Deity

by Theresa Danley

  Peet didn’t fraternize with his students, but as a man it was often difficult not to notice them. The clothes they wore were designed to accentuate, not cover, their sexuality. Even now, after Peet had been cleared of the fraternizing accusations, some of his students seemed determined to test him. His classroom was daily baited with lures. Even in the field, he couldn’t get away from low-cut blouses that fell open as a young lady bent over her work.

  Despite the youth exposed all around him, their posturing was in vain. Peet wasn’t about to lose his job over them. As a result, he’d come to appreciate the conservative students - the girls who put less effort into drawing a man’s eye and more into concentrating on their work, allowing Peet and his male counterparts to comfortably do the same. Fortunately, Lori was that modest type. Perhaps that was why he found it so easy to work with her. Perhaps that was why he couldn’t take his eyes off of her now. There was an irresistible familiarity working with Lori again.

  There was an unexpected temptation working with her like this.

  The wetsuit hugged Lori’s tight figure which had never before been so exposed, and Chac Bacab’s hands were all over, checking tubes and buoyancy harnesses, battery packs and air supply. Lori was compliant, carefully listening to his instructions, even as he took her hand to double check the diving light strapped to her wrist.

  Peet finally turned away.

  “We’re all set,” Chac announced. “Let’s go.”

  Sporting his own wetsuit and burdened with gear, Chac started for the trees just beyond his Land Rover.

  “We’re not going to the ocean?” Peet called after him.

  “We won’t be splashing around that Scuba Blue,” Chac called over his shoulder. “Not today.”

  Peet heard him chuckle as he ducked into the trees. That’s when a pair of fins slapped him squarely in the chest. He looked down to find a dispirited cloud in Lori’s eyes.

  “I believe these are yours, Dr. Peet.”

  * * * *

  Chac looked good in a wetsuit. Lori already knew he had a husky build to him, but what could have been interpreted as age-related thickness was now revealed as sinewy muscle, and plenty of it. She couldn’t help but wonder where he’d developed such an athletic frame. After all, he didn’t strike her as the type that spent hours in the gym.

  If there was anything that could distract her from the masculinity trekking the footpath ahead, it was the rainforest that quickly devoured them. The trees were alive with the relentless cries of birds. There were hundreds of them, maybe thousands. The canopy was infested with them, their fervent noise striving to drown the occasional wail of a monkey.

  Sweat quickly dampened Lori’s brow and trickled between her breasts. She missed the light, airiness of her cargo pants which had been traded for the tight confines of the wetsuit, a suit clearly unsuitable for hiking through the captured, muggy air of a Mexican rainforest. To make matters worse, the vegetation hummed with swarms of insects.

  Thankfully, a hundred yards into the forest they came upon a small cenote, its cool, shaded waters welcoming them twenty feet below.

  “This is a popular swimming hole with the locals,” Chac explained.

  “Dr. Webb found his fresco down there?” Lori asked, swatting at a cloud of mosquitoes.

  “Not exactly. But that’s where we start. Underground channels connect this cenote to at least five other cenotes before draining somewhere out there in the ocean. It’s all part of the water system that developed around the perimeter of the Chicxulub Crater.”

  “We’re standing in a crater?”

  “Actually, we’re standing above it. The coastal depression created by the meteor has been filled in with sixty-five million years of silt and erosion. The only indications that a crater ever existed at all is through geological data and by the collision rift along the terra firma portion of the perimeter. Water collected along this rift and eroded the limestone around the perimeter zone, creating a chain of wells and cenotes.”

  “That’s amazing,” Lori said as she strapped on her fins.

  Chac smiled. “There aren’t many people in this world who have gone swimming in a cenote.”

  “This will be my second,” Dr. Peet said, half-heartedly. “And I wasn’t too fond of the last one.”

  “At least you’re jumping into this one on your own free will,” Chac said with a slap on Dr. Peet’s shoulder.

