Mayan December

by Brenda Cooper

  “Likewise.” Michael was better looking than Don Carlo, except his flirting wasn’t as harmless. But he could give her more work. She was traveling on the last of the money IndiStudy had paid her, and she needed a way to feed Nix next year. A tough line to dance on. She smiled along that line, stepping back a bit from him. “What can I show you?”

  “Can we start at K’uk’ulkan?”

  The temple of the snake god. At least he didn’t call it “the castle” like so many tourists did. She glanced over at Julia and Don Carlo. “Is that all right with you two?”

  Julia said, “Sure,” and Don Carlo grinned, his smile lightening her mood. He felt like an almost-authentic version of Ian. Funny, since Don Carlo was native and Ian imported. She shook her head to clear the thought and led the trio toward the large stepped pyramid, falling a little behind to glance down at her phone.

  No Nixie. Damn. She pushed the message button and whispered an instant voicemail to Oriana. “Is everything okay?”

  Michael waited for her. She must be showing her worry because he echoed, “Is everything okay?”

  She nodded quickly, an instinctive reaction in front of a client, and then shook her head. “I think so. My daughter is at Tulum, with a friend. I was just checking on her.”

  He looked as if she’d just brought a monkey into a crystal showroom. “Trixie? Isn’t she young?”

  “Nixie. She’s eleven. I brought her down to see this.” She struggled to keep her voice light and even. “Something she’ll remember her whole life.” She smiled at him, hoping to disarm.

  His smile didn’t reach his cool, blue eyes. “Tulum’s got enough military presence to keep it safe.”

  “I’m sure you’re right.” But she couldn’t help glancing down at her phone. There was no reply, and Nixie’s light was still missing.

  As they dodged a woman pushing a baby stroller awkwardly on the cobbled walkway, he changed the subject. “We appreciate your work. I’m looking forward to being here when the stars line up like the legends.”

  “Not legends,” she said. “Science. The Mayans were excellent astronomers.”

  “So have you noticed anything different here?”

  What was he looking for? She chose her words carefully. “Chichén has become a popular destination. Mayans are coming, too. In droves.”

  “Will there be trouble?” he asked, echoing the tabloid headlines.

  She held her hands out, shrugging as if to say she didn’t know. “We saw some protests yesterday in Playa.”

  Michael sounded worried as he said, “Miss Marie’s having an international environmental conference starting in Cancun in a few days. Conferences seem to need demonstrators and terrorists.”

  One more way the world was going crazy all at once, trying to hold to a world view that was slowly killing them all. Then the name he said sunk in. Marie Healey.

  Marie Healey, the President of the United States’ Science Advisor and Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy. The woman who ran his international program of shared responsibility for climate change. A mixed success, but more than anyone else had managed.

  “I went to school with her,” Alice said.

  “Really?” He sounded intrigued. “What was she like?”

  “Smart.” Alice could see her, a year older, laughing as she came to Alice for last minute tutoring, or chided her for studying too hard. Marie the lucky, the one who always knew the moment to strike, the act to take, the person to meet. Marie who might be saving the world. No other woman at Stanford had burned as bright as Marie. “She’s brave. We used to get in trouble together.”

  “So are you brave?”

  Alice shook her head. “Marie used to make me brave. Besides, courage is for the young.”

  He arched an eyebrow at her. “Really? You’re brave enough to come down here on your own.”

  They were near the bottom of the pyramid, and Alice stopped so Julia and Don Carlo could catch them. Maybe she could start them all up the steps and then call Oriana again. “Ready to see if you’re in shape?”

  Julia’s eyes flashed at the challenge. Don Carlo showed his white teeth in a faint grin, and Michael simply started up. His long legs made the tall steps easy, while Julia climbed slowly, placing both feet on each step before taking the next one. Although she stayed close to the metal chain running up the center of the steps, she didn’t actually grab for it. Don Carlo went up at Julia’s pace, at her side, but one step at a time. He looked like a Mayan priest might have, taking the steps reverently, his back straight and his head high.

