The Joshua Files - a complete box set: Books 1-5 of the young adult sci-fi adventure series plus techno-thriller prequel

by M. G. Harris

  “I have my reasons.” She clears her throat. “I’ll give you ten million pesos for all fourteen bracelets.”

  “How much is that?” Ixchel asks. “Can we live on it?”

  “Here in Quintana Roo that money will buy a nice little house, some land for farming and a small business, maybe a shop or a restaurant,” Susannah tells us in a mild voice. “I’ll talk to Monica. We can all go together to the bank tomorrow. I’ll expect the authentication certificates for each item.”

  “Ten million,” I repeat, trying to hold a firm gaze.

  “A comfortable life, most certainly. You won’t be rich, sure, but you’ll have everything you need. If you want to be rich, well, there I can advise you. There’s land in this state that is going to become extremely valuable once this new Cancun resort takes off. If you buy the right pieces I really think you could make millions by the time you turn twenty.”

  Ixchel and I stare at each other, hearts in our mouths. I know what she’s imagining – the same as me. The two of us living the rest of our lives by the Caribbean Sea, our own place, some banana and coconut trees, maybe one of those trees with red flowers. Our own surfers’ paradise, cabanas on white sands. Barbecued fresh-caught fish, every day. Playing guitar on the beach. And in a few years when Cancun hits the big time, maybe our own really cool, luxury beach house, the kind of dream place you make on The Sims. Every night could be like last night, the two of us lying on a soft warm beach, watching the stars appear over the sea.

  No ancient destiny. No worries about 2012. Just Ixchel and me, together for ever and finally free.

  Susannah leads us out to her back garden, where there’s a pool so smooth that the water looks completely untouched. While she and Dr Velasco iron out the details of the deal, Ixchel and I are silent, our fingers touching under the table.

  Susannah’s history room has hit me very, very hard. I’m finding it tough to adjust to the news that while life in Mexico seems relatively undisturbed, everyone I knew does not exist.

  My mother was probably never born. Tyler almost certainly never born. Even my dad and everyone in Ek Naab – if Ek Naab doesn’t exist then they don’t either, the lot of them. Never born.

  England is in ruins. All those other places too. I feel bad for them of course, but England! Oxford deserted, radioactive, overgrown just like ancient Becan or Calakmul.

  The day I returned the Ix Codex to the “invisible city”, Blanco Vigores warned me: Don’t imagine that one day people won’t stroll through the remains of Manhattan, of Trafalgar Square. The thought that I could actually do that now makes me queasy. As he also said: We all exist in the shadow of tomorrow.

  The day before yesterday I was in Calakmul. Not the crumbling ruins in a sweltering forest but the living, breathing capital of the Snake Kingdom, teeming with life. Now, everyone and everything in Calakmul has crumbled away. The same goes for Oxford.

  Death, decay and ruin – it’s waiting for every one of us. It makes you wonder – what is the point of life?

  Yet glancing at Ixchel, I realize that I already know the answer to that. Right now, she’s all I care about. Those things that Susannah promised us we could have with her money . . . without Ixchel, they’re meaningless.

  “I’m flying my jet to Mexico City tonight,” Susannah announces.

  I nod. “You fly a jet; that’s cool.”

  “Pilot lessons proved more enjoyable than the alternative,” she says modestly. “With all the businesses to check on I’m in the air twice a week, at least. Tonight, Josh, Ixchel, I’d like you to join me.”

  “To Mexico City?” Ixchel says.

  I add, “Why?”

  “Because there’s something I want to show you there tomorrow morning.”

  “What?” Dr Velasco seems taken aback and even a little put out by Susannah’s suggestion.

  A mysterious gleam returns to Susannah’s eye. “I’d prefer to keep it a surprise. Would you let me? It’s something kind of special. We’ll stay in my Mexico City apartment – it’s a wonderful place, you’ll enjoy it.”

