by Alan Baxter
He stood up, sniffing hard and long, his eyes watering as the bitter, chemical flavour flooded the back of his throat. He let out a long, satisfied breath, stretching upwards as the fine particles began powering around the fragile capillaries in his nostrils, coursing through his bloodstream. He shook his head vigorously, a deep growl rising from his throat, as he licked the barrel of his pistol, slipped it back into its holster.
He stood there for a couple of minutes, letting his metabolism rise with the drug, before striding on. As he walked he began to experience the pulsing rushes the drug induced, his headache clearing, the pain in his thigh and ribs still there, but not important. And his fatigue was passing quickly, energy building fast. He felt good.
The trees around him became greener, the leaves more defined, the sounds of the jungle crisper. With a start he crouched low, blending into the jungle like a ghost. He had heard something that didn’t compute. Cocking his head to one side he listened hard. There it was again, floating through the foliage like the drone of a lazy, fat bee. But this was definitely an engine, probably a jeep. He slipped the map from his pocket, looking at it closely. There was no way he could have wandered off course, he simply didn’t do that sort of thing. But there was definitely no road shown here on the map he had, so the road must be new. Interesting. He had imagined it to be a camp in the middle of nowhere, with a handful of men scraping and digging at the long buried past. Long buried for a reason, because it had died out like its makers and should be left that way.
The sound of the jeep rose, soon accompanied by the whirr of deep treaded tyres and the crunch of flying gravel. Carlos crept forward, looking for the road. And there it was, not twenty feet in front of him. He ducked low again as the jeep sped past, gravel spewing from its tyres like shrapnel, showering the heavy leaves along the road with a sound like a rainstorm. One driver, male, local by the look of him, some boxes and large plastic water containers in the back. Presumably returning from a supply run. Well, that certainly made things easier.
He stood up, pocketing his map, and continued through the trees. He kept the road to his left and followed it. With no more need of his compass he strolled casually along, breathing deeply of his artificial euphoria. Before he knew it the sounds of working men began to reach his ears, shouts and laughs, the occasional banging of a hammer or revving of an engine. Carlos allowed himself an evil smile. His prize was close at hand.
16
Sharp, fast images of native Amazonians suffering and dying flashed through Isiah’s mind, quickly followed by images of raped forests, raging floods. Another mental slap. With a grunt of annoyance he silently cursed the Balance. ‘On your feet, Samuel,’ he said, his voice betraying not a trace of pity. ‘We have work to do.’
Samuel looked up at him from the moss covered log he was sitting on. His face was a study of misery. His t-shirt was stained and soaked, stuck to every inch of him with sweat, and sweat ran in rivulets down his cheeks, the back of his neck, every part of him. His eyes were red and tired and his hands trembled. Hands that were constantly either scratching at one of his numerous mosquito bites or swatting at the incessant flies circling his face, never leaving him a second’s peace. They had been going hard, forcing their way through the jungle, and it wasn’t over yet.
‘This place is fucked!’ Samuel snapped.
Isiah laughed without control for a second at the comedy that was Samuel. ‘It’s the jungle, you idiot.’
‘How close are we to this skull? And how long till it gets dark?’
Isiah shrugged. ‘At a guess I’d say we were about three hours from the site. As for night, we’ve got maybe an hour or so of light left.’
Samuel was frantically waving both hands in front of his face like a lunatic. ‘Bastards! Fuck off, you little bastards!’ He looked through his waving hands at Isiah. ‘So we’re going to have to walk for a couple of hours in the dark?’
Isiah nodded. ‘You should look forward to it, Samuel. At least the flies go to bed.’
Samuel looked at him suspiciously. ‘Do they?’
Isiah smiled. ‘Sure. Extra battalions of mosquitoes come out to replace them. And spiders, snakes and possibly even a pack of peccary.’
Samuel looked at the floor, shaking his head. ‘Fuck you, man. What the goddamn are peccary anyway?’
