Music of the Spheres (The Interstellar Age Book 2)

by Daniels, Valmore

  Terry’s traditional upbringing would not let him direct his rage at his grandfather or the leaders of the community for not bargaining with the scientists. And so, the only option he could think of was to abandon the people who had failed him and make his own way through life. He had spent the past half a year planning and saving.

  But now he was alone, friendless and more than a little frightened. The rudimentary education he had received in the village was enough for him to read and write, but Terry did not even have basic computer skills. The village only had one computer and it didn’t have an EarthMesh connection. When the scientists from USA, Inc. left, they took all their machines with them.

  At one end of the spectrum, humankind had traveled to another solar system, and at the other end, there were millions of people who lived in squalor. This was the inequality that kept Terry going. He had no idea how he would do it, but he vowed to set things right and bring balance to the world so that no one would have to suffer and die needlessly, like his darling Itzel.

  With renewed passion, Terry threw himself into his work that afternoon, enough so that at the end of the day the foreman invited him back.

  “You’re not union so you’ll work on a day-by-day basis.” With that, he gave Terry his first day’s pay.

  “I said I would work today for free,” Terry protested, holding the lempira in his hand uncertainly.

  The foreman shook his head. “You need proper clothing. That outfit you have on makes you look like a beggar. If any of the supervisors came around, they would write me up for it.” He made it sound as if Terry were doing him a favor by accepting the money.

  The foreman shooed Terry off and he immediately went in search of Humberto, who was walking toward the main gate.

  “Is it too late to go to the store with the cheap clothes?” he asked the larger man.

  “Change your mind?” Humberto didn’t break his stride, and Terry matched his pace.

  “Yes, you were right. I need to look like I belong.”

  “So old sourpuss is keeping you on?” Humberto jerked his thumb back in the direction of the foreman’s office.

  “Just as a day worker,” Terry said. “For now.”

  “All right. Let’s go.”

  As he led Terry off the factory grounds towards the city centre, Humberto surprised him by saying, “I know who you are.”

  “You do?”

  “Yes.” Humberto glanced at Terry out of the corner of his eye. “I saw you on the news a few years back.”

  Terry answered in a sullen voice. “Oh, that.”

  “The way the reporter told the story, your village was host for all those rich NASA men. Good fortune for you.”

  “It could have been,” Terry said. “But it wasn’t.”

  As if measuring Terry up, Humberto took a long while before prompting him to tell his story.

  “It’s all right if you want to keep yourself to yourself,” Humberto said finally. “But I left a village very much like yours because I was angry at how poor our conditions were. I didn’t want to live like that anymore. No one should have to live like that.”

  Sensing he finally had someone who would understand him, Terry started at the beginning and told Humberto about his grandfather and the ancient scroll, about NASA and Alex Manez, and when he ended his story with the account of how Itzel had died unnecessarily, there was a catch in his throat and a tear in his eye.

  Humberto clapped his hand on Terry’s back. “After we get you some clothes, there are some people I want you to meet. They all have a story like yours,” he said. “They also have a plan to put things right. I think you’ll like hearing what they have to say.”

  ∞

  Terry was nervous about going to a secret meeting. He had heard the stories of criminal organizations operating in the city, recruiting ignorant farmers and villagers into their operation and either corrupting them into their way of life, or using them up and discarding them in the most unpleasant ways.

  The only thing that kept him steadfast was Humberto. He seemed perfectly at ease as the two of them wound their way through the narrow barrio alleyways to a ramshackle building. It looked like an abandoned storage warehouse.

  “Don’t worry,” Humberto said. “I called ahead to let them know we are coming.”

  Upon entering the building, Terry was surprised to see only two people waiting for them. He had imagined a gang of cold-eyed men brandishing weapons. Instead, the first man was scrawny and wore glasses. His pock-marked face was split in a wide grin as he stepped forward to shake hands.

  “Hello, I’m Jose Fernandez.”

