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

  Tonight, the galactic superwave hits the solar system. By midnight, it’ll crash through Earth’s atmosphere. On the other hand, maybe that mysterious force field around the moon will protect us. That’s what the space scientists tell us is going to happen.

  And if you can’t trust space scientists, who can you trust?

  When Montoyo notices me, he breaks off his conversation with the chief and strolls over.

  “Your mother received a call today. From Susannah St John. She wants to invite us to celebrate in Tlacotalpan.”

  Ixchel and I exchange a glance “You mean,” I say, “instead of here?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Why doesn’t Susannah come to Ek Naab?”

  “She says they’re having a really wonderful party. A proper Veracruz fiesta. Great food, live salsa music, danzon, all those marvellous things.”

  “Sounds all right,” I say. “But we’ve got our friends here. I’m going to play some songs on my guitar. Don’t you think we owe it to everyone here, after all their years of work?”

  “Josh – let me assure you – your duty to Ek Naab is done! And after all, you can party with your friends any time.”

  “Not like tonight.”

  Montoyo is really trying hard. “Josh, your mother wants to go. She’s hungry for some ‘real Mexico’.”

  “I’d like to go,” Ixchel says, tugging at my hand. “I love Tlacotalpan. And the people in Veracruz have incredible parties.”

  “What about Benicio? We should hang with him tonight, don’t you think?”

  Ixchel grins her cute, lopsided grin. “You know perfectly well he has a new girlfriend. He’ll be with Roxana. I guess maybe you want me to see them together . . . you want me to see that he’s really and truly over me?”

  How little she knows – if there’s even a chance that Ixchel might be jealous of Benicio’s new girlfriend, I definitely don’t want to see it.

  “It’s got nothing to do with that! Just that, you know, he’s been a big part of all this. Massive. Honestly, I’d be dead several times over without Benicio.”

  “He knows that; we all do.”

  “And he’s family.”

  “If it’s about family, then maybe you should do what your mom wants?” she says.

  “Hmm,” I mutter, hunting for another tactic. “Anyway, I thought you couldn’t stand Susannah St John. . .”

  “I guess I was wrong about her. Since Tyler is Arcadio. Come on,” Ixchel says. She smiles. “Para bailar a la bamba, se necesito un poco de gracia. . .”

  “To dance the bamba, I need a bit of grace? OK. See – there’s the whole problemo. Grace. On the dance floor. I’ve got none.”

  “Not true,” she insists. “What about capoeira? That’s a dance.”

  “Not the way I do it. . .” I grumble. “Look, OK. We’ll go. But let’s at least say goodbye to Benicio. And don’t expect me to dance.”

  We leave Montoyo to get back to my mother and head for the marketplace. Benicio is there, setting up the party with some students from the Tec. His new girlfriend Roxana is one of Lorena’s medical students. A really pretty girl, who I think has been after him for a while. Ixchel’s right; Benicio seems more interested in Roxana than in where Ixchel and I plan to be at midnight. We help with the set-up for another couple of hours. When we say goodbye it’s casual, as if it were just another day. Maybe it’s too big to acknowledge, the fate we’ve been spared by the presence of the giant force field that emanates from the moon. It would be good to think that two guys who once fought over a girl could eventually become really good friends. That’s what I want now, for Benicio and me.

  When the goodbyes are over, we head for a Muwan that waits in the hangar, Montoyo and my mother in the passenger seats, Ixchel up front with me. We fly to Tlacotalpan. This time, the NRO don’t bother us – if they even notice we’re in the air. We find a hidden place to leave the Muwan, about two kilometres from town. The rest, we walk, mostly in the dark, watching out for swamp frogs hopping across the road, their eyes glowing green when they catch the passing beam of a car’s headlamps.

  All the taxis are full, lines of cars arriving from nearby towns and hotels in Veracruz for the party of the century. There are some pretty big-name bands on the bill tonight. Every type of music from salsa to dubstep.