‘Like a wild pig. They’ll eat you alive if you sleep on the forest floor and they’re lucky enough to find you.’ Samuel looked up, trying to decide if Isiah was winding him up or not. ‘It’s true,’ Isiah assured him.
Samuel looked down again, his hand robotically waving back and forth in front of his face. ‘Whatever. I’ll sleep up a tree.’
‘Then the pythons’ll get you.’
‘Why the hell are you so fucking cheery?’ Samuel exploded. ‘You don’t seem bothered by the flies, the heat, the fucking damp bastard air. You’re not even sweating that I can see! With your jacket on and everything!’
Isiah smiled at him. It was a smile that said, I’ve been around long enough to cope with this, or, You should know better by now.
Samuel stood up and looked more closely at Isiah. He could see flies and mosquitoes buzzing all around, but none of them seemed to get to within a couple of inches before flying away. There were no invasive flies trying to crawl into Isiah’s nose, ears, mouth. Isiah took this close examination in his stride, watching Samuel’s face go through a broad range of thought processes. After a moment Samuel reached out very slowly, moving his hand towards Isiah’s forearm, still covered by the sleeve of his leather jacket. When he was no more than an inch from Isiah’s arm he stopped dead, looking at Isiah like he wanted to kill him. ‘You son of a bitch,’ he whispered. He moved his hand away, then back again. ‘The air around you is cold, man. Fucking chilly!’ Isiah nodded. ‘How?’ Samuel demanded.
‘When will you learn, Samuel? It’s like I said before. It’s not magic. It’s controlling the very energy of the universe. You could do it if you tried. Use your will, Samuel. Will the air around you to cool, will the flies and mosquitoes and other bugs to give you a wide berth, channel that energy.’
Samuel scowled. ‘I could do it?’
Isiah raised one eyebrow. ‘Did you put the candle out? Did you move the cup?’ Samuel nodded. ‘So you can do this. You can do anything.’
Samuel’s brow creased in concentration.
‘Relax,’ Isiah said. ‘Don’t try so hard. Just believe in your own ability, the strength of your will.’
Samuel took a deep breath in through his nose, his eyes shut. As he let his breath flow slowly out he attempted to cool himself, to slow his fast running blood, to chill the air around him. For a moment he was convinced it was working. ‘I can feel it,’ he whispered, as if speaking too loud would shatter the sensation.
‘Of course,’ Isiah replied. ‘I’ve already told you that you have enormous innate strength. You could learn quickly if you were willing to put in the hours. Practice while we walk, we have a long way to go.’
They started out again, Samuel smiling as he cooled himself by the power of his thought and mentally drove the flies away. He could feel his mind expanding as he practiced. He had noticed the same thing in the church while he toyed with the candle, then on the plane, like his mind was getting bigger, encompassing more. He had brushed it off before, but now it was stronger. The more he tried to do, the more he achieved. And the more he achieved, the more he knew he would be capable of.
Isiah could sense Samuel’s growing strength and confidence as they walked. Samuel was a remarkably powerful person on the inside. Thank goodness that he had never realised his potential until now. And now it was really too late. Isiah knew, in that annoying, innate way of knowing that he was so used to, that Samuel needed this practice.
Samuel cried out and fell down onto one knee. ‘What is it?’ Isiah asked, crouching beside him.
‘My calf,’ Samuel gasped. ‘Shit, bad cramp. Really bad.’ He was gulping breath between gritted teeth as he frantically r
ubbed at his calf muscle.
‘It’s because you’ve been sweating so much. The sodium levels in your body have dropped interrupting the electrical signals in your muscles.’
Samuel stared at him. ‘Thanks a fucking lot, doctor! How about a cure instead of a goddamn thesis?’
Isiah shrugged. ‘You need salt, that’s all. Hang on.’ He took a water bottle from his pocket. They had a couple each, small ones that Isiah had saved from the plane. He held one hand in front of his chest, palm up, cupped slightly. He concentrated, eyes hooded. Small white particles began appearing on his palm, flaky, irregular in shape. After a few seconds there was a small pile of them. Isiah opened his and held out his hand.
