Porter smiled and nodded. He liked the idea of a being a peculiar person. Scholars—including Dr. Kinnard—could disagree with him, but they had to acknowledge that his arguments were good and worth investigating. A lot of people read his material, even when they suspected it would make them angry. They also knew John D. Porter published well-thought out material which others would jabber about, so it had to be read. No one else jeopardized their future career as frequently as Porter. But at the same time, those who read his stuff knew he had all the facts, and those facts would be presented in a manner which couldn’t be shrugged off with the same ease that Porter brought them forth.
“But you’re good at what you do.”
“I enjoy my studies,” Porter said with a smile. He wasn’t being cocky, especially because his position currently looked very unstable. He didn’t want to blow any opportunities Kinnard might present, and the humility showed in Porter’s face.
The smell of cinnamon simmered on the air.
“Do you know Dr. Ulman?” Kinnard said.
“Should I?”
“He’s a good friend of mine.” Kinnard looked at the table. “Always has been. Ulman has found something you might want to use to finish your work at Stratford. It provides a fixed argument, so you won’t have to spend time deciding your point.”
“I’ll use anything I can get my hands on,” Porter said with raised eyebrows.
“What do you know about Mesoamerica?”
“I haven’t studied anything in school,” Porter said, wondering what American history had to do with his dissertation. “But I’ve done a little research on my own…for interest’s sake.”
“I thought you might have,” Kinnard said. Porter was an excellent student. More than that, he excelled in his studies. Yes, he was eccentric, but some of the best professors were those absolutely obsessed with their work. So when Porter said he’d “done a little research,” Kinnard had no doubt that Porter’s grasp on the subject was stronger than his.
“This have something to do with my dissertation?” Porter said, scratching the back of his neck.
“You’re in a real fix,” Kinnard said, his face hardening. “You realize that?”
“Yes I do.”
“My colleagues know what caliber of student you are. It would look real bad on my record as your supervising professor, if you of all people failed to complete the requirements of Stratford University in the last seconds of a long, drawn-out game.”
“Wouldn’t want to blemish your reputation, sir,” Porter said. “I’ll do my best to rectify my situation.”
“That would be wise.” Kinnard said. Porter realized his supervising professor looked as bad today as he had the last time they’d met. Maybe even worse. His hair was askew, his eyes puffy, not to mention his peculiar paranoia.
“So what did you bring?” Porter said. He noticed Kinnard had a difficult time looking him in the eye. Kinnard’s hands fidgeted, and Porter wondered if the professor was taking this a little too personally. After all, it was Porter’s problem, not Kinnard’s.
“Dr. Ulman…my friend…” Kinnard said, “was working on something he found in the southern mountains of Guatemala.”
Porter sat up.
“I understand that at first it didn’t look like much. Another mound, buried in a Central American forest, but Ulman was led on by an ancient tale told by a few of the locals whose small families reportedly lived in the area for the last fifteen-hundred years.”
“A story?” said Porter.
“About a sacred place…destroyed by the hands of an ancient god, or something,” said Kinnard. “Ulman said it was a fascinating tale, all of which he would tell me after he returned to the states.”
“But he hasn’t come back,” said Porter.
Kinnard spoke, staring at Porter’s hot chocolate. “He found something. Wouldn’t even tell me about it at first. He said it was really big.”
“What, a Central American Jurassic Park? I’ve seen movies about lost—” Porter stopped.
With eyes hardening into marble, Kinnard stabbed his way into Porter’s gaze.
“I’m sorry. Dr. Ulman,” said Porter, “he’s an archaeologist?”
“Professor of Archaeology here at Stratford. He was down there for more than six months before he wrote me the first time. A memo.” Kinnard looked back at the table. Porter sensed that his professor’s mind had left the United States and was heading south. “Ulman said he’d written others as well. Seems he found something no one else would believe. Of course, we all like the sound of that, don’t we. But now I realize his words were accurate.”
