The Joshua Files - a complete box set: Books 1-5 of the young adult sci-fi adventure series plus techno-thriller prequel

by M. G. Harris

  “Have to warn him,” I say.

  My phone is soaked, so Benicio takes out his own phone. I dial Tyler’s mobile number and wait.

  “Who’s this?” he answers, sounding sleepy and annoyed.

  “It’s me, Josh.” I’m shocked at how much effort it takes to talk, even now. My lips are slow; my tongue feels thick.

  “Josh! You know what time it is?”

  “There’s danger. Ollie – she’s bad news. One of them. Stay away. Get out of Oxford.”

  “What. . .?”

  “Tyler, I’m serious. Get up. Get out. You could be next.”

  “You OK? You sound awful.”

  “I will be OK. Can’t talk much now. Keep your mobile on. Don’t let Ollie know you know. Leave tomorrow. Promise me!”

  “OK, OK! I’ll do it. You gonna tell me why?”

  “I will,” I sigh. “But not now. Tired. Hurting.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Safe.”

  “Who’s with you?”

  “A friend.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah.”

  “OK. That’s good.”

  “Tyler . . . one more thing. Listen, OK? Go to my house, soon as you can. Key is with neighbour, Jackie. Get postcards on my desk. There are six . . . keep them safe. Jackie can’t let Ollie in. For any reason. Got that?”

  I make him repeat the instructions and say we’ll talk again tomorrow.

  Benicio takes off again. The Muwan floats soundlessly through the sky. Flying west, we’re headed away from the rising sun, backwards in time to the depths of night. Through the cockpit dome I can see stars gleaming in a velvety sky. The moon has set, but I can see a faint halo of its glow beyond the horizon. I have the strangest feeling of being wafted out to space, like a leaf caught in a pocket of warm air.

  I must be dreaming, because just when I think I’m on the edge of sleep, I hear Stan Getz playing his sax over a chorus of violins. It’s a slow tune with a deep, melancholy vibe.

  Well, at least it isn’t the “Blue in Green” dream again.

  BLOG ENTRY: MOONLIGHT IN VERMONT

  Remember that Stan Getz tune? I was listening to it last night, flying over the Atlantic. Dad left his iPod in the Mayan city when he was there. (My second cousin Benicio dropped that piece of information on me today.) Dad was expecting to go back to Ek Naab. He disappeared while making what he thought was a quick trip to look for the Ix Codex. Dad’s iPod was still in the room where he slept in Ek Naab. Waiting.

  I don’t know why, but little things make me saddest of all.

  I’ve got the iPod back now, just the way Dad left it. I’m going to keep it with me and I’m not going to change a thing.

  About Ollie: Mum, how can you tell who to trust? I wish someone would tell me. Because I don’t seem to be very good at spotting people who are out to deceive me.

  I managed to find the stolen documents and destroy them. From what Ollie said later, though, I think it may have been too late. I think they’d already deciphered them. Then Ollie and lover-boy Madison came back and . . . let’s just say I made it out of there with my life, OK?

  I was hurt, but nothing too serious. Some nasty bruises and a few cuts from broken glass. A woman called Lorena here in Ek Naab patched me up. She gave me some pills and let me sleep in a nice comfy bed, not a hammock. I slept for most of the day, woke up, ate some food.

  Then I found Benicio’s computer and wrote this blog entry. Gonna have to finish soon. . . I can hardly keep my eyes open.

  Ek Naab is just as bizarre as I remembered. I looked out of Benicio’s window and saw the plaza, the lit-up church, the five-globed street lights and everywhere, the hibiscus flowers. And then looked up – straight into the meshed ceiling of Ek Naab.

  I didn’t dream it. So weird.

  When I’m done writing the blog I lie down. It’s only meant to be for a few minutes – the painkillers Lorena gave me are making me woozy. But I sleep the whole night through – my second in Ek Naab – and I don’t wake until the next morning. I hear voices from the room next to the bedroom I’m in. I wander through to find Benicio with Montoyo. They’re sipping coffee, talking quietly. When Montoyo sees me, he stands up, comes over to me and gives me a typical Mexican man-hug, with a slap on my back.

  “Glad to have you with us again,” he says. Montoyo hasn’t changed his appearance at all – black shirt, black trousers and boots, grey-flecked ponytail. He’s just as serious as ever. The only way I can tell he’s happy to see me is because he says so.

  On the table are two plates containing cinnamon buns and molletes – warm crusty rolls spread with refried beans, fresh white cheese and a tomato salsa. Benicio pours me a tall glass of orange juice. Benicio and Montoyo watch me eat, which can’t be a pretty sight – I’m starving.

  “So. Let’s hear about this ill-fated excursion into the lair of the enemy,” says Montoyo with a touch of sarcasm.