‘Salt?’ Samuel hazarded.
‘What did you think it was, coke?’
Samuel pulled a sarcastic face. ‘Right. Chance would be a fine thing.’ He pinched the salt from Isiah’s hand between middle finger, fore finger and thumb and put it into his mouth with a wince. He quickly grabbed the bottle and swallowed a large mouthful of warm, stale water, rinsing it around his mouth as he did so. ‘Will that be enough?’
Isiah nodded, mentally easing Samuel’s calf muscle as he spoke. ‘For now, or it’ll make you sick. Have some more in a while. I’ll help with the cramps in the meantime. Come on.’
Samuel stood and followed Isiah again, limping slightly due to his still stiff muscle. ‘So how does that work?’ he asked. ‘How do you manipulate salt into being.’
‘Same way you create anything else,’ Isiah replied.
‘Explain.’
Isiah sighed. Well, there’s little else to do. ‘Everything in the universe is made of the same stuff, Samuel. You are just a collection of atoms, so am I, so is a toilet seat, so is salt. You can ‘create’ anything by pulling its component atoms together from the infinite number of atoms swirling around you all the time. Or break one thing down and recombine it into something else.’
Samuel laughed humourlessly. ‘So you could have made coke! You could make anything.’
‘If you know its molecular structure. Salt, and a small amount of it, is pretty easy. Try to make a horse, for example, and that would be a titanic task, virtually impossible as it’s such a complex thing.’
Samuel raised an eyebrow. ‘Virtually impossible?’
‘Nothing is impossible, Samuel.’
After a moment’s thought Samuel said, ‘Ah, but hang on. If a horse is such a complex thing, virtually impossible to make, then your other theories don’t stand up.’
‘What do you mean.’
‘You said that people and their beliefs create gods!’
Isiah nodded. ‘Yeah. One person actively trying to construct a horse from atoms is a mammoth task, but when people simply believe in something totally they skip the rather messy cognitive thought processes. They simply ‘do’ without thinking.’
‘So maybe,’ Samuel said, ‘the gods that are around now are simply people who believed themselves into being gods?’
‘Bizarrely enough, some of them are, yes. Others are deified perhaps, by people’s beliefs, or created outright by people’s desire for a spiritual figurehead. All manner of methods.’
‘Deified?’ Samuel asked. ‘You mean some gods are people that have become gods because of other people’s beliefs? Like Jesus? You’re saying that he did exist before the beliefs of Christianity?’
‘Sure. Possibly. People like Jesus, Moses, Lao Tzu, Thor, probably did exist. People’s belief usually grows from something tangible, something real. Most legends and myths are based in truth at some level and religions with their pantheons of gods are nothing more than extremely complex legends. But the people existing in the first place weren’t gods then. They were probably just very cool people with a lot of charisma and a good philosophy.’
Samuel blinked. ‘Probably?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I thought you knew all this shit for sure. I thought you’d met all these holy people.’
Isiah laughed. ‘I have, Samuel, and you’ve met some too. But those entities were created by strength of faith.’
‘So it might have created them in the first place.’
Isiah nodded. ‘Or they might have been deified by belief based on their previous deeds, but the real person from history, the root of the legend, and what is now the god, could be completely different beings.’
Samuel shook his head, bewildered. ‘Could be? Maybe the deity was a deity first and people’s belief made him stronger.’
Isiah shrugged. ‘That’s what most people believe, because the thought that they created their own god is too much for them. But people make their gods, Samuel. The biggest problem is that most people don’t actually know what they believe. The collective subconscious of everybody is a damned powerful thing.’
‘But you don’t know anything for certain, do you?’
Isiah looked at Samuel, his eyes cold. ‘What I know for certain is that it’s all a bloody mess. I’ve seen gods created before my eyes and I’ve cast other gods down. But nobody knows how it all began. People and their thoughts have been around a long time.’
Samuel sighed. ‘And after all this time, all these hundreds of years, and all this adventuring in the name of balance, you still don’t have a definitive answer.’
