During her first night in Tenochtitlan, Acalan had told her about the omens that had predicted the coming of Quetzalcoatl and how Montezuma had misinterpreted them. She had been shown the drawings of the white-skinned man initially believed to be Quetzalcoatl, and from the stories of their “sticks that emitted fire,” Vrin surmised that the beings of this planet were composed of different gene pools, with the white-skinned ones coming from a more technologically advanced society.
Since Montezuma and his entourage believed the white-skinned invaders were Quetzalcoatl and his army, Acalan had managed to convince those who had seen the “real” Quetzalcoatl that Tenochtitlan would soon be under siege. The only place the god-infant and his mother could be safe was in the legendary place of his birth: White City. It was of utmost importance that the Aztecs take him there immediately and tell no one what they knew.
The journey by foot took nearly a month. As they had made their way through the rain forest, Vrin used her bio-scanner to evaluate the flora and fauna for any Vambir nutrients, but nothing was compatible. Walking silently at night with J’Vor secured to her in his sling, she maintained an air of ethereal detachment expected of a goddess and graciously permitted the Aztecs to carry the pod during the day while she and J’Vor took their “divine rest.”
Once they reached White City, the population shook with fear when they saw Vrin and J’Vor, and readily believed that Quetzalcoatl and his mother had returned to them in their original divine form. A royal chamber for Vrin and J’Vor was established inside the main temple. To Vrin’s intense frustration, she and J’Vor were never left alone, and as the days turned into weeks, she knew there was only one way out of her present dilemma: she and J’Vor would need to go into stasis for an extended period of time. Judging from the pictographs of the weapons used by the white-skinned beings, she estimated it would be at least five hundred years until the inhabitants of this planet were technologically advanced enough to render assistance. Surely by then she and her son would be recognized as extraterrestrials, and agricultural techniques would be developed enough to grow hemo-crops from her depleted rations.
She could not enter stasis with J’Vor while the pod was inside the temple. Cloaking the pod would do no good, since it was enclosed in a small chamber, and the Aztecs knew precisely where it was. If it were to disappear from sight, they would still be able to touch it, and if they attacked it with their stone axes, the hull would be breached and the automatic revival sequence activated.
If she could escape into the rainforest with J’Vor, it would be a small matter to dig a shallow pit. Once the pod’s cloak was activated, it would take on the look of the gnarled trees and vines that surrounded it. The pod’s homing beacon would remain active, and if the Isla’s crew had survived in the lifeboat, then there was a chance they would locate her before the five-hundred-year stasis cycle was finished. If Kevak was still alive, she knew he would not rest until he found them.
Although weak from malnutrition, she was still superior to the natives in both strength and speed. A plan formed in her mind: she would announce that she and Quetzalcoatl would bestow their blessing upon White City and partake of their blood offerings and insist that the sacred ceremony take place deep in the rainforest. In order to lull the Aztecs into a false sense of security, she would leave the pod behind in the royal chamber. Once they were all far away from White City, she would sprint back to the temple with J’Vor, easily outrunning them. At that point, she would command the pod to enter hover mode, and it would follow her away from the Aztecs, never to be seen again.
With a little luck, when they came out of stasis, she and J’Vor would either be in the company of the Isla’s crew or in a civilized, new age of technology.
SERENDIPITY
Newlun, 1811
Johep used the lasdrill to attach the section of vinylinium into place. The vinyl and aluminum compound that would make up the Newisla’s hull had taken centuries to manufacture, but the Vambir took heart when they could see the spacecraft that would transport them home taking shape.
The manual labor required to build the ship would have been done by Lowcaste workers back on Vambiri, but since Lowcastes had been cheated out of passenger assignments on the evacuation ships, it was up to Johep and the other Highcaste Newlunders to fill their ranks until the project could be completed.
This work shift had Johep paired with another male in the aft section. Long accustomed to the constant high-pitched hum of the laser, Johep stopped suddenly when the lasdrill of his coworker emitted crackling noises.