  Uncertainly, Terry shook the man’s hand as Humberto introduced him.

  “His first day in the city,” Humberto said to Jose, “but I feel he is the very person we have been waiting for.”

  Jose nodded. “You’re from the village with the alien scroll?”

  “Yes,” Terry answered. There was no use trying to hide it. If he had been on a newsvid, he would be recognizable to many. “But the scroll is not alien. It’s ancient Mayan. My grandfather is its caretaker. He believes it is the story of the end of our gods; the NASA people thought it was the story of an alien visit.”

  “Ah, yes.” Jose gestured to a table with four chairs. “Please sit. Would you like something to drink?” He nodded to the other man who dug into a picnic cooler and withdrew four bottles of beer.

  When the man popped the cap and offered the drink to Terry, he said, “Pleased to meet you. My name is Alberto.” Though his voice was deep and rich, there was a hardness in his eyes. Terry noticed a scar that ran from Alberto’s left ear to the corner of his mouth.

  Being polite, Terry tipped the beer to his lips and drank deeply. They all sat down.

  “First off, I want you to know that Humberto, Alberto and I all have Mayan blood running through our veins to some extent. In that, you are like our brother. That is one reason we have arranged this meeting.”

  That was unexpected information, but Terry immediately felt a little more comfortable and trusting of these men.

  “I believe in being honest with my friends and family, and I believe in coming straight to the point,” Jose said. “Do you mind if I am blunt with you?”

  Terry shook his head. “No. Not at all.”

  Jose leaned forward and smiled. “We want you to go back home.”

  ∞

  At one point in pre-Columbian history, before the colonial invasion, the Mayan civilization had been more advanced than any other culture in the Americas.

  Along with art, music, and architecture, the Mayans had also been the first in that part of the world to develop a written language. They studied mathematics and astronomy, and in some ways their development rivaled those who lived on the other side of the world.

  “It is no wonder,” Jose told Terry, “that the alien visitors chose the Mayan people as the custodians of their technology. If history had progressed as it should have, the Mayan culture would today be the dominant force on Earth.”

  Unfortunately, the wars with the northern tribes, the arrival of the conquistadors and the flood of aggressive Europeans over the last thousand years had drowned out the Mayan culture and reduced their civilization to small pockets of communities.

  Jose’s mother, he told Terry, was a half-blood Mayan, and had married into a reasonably wealthy Honduran family. Growing up, Jose’s mother had told him stories of his culture. “My legal name is Jose, but my Mayan name is Huehuetlotl.”

  It was while Jose was in university studying law that the story of the discovery of Kinemet had broken. For years, he followed the story with interest. After the first interstellar mission, NASA had tried to acquire the ancient scroll for themselves.

  A legal aid by that time, Jose and a few sympathizers had organized themselves into an activist group. At the time, they had called themselves the Mayan Spiritualists, and they tried to put pressure on the Honduran government to restrict, or at least regulate access to the scroll.<
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  “NASA was spending a lot of money in the area and in the capital region,” Jose said. “Too many government officials were lining their pockets with bribe money from businesses and contractors who wanted to work for the wealthy Americans. Our movement was denounced, and those same politicians instead pressured my law firm to have me fired and blacklisted. The only work I’ve been able to find in the past year has been as a tutor to university students.”

  Jose gave Terry a very intense, impassioned look. “For centuries our people have been taken advantage of, when all along we were meant to lead the way to the stars.”

  His words stirred similar emotions in Terry. The Mayans had been stepped over by those with money and power, and kept poor and ignorant. If the Mayan people had continued to be a power in the Americas, tragedies like the death of his darling Itzel would never have happened.

  Jose continued. “It was then that my friends and I began our work in earnest. There are more than a hundred of us now, and our numbers are growing. We even have a rich benefactor—unfortunately not Mayan, but he believes in our cause.”

  Terry asked, “And what is your cause?”

