THE MAYAN GLYPH

by Larry Baxter

In operation, El Remora was filled with cargo near the processing plants in the hills, locked and sealed and booby-trapped, and trucked to the dock area at Cartegena. There, El Remora was attached to a minisub. The freight coordinator would dispatch the minisub to rendezvous with an unsuspecting northbound tanker, match speeds, and latch El Remora to the tanker hull at a point well below the unladen waterline, but not so low as to be in danger of being scraped off if the tanker's captain miscalculated the depth of a reef.

  El Remora emitted an ELF, Extra Low Frequency, radio pulse at a frequency of twenty kHz at ten minute intervals. This pulse was tracked by RDF receivers operated by Ernesto's cartel on Andros, Grand Cayman, Elizabeth, NJ, and the town of Akumal, just south of Cancún on the Yucatán peninsula. When the tanker passed the destination port for its secret cargo, the RDF would send a powerful ELF coded response and El Remora would detach and sink to the sea bottom. Later, a cartel-operated yacht would be dispatched to the location and send the coded message causing El Remora to inflate an air bladder and ascend to the surface. There it would be tied with a hundred feet of line to the yacht, resubmerged, and towed to shore.

  Ernesto was considering the redesign of the nosepiece of El Remora to add a parachute that would allow air drops. Boats were reliable, but slow. And the parachute would permit air pickup from the production facilities in the hills and allow drops to just outside the D.E.A.'s radar surveillance limits. The saving in inventory costs would be ten million US dollars per year.

  Ernesto was proud of his design, which worked so well that of the fleet of fifty-five torpedoes only one had been lost, in a violent storm. He was prouder still of the English language lettering which he had had screen printed on the sides. The words were designed to discourage investigation in case El Remora was found attached to a ship or found waiting on the sea bottom for pickup.

  DANGER

  DO NOT DISTURB

  U.S. Dept. of

  Environmental Safety

  Contents deadly poison

  May be fatal if disturbed

  If found, call 1-622-555-8212

  $5000 REWARD

  DANGER

  The telephone number was connected through a series of relays to the Cartegena facility, where an English-speaking cartel employee was instructed to express heartfelt thanks, wire the reward, and get the location of the torpedo. Ernesto thought how really excellent it would be if somebody saved his drug-filled torpedo, thinking they were helping the government of the United States.

  With a final loving pat on the torpedo's dorsal area, Ernesto walked through the windowless cinder block building that housed the cartel's transportation and distribution facility. He had risen rapidly to second in command by virtue of his cleverness at problem solving, his knowledge of English, and his skill at arranging unfortunate accidents for his competition. El Jéfé, Señor Ajuzar, was not even worth an accident, as he was so old and so afraid of the Federales that he was becoming totally ineffective, and all of the important operational decisions fell to Ernesto by default.

  Ernesto walked up a flight from the storage basement into the large operations center. Here, on the ground floor, narrow windows looked out on the ocean and on the industrial district of Carteghena. They were the only occupants of the small building. A sign outside announced "Arquiera Industrial Waste Disposal" and in smaller letters "Beware of the Dogs." They were not often bothered with unwanted visitors, and the local police were well paid to keep distractions from law enforcement to a minimum.

  Inside on the far wall was an inspirational poster that Ernesto had made:

  "Each year, Americans spend thirty-eight billion dollars on cocaine, ten billion on heroin, and seven billion on marijuana. WE WANT IT ALL! Do your share."

  A large wall-mount computer monitor showed the Atlantic Ocean, with the radio stations outlined in yellow and the paths of the active Remoras outlined in bright red. All the latest flat-panel computer displays, thought Ernesto. It really pays to have a large equipment budget. Nothing like working for a firm with a ninety-five percent pre-tax gross margin. And they didn't even pay taxes.

  Two technicians saw Ernesto enter and straightened slightly at their consoles. "You!" Ernesto jabbed two fingers into the shoulder of one of the technicians. "Anything to report?"