Porter didn’t nod. Intrigue and questions colored his gray eyes.
“Ulman sent me more, since that time, and…I don’t know how to explain what he’s found. Or what he thinks he’s located.” Kinnard looked Porter squarely in the eye. “You might want to explain it.”
“Tell me more,” said Porter, sipping from his scalding mug.
Kinnard sighed. “Seems that Ulman discovered a book.”
“I found one recently in my closet under a pile of clothes I didn’t know was there. What makes this book special?”
A red flush filled Kinnard’s face and the muscles in his jaw flexed. “I’m trying to save you from your mistakes, Porter, remember that! You may be a smart student, but there’s a big difference between intelligence and wisdom. Intelligence will get you through the university, but only wisdom can get you out with a doctorate! Up till now, you have not proven your brains!”
“Dr. Kinnard!” Bruno said, coming to the rescue out of nowhere. Of course the old man couldn’t let fights disrupt the cozy spirit of his place. “Can I get you something to drink?”
Kinnard let all the hot air rush out of him before looking up. He relaxed the muscles in his face as best as he could and said, without eyeing the old man for more than a second, “Coffee.”
Bruno turned with a smile. “One cup, com’n up!”
Porter relaxed, though he hadn’t realized the extent of his building tension.
Kinnard started again. “The book Ulman found appears, according to his analysis, to be a codex dating somewhere around 500 BC.”
“What’s it written on?” Porter said, intrigue in his tone.
“Paper,” Kinnard said without looking up from the fries on which he’d suddenly focused.
Porter waved a hand for him to have some. “A paper book?”
Kinnard shook his head at the food. “It’s not that uncommon.”
“I know. Two manuscripts made of bark paper were found at Mirador, but no one’s been able to separate the fused pages. I believe they dated to somewhere around AD 450. But I am not aware of any other paper codices recently discovered in the Ancient Americas.”
Kinnard nodded, gazing at the table as though ashamed of what he was saying. But that was an absurd idea, Porter thought. “Ulman’s codex isn’t glued together,” said Kinnard, putting a fry in his mouth. “The pages are in beautiful condition. But they hold something we never could have predicted.”
“What’s that?” Porter said. He swallowed the rest of his hot chocolate and put the cup on the end of the table for a refill, never taking his eyes off of Kinnard’s bald spot. “How’d Ulman find a book that wasn’t cemented together? Was it a scroll?”
Kinnard kept his eyes on the table, only looking up once in awhile. “You would come up with that, wouldn’t you.”
“Excuse me?”
After a deep breath, Kinnard spoke. “You’re a…a member of the LDS church, aren’t you?”
“I…am,” Porter said, his head bobbing with growing curiosity.
As if to divert any awkward feelings, Kinnard asked, “What does that stand for again?”
“Well, the full name is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It’s that last part which differentiates us from other churches…by name anyway.”
“I had an LDS friend growing up in Illinois. Learned it was wrong to call you ‘Mormon
s’.”
Porter smiled. “Well, it’s not bad. Most people don’t understand where the term ‘Mormon’ came from. You know that along with the Bible we read the Book of Mormon. Evidently, those who didn’t belong to the church gave us the title ‘Mormons’ based on our scriptures. It may have been an insult a long time ago. Some might even have negative feelings toward the use of the nick-name, but I don’t really care. It’s almost a household word now. Think about it. What do you see in your head when you hear the word ‘Mormon’?”
“White shirts and ties on bicycles.”
“Right,” Porter said, pointing a finger.
Bruno delivered the coffee with a smile and disappeared again. Neither of the customers seemed very intent on eating.
Porter went on. “Mormon missionaries. Clean cut, young, smiling, nice guys that you’d never expect to commit a crime. Kind of the ideal young man.” He shifted in his seat. “I don’t see any insult in that image. If the name brings to mind an old-fashioned all-American reflection, then I don’t mind the name.”
