“Right, in 1524, a general under Cortez forced the Quiche to surrender, burning their capital city, Utatlan.”
“You know some American history,” Alred said, her eyes relaxing. “The Popol Vuh was one of the few books that survived the period. Most of the native libraries were decimated by the Spanish inquisition, ruining our chance to obtain a detailed history of the Maya.”
“Some Mayan codices survived the Conquest,” Porter said quickly.
“Most are fakes.” Alred crossed her legs. “The Popol Buj, or Popol Vuh as you call it, was only one of four authentic works we know of. What about it?”
“Well, you know it is a collection of oral tales recorded by the Quiche nobles,” said Porter.
“I am well aware of the book’s background, Porter. Do you also know that we don’t have the original?”
“Is that supposed to preclude what I’m about to say?”
Alred paused. “I’m the Mesoamerican scholar here.”
“I…realize that. That’s why I think you’ll appreciate this. Especially in light of our new study. I have the book right here.” He picked up an English copy from under a thick lexicon of Hebrew words. “Listen to this: ‘…they planned the creation.’”
“Is that why we’re talking about the Popol Vuh?”
Porter looked at her, shock on his face.
Was she supposed to understand something in all this rhetoric?
“It says the same thing in the Book of Genesis.”
“I thought the Bible defines one god as the creator,” Alred said as Porter reached into his briefcase and pulled out his scriptures.
He put them on the table and Alred’s eyes widened. The black book with worn gilding was at least three inches thick, and as he opened it, she could see the onion skin pages. “Here. Genesis 1:26. ‘And God said, Let us make….’” He shot his face up at Alred’s.
“What happened to Judeo-Christian Monotheism?” said Alred.
“Vayomer elohim vaaseh adam btsalmenu kdmutenu. The Hebrew word for God in this verse is Elohim. As in Cherubim and Seraphim, the -im implies plurality, just as -es in the English language. And the gods in this scene are obviously planning to come down and create. Here: chapter 2 verse 4 and 5: ‘…in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, and every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew…’
“‘Thus it was created in the darkness and in the night by the heart of heaven,’ says the Popol Vuh.” Porter looked up from his books.
Alred nodded. “Is that the Mormon in you speaking, or the scholar.” She didn’t know why she listened. She was sure she could find a Jew capable of explaining why their monotheistic religion had a deity with a name implying plurality.
“The scholar, actually!”
“You’ll bring up The Books of Chilam Balam next,” said Alred.
“You know I can find Semitic relations with the name Balam, but I wanted to point out the Popol Vuh. See these names?” he indicated the pad again. “I’ll read them for you.”
“Please.” Alred closed her eyes.
“This one, Vucub Cakish, a main character in the book,” he said. “Did I pronounce that right?”
She nodded.
“And this…Xbalanque.”
“Small Jaguar,” Alred said, opening her eyes and folding her arms.
“What?”
“That’s what the name means.”
“Well,” said Porter, “both correspond to…names in the Book of Mormon. But neither Vucub Cakish nor Xbalanque were available to scholars let alone anyone else until Carl Scherzer translated the text in Vienna from the original language into Spanish in 1857…many years after the publication of the Book of Mormon.”
“Really,” she said, skepticism in her voice. “What Book of Mormon names exactly.”
“Well in a section called the Book of Ether, there is a person by the name Akish. That’s not a stone’s throw from Cakish.”
“But ambiguous enough for debate,” said Alred.
“True. The second might take a deeper dive, but look. Break up the name Xbalanque. Of course the x in older Spanish and Portuguese languages is pronounced sh. And you know vowel shifts are common enough that rarely can we trust vowels at all in etymology.”
“Okay, you’ve effectively turned Xbalanque into the word SH-B-L-N-Q,” said Alred. “Where’s your correlation.”
Was she humoring him? Or just hoping he’d get it over with.
“Do you believe the q with an n preceding it could fall off the end of a word?”
“Why not.”
Porter tightened his lips together, then softened. “And an m is interchangeable with an n?”
“Are you patronizing me?” she said lifting her brow. “We all know p and b, t and d, k and g, l and r, and other such combinations can be found in the evolution of languages. Balam and Balan are essentially the same name. What’s your point.”
“There is both a Shiblon…and a Shiblom in the Book of Mormon. Incidentally, the Hopi Amerindian tribe professes even today that they come from the ‘great red city of the south.’”
“Oh, really,” she said, relaxing with the realization that the further Porter babbled into American anthropology and philology, the more he left behind his area of scholarly specialty.
“Yes. There is a similar mention in the Book of Mormon about groups of people departing a city they called Zarahemla. By a strange coincidence, in Arabic, dar or zar is one word for settlement, and ahmar means red. Zarahamra and Zarahemla,” Porter tilted his head. “Could be nothing, but seems enough evidence to at least warrant serious consideration of transoceanic contact with the Old World even without Ulman’s codex.”
“Did our conversation just leave the Popol Vuh?” said Alred.
“The Mayan Indians possess plenty of proofs of Near East connections if you ask me,” said Porter.
“All long shots?” said Alred. “Give me one.”