  "Nothing out of the ordinary, sir," said the man. "Number fourteen was with Toshu Maru, she is a Japanese tanker. Her cargo is Venezuelan heating oil heading for Elizabeth, New Jersey. She changed course unexpectedly for Fort Lauderdale, and we monitored the captain on the ship-to-shore radio. He said that one of the diesels had low oil pressure and as a precaution he was anchoring for repairs."

  "Did you detach El Remora?"

  "Yes, sir. Your orders are that no Remora gets near any ship repair facility. We detached in twenty fathoms off Miami, and the pickup has already been made by Jorge on Bluefin."

  Bluefin, Ernesto knew, was a fifty-five-foot sport fishing boat out of Miami that did a lucrative charter business as cover. Jorge was sometimes angry when he was asked to give up a fishing party for company business. Jorge did not seem to have a proper work ethic. Jorge would someday need to be disciplined; perhaps Ernesto would attend to it himself. He needed the practice, it would not do to get rusty. He smiled to himself.

  "Is Bluefin reattaching her to another host, or taking her north herself?" asked Ernesto.

  "We could find no good carrier leaving soon, and the New York sales channels are almost out of product, so Bluefin is making the run, up the Intracoastal. She should be off the New Jersey coast in twenty-four hours, so the pickup rendezvous will not need to be altered."

  Ernesto thought again that El Remora was almost too good to keep private. He could sell the torpedo to the other cartels, or franchise to the Asians—but the idea was, of course, senseless; more Remoras in use meant a larger chance of discovery by the D.E.A. But even discovery would probably not expose the operation, as the hidden fifteen-pound charge of plastic explosive would vaporize the torpedo, the cargo, and the person unfortunate enough to open the access hatch without using the correct sequence of bolt removal.

  "What is the status of the inventory?" Ernesto asked. The technician punched up another computer screen showing the stockpiles of cargo at the warehouses in Cartegena and Tulum in Mexico. One of the advantages of El Remora was its dual use as warehouse storage, hidden on the sea bottom from visual sighting by its dark green color and hidden from magnetometer detection by its fiberglass construction. The Cartegena warehouse, in the basement of the computer building, was serviced by the minisub through an underground water passage. In Tulum an underwater cave was used, part of the thousand miles of unexplored underground aquifers that lay beneath the Yucatán peninsula on the Caribbean coast of Mexico.

  Chapter 13

  * * *

  Uxmal, October 29, present day

  In the morning, Robert and Teresa rented a battered VW van painted in several layers of different colors, fenders tied on with rusty coat hangers. It featured two extra tires, both inflated, and a dented five-gallon can full of water, and aside from a hissing noise from the motor and a pronounced pull to the left, it seemed to run well.

  They packed up the communications gear, the laptop computer, a portable printer, a digital still camera, a camcorder, small-scale maps, drinking water, an assortment of fresh fruit, Imodium AD, and number fifteen sunscreen.

  On the road, they checked the map and headed northwest to Uxmal to find the glyph that Robert had seen on his computer screen. Robert looked over at Teresa, her dark-skinned arm carelessly draped out the open window in the full rays of the sun. Her hair was drawn back from her face today. She wore a crisp professional white short-sleeved shirt and white shorts, making a nice contrast with the rich butterscotch tones of her skin. She looked absolutely wonderful.

  "So, anyway," said Robert, feeling clumsy next to her control and coolness. "Tell me all about yourself."

  "What's to tell? My career as a concert pianist, or all the World Cu
p skiing championships, or the Fulbright scholarship at eight?"

  "No, really. You said you were born in Mexico?"

  "Yep, pretty dull story, the visiting Harvard Ph.D. archeologist and the innocent young Spanish girl. No, that's unfair, my parents are neat people. My mother studied at the local equivalent of Harvard. I got my mother's hair and skin and my father's eyes. There was a bit of stress early on, she was Catholic and he was Baptist, but they worked out compromises—my mother named me after her favorite saint and sent me to her church, my father taught me Gospel music. I liked the music best."

  "And you did your undergrad and graduate work at Harvard?"

  "With those genes, I was a cinch. Then I guess I threw myself into my work—the Mesoamericans—probably trying to please my father, and I've always liked languages. I've been studying them mostly by remote control, though. Even though there's lots of photographs, it's going to be a kick being there again. This is only the second time I've been out of the U.S. since I was six. I've only been on a plane once, that trip to Uxmal."

