by M. G. Harris
The hut is the size of a large garage. There’s a tiny kitchen area with a gas-canister-powered stove and a bowl which functions as a sink. A log fire blazes under a brick-lined chimney. There’s a bed, spread with a sleeping bag, a small table with two chairs. On a single pine shelf is a pile of paperback books and a portable stereo.
My dad sits on the bed and invites us to take the two chairs. I stumble, finally find the chair, and sit.
When I bring myself to look again, I can’t take my eyes off him. He gazes back with a look that’s like a spear to my heart. It’s exactly the expression he had in my dream. Bemused, regretful, icily distant.
“So . . . you’re my son, hey? What’s your name?”
“Josh.”
He nods, and I catch a glimpse of a tear in his eye as he grins. “Josh; good, I like it.”
There’s a painful silence. “You’re Andres,” I say. “Professor Andres Garcia. You’re an archaeologist. You live in Oxford, England.”
“Andres. Wouldn’t have been my first guess. And England! That explains why I speak such good English,” he says.
“Your wife is Eleanor,” I continue. “And she . . . and me also . . . thought you were dead.”
Andres nods again, eyes down. When he looks back up, I see that his eyes are brimming with tears. He wipes them away with the back of one hand. I rush to his side and hug him. After a few seconds he hugs me back. It feels half-hearted.
“What are you doing here, Dad? How did you get here? And why didn’t you come back to us?”
He pulls away and puts his head in his hands for a long moment. Then he stands and walks to the kitchen, where he lights the stove to boil some water.
“I can remember how to speak and walk and . . . all the basic stuff. Which includes speaking English as well as Spanish, apparently. And I seem to know my way around a mountain. I remember everything that happened since I arrived on Orizaba. Most of all I remember the thing that’s kept me here – the fear. Someone is watching me. Someone is looking for me, and when they catch up with me, I don’t think I’ll be coming back.
“One day . . . months ago now . . . I found myself in the rocks on the slope of this mountain. I had a head injury, but nothing more. I was found by a climbing guide, who took me down to the first hut. They wanted to take me to hospital but I wouldn’t let them. I was terrified – of people. I didn’t want to go where there were many people. This fear was like nothing you can imagine. Completely irrational! And yet it consumed me. I couldn’t even stand to see the people arriving in the hut. I looked into each face and I wondered – are you the one who’s come for me? So they let me stay in this hut. It’s usually an emergency hut, but with me here it’s always warm and safe, for anyone who gets caught in bad weather.”
Ixchel says, “So . . . you don’t remember anything?”
Andres shrugs. “Not so far.”
“You don’t remember me, or Mum, or Oxford, our house . . . anything?” I say.
“No, son. I’m truly sorry. I don’t.”
“What do you remember about the people who are after you?”
“Almost nothing. There are some very, very vague memories, like fragments from a dream. And they don’t make sense.”
“Try us,” I say.
“I’m flying . . . and being chased by another aircraft. That’s one. I’m in a cage, like a prison. That’s another. I’m being shot at, but I don’t die and I’m not afraid.”
“What were you wearing when you woke up on the mountain?”
“Just an orange jumpsuit. I nearly froze to death. And a piece of really tasteless jewellery.” He reaches under the mattress and pulls out a chunky bracelet. Even though I’ve never seen it before, I know immediately that we’re looking at the Bracelet of Itzamna. Dad doesn’t miss our unspoken recognition.
“But it’s not just jewellery, is it? Even I guessed that much. This has something to do with why I’m here. I think it may even be why those people are looking for me.”
Dad doesn’t let us touch the Bracelet but instead fits it on to his left wrist, like a watch. It’s about twice the width of a fat digital watch, made of a copper-coloured material that shines, but without the sheen of metal. It’s engraved with wedge-like symbols, similar to the inscriptions on the Adaptor. Some symbols look like buttons. Just placed to the left of centre is a small dent; a hollow to hold something about the size of a small pea.
“It’s got some kind of power source,” Dad says, staring at the Bracelet with what I could swear looks like affection. “It hums. Like static electricity. It’s not from this world. I’m sure of that. And it’s broken.”
“Broken?”
“When I look at it, I have one thought, one memory. Burnt out.”
I give the Bracelet a careful look. “It doesn’t look burnt.”
“No,” he agrees. “It doesn’t.”
“You don’t know how to use it, or what it does?”
He shakes his head. “But I think that once, I did.”
“I think you did, too,” I say. It’s all beginning to make sense. Montoyo told me that Dad either took the Bracelet from Blanco Vigores – or else Vigores gave it to him. If the Bracelet is a time-travel device, then that explains how Dad escaped from the NRO.
He jumped in time.
Which means that somehow, Dad must have worked out how to use the Bracelet. Or fixed it. Montoyo said they hadn’t been able to make it work. But Dad did!