“Check the hydrogen cell,” Johep called out to him. “It could be feeding back.”
“I’m almost finished with this panel,” said the male. “It just needs one more—”
An explosion hurled Johep across the workspace. When he got to his feet, he saw the grisly sight of the charred remains of his coworker. Half of the male’s head been obliterated by the laser feedback, and as the emergency sirens began to wail, Johep knew that the long-awaited opportunity to secretly acquire more technology had arrived.
Racing to the singed lasdrill that had malfunctioned, he inspected it and saw that the hydrogen cell was still intact. He quickly removed it, then used his own lasdrill to vaporize the casing that held it in place. Hearing shouts and running footsteps, he quickly hid the cell behind a loose sheet of vinylinium. As the Vambir rushed in, they saw Johep squirming on the ground in pretended agony next to the dead worker.
*******
“Johep, can you hear me?” asked D’Hal.
Johep slowly blinked his eyes open and recognized that he was in Medical. D’Hal stood in front of him, while Gyran was seated at his side.
“What happened?” he asked.
“There was an explosion in the aft section,” said D’Hal. “Your coworker was killed. Do you remember anything?”
“His lasdrill stopped humming…then…there was a massive feedback pulse,” he said.
“The damage to the lasdrill was inconsistent with a feedback pulse,” said D’Hal. “It looks like it was partially vaporized by another lasdrill.”
“The explosion caught me unawares,” explained Johep. “I had a tight grip on my drill. It could have continued emitting a ray as I fell.”
“Are you sure that’s what happened?” asked D’Hal.
“No, I’m not sure!” he retorted. “I don’t remember anything after the explosion.”
“Of course not, Johep,” said D’Hal. “It’s perfectly understandable if you can’t remember, but I needed to ask just the same. I’ll leave you now to recuperate.”
After D’Hal had left, Johep sprang out of bed.
“Johep,” said Gyran, “you should be resting.”
Making sure D’Hal was gone, he bent close to Gyran and whispered directly into her ear, “Go to Senfo and get reassigned to my work station. There you will find a loose section of vinylinium. That’s where I hid the hydrogen cell.”
Gyran eyes widened in hope. “A power source!”
“That, along with the implant we removed from the female who died in childbirth, will be our ticket to freedom,” said Johep. “We can broadcast a signal that will replicate a pod’s homing beacon. If there are any undiscovered Vambir out there, they will find us.”
“Won’t Kevak’s lifeboat computers also detect the signal?” asked Gyran.
“I’ll dampen it so that it only has a radius of a hundred miles,” he said.
“It will take a long time for a response,” she said. “You may as well write a message in a bottle and cast it out to sea.”
“The world is smaller than you think it is,” he said with smile, “and time is on our side.”
DISCOVERY
Kozheozersky Monastery, 2011
“What are your conclusions regarding errant pods?” asked Kevak.
“Putting together the final seconds of fragmented data transmitted from the Isla, the fate of sixteen of the jettisoned pods is unknown,” answered Emanui.
; “Sixteen pods remained in orbit?” asked J’Vor.
“All that can be said is that sixteen did not record external temperature spikes that would have occurred during atmospheric entry,” said Emanui. “They could have remained in Low Earth Orbit, or they could have bounced off Earth’s atmosphere into deep space.”
“So the triple-headed comet seen in 1519 could have been three errant pods,” said J’Vor.
Emanui nodded. “It’s possible.”
“What about hidden Aztec cities?” asked Boris.
“I found several,” said Emanui, “but one in particular stands out.”
In the weeks since their last meeting, they had each worked diligently to find out as much as they could about Aztec legends of the Spanish invasion.
Everyone watched in awe as images of rectangular stone structures hidden under centuries of jungle growth were instantly laid bare on the screen before them, thanks to cloaked Vambir technology strategically placed on NASA satellites by Kevak’s network.
“So many!” exclaimed Boris. “Where do we begin?”
Emanui zoomed in on a region in Honduras. “Here.”
“That’s nearly a thousand miles away from Tenochtitlan,” said Tariq.
