by Alex Archer
On the television, which she had on as a sort of background, a man with a young face and a richly coiffed head of silver hair was interviewing a lean, tanned man who seemed to smile perpetually.
" – really think there's nothing to these reports coming out of New Mexico, Don?" the silver-haired man asked.
"Just call me Mr. Skeptic, Miller," his subject said, grinning. The crawl beneath him read Donald "Mr. Skeptic" Triphorn, Editor, Skeptic Eye Magazine. "And the answer to your question is, of course not."
"How could so many people be mistaken, Mr. Skeptic?"
"I'm glad you asked me that, Miller." He turned the unrelenting grin to the camera. "I'd say it's a classic example of an overwhelming will to believe. We're inundated incessantly with fantasy – stories that take us out of our humdrum daily existence, reassure us that there really is magic in the world, regardless of what the mean old scientists say. From Harry Potter to Roswell conspiracy theories, it's very popular. The fact is, Miller, a lot of us want to be fooled by easily explainable events. Or publicity stunts. Or simply to buy into urban legends."
"But don't urban legends usually have no traceable attribution, Mr. Skeptic? Don't these stories usually get told as happening to a friend of my cousin, third-or fourth-or sixteenth-hand? Whereas these stories have names and faces associated with them," Miller asked.
Mr. Skeptic's grin had turned a bit glassy. Hearing part of her own discussion of a couple of hours earlier with Dr. Cogswell replayed, Annja had stopped staring fruitlessly at her piled clothes. She gave full attention to the television screen.
"In one recent case our alleged Holy Child appeared to a young couple whose SUV had broken down at night in an early blizzard near Red River. If you'll recall, he actually gave them a silver thermal blanket to keep them warm until help arrived."
Miller – Miller Pemberton, an on-screen flash identified him – nodded his silver head. "We have some shots of that." The screen showed a pair of hands displaying a thermal blanket.
"Not only is that a perfectly normal thermal blanket you see there, Miller," Mr. Skeptic said as his grin reappeared, along with the rest of him, "but thanks to the magic of modern inventory-tracking technology, authorities have been able to identify it as an item shoplifted from a Wal-Mart near Interstate 40 in Albuquerque."
"Hard to reconcile petty theft with an entity popularly rumored to be the infant Jesus," Pemberton said.
A great, warm wave of reassurance washed over Annja.
Cogswell was clearly full of nonsense; that much was obvious. He was an intelligent, very learned man, well meaning. But misguided, like so many devotees of the strange.
"I understand you actually believe there is a threatening aspect to these sightings, though, Mr. Skeptic."
The grin went away and was replaced by a look of concern so studied it almost made Annja burst out laughing.
"Yes, there is a considerable threat here, Miller," Mr. Skeptic said. "Tall tales such as these cause people to question proper authority, disbelieving what scientists or even our government tells us. I don't think I have to tell you how dangerous such antigovernment sentiments can be. If people trust their own untrained observations instead of what they are told by qualified professionals, the possibilities for unjustified panic or worse are infinite. Don't you agree, Miller?"
"Of course, Mr. Skeptic. Of course I do." Another camera focused on his head as he turned to look into the lens. "And now a few words about a very special program coming up called 'We'reAll Going to Die'..."
"Christ," Annja said. She reminded herself that in the late sixteenth century, popular broadsheets distributed all across Continental Europe described the Spanish Armada as an overwhelming success for King Philip and Spain for weeks and weeks after the battle. The more things change, she thought.
Shaking her head, Annja turned off the television. My plane leaves in three hours, she told herself. I have to make some executive decisions here.
I don't have time to wonder who's crazy – me or the rest of the world.
Chapter 15
Madrid, Spain
"Pretty, isn't it?" the little man asked.
From the small platform built out over the second-floor scenic overlook Annja observed the great spray of palms and other tropical vegetation springing from the middle of the huge atrium. "Yes," she said, "but definitely not what I expected."
"You expected some kind of mystic or historical shrine," he said, hopping from foot to foot. "Instead I give you a shopping mall."