And now all that knowledge is lost. . .
I can’t even imagine how long Dad’s been away, or where he’s been. For me, months have passed. But for him? It might be longer. . . If it weren’t for the fact that like me, Dad has dark-brown eyes, I’d even wonder: was Arcadio really my own father, travelling in time?
“Josh . . . do you know what this is?”
“I think it’s the Bracelet of Itzamna,” I tell him, looking at Ixchel for confirmation. She only shrugs. I guess she’s never seen it either. “You’re right, people are looking for it. Maybe they’re even looking for you. The people who captured you were agents from the US National Reconnaissance Organization. It’s part military, part secret service. They faked your death, to make it look like you died in a plane crash. They really didn’t want anyone looking for you, I guess. But what I can’t work out is – how did they fake your dental records? The coroner identified the body, said it was you.”
Dad shrugs. “Maybe they bribed the coroner.”
Open-mouthed, I say, “People can do that?”
“Not without connections, I imagine. But if what you say is right, then this agency must know pretty powerful people within the Mexican government.”
“You don’t remember anything about me and Mum,” I say. “How about something further back. Your mother? Your father?”
“I have these feelings . . . but I can’t remember names or faces.”
“How about archaeology? You remember any of that?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I could remember language. The language part of my memory seems to be untouched.”
Ixchel speaks to him in Yucatec, saying something I don’t understand. He replies and then looks astonished.
“You speak Yucatec,” she says. “Can you also read the writing on the Bracelet?”
“I’ve already tried. It’s a type of cuneiform writing – looks like an ancient Mesopotamian language, but with strange modifications to the symbols. It doesn’t make any sense.”
Montoyo didn’t make a big deal about the links between Itzamna, Ek Naab and the Erinsi – the ancients named with old Mesopotamian words for People of Memory. But the Adaptor, the Revival Chamber and now the Bracelet of Itzamna all seem to have a link with ancient Mesopotamia.
How far back does this go?
The sorrow I’ve been feeling that my own father doesn’t recognize me is starting to melt. I sense the beginning of hope. If I can persuade my dad to leave this mountain with us, we can try to get him home. Maybe that will bring back his memories.
I stare back at him wordlessly, feel a lump rise in my throat.
“How did you find me?” he asks.
I tell him most of the story – how I came looking for the Ix Codex, how I found Camila and then Ek Naab, and how eventually I recovered the codex. When I come to the part about Camila drowning, I can’t go on. I can see from his reaction that he doesn’t remember who Camila is – and I haven’t the heart to tell him. So I skip the details – I don’t tell him that she was my sister; I don’t tell him that she died.
Talking about what happened helps to keep my mind off the utter misery of the situation. I’m talking to my father – and he’s rapt with what I’m saying – yet he can’t think of me as his son.
Which makes it hard to feel like his son. That’s not easy to stand.
With help from Ixchel, I tell him about the message in the postcards, from Arcadio. The name doesn’t ring any bells with my father. He listens with intense concentration.
At a certain point, I remember that I have my dad’s iPod. Maybe he’ll recognize an object? Maybe it’s just people he can’t remember?
I show him the iPod, but he just shakes his head. “As far as I remember, I’ve never seen one before.”
Ixchel says, “What happens if you play something from it?”
I pass Andres the iPod and show him how to hook up the earphones. I select a playlist of Miles Davis tracks, beginning with “Blue in Green”.
Watching him listen to the tune that’s haunted me for weeks, I almost cry. Within the minute, tears are rolling down his cheeks and into his beard. He squeezes his eyes shut and grips my arm hard. His voice cracks with emotion as he whispers, “I remember this. I do.”
Ixchel goes to the kitchen to make tea from the water that’s just boiled.
I sit with my father as he listens to the music. I watch him wipe away his tears.
He looks into my eyes. “You’ve been in all this danger, because of me.”
“He got shot, too,” chimes in Ixchel, before I can silence her.
“No. . .”
“It’s nothing,” I say. “Just a flesh wound.”
“But it happened because of me.”
“No, no way!”
“Yes,” he insists, sadly. “From what you’ve said, it’s obvious. I should have found this Ix Codex. Not you. It wasn’t your job.”
“Well, maybe it was my job.”
“No. You completed the mission I started. You succeeded where I failed. Meanwhile I’m holed up in here like a fox, afraid to leave.”
“Well, you know what they say . . . it’s not paranoia if they really are out to get you.”
But Dad ignores my attempt to be funny. “I still don’t know how I’m going to get away from here. It’s a physical thing. I can’t make myself go past the first hut.”
“We’ll help.”
“And I don’t even remember my own boy!” He rips the earphones off and stares in despair. “I can remember some lousy jazz track but I can’t remember my wife or son.”
