by Steve Alten
“Another vision?” She speaks in the Nahuatl language of the Toltec and somehow he can understand her—his brainwaves tracking his shifting consciousness, completing the transformation of his altered identity.
He is Chilam Balam.
He is the Jaguar Prophet.
Communicating in her native tongue, he responds to his soul mate’s question. “I saw the bearded white man.”
“The great teacher returns?”
“No, Blood Woman.” He slides out from beneath her, his body void of the wounds from his dream. “The bearded white ones are invaders. On one Imix they shall arrive by sea from the east bearing a symbol of their god. By violence and death they shall introduce their new religion.”
He kneels by the long parchment lying on the bare floor and begins painting new images, translating his last vision into Mayan glyphs. “Go to the Council. Advise them that I shall seek the assistance of the great teacher in his sacred temple tonight.”
It is nearly sunset by the time Chilam Balam leaves his dwelling.
He follows the sacbe, the raised dirt road cutting through the dense Yucatan jungle. Farmers work the fields, growing maize and other crops. Laborers clear brush for new trails. Faces turn, heads bow. Chilam Balam is revered.
He heads south in the direction of the blood-red pyramid, the Kukulcan rising in the distance like a giant ant colony to tower a hundred feet over the vast ceremonial center. Thousands crowd the esplanade, bartering their wares. Potters display vases and plates, growers their food, weavers their breechcloths and dyed skirts—the fabric provided by the ceiba, a pentandra tree whose fruit is a six-inch pod containing seeds surrounded by a fluffy, cottonlike yellowish fiber.
Thirty thousand Maya: drawn together to discourage enemy raids, bound by their affiliation with the Itza clan, tasked with servicing their gods and their community.
Chilam Balam makes his way past craftsmen and healers until he arrives at the pyramid’s northern balustrade. The prophet remains the most important advisor to the J-Men, Ix-Men, and Mayan priests who rule the Council. He is the architect of the katuns, each twenty-year epoch of existence foretelling a vision of the future … visions that come to the Jaguar Priest in dreams. He has seen the bearded white men arriving in wooden ships. He has witnessed their fire sticks spitting death among his people. He has envisioned the Itza warriors suspended from wooden crosses, tortured by the white men’s god.
What confused Balam was that the great teacher, Kukulcan, had been a bearded white man. His arrival had raised the Itza, his wisdom had ensured food during times of famine. Most important, his knowledge of the heavens had provided them with the sacred device wheels that served to organize and prepare the Itza for things to come. Before he departed, the Pale Prophet had promised the Itza-Maya that one day he would return.
That Chilam Balam is able to channel the great teacher’s spirit is what renders him such a powerful seer. But the great teacher had been a man of peace. These bearded white men clearly were not.
Seeking answers, Chilam Balam climbs the narrow steps of the pyramid’s northern face and enters the sacred temple. A fire burns on the charred stone floor. Bowls are filled with fruit and cacao leaves.
The Jaguar Priest closes his eyes and mumbles an ancient chant, waiting for the arrival of Kukulcan.
The night sky reveals the dark road to Xibalba, the galactic womb only a day away from converging with the horizon. The fire is gone, reduced to smoldering embers.
“Balam.”
Kukulcan appears before him, the pale Caucasian dressed in a white ceremonial robe that matches his long flowing silky hair and beard. His azure eyes share the luminescence of the jaguar.
Chilam Balam bows in reverence, his forehead kissing the warm stone. “Great teacher, I ask your help in interpreting these latest visions. Does the arrival of the bearded white men portend your return or our demise?”
“Both. For I am here with you now, and I offer salvation.”
“Instruct me, teacher.”
“Amass the Itza-Maya tomorrow evening at the sacred cenote. Instruct the farmers to bring with them enough seed to ensure bountiful harvests for at least three tuns. Instruct the healers to do the same with the seedlings that sustain their medicines. Instruct the laborers to bring their tools. Instruct the people to bring only the belongings they can carry on their backs. Leave everything else, including your books. The invaders shall conquer the Azteca, whose lust for blood rivals their own. When they enter Chichen Itza, they shall find a city of ghosts.”
