“As a precautionary measure. We don’t have much time to work with the pillar so I didn’t want to waste time trying to track down alternative means of accessing the pillar ball should I need to. As it turned out, I needed to.”
John scowled, reaching a hand out expectantly. With a deep sigh, Matt withdrew the museum pass from the top pocket of his own pack and slapped it into John’s hand. This was turning into a mess. “Look,” he said in his own defense, “I’m only borrowing the pillar ball so that we can study it with the pillar in situ. I intend to return it when we’re done.”
John irritably stuffed his notebooks, pencils, compass and other miscellaneous tools into his pack. “And yet the FBI are knocking on my door!” he snapped, zipping the pack shut with added emphasis. He stood and slung the pack over his shoulder.
“Where are you going?” Matt asked, chasing after him.
“Sounds like I have a lot to clean up in Mexico City,” John growled. “Then I’m going home, if they don’t send me to jail first.”
“You can’t go.”
“I refuse to work with someone I can’t trust.”
Dead weight desperation collapsed Matt’s resolve. He needed John’s expertise, his experience. Matt knew Izapa well enough, but it was Mayan cosmology that would complete this journey and John’s astronomical knowledge was what he needed most. John had to stay. Matt wasn’t one to grovel and beg, but in this case, he was willing to go to extremes.
“Wait a second, John,” Peet called, interrupting Matt from his next move. “If you knew you needed an artifact from the museum, why didn’t you go back instead of Matt?”
That stopped the old man in his tracks. John turned to address the question, a question that conveniently placed him on the defensive.
“Matt called me down here to map the pillar’s location in relation to Izapa’s monument groups and the major landmarks of the area,” John explained. “When I saw the markings on the pillar, I recognized they matched the style of the markings on a pillar ball I’d found in this area seventeen years ago.”
“So the pillar ball really was your discovery.”
“It was and I immediately turned it over to the museum, but I always remembered that ball for its unique markings. Most pillar balls have no markings at all.”
“I was hoping John might find an astronomical significance to this pillar and ball,” Matt added.
“That was going to take some time and like Matt said, we’re running short on time, so I agreed to stay and continue the work Matt couldn’t do while he retrieved the pillar ball.” John glared at Matt. “But I didn’t expect you to steal the artifact. When did you become such a thief?”
“Don’t fool yourself,” Peet said. “Surely you haven’t forgotten his religious exchange experiment.” He turned on Matt. “I doubt you asked a Jew for a copy of the Torah, or a Muslim for the Koran. You probably even stole a copy of the Book of Mormon from your own university, didn’t you?”
“The Book was mine,” Matt said irritably. “And all the other texts were eventually returned to their rightful owners. It will be the same with the pillar ball when we are through with it.”
“Do you not remember the eighth Commandment of Moses,” Father Ruiz interrupted. “Thou shalt not steal?”
Matt felt his frustration mounting. The last thing he needed was to answer to a priest. “And those without sin shall cast the first stone,” he snarled.
The priest retracted. John started to leave once again.
“John, please—”
“I refuse to associate myself with an antiquities thief,” he said.
“I’m not a thief,” Matt insisted. “I was desperate and pressed for time. That’s all. We’ve come this far. Aren’t you the least bit curious how all of this fits together?”
John hesitated. A good sign.
“We’re on the path to something big here,” Matt continued. “Don’t you want to know where all of this will end?”
“Wait a minute,” Peet interrupted. “What path? What are you talking about?”
“I believe this pillar and ball will lead us to the exact location where Jesus gave knowledge of his second coming to the Maya people.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Father Ruiz murmured beneath his breath.
Peet shook his head. “What are you talking about, Matt?”
“The original Long Count Calendar! This knowledge was given to the Maya people to count down earth’s last days—to the time of His second coming!”
Thrones And Pillars
Peet glanced at John who appeared as unwilling to speak his mind as he was. Somewhere in all of Matt’s religious academia he’d fallen off course. Somewhere in all his search to find truth through the similarities found in different religions, Matt had led himself into archaeological delusions. But neither he nor John was prepared to counter the ridiculous notions of a colleague. After all, some of the world’s most amazing archaeological discoveries came out of someone’s crazy ideas.
However, Father Ruiz wasn’t about to be held back by such academic decorum.
“You’re reasoning is not supported anywhere in Biblical teaching,” the priest challenged.
KC moaned as she distanced herself from the conversation.
Father Ruiz paid no attention to her protest. “Only the Father knows the timing of Jesus’ second coming. Nobody on earth can put a date to it, let alone a location. Besides, according to Revelations, Jesus will not establish his new kingdom on earth until after the rapture and the seven stages of the Tribulation. How do you expect all that to happen in the one day we have left in the Long Count Calendar?”
Matt clenched his jaw. “I didn’t say I knew how God would work out his plan. All I’m suggesting is that we have the opportunity to be at the right place at the right time. Imagine. Wouldn’t you like to be the first disciple Jesus sees when he returns?”