  “So long as you and I can conclude the deal,” Dr Velasco says. “Then I guess there’s no problem.”

  I’m pretty keen to see Mexico City in this world. Susannah seems so happy when we agree. I keep catching myself looking at her closely, checking for any possible sign that deep down, she knows me. Do I remind her of Arcadio? Did she meet Arcadio? Is that why she believes our story about time travel?

  She believed it very quickly. I definitely get the feeling there’s something she’s not telling us, too.

  We say goodbye to Dr Velasco outside Susannah’s house. Until this moment she’s seemed entirely confident and comfortable, but underneath her friendly goodbye with Susannah I wonder if there isn’t a bit of tension. As though Dr Velasco resented us going over to Susannah.

  We shake her hand while she eyes us with polite distaste.

  “Be careful,” Dr Velasco warns in a strange voice. “See that you don’t get blown off course. This is hurricane country.”

  As she leaves, Ixchel whispers, “What did she mean?”

  “I dunno,” I reply. But her words give me an uneasy feeling. They remind me of something Blanco Vigores once said to me. He warned me against storms too. But somehow I don’t think he was talking about the weather.

  Susannah drives us to Chetumal as the sun is setting. We swing by the hotel and the bank to pick up our clothes and the Mayan jewellery. While we’re in the hotel Susannah goes to the museum, where Velasco has promised to sign a bunch of authentication certificates for the bracelets. I take the opportunity to grab the Bracelet of Itzamna and stuff it into my pocket. There’s no way I’m leaving it here if we’re flying all the way to Mexico City. . . From there we drive to a small airport. We park almost in front of her company’s white four-seater jet. It’s not much bigger than a Muwan. Then I remind myself that there probably aren’t any Muwans in this reality.

  No Ek Naab, no Muwans, no Benicio.

  In the plane, Susannah takes to the cockpit. As we drive on to the runway it’s already dark. Looking at Susannah, I have to admit that she’s less and less like the other-Susannah we met in Tlacotalpan. There, she seemed lost, unanchored. She’d spent most of her life waiting for news of the bloke she loved. Whereas in this reality, she’s a canny businesswoman, collector of rare antiquities, and a pilot too.

  We arrive in Mexico City at around 9.30 p.m. As we fly in, the twinkling orange lights of the city extend almost as far as the eye can see. After we’ve landed, we find a car from Susannah’s company waiting on the tarmac.

  Ixchel’s eyes are wide at the whole experience. “Her own plane, her own driver . . . she’s pretty rich, Josh!” she whispers to me. “History might have killed Susannah’s entire family in this world, but she sure did manage to do well.”

  “God spared Mexico,” I whisper back. “No wonder everyone here is so grateful. Their neighbouring country gets blown to bits . . . but Mexico’s left untouched.”

  We drive along raised highways adorned with swirling, flashing lights advertising Coca-Cola, Antarctica, Varig Airlines and mainly Japanese companies like Sony, Nikon, Honda. Apart from Coca-Cola, there are no American brands. The car takes us to an old colonial neighbourhood near the centre of the city. Her apartment is the penthouse of an old palatial building. She leads us out on to a balcony with iron railings and at least thirty pot plants. We watch as she unrolls a hosepipe that’s attached to an outdoor water tap and sprays water all over the plants.

  “Look at my poor plants,” she murmurs fondly. The spicy aroma of geraniums fills the air. “They miss me so.” Casually she adds, “I’ve asked the maid to make up two bedrooms for you. Now, how about some pie and a nice cup of chamomile tea?”

  We eat blueberry cheesecake at the kitchen table next to furniture that’s oddly strange in design. Powder blue seems to be the “in” colour for fridges here.

  “I’d like to talk about this time travelling,” Susannah
announces.

  Ixchel and I exchange wary glances. “Why?”