“Teacher, where shall we go? Do you wish us to hide in the jungle?”
“At midnight the dark road to Xibalba shall arrive. All who venture down its path shall henceforth be known as Hunahpu. The Hunahpu shall seed the sixth great cycle of man. A thousand times a thousand katuns shall pass before the Hunahpu return. When the race of white men slips into the darkness of ignorance, oblivion, and despair, the wisdom of the cosmic light shall again return, offering mankind a means of salvation at the end of the fifth cycle.”
The fire suddenly returns, crackling with energy.
The great teacher is gone.
The Council convenes at midday atop the platform of the Temple of the Warriors. Chilam Balam recounts the great teacher’s words, only to be openly challenged by a rival priest, Napuctun.
“The arrival of the bearded ones from the lands of the sun must be met by the sons of the Itza. They are bringers of a sign from our Father God. They bring blessings in abundance!”
Balam puffs out his chest. “Who are you to defy the words of Kukulcan? The raised wooden standard shall come. It shall be displayed to the world, that the world may be enlightened. There has been a beginning of strife, there has been a beginning of rivalry, when the priestly man shall come to bring the sign of God in the time to come. A quarter of a league, a league away he comes. You see the mut-bird surmounting the raised wooden standard. A new day shall dawn in the north, in the west. The bearded ones shall bring bloodshed and death to the sons of Itza, shattering the pottery jars into dust. I am Chilam Balam, the Jaguar Priest. I speak the divine truth.”
The Council huddle together with Napuctun.
After a few minutes, Balam’s archrival addresses the prophet. “Assemble the sons of Itza as the great teacher instructed.”
The Jaguar Priest bows. “Napuctun is wise. It shall be done.”
Dusk arrives in Chichen Itza, summoning tens of thousands of men, women, and children to the grand esplanade. They organize by status, filing in long procession lines before hundreds of clay pots filled with blue dye. The striking turquoise pigment is a combination of indigo and palygorskite, the ingredients heated at high temperatures. The color, known as Mayan blue, matches the intense color of the great teacher’s eyes.
Now blue-skinned, Indians follow the sacbe north through the dense jungle. Torchbearers light the way, directing the masses to the sacred cenote—one of thousands of freshwater sinkholes created 65 million years ago when an asteroid struck the shallow sea that would eventually become the northern tip of the Yucatan Peninsula.
Lunar light from a blood-orange moon illuminates layers of geological grooves sculpted along the interior of the chalky-white limestone pit. Vegetation has turned the cenote’s placid waters a pea-soup green. Four centuries earlier, desperate after the sudden departure of Kukulcan and in direct violation of their great teacher’s law, the Maya had turned to human sacrifice, hoping their acts would force the return of the Pale Prophet. Thousands of men, women, and children had been killed on the pyramid’s summit, their hearts torn from their chests by zealous priests, their lifeless bodies kicked down the temple steps.
The cenote had been reserved for sacrificial virgins.
Unblemished females were locked in a stone steam bath for purification, then led out to its rooftop platform by ceremonial priests. Stripping the young maidens naked, the death merchants would stretch them out upon the stone structure, then use obsidian blades to cut out their h
earts or slice their throats. The virgin’s body, laden with jewelry, would then be ceremoniously tossed into the sacred well.
Only at the urging of the Jaguar Priest had the rituals finally ceased.
In the circular clearing that defines the sacred cenote, Chilam Balam stands atop the stone bath house and gazes upon the blue tide of humanity. The crowd occupies every square foot of surrounding jungle for as far as the eye can see.
And they are grumbling.
“Who is the great teacher to demand that we leave our homeland for the underworld?”
“Why should we listen to a man who deserted our people more than twenty katuns ago?”
“What if Chilam Balam is wrong? What if the bearded ones bring prosperity?”
Council members huddle with Napuctan along the far rim of the sinkhole. The rival prophet gestures at the Jaguar Priest.
