by M. G. Harris
He must be here. We made it.
I put an arm around Ixchel’s shoulders as she wipes her mouth, groaning slightly. Finally, she looks up at me. “That’s it. I’m never going through that time-travel thing again.”
“But you have to,” I remind her. “When we go home.”
The crowd before us parts, letting someone through. Right away I know two things: the man standing before us is indeed Itzamna. And he’s not Mayan. He’s about forty years old, fair-skinned, shoulder-length dark brown hair, blue eyes, not particularly tall – around my height, in fact. He’s slim and lightly built, wearing a simple tunic of unbleached cotton decorated only by a shell-studded hide belt. The guy looks as though he hasn’t done a day’s heavy work in his life, unlike most of the Mayan men around him – all fierce-looking and armed with black daggers.
“Well, good day to you!” he says in Mayan, with a cheerful beam. One eyebrow goes up. He switches to English, speaking with an accent – could be Aussie, Kiwi or South African. “Or perhaps in English? Good day!”
Hesitantly, I shake the hand he’s offered. “Hi . . . I’m Josh. I guess you’re Itzamna?”
“So they say! The name’s actually Zsolt Bosch. You can call me Bosch. I might even remember to answer to it. Who’s the lovely young lady?”
Ixchel shakes his hand too. “I’m Ixchel.”
“Ah, we should get married then!” The guy laughs as though he’s made a huge joke. “I’m supposed to take a wife called Ixchel, right? To fulfil the legend. Only between you and me,” he says, winking, “the wife might have a bit of a problem with that.”
The crowd is watching our conversation with huge interest, but they obviously haven’t a clue what we’re saying. Itzamna – or Bosch, as he wants to be called – he just ignores everyone. “Where are you from?” he asks. “I mean, when?”
“The twenty-first century. From 2011.”
Itzamna frowns. “Don’t say it! Does something go wrong with my plan for 2012?”
We shrug, helplessly. “So far as we know . . . it goes wrong.”
All Itzamna’s good humour vanishes. He steps closer, pushing away the restraining arm of one of his guards. “If you’re here to help me fix things, then you’re right on time. Come with me; there’s something I need you to do.”
With a few words to his men, we’re left alone, all the citizens reluctantly shepherded away by Itzamna’s warriors.
“You’re from the future,” I say, staring with deep curiosity at Bosch/Itzamna. He nods curtly and begins to walk, urging us to follow.
“I’m from the twenty-second century. I was an archaeologist, specializing in Pre-Columbian civilizations. And here in Izapa I made some truly incredible finds.”
“The Erinsi,” I say. “The ‘People of Memory’.”
“Well, of course,” he says, casually. “It figures that you’d know about the Erinsi. Presumably you found one of their time-jump bracelets.” He glances at me as he walks. “I can’t imagine how. You’re just kids! Did you borrow it from your parents? Actually, do you mind me asking where you found it? I must admit I only ever found one Erinsi ruin. Even though I worked out that there must be more. The Revival Chambers, for example. There are five of them, although I didn’t get around to finding any of the others.”
Bosch’s questions have the same energy that he carries in his whole body. I can’t imagine this guy sitting still for long enough to translate the inscriptions. Either he’s a real live wire or else he’s agitated about something.
Instead of answering any of his questions, Ixchel asks one of her own. “Why are there five Revival Chambers?”
“Why?” He shrugs. “Redundancy, I guess. The Erinsi placed a human element into their plan for 2012. Unfortunately, ah, there was a mishap with the chamber in Mexico, and all those people were revived too early. But with four other chambers, I guess there’d still be someone around to be revived in 2012, to operate the moon machine. Even with more mishaps.”
“People,” I repeat, “to be ‘revived’? And did you say ‘moon machine’?”
Bosch nods vigorously, but doesn’t slow his pace. We’re crossing behind some small stone platforms now, low temples, and heading towards a village of straw huts about a hundred metres away. Behind the city are fields of what might be maize. Beyond, the forest rises swiftly towards a range of mist-shrouded volcanic peaks, including Mount Tacana.
It’s striking just how similar this city is to seventh-century Calakmul. It’s on a smaller scale, definitely. But I can hardly believe that we’re more than a thousand years deeper in the past than we were in the Snake Kingdom.
Unlike ancient Calakmul, in Izapa there are no towering pyramids, but many low temples and terraced platforms. But the more I see, the more I realize that it’s pretty large. I spot limestone constructions in every direction, dark grey from the recent rain that’s made the ground soft and loamy. The sun is blazing, and my skin already feels hot, slick from a thin film of sweat.
“The Erinsi civilization was devastated by a massive burst of electromagnetic radiation that wiped out all their computer technology. This is around seventy-six thousand years ago, mind you. Then a few decades later their main city complex was destroyed by the explosion of the caldera under Lake Toba.”
“Caldera. . .?”
