by M. G. Harris
“Get out.”
“After you. . .”
He screamed again. “Get out! Caray, Josh, don’t you know when you’re in trouble?”
I held up both hands and stumbled past him on the way out of the craft. “All right, all right, don’t have a cow.”
He had to be joking, surely? Why was he going on about spies in Ek Naab? There had been constant rumours and fears that our enemies might infiltrate Ek Naab, but as far as I knew nothing had ever been proven. It was such a strange thing to joke about. Was he telling me that he knew about spies, or maybe that he was one himself? Or that he suspected that I might be a spy?! My mind raced, trying to make sense of what he was saying.
Before I knew what was happening I was on the ground, with Benicio following me. I glanced over my shoulder to see that he still had the gun aimed straight at my chest. It was beyond surreal. I couldn’t even feel fear; disorientation obliterated everything else.
“OK, Benicio,” I began. I felt a firm yank at my waist. In the next second I was pulled off my feet, dangling. A surge of panic hit me; I twisted around in the air to see the Muwan rising slowly off the ground. It took me another second to realize that I was connected to the open cockpit by an almost invisible thread, a thin cord that had somehow been attached to my belt. I swivelled back to look at Benicio, grinning and waving at me from the ground. I spotted the Muwan’s remote control in his right hand.
“Ha ha, Josh. How do you like Crazy Benicio so far?”
I open my mouth to reply but the air rushes out of my body. An unseen force flings me against the side of the Muwan. There’s barely time to protect my face before I slam against it.
Benicio calls out, “Hold on tight.”
Then the aircraft takes off. It hurtles along, fifteen metres off the ground, for about twenty seconds. It comes to a juddering halt, and I hear the gravity dampeners engage. My fingers are clamped on to the edge of the cockpit, knuckles locked so hard that it takes a second or two to get them to relax. I hear myself breathing noisily. The craft has stopped in the middle of nowhere, high enough off the ground that a fall might kill me.
From inside the cockpit comes Benicio’s disembodied voice.
“Climb aboard.”
I’m too startled to move at first. Has he set up some sort of voice-relay? How am I hearing his voice up here?
His voice repeats: “Climb aboard. You have ten seconds to turn off the auto-destruct. Nine. Eight. Seven.”
There’s no time to wonder what’s going on: I scramble up the side of the craft and tumble in. In the pilot seat, I hit a flashing light on the control panel.
“I lied,” Benicio says, with a laugh. “I’d drop you first. Then I’d auto-destruct.”
“What the hell do you want?” I yell, at no one.
“This is Crazy Benicio,” says the voice. “Touch ‘play’ to continue.”
“Touch play to continue. . .” I mutter, as realization hits me. “This is a recording?!”
There’s no answer. Of course not.
Hurriedly, I pull my visor back into position. The list of autopilot programmes is there, with a big play button over CRAZY BENICIO.
The recording continues. “Prepare to play with the professionals, buddy. I’ve called in some boys from the Mexican Air Force.”
I grapple with what this can possibly mean. Benicio called the Mexican Air Force? When? Is he totally insane?
My muscles are so tense that my fingers have almost locked around the steering wheel. I breathe slowly, go through one of the calming exercises I’ve been shown. Almost immediately, my whole body eases.
“It’s only death,” comes Benicio’s voice. He sounds absurdly cheerful. “You can’t live for ever.”
My fingers touch an invisible button in the air. The cockpit begins to close. I notice then that the cord attached to my waist is fastened with a sturdy metal clip, like the type climbers use. The other end goes into a socket on the dashboard.
Benicio must have clipped it on to my belt when I pushed past him on my way out of the cockpit.
The Muwan begins to rise slowly. After the first few seconds it accelerates. Muscles clamp tight in my stomach as the machine zooms high – fifteen-thousand metres in ten seconds.
What follows is a descent into insanity. Abruptly, the craft drops about a hundred metres, and then bolts ahead at a thousand kilometres per hour. A few seconds later, the plane begins to corkscrew. It straightens out after another breath-stopping minute.