Peet sighed. He had to admit that he knew as little about the Mormon faith as anyone outside the church, but he suspected Matt had derailed his own beliefs. After all, he had been dismissed from BYU and excommunicated from the Church of Latter Day Saints. But if there was one thing he understood about religion it was how strongly it affected people and the way they viewed the world around them.
“With all due respect, Matt,” he began, “aren’t you afraid of jumping to conclusions? After all, there’s no convincing evidence that your fresco represents Jesus coming to the New World, let alone serving as a signpost to the very first Long Count Calendar ever used.”
Matt smiled. “Why do you think Chac calls it his Calendar Deity?” he challenged. “Who or what the figure is or represents may be debatable, but there’s no question that it serves as a trail marker.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Take another look at that pillar.”
If only to humor him, Peet walked back to the pillar. He studied it more closely, starting with the gear shaped hole at the top. From there his eyes dropped and that’s when he recognized four lines running down the length of the stone, two were perfectly vertical and perfectly parallel to each other. The other two were also parallel to each other, but they ran about thirty degrees from vertical. At the very bottom of each pair, half hidden behind the grass and undergrowth, he noticed peculiar markings that looked like…feet.
One stepping in front of the other.
“Legs?” he asked.
“Not just any legs,” Matt said. “The legs of Jesus.”
“You mean the Calendar Deity,” Peet said.
“Whatever. In either case, they are the same legs that are on the figure from which the Kin piece came.”
John, with pack still slung over his shoulder, reluctantly ambled back to the pillar. What had stopped him from marching straight out of the jungle, Peet couldn’t be sure. Perhaps he took into consideration the risky cost of leaving his survey equipment behind. John had always been one to resist wasted expenses. Or perhaps he suddenly remembered their only means of transportation
was the Jeep, and getting the keys off of Matt was out of the question.
Most likely however, Matt had piqued John’s curiosity, and curiosity was a hot button for men like them. It was the force that drove the scientific community as a whole to push boundaries and look at horizons beyond all reason.
“Matt recognized the legs and the pillar’s connection to the Kin piece,” John said, “but it wasn’t until I realized the Calendar Deity’s hands were etched into the pillar ball that we began putting the pieces of this puzzle together.”
“So the effect is a life-sized etching of the Calendar Deity carrying a pillar ball in his hands,” Peet speculated.
“Not a pillar ball, but the world,” Matt said. “Jesus holds the world between his hands.”
“Whatever the interpretation,” John said, “the direction in which these artifacts face cannot be determined until we have the two pieces together.”
“Why not?” Peet pressed. “The fresco showed the Calendar Deity holding out a ball in the same direction that his feet were pointing. Therefore, one could assume the front of the pillar ball would face in the direction the pillar’s feet are pointing without actually having the ball physically on site.”
“Not so fast,” John said. “Walk around the pillar.”
With a shrug, Peet did as instructed and immediately recognized the problem. As he made his way around the pillar, he found not just one pair of legs but four, essentially a pair for each of the four directions.
“How are we to know which set of legs the hands are supposed to be paired with if we don’t have the pillar ball?” John asked.
“But the ball could be placed in any position,” Peet observed.
“That’s where the Kin piece comes in,” Matt said. “There’s one gear tooth that’s slightly broader than the others on the Kin piece. I call it the primary tooth and it fits into only one space in the pillar. Essentially, the Kin piece can fit only one certain way.”
He took the piece back from Peet and slipped it into the hole on top of the pillar, this time with the Kin glyph facing down so that the two ridges on the backside now faced upward. He then picked up the pillar ball and rolled it in his hands so that Peet could see the underside. There, Peet was surprised to find a small neck, only centimeters in length, and at the base of the neck were two ridges similar to those on the Kin piece.
“And the ball doesn’t just sit in any position,” Matt added.
He hefted the ball onto the pillar and carefully centered it until the neck fell into the recess left by the Kin piece. He then shifted the ball until its ridges clicked against those of the Kin piece, locking it into position.
“So,” KC said impatiently. “Where is this headless Calendar Deity pointing to?”
John frowned, clearly not pleased with the results. “To the south,” he said.
“What’s to the south?”
“Ocean,” Matt replied with a disappointed tone. “Nothing but ocean.”
* * * *
Matt struggled to make sense of the pillar. South was the last direction he expected it to face. To make matters worse, John quickly discovered with use of his compass, the pillar wasn’t even pointing to true south. In fact, it was twenty-three degrees off to the west.
“This may not be an entirely random position,” John said. “The monuments of Group B largely face twenty-three degrees northeast. That’s a full one hundred and eighty degrees from this pillar.”
“So why would this pillar face backwards?” Matt asked.
“Just to make life difficult,” KC groaned.
Peet shared a glance with Matt. “She may be right,” he said. Matt waited for an explanation, so Peet continued. “If there’s any importance to this original calendar you’re looking for, why wouldn’t the Maya want to keep it from outsiders looking for it?”
“It’s early yet to jump to any conclusions,” John interrupted. “We really must examine all the facts available to us.”
“Or there could be more to the pillar,” Peet suggested, stepping back up to the stone marker. “Instead of carrying the world, what if the Calendar Deity is turning the world?”