“Precisely,” said Emanui. “Quetzalcoatl was a white-skinned god who did not come from Tenochtitlan. This region of Honduras in the Mosquitia rainforest is the legendary birthplace of Quetzalcoatl. The Spanish called it La Ciudad Blanca.”
“The White City,” whispered Boris.
“According to legend, the city was painted entirely white and was a place of great beauty filled with gold,” said Emanui. “As you can imagine, people have been searching for it for centuries.”
“So this is the lost city of a white-skinned god,” said Tariq. “Is that the only reason for choosing this location over the others?”
“No,” said Emanui. “This is the reason.”
She continued to zoom in until the petroglyphs carved into the walls became visible.
“Two Vambir!” exclaimed Kevak. “An adult and a child!”
“There’s more,” said Emanui, uploading a new image. “I searched the archives and found satellite images of the Mosquitia rainforest on the date of the Venus transit in 2004. These are the images recorded at the White City coordinates.”
“It’s people!” cried Tariq as he saw the cluster of dots.
“As you can see,” said Emanui as she scrolled through images, “the area was empty before and after the transit.”
“It’s a congregation,” whispered Kevak.
“The next Venus transit is less than a year away,” said Boris. “We must go there in the lifeboat and observe what happens behind the safety of the cloak.”
“One other thing,” said Tariq. “It’s time to bring Jasper into the loop.”
The others nodded in agreement.
SERUM
Liberia, 2012
Maz inserted the needle into the sleeping patient and watched as the blood trickled down the tube into the flexible plastic bag. As soon as it was full, she removed the needle and sealed the spout.
Upon entering the lab, she emptied the contents into a centrifuge and waited while the cellular components were removed. The coagulated blood yielded a serum rich in antibodies.
Sleeping on a lab cot in his Hazmat suit, Professor Espinoza awoke to see the young assistant hard at work.
“It’s past midnight, Maz,” he said. “Even when I was your age, I had to rest sometime.”
“Patient Four made a full recovery,” said Maz, changing the subject. “The antibodies in her blood are the highest concentration I’ve ever seen.”
“Then you were right, after all,” said Espinoza. “This is an important breakthrough.”
Six weeks ago, a tiny village in Liberia had prepared a dead elder for burial with the usual bathing ritual. Within days, everyone who had handled the body was violently ill with symptoms of hemorrhagic fever, and ebola was quickly confirmed.
Espinoza and his staff traveled to the vicinity and set up a makeshift hospital and lab. Maz had performed admirably during the crisis, monitoring each patient around the clock. Every patient admitted the first week had died, but miraculously, on the tenth day a child had passed the crisis point and survived. Maz had used the child’s blood to create a convalescent serum and injected newly admitted patients with it. All showed immediate signs of improvement, but Patient Four’s recovery was remarkable.
“The newly infected will be treated with the serum from Patient Four,” said Maz, “and when they recover, their blood will have even higher concentrations of antibodies. Ebola can be defeated!”
“Get some rest, Maz,” said Espinoza. “You’re driving yourself to the point of exhaustion.”
Espinoza had seen research assistants come and go through the years. Ambitious to obtain a post at a prestigious university, they had regarded their time with him merely as a stepping stone and had moved on as soon as a better opportunity had arisen.
Maz was the exception.
Espinoza never ceased to be amazed by her. Not only had she embraced a traditional Shoshone lifestyle, but she was also fluent in the ancient Náhuatl language spoken by her ancestors. Yet this adherence to her ancient roots was in stark contrast to her passion for the study of epidemiology. With the one exception of a Native American religious retreat she had attended in June 2004, Maz had never missed a day of work.
“Ebola was the plague that swept through the Aztec civilization,” said Maz.
Espinoza sighed. “We will never know. The descriptions recorded by the Spanish priests also match the Black Death.”
But Maz knew, and Espinoza could never have guessed how. The sample she had obtained from Quetzalcoatl in the failed attempt to cure him with Black Death anti-bodies in 2004 had confirmed that he was infected with ebola, and the strain present in Liberia was almost a perfect match.