‘You have to think, Samuel, use your brain! Exercise your mind. That’s the whole point, you see.’ Isiah waved his hand in front of him, encompassing everything. ‘That’s where this whole mess comes from! People always ask each other what to believe and megalomaniacs abuse people’s weak minds and sheep-like submissiveness to control them. Control a person’s beliefs and you control the very essence of their being. Look at the corruption in the world’s churches, look how many religious fanatics have died violent, bloody deaths at the orders of their spiritual leaders.’
Samuel was silent for a moment. Then, ‘So you think it would be best if everybody stopped believing in gods and spiritual powers and simply believed in themselves?’
Isiah smiled. ‘Ah, Samuel, there you have it!’
‘And people could manipulate the infinite energy of the universe that you keep on about and have ultimate control over their own destinies?’
‘That, Samuel,’ said Isiah, patting his shoulder, ‘is my personal dream.’
Samuel laughed. ‘Because if nothing else, it would let you off the hook?’
‘Exactly.’
They walked on in silence for some time, Samuel tripping and stumbling as the vines and roots grabbed at his ankles like ghouls clawing their way up from damp graves. Leaves and branches slapped his face, snatched at his clothes in the gathering gloom of late afternoon. The ground itself was soft, uncertain.
He concentrated as they made their slow progress, exercising his new found ability to stay cool. He smiled inwardly at the thought of getting that skull in his hands, having all the time there was to develop powers at least equal to Isiah’s. He certainly wouldn’t be helping people out for the greater good. He’d be a god in his own right, free from the Devil and any other power that would attempt to oppose him. Isiah was a fool to be helping him really, but he’d be damned if he’d stand in the way of help like this. Isiah’s greater agenda was of no concern to him. From now on Samuel would believe only in Samuel, and he would be his own greatest power.
He grinned. ‘I reckon I’ve just seen through your ruse.’
‘Really? What ruse is that.’
Samuel took a deep breath. ‘All right. All this talk of the Balance and its superior purpose and everything else. What you call the Balance is what I’d call God. Same thing. Your Balance is just God protecting himself.’ Samuel smiled, pleased with himself.
Isiah shook his head. ‘Himself? The Balance is not a person or a deity, Samuel. Gods and demons are created by people’s beliefs but no one believes in the Balance. Only a very few people are even aware of its existence. It has no followers, no worshippers, no idolisers. It’s beyond your god and any others.’ He paused, looking at Samu
el. ‘You want to know what I think it is?’
Samuel’s face was defiant. ‘Go on then. What is it?’
‘Well, I don’t claim to know. I just have a theory.’
‘Which is?’
‘People create gods with their beliefs and their desires. What most people really desire more than anything else, no matter what their religion or spiritual belief, is peace and quiet, security and oneness. In other words, Balance. I think the Balance is an entity beyond complete comprehension, but created by the combined subconscious desire of all humanity and all gods for balance in their lives. The total subconscious has created the Balance unknowingly as a kind of safety valve against the plethora of conflicting beliefs in the world. But it’s a shaky protection at best.’
Samuel grunted, not at all pleased with that explanation. In truth he was not at all pleased with many of Isiah’s explanations, but here he was in the middle of the stinking hot jungle, a pawn in the hands of these things Isiah took for granted. His mind wandered back to the task in hand and the skull that would give him so much time and power. He smiled as he imagined having centuries to become so powerful that none of this complicated talk of beliefs and gods would be of any concern to him.
Surreptitiously scanning Samuel’s mind, listening to his thoughts, Isiah smiled too. Funny how you could teach some people things that they seemed to grasp and understand, yet still they learned nothing.
17
As the last of the light was fading from the day Katherine and Thomas walked back to the dining tent. They felt both exhilarated and exhausted by the day’s events, knowing that today had been one of the biggest days of discovery since the site was first located. The cicadas had begun their evening concert, the sound earthy and reassuring in Katherine’s mind.
‘Imagine if there was a time when people from all corners of the world would gather at this one place,’ Thomas mused, ‘bringing all the skulls together, for rituals of enormous power.’