He placed his hands over the hands carved into the ball and leaned into it. The ball began to move but to his surprise, that wasn’t the only thing that turned. As he strained against the stone, the pillar itself began to rotate! As everyone watched, he turned the pillar a quarter turn, then half a turn until—
WHOOSH!
A cloud of dust shot into the air as the pillar suddenly dropped two feet into the ground, no longer mobile in any direction.
“Like a key in a lock,” John gasped.
With the ball resting waist high, Peet stepped away. The Calendar Deity now faced the northeast, twenty-three degrees from north, to be exact.
“That’s the direction we need to go,” Matt said.
KC took one hopeless look to the northeast where there was nothing to see but the trees hemming them in. “I think I liked the ocean prospect better,” she mumbled.
Matt took Peet’s place behind the pillar and rested his hands directly over the Deity’s hands. He looked straight forward into the trees.
“Clear some of those limbs,” he said. “Give me a clear view.”
Peet grabbed a nearby machete and, with Father Ruiz and KC waiting to clear the debris, he hacked away at the trees and brush growing directly in front of the pillar. John took the less tiresome option. Reassuming his position on the throne, and with a map and compass in hand, he quickly sketched a path straight from the pillar to—
“Tacana.”
Peet could see it too. The volcano peeked through a thin veil of limbs, rising above the beanfields and coffee groves that held the jungle at bay.
A large, anxious grin captured Matt’s boyish face. “The calendar has to be on Tacana.”
“May I make one observation here,” KC interrupted. “That volcano is pretty damn big. Where do you suggest we start looking? We don’t even know what this calendar looks like.”
Matt stammered in his excitement. “I expect we’re looking for a stela. Or perhaps some cliff face with the very first Long Count calculations recorded on it.”
“Or the first calendar could have been recorded on a fiber codex that perished hundreds of years ago,” Peet speculated.
Matt was undeterred. “We’ll never know until we follow the crumb trail,” he said. “The Calendar Deity has led us this far. The calendar could be waiting for us in some significant crevice in the mountain, or within an embankment of lava flow, or maybe even—”
“The cleft,” John suggested. They all turned to him and when nobody said anything more, John rose to his feet. “See for yourself,” he said, vacating the throne.
Peet accepted the invitation and took a seat. The purpose wasn’t immediately clear. Through the vegetation he had just cleared behind the pillar, he caught just a peek of the coffee plantations woven into the hilly Soconusco jungle. Just beyond was the lofty Sierra Madre de Chiapas and its misty cloak. However, through the mist Peet could just make out the outline of a volcanic peak rising severely in the distance directly behind the pillar, and it was then that he finally realized what John was talking about. From his position on the throne it was suddenly clear why the pillar dropped when he’d turned the ball. The clue lay in the thronesman’s point of view. From where Peet sat, the pillar had dropped the pillar ball precisely in line with a significant cleft in the side of the volcano.
“I believe Matt is on to something,” John admitted. “Calendar or not, the pillar is pointing us to Tacana.”
Izapa
The Aspirin did little to ease Lori’s headache. In fact, it may have only agitated her condition for the pain in her head had transpired into an upset stomach by the time Abe procured a Toyota 4-Runner at the Tapachula Airport. Thirty minutes later they arrived at the ruins of Izapa.
The place had the feel of time and abandonment. Unlike Chichen Itza, where the flurry of visitors and souvenir vendors
resuscitated life back into the city each day, Izapa was empty—not quite dead but certainly sleeping. There was a reverent ora to the ancient city that could only be produced by sacred places. Or a cemetery. Skeletal stone temples basked beneath the tropical sun while stone pillars dotted the grounds like grave markers without a soul to appreciate them. There was nobody around except Lori and her companions standing tentatively at the edge, debating their next move.
“I’d say we’d have a better chance of finding your Zapatista stronghold back in Tapachula,” Lori said, gazing across the hallowed grounds.
Izapa may have been deserted, but it wasn’t entirely forgotten. After all, the ruins had been excavated from their death beds and the fact that it was clear of brush and other intruding vegetation offered proof that the site was at least tended to on occasion. There were even little lean-to shelters erected over some of the more delicate features, Lori noted, to protect the carvings and glyph writing from the corrosive weather.
“Isn’t there supposed to be a park ranger or something like that?” Tarah asked, shielding her designer sunglasses with one hand, the other planted firmly on a hip.
“I doubt this place draws enough attention to warrant one,” Abe said.
It was about that time that Lori spotted a young boy, possibly ten or eleven years old, walking along the highway with a market bolsa slung over his shoulder. The boy never took his eyes off of them as he reached into the bag and withdrew a bottle of water. He held it into the air and called after them. Lori couldn’t understand his words, but she got the gist of his message.
“I think we’re being solicited by the closest thing we’ll find to a park ranger,” she said.
“We don’t have time to boost the local economy,” Tarah groaned—a comment that caught Lori off guard considering they’d just flown in from Tunkuruchu.
“We can ask him if he’d seen Dr. Webb,” Lori suggested. “I’m sure strangers stand out in a place like this.”
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