by M. G. Harris
I thought I’d been obsessed before. About my dad’s disappearance, about travelling back in time to change things.
By comparison, they were just hobbies.
Is it like this for everyone? Because I feel as if I’ve gone insane. I don’t even want to get better.
Is she thinking about me? She has to be. There’s something between us, I know I’m not imagining it. But for some reason . . . she’s with Benicio.
Jeez. It can’t be like this for everyone else. We’d all be walking around like dozy zombies if this were normal. Is it something the Sect has done to me, when they genetically engineered something into me? I can’t stop wondering.
What’s me, what’s normal, and what have they changed?
“Hey, Ixchel,” Benicio says before I can speak. He gives her an affectionate smile, obviously appealing for her attention. Ixchel swings away slightly, looking at me.
“So this is where you hang out in the mornings?”
“Yeah, that’s right. It’s today’s big news story.”
Ixchel pulls a face. “You don’t have to get sarcastic.”
“I’m not being sarcastic,” I growl. “British understatement. We’re famous for it, right, Benicio?”
“Well, it’s a nice country,” Benicio admits. “But I never really got that whole Britishness thing.”
You liked it at the time, I want to say.You liked all the attention from those Oxford University students, too. But I don’t; instead, I bite my lip.
“I just saw Carlos Montoyo,” Ixchel says, smiling first at me, then Benicio. “He was looking for you at your apartment, Josh. He wants you to go see him right away.”
“Better hop to it, buddy,” Benicio grins. “Be a good boy now.”
I wrench my attention away from Ixchel. (I wasn’t actually looking at her, of course, but I’ve learned how to look without staring. It’s kind of the same way you look-but-don’t-look at the sun.)
“A ‘good boy’? Huh. Funny, coming from you.”
“Don’t you know what Montoyo wants? Maybe you saw it in a dream.”
I can sense myself bristling. “Leave it out.”
“Hey!” Benicio shrugs. “You’re the one who talks to the dead. Maybe they told you what Montoyo wants? Like when your dead sister came to you in a dream and showed you the secret hideout of the Sect of Huracan at Lake Bacalar. . . Who am I to argue with your mystical powers?”
I summon all my self-control and force a grin. “Can’t blame you.”
Only Ixchel remains serious. “What amazes me,” she says, “is that you still question it. After everything that’s happened! You must have something weird going on with your mind, Josh. Some kind of extrasensory power.”
I turn to Ixchel. In a low voice I say, “That must be it.”
Extrasensory power, hey? I love you. Read my mind, Ixchel. Did you hear that?
I watch closely, but she doesn’t react. Of course not.
Benicio smiles, trying to flirt with Ixchel again. It turns my stomach, so I start to walk.
“I’m gonna go and . . . write my blog,” I tell them.
“Oh, you’re still doing that?” Ixchel sounds interested. Benicio chuckles.
“Blog Boy! I love how there’s someone here who’s a bigger geek than me.”
“That’s right,” I say, turning to face him. “A bigger geek, bigger and stronger than you, probably almost as good as Tyler at capoeira by now and after two weeks of lessons, already better at handling a motorbike than you. Just wait until I start taking flying lessons, Benicio. You might not be the pilot supremo for ever.”
Benicio erupts into peals of laughter. “Better at handling a motorbike? Caramba, Josh. Now that is funny.”
“I’m better,” I say quietly. “And you’ve seen me ride, so you know it. Want me to prove it?”
My cousin just shakes his head, grinning in amazement. “Prove it? Sure, sure! Why not?”
I don’t move. “OK. Where. When?”
“Pues ahorita, guey, ahorita! ‘Right away’ sounds like a good time to me.”
I’m a little surprised that he’s calling my bluff, but I don’t show it. “OK,” I repeat. “Let me get my bike gear.”
“What about Montoyo?” he says. There’s an edge of challenge to his tone.
“Montoyo can wait.”
“Oooff.” Benicio claps, twice, pretending to be impressed. “Tough guy.”
If Ixchel wasn’t here, I’d probably thump him right now. But she is, so I just stand there with thunder in my eyes.
“I’ll pick you up at your place, cousin,” Benicio says with a smirk. He turns away, then stops. “Oh, and by the way, who is that other guy you were talking about, Josh? Who’s ‘Tyler’?”
Benicio’s teasing about Tyler is obviously designed to annoy me. It’s like he enjoys reminding me that I don’t have any new friend in Ek Naab who’s as good as Tyler.
It’ll be a pleasure to show him up in front of Ixchel.
I try not to think about Ixchel’s reaction to my motorbike challenge. I wasn’t really focusing on her during that exchange, but now that I cast my mind back, I can’t avoid the memory of her look of astonishment. She didn’t seem impressed, now I think about it. Mainly stunned, actually.
I grab my new leather jacket and motorbike helmet. I’m gonna be wearing motorbike gear and riding a bike in front of Ixchel. How can that be anything but cool?
Life in Ek Naab might be weird, and it seems sometimes that I can do nothing but stand by and watch myself become a scary stalker-guy around Ixchel, but still. . .