  Chac did a final gear check, adjusted his own mask and mouthpiece and finally stepped up to the edge of the cenote. He lifted a finned foot in a gymnastic show of sinewy balance and stepped off the ledge and plunged into the water below. Lori followed, hitting the water in anticipation of escaping the bloodsucking insects and relieving the heat within her wetsuit. She managed to accomplish the first part. The water, however, was warm.

  She heard Dr. Peet splash into the water nearby but she was already following Chac as he powered his way toward the bottom of the well. The water quickly darkened around Chac’s surprisingly bright wrist light, reminding Lori to turn her own light on. Deeper and deeper they kicked, the pressure intensifying and imploring a sense of panic that Lori had to choke back.

  Finally, they reached the cool, silty bottom where Lori thought she detected a slight current swirling around them. This was where Chac had warned they would use most of their oxygen if they weren’t careful.

  Chac hesitated to hook a guideline to the mouth of the channel. Then with a sweep of his arm he suddenly pulled Lori in close to him. She found a hold on the diver propulsion submersible that had been attached to the front D-rings of his harness and, with one arm holding her tight against his solid frame, Chac launched them slowly against the current of the channel.

  Lori found herself in a claustrophobic world of confinement and absolute darkness held at bay only by their wrist lights mingling against the limestone walls. She was suddenly aware of her reliance on that light, on the gas flowing from the tanks on her back and on the guideline steadily spooling from Chac’s hand. And she was utterly reliant upon him.

  Her light beam caught glimpses of skeletal stalagmites and stalactites within occasional silty pockets that shielded them from the current, but they were nothing like the cumbersome underwater forests she’d been expecting. In fact, save for the steady current, there were few obstacles to speak of. Chac simply powered on through darkness.

  She had no idea how far they’d gone when he finally stopped the submersible and released her, allowing Dr. Peet to catch up with the spare submersible. The channel walls and ceiling had dissolved into a deep void where there was only a crushing darkness like none Lori had ever seen before. She might have been convinced she’d gone blind were it not for her tiny wrist light now reduced to a slivery, drowning glow vainly reaching for an end that wasn’t there. She was weightless in a cosmos with no stars.

  Then something grabbed her arm. Lori’s heart jumped in her throat until she realized it was only Chac, slowing her ascent for decompression. He held them all to a painstakingly leisure pace, suspended above the current until suddenly, finally, they broke through the surface of that black water. The beams of their wrist lights groped for reflection and found it only on each other’s wet faces.

  Chac removed his mouthpiece. “Welcome to the Mural Room,” he said, his voice cracking off the surface of the water.

  “Where are we?” Lori asked.

  “It’s an underground well,” Chac said as he pulled himself through the water. “Think of it as a cenote with a roof.”

  “I can see why it would be dangerous for Matt to come here alone,” Peet said, breast stroking after them.

  “That’s why I’m certain he didn’t come here when he disappeared,” Chac said. “That, and the fact that all of his diving equipment has been accounted for.”

  The splashing of their movements grew louder as the sound reflected off obscure cavern walls. It was then that Chac said, “There’s a rock shelf here…”

  Too late. Lori’s knee had already slammed into
the coarse limestone. She winced as the pain throbbed through her leg but she continued onto the shelf which gradually rose out of the water. Soon enough they were standing on dry ground, shedding their oxygen tanks near a wall. Lori was immediately enthralled with the brightly-colored anthropomorphic figures that emerged within the beams of their lights.

  “How did you find this place?” she asked.

  “Cave diving is Matt’s hobby,” Chac responded some distance away. Lori hadn’t noticed that he’d stepped away. “He’s usually underwater when he’s not looking for Jesus. He spent a lot of time in the Riviera last year until he turned his focus to the Chicxulub cenotes. When he found the murals painted all over this cavern, the Riviera caves were all but forgotten.”