  “Because, my dears, don’t you think it’s fascinating? I mean, you say that there was no nuclear war in your reality.” Delicately, Susannah puts down her fork. “Surely you can see why that idea would haunt somebody like me?”

  “What if. . .” says Ixchel, almost to herself.

  “Exactly,” says Susannah. “The big ‘what if’. Not a person alive who hasn’t asked herself that. What if the nuclear war could have been avoided? In your world, so you say, it was. I’d love to know how.”

  “Me too,” I say, then fall silent.

  “Please, dear,” Susannah says, with a hint of insistence.

  “It’s not just us,” I say eventually. “There’s someone else travelling in time.” I watch her reaction. If I mentioned Arcadio now, how would she respond?

  “Someone else, you say?”

  “I tried to tell you earlier.”

  But Susannah seems genuinely baffled. “Maybe so, my dear. I’m finding it hard enough to accept that you two young people have travellled in time.” With great care, she sets down her tea cup. “So, who is this other journeyman?”

  “Marius Martineau. He’s a thief,” Ixchel says. “He’s stolen something from the timeline. A book of lost, ancient knowledge. Without that book in this history . . . I guess things are different.”

  “A book of ancient knowledge. . .?” Susannah sounds thrilled, intrigued. “Dearie, I sure-as-shootin’ wanna hear about this. . .”

  I take up the story. “Martineau . . . he wants to control the ancient knowledge. He wants to fix things so that only he and his people can control the future. You know about the Mayan Long Count ending in December 2012? Well, that’s because something is going to happen. Something bad that could destroy civilization.”

  “And this time-meddler, this Martineau, he wants to see civilization destroyed?”

  I shake my head slowly. “I don’t think he cares about that. I think he just wants his group to be in control. They think they’re special, better than everyone else. Survival of the fittest – and they’re more worthy of survival. The event at the end of 2012 will let them take control of everything. That’s what they believe.”

  Susannah considers this while dropping a cube of sugar into her tea. “You think Martineau changed history so that there would be a nuclear war in 1962?”

  “It doesn’t seem like something that would help his plan,” I admit. “But time travel can be tricky. You try to change things, you try to find the ‘zero moment’ from which everything begins. Then other things change, things you didn’t plan.” My eyes meet Ixchel’s. “He must have done it; Martineau. He told me he’d used the Bracelet more than once. He found out how to go back to the ‘zero moment’.”

  “Sound awful complicated,” says Susannah. But her tone has changed suddenly and there’s a look in her eye as though something has just occurred to her. Or as if I’d said something alarming.

  Ixchel frowns. “It sounds dangerous.”

  “I don’t reckon this history is the result of something planned,” I say to Ixchel. “But it is something to do with the Ix Codex. To do with the disappearance of Ek Naab, also.”

  “In our timeline, Ek Naab’s citizens were not the only people to know about the ancient technology,” Ixchel reminds me. “Remember? Your grandfather’s Muwan crashed and the US government took it to Area 51.”

  “Yeah, the Americans, you’re right! You think they secretly used the ancient technology to prevent the nuclear war in our world?”

  Ixchel shrugs. “That has to be the connection.”

  I stare at her. “It could be! But no way can this be how Martineau wants things to turn out! Without Ek Naab, there’s no Bakabs. And the Sect of Huracan started from Ek Naab!”

  “It’s a shame he didn’t read Arcadio’s warning,” remarks Ixchel. “You can’t ‘swim against the stream of time’.”

  “My, my. You children are saying some extraordinary things now,” Susannah comments.

  I manage a chuckle. “I’m sorry, I bet we’re weirding you out.”

  Shrugging, she replies, “Well, it may be that what I’m about to say will have a similar effect on you. . .”

  Ixchel and I gaze at her with bated breath.

  “I would really like it,” Susannah says, “if you would show me the Bracelet of Itzamna.”

  We’re stunned into absolute silence. She knows about the Bracelet. But how?

  I stare at Susannah for a full minute before saying in an accusing tone, “You’ve met Arcadio.”