Porter raised a hand and let it flop as if he’d already spoken his thought. He grabbed his copy of the Popol Vuh, flipped the torn up pages, and read a line. “‘In this way they carried Avilix to the ravine called Euabal-Zivan,’ pardon my pronunciation, ‘so named by them, to the large ravine of the forest, now called Pavilix….’ Pavilix, in Mayan—”
“Means in Avilix,” said Alred. “Tell me your amazing fact.”
Porter didn’t speak, his face shining as if it was obvious. “The Mayan prefix p can be defined in?”
“That’s right.”
“The letter b is simply a voiced p.”
“Are we back to sound shifts?”
“The Hebrew mirrors the Mayan in this case. B is the prefix used at the very beginning of the Torah or the Old Testament: B-reshit bara Elohim et ha-shamaim vet ha-aretz. B-reshit, in the beginning….See it?”
“And what does this have to do with our precious KM-2?”
Alred realized she was sitting in a tight ball, limbs wrapped together like tape, strapping her to the chair. Her eyes had found their usual hard stare. Her skin had paled in the dim library light. Her auburn hair had turned to dark gray.
Licking his lips, Porter visibly debated his response. “I…found something even better while translating. Something I know…you won’t believe.”
“I’ll believe anything less subjective than the ride you just took me on,” she said. “What.”
Porter scratched his forehead and gazed at the shelves around him, holding volumes of their own secrets. “I probably shouldn’t…say…yet.”
“Because we’re at war?” she said, leaning forward and propping her hands on her knees as if about to spring at him. She tried to loosen at least her shoulders. “Or because you’re not sure about your facts?”
Porter sagged in his seat. The fire in his pupils dimmed. “Alred…I’m not trying to fight you. I really wish we could work together on this. That’s what Kinnard wanted us to do.”
So little he knew, she thought, sq
uinting with her eyes and her lips.
“Do you have the codex here?” she said.
“I do,” he said.
“You go everywhere with it?”
“No,” he said, before holding his breath. “I hide it in the vent in my office. The heat’s not too bad for it.”
“We should trade off,” said Alred, thinking him foolish with the manuscript, “a day at a time.”
Porter made his mouth into a tight line and nodded.
Alred stood.
“I guess you got the carbon dating results,” Porter said.
“That why you forgot about our meeting at Bruno’s?” Alred drew a manila envelope from her portfolio.
“Are you asking me if I’m insecure about the results?”
Alred stood in silence, waiting, the envelope in her hands.
He stared at it. “Tell me, when was the Valley of Guatemala populated…according to the facts?”
She said nothing.
Porter listened.
The delicious smell of dry paper moistened the air around them—the splendor of all good libraries.
“Archeological evidence suggest 600 BCE,” Alred said.
He smiled. “Then I’m not worried a bit!”
Taking a breath, Alred looked at her package. “There’s been a delay. Dr. Atkins wants to take another cut of the codex.”
“She’ll burn it all if she has the chance.” Porter took KM-2 carefully in his hands and slipped it into a brown paper sack. “What’s that,” he said, looking at her envelope.
Alred pushed her lips to one side of her mouth, looking at it. She pulled at the manila flap and withdrew a folded sheet of newspaper. “Dr. Masterson wanted me to give this to you.”
Porter stood and took the gray paper, the ink smudged all over it. The obituaries stared at him. Highlighted, he found the name Dennis GEOFFREY Albright, Ph.D.
“What?!” He scanned the words too fast and had to back up to figure out what had happened. “A heart attack?”
“While jogging,” said Alred. “Some at the University…seem to think he was murdered.”
Porter slumped back into his seat. He touched the corner of his mouth with a couple fingers and stared at nothing. “We never found out what happened to Dr. Ulman…Wilkinson.”
Her right eyebrow lifted and she frowned. She came close to the table. “Porter. Albright died of natural causes.”
“I bet Kinnard doesn’t think so? He knows Albright personally, if I remember right.” Like a hypnotized bug, Porter gazed at the florescent light on his table. “What’s their…connection?”
A flash of memory hit Alred like a two-by-four. She saw Kinnard slumped on one end of the table, his hands rubbing his temples; Masterson standing as she walked into the room; Goldstien smiling at her…too much; Arnott, quiet like a little devil with sharp eyes; and Wilkinson in his dusty suit….
She shook away the image and said, “You think someone wants Dr. Ulman’s KM codices.”
Porter said nothing for a moment. He looked at Alred with a serious grin. “Scholars are human too. Mankind has this nasty habit of doing things they really shouldn’t…including genocide. Question is, where does that put two doctoral candidates working a hundred-miles-an-hour on the same task as dying professors?”
Alred pulled her head back.
* * *
She looked troubled when she left. Porter couldn’t blame her.
But he had too much work to do. And if someone wanted to kill him over it, he had to do it even more quickly. Time to figure things out. All the implications.
His eyes stung with lack of sleep. He didn’t dare look at his watch.
He glanced for only a second at the manila envelope with the edge of the obituaries poking out.
The library would be open all night. The same every weekday. It was a new policy the students had fought for just last year. A bit revolutionary, but Porter took advantage of it. Librarians dimmed the lights after 10:00, probably as a tactic to dissuade students from coming after that hour. If no one came, the managers could fight the board for the right to close at a decent hour again. They’d win.