“A caldera is a gigantic pool of magma under the earth’s crust. When they explode it’s called a supervolcano. The explosion throws trillions of tonnes of dust into the atmosphere. It’s like a long, dark winter lasting years. Crops won’t grow! A major extinction event! Two major disasters like that, well, it’s enough to finish off even a complex, advanced society like the Erinsi. But they had a plan.” Bosch taps a finger to his nose. “Smart people! The ones who survived, they pooled all their resources. They set things up so that their knowledge wouldn’t be lost. They spent their last efforts making a machine that would protect the earth from another massive electromagnetic pulse, like the one caused by the galactic superwave. Then, they left.”
I stop walking. “They left?”
“That’s right. They put themselves into hibernation. In the Revival Chambers. Those chambers were built to preserve people for up to a hundred thousand years.”
“So . . . so all along they planned to stop the 2012 superwave?”
“Yeah.” Bosch grimaces. “Like I said, there was a mishap. When I found the Revival Chamber in Mexico, it was empty. I found their lab too. Listen, kids, it’s a long story. A really long story – the story of the last fifteen years of my life. But now, I need your help. You’ve got a functional time-jump bracelet, right?” With vague interest, he glances at the bracelet on my arm.
“Well, yeah.”
“Good. So you have a way out of here. I have to stay longer and see some things through. But you two can help me.”
“Us help you? How?”
“The seismic readings I’ve taken lately are not good,” he says grimly. “Not good at all. I think Mount Tacana is going to blow her top. So I’ve been copying down the inscriptions and translating them. . .”
Ixchel interrupts, “Copying from the Erinsi Temple of Inscriptions?”
Bosch looks at her with a faint air of disquiet. “Yes. Odd that you’ve heard of the inscriptions . . . seeing as how you’re from the twenty-first century. Rather thought that I’d discovered them, in the twenty-second.”
“The Erinsi are not known in our time,” Ixchel tells him with care. “Except by a secret group. A group set up by you to guard the ancient knowledge until 2012.”
Bosch chuckles, grins widely and winks. “That’s one hell of a plan. Sometimes I’m such a genius, I scare myself.”
Bosch is striding faster and faster towards the village. Ixchel has to break into a slow jog to keep up. Breezing through the village, Bosch dismisses the questioning looks that are thrown in our direction with a simple, “They’re with me, from my country.”
Ixchel hangs back slightly and tugs at my arm. “This doesn’t seem st
range to you?”
“What, Itzamna-I-mean-Bosch? We guessed he might be from the future, didn’t we? What with the Books of Itzamna being written in English.”
“I know, but don’t you think he’s behaving strangely?”
“Well, yeah. He’s obviously in a hurry. Look at the mist around the volcano. I don’t think it’s a cloud. And that smell, don’t you reckon it could be smoke?”
“From the volcano?”
In the time it takes for this brief exchange, we’ve passed through the village and into the forest beyond. I call out to Bosch, “Where are we going?”
He slows to let us catch up. “I have my office in a cave nearby. It’s dry; all my equipment is there.”
“You brought equipment from the twenty-second century?”
“Some. Mostly it’s Erinsi stuff, taken from their lab.”
“Their lab? Where is that?”
Bosch stops in his tracks and gives me a long, searching look. “Why do you ask?”
Ixchel and I exchange a nervous glance. She begins, “It’s just that. . .”
“. . .we don’t know much about you,” I say. “We’ve read about you, of course, and we know you write those four books of inscriptions.”
“Four?” he says, alarmed. “God, it’s worse than I thought. I was planning on five! The last part was going to be my history, and about the Oracle.”
Ixchel says, “Five? But . . . you can’t have planned five. Why else name them after the four Bakabs, who represent the four corners of the Earth?”
Ruefully, he grins. “You like that, hey? I hoped it would seem appropriately mysterious and portentous. The fifth is more of an appendix. It’s a real pity if it doesn’t survive.”
“But . . . you’re from the future,” I say, puzzled. “You must know if it survives or not.”
“I’m from the future,” he responds, tight-lipped. “But maybe not yours.”
Now we’re both bewildered.
“You’re from a pre-2012 future, yes?” Bosch explains. “Whereas I’m from a post-2012 future. In my future, the superwave hits the world very hard. A group takes over, a group known as the Sect of Huracan. No one knows how, but they seem to be prepared for the crisis. When it hits, they’re the first organization to start offering support to all the countries that are going to pieces. That’s how they take over. By the twenty-second century, there isn’t a world leader who isn’t part of the Sect of Huracan.”
Ixchel and I simply gape.
“They found some way to persuade folk to do what they wanted. I was one of a clandestine group investigating the Sect,” Bosch continues. “The top members of the Sect claim to be descended from an ancient civilization. That’s why I was brought in – to search for traces of the Erinsi. I found them, too. Incredible stuff; you wouldn’t believe how incredible. Not just the time-jump bracelet but the Oracle too.”
It’s the second time he’s mentioned the “Oracle”. I ask him what he means.
“The Oracle is an Erinsi device for calculating the odds that a single rogue element – say, a time traveller – has interfered with the timestream. They developed the timejump device to use with the Oracle.”
Open-mouthed, I ask, “So . . . you’re not meant to use the Bracelet randomly?”