  “We now call ourselves the Cruzados, and our mission is to restore the Mayan people to their rightful place as ambassadors to the people of the stars.”

  “How will you do that?” Despite his initial misgivings, Terry was becoming intrigued. If he joined a group who shared his beliefs, the possibilities were limitless.

  “The world will not simply grant us the status we deserve. They have already shown their disdain for us. Therefore we must make them give it to us.” There was a hard edge to his voice and fire in his eyes.

  Terry balked momentarily. “Make them? You mean, by force?”

  “If necessary,” Jose said, his hand balled into a fist. Then he relaxed his hand and opened it; the smile returned to his face. “But it will be better if we secure our position with a different kind of power: knowledge. If we have something no one else has, then they have no choice but to deal with us.”

  “The secret of the scroll,” Terry guessed.

  “That’s right.”

  “But their scientists have been working on that for years. They’ve given up. No one knows how to decipher it, not even my grandfather. What can we do?”

  Jose put his hand on Terry’s arm. “We can have faith in our destiny. The secret will be revealed when the time is right. And when that time comes, we must be prepared.”

  ∞

  Over the following weeks, Terry met with the Cruzados a dozen more times, often talking or arguing late into the night. They formulated a number of plans, and by the end of Terry’s first month in the capital, he had thrown his full support into the cause.

  ∞

  Terry returned to Copán Departmental in a rented pickup truck four weeks after leaving. The bed of the truck was filled with food, clothing, and medical supplies. In his pocket, he had more lempira than he could make in a year working the coffee fields.

  When he arrived in his village, he recounted to his grandfather and parents how he had made his small fortune at a casino one night, and his first thought was the welfare of the village. He told them he had contracted with an engineering company to rebuild the village’s water processing and sewage system, and had arranged for a doctor to visit the village once a month. Regaled as a hero, Terry spent the better part of the year working to improve conditions in their community.

  Terry also brought a pocket-sized holoslate with a mesh connection. Jose had supplied it to him, and instructed him to keep this device secret from his fellow villagers.

  Every night, when he was by himself, Terry used the computer to learn to read and write English. He also took courses in math, history and science. Jose believed firmly that knowledge was power, and insisted that all Cruzados had the benefits of an education. As a side benefit, Terry also discovered world music, and spent hours listening to everything from classical to rock to the latest progbeat rage.

  Jose had insisted that Terry also spend as much time as he could learning the customs and culture of USA, Inc. and Canada Corp. and the history of the NASA space program—the Quanta missions in particular and every scrap of information they could find out about Kinemet.

  During the day, his task was to find out as much as he could about the ancient scroll. Though he still found himself with unresolved feelings of anger towards his grandfather’s stubborn and backwards ways, Terry forced himself to ask after the history of the document and pressed his grandfather to speculate about the secrets it held.

  Once a week, Terry would check in with Jose or Humberto to exchange updates, and once every two months Terry would leave the village for a weekend. He told his grandfather he was going to visit the friends he made in Tegucigalpa. In reality, he went into the countryside at a secluded camp where he would train with the Cruzados in combat techniques.

  Initially, Terry resisted the idea of military action.

  “Sometimes, in order for your voice to be heard,” Jose told him the first time Terry picked up weapon, “you may need to raise it.”

  ∞

  The months rolled by without any new developments until the day when, in frustration, Terry demanded that his grandfather repeat the story of the ancient scroll over and over again.

  Listening to the words his grandfather spoke, the key to unlocking the secret of the document came to Terry as if it were preordained.

  Running back to his own house, Terry contacted Jose on his holoslate.

  That call set in motion a whirlwind of events that ultimately brought Terry to where he was today: standing on the bridge of a Lunar Lines ship with an ion pulse rifle in his hand while Jose announced their takeover to the passengers.

  To Terry, the past year seemed more like a dream or a nightmare, and it was then that he realized he had lost control of his own destiny.