“It wasn’t the Black Death,” insisted Maz.
Espinoza knew it was pointless to argue with her when she was in one of her sullen moods. He decided to broach the subject that she was always loathe to discuss.
“There are open posts for epidemiology professors in the United States and Europe,” he said. “I would be happy to write reference letters for you.”
“No,” she snapped. “My work here is too important.”
“You’ve been with me longer than any other assistant,” said Espinoza, “and you deserve so much more than this. You would be able to afford a nice house and attend conferences all around the world. Why should you have to spend the rest of your life living in student dormitories? Quite frankly, Maz, it appears to others as if I am exploiting you.”
“We are all travelers through time, and I choose to spend it working for a higher purpose,” answered Maz.
Espinoza smiled, oblivious to the meaning behind her noble words.
“By the way,” said Maz, “I’ll be attending another religious retreat in June.”
“Of course,” said Espinoza.
HERMITAGE
Guyana, 2011
“Jasper, come inside,” called Nadia. “It will be daylight soon.”
As he stared at the glowing band of orange straddled on top of the dark purple horizon of the Atlantic Ocean, Jasper began to feel the heat spreading through his body.
“Jasper!” Nadia cried.
Turning toward her, he ran into the safety of their adobe hut and silently descended the stairs to the underground shelter.
“Would you have stayed outside if I had not called you?” she asked.
“No,” he said. “On this day, centuries ago, a Vambir sacrificed his life by pretending to be Nosferatu. The villagers saw him die as he stepped into the daylight, making it possible for Kevak and the rest of us to live in safety. It is how I honor his memory.”
“No one is truly gone as long as they are remembered,” she said.
“If only I could forget all the terrible things I have seen,” he said. “I had thought
hand-to-hand combat was the ultimate in violence, but I was mistaken. The weapons of mass destruction created by humanity make the Vambir threat laughable.”
“We must not be distracted by humanity’s natural progression,” she said.
“The progression only seems natural because you were transformed less than a hundred years ago, my love,” he said.
“And I would be long dead now, had it not been for you,” she countered.
In 1917, Nadia was part of a small group of servants that waited on the Russian royal family during their captivity at the hands of the Bolsheviks. A year earlier, Kevak had sent Jasper to head a group of Rescued and Watchers to investigate strange reports of a peasant monk who had risen from obscurity to become the chief confidant of the Tsarina. Although the monk had been credited with saving the heir to the throne from a mysterious blood disease, rumors surrounding the so-called holy man were rife with tales of drunken orgies and girls that had gone missing.
Watchers who infiltrated the well-connected clique that fawned over the monk at his downtown salon reported seeing him outside in the daylight, and it was concluded that rather than being a Vambir, he was merely a master manipulator.
Yet the Feral count in the region was extraordinarily high due to the bloody revolutions and pogroms taking place, with the majority of Ferals choosing to hide their activities by disguising themselves as soldiers. Jasper and his network had been placed in several military units in order to flush them out and had met with limited success.
Nadia came to his attention when he was part of the security detachment sent to guard the royal family. The gentle housemaid had won his heart with her beauty and unworldliness, which was in sharp contrast to the evil he had been fighting for centuries.
Jasper had been powerless to prevent the execution of the Tsar and every member of his family and household. The planning for the treacherous act had been such a well-kept secret that he only found out about it shortly after it had taken place. Racing to the scene, he had come upon the execution squad as they were ripping apart the dresses of the princesses in order to collect the diamonds sewn into the linings that had deflected the first round of bullets. To Jasper’s horror, Nadia’s naked body was among those thrown into the back of a wagon that would take the dead into the woods for disposal. Sensing a faint heartbeat, he had gone into berserker mode, overpowered the troops, and spirited her away to his stasis pod. With her life hanging by the thinnest of threads, Jasper had cut his wrist and allowed the blood to drip into her mouth, transforming her.
The Nosferatu Chronicles: The Aztec God Page 10