Kinnard nodded. “As a Mormon, then, you believe in transoceanic contact between the Old World and the New, prior to, let’s say, the Viking arrival ‘round the year 1000.”
Porter nodded.
“Well, then you should love this codex.”
“Why…does it back up that argument?”
Leaning forward in his chair, Kinnard said softly, “Ulman’s codex may be something of a Rosetta Stone. The book is written in two languages on every page. That’s a good thing, because Dr. Ulman can barely make out one of the languages. The second he can’t decipher at all. But he says it’s only guesswork at present.”
“You’re giving the book to me,” said Porter.
“You couldn’t be worse off, Porter,” said Kinnard. “Not unless you’d been shot and left to die, anyway. Ulman’s a good man…and he’s my friend. I think he’ll understand after he gets back. You will of course need to give Ulman credit for the physical discovery.”
Porter imagined the writing on this Mesoamerican ‘Rosetta Stone.’ All students of Ancient Near Eastern Studies were familiar with the real Rosetta Stone, the big slab of black basalt found in 1799 by an unknown person. The rock contained a text praising an Egyptian king, Ptolemy V Epiphanes (203-181 BC), written in Egyptian Hieroglyphics, then in Demotic, which some termed New Egyptian or Egyptian Short Hand, and then in Greek. Before 1822, scholars had not yet conquered the Egyptian writing system. But in September of the same year, a Frenchman by the name of Jean-Francois Champollion, realizing the message was being repeated in all three languages and finding specific names in each text, presented a paper deciphering the obscure glyphs for the first time to the Academie des Inscriptions. The result was a blaze of excitement concerning Egyptology throughout Europe. Champollion changed the world, an opportunity that both Porter and Kinnard could only hope for.
So why was Kinnard giving Dr. Ulman’s find to Porter for study?
“A new Mesoamerican script?” said Porter.
“Ulman could read a little of the first set of characters on the page. Maybe the language is just an older version of characters common to the area, I don’t know; I don’t read any of those languages. But that was the writing Ulman could read to some degree.”
Porter blinked and thought he misunderstood.
“Ulman couldn’t read the second language on the page…” Kinnard said.
They both looked straight into each other. Porter felt the room warm around him. Perhaps it was his own blood pulsing faster just beneath his skin.
“…but…I thought I recognized letters of the second script,” said Kinnard. “You might be able to decode it, Porter.”
“But I…don’t know any ancient American languages.”
“Neither do I.”
CHAPTER SIX
April 1
3:00 p.m. PST
Erma Alred closed the door behind her. The room had far too many people in it for a casual discussion between Professor Masterson and herself as she had planned. But as the head of the Department of Ancient History and Anthropology at Stratford University, Dr. Masterson could do what he wanted.
“Good morning Ms. Alred,” Masterson said with a bloated smile as he stood to shake her hand, “Right on time as usual.”
Evidently the other four men in the room had come early, though she hadn’t the faintest idea why. They watched her as she shook Masterson’s hand. She eyed them closely, but also casually. She recognized a few faces, she thought, but couldn’t be sure.
Masterson raised a hand to the only empty chair around the rectangular table. “Have a seat.”
“Thank you,” she said, sitting down. The room smelled like old pipe smoke, memories of the professors who first ran Stratford University. Masterson’s cordiality confused her. Never before had he treated her with so much respect. She had come to the office hoping to discuss her proposal for her dissertation, which she’d been working on since last semester. She had plenty of time to change it, so she wasn’t pressured with that.
But Alred had learned that Masterson, who served as her supervising professor, was a difficult man to sway from his own stubborn opinions. He had plenty of ideas and was sick of being kicked around by other professors who thought they had more efficient or effective plans. Bitterness had swallowed him long ago and kept him boiling in a stomach of acidic antagonism. As he had told her many times, he hadn’t climbed his way to the top, he’d fought his way. He didn’t expect others to follow his example and rather hoped they didn’t.
