Spears of God

by Howard V. Hendrix

  The wrongness of it all would not let go of him, even now. Sometimes he felt pressing into his chest that physical remnant of his daughter, a phantom limb from a body not his own. He expected to find stigmatic blood on his clothing whenever he looked down. It was never there, but his clean shirts were a palimpsest in which he could still read the wound.

  He looked at the picture of his daughter on the first inside page of the Book of Remembrances.

  Blondish-brown hair, blue eyes, a bit on the chubby side with the last lingering babyfat of childhood. This book could be opened, but not her flat picture. All the memories that might have been—of college and career, marriage and family—were shut from her, and from him too, now. Her future life was a Book of Remembrances that would never be unsealed.

  Children ought to bury their fathers, not fathers their children. Yet he had buried his daughter—enough of her brought home to Argentina to meet the requirements of Jewish religious law, anyway—and he was still here, continents and oceans away from the place where his daughter had been taken away from him.

  The loss could not be taken away by distance. At the service, grief had overwhelmed even whatever desire for recrimination Olivia might have felt. For that time, at least, they were not estranged from each other, but simply aggrieved together.

  The death had not brought them together beyond that day, however. Their divorce had been finalized only last week.

  Waiting for his visitor now, Avram felt as if his life had become a wasteland—barren, empty, and dry.

  Like the Atacama desert of Chile, where once he had led an expedition searching for meteorites. He searched for nothing now. He was lost and he did not feel like finding anything, or being found. Why bother? Nothing good would ever come of anything anymore.

  His friends and colleagues said it was survivor guilt, but there was more to it than that. No matter how strongly the authorities insisted that the suicidal attack that killed his daughter was random, he could not escape the feeling that, somehow, he was responsible. That this was no ordinary act of terror. His friends told him his fears were not rational, yet—

  His doorbell rang. It rang again. He did not want to answer it. The past lurked behind that door, and possibly the future.

  The doorbell rang a third time.

  “Avram! Avram, are you home? It’s me. Luis. Luis Martin.”

  Avram was stunned to hear Luis call out in English like that, even giving his name. The shock of it jolted him to his feet, but as he walked to the door, he realized that “Luis Martin” was probably not his visitor’s real name anyway.

  Perhaps solving the mystery of the man’s name might help to explain why Luis often preferred, as now, to speak in English, though Avram was pretty certain, from the accent, that his first language was Brazilian Portuguese.

  Avram opened the door, muttering apologies, and the madness of the world walked in, wearing a pale panama hat, a summerweight linen suit of matching pallor, and a mustache preternaturally dark for a man of Luis’s years.

  “Any reluctance you might have toward seeing visitors, Avri, I perfectly understand. My condolences on the loss of your daughter Enide. I was very much saddened when I read of it.”

  “Thank you, Luis. Please, sit down, won’t you?”

  Martin took a chair and sat, while Avram sat down more slowly on a sofa.

  “Your cousin’s name was Enide, too, wasn’t it? Last time, the first time I mean, it was another Enide.”

  Avram nodded, but said nothing.

  “You were only in graduate school then.”

  “Yes,” Avram said quietly. “That was when I became involved in the study of meteorites.”

  Martin nodded. He took two cigars out of his jacket pocket and glanced expectantly at his host.

  “None for me, but thanks,” Avram said. “Feel free, yourself.”

  Martin lit his cigar in a manner that managed to seem both offhanded and ritualistic at the same time.

  “You’ve come a long way since those early studies. Done some solid scientific work in Chaco Province, and in Brazil,” Martin said after a few puffs. “Around Serra Geral, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Traveling back and forth through Tri-Border, you’ve also done some very good work for us, as well. I may have something more you can do—something that will take you away from your grief.”

  Avram only half heard Martin’s offer, for he had let the mention of his old work flood his head with memories. The subtropical forests of Formosa province and Chaco. The National Park in the Distrito Chaqueño Oriental, its center and south covered by forests of quebracho colorado. The savannas of the west, with their Caranday palm trees. The Panza de Cabra Lagoon in the southeast, with its rich aquatic flora and fauna, so different from the Campo del Cielo, the Field of Heaven, the Sky’s Land—dry, scrubby, treeless, and almost rockless.