Her host, who rejoiced in the name Dr. Eleuterio Bobadilla, was a professor from the even more impressively named Departamento de Historia Antigua, Historia Medieval y Paleografía y Diplomática of the Madrid Autonomous University. Both his name and that of his department were substantially longer than him. The top of his shiny brown head, egg bald but for a little black fringe at the back, barely came to Annja's shoulder. He had lean features, a neat little mustache and skinny arms and legs sticking out, improbably, from a grotesquely large white jersey that came down almost to the bottom of his black silk running shorts. Annja recognized it as a Real Madrid home jersey. A pair of red-and-white running shoes completed his ensemble. She gathered he'd actually jogged from the university to meet her. It was impossible to guess how old he was, but he somehow reminded Annja of a young Mohandas Gandhi.
"I admit I was wondering why you weren't showing me the basilica devoted to the Virgin of Atocha."
"Well, you know, you told me you had seen ample images of the virgin and child," Bobadilla said, his running-in-place cooldown finally coming to an end. His appearance in exercise clothing had taken her somewhat aback. In her experience, most Europeans were terribly formal in dress, especially in front of Americans. "The basilica is not so much about the Santo Niño. Our Lady of Atocha is far more significant to us. She is rival to the Virgin of Almudena for the devotions of pious Madrileños. A few years ago our king, Juan Carlos, recognized the Lady of Atocha as protectress of the royal family."
Annja leaned on the rail. Below, a few tourists stood snapping digital cameras at the gardens while locals strolled by. Overhead the space rose to a high half-cylinder ceiling, ribbed with metal girders and pierced with a great skylight to allow the sunlight to pour down on the tropical jungle in miniature. Structurally, the mall looked like nothing so much as a turn-of-the-twentieth-century train station. As it once had been.
"But wasn't the church built on the site of the original Santo Niño manifestation?" she asked.
"No. To tell you the truth, no one knows precisely where that took place. The church was originally consecrated by Alfonso VI, who credited an image of the virgin for his reconquest of Madrid from the Moors in 1083. That was two centuries before the events commemorated in the Santo Niño legend supposedly took place. Why Alfonso picked the site is anybody's guess. For much of its history the church lay derelict. Indeed, the current cathedral is younger than this, the old Atocha station."
He gestured around to encompass the echoing space. "The station was rebuilt after a fire in 1892. Meanwhile the image of the virgin wasn't even housed at the church until 1926, shortly after a rather desultory reconstruction began."
"Desultory?"
He shrugged. "The basilica did not open until 1951. I thought it might please you to see our old station, which is something of an attraction for tourists. I hope I have done right; if you wish I can order a cab to carry us to the basilica at once."
He started to fish under his jersey, presumably for a cell phone. Annja stopped him.
"That's okay. I love ancient cathedrals, or I wouldn't have my specialty. But 1951 isn't ancient to anyone. And what I really wanted was to get as much of a feel for the origins of the story as I could."
"Regrettably," the little man with the big, bald head said, "very little indeed remains of the thirteenth-century village of Atocha within twenty-first-century Madrid."
She smiled at him. "Perhaps you'd at least fill me in on the story of the Holy Child."
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"It would be my pleasure. You must first understand that the Santo Niño enjoys no great popularity in Spain today. His worship is far more prevalent in the colonies, Cebu, Mexico, Chimayó. Indeed, it appears to be the case that the earliest known image of the Holy Child as we know him today was the one sent as a present to the Mexican town of Plateros in the sixteenth century. In the thirteenth century the Moors, it is said, held the little village of Atocha, then well outside the walls of Madrid. Prisoners captured in the continuing war for freedom from the occupiers were kept in most deplorable conditions in a building in the town. The Moors refused to feed them, insisting that the local townsfolk should provide, which was not an uncommon arrangement for the time, however harsh. In time, suspecting the Christian villagers were all sympathizers with the insurgency – as no doubt they were – the local ruler forbade anyone to visit the prisoners except children under the age of twelve.