Alred looked forward to working in a university back east, if at all possible, when her studies ended at Stratford. Masterson said he’d made up his mind to mold her into a killer in the field. She could go far in Mesoamerican scholarship, if she knew what she was doing.
Alred never worried much about her future. Having been raised by a fine instructor of mathematics, Alred found there was a logical side to everything. The anxieties of most people were unnecessary. Those who worried about relationships, for example, usually caused more problems fretting over negative possibilities than would have occurred naturally. Stress leads to self-fulfilling prophecies, Alred told her friends. Most people didn’t realize that. General ignorance and self-promoted apathy was the greatest problem in the world, she believed. Thus, Alred didn’t cope well with those who were always coming up with excuses. She just shook her head and wondered why people didn’t take control of their lives instead of letting others boss them around. Pro-activity led Alred to higher levels of success than most others would be able to enjoy.
Masterson turned quickly to the other men in the tight room. Indicating each with a relaxed hand, he said, “Ms. Alred, this is Dr. Goldstien, Dr. Arnott, Dr. Wilkinson, and Dr. Kinnard.”
“Pleased to meet you,” she said, maintaining the odd cordiality, and throwing out the idea that she would discuss her dissertation at all today. While pushing back a lock of red hair over her right ear with her fingers, she grumbled inside, but let the feeling pass.
Goldstien smiled—probably at how well Alred’s neatly kept fingernail polish, her lipstick, and the red hair blended in a singular color. It wasn’t a perfectly red shade, but rather a light auburn. She sensed he was one of those who were amused at how women were able to play with make-up to enhance what was already there; a typical low-class man who couldn’t get married or had been, but quite unhappily so. He liked her, and didn’t hide it well. But she figured Goldstien didn’t care if she knew it. He projected himself as one who found the rule prohibiting professors dating students a little juvenile and old-fashioned.
Alred avoided further eye contact with Goldstien. She could feel his gaze easily enough, and sat with determination on her face. But again, she wasn’t worried. Her passive guardian—her Uncle Alan—had enrolled her in a martial arts class at an early age. She’d grown up with the reputation of beating up the boys in her Junior High school. Alred had the peace of mind of knowing she could break a man twice her
size, were he to try something, no matter how dark it was and no matter what alley they were in.
With his big smile, Masterson sat down, slapped his hands on the ends of the armrests, and sighed. He looked happy, and Alred knew it was all a front. She suspected everyone else saw the same picture, but couldn’t be sure. She scanned her eyes over the other three men.
Dr. Arnott smiled with his thin lips, but it really did look fake. His eyes sagged and looked too much at the table. The fingers of his left hand played against the knuckles of his right as he rested both elbows on the lightly varnished wood.
Dr. Wilkinson, dressed in a brown suit dating to the early nineteen-seventies, kept his eyes on Masterson. It was obvious he was waiting for something.
Dr. Kinnard stared seriously at the table, and as far as Alred could determine, he hadn’t looked up since she’d entered.
Underneath, they all trembled with seriousness, she thought, and the subject obviously dealt with her.
“How are things?” said Masterson.
It felt as awkward as it sounded.
Alred decided to get right to the subject and spoke honestly. “I thought we were going to discuss my dissertation.”
Masterson nodded. “That’s the plan.”
“With all due respect,” she said, “what do these gentlemen have to do with my thesis. Am I in trouble?” She knew she wasn’t, but felt slightly agitated and didn’t want to admit it. She was used to being in control of her life, and this situation was highly irregular.
Masterson continued to nod. Then quite suddenly, he leaned forward in his chair and clasped his hands together. “Ms. Alred, we’ve come up with a great idea for your dissertation.”
“I was…was under the assumption that the student chose the subject of her final argument,” she said. Her face remained relaxed, though all her muscles grew firm.
The Kukulkan Manuscript Page 5