A holographic radar map of the sky ahead appears inside my visor. It’s clear, with occasional commercial airliners showing up over a thousand metres below. Commercial aircraft show up as blue. Anything else – military or UFOs – usually show up red. In the far distance over Campeche I spot a triangle of jets in formation.
“Military ahead,” announces Benicio’s voice calmly. “Select evasive manoeuvre. And whatever you do, don’t get tempted to use the ion volley. . .”
I hold my breath, heart pumping. A list of pre-programmed manoeuvres scrolls before my eyes. Within a minute, I’m dizzy. My concentration flags; sweat gushes from under my arms.
I had no idea it would be so hard to stay calm.
There’s something crushing about being alone in that machine for the first time in my life, totally responsible for my own life and a priceless bit of engineering. On the radar, I watch the triangle of military craft turning around. They are more than ten klicks away, but they’re definitely heading for my position.
I steady my breathing and concentrate on the list of manoeuvres. Campeche Run, Orizaba Swirl, Stratosphere Dive. . .
I hit the last one: Bermuda Mask. It’s risky because I’ll be going out over the Gulf of Mexico, where there tends to be loads of air traffic. But the good news is that if you fly low, near the Bermuda Triangle, people are less likely to believe anyone who films your flight. The other bonus? Fires from gas and oil wells – they show up on infrared cameras and look a lot like a Muwan in flight. A great place to mask your appearance and to lose a tail.
But instead of changing course for the Gulf of Mexico, the Muwan turns in the opposite direction, until I’ve completed a one-eighty and find myself heading back the way I came.
I stare from the control panel to the holographic flight map, stunned, baffled, scared.
What did I do wrong?
Then Benicio’s voice sounds again, slightly louder, animated by a slight crackle.
“OK, dude, that’s not a good choice.” He sighs. It’s very confusing. Is this still the recording? Or is this Benicio’s voice from the ground, watching me? “I’m bringing you in,” he continues. “Man! You really have no clue when you’re out of your depth!”
My mouth opens but nothing comes out. I gaze at the control panel, the holographic flight map, struggling to comprehend what I’m seeing.
The radar field is empty now. No sign of military aircraft, anywhere. The “Mexican Air Force guys” have vanished.
“In case you hadn’t realized, Josh, you failed the test.” There’s another irritated sound from my cousin. “You did the escape bit OK, that was good. And you were scared, right? Yet you kept your cool. But Bermuda Mask is too, too risky, cousin. If three Mexican Air Force guys really had sighted you, you’d have to be ice-cold under intense pressure to beat them on that territory.”
It takes me an embarrassing amount of time to process what Benicio is telling me. “You . . . you staged all this? The recording, the . . . the Mexican Air Force? The whole chase?”
“Fake, fake and, uh, fake. That’s right, cousin. Crazy Benicio is the final test. I can’t pass you without it. Without Crazy Benicio under your belt, you’re nothing but a taxi driver.”
Ixchel reads my blog while I change into shorts and a T-shirt. She chuckles quite a bit and tilts her head towards me, saying, quizzically, “The Doomsday Manifesto?”
“Yeah. I thought I should have a manifesto. Like in that film you got so obsessed with when you were working as a waitress
in Veracruz. You know? The one with those two Mexican guys, the ones whose photos you have on your wall.”
She nods in approval. “Ah – I see. Point Seven of your manifesto: Get involved. I like it.”
“Hmmm.”
“How are you going to ‘get involved’?”
“Not sure yet.”
Ixchel waits for me to continue, but I don’t. When she sees my expression, she comes over to where I’m sitting, a bit mournful, on the side of the bed.
“Don’t be sad.”
“But I was useless.”
“How long did it take you to get good at your capoeira?”
I groan. “Years.”
“You weren’t doing all those somersaults and spinning kicks from day one?”
“Well, no.”
“So don’t complain,” she says with an affectionate stab to my chest. “Benicio has been flying for five years – since he was fourteen, in fact. It takes time.”