Some of the new stuff I’ve been doing, learning to drive a car, a motorbike, all this new gear . . . it’s pretty great.
Benicio picks me up outside, just as he promised. He’s gone for the casual look. He’s in blue jeans, cowboy boots and a blue checked shirt with the wristbands turned up once. Suddenly I feel like a little kid getting all dressed up. But it’s too late to go back and change now – I’d look like an indecisive, anxious idiot.
My cousin will always have four years on me. I wish I could get used to that. Wish I could stop comparing myself to him.
It’s kind of impossible, though. Ixchel likes him, not me. And when I’m not busy hating Benicio . . . well, I like him too. He’s a cool guy. Funny, because that’s why I hate him.
I follow Benicio to the grandest building in Ek Naab, the one that fronts as a deluxe eco-hotel. The elevator in the ornate marble-lined lobby takes us up to the surface level. I’ve heard that there’s a false display that is programmed into all the elevators so that it can look to outsiders as if the lowest floor is S – the sotano (basement). When in fact there are three storeys below – into the underground city of Ek Naab. It’s “just in case” anyone from the outside world ever has to visit. In which case they’d be shown the exemplary eco-resort with its solar-heated swimming pools and the outdoor blue cenote, the lush tropical gardens, the surrounding farms on which all food served in the resort is grown, the pretty white Spanish-style church with its orange grove and the cemetery in which they bury everyone who’s ever lived in Ek Naab. My dad, too.
Privately, though, I’ve heard it muttered that if the Mexican government were to realize there’s anything more than fruit-growing and eco-tourism going on in Ek Naab . . . things could get very serious.
Ek Naab’s location is utterly secret. It has to be. They guard the secret knowledge of the Erinsi – the “People of Memory”. A civilization so ancient that there’s almost no record of their existence. A civilization with knowledge of time travel, sophisticated bioengineering and anti-gravity propulsion.
But most of all – the last Earth civilization to be finished off by the galactic superwave. Their computer technology was wrecked overnight by the superwave’s electromagnetic energy. Their civilization collapsed. Who knows when it happened to the Erinsi – but they knew when the superwave would be around again: 22 December, AD 2012.
A Mayan god (or was he really a time traveller?)
called Itzamna copied the ancient Erinsi writings into the four Books of Itzamna. The books – or codices – have been guarded in Ek Naab since Itzamna’s time, around 350 BC. One of the four books – the Ix Codex – went missing for centuries when it was stolen by a king of the Mayan Snake Kingdom, a place we know nowadays as Calakmul. That was back in AD 653.
The men in my family – the Bakabs of Ix – have been hunting for the Ix Codex ever since. We’re the only ones who can touch it and survive the blast of bio-toxin that hits anyone within a five-metre radius of the book’s deadly cover. A gene protects us, just as a gene protects every Bakab – the ones who protect the other Books of Itzamna: the Kan, Cuauc and Muluc codices. A bit before my fourteenth birthday, I found the codex buried near the crater lake of Catemaco, in the Mexican state of Veracruz.
Itzamna named his four sons – the Bakabs – with the names of the four corners of the Mayan universe. But I reckon Itzamna wasn’t even a Mayan. Were the Bakabs really his sons? Lately, I’ve been wondering.
The people of Ek Naab are definitely descended from Itzamna, as well as from those Bakabs. And from a bunch of other folk who managed to get into the Cult of Itzamna and live in the hidden community of Ek Naab – which means dark water. Including quite a few Spanish and other visitors who discovered the secret city over the years. The famous American explorer who discovered the Mayan ruins, John Lloyd Stephens, for one. I’m descended from John Lloyd Stephens too, as it turns out. On my great-grandmother’s side.
It’s a small place, Ek Naab. Small and windless.
Stifling.
We stroll through the gardens and pass gardeners trimming the bougainvillea. When I came to live here with my mother I wondered about two things: how come such a small place had so many smart people? I mean, Ixchel finished high school at fourteen! The ancient languages stuff she’s studying now is university level. That’s not even unusual here. Benicio is a pilot and an aeronautical engineer. He’s only just turned eighteen.
The other thing I wondered was – what do you do if you’re not smart enough for that? What if you’re happy to be a gardener or a cook?
Well, it seems that gardeners and cooks and cleaners and doctors and aeronautical engineers all get paid more or less the same. Housing is all provided by the city; most people live in similar small apartments. You can get any food or clothes you need in the daily market. There’s a kind of money, but it only works in Ek Naab.
Call me old-fashioned, but I don’t like it. It’s creepy having so many people know who you are and know your business. Carlos Montoyo getting together with my mother, for example. The news of that spread across Ek Naab within one day. Lorena, the chief scientist, saw the way Montoyo held my mother’s hand when she was giving us the results of my genetic tests. The next day, everyone knew about what Lorena had seen.
“It’s so nice for Carlos,” people tell me. They actually stop me in the street to say it.
“Excuse me,” I want to say, “but I don’t care about Carlos Montoyo’s love life. I wish my mother would have respected my dad’s memory for a bit longer. A couple of years, at least!”