  I tell them everything I remember, every detail, beginning with how I first met Ollie. They listen and occasionally nod. Montoyo’s expression never changes. He’s heard most of this before, from our last phone call. But when I come to my raid on Ollie’s house, his interest picks up.

  “This document you found on her computer,” Montoyo says. “It’s very important that you try to describe everything you remember. Even a detail could be crucial.”

  I remember all the town names I saw – Wengen, Andermatt, Morcote, Ticino – but none of the people’s names.

  “Hmmm. Switzerland. . .?” Montoyo thinks for a moment, then sighs. “It’s a shame you weren’t able to print this out.”

  “Hey, I burned the copied pages of the codex,” I remind him.

  “A good plan, but probably a waste of time. As you said, they’d already deciphered it.”

  “Yeah . . . about that. . .”

  And then I ask the single question which has been troubling me since the minute I cracked the code of the Ix Codex.

  “Why is the Ix Codex written in English?”

  Montoyo and Benicio stare at me. Benicio’s eyes become round and shiny. Montoyo sighs and turns to Benicio, who stands up.

  “It’s OK, I know, I know. I’m going,” Benicio says and leaves the room. I just about hear him sigh as he goes out through the front door.

  Montoyo turns a stern eye on me. “You don’t talk about the codex to anyone outside the Executive. Never!”

  “All right!” I say. “I’m sorry!”

  “Benicio, as you’ve realized by now, did not know what you have just told us. For the sake of most of the citizens of Ek Naab, the Books of Itzamna are written in code – that’s all they know.”

  “All right,” I say. “But Benicio’s OK, isn’t he? I mean, we can tell him.”

  Montoyo pauses for a second. “Benicio is OK, yes, but the policy should not be changed.”

  I’m starting to feel defensive. “You could have warned me.”

  He nods. “Accepted. But from now on, you don’t speak of the codex to anyone outside of the Executive, OK?”

  We watch each other for a second. He’s deadly earnest.

  I say, “OK.”

  “I don’t have a good answer to your question,” he says. “It has been the subject of speculation for hundreds of years – the reason that we didn’t decipher the codices for so long – but no citizen of Ek Naab knew English. And then in 1842, we had a visitor, the American explorer Mr John Lloyd Stephens.”

  Montoyo and I exchange a long, knowing look.

  “John Lloyd Stephens. . .?” I blurt.

  “Yes. . .”

  “Who wrote the book. . .?”

  Montoyo nods, calmly. “Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas and Yucatan. . . The one Simon Madison took from your house, yes, that one.”

  I can hardly believe what I’m hearing. “John Lloyd Stephens came to Ek Naab? And kept it a secret?”

  “It’s a long and fascinating story,” Montoyo says. “Remind me to tell you one day.
Being economical, it is enough to say that from him, the members of the Executive learned enough English to deduce that the codices were written in English.”

  “But how is that possible?” I’ve been thinking it over for days and it just doesn’t make sense. “I mean, I don’t know much about British history, but I’m pretty sure that when the codices were written, Britain was part of the Roman Empire. Did English even exist then, as a language?”

  Montoyo says drily, “You know even less British history than you imagine. Roman Britain dates from after 50 BC. The Books of Itzamna were written around 350 BC.”

  “But did anyone speak English then?”

  Montoyo sighs. “What do they teach you at school? Of course not. In 350 BC, you’d find little trace of anything you’d recognize as English.”

  “So the codices are fakes?”

  “Fakes . . . meaning what?”

  “They weren’t really written in 350 BC.”

  “As I just told you, they were.”

  “But how? If no one spoke English at the time?”

  “Well, that’s the question, isn’t it?”

  I hesitate. “Are you saying you don’t know why they’re in English?”

  “I’m saying that in over fifteen-hundred years, with all the resources at our disposal, we have no conclusive answer to that question.”

  “But you have a theory.”

  “A theory, of course. We have several theories.”

  I pause, expectant. But he says nothing.

  “. . .and?”

  “Well, Josh, let me ask you: what do you think is the answer?”

  I think about it again.

  “Itzamna definitely wrote them?”

  “So it is claimed.”

  “Who claims it?”

  “Itzamna himself. He claims to have copied them from the walls of a temple he found. Where – as you’ll know from reading the beginning of the Ix Codex – they were first written by the Erinsi.”

  “Right,” I say. “Ollie mentioned that. The Erinsi – she knows all about them. So could you tell me: who are the Erinsi?”

  Montoyo gives a tiny smile. “You don’t by any chance know any ancient Sumerian, do you?”

  “Actually, I don’t.”

  “I was wondering. Maybe you learned it when you weren’t learning British history.”

  “No, I learn modern stuff, you know, that is actually useful for modern life,” I say, impatient. “What’s Sumerian?”