“I guess.”
Ixchel begins to giggle. “You really believed he was a spy. . .?”
“Not even! That’s what got me riled, to be honest. I knew something was going on. I wonder how long he worked on his Scary Hijacker routine.”
“You’re angry because Benicio made you believe some stupid lie?”
“That’s just it, I didn’t really believe it. Deep down I knew he had to be joking but . . . but. . .”
“Ah – he confused you?”
“Yes.”
“And scared you?”
“A bit, yeah.”
Ixchel hesitates for just long enough for me to guess where she’s going with this. “But isn’t that exactly what you’d feel if you really did have some dangerous enemy breathing down your neck, chasing you down in the Muwan, making it impossible to escape?”
I look at her, feeling a bit of an idiot. She’s right.
“Did Benicio ever tell you what made him write that flight programme?”
“No.”
“It was when your father was captured by the National Reconnaissance Office, the NRO. Benicio thinks that must be how they got him: the NRO pilots cornered him, pinned him down.”
My eyes fix on hers. She’s telling the truth. “Benicio told you this? When?”
“Just before, while you were taking a shower and writing your blog.”
“That’s . . . wow. I wonder why he didn’t tell me.”
“You know Benicio – everything’s a joke with him.”
“But he can be serious with you.”
“Once in a while. He was upset about what happened to your father. He was against leaving your dad to fly that Muwan, with so little training. Benicio told me that he’d offered to fly your dad to where he needed to go.”
Miserably I say, “I wish he had.”
“There didn’t seem to be any danger. Back then, no one in Ek Naab knew that the NRO had stolen our technology. No idea that they were a threat.”
“I didn’t realize that Benicio felt bad about what happened to my dad.”
Tenderly she says, “Of course, Josh. Everyone in Ek Naab did. I still remember how sad and alone you looked the day of his funeral.”
“Do you remember what you told me that day?” I murmur.
She squeezes my hand, just as she did that horrible day. “I said you’d get through it. And you did.”
“Thanks to you,” I say, very quietly. “Thanks to Benicio. But no thanks to Montoyo.”Ixchel remains silent. She knows well enough the problem I have with Carlos Montoyo. She gives me a long, considered look. “Maybe it’s time you talked to Carlos about all this.”
“Talk to him? I see the guy almost every day.”
“I mean really talk. You haven’t let him know that you’re angry about them not including you in the plans for 2012, have you?”
Ixchel’s trying to help, I know. But it seems incredible to me that Montoyo wouldn’t know. After everything I’ve done so far to help the scientists in Ek Naab stop the galactic superwave – how could he not realize I’d want to at least be on the team?
“Montoyo knows.”
“You haven’t actually said anything, though, have you? I bet you glower at him over the breakfast table, but he probably assumes that’s because you don’t like seeing him with your mother.”
“No – he knows I’m OK with that.”
Ixchel laughs. “Really?”
“Seriously, we had this proper man-to-man talk where he told me that he was obsessed with my mum and I was, like, Yeah, OK, and he made me promise to take care of her if anything ever happened to him and I was all, you know, Same. So, yes, he knows I’m OK with him seeing Mum.”
“But wasn’t that in a different timeline? The timeline where the Ix Codex had been stolen in the Mayan past? The timeline we changed when we travelled back into the past?”
“Oh,” I say. “Yes, it was. It’s hard to keep two different histories straight sometimes. It’s like having feelings and memories from a dream.”
“Maybe in this reality, Montoyo and you never had that conversation.”
“You could be right,” I admit. “I hadn’t thought of that. We don’t really communicate much. It’s all ‘How are your studies going?’ and ‘You still seeing that pretty girl you’re supposed to marry?’”
“That would be me,” she says with a grin.
“Blatantly,” I say, gazing into her eyes.
“Good. So you’ll talk to him?”
I slide an arm around her waist. “Sure. Remind me what about, again?”
Ixchel touches a finger to the tip of my nose. “Josh. Stop it.”
