The Fifth Harmonic

by F. Paul Wilson

  It looked like a tight fit. I wasn't claustrophobic, but the very real possibility of becoming wedged in that sandstone straitjacket, unable to move forward or back, broke my skin out in a clammy sweat.

  I thrust my flashlight further into the opening and aimed the beam around the corner. The light that filtered back was brighter than I'd expected, and had a warm buttery glow . . . as if reflecting from a glossy surface.

  I was going to have to crawl in. I didn't like the idea, but I'd come this far already. I simply told myself that if at any point I felt the passage was too tight, I'd retreat.

  Keeping the flashlight extended before me, I eased myself into the vertical section and scraped my way up to the turn. I trained the light along the horizontal passage and blinked at a shimmering array of smoky yellow crystals, a huge pincushion of glittering six-sided needles not ten feet away.

  I hauled myself up and belly-crawled the rest of the way on my elbows and knees with only a few scrapes and scratches. I thrust my head, arms, and shoulders into the three-foot-wide geode at the end of the passage and stared in wonder at the dazzling display around me. Hundreds of glittering golden spikes of all sizes jutted from every angle, like the ventricle of a crystal heart.

  And jutting from the floor of that heart . . . four golden metal tines.

  I stared in awe. Someone had fashioned these, hammered them into shape, then inserted them into the base of this huge, damn-near inaccessible geode. How long ago? And why? So that someone like me could come along ages later and find my “first harmonic”? It seemed beyond belief.

  It seemed like sacrilege to take one, but I'd come this far and I wasn't about to come away empty-handed. I reached for the nearest tine and wrapped my fingers around it. Did I feel a surge of magical warmth arc up my arm? Did I feel a tingle of All-Mother energy course through me?

  No. The only thing I felt was that I was somehow desecrating this beautiful display. But I had put myself in Maya's hands, and she'd sent me here to find them and make one my own.

  I worked the tine free and started backing out. I had a bad moment when the rope around my waist bunched up and caught on the turn, but I wriggled around that and dropped back into the chamber below. I took another look at the tine, twisting it in the flashbeam and watching the golden reflections dance on the stone walls. Then I shoved it into a pocket and headed back the way I'd come.

  I was feeling a little giddy as I followed the rope, looping it and carrying it along as I traveled. I'd done it. This wasn't like climbing Everest, or breaking the sound barrier, but for Will Burleigh, this was quite a feat.

  When I saw the opening and the sunlight blazing through from beyond, I quickened my pace. I felt like a little kid finally getting his turn at Show and Tell. I wanted to show the teacher my prize.

  I ducked into the opening and started to scramble through.

  “Maya!” I called as I hit the sunlight. “I did it! I got one!”

  “Will!” she cried from above. “The sand!”

  I'd forgotten about the sand. It began to fall away beneath my feet, sliding into the passage opening, carrying me with it. I struggled to get free, but that only caused more sand to break loose and slide toward me, pushing me further. I was being carried back inside.

  I cried out and frantically grabbed hold of the lip of the cave mouth but the sand kept coming, faster and faster in a miniature landslide, filling in around me, choking the opening. I fought to keep my head free but the sand was flowing too fast. In seconds I was covered. Now I panicked and struggled like a madman—the cave entrance was filled; I couldn't move forward or back. I was trapped and I could tell by the increasing weight on my head and arms that more and more sand was collecting above me. No air! I was going to die!

  And then I felt something snaking by me, rubbing against my left leg and arm—the rope. I grabbed at it, got a grip and held on with whatever strength was left in my air-starved muscles. My head banged and dragged against the upper edge of the cave mouth but I wasn't letting go. I felt myself pull free of the smothered opening, and then I was in the light, gasping lungfuls of air.

  I let go of the rope and rolled to the side. I landed on my hands and knees, coughing and retching.

  Suddenly I felt the rope tighten viciously around my waist. Next thing I knew I was being hauled into the air, kicking and struggling as I banged against the wall of the pit. But how? Maya didn't have the strength for this. Even if Ambrosio had arrived to help her, they couldn't haul me up at this speed. Did she have superhuman strength?