  Susannah told us to meet here in the main zocalo. We arrive to find the fiesta has already begun. There’s a band in the central gazebo playing old-fashioned Latin dance hall music, trumpets blaring. A dazzling light show of powerful multi-coloured beams that meet in the air above the central square. All the surrounding buildings are decked out in papel picado – traditional Mexican paper decorations in red, white and green, the colours of the Mexican flag. There’s a Mayan theme too – people walking around in traditional Mayan costume, which actually freaks Ixchel and me out. I guess we’re the only people here to feel that way, but I don’t mind admitting that the sight of one guy dressed like a fierce Mayan warrior, face painted in red and black like that thug Rain Son, gives me a nasty scare.

  The ancient Maya were right – that’s what some of the New Age types are saying. There was something significant about the date of the end of the Mayan Long Count Calendar. The date that the human race realized that We Are Not Alone. That Someone or Something out there in the Universe is watching out for us. A global shift of consciousness. Gratitude to replace all our selfishness. Etc, etc, etc. In the end I can’t bear to listen.

  I can’t forget that for our reality to be saved, Tyler’s reality had to suffer the consequences of the galactic superwave. Without visiting that future, I would never have made the connection about the key location. There wouldn’t have been three people to activate the moon machine. Maybe this is the only reality where we’re spared from the superwave.

  Hard to forget that when you have people you care about in the other place.

  Staring into the zocalo I watch the graceful gliding of couples dancing danzon, men dressed all in white with loose guayabera shirts, red neckerchiefs, white shoes and panama hats, women in bright-coloured dresses that sway with their hips. Ixchel points and murmurs “Look. It’s Susannah.”

  She’s right. Susannah has her hair tied back with a red carnation and she’s dancing very smoothly with an elegant mover, a guy about the same age as her, dressed in crisp white cotton. When she sees us she smiles, waves a red fan at us and finishes the dance with a flourish. Her dance partner turns, takes her hand. She leads him over to us, fanning herself delicately.

  When they’re up close my jaw drops. Susannah smiles, first at me, then at Montoyo. He leans in and kisses her warmly on the cheek. So does my mother. But I can’t budge, can’t stop staring at her partner.

  “Is he here?” asks the elderly gent, with a grin. His glazed eyes stare at a point just over my shoulder.

  “Yes, my dear,” replies Susannah. “Josh Garcia is standing right in front of you.”

  I stammer, “Blanco Vigores. . .”

  My eyes are riveted to the old man. Then to Montoyo I say, “Did you know he was here?”

  “Susannah told me earlier today.”

  “Blanco. . .” I repeat. “You’re here. How? Why?”

  “Because,” Susannah says, with tenderness, “he came back to me. After all those years, finally, he did.”

  The significance of her words takes several seconds to land.

  “You?” I gasp. “Blanco? You’re Arcadio. . .? But what about Tyler? I mean, how?”

  Blanco removes his hat and I get another shock. He’s not bald. A neatly cropped scrub of short silver hair covers his scalp. Blanco steps forward. “Young Josh. I’d like to talk to you, alone. Would that be acceptable? Perhaps you’d be kind enough to take me somewhere quiet? Maybe by the river.”

  As the old man fumbles for my arm I take his hand, place it on my shoulder and say to Montoyo, “You once told me you’d met Arcadio. Did you know that he was Blanco Vigores?”

  “No. It was a long time ago,
Josh. Blanco convinced all of us, with his appearance of age. In the past few months, since Blanco went missing, I admit that I began to wonder. But Arcadio made me promise never to speak of our meeting. On pain of certain death!”

  “I have some experience of time travel,” Blanco admits, a touch ominously. “And some idea of how things may turn out.”

  “So you’re not really old?”

  Blanco laughs, a short, sharp bark of a laugh. “As you can see, young Josh, I am quite advanced in years!”

  “But you’ve always looked the same age,” Montoyo says. “An aging, bald, blind man.”

  “You used the Revival Chamber,” I say. “Didn’t you? Diego Ka’an told me, the Head of Surgery. That’s where you used to disappear to, all those times you went missing.”

  “Yes, every week or so I’d put myself into hibernation for at least a month. Decades passed in Ek Naab, while I aged by a mere handful of years.”

  “That’s how you stayed the same age for so long.”