Chilam Balam glances up at the heavens. The dark rift of the Milky Way slices north-south across the cosmos, its black road meeting the horizon.
Midnight passes. Nothing happens.
A stone flies past Chilam Balam’s ear. Another strikes his leg.
The prophet’s loyal followers crowd around him, forming a protective wall. His soul mate, Blood Woman, moves to his side.
Napuctun beckons from across the cenote, silencing the crowd. “The Itza have assembled, Chilam Balam. Midnight has come and gone. Why have you led us astray?”
“Does Napuctun question our great teacher?”
“I question you! Let us see if you are a worthy channel for Kukulcan. Throw the heretic and his followers into the cenote!”
The crowd amassed on the sacbe surges forward, driving Balam’s supporters over the edge of the sinkhole. Screams rend the night air.
The Jaguar Priest grabs his mate by her wrist and jumps!
Chilam Balam and Blood Woman plunge forty feet toward a surface already violated by hundreds of splashing bodies when time suddenly stops. The prophet stares, transfixed, at a droplet of water that hovers before his right eye. His bedazzled mind captures a snapshot of his soul mate’s horrified expression, her hair blown upward, each strand frozen in the moment—
—as the cenote’s waters transform into a raging falls that flow down a serpent’s throat—Xibalba Be—the dark road to the underworld.
The materializing wormhole inhales Chilam Balam and his followers into a parallel universe that, until seconds ago, never existed.
5
Not only does God definitely play dice, but He sometimes confuses us by throwing them where they can’t be seen.
—STEPHEN HAWKING,
“DOES GOD PLAY DICE?”
PEKI’IN, ISRAEL
MAY 3, 2047
“Ahh!”
Immanuel Gabriel’s azure eyes snap open. It takes him an unsettling moment before he realizes he is no longer Chilam Balam, that he is himself again, buried neck-deep in sand in front of the cave of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai.
The graying eastern horizon soothes his nerves, the dim light revealing a lone figure standing by the carob tree. Dressed in a white robe, he could be Kukulcan’s twin, save for the lack of facial hair.
“Jake?”
“I’ve missed you, Manny. I’m glad you finally reached out to communicate.”
“How did you get here? Are you even real, or is this another vision?”
“I exist, though I am no longer part of the physical realm. What you see is the reflected light of my soul.”
“Is that your way of telling me you’re dead?”
“Existence as you know it is far different from the reality of the infinite world. But yes, I died on Xibalba.”
Manny lays his head back, his eyes clouding with tears. “It’s my fault. I should have gone with you.”
“No. I was the one who was wrong. I made your life miserable. Can you see it in your heart to forgive me?”
“I forgive you, bro. I miss you.”
“Our souls will always be entwined.”
“I had a vision, Jake. It felt so real.”
“The vision was not my doing. You channeled a prior life.”
“Yeah, sure I did.”
“Every human alive today has experienced at least one past life.”
“Jake, no offense, but I’m still having a hard time believing we’re speaking, let alone—”
“Reincarnation is not about believing. It is about understanding the very nature of the soul. The soul is eternal, a spark of the Creator that desires to exist in the Upper World. There’s a lot more to this, but the physical world was created for one purpose: so that each soul has an opportunity to earn its own eternal fulfillment. The process is known as Gilgul Neshamot. A soul descends upon the physical world because it needs to make a correction, sometimes from a sin committed in a past life. If a soul lives one lifetime without fulfilling its correction, it may return three more times to complete its tikkun, its spiritual repair.”
“My soul, in a prior life, was Chilam Balam?”
“Yes.”
“And what is my purpose? What am I supposed to correct?”
“The destruction of the world.”
“The destruction of the world? Is that all? Hell, I ought to be able to handle that, no problem.”
“Manny, this is a challenge you accepted the day you refused to join me on Xibalba. By remaining behind, you altered mankind’s future. In doing so, you also changed the past.”
“You lost me.”
