“Okay,” Keith said. “Who are the Olmecs? And what kind of Mother Goddess did they have?”
“There is not much mention of women at all,” Sophie admitted. “Later cultures – Aztec and Mayan – have many goddesses, but there isn’t one we can certainly say was Olmec. There’s so little to go on. Pottery, evidence that they used cocoa, rubber balls, and various kinds of stone and wood sculptures. Archaeologists speculate all kinds of religious practices – there are strange statues with figures that seem to be part human and part jaguar. There are also huge stone heads. Secularists are so busy attributing everything to religious practice we cannot get any objective information. Even the written language, since it is pictographic, is almost untranslated.”
“There is the association with mirrors and spiders,” Naddy said. “Those seem to indicate a female influence.” Sophie glared at him. “What?” he asked. “What about the Spider Woman?”
“That is Aztec. Much later,” Sophie said. “Don’t talk foolishness.”
“Perhaps the Spider Woman is an echo of an earlier leader,” Naddy said. “Consider the Scripture that says, The spider takes hold with her hands, and is in kings’ palaces. A spider’s web extends her influence. She knows every movement within its sphere.
“A merchant woman could have an extensive network of contacts. She could both be warned of approaching danger, and have the means to share the message of truth. Olmec pottery has been found in many places. So have the rubber balls. They had some way of vulcanizing, all those centuries ago.”
“So how would the mirrors fit into your theory?” Fran asked. “Just because women are the ones who mostly use them? A mirror is a pretty prized trade item, too, isn’t it? People use them for signaling, and for other things.”
“Indeed,” Naddy agreed. “Again, the religious theories overwhelm any chance of learning fact. Obsidian and hematite mirrors are spoken of as being portals into the spirit world. They are often set into the eyes of the gods in later statuary.”
“A mirror gives you a look at yourself,” Bart said. “Like when the Scriptures say a person sees himself in a mirror, but goes his way, forgetting what he’s supposed to be. Maybe that’s what the mirrors were really for. To remind people to clean up their act. It’s a physical picture of our spiritual need to remember God’s constant presence and our responsibility to be right before Him. He can always see us. That’s the true portal to another world – the connection God has chosen to make with human beings. Those people corrupted that into their false gods being able to see them, or the ability to become like them by crossing over into their world.”
“That makes sense,” Keith said. “Still, I’m not a big fan of calling our third daughter-in-law of Noah the Spider Woman. That sounds creepy.”
“We can hold off on naming her until we’re a little more certain we’ve found her.” Talia laughed. “After all, we’ve already established that the Spider Woman came later. We still don’t have a real Olmec woman in leadership or any other capacity.”
“Not so sure Britomartis and Pipali qualify as real women, either.” Keith shrugged. “We’ve inferred a lot about them from some images. All of this is just theory. It’s the danger of persecution, and the need to prevent the Great Thirst, that we’re focusing on. We need to be reasonably sure we’ll find tablets where the Olmecs live before we take off.”
“I may be able to help you with that,” Eva said. “I’m from Mexico, remember? I got interested in the Olmec culture after the folks who were working down there rescued me. I started tracing my ancestry back, and my people lived in Veracruz, the area where the Olmecs were. There are descendants of the Olmecs who still live there, and I have contact information for them.”
David popped his head in the side door, drenched in sweat and breathing hard. “The kids are ready to give up trying to catch me,” he said. “Who’s teaching today?”
“I am!” Joshua Bradley exclaimed, jumping up. “Thank you, David. Well, keep us posted, Mr. and Mrs. Bradley. Don’t go running off too quickly. You may have forgotten, but school is starting up in about three weeks.”
Keith and Talia stared at each other as the meeting broke up and the others drifted away. “School!” Keith exclaimed.
“I never even thought about starting school again,” Talia said. “We need lesson plans … ohhh!”
“We need to find out if Jiggly made it out of surgery okay first,” Keith said.