She watches me go off in the direction of Montoyo’s office. It’s not somewhere I’ve ever been, because Montoyo and I tend to avoid each other during the day. So he’s understandably surprised to see me.
As I stare around the room, Montoyo shuffles in his chair and stands up. The walls are covered in old maps, reproductions of the famous Frederick Catherwood illustrations of the Mayan ruins in the nineteenth century, and a frame containing book jackets of the first few editions of John Lloyd Stephens’ book Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas and Yucatan. It’s not difficult to see what attracted my mother to the guy – his office is decorated almost exactly like my own father’s study. Archaeology and discovery. It’s the office of a university professor, not the behind-the-scenes ruler of a tiny, hidden world.
For a moment I wonder which is the real Montoyo – the part he plays as his “cover” in the outside world, a professor at the University of Yucatan? Or the Montoyo that I know – the wily, strategic operator?
Montoyo snaps his laptop computer closed and removes his reading glasses. He’s dressed the same as always: a dark, long-sleeved shirt with a silky sheen and black jeans, his shoulder-length, salt-and-pepper hair tied back in a tight ponytail. Montoyo the campus guru, the hippie academic.
“Josh,” he begins, clearly at a loss for words. “This is . . . well, I’m not certain what it is. How did your flying lesson go?”
“We did Crazy Benicio. I failed the test,” I say, without expression.
His face falls, but it seems more for effect than sincere. “I see. I’m sure you’ll improve.”
I nod. It’s hard to know how to begin. There’s no easy way to bring the subject up.
Bluntly he asks, “So, why are you here?”
Good. He’s cutting straight to the chase. I prefer that.
“How are things going?” I blurt. “With the 2012 plan. Is everything on schedule?”
Montoyo blinks. I ask him the same things at home, at least once a week. The answer is always the same. Everything’s fine.
“Well, Josh, as I believe I’ve told you before. . .”
“You’ve told me nothing,” I interrupt. “But I can work out for myself that something is wrong.”
Now I’ve got his attention.
“You’ve instructed Benicio to tell me nothing, I know that. Every time I mention the 2012 plan, he shuts right up. And there�
�s this atmosphere. Between you and me. Something you’re not telling me. Something you don’t feel right about keeping from me. It wasn’t always like this; don’t think I’ve forgotten.”
Montoyo replies thoughtfully, “I see.”
“The 2012 plan, it’s all about bringing together the elements of the instructions in the Ix Codex. Right? Me and Ixchel actually wrote out part of the original Ix Codex – at least we copied out the translations that Itzamna had already made – so don’t forget: I actually know some of what is in the Ix Codex. Enough to know there’s a lot you aren’t telling me.”
“We’ve all heard about how you and Ixchel helped Itzamna to transcribe the ancient Erinsi inscriptions,” Montoyo says, a touch sardonic. “And of course we’re all very grateful for everything you’ve done.”
“Men of destiny. Men of action. That’s what you told me once. You said that’s what we are, you and me.”
In a level voice, Montoyo says, “Did I?”
“Was it all an act, Carlos? To get me to do something for you? Go on another deadly mission?”
His mouth tightens. It could be my imagination but he seems to turn a little paler. “Relax. There will be no more missions.”
“I want missions! I’ve earned the right to be treated properly and asked to do stuff and told the risks!”
“What you’ve earned is the right to be left alone to enjoy what is left of your childhood.”
“My childhood was over years ago!”
Montoyo gives a reluctant nod. “Maybe. Yes, that’s probably true.”
“Give me a straight answer for once. Is everything OK with the 2012 plan? Are we going to be able to stop the galactic superwave?”
My question hangs in the air for a few seconds, seems to freeze and glaze over with ice.
And whatever Montoyo was thinking of saying . . . he stops. Mid-sentence, mid-thought, even. He looks at me with unmistakable anxiety and mutters, “What is imperative, Josh, is that you say nothing. . .”
I stare.
“And you cannot take any action . . . Josh. You have to promise me.”