"Then lo! A child appeared, dressed as a pilgrim of the day, in robe and cape, sandals and hat with plume. He carried a staff with a water gourd suspended from it, and a basket of bread. The guards permitted him to enter. One story has it that no matter how much bread and water he distributed to the captives, neither his bread basket nor water gourd ever ran out – a clear linkage to the biblical miracle of loaves and fishes."
He raised his right leg behind him, grasped his instep, pulled. "Please forgive me. I have a tendency to cramp. A consequence of adult-onset diabetes, I fear. Another, even more miraculous version of the story has important resonances for these apparitions of the Holy Child you're having in the New World.
"In this rendition the jailers did not permit the Holy Child to visit the prisoners. But they could not keep him out. They would hear talking from within the cells, rush in, find the captives just swallowing the last of their bread and water. But never a sign of the Holy Child."
"He vanished," Annja said, "just the way he supposedly vanishes from the backs of people's cars in New Mexico."
"Precisely! Moreover, when the women of Atocha went to give thanks to the image of the Santo Niño – in this account, Christ as a child in pilgrim's garb rather than the miraculous figure who brought succor to the Christian prisoners of Atocha – they found his shoes soiled and worn out. Leading to the charming custom in Chimayó of taking baby shoes to the image of the Santo Niño in the chapel there, I understand."
"So in that story we have the origins of the vanishing-hitchhiker elements of the Santo Niño," Annja said.
Bobadilla laughed. "I had not heard that connection drawn before. But yes, it is apt. Especially in view of these American sightings. And also of the tradition of the Holy Child succoring travelers in need or peril, which I also understand plays a role in these modern encounters."
"Yes." She hesitated. "What truth, if any, do you assign to the story?"
"I am not a particularly observant Catholic. I consider myself a man of reason. So naturally I will tend, at least intellectually, to discount the miraculous elements of the story. As for an unknown child appearing, dressed as a pilgrim, and bringing food to the suffering captives, I personally believe it almost certainly happened."
"Really?"
"Quite so. It makes sense. It did, after all, cleverly skirt the prohibition on adult visitors. And the pilgrim garb may be explained by the fact that Muslims then as now hold pilgrims in particular regard, even infidels. After all, while the Christians were undoubtedly subject to varying degrees of oppression, their religion was not forbidden.
"Moreover even the apparently inexhaustible supply of bread and water might have a factual basis – in extra baskets and gourds concealed beneath the flowing robe and cape, yes?"
Annja laughed. "That sounds quite plausible actually."
"I would not be surprised if the Moorish guards were wise to the ruse and went along with it. For all the real hostility existing between Muslims and Christians during the occupation, these people were neighbors. They lived far more of their lives peacefully together than they did in fighting one another."
"People depended on each other to survive," Annja said.
"Precisely! The lines were not drawn nearly so starkly at the time as they are now, in our pictures. Also there is a respect of cleverness and resourcefulness in many Islamic cultures. The guards may have thought the whole thing a capital joke, regardless of how seriously their commander took his edicts. And I think to see echoes in the tale, even at this essentially plausible level, from Sufi parables, which often involve degrees of deception. That strain of Muslim mysticism, as you well know, played an integral if often forgotten role in shaping our own Spanish intellectual and mystic traditions, after all."
"Yes," said Annja, who had studied Spanish history. "But what of the more...esoteric elements to the story?" she asked.
"I see two possibilities, which are far from exclusive. First, simple folk rumor, and the universal and long recognized tendency of any story to grow in the telling. The identification of the child bringing succor with the Christ child would be quite natural for people raised to believe unquestioningly in Christ's reality and dual nature, human and divine. The more so if in fact an image of the Christ child dressed in the pilgrim's characteristic garb preexisted the events that gave rise to the story, rather than came about as a result of them.
"The other possibilities? That Christian Spanish leaders, secular and of the church, deliberately created the tale, whether tailoring facts to fit or making it all of whole cloth, as a propaganda ploy. If you can credit the church fathers with such cynicism."