Bosch’s expression darkens. I might almost say that he blushes. “Of course not. That would be highly, highly reckless. The Oracle calculates when time travel has probably been used to interfere. The difficulty lies in knowing what the intervention is. The Oracle only gives a probability. Well, I ran some calculations, using statistics from recent history; I’m talking about from the twentieth century onwards. Historical data isn’t so good before then.”
“And. . .?”
“And the single event that most highly correlates with time travel is December 22, 2012. The Oracle showed that what happens in 2012 is almost definitely the result of a time traveller’s actions.”
“But the superwave is a natural phenomenon,” Ixchel says.
“Yes, it is. How the world handles the superwave event, though, that is not. In my reality, the Sect of Huracan takes over. Somehow, they’re ready for it. Taking over the governments of the world was all part of their scheme. My group decided to put a spanner in their plan, to see if we couldn’t engineer a different turnout.”
“So . . . the Sect of Huracan are supposed to win? That’s how things are meant to turn out?”
“No,” says Bosch very firmly. “We don’t believe in ‘meant to’. That’s fatalistic rubbish. There’s always a better way.”
I’m starting to get the impression that Bosch hasn’t used the Bracelet very much. If he had, chances are that like Ixchel and me, he might realize that you can’t easily interfere with history. When I tried to get my dad out of the prison in Area 51, that’s inadvertently what I did. Marius Martineau too – his interference has resulted in at least one reality that wasn’t planned – the one with the nuclear holocaust.
How can Bosch be certain that he isn’t the very agent that causes the outcome he is trying to prevent? It’s beginning to look horribly likely to me that he is. Without the writings of Itzamna, how would the Sect even know about the superwave and 2012?
How does Bosch know that he isn’t playing right into the hands of the Sect?
“Have you never met anyone from the Sect?” I ask. “I mean, since you’ve been in the past.”
“I haven’t,” he says. There’s no obvious sign that he’s lying. “If you know I’m here then presumably they do too.”
“Maybe not. We didn’t know exactly where and when to find you.”
“Yet here you are.”
“Because of the inscription on the temple wall,” I say. “The diagram of the Bracelet of Itzamna at the ‘zero moment’. We just copied the settings.”
“‘Zero moment’?” he says. “You mean like, t equals zero, in chemistry?”
I shrug. “I guess. In our reality, this is the ‘zero moment’. It all starts with you.”
Bosch shakes his head. “There’s no diagram of the Bracelet on the temple wall. The only Bracelet diagrams in the Book of Ix are mine.”
“Then maybe you’d better make an inscription,” I tell him, wide-eyed. “Or else how will we know when to warn you about Martineau?”
“Martineau? Who’s Martineau?”
“Marius Martineau. One of the leaders of the Sect of Huracan. He’s been interfering with the 2012 plan. He’s stolen the Ix Codex from the group you set up to protect it. But things didn’t turn out the way he planned.”
“Someone from the Sect is trying to find me. . .?”
“In the reality we’ve just come from, there’s been a nuclear war in the twentieth century. A really big one. Two thousand twelve is the least of their worries. That’s why we came to warn you. Martineau started time travelling, changing things. Eventually, he gets rid of the Books of Itzamna completely. When that happens, there’s a nuclear war in the twentieth century.”
Bosch seems appalled. “A nuclear war? But how?”
I shrug. “We don’t know. But there has to be a connection. Martineau takes those four books out of history, and all the technology written in them is lost. Somehow, it leads to nuclear war.”
Bosch looks dazed.
“We figured that he could only do that by coming here, by doing something to you.”
“What. . .?”
“By killing you,” Ixchel says bluntly. “We think Martineau will try to kill you.”
There’s a deep, low rumble and the weird sensation, for about ten seconds, of the ground shifting under our feet. The tang of smoke in the air gets sharper, with the added smell of bad eggs.
Darkly, Bosch says, “If we stay around here much longer he won’t have to kill me. The volcano will take care of that. You say you’re here to help, that’s good. I’m going to take you to my study in the cave and set you up with writing the Book of Ix. There are only a few more pages to go, but they’re essential to the 2012 plan.�
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“What about the volcano?” I say, unable to take my eyes off the pillar of smoke that has begun to twist out the peak of Mount Tacana.
“I’ve been warning the Mayans to prepare for evacuation,” he murmurs. “I’ll go back to the village now and tell the Jaguar Priest that it’s time.”
“But . . . but what about us?”
Bosch scowls. It’s the first time I’ve detected hostility from him. He plants both hands on his hips. “Listen, you two. If I don’t finish writing those books, there’ll be no way to save the Erinsi knowledge. In the future, that whole temple is destroyed by lava. I don’t know if this is going to be the explosion that destroys the temple or not. It might happen now, it might happen in five hundred years. I can’t take the risk, do you see that? Listen, I can’t imagine how or why a couple of teenagers have got hold of a powerful ancient relic like the time-jump device. Right now, I don’t have time to listen to your story. I only have time to get these people out of here and to finish the Books of Itzamna. With your help, I might just do that. So what do you say? How serious are you about stopping the Sect of Huracan?”