  Alice glanced back at her phone. Nothing new. She sent another message and forced her legs up instead of letting them run back to the parking lot and hail a cab to Tulum. Midday sun whitewashed the sky to barely-blue and heated the steps so they produced faint shimmers of heat.

  Seven steps from the top, her phone vibrated. Alice hesitated, suddenly scared to listen. She pulled ahead of the other two, rushing her breath, and sat down on the top, her toes barely reaching the step below her. She tapped her wrist. “Oriana?”

  An unfamiliar voice said, “Call for Ms. Alice Cameron.”

  Her hands shook so hard she almost dropped the phone. “I’m here.”

  The voice on the other end of the line was very formal. “Please hold for Director Healey.”

  Surely it was coincidence she’d just been talking about Marie. Although maybe it made perfect sense they’d both be here at this time.

  Marie was calling her?

  “Alice?”

  She recognized the voice. Marie was calling her. “Yes? Hi. How are you?” She sounded like a tweener talking to a kid-band lead singer.

  “I’m fine. A little busy lately.” Marie’s warm tones calmed Alice’s racing blood. “Are you sitting down?”

  “Yes.”

  “I want you to show me around Chichén Itzá.”

  Alice’s mouth dropped open. “I’m . . . sure! I’m there right now. When?” What a dumb question. Surely for the summit.

  “Me and a few of my best friends. On the twentieth. Yes I know the site is closed. But not to us.”

  Wow. The V.I.P. showing. Oriana could watch Nixie. If Nixie was now . . . Damn. Alice licked her lips. “All right.”

  Marie’s voice warmed even more. “Look, I saw your name on a list of people who could do this. So I picked you. I’d like to see you again. There’s a dinner afterwards, too. For even more of my best friends. Can you come to that, too? The president will be there.

  “I . . . I’d love to.” Her knees felt watery. Not a good thing on top of a pyramid. At least she was sitting down. Marie Healey. And the President of the United States, and other leaders of the free world. Or the not-so-free if you counted China, where they kept up an invisible electronic wall that almost worked around the whole country. “I . . . yes. I’ll be happy to do it. Of course I’d like to see you again.”

  Silence fell for a beat. When Marie continued, her voice was serious. “I wanted—needed—someone I can count on. Someone who won’t play politics.”

  Michael’s impatient voice called to her. “Alice!”

  She shook her head at him. He glared at her with an I’m more important than you and you work for me look. Don Carlo showed up beside him and said something Alice couldn’t hear and the two men stepped away. Alice refocused in time to hear Marie ask, “Are you busy?”

  “Not too busy to talk to you.” Unless my daughter calls. But she didn’t say that. “I’m honored. Should I meet you here, and when?”

  “It’s not that simple. There will be background checks. I need you to meet with my security people. The first session will be tomorrow morning.”

  “Tomorrow.” She’d planned the morning off, promised Nix she’d take her to the beach. “Hold on.”

  She flipped to her calendar, noting along the way that Nix still didn’t appear to be in the real world if you counted on GPS. You could build great applications, but a bad network could take them all dow
n. Or magic. Not. Surely not.

  Her schedule popped up on the screen. Maybe she could rearrange her noon meeting, keep her date with Nix. It mattered. “I can be free at noon.”

  Marie responded. “Staff has time at nine in the morning. At the Cancun Marriott. I’m sorry, I can’t change it. If you want to do this, you’ll have to be flexible. I’ll make sure to fix anything it does to your schedule. You’ll be paid, of course. For all of the time.”

  She’d have to leave before breakfast. It was just wrong to leave Nix in the lurch, but December, 2012 would never come again, and she needed the money. And Marie Healey! “Of course I’ll do it.”

  “But do you want to?”

  Alice swore she heard something almost pleading in Marie’s voice. “Of course I do.”

  “Okay. Be at the Marriott at nine. There’ll be follow-ups, too, I’m afraid.”

  Alice let out a long breath. “I’ll do it.”

  “Thanks.”

  Alice was wondering what to say next when it came to her. Don Carlo. “May I bring someone who can help?”