  “Yes, that was Campo del Cielo,” Avram told Martin. “In Chaco and Santiago del Estero. There was a major meteorite fall in that area about five thousand years ago. Thirteen big iron-nickel meteorites had already been discovered there, in the four hundred and twentyfive years since the Campo was first visited by Westerners.”

  “I recall hearing something about an American gem and mineral dealer, arrested while trying to haul a big rock out of there,” Martin said.

  “That was Robert Haag, in 1992. He had made a deal with a local man to purchase a thirty-seven-ton meteorite. The Chaco meteorite, largest that ever fell in our country, and the third biggest in the world at the time. Haag bought the meteorite, but then the authorities arrested him for trying to make off with a national treasure.”

  “You were there in relation to that, then?”

  “In a way. I was trying to determine whether any of the rocks at Campo del Cielo matched the Spanish historical descriptions of the Meson de Fierro.”

  “Ah yes, the great ‘Table of Iron.’ Now I remember. You proved the match, right? But how was that connected with the Serra Geral?”

  “There are many legends of fire from the sky, among the indigenous peoples who lived in Chaco and Santiago del Estero provinces—” Avram said.

  “The people who named Campo del Cielo, you mean?”

  “Yes.” Even if he was not yet ready to hear Martin speak openly of it, he was indeed secretly relieved to be taken away from his grief, if only for a few moments. “Among peoples in the littoral regions, the myths tell of a great flood that happened at the same time as the fire from the sky. I was in Serra Geral looking for geological evidence of that flood. I suspect it was a tsunami related to other, larger meteorites that fell into the Atlantic, about the same time that the Campo del Cielo stones impacted inland.”

  “Fascinating, fascinating,” Martin said encouragingly. “I never realized how amazing it was, what you were doing there. For me it mainly provided a wonderful cover story for your trips back and forth through the Triple Border area.”

  Avram nodded. In the past, Martin had suggested that he was connected somehow with both Israel’s Mossad and America’s CIA, though Avram had never been able to pin down the exact nature of those connections.

  Over time, he had come to suspect Martin’s services went to the highest bidder. His money had always spent well enough, at any rate, and Avram had no trouble understanding the interest of international intelligence agencies in the Tri-Border Free Zone between Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil. Those same intelligence agencies not only spied in the Zone but also recruited there.

  The Zone itself was a sort of criminal United Nations, the haunt of warlords, revolutionists, counterrevolutionists, violent fanatics, drug smugglers, terrorists, arms dealers, money launderers, forgers, fugitives, and organized crime figures from Russia, China, Japan, Nigeria, the Middle East—just about anyone from anywhere who might have reason to be allergic to the law.

  Looking at him now, Avram wondered whether Luis Martin might himself have once been a denizen of the Zone. Hell, maybe he still was. Perhaps he had just
developed too high a profile, just become too well known. Hence the need for Avram, as a lower profile set of eyes and ears, a simple geochemist making a few extra Argentinian pesos.

  “Your reports have prevented more than one terror attack, you know. A very fitting monument for your cousin Enide, despite the secret nature of that memorial.”

  “Thank you, Luis. I hadn’t thought of it that way.”

  “You should. It may in some way help you to deal better with your current grief. I came here today because I think you can help us create an even more fitting memorial for your daughter, her namesake.

  One that involves your long interest in meteorites, and our long interest in the future.”

  “What do you mean? Which meteorites? Where?”

  “Lots of places,” Martin said, arching an eyebrow at him. “Stones in Israel, for instance. In the Empty Quarter of the Arabian Peninsula. Even one in Mecca, I’m told.”