Ixchel says, “With help, maybe you can get your memory back.”
“You say that only because you can’t imagine what it’s like. To have no memories! Just murky images, impossible to grasp; sounds that bubble up as if from the swamp of dreams.”
His voice trails off and he gazes, unfocused, into his hands. Then he looks up at me again. “Did you miss me very much? You, your mother?”
I gasp. “Well, yeah! What do you think?”
To my surprise, he actually shakes his head, smiling. “I think you’re managing pretty well without me.”
I’m speechless. He continues. “To find the codex, to get all the way here, really, it’s amazing. That you don’t see it only shows me how normal this has become for you. What high expectations you have of yourself. Someone taught you to believe in yourself like that. It would be wonderful to think I had anything to do with that.”
“But . . . of course you did,” I whisper. “You’re my dad!”
We stare at each other. “Well, your old man’s got a dangerous streak too, Josh. I seem to be drawn to trouble.”
“No . . . it’s not that. It’s the adventure you like. You always have.”
“Oh,” he says. “That must have been rough on you and your mum. Did you mind?”
“Dad! Of course not. That’s . . . that’s what’s so great about you. I wanted – I want – to be just like you.”
He ruffles my hair. “You’re already better. When I was your age I was just wasting my time, hitting on girls and. . .” Abruptly, he stops talking, becomes deadly serious. I watch his eyes, hold my breath.
“Dad . . . do you remember? Try!”
“There was a girl. God! I wasn’t much older than you. We had a baby!”
He stares at me, astonishment mixed with delight. He grabs hold of my arms. “Josh! I remember something! You have a sister!”
There’s a rush of excitement as I realize what this means. His memories are coming back to him. Maybe eventually, they all will. But what a thing to remember first. I feel sick with nerves when I think about it.
I’ll have to tell him that my sister, Camila, is dead – murdered.
Outside, the wind whips around the hut, louder by the second. Powdery snow slaps hard against the single window. There’s another sound then, one that I can’t quite place. It sounds like a low rumble.
The effect on Dad is like an electric shock. He leaps to his feet. “Turn off the gas! Turn it off quick!”
He dashes to an apparatus next to the sink. He picks it up, and staring at it in horror, he crosses the room to where a bulky, granite-coloured North Face ski jacket hangs on a hook by the door. From one of the pockets he takes a walkie-talkie. He barks questions in Spanish, spitting each word. “What readings are you getting? I’ve got 5.5. Right. How many people are on the way to the summit? How many rescue crew can you spare? OK. OK. I’ve got two with me. OK.”
The second he gets off the radio, he starts to put on his jacket. “Get your jackets back on,” he instructs. Now that he’s in mountain-rescue mode, a change sweeps through his personality. He’s become confident, methodical, precise. “Ropes too. And your backpacks. Get your crampons in place. We’re leaving. There’s seismic activity.”
Ixchel and I reel with alarm. “The volcano . . . is going to explode. . .?”
He hesitates. “No . . . but . . . there’s a lot of fresh powder near the summit.”
“And. . .?”
Through tensed lips he says, “Avalanche.”
My father, Andres, has to lean hard against the door of the hut to prise it open – the wind pressure is so high. Outside, I feel a surge of fear. Occasional gusts blow hard enough to throw me off balance. Metres away, on the glacier, it will be almost impossible to stay upright when those gales blow.
Dad shouts some incomprehensible words into his walkie-talkie and then listens, nodding. The second he finishes talking, he turns to us.
“We’re going to go down as fast as possible, OK? Roped together. If you feel yourself slipping, lean back hard, OK? Dig your crampons into the ice. We’ll be zigzagging down. Tread exactly where I tread, OK? There are some crevasses, but I know where they are.”
There’s another rumble. This time I feel it beneath my feet. Terror pours through me like hot water through ice. I can see it in Ixchel’s face too.
“Shouldn’t we stay in the hut?” I yell above the wind. How is my leg going to hold up?
Dad shouts back, “It’s in the path of the avalanche. We need to move.”
He leads us out on to the lip of the glacier. We scramble up the two feet of ice, then start walking, first Dad, then me, then Ixchel. We zigzag across, taking tiny steps. One second the air is still; the next, there’s a roar of freezing snow.
Another deep rumble. It’s strong enough to shake us off our fee
t. We’re thrown back against the mountain. We lean against the slope, scrape our boots into the ice. When the tremor passes, Dad shouts, “That was good. Keep doing that when it quakes.”
As I prepare to pull myself to my feet, I glance upwards. I’m slightly surprised to see a light aircraft circling the top of the volcano. I hadn’t heard it before, over the wind. I point it out to Dad. He looks up curiously. “Vulcanologists, probably,” he says. “They like to take photos of the crater when we get seismic activity around here.”