Porter rubbed his face and looked around.
He knew someone was on the lower level, but the fourth floor was devoid of life, save himself…and a cricket he thought he’d heard half-an-hour earlier somewhere beyond the stairs. Fourth floor! What a feat that must have been for a little black insect that couldn’t fly! He thought about it until he saw himself as the insect, climbing the cream-colored walls, the naked stairs, the bookcases, not knowing where he was going.
Lost among the stacks, Porter the cricket dug his way through the volumes. Skipping from one title to the next. Hoping he’d find some direction, a clue to the way up or out.
Whisper.
What was that? He spun around too fast. His cricket legs rubbed and a chirp erupted.
Cats weren’t aloud in the library. But he could sense them sliding through the bases of the shelves.
He couldn’t outclimb the creatures. He couldn’t hide motionless forever. If the felines didn’t see him, they’d hear him, smell him, track him down by following his droppings….
“Shhhh!”
Porter lifted his head from his books and note pads.
He’d dropped to sleep.
But he heard the whisper again.
In his mind, he replayed the shush shouted in silent breath, like a wind let loose among the catacomb halls of manuscripts. Yet, he knew no sound escaped anyone’s lips.
He thought about Albright, running….
Footsteps on the stairs.
He pictured Wilkinson with the letter opener in his back.
Closer now, but slower…more careful…quiet….
Dr. Ulman….
Silently, Porter stood.
Wailing metal against wood, the chair betrayed him. The sound echoed from each shelf to the wall to the stairs.
The codex.
Porter took it, still in its brown bag. The paper whispered to the cricket.
Sleep choked Porter’s brain. He tried to shake it away. Now was a good time for adrenaline. Gazing with wide eyes at the stairs, he saw the shadows of people rising from below.
Had the librarians gathered to mob the one student who dared to stay all night?
Unlikely.
Imagination.
But on his mission in Japan, Porter had learned to trust his feelings.
He took up his briefcase with one hand, slipping his notes into it quickly. He bit his lips with his teeth. He grabbed the paper with Albright’s death notice and dived into the shelves.
Through the volumes, Porter saw the men in black. Nice suits. Turtleneck shirts under the coats. Very stylish. But why all dark?
The guns weren’t hidden. Nine millimeter. Silencers?
Only two of them.
Had Porter served as a Marine, he might have opted to fight and find out who these men were.
But he was a scholar.
The pen may be mightier than the sword, but books don’t deflect bullets.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
April 22
1:40 a.m. PST
The ghost appeared that very same minute.
Alred couldn’t see it directly. It was a shadow in a raven black room. Standing. Breathing. Watching her rest.
She knew she’d been asleep, for a moment earlier she was in the grand Victorian house of her great aunt who lived in Peru, Nebraska. But the house wasn’t the same as it had been when she’d visited as a child. She was quite young again, but that didn’t matter. The walls were whiter than she remembered, the ceilings higher. The house swayed in the wind on a hill of green that hadn’t been there. And she wept deeply, seeing the grave stone bordered with pansies and other flowers, pink and yellow, which she didn’t recognize. Carved in the granite were the words, JACQUELYN ALRED.
Alred loved her great aunt. No relative had been so kind, making sweet cookies with peanut butter or chocolate chips on the rare occas
ions when she’d come over. She’d only seen the woman as many times as she had fingers on one hand. But Alred cried when she saw the stone. And tears covered both cheeks as she wandered round the mansion—three times bigger than she remembered it—with the soon-to-be new owners.
The house no longer belonged to the family. There was no more family. She had to leave.
Standing on the grass which leaned and relaxed repeatedly in the comforting breeze, Alred said her good-byes….
And was in her room again, awake and aware that something else phased in and out of the molecules of darkness around her.
She looked…but didn’t turn on her light.
Of course there was no one—
“Alred….”
The apparition stood where it didn’t, oscillating like a mirage of shadow, there…but not there…then….
“Alred, can you hear me?” said the fiend, the monster that shouldn’t be.
The door was closed, locked, the window sealed.
“I’ve come…to speak to you.”
She smashed her pillow with the back of her head.
Alred could smell sulfur in the musty air.
The phantom looked at her, waiting for a reply. It had no feet she could see, no facial features but those it created to look human, no hands at all for they were too complex to mimic well. It was a cold breeze holding still in the tepid room.
“What do you want?” she said.
“Alred…can you hear me?” said the ghost.
“Of course I can hear you,” she said before realizing the mouth of the monster didn’t move in conjunction with the words that came out. It was like an old film from a foreign country, poor black and white, with the actors shifting their tongue behind bobbing lips while no sound worked with them. Even now, the vaporous man opened his mouth and beckoned with unheard words. He spoke for nearly ten seconds before she heard anything.
With his arms at his side the shadow with features said, “I don’t dare touch you.”
“You got that right!” she said, realizing if she turned on the light he would cease to be.
“But I’ve…brought you something. And I need you to listen.”
“Go away,” said Alred, tears still in her eyes from her dream. But the words had no force by the time they left her throat.
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