  Abruptly I stopped rising and hung suspended thirty feet above the floor of the pit. I tried to call Maya's name but I still had too much sand in my mouth and throat. I looked up and saw her face reappear over the edge.

  “Oh, my!” she said. “I went too far. Stay there! I'm going to pull you the rest of the way up!”

  Stay there? What else could I do?

  Seconds later, I began rising again. To avoid getting banged up even more than I already was, I grabbed the edge of the wall when I reached the top, and levered myself up and over.

  The rope slackened immediately and I slumped face first onto the ground, panting and groaning.

  I heard running footsteps approaching, and Maya's anxious voice.

  “Will? Will, are you all right?”

  I rolled over. Maya was looking down at me with a worried expression.

  “Do I look all right?” I croaked.

  “No. You are covered with sand and your scalp is bleeding.”

  “I feel worse.”

  “Is anything broken?”

  I didn't think so. I struggled to my knees and Maya gave me a hand up to my feet.

  “I'm okay,” I told her. I wasn't, really. I hurt all over, my head was pounding, and my insides were jittering with adrenaline overload. “But that was too close. I damn near smothered down there.”

  “When I saw all that sand breaking free and sliding toward you, I didn't know what to do.”

  “You knew exactly what to do—and you did it. But how? One person, I don't care how strong, doesn't have the strength to . . .”

  As I was speaking my gaze had been running along the length of the rope, following it all the way to the rear bumper of the Jeep.

  “Oh,” I said. “I see.”

  Quick thinking. Would I have thought of that if positions had been reversed? I felt a burst of warmth for this strange woman, and a little guilty that I'd doubted her motives for bringing me here. Even if she had discrepancies in her background, she'd just saved my life.

  “Thank you.”

  “Do not thank me. It was I who endangered your life by sending you down there. I am so sorry this happened.”

  “I got careless,” I said, reaching into my pocket. “I was kind of excited about finding this.”

  I pulled out the tine and handed it to her. She backed away with her hands flying out to the sides.

  “No. Do not let me touch it. Do not let anybody touch it. That is your tine and only you may touch it.”

  “Why's that?”

  “I will explain later. We will be spending the night not far from here. After we clean you up I will tell you.”

  Cleaning up—what a wonderful thought.

  3

  Another bumpy trek, shorter, downhill, and almost due west this time, until the all-enveloping jungle suddenly broke open into small, compact cornfields baking in the sun. A few hundred yards farther on we came to a tiny village of about ten or twelve huts with tall, peaked thatch roofs. Maya stopped the Jeep on the outskirts, next to a long fence post strung with fifty or sixty corncobs, hanging in the sun to dry.

  “Wait here, please,” she said, “while I find us a place to stay tonight.”

  I remained in the Jeep and watched her enter one of the huts.

  Peaceful here. Not far away a few chickens pecked at the dirt where two women dressed in bulky red blouses and long blue skirts worked outside one of the huts; each knelt before some sort of primitive loom. O
ne end was attached to a wall, and the other was belted around the waist to keep it taught. I watched their quick agile hands manipulating the wooden rods and slipping the shuttle back and forth to weave a red fabric much like that of their blouses.

  They glanced my way and toward the hut Maya had entered as they chattered. I figured I had to be the topic of conversation. Two dark-eyed, barefoot, laughing children, dressed only in ragged shorts, ran around from the far side of a hut and skidded to a halt when they saw the Jeep. Cautiously they approached to stare at the bloodyheaded, sand-coated white man inside. When I smiled and waved, they dashed back to their mothers.

  I did not pick up a welcoming feel. I was dzul, and that made me a little uncomfortable.

  Maya returned a few minutes later.

  “We can stay here,” she said. “I know this woman. Her man is away and she will move in with her sister for tonight so that we can have her house.”

  “I don't want to put anyone out.”

  “I am paying her one hundred pesos.”

  I did a quick calculation: about twelve bucks. “Is that fair?”