“Yes. But what if we plan another trip, as soon as we’re sure of where we should go, for the Bible as Literature class at Spring Break?”
“That sounds perfect.” Keith kissed her, grabbed her hand, and they ran off to the hospital wing to find out about Jiggly.
Chapter Sixty-six – School Days
Keith couldn’t shake the surreal feeling of returning to Bradley Central for another school year. The place had been a second home to him all his life, but everything that had once been familiar to him had changed in the last year. Most of it seemed to be in a good way, thankfully.
The school board had been more than a little shaken by the events of last year, but an unexpected personal conference call scheduled by Dr. Williams had done much to reassure them. Keith had thought it strange that the state had switched gears from plowing Bradley Central under to reinstating everything back to the way it had been. Dr. Williams had dismissed their uncertainties with an off-handed reference to mistakes and misunderstandings. She insisted that the Bible as Literature program was alive and well, grants included.
Brad Shannon had helped the Bradleys get some compensation for the invasive and destructive search of their home. No charges had ever been filed and the search was ruled unjustified. The remodeling had included turning Joana and Keith’s rooms into guest rooms where Dan, Naddy and Sophia, or any of the rest of their friends could stay. Grandma Bradley was able to return to her senior apartments after being on the waiting list only a few weeks.
Naddy and Sophia insisted on going down to their colleagues working at an Olmec site to try to pin down whether the third daughter-in-law of Noah might really be found there. David and Cindee had announced their engagement on the last day of camp, much to the delight of the campers. They accompanied Naddy and Sophie on the trip to Veracruz about a month after school started.
Their initial findings were promising. Interviews with the local contacts Eva had suggested opened their eyes to things they had not considered before. Keith and Talia felt a little out of the loop when Sophie and Naddy remained vague about their findings, but it seemed more and more likely that they would be headed for Veracruz during Christmas vacation.
Jiggly the Cyborg, as he now preferred to be called, moved to a rehabilitation center in the “big city” where Keith had attended college. Dr. Ewing kept a watchful eye on his progress and Keith and Talia kept in touch with him too. Naddy and Sophia kept him on the payroll and promised he would be included in the search for the third daughter-in-law of Noah whenever he was ready to re-join the team.
Things began to seem almost normal to Keith as he settled into the routine of Science classes, occasional PE subbing, and Bible as Literature responsibilities. Even more kids signed up this year. They ended up starting in the auditorium when the class outgrew the largest classroom, while grant and insurance money allowed for a wall to be knocked out and a larger classroom to be built. Sam Ewing was happy to take on the task.
Keith was dimly aware that all three parents who had caused trouble last year, the Sheldons, the Holdens, and the Gregorys, were back this year, but after a month he still hadn’t heard any complaining. He had to chuckle over their fears that those families were part of the conspiracy among Dr. Williams, Jenny Kaine, and the three families, to get Bradley Central shut down, or at least to stop the work of preparing for the Great Thirst.
One day as he prepared to leave school Keith got a message that Mr. Holden wanted to meet with him. “Are you sure he meant me and not my dad?” he asked the school secretary.
�
�I’m sure he said Mr. Keith Bradley, not Mr. Joshua Bradley,” the secretary said with a smile. “They’ve been quiet a long time, haven’t they? I guess it’s time to start making a fuss again.”
“Well, I do have Ruan in Earth Science this year.” Keith rubbed the back of his neck. “Maybe it’s about that.”
“He said it was about the air filtration system,” the secretary said. “And he said it was urgent. He said he’d wait in the teachers’ lunch area next to the cafeteria, in case you had time to see him now. Might be best to get it over with.”
“Fine,” Keith sighed. “Please tell my wife where I am, and that I’ll just catch a ride home with my dad.”
“Hey, Mr. Holden,” Keith said, shaking hands with the man as he rose from a seat in the small room off the main cafeteria. “What can I do for you?”