  "Ever been married?"

  She gave him a sideways look with a little smile. "You first."

  "Nobody ever asked."

  "Same here. Armand might, though; I'm working on him. He doesn't talk much. What's your girlfriend like?"

  Robert thought for a minute.

  "Hard to describe?" she said.

  "Well," he said. "Um. Actually, I don't have a girlfriend. But I didn't want you to worry about coming down here."

  "You're not all that scary, Dr. Asher. The plane trip, that was scary. No girlfriend, huh? Other than that, what are you really like?"

  "Really dull. Poor but honest family. College career featuring lots of part time jobs. Married for just about one year, but we did not meet each other's expectations. We parted friends, though. One daughter, Katie, living in Texas with mom and new dad, really neat kid, twelve years old. Maybe you'll get to meet her. My professional career features a long succession of near misses. I'm probably trying to please my father too, he was into winning, but I think I'd rather just compete. I sure would like to win this one, though."

  "Where abouts in Texas? Your daughter?"

  "Safe by a hundred miles in Houston. I don't feel really good about not being there, though."

  Teresa thought about that for a minute, then said, "Maybe you can help her more here. How do you feel about this trip? Is it an academic boondoggle or does it have a chance of helping?"

  "When I think of the Maya building microscopes and finding virus medicines and also leaving some record of the whole thing—a record that nobody's been able to find—I think it's a flagrant misuse of funding. When I talk to Dr. Spender, I get a sense that he believes in us. And then I think we're going to find the answer against all the odds."

  She nodded.

  * * *

  About noon they stopped at a tiny store in the tiny town of Peto to restock their soft drink supply. As they were leaving, Robert tried to shift into first gear and produced instead a scream of protest from the transmission. He pumped the clutch and tried again more gently, to no better effect.

  "Forget how to use a manual?" asked Teresa.

  "It's the clutch. I thought it was getting a little low in the pedal."

  "Major oops? Do you have AAA?"

  "Better than that, I spent my entire youth in junk cars. Not to mention my old age." He turned off the engine, shifted into first, and started the engine in gear. The VW lurched forward. The synchro seemed to be in pretty good shape, he thought, as he matched revs to upshift, and there weren't a whole lot of traffic lights to worry about.

  * * *

  Six hours later, Robert pulled the VW into the dusty parking lot marked "Uxmal, Parking, No Buses." They joined a few dozen cars in the lot, and he patted the VW's dashboard affectionately. "Yeah," said Teresa. "Got us here. Good car."

  "And we have a gallon or two of water left over."

  "And you thought it was for the radiator. It was for us. Now we can wash the windshield or something."

  "Not that it needs it."

  "Maybe we should leave it buggy and take the windshield home with us. Any stateside entomologist would kill for these samples."

  They unstuck their shirts from the vinyl upholstery and got out. Robert set the satellite communications module up on the roof rack of the van, clamping it to the rails to discourage any local satellite communications module thieves. He flipped the power switch on the portable unit.

  Robert's portable conference unit sent an encoded radio message to the van's satellite transponder which bounced a radio signal off a low-orbit communication satellite to the dish on the roof of Teppin's building. It then traveled through the lab's Ethernet communications lines to the small transceiver in Teppin's office. The RF message was bounced to the receiver on Teppin's wheelchair, cueing the video camera to turn on and relay Teppin's voice and image through the reverse path to Robert's tiny television monitor. The loop was traversed with a one-second delay, and Dr. Teppin's image popped up on the small display screen.

  "Robert. Good, I was wondering where you were. And you have Teresa with you, I see. Excellent." Robert heard the tiny whine as the little camera scanned around. "Does that sign say Uxmal, by any chance? You are early."

  "The call of duty pulled us away from the beach. We are in the Uxmal parking lot, we just drove from Cancún. Would you like to walk around with us?"

  "That would be excellent. I could use a little virtual warm weather and sunshine, it is quite cold and gray here."

  Robert put his arms through the shoulder straps of the portable unit. "How's that, up there?"

  "Perfect. I can see fine."