  “She asked for fifty,” Maya said. She pointed to a well-worn path into the trees. “A stream is that way. You can clean up there while I help her move a few things to her sister's.”

  That sounded good. I grabbed my duffel and followed the path down a gentle slope. The palmettos and mahogany trees abruptly changed to willows at the water's edge. The stream looked to be about fifty feet across with a gentle current, its water the color of weak tea. To my left, a row of dugout canoes lined the bank. I moved upstream to my right until I found a spot where the bank was no more than a foot high. After checking the area for alligators and water snakes, I stripped off my filthy clothes, retrieved a bar of Lever 2000 from my duffel, and waded in.

  The cool water was heaven-sent. I washed away two days of sweat and grime. I lathered up my hair and lacerated scalp; the wound stung as I washed out the dried blood and gently cleansed it. Then I rinsed my filthy clothes, dried myself off, and got into a fresh shirt and slacks. I didn't bother to shave.

  When I returned to the village I found Maya standing in the doorway of the hut, smiling.

  “You look like a new man.”

  I felt like one. I handed her a tube of bacitracin ointment I'd pulled from my medical kit.

  “Could you put a little of this on my scalp?” I said. “It'll keep it from getting infected.”

  “I have something better,” she said.

  I didn't want to risk a homemade Mayan concoction. Better to stick with what I knew.

  “I'd prefer this,” I told her.

  “If you wish. With my fingers?”

  “Sure.”

  I bent toward her to place the top of my head within easy reach. Her touch was gentle and sent a pleasant chill down my neck as she applied the ointment.

  “There,” she said. “Now it is my turn to clean up.” She motioned me inside. “Make yourself at home.”

  I ducked through the low doorway and stood in the dim interior. At least the roof was high. I looked around the single room. The walls were made of palmetto trunks lashed together and sealed with some sort of mortar; the thatched roof was a combination of grasses and palm fronds. To my left was the cooking area—a circle of stones formed the hearth; the flat metal top of a fifty-gallon oil drum served as a griddle; a variety of earthenware pots surrounded it. Next to that was some sort of altar with a picture of the Virgin Mary surrounded by offerings of flowers, incense, and what looked like tobacco.

  Tobacco? I picked up a few strands and sniffed. Tobacco, all right. Fighting off the image of the Virgin Mary lighting a cigarette, I turned and checked out the rest of the hut.

  A pair of hammocks stretched across the corners at the opposite end. And that was it. No table, no chairs, no shelves—the rest of the owners’ possessions hung all about me on cords tied to the rafters.

  What now? I had a sudden urge to return to the stream and watch Maya's ablutions, but overcame it. Where had that come from? Yes, I was sure Maya naked would be a wonderful sight, but I'd never been a Peeping Tom, and wasn't going to start now.

  And on the subject of Maya, I wondered if Terziski had learned any more about her. I sat on one of the hammocks and pulled out my laptop. I typed a quick note to Kelly, telling her about my discovery of the Mayan pyramid but nothing about the stormy night I'd spent alone atop it. I made the satellite connection, uploaded the Kelly note, and found a note from her along with another message from Terziski.

  Kelly told me Mom said hello and they were both glad I'd made it safely to Mexico—and now that I'd seen the place, couldn't I come back and start treatment?

  “Sorry, Kelly,” I whispered. “No can do.”

  I popped Terziski's note onto the screen.

  Doc—

  Lots of confusing data. Found a Maya Quennell listed with a philosophy degree in the Berkeley computer, but no academic record. Never registered in any (not a single one) of the core courses required for a philosophy degree. Berkeley folks were as puzzled as me. Looked like her name was just stuck into the computer.

  Had a friend in France run a check in Paris. Found an Andre Quennell who worked as a journalist for Paris-Soir in the twenties and thirties. Found a record of a Maya Quennell at the Sorbonne, but get this: she graduated in 1938!!! (Has to be her mother.) Don't know anybody in Algiers where she says she was born, so can't help you there. But am going to take a good look at that protest arrest back in 1972. (I know she's too young, but how many Maya Quennells can there be in this world???)