“I wanted to show you something,” he said, producing a black plastic bag. “I’m kind of hesitant to open it, but I don’t think it’s really dangerous. Just … troubling.”
He undid the tie at the top of the bag and showed Keith a collection of crumbling notebooks, vinyl covers, empty spiral bindings, and parts of cards and loose papers. Most of the contents of the bag was a pile of grayish-white dust at the bottom.
“Where did you get these?” Keith asked. “Are those Bibles in there?”
“Yes, among other things,” Mr. Holden replied. “My wife and I – we quit going to church years ago, before Ruan was born. But my brother is quite religious, and he leads a Bible study for some disadvantaged kids in the city. They were contacted about that Bible archiving project, or whatever it’s called, that the government said it was doing, and he collected all the kids’ study materials for them to scan.
“They gave him grant money to rent a better place to hold his meetings – he was able to get kitchen facilities and make some hot meals and so on for the children. He admits he and his wife didn’t have a lot of money to start out with, to invest in buying the kids’ supplies, so they just got cheap notebooks and five-dollar Bibles and even some used things. They stored everything in cupboards over the summer, and when he was opening up, getting ready to start up again this year, this is what he found.”
Keith looked Mr. Holden in the eye. “My dad told you about the radiation we detected after the scanning crew was here last year, right?”
“Yes, but he said it wasn’t likely to cause any harm. They gave out those filtration systems, with the radiation cleaners built in, just as a precaution. Isn’t that correct?”
“We haven’t found that any people suffered harm,” Keith replied. “But my grandfather’s old Bible turned into a dust pile earlier this summer. I’m sure you heard about the … explosion … that went off here at the school this summer. Sam Ewing, the inspector, said he detected radioactivity and had to perform a cleanup. A lot of the student supplies left here over the summer had disintegrated and he ended up destroying everything that had been irradiated.”
“Irradiated! Someone set off a dirty bomb at the school?” Mr. Holden turned white.
“It was a very low dose,” Keith hastened to reassure him. “There’s no danger now.”
“We didn’t hear anything about this. Why wasn’t it all over the news?”
“I’m not sure,” Keith said. “Maybe they were too busy trying to blame the bombing on me, or my wife, or my father.”
“My wife told me about those rumors. In fact – Mrs. Sheldon and Mrs. Gregory and she were all saying –” He stopped and looked away. “Now look, Mr. Bradley. We may have had differences of opinion over facilities and a few complaints about policies, but we didn’t come here to run you people out of town. At least, I didn’t. Now, about these Bible study materials – you say another Bible has disintegrated, like these have?”
“Yeah. We’ve heard stories here and there about others, too, since that happened. I suspect there are more we don’t know about.”
“Ruan was getting quite interested in that website over the summer – the one where the Bible study materials were scanned and stored for the government project. He annoyed my wife with all his questions, and his complaints that it didn’t seem to work right most of the time.
“He was right, though. I tried to help him with it, just to stop hearing about it, and it hardly works at all. I’m curious about why you’re continuing to participate in the program, if study materials are being damaged and the repository doesn’t even work correctly. Is it just for the grant money?”
“We’re still teaching the Bible as Literature class because we want the kids to learn the Bible,” Keith replied. “People have made the same complaints about the tablets that were given to them for their participation last year. They hardly work to get on the repository site. They seem more likely to block any kind of Bible study searches than return results.”
“Perhaps they’re just trying to balance learning,” Mr. Holden suggested. “After all, it was supposed to be a repository of all kinds of faiths, wasn’t it? All kinds of knowledge?”
“My wife and I checked a lot of the religion sections on the site while making up lesson plans for this year’s class,” Keith replied. “Most of them aren’t any more accessible than the ones about the Bible.”
“Why would they set up this Religious Repository if they can’t maintain access to the materials? Is the whole repository that bad?”
“No. If you want to look up information from the secularist parts of the site, those come right up. In fact, if you’re not careful, almost any search will redirect you to those topics.”