  Marie sounded startled. “Who?”

  “Don Carlo Agapito. He’s American. Used to own a tech company he sold, uses that money to help Mayans down here. He’ll be good for PR.”

  She could almost hear laughter in Marie’s voice as she asked, “Is he your sweetie?”

  Alice did laugh. “No, I don’t have one of those. But he’s helped me get work down here, and I can use someone I trust to help me if the group gets too big. He can answer any question about the Mayans themselves. And they should be represented.”

  “Hold on.” The phone went silent, and Alice heart her heart beating too fast for a long time before Marie came back on the phone. “He’s already on the possible list. We’ll move him up a notch. My folk will contact him.”

  “Thanks,” Alice said again, a little surprised at her audacity, at how easy and hard it was to talk to Marie, all at once. Just like it used to be. “I’m looking forward to seeing you.”

  “Okay. I’ll have the security squad contact you. You can give them your friend’s particulars.”

  “All right.”

  “Look, I’ve got to go keep working to save the world. But I’ll see you in a few days. I’m glad we found you and you’re down there. Bye.”

  “Bye.” But Marie had cut the connection before she even said that. Alice sat up straight and looked out across the jungle. Wow.

  “Are you ready yet?” Michael called.

  She stood up quickly. “Yes, sorry.”

  “Was that Nixie?” he asked.

  “Just . . . ” What to say? “An old friend. Someone I wouldn’t have been able to call back if I hadn’t taken the call.”

  He frowned, but led her around the top of the pyramid toward the others as if he were the guide.

  She frowned, but followed him. He paid her, after all.

  They came upon the others looking down at a whitewashed four-step pyramid.

  Alice shook herself. Nixie . . . well, what could she do? Nixie had to be all right. She needed to focus, to do her job. Speaking of the job, she pointed. “That’s the Temple of the Warriors below you.” Tall stone columns holding up nothing but air and imagination surrounded a building as steep as the one they stood on, but squatter and shorter. “No one knows exactly what the columns held up. It’ll be decorated as a market for the equinox. Those are the tallest freestanding columns found so far in Mayan architecture, even though they look small from up here.”

  Julia spoke softly, “It’s like looking down on the bones of a world. With all we understand, we don’t know what it looked like when the culture was alive. Maybe we never will.” She turned to Alice, sounding morose. “What if we had to look at our own bones some day?”

  Don Carlos said, “Our bones keep being rebuilt and restored. Perhaps they’ll never be as bare and unclothed as these. Or as strong.” He looked down on the Temple, musing. “Imagine hundreds of my people, thousands, walking on the paths, going about their business. Artisans carrying pots and mosaics, warriors practicing, women with water and weaving.”

  Alice liked his word pictures. “Scientists and mathematicians—all priests, but they had people who did my job.” Like ancestors, in a way. A heritage she could almost feel when she came here. “They’re going to try to decorate some of this the way most archeologists think it would have been. You should have heard the arguments! We won’t get it right, but you’ll see your color.”

  Don Carlo smiled yet again. “And there will be real Mayans acting as the artisans and warriors.”

  She couldn’t bring herself to tell him that only a quarter of the actors would be Mayans. Many had been hired for their looks: tall, tanned people more like the American and European ideal of Native Americans than the small, wiry Mayans.

  They came upon Michael staring fixedly toward the Ball Court. He turned as they approached, laughing, “What took you so long?”

  Showoff.

  “We stopped to admire the view,” Julia said sweetly.

  Michael grunted.

  Her phone vibrated again and Alice turned her back on Michael, no longer caring what he thought. She sat down.

  “Everything’s okay. We were in the water, so didn’t have our phones.” Oriana sounded excited. “We swam with a turtle. It was the most amazing thing. A big old leatherback. They never come in there, not that big, not at Tulum.”

  Alice let her breath out, yet she still felt full of air, almost like she could spread her arms and fly from the pyramid. Nix was okay! She glanced down, looking for Nixie’s light. It wasn’t there. So Tulum was just a dead space in the wireless network. Alice smiled as Oriana continued. “We’re going to dry off and wander through the ruins. We’ll call you later. Don’t worry.”