  He grabbed a water bottle and they walked up the dusty path to the old city. The heat, without the wind of the van's passage, was like being clubbed in the back of the neck. The ocean breeze had no effect here and the temperature was ten degrees higher. Ugly rough-skinned iguanas sunned themselves on the rocks, how do they stand the heat? "Dr. T," he said, "Just so you get the full picture, the temperature here is about a hundred degrees, there's no wind, and the drinking water tastes like gasoline."

  "Sometimes I rather prefer being handicapped," said the small voice from the speaker. "Step carefully, there. Don't drop me."

  At the park entrance, just past the Kodak and Fuji Film sign competition and the soft drink vendors, a half dozen guides waited for business. Teresa consulted a spiral-bound notebook.

  "One of the Harvard guys recommended a guide called Artoz. He's supposed to be a pretty serious student of the Maya."

  "Anybody here know Artoz?" called Robert.

  All six guides ran over, explaining the details of their intimate knowledge of Artoz. Most claimed that Artoz would in general prefer it if they were selected instead of he, as they were more humorous, more knowledgeable, more fluent in the English. One squat, dark-skinned man arrived a little late and spoke more quietly, but his story was more persuasive: he was Artoz.

  Robert dismissed the others with some difficulty and asked Artoz if he was available, perhaps for an extended period of time. Artoz answered that he could indeed be had for an extended period, especially if the fee were commensurately extended. They shook hands and introduced themselves.

  "Ah, scientists. I should give you a discount. Later I will ask my accountant if that is possible. Meanwhile, you are certainly in the best hands. Pleased to meet you. It is not often I can talk to somebody who cares about the Maya. And you are from Harvard, Teresa Welles? There is quite a good archaeology department at Harvard, I have read their papers many times. You are with that group? You could probably teach me about Uxmal. Are you to be called Dr. Welles?"

  "I haven't done much work on Uxmal," she said, "Except look at the glyphs. I'm sure you can help us a lot. I am to be called Teresa."

  "Artoz," said Robert, "You should also meet my boss, Dr. Edward Teppin. He's on my shoulder. Sort of." He indicated the three-inch screen showing Dr. Teppin's image.

&
nbsp; "Good afternoon, Artoz," said Teppin.

  "Caramba! Never before have I seen this."

  "Saves airline tickets," said Teresa.

  "OK, I take three people for the price of two. Special deal only today. My heart is soft, I think."

  They walked up a narrow dirt path. The first building they came to was a huge gray rectangular structure. "The Nunnery," Artoz announced. "Although the Maya had no nuns. The early Spanish Conquistadores thought it looked like a nunnery and the name remains. Notice the carving: Chac the rain god, with a serpent. And here you will see a stela, the large stone that the Maya used to inscribe their complicated writing. Oh, but excuse me, you know this."

  "Teresa," said Robert. "In the computer virtual reality pictures, these buildings were brightly colored, bright red and white."

  "Yes," she said. "The original colors can be deduced from small chips of paint left in sheltered corners, here and there. But the paint is mostly gone, and the stone has weathered to this gray color."

  "What do we have here? Training to be a Uxmal guide? Stealing all my secrets? Much prettier than I am, no fair?" asked Artoz.

  "Artoz, we need your help with something a little unusual," said Robert.

  "Ah, sí?"

  "We're looking for a particular group of glyphs." Robert showed Artoz the N.Y.U. pictures. "We are trying to translate these particular three and we need to look at nearby glyphs to help in the translation. The glyphs were photographed in 1920 here in Uxmal."

  "Uxmal does not have much writing, in fact it is actually quite poor at writing, with not many stele and not in good condition. But what is here I can find, and also I have some secret places with more writing that you may be interested in. No extra charge, all is covered on my low hourly rate."

  "Can you find these glyphs in the photographs?"

  "But certainly. Come with me. They are just here, near the Palace of the Governors."

  * * *

  The Austin virus glyphs were engraved on a stela—a large stone slab like a big gravestone—still readable but showing some deterioration since the date of the photograph. Teresa explained their problem to Artoz, that the glyphs were not translatable because they described a chemical, not a word, and they needed to try to find clues to the way the chemical was created.