  His voice faded beneath the sudden sputtering of a generator. Lori caught the scent of exhaust and then as the generator powered up to a steady drone, an old incandescent floodlight dimmed, then brightened against the wall not three feet away.

  Like a black ghost slipping back toward the light, Chac returned from the generator concealed in the darkness beyond. Lori realized he had already shed his diving fins so she proceeded to release the spring heel straps of her own.

  “Documenting these hieroglyphs was excruciatingly painful until we got this equipment in here,” Chac said in a distracted tone as his eyes scanned the limits of the light. “The lamps make a world of difference, even with the filters we use to keep the murals from fading.”

  “And you say one of these figures interested Dr. Webb?” Lori asked as she studied the remarkably colorful wall.

  “He calls it his Jesus fresco,” Chac said. “I call it the Calendar Deity. It’s right over here.”

  Kin

  At first glance, Dr. Webb’s Jesus fresco was just as Lori remembered from the photo attachment in Dr. Friedman’s e-mail. The full anthropomorphic figure stood almost Egyptian-like against the porous limestone wall; feet pointing forward with shoulders square to the viewer. Both arms were extended before it, carrying a ball-like object as though reverently carrying a sacred object to altar.

  The figure was off to the side, separate from the palette of murals decorating the limestone beside Lori. The drawing was joined by five blocky Mayan hieroglyphics but otherwise, it was secluded from the main frescos and nearly escaping the ring of lamplight.

  “I can’t help but notice its similarity to The Trader petroglyph,” Dr. Peet murmured.

  Lori was way ahead of him. It was the Jesus fresco’s familiar shape that had immediately captured her interest from her computer screen. It was far more elaborate than the lone Trader petroglyph pecked into the Utah sandstone, but the basic shape was the same, right down to an unidentifiable object held out between both hands. Aside from the five blocky glyphs, the only difference in the Jesus fresco was an apparent halo floating above the figure’s head.

  At least, that was the only difference.

  Now, standing face to face with the fresco, Lori recognized a new disparity. The Jesus fresco had changed from the original picture Dr. Friedman had e-mailed her. Given Chac’s stunned silence, he noticed it too.

  “That can’t be,” he mumbled as his hand instinctively reached for the new anomaly.

  Above the figure’s head where the halo had been, there was now only a hole approximately six inches in diameter and carved a full three inches into the stone. Strangely, square-cut teeth extended around the entire hole, giving it a gear-like appearance.

  Chac’s fingers traced the depression with his fingers. “This wasn’t here before.”

  Lori touched the stone near the hole, then rubbed her fingers against her thumb to sample the residue texture of the wall. “The algae’s been removed,” she observed.

  “That doesn’t surprise me,” Chac said. “Matt’s been cleaning, restoring and documenting this fresco.”

  Lori wasn’t satisfied. “Look. This hole completely cuts out one of the hieroglyphs.”

  She had noted the position of the five Mayan glyphs in Dr. Friedman’s e-mail. One glyph floated just below the figure’s feet while the others looped around the front with the last glyph floating above the head, encapsulated by the halo which was now precisely where the gear-shaped hole had been cut out of the wall.

  “What is the significance of the hieroglyphs?” Dr. Peet asked, studying the wall over Lori’s shoulder.

  “They represent the five cardinal points of the Mayan Long Count Calendar,” Chac explained.

  “One glyph for every thousand years on the calendar,” Lori guessed.

  “Not exactly. The five glyphs are Kin, Uinal, Tun, Katun, and Baktun. They represent the numbering system of the Long Count. There are twenty Kins to a Uinal, eighteen Uinals to a Tun, twenty Tuns to a Katun and twenty Katuns to a Baktun. Thirteen Baktuns complete a full calendar cycle. In other words, there are twenty days to a Uinal month, eighteen months to a Tun year and so forth. Each glyph was represented here except the first glyph, Kin, has been cut out.”