  “Okay.” She dropped her hand to her side.

  Julia sat on her right and Don Carlo stood beside them, calm and serene. Alice looked below them, the pyramid steps almost as steep as a ladder from this height. Chichén Itzá spread out below her, and for the first time that day, the magic and mystery, the sheer timelessness of the stone world filled her again. Years of her life had been arrowed toward this week. She needed to lighten up and let that in, enjoy it. Quit worrying.

  Michael cleared his throat. “Was that Nixie?”

  “Yes.” She smiled and made a little ceremony of shoving her phone into her pocket. “Let’s go. What are you waiting for?”

  CHAPTER 11

  Heat dried the saltwater from Nixie’s back before they even made it off the beach. Nothing, ever, had been so cool as the big turtle. Not even the Mayan man with the quetzal bird. Why was she so lucky?

  “That was . . . wow.” Oriana said. “You are magic. I’ve seen a few leatherbacks before, but never so close in or so . . . so . . . it came to see you!”

  Nixie smiled. “I’ve never seen one before. I wish we’d gotten a picture.”

  “Come on, let me show you the ruins.”

  Nixie blinked at her. Might as well. Nothing could be as great as the turtle, though. Its eyes had been so old, so like her grandfather’s eyes. They gave her that same feeling like she was just perfect exactly like she was, like she would always be perfect. She looked out at the clear, calm water. “No wonder you love to dive.”

  Oriana put a hand on Nixie’s shoulder, and Nixie had to strain to hear her soft voice. “I’ve been diving down here for years, and I’ve never seen a leatherback act that way. It might have been a pet.”

  Nixie screwed her eyes tight against the glare. “It didn’t want to be my pet. It wanted to tell me something, I just know it.”

  “But you don’t know what?”

  “No.” She shrugged Oriana’s hand off and started up the beach. “But let’s go. I want to draw a picture. Maybe we can find a good place to sit so I can draw the ruins. Mom would like that.” She pointed up at the rocky bluffs just above the beach. “Maybe there.”

  “You don’t want to walk around?”

&nbs
p; “Not yet. I want to think about the turtle.”

  As they crossed from sand to grass, they passed five young Federales dressed in black, aliens among the multinational tourists in Bermuda shorts and Hawaiian shirts.

  Nixie and Oriana settled together on a wide rock with a view of both the ocean and the ruins. Both pulled on shorts from their packs to protect their swim suits from snags. A tourist path ran between them and the ruins. “Our view’s going to be interrupted,” Oriana said.

  “I don’t care. I want to see the ocean.”

  “Are you waiting for the turtle to come back?’

  Nixie shook her head. “I don’t think it will. Not today. It would have just stayed. But we live in Arizona, and there’s no ocean there.” She dug through her pack and pulled out her journal and her drawing box. “You can use my pencils. If you want, I can tear out a piece of paper for you.”

  Oriana smiled. “I brought my own journal. It’s no good for drawing, but I have a pen. I’m quite content to just sit here and pretend I’m an iguana basking in the sun.”

  Nixie laughed. Good enough. She’d had to sit still for years, following her mom to archeological sites and lectures and stupid adult parties full of teachers. She’d learned to like it. Sitting still, that is. She pulled out a black pencil to sketch in the outline of the Temple of the Descending God, easily visible from here. Maybe she could do something as neat and orderly as her mom’s scientific drawings. It would be easier without her mom looking over her shoulder.

  She waited for the path to clear of people, steadied her camera against a rock, and took a picture of the ruin from exactly where she sat in case she didn’t have time to finish. The outline was pretty easy, just a square on a square, and the rough outline of the rocks between her and the ruin. The gentle scratching of Oriana’s pen soothed her, and she’d gotten all the way to trying to shade the darker gray of the stone lintels before she looked up.

  Oriana whispered to her, as if hoping not to disturb her. “I’m going for some cold water. Would you like a bottle?”

  “Sure.”

  “Do you want to come with me?” Oriana asked.