  15

  Tegucigalpa :

  Honduras :

  Central American Conglomeration :

  The virtual tourist flicks on to show a city bathed in heat and humidity. The sky is a clear blue with barely a trace of clouds behind the skyline of the airport.

  A cacophony of noise from the loading trucks, taxis and passenger vehicles outside the terminal is loud enough that Michael—who is framed in the two-dimensional image—has to raise his voice to be heard.

  He looks cranky and tired.

  “What are you doing?” he asks after tapping a request for an autotaxi into a kiosk.

  George’s voice comes from off-screen. “Documenting our trip.”

  “We’re still at the airport,” Michael says. “I’m not sure they care whether we can get an autotaxi or how much we paid.”

  “Well, you never know. Don’t worry, I’ll edit out the boring parts before I submit the recording. But I think our arrival in Tegucigalpa is a good bookend.”

  Michael presses his lips together. “You look conspicuous. We need people to trust us before they’ll talk to us.”

  The image bounces. “The only fieldwork we do is looking at reactors. Calbert never saw any reason to upgrade us to the new PERSuit system. Now that’s a toy I’d like to get my hands on.”

  Shaking his head, Michael says, “We’ll just have to make do with what we have. Let me do the talking when we get to the consulate.”

  “You got it, boss.”

  Michael grimaces as he waves down a cab. “Sorry I barked at you. It was a long flight.”

  “No worries.”

  An autotaxi pulls up and they throw their bags in the storage compartment. The image jostles dizzyingly as they enter the vehicle.

  The computer personality prompts,

  The image pans to Michael, and George says, “Why don’t we go to the hotel first, check in and get cleaned up?”

  “That sounds good.” Michael scratches his beard. “Maybe I’ll shave, after all. I didn’t think it would be so hot down here.”

  “The Ambassador Arms,” George sa
ys to the computer, and the autotaxi pulls out into the street.

  ∞

  The virtual tourist image turns back on outside the glass doors of an office on the third floor of the Centro Financiero Banexpo building. The frame zooms in on the sign of the Canadian Embassy.

  Michael, who looks energetic and confident, stands at the door and pauses. With a clean-shaven face, he is dressed in a loose-fitting white shirt and brown pants.

  He removes a wide-brimmed hat and faces George and the camera eye.

  “All right. I guess if we’re documenting everything, I’ll narrate.” Michael clears his throat. “We’re here at the embassy office to get our travel papers, maps, and to meet with John Markham, who is the consul’s aide. We hope he can give us some additional information on the theft of the Mayan scroll and the kidnapping of Yaxche, the translator.”

  Michael enters into the reception area where a smartly-dressed woman smiles a greeting.

  “Hello, I’m Michael Sanderson and this is George Markowitz. We have an appointment.”

  “Mr. Markham is expecting you. Go right in.” She points down a carpeted hallway. “It’s the office at the end.”

  Michael nods and then proceeds to the consul’s office.

  Inside, John Markham stands up from his desk and comes around to shake Michael’s hand. Deeply tanned skin stretches around his mouth as he greets them. His eyes glance at the VT camera.

  “We’re recording our progress for our report,” Michael says.

  “Oh, that’s fine. Come in. Have a seat.” He returns to his side of the desk.

  The image briefly flashes on George’s hiking boots as he awkwardly finds his chair and sits down. As he points the camera back up, John is handing Michael a thin memory card.

  John says, “After your supervisor called to let me know you were coming down here, I took the liberty of compiling some local newsvids that reported the incident.”

  “Thank you.” Michael takes the card and inserts it in his holoslate to transfer the files. “Every little bit will help.”

  “I’m afraid there isn’t much there. Whoever these Cruzados are, they’ve kept a very low profile up until now. They’ve never taken part in anything more serious than a protest at the Office of the Interior when NASA first tried to purchase the document. For the past year, they’ve been so quiet we assumed they’d disbanded.”