  “Why would Dr. Webb cut the Kin out?” Lori pondered out loud.

  “Perhaps out of anger,” Chac said. “These hieroglyphs were the cause of some heated debates between us. I believe this fresco represents a Mayan priest or prophet who brought the knowledge of time to the people.”

  “A priest like Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl,” Lori guessed again.

  “That was my original assumption,” Chac said. “According to the Yucatec legend, there was a man who arrived, bringing with him wisdom and peace. They called him Kukulkan. The only man I know who fits that description is Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl.”

  “But I’m guessing that theory didn’t sit well with Matt,” Dr. Peet said.

  “He insisted this fresco represents Jesus Christ. He somehow convinced himself that the calendar glyphs indicated the day of Jesus’ second coming.”

  “And what day is that?” Lori asked.

  “There are no numbers associated with the glyphs so the glyphs alone do not specify a specific day. However, Matt believes the lack of numbers represent the moment when the last Kin of the last Baktun has passed—when all points of the Long Count Calendar are zeroed out.”

  “And when will that be?”

  “December 21st.”

  Lori gasped. “So the end of the world truly is coming.”

  Chac smiled. “I suppose, if Matt’s interpretation of this fresco is correct.”

  “But you aren’t convinced,” Lori said.

  “I don’t even think it represents Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl anymore.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I took a sample of the paint and found that it dates far later than all the rest of the murals in this cavern. The data shows this fresco was painted somewhere in the mid to late nineteenth century. Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl was banished from Tula in the year 987 AD and would have landed in Yucatan shortly after, so clearly this isn’t first-hand documentation of his arrival.”

  “And Jesus Christ lived nine centuries before Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl,” Dr. Peet added. “So if this mural was created in the nineteenth century, how can Matt conclude it documents the future arrival of Jesus Christ?”

  Chac shrugged with an “it’s a mystery to me” look on his face.

  “So, if it isn’t Jesus or Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl, who do you believe this fresco represents?” Lori asked.

  Chac shrugged. “Similar to Matt’s interpretation, I wonder if this isn’t a deity after all—a previously unknown and forgotten deity among the Maya. So I call this the Calendar Deity - the god who brought knowledge of calendars to the people.”

  “I’m sure that stirs a lot of debate,” Lori said.

  “It will, once we introduce the discovery to the rest of the world.”

  Dr Peet stepped back thoughtfully. Lori could see his mind working on a new problem, and like the professor he was, he expressed his thoughts aloud.

  “Putting all that aside,” he said, “Matt is an archaeologist. He wouldn’t vandalize an ancient mural over a difference in interpre
tive opinion.”

  “That’s why I don’t think Matt did this,” Chac said, turning back to the hole above the figure. “If he intended to cut a part of this fresco out, he would have simply cut a circle or square. He wouldn’t go through the trouble of cutting teeth out of the circle. That kind of precision would have taken considerable time.”

  Lori nodded in agreement. “Not only that, but this piece wasn’t freshly carved out of the rock. Look.” She unstrapped her wrist light and shined the beam directly into the hole. “There’s algae growing just inside the lip of the hole here.”

  Chac nodded as though following her train of thought. “This hole wasn’t intended to carve something out of the fresco. It was created to insert something into it.”

  * * * *

  Something wasn’t quite right. Chac had known it the moment he turned on the generator.

  Only one lamp had come on.

  He and Matt had taken great pains to get two lamps into the cavern. The generator had been the most problematic. Nevertheless, they’d prevailed and made great progress in their work on the murals. Now, however, there was only one lamp standing, the second strangely unplugged and lying near their feet.

  Chac was trying to find a link between the lamp and the hole in the limestone when Peet interrupted his thoughts. The anthropologist had busied himself inspecting the algae clinging around the lip of the hole.

  “Whoever took the Kin piece must have realized this wasn’t the outline of Jesus’ halo, but a small portion of the gear’s teeth just visible above the figure’s head.”