“I did notice that pattern when I spent some time on it with Ruan. Well, children might as well be guided away from mythology.”
“So you’d prefer kids be told they’re going to be able to enjoy the results of their study and hard work, and the contributions of their families and churches, preserved forever online, but instead get pushed off into something they didn’t have a choice about?”
Mr. Holden bristled but his eyes settled on the contents of the black plastic bag. “Are they trying to take away people’s choices? Restrict access to religious materials? Is that what this is all about? That doesn’t seem right. And this radiation. What if we complained?”
“So far we haven’t been able to prove any definite connection,” Keith said. “I have a theory that the radiation destroying these materials has a specific signature. Unique, or at least highly identifiable. I think they’re not only destroying materials, they’re creating tracking markers on the ones that don’t get destroyed. The tablets we were given emit the same signature. And if they are kept close to other things, those things begin to display that signature.”
“The government is tracking people? Religious people? I think you’re being paranoid.”
“Mr. Holden, if you knew the kind of summer I just spent, I’m not sure you’d say that. I’m not sure it was the government, but I know the school was irradiated by that explosion. I know I can detect traces of radiation in my grandfather’s Bible dust, other people’s scanned materials, and, I’m betting, in that black bag you’ve got there. And I know the signatures are all the same. Besides that …” Keith almost blurted out the whole story of Jenny Kaine, the black van, and everything that had happened in Pakistan.
Once his testing on his grandfather’s Bible had been completed, and other scanned materials, they’d all discarded every Bible and tablet and notebook that had been scanned, and gotten the word out to others as well. Most hadn’t listened. People were especially fascinated with the tablets, even if they didn’t properly search the Repository site. They had some offline games and so-called educational activities that were very addictive. They connected to any wifi and almost always had something entertaining available.
During the summer camp, they’d confiscated several tablets during the Bible study times and found secularist mantras being taught via different kinds of games and “inspirational moments” on the devices. Kids who had been sullen and uncooperative miraculously improved after a few h
ours without their tablets.
Keith wasn’t sure he could share any of those things with Mr. Holden. Instead, after the few seconds it took for those events to click through his mind, he simply said, “Did you want me to test these for your brother?”
“No,” Mr. Holden said. “Aside from your theory about signatures and dirty bombs, I think I can take your word about the cause of this destruction. Are those children in danger at that facility where they meet? Are my brother and his wife in danger?”
“Probably not,” Keith admitted. “There hasn’t been enough time to gauge long-term effects, though.”
“Would you … If my brother wishes to contact you, are you open to that?”
“”Absolutely.” Keith scribbled his phone number down and handed it to Mr. Holden. “Anytime.”
Chapter Sixty-seven – An Exclusive Offer
Talia ran out to the store in the Tesla to get some cinnamon and yeast one Friday evening. As was usual when shopping, she came out with a double armload of grocery sacks. Not at all usual was the sight of a leggy, expensively-dressed blonde leaning against the Tesla. The woman straightened up and extended a hand.
“I don’t think we’ve ever officially met, but I know your husband very well. My name’s Jenny Kaine, and I have a proposal to make.”
Talia dodged the hand, unlocked the Tesla, and stowed her bags. “I’m not so sure you know my husband as well as you think you do,” she replied. “Not if you think you can keep stalking and intimidating us and trying to stop or destroy our work.”
“I’d say I’ve proved I’m a pretty good investigator,” Kaine laughed. “After all, I’ve found you every time I really wanted to.”
“So we had a mostly nice, peaceful summer because you didn’t want anything else from us?” Talia tried to keep her body relaxed but ready.
“Well, yes, I concede I don’t know where your summer vacation home is, but I did hear about all that excitement in Pakistan. You’re a very resilient little thing, aren’t you? No scars? No missing parts like that poor assistant? You look like you’re perfectly ready to kick the crap out of me.”
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