  But she just shakes her head, smiling mildly.

  “You must have,” I insist. “Or else how could you even know about the Bracelet of Itzamna?”

  “Well, my dears,” Susannah says, “that is exactly why I brought you to Mexico City.”

  If Susannah imagines we’ll be able to sleep after telling us something like that, she’s crazy. As soon as all the lights go out, I hear the door to my room creaking open. Then Ixchel is perched on the edge of my bed, turning on my night light.

  There’s about five seconds of awkwardness before we pounce on each other. Within minutes I’m trembling from the intensity of my own impulses. Ixchel notices and gently pushes me away. I’m not upset, though, not like when she went all chilly on me in the Sanborns hotel. Ever since we first got together we don’t seem to need to discuss it. Instead we’re collecting small moments of understanding. Before, it felt like there was this electric fence between us. I might get a shock if I tried to get close, or I might not. That’s gone now. We’re going somewhere with this, that’s all that matters. The relief is incredible.

  “How does Susannah know about the Bracelet?” Ixchel says, raising the subject with dizzying abruptness. “Do you believe that Arcadio never visited her?”

  Carefully I say, “Yeah, I do.”

  “If Arcadio did visit her, you realize that kind of implies that you are Arcadio?”

  “Huh? How do you get that?”

  “Arcadio is a Bakab – he must be if he can use the Bracelet of Itzamna. There’s no Ek Naab in this reality so there are no Bakabs – except you.”

  I don’t like where this conversation is taking Ixchel, so I change the subject. “I just can’t believe how different things are without the Ix Codex. Yet . . . this can’t be what Martineau wanted.”

  “I agree. When you saw him in seventh-century Calakmul, did he say what he was planning to do?”

  “He did say he was taking the codex out of history. But only the Ix Codex! Ek Naab always had the other three books of Itzamna.”

  “Have you thought about where Martineau is now?”

  I shrug. “He could be anywhere, any time. He’s probably used the Bracelet again. If he turned up in our Ek Naab, he could have been captured. That would have created a whole different future, but Ek Naab would still be there. I’m guessing if he found himself in Ek Naab, he probably used the Bracelet right away – to take him somewhere else. Unlike me, Martineau actually knows how to change the settings.”

  “Where would he go? What would he do?”

  “Wherever – or whenever it was, it was pretty darn drastic, what he did. To change things so there’s no Ek Naab? That means going back way before seventh-century Calakmul. He’d have had to go back to . . . I dunno. To when the Books of Itzamna were written. And somehow stop them being written.”

  Ixchel chews this over for a moment. “But if that’s a better strategy, why wouldn’t he try it the first time? Why even bother to go to seventh-century Calakmul?”

  “Well, that’s easy. Why did we go to seventh-century Calakmul? Cos it’s the only time and place we know for sure the Ix Codex was at.” I shrug. “It’s the same for Martineau.”

  She frowns. “But the completion date of each book of Itzamna is written in the end of every codex. If Montoyo had wanted to send you to Itzamna’s time, he could have.”

  “Yeah, but Martineau didn’t have that information
, did he? The Sect had the beginning of the Ix Codex, not the end. They don’t have any of the other three books.

  Yeah . . . Montoyo sent us to Calakmul because it’s the first place that Martineau would have gone. And if I just hadn’t handed him the Ix Codex, everything would have been fine.”

  Ixchel murmurs, “If you hadn’t rescued me, you mean.”

  Our eyes meet for several seconds. “I had to,” I say, very quietly. “Can’t you understand? I’ll always choose you.”

  Her fingers touch mine. She breathes a heavy sigh. “Instead, Martineau’s just kept trying, going on and on, changing the timeline.”

  I agree. “He’s crazy, unhinged.” For a second I wonder if using the Bracelet makes you lose your mind. The rush you get from knowing you’ve changed world history could have some dangerous side effects.