"You'd be surprised what I wouldn't put past the church. Please forgive me if I offend," Annja said.
Bobadilla laughed. "Not at all. In turn, forgive me if I presume, but something in your tone of voice – are you a lapsed Catholic?"
Annja nodded. "Raised by nuns," she said. "At a Catholic orphanage in New Orleans."
"Pobrecita," the professor said, clucking sympathetically. "We at least got to escape from our nuns by going home at the end of the school day!"
****
The monsoon had come to Cebu Island, tucked into the Philippine archipelago between Luzon in the north and Mindanao to the south. Riding the taxi back from Cebu City to the international airport, across the Opon Channel on Mactan Island, Annja found the torrent falling from the sky perfectly appropriate. First, as a metaphor for her Philippine expedition, which was a total wash. And as portrayal of her mood.
The driver chattered cheerfully in Spanish, so incessantly and inconsequentially she wished she'd never let him know she understood the language.
It wasn't that difficult to tune him out, since not only did he not seem to require any response from his passenger, but he also seemed not to have to breathe. He rattled ceaselessly about local politics, corrupt and rife with coups and rumors of coups and the weather, which she could see for herself was lousy.
She had paid her visit that morning to the Basilica Minor del Santo Niño. The Cebu church was a typical colonial structure with two bell towers, built of coral blocks that gave it an unfortunate corroded appearance, as if it suffered severe acne. A pleasant young sacristan in a white gown over black trousers, who spoke excellent English, showed her the sights.
These included the Santo Niño himself, or rather a replica of the miraculous image, which had been given to the queen of the Cebuanos by Magellan. Forty-odd years later the Spanish returned and found the natives hostile. They set the village on fire and when it was subsequently found in a burned-out house, the image of the Santo Niño was either charred beyond recognition or miraculously unscathed. Her guide smilingly refused to say which. And since the original was kept under lock and key in the associated convent, she was not likely to find out.
It hardly mattered to her current quest.
As for local legends about the Holy Child, especially nocturnal perambulations and aid to the needy, the sacristan hadn't heard of any. The Santo Niño was mostly a pretext for a big annual party, it appeared.
Annj
a gazed out the window. In all the brochures in Annja's hotel, Cebu City portrayed itself as the real economic miracle city of Southeast Asia. For all Annja knew, it could be. It certainly had its share of gleaming new skyscrapers. But that didn't mean it lacked slums.
They drove through one. At this point of the mid-afternoon there was miraculously little traffic. The cab was like a blocky little sampan making its way down a vast, empty river between steep green slopes. Miserable shanties of rain-warped planks and rusted sheet metal stuck up out of the vegetation on stilts like exotic weeds. This, she knew too well, wasn't the worst of it. The real poverty was to be found in the city dumps, which were inhabited by tens if not thousands of truly desperate people.
But this slum smelled more than bad enough. The air carried the scents of petroleum fractions, rotting vegetation, untreated sewage, rancid peanut oil and general misery.
For this, she thought, I did such damage to my tailbone, my spine and my budget, with all this globe hopping? She was retrograding Magellan, circumnavigating the globe ass backward. She wasn't even sure why.
Her eyelids drooped. Her head dropped toward the glass of the door where she sat directly behind the driver, mainly so she couldn't hear him quite as well. Its impact against her forehead woke her.
The cab was slowing. A truck was stalled out in the lane right ahead of them with its hood up and engine steaming into the rain. Away up on a hillside across the highway a dirty white flower bloomed. She saw an intense blue-white light spiraling toward her, drawing a twisty white trail behind it.
She recognized it only because she had seen the movie Black Hawk Down five times when she had been going through an Orlando Bloom phase.
As the soldiers did in that movie, she shouted, "RPG! Get out now!"
The driver turned an almost comical gape of surprise and incomprehension toward her as she yanked her door open. He was not reacting. She grabbed the collar of his shirt and with her feet to the back of his seat kicked for all she was worth, hoping vaguely to yank him out the back door with her.