  “A bald head doesn’t show the hair turning white,” Blanco tells us all. “I was doing a good job of slowing the aging process, it’s true. Until the Sect of Huracan discovered the Revival Chamber.” He turns to me with a melancholy gaze. “Young Josh, will you let me explain? Listen to the confession of an old man?”

  We leave the group as the band starts up again. Blanco’s hand lies firm on my shoulder. I’m thinking furiously, my mind racing as I lead him through the crowd and towards the palm-lined Malecon, the pier beside the wide, dark water of the River Papaloapan. A fireworks display is being prepared on a barge on the opposite bank. We find an empty bench and sit.

  “If you’re Arcadio, then what about Tyler?”

  Blanco’s hand goes to the red cloth around his neck. He fingers it almost nervously. He peers at me. It’s eerily as though he can see me looking back. “Haven’t you guessed, Josh?”

  And then it hits me. I shrink back.

  “You’re . . . you’re him. You’re other-Josh. From Tyler’s reality.”

  With a nod, he replies, “Yes, I am.”

  I gaze out across the water, to the opposite bank where reeds and sugar cane sway in a gentle breeze.

  “Wow. That’s not what I expected, after what I heard about how you walked out on your family.”

  “Don’t judge me too harshly. I was very young. I was in love.”

  “With Emmy?”

  There’s a sudden, joyous smile. “Yes! Emily. Dear girl. Did you know her too?”

  “Yes.” I shrug. “Never occurred to me that she might like me.”

  “Most of all, I was in denial. Many of us were. The most surprising thing about the end of the world is just how few people recognize that the moment has already passed.”

  “But . . . you’re the one. You fixed things. If you hadn’t written me those postcards. . . You did all this.”

  “No. We did it. You and I, together. With a great deal of help from our friends.”

  “Hang on, didn’t you tell me you found the Bracelet of Itzamna in Izapa?”

  “Yes. In this reality. I travelled back here with the Bracelet you gave to Tyler. Right back to those woods near San Cristobal.”

  “You told me that you almost died when you first used the Bracelet.”

  “Yes. Foolishly, I first tried without instructions. In my own reality, it took me years to find the Ix Codex, the instructions. Many more years to translate the book. Are you trying to catch me in a lie, young Josh? I’ve always been careful with what I’ve told you. But I’ve never lied.”

  “Your accent is weird.”

  “I’ve lived all over the world, in so many times. I once went fifteen years without speaking English! I don’t know where I’m from any more.”

  “I’m glad you’re not really bald. But am I going to go blind?”

  He laughs. “That’s what you’ve been worried about? No – the blindness was from a chemical accident in the laboratory.”

  “Jeez – thank goodness for that! I didn’t like to ask.”

  The old man chuckles. “Ah, youth! Well, thanks to Tyler, I was able to escape my own bad choice. Tyler returned to his own reality and found me in the Emergency Government Centre.”

  “Ah – that explains why Andres couldn’t find you. Tyler had already gotten you out!”

  “Heh. Precisely. He took me away, back to his friends in Jericho, then back to my parents. He gave me your message. We did what you made possible. We moved Tyler’s group away, found somewhere to start again. Tyler was an inspirational leader. Eventually, when I was in my late twenties, I gathered up enough courage to use the Bracelet of Itzamna. I knew that it was still anchored to this reality, you see. I merely had to find a way to change the default setting to return me to the woods near San Cristobal, rather than the underground bunker in Lake Toba.” He gives a short laugh. “It only took me five years.”

  “And you came back, just because of what Tyler told you, about becoming Arcadio, sending me those postcards and saving this world?”

  Very simply he says, “Some destinies are unavoidable.”

  “Oh,” I say, relieved. “Good. I mean, not for you, obviously . . . but. . .”

  “So all this time – there’s been two of me.”

  “I’m no more you than if we were twins. We share the DNA we were born with and some commonality of upbringing. You must have seen enough to know that we were different.”

  “It’s kind of nice to have a twin.”

  “And we share a destiny, too, young Josh. Don’t forget that.”