I don’t, of course. Instead I give them this weak smile and nod and try to remember who they are: second cousin, third cousin once removed?
Everyone’s interested in Carlos Montoyo. He’s the richest guy in Ek Naab – but not with money.
The real privileges of Ek Naab are this: access to secrets and access to the outside world.
Carlos Montoyo isn’t the mayor of Ek Naab – that’s Chief Sky Mountain. Montoyo’s apartment is nothing special. It’s the same as the one I share with my mother: two small bedrooms, a lounge and a kitchen. But in terms of secrets and access to the outside world, Montoyo is top dog. Partly because his job allows him to spend much of his time posing as a lecturer at Yucatan University in Merida. I’ve heard rumours that his apartment in Merida is pretty palatial.
Benicio is one of the Sky Guardians, the Muwan pilots who patrol the airspace near Ek Naab. The way I see it, though, Benicio is more like Montoyo’s personal gopher, his fixer.
Benicio hasn’t said a word to me since we set off. I’m lost in my own thoughts, so I scarcely notice. But as we pass the open-air blue cenote, he sighs. Then he turns to me with a tough-guy glance.
“You’ve guessed about me and Ixchel, haven’t you?”
I stare ahead and keep moving. I realize that I need to come up with a speedy, breezy reply if I’m going to be able to seem convincingly unbothered.
I open my mouth but nothing comes out.
Benicio continues to stare at me for a few seconds. “All right,” he says in a low voice. “I knew it.”
I find my voice. “You knew what?”
“You’re angry with me. Because she’s your intended.”
“You know as well as me, mate,” I tell him, “that Ixchel and me have never agreed to that arranged marriage thing.” If Benicio has anything to add on the matter, the way I closed down the discussion seems to stop him.
We arrive at the garage where all the road vehicles in Ek Naab are stored. Most of them are pickup trucks designed to be used on the ranches. There are about eight motorbikes. Benicio’s is the Harley. Gently, he prises it free of the stand and pushes it out. Then he points at a second bike, the 250cc Honda that I’ve been learning to drive.
“What, and you get the Harley?” I say, annoyed.
“You don’t know how to handle the Harley. The Honda can go fast enough. We’re racing in a banana plantation, Josh. Bananas! Not exactly the highway to Cancun.”
“Just as well,” I mutter, grabbing hold of the Honda by the handlebars. “Tyler would never believe I was riding a Harley in the outside world, anyway.”
Benicio eases his head into a Shoei motorcycle helmet. “You keep mentioning this guy Tyler,” he observes. “Why?”
There’s no time to answer Benicio’s question and it doesn’t seem like he even really wants an answer, because he’s on the bike and revving up the engine two seconds later. I’m left wondering what’s going on, but I have to get moving fast to follow him to the banana plantation.
That’s the second time he’s seemed surprised to hear me talking about Tyler. The first time, I thought he was being intentionally annoying. Just now, he looked totally serious. Benicio not knowing who Tyler is . . . that felt real.
But how? It doesn’t make sense.
All in all, things have been very strange in Ek Naab lately.
First there’s the way that people keep having parties. When Mum and I arrived three months ago and had our house-warming party, I’m pretty sure that people commented on how nice it was finally to go to a party and hang out. Like it was an unusual thing.
Since then, though, I swear, there’s a thing every week. These teens from Ek Naab could even teach my friends in Oxford a thing or two about how to party. They may study hard during the day but from what I’ve seen, lately they seem to have gone off the rails a bit at the weekends.
Loud music, drinking, girls and boys getting together. It’s like being back in Oxford sometimes. Was it like this when I arrived in Ek Naab? Somehow I had the impression things were pretty quiet here. But no. I’ve not been short of offers, either. It’s just that I’m not interested in anyone except Ixchel and . . . I’m not sure about how the jealousy thing is supposed to work? Tyler’s theory is that girls like you more if they see you with another girl.
What if they don’t, though? Seems a risky strategy to me. Not to say a bit mean. I wouldn’t like it if a girl used me like that, to make another boy jealous.
But Tyler is a big fan of the jealousy trick. He advised me to use it to get Ixchel interested. He said that right here in Ek Naab, actually. The very night of our house-warming party.
How come Benicio can’t remember him? That’s just madness, man (as Tyler would say).
It’s not the only strange thing Benicio has said. What did he mean, mentioning the Ix Codex earlier today? As if it had changed things for the worse
in Ek Naab. That’s not what happened at all. Finding the Ix Codex put the whole mission of Ek Naab back on track. With the information in that book, they can use the Revival Chambers and save the world from the 2012 galactic superwave problem.
Not that anyone has ever told me the 2012 plan, of course. I’m not even allowed to know what’s in the Ix Codex, or how they’ll use that ancient knowledge to stop the effects of a gigantic electromagnetic pulse that’s coming along with the superwave. It’ll zap all the computer hard drives and electronic systems and put the world back a hundred years as far as technology goes. To them, I’m just the Bakab kid who retrieved the Ix Codex. But it seemed like things were under control. That slowly they were working their way through the Ix Codex and getting the information they needed.