  Mecca? He knew of no meteorites located there. Unless…

  The stories of al Hajar al-Aswad, the Black Stone of the Kaaba! No one had ever proved it was a meteorite, despite the stories. Ambitious scientists and unscrupulous meteorite hunters had popped up abundantly in that context before—especially in crazy thriller novels—but surely no one, in real life, would have the audacity to go after a holy relic at the center of the Islamic world’s greatest shrine.

  Or would they? The idea of piloting passenger jets into monumental buildings had once been only the stuff of crazy thrillers, too….

  Luis Martin was staring expectantly at him now. Under Martin’s gaze, Avram Zaragosa felt a new sensation burning across his chest, exactly where he had clutched his daughter’s dismembered limb.

  The bomb builder, the recruiter, and the driver for the “martyr operation” that had killed his daughter had all been arrested. Halabi herself had opted for martyrdom, an act of revenge for the death of her brother, Ahmed. There was no one left to blame for Enide’s death, at least at the operational level, yet the madness continued.

  In that moment, under Luis Martin’s gaze, Avram’s mind went red with the fire of a great hate, for all the billion-plus adherents to a worldwide religion. He was determined to make them all pay for what one of them had done to his daughter.

  “Well?” Luis Martin said. “Are you interested?”

  “Yes,” Avram said. His eyes remained fixed on his visitor. “I’m very interested.”

  Martin smiled and stood.

  He got to his feet, too. As they firmly shook hands, Avram Zaragosa heard the madness of the world speak his name.

  TWO

  SOUVENIRS OF A MADWOMAN

  “It won’t be for long,” Susan Yamada said, glancing from Michael Miskulin to his uncle Paul, then to the Mawari children.

  Dressed now in contemporary clothes to make them less conspicuous, they were also easier to tell apart.

  Three girls and a boy, they sat cross-legged in a corner of the room, preternaturally quiet and alert. As always.

  “We brought them here because we need to continue keeping them out of the public eye,” Susan continued. “Your compound here seems private, and Michael said you used to be a journalist, before you went into the sciences. We figured you might know how to fend off your former colleagues in the media if any of them came snooping around.”

  She glanced at Michael, who nodded in agreement and then stared hard at the man who stood before them. Uncle Paul had once sported a full beard and full head of hair, both sandy colored, but he had become increasingly bald, and his remaining hair and beard were abundantly flecked with white. Despite the years, however, his uncle still retained the character he remembered from childhood—impish, gnomelike, impulsive as always. At the moment, though, his expression was serious.

  “I’ll be glad to take care of them,” Paul Larkin said somberly. “I bear some considerable responsibility for what happened to their people, after all.”

  “Oh, come on, Uncle Paul!” Michael protested. “Jacinta’s been dead for years. The killing couldn’t have happened very long before we got there. The massacre has nothing to do with you, or with her.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t entirely agree with you,” Larkin said, looking up from the glass of neat scotch he held in his hand, then glancing out the floor-to-ceiling windows that faced toward Lake Tahoe and the snow-capped mountains beyond. “This isn’t about what ‘might have been,’ any longer. This is about what is. You see, when I funded your little expedition to Jacinta’s tepui, there were things I didn’t tell you.

  Things I was afraid might prejudice you.”

  “What do you mean?” Susan asked, sliding forward on the chair of plush leather into which she’d sunk.

  “What sort of ‘things’?”

  “Rather difficult to explain…here,” he said. “I’ll show you. Follow me.” He turned toward the door.

  Michael and Susan glanced at each other, doubt mirrored in their expressions, then they stood up and walked after him. The children, in their silent, quirkily observant fashion, each stood in turn, then followed the adults into the adjoining hall. All of them heard Larkin rummaging in the den down the hall before they reached him and saw what he was up to.

  Once inside the room, the children sat cross-legged on the floor again.

  “Maybe you could help me?” he said, pulling boxes out of a closet and handing them to the two adults.

  “What I’m looking for is a tiny white envelope, about the size of a theater ticket, sealed in clear plastic.

  Look through these, would you?”