“The physical universe has been caught in a time loop—a time loop created by a Doomsday device tested several years before our birth. Unbeknownst to its handlers, an anomaly was created. On December 21 in the year 2012, the anomaly appeared in the physical dimension—
“—destroying the entire planet.”
The approaching dawn burns Mitchell Kurtz’s eyes. From his perch on the deserted mountain highway he can see wisps of fog gathering along the treetops below, the village of Peki’in still asleep. The bodyguard yawns, then stands and stretches. He contemplates another set of push-ups, opting instead for an energy bar.
The motion sensors in his glasses alert him to the intruder a split second before he activates his pain cannon.
“Ow!”
He traces the woman’s scream, surprised to find his new female acquaintance lying on the tarmac next to her road bike, the metal still sparking. “Arlene?”
“Albert?”
The name catches him off guard, Kurtz momentarily forgetting his new alias. Albert Phaneuf … you’re a movie producer. “Arlene, what are you doing out here?”
“Taking my morning ride. What are you doing here?”
“We just finished shooting a scene, that’s why they closed the road. Didn’t you see all the vans?”
“No.”
He helps the brunette off the ground, her well-endowed bust enhanced by her neoprene bodysuit. “Arlene, how did you get past the roadblock?”
She slips her arms around his neck, their lips inches apart. “I told them I was in your movie.”
Kurtz collapses in her arms, the paralyzed bodyguard never seeing the barbed prong of the divorced woman’s ring as it pricks the back of his neck.
“Jake, that makes no sense. If humanity was wiped out in 2012, how were we born? Why are we still here in 2047? And what kind of anomaly could annihilate an entire planet?”
“I cannot provide all the details, to do so could jeopardize your mission. What I can tell you is the anomaly’s creation and subsequent expansion into the physical universe opened wormholes, space-time portals. They are unstable and largely rendered moot … unless someone enters. In that scenario, an alternate universe is created, the repercussions of which can affect all physical existence.”
“I’m still lost. Who entered the wormhole?”
“You did. As Chilam Balam.”
The blood rushes from Manny’s face. “The cenote … But that happened more than five hundred years ago.”
“As Einstein proved, time is not linear. W
hile the anomaly bound the wormholes to Earth, some appeared in our past and present, others opened in the future. Ultimately, that’s what offered humanity a second shot at salvation. A wormhole opened in near-Earth space on July 4, 2047, again as a result of the anomaly created by the Doomsday device. Lilith’s fleet of Mars shuttles were inhaled down the time tunnel’s vortex, depositing them on Earth, only Earth millions of years in the future. The planet and cosmos were so alien, the colonists had no idea they had crash-landed on their own home world.”
“What happened to them?”
“Though the surface was barren, the sky harbored a magnificent domed city hovering in the clouds, possessing technologies so advanced they remained inaccessible to the Mars colonists. The cloud city had been abandoned, or so the colonists thought. Over time, consumption of the water supply genetically altered the colonists, allowing them access inside the alien structures. One of these vaults contained the physical remains of an advanced species of humanoids, possessing elongated skulls.
“The post-human society had split into two sects. One sought to explore the physical universe; the second desired to access the higher dimensions of existence. To do so, the latter group abandoned their physical forms to unleash their consciousness into the spiritual realm … something that violated the laws of creation.
“Lilith, my son, Devlin, and all but a few of the surviving Mars colonists discovered the post-humans’ remains. Accessing their DNA, the colonists became more powerful than they already were. In doing so, these fallen ones—the Nephilim—condemned themselves to a purgatorylike existence in a spiritual realm—an eleventh dimension ruled by the negative forces of creation. They called this realm Xibalba.”
“Xibalba is Hell? Jake, how could living beings access Hell?”
“The colonists weren’t alive. The post-human DNA had killed them, they just didn’t know it. The negative forces were feeding off their collective consciousness, making them believe they were still marooned on this alien world. Devlin became Satan’s alter ego, torturing the colonists to absorb their light. This was the netherworld our father found himself exiled in, his being harbored within a calabash tree, his soul guarded by Lilith. Mother and I were able to release him, but I was mortally wounded in the process.”