  “Sumerian was an ancient language of Mesopotamia – what you now call Iraq. In old Akkadian, a dialect of Sumerian, Erinsi translates as “people remember” – or perhaps “people of the memory”.

  “It took us a while to work that out. We came to recognize that our own poor linguistic skills proved something of an impediment. Since then we’ve started training a group of linguists and epigraphers. There are few ancient languages we don’t know here – we’ve even cracked Linear A.”

  “And that’s good?”

  “It’s remarkable. No one else on earth can read Linear A.”

  “So the Erinsi wrote in English?”

  Montoyo sighs. “Be logical, Josh. If their own name for themselves uses words from ancient Sumerian, why would they speak English?”

  “So . . . the Erinsi wrote the stuff in the codices . . . and Itzamna just copied it and translated it into English?”

  “We believe so. With no evidence of the original inscriptions, we can’t be sure.”

  “The original inscriptions on the temple walls – they’re gone?”

  “So far as we know, destroyed by a lava flow,” Montoyo says.

  “Where was the temple?”

  “At Izapa. It’s here in Mexico, near the volcano Tacana.”

  I think of the thrilling flight with Benicio, when we were chased by the NRO in their Mark I Muwans. “I’ve been there,” I say.

  Montoyo bows his head and actually smiles. “I know.”

  “So you’re saying . . . there were some ancient inscriptions in a Mayan temple . . . written in Sumerian?”

  “That’s pure speculation. We’ve yet to find the remains of this temple of inscriptions. We believe it to be buried. Believe me, we’ve searched.”

  “So what are the Erinsi? ‘People of Memory’? What do they remember? And they’re the ones with all this technology, the Muwans, the poisonous gas on the Ix Codex, the genes that protect the Bakabs?”

  Montoyo smiles again. “Yes, that’s right. Now you know almost as much as us.”

  “And Itzamna is . . . what. . .?”

  “What do you think. . .?”

  I can’t bring myself to say it. It sounds so ridiculous.

  “If he wrote in English . . . and modern English wasn’t spoken until the fifteenth century . . . then?”

  “Yes?”

  “Then . . . he must be a time-traveller. From the future.”

  “You got it.”

  “That’s your theory?”

  “That’s our theory.”

  “That’s just mad.”

  Montoyo shrugs. “You never heard that saying from your Sherlock Holmes? ‘When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.’”

  “But time travel is impossible.”

  “Is it? Can you prove that?”

  “No . . . but . . . wouldn’t we have seen people from the future?”

  “And you can prove you haven’t?”

  “No . . . but . . . isn’t it impossible, I mean, according to the laws of physics?”

  “Depends which physicist you ask.”

  I think about it a little more. “You actually believe this?”

  Montoyo shrugs. “We have no proof. And yet, the theory would appear to explain the facts.”

  “You’ve looked for his time machine?”

  “We have.”

  “And?”

  “Nothing so far. But as you know, the Depths under Ek Naab have mysterious qualities. We’ve never fully explored them. Too many people have disappeared in the attempt. It’s fair to say that within the members of the Executive there’s a belief that somewhere, there exists a time-travel device.”

  “And that’s why you want that thing my father took, isn’t it?”

  Montoyo inhales sharply. “Smart boy.” I guess he thinks I’ve forgotten that he all but accused my dad of stealing the Bracelet of Itzamna when he was in Ek Naab. Or that we made a deal; a personal secret mission to track down any news of what became of the Bracelet. Not a mission I took very seriously, to be honest, once my mysterious leaf-storm dream began to lead me to the Ix Codex.

  “The Bracelet of Itzamna . . . it’s part of the time machine?”

  “We think so. The Bracelet itself has no function. We’ve run all manner of tests on it . . . nothing. We think that the Bracelet is incomplete.”

  “Broken, you mean?”

  Montoyo considers. “No . . . incomplete; just one part of a more complex machine. We assume that it fits inside another device.”

  “The Container?” I say, remembering the text I translated from the Ix Codex.

  “Could be. We can’t be sure.”

  “And you think Madison’s group have the other artefact – the Adaptor?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “Do you know what that does?”

  “Naturally, we know exactly what it does. Abdul-Quddus sent us digital images of the Adaptor, before Madison stole it. It matches the diagram from the Ix Codex.”

  I stare at him. “But you’re not going to tell me?”

  “That rather depends.”

  “On what?”

  “On whether you insist on going back to your life in Oxford. If so, then I can’t tell you anything else.”

  “But . . . I don’t get it . . . you told me all that stuff about the Erinsi and Itzamna.”

  “Actually, I told you very little. You mostly worked it out for yourself. And most importantly, we discussed theories, not facts. The Ix Co
dex is an instructional document. It contains facts, not theories. In the wrong hands, a fact may prove fatal.”

  “Any mention of time travel?”