  Will be in touch.

  —Terziski

  Baffled, I reread the message twice, then stowed the laptop away. I lay back in the hammock, staring at the tools and utensils dangling above me like some giant mobile, and tried to make sense of this.

  If Terziski was right, Maya's Berkeley degree was a fraud. But why lie about a degree when she didn't need one to be a New Age alternative “healer”? I couldn't find a rationale.

  And if her degree was bogus, what else was she was lying about?

  As I swung gently back and forth, I felt my eyelids begin to droop.

  No sleep last night . . . climbing walls and crawling through caves today . . . I was bushed.

  The chorus of uneasy questions swirling through my brain tried to keep me from dropping off.

  They didn't have a prayer. . . .

  “Wake up.”

  I opened my eyes to find Maya standing over me, gently jostling my shoulder.

  “Time to eat. I cooked in another hut so as not to disturb you.”

  I appreciated that. Thoughtful, beautiful, resourceful—and she cooked too. How had she managed to remain unattached?

  I swung my legs to the side and almost dumped myself from the hammock.

  “Easy,” she said. “They take some getting used to.”

  “I'll have to be careful during the night.”

  I stretched and glanced at my wrist, but I'd left my watch in the duffel after cleaning up. Through the door I could see that the light was fading. How long had I been asleep?

  “What time is it?”

  “Dinner time.”

  “Great,” I said and let my annoyance show. “I ask where I am, I'm told ‘Mesoamerica.’ I ask the time, and it's ‘dinner time.’ Why can't I get a straight answer?”

  I realized I was overtired and cranky, like a child who's just been awakened from a nap, but all this indirection coupled with Terziski's latest e-mail had me on edge.

  Maya handed me an earthenware bowl filled with something steaming and spicy-smelling.

  “It is dinner time in Mesoamerica,” Maya said, a small smile playing about her lips. “What more do you need to know?”

  “How about the name of the country, dammit. If I'd known you were going to be so mysterious, I'd have brought along one of those GPS doodads.”

  She seated herself crosslegged on the dirt floor near the door, next to a plate of tortillas.
<
br />   “And what good would that do you?”

  “I'd know my latitude and longitude to the second.”

  She looked up at me. “I repeat: What good would that do you?”

  “I have a thing about knowing where I am. Whenever I've traveled I've had to have maps. Annie and Kelly used to call me a ‘map nerd.’ I suppose I was. I'd get to a city and immediately buy a street map and locate our hotel in relation to the major thoroughfares and landmarks. It made me feel secure—something I'm not feeling right now.”

  Maya was unimpressed. She patted the spot on the floor on the far side of the tortillas.

  “Sit and eat.”

  With my knees creaking in protest, I grumpily assumed the position. Outside, the village was quiet—no children or chickens about, and the two weavers apparently had quit for the day. The wisps of wood smoke and the rich smells of cooking food wafted among the huts.

  “What am I eating?” I said.

  “Corn and beans in black chili sauce.”

  I spooned some into my mouth. Spicy but flavorful—the chili didn't overwhelm the beans and corn. I swallowed with a minimum of discomfort—the warm, moist mix slid down fairly easily.

  “Delicious,” I said. “But is this Mexican food, or Guatemalan, or Belizian, or what?”

  “It's Mayan,” she said.

  I must have looked ready to scream in frustration, so she went on, speaking quickly, fire growing in her voice.

  “I do not recognize the artificial borders that have been imposed upon my people's land. This is Mayaland, and it stretches from the tip of the Yucatan Peninsula down through the illegal and criminal states of Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. This is the land of the Maya nation, but these other so-called nations have usurped it. For centuries they have sought to destroy the Maya, using my people as either cannon fodder, scapegoats, or target practice, stealing our land, burning our crops and villages, raping our women, and slaughtering our men and children.” She fixed her blazing green eyes on me. “So please do not ask me again what country you are in. The answer will always be the same: Maya country.”