  Michael and Susan did so. Most of what they looked through was typical family memorabilia—a large crop of photos featuring Jacinta at various ages, news articles on her accomplishments going all the way back to science fair and high school chess team victories. There was a copy of her birth certificate, with the birth date—the sixth of June 1961—circled and accompanied by the scrawled annotation “Jung’s death date.”

  “Jacinta made that note,” Larkin said, glancing at the item in Michael’s hand. “That particular synchronicity was a big deal to her. Claimed it had something to do with transmigration of the soul.”

  Michael and Susan nodded absently, then continued the search for the tiny white envelope sealed in plastic. Scattered among the memorabilia were even more esoteric materials. Michael saw clippings, notes, and Web printouts.

  “Lots of information on quartz here,” Michael commented.

  “Yes. Jacinta thought the tepui people had an obsession with the stuff. Particularly important to their mythology,” she said.

  Michael nodded, but said nothing more as he continued to look through the yellowing papers. There were articles relating to the nature of the mineral, a silica fused from silicon and oxygen, harder than steel, fashioned into weapons for the past fifty thousand years, most prominently spearpoints and arrowheads.

  Curious. Quartz was beloved by so many different people over the ages, from ancient Sumerians and Egyptians, Bedouins and crusaders and Oriental craftsmen, to electronics manufacturers, shamans and witches, alchemists and spiritualists.

  “That’s strange. There’s nothing on shocked quartz from meteoritic impacts,” Michael said. “Nothing on tektites or impactites. Nothing on coesite, or stishovite, or tridymite.”

  “Hmm! I’d only ever heard of shocked quartz in the context of ‘blast glass,’” Paul said. “From nuclear detonations in the desert.”

  “It’s a product of meteoritic impact, too,” Michael said. “Several other high-pressure or high-temperature quartz polymorphs are connected to meteorites as well.”

  “I guess I missed that connection all these years.”

  Frowning, Susan glanced away.

  “I thought we were looking for a little white envelope,” she said, impatient.

  Michael nodded. He knew that she still somehow blamed him for the murderous mess they’d stumbled on at the tepui. It had not so much caused a space to open up between them as broadened a gap already
there—unfortunately.

  His uncle cleared his throat.

  “Myself, I never used to put much credence in the myths Jacinta was so keen on,” he said. “Especially their genesis story. Just too implausible—that’s what I thought at the time, anyway.”

  “Yet you’ve got lots of documents here that support her,” Susan said, reading from clippings and other hard copies. “All this stuff on coelacanths, and cycads. Scorpions. Dragonflies. Ginkgos. Tuataras.

  Nautiloids, and Lingula clams. Relic populations of Homo erectus in Java and other Indonesian islands, even the indigenous Tasmanians and their supposed Mousterian Neanderthal toolkit.”

  Larkin nodded.

  “Jacinta was fascinated by living fossils. I developed an interest, afterward. She claimed the people she found on that tepui might be an example of an Elvis taxa, or a Lazarus taxa.”

  “What?” Michael exclaimed.

  “Species thought to be long extinct, but which suddenly reappear in the fossil record,” Susan said, before Paul could reply. “That’s legitimate science. This Mousterian Tasmanian theory, though, that sounds like the loonier fringes of cryptozoology, to me.”

  “Ah, here it is,” Larkin announced triumphantly, holding up before him something slim and white inside a small plastic jacket. He broke the seal on the plastic, removed the ticket-size envelope, opened it, and removed a carefully folded sheet of age-brittled white paper, which he presented gingerly to Michael and Susan. Michael saw only a dusty blue image, like the photonegative of a brain.

  “A spore print?” Susan asked.

  “Exactly. I found two of those odd little envelopes buried deep in my backpack, after I emptied the pack on returning home from the foot of Caracamuni tepui. I’d just put a stop to her crazy shenanigans and foolhardy spending there. I’ve never understood her motivation, really.”

  “For the spending?” Michael asked, “Or for planting the spore print.”

  “Neither one, actually. When I confronted Jacinta, she denied having planted them there. She got very emotional, though, when I told her I would destroy them.”