  For a few moments, we’re silent. “Your mother mustn’t know,” Blanco warns, his tone suddenly dejected. “I’m relieved I can’t see her. There are things I don’t wish to remember.”

  “Is that why you didn’t come to the funeral when my dad died? You didn’t want to see Mum?”

  He nods, very sombre.

  “What happens,” I say, with a rush of anxiety, “to Sofia? To Eleanor and Andres?”

  “Tyler takes them away too. Menorca, Josh, in the Mediterranean Sea – one of the few places not to become affected by the plague. Their strict no-fly policy during the sickness allows them to hold out against the Emergency Government. The population there are able to readjust to a life without technology. They catch fish; they grow olives, tomatoes and oranges and swim in the blue, blue sea. It’s still a hard life, but much better than existing in that desolate village by the lake.”

  “So you read those books,” I say. “The ones I left in your bedroom?”

  “Ah yes. I read them many, many times. Borges and Calvino. Most influential,” he chuckles. “Indeed. As you can probably tell from my name.”

  “Your name?”

  “Borges,” he says with a smile. “And Calvino. Think about it.”

  I stare at his smiling, unseeing face and am glad that he can’t see me blush. “Right. Of course! Your name - an anagram. Staring me in the face.”

  “The truth often does.”

  “So did Tyler tell you all about that strange old Erinsi woman?”

  “He did. What a marvel. The last of her kind. I’ve always envied you a little, for meeting such an extraordinary individual.”

  I can’t suppress an ironic laugh. “Tyler can’t have told you everything. That Ninbanda was, like, totally suicidal. I mean, I can just about understand that she might have been trained for a suicide mission, but to drag me and Tyler into it, to die in that bunker, all to protect the Erinsi secrets. . . It’s just . . . madness!”

  “As Tyler might say,” Blanco murmurs, a touch of longing in his voice.

  “If you knew about Ninbanda, why didn’t you tell us that the NRO could be trusted?”

  He looks puzzled. “What makes you say that?”

  “Ninbanda knew, didn’t she, about the 2012 plan? She must have told the NRO. And that’s why they were obsessed with finding Ek Naab and the Ix Codex. At least, that’s what we figured out, Ixchel and me. The NRO wanted to save the world from the s
uperwave, too.”

  Blanco shakes his head firmly. “We can never be certain of that. Ninbanda’s motives may have been pure – yes, this is possible. The Erinsi took extraordinary pains to ensure that no single person could ever execute the 2012 plan alone. Cooperation and secrecy were built into the solution. Those of the final generation, who would eventually execute the plan, were willing to die in the act of protecting the planet from the superwave. To sacrifice themselves for the continuation of civilization. The NRO, however, were always suspect. Their leadership is subject to the changing winds of democracy. Who could say what a given administration might order them to do?”

  “Well, yes, I guess the Erinsi didn’t trust anyone who wasn’t willing to die when they went into that bunker. But I think Captain Bennett would have been up for it.”

  “I suspect that Captain Bennett may indeed be an unusually brave man.”

  “Yep. Braver than me.”

  “You can’t know that. You didn’t know that the final journey might be one-way.”

  “At least Bennett didn’t have to give his life, and Tyler and I had a way out.”

  Blanco gives a rueful sigh, perhaps at being reminded about time travel.

  “So now you’re back with Susannah. Why did you leave her?”

  “Eventually the inevitable happened: the Crystal Key burned out and the Bracelet of Itzamna stranded me. For many, many years I lost my memory. Memories returned rather slowly. I wasn’t able to get back to Susannah. It took years of working with the top scientists in the world, trying to find a way to make that blasted Key peptide.” He sighs again, this time deeply. “The truth is, I grew old.”

  “Josh. . .” I say our name tentatively. He responds with a curious half-smile. “You time travelled loads of times, didn’t you? What were you doing?”

  “Ah! Things which are best left in the past.”

  “You’re not going to tell?”

  Gently, he shakes his head. “Time is fragile, young Josh. By now even you should understand.”

  “What does that mean – ‘even’ me? You’re me. We’re the same.”

  “We were the same. And then our lives took different paths.”