“I will tell ladinos nothing!”
Chel had made a mistake. Fraternidad meant brotherhood in Spanish. Living here in Los Angeles, commingling of Spanish, Mayan, and English was common. But where Volcy had come from, it was reasonable to doubt a Maya church with such a word in its name.
“Fraternidad cannot know,” Volcy continued. “I will never lead the ladinos to Janotha and Sama.… You are ajwaral!”
There was no single English word for it. It meant literally, You are a native of here. But Volcy intended it as an indigenous slur. Even though Chel had been born in a village like his, even though she devoted her life to studying the ancients—to men like him, she would always be an outsider.
“Dr. Manu?” said a voice from behind her.
She turned and found a white-coated figure standing in the doorway.
“I’m Gabriel Stanton.”
CHEL TRAILED THE new doctor past the masked security guard and out into the hallway. His voice was full of purpose, and his height gave him a commanding presence. How long had he been watching? Had he sensed the uncomfortable direction her conversation with Volcy had taken? Stanton turned. “So Mr. Volcy says he was sick before he got to the States?”
“That’s what he told me.”
“We have to know for sure,” Stanton told her. “We’ve been looking for a source here in L.A. If what he says is true, we need to be looking in Guatemala instead. Did he say where in the country he was from?”
“Based on his accent, I have to assume he’s from the Petén,” she told him. “It’s the largest department—the equivalent of states. But I haven’t gotten anything more about the village he’s from. And he won’t say how he got into America.”
“Either way,” Stanton said, “we could be talking about Guatemalan meat as our vector. And if he’s from some small indigenous village, then it has to be something he would have had access to. Far as I understand, thousands of acres of tropical forest have been cut to make way for cattle farms down there. That right?”
Chel nodded. His knowledge was impressive, and he was clearly a smart guy, if intimidating.
“Volcy could’ve been exposed to tainted meat from any of those cattle farms,” Stanton said. “We need to know all the meat he ate before his symptoms began. Far back as he can remember. Beef especially, but also chicken, pork—anything.”
“Villagers can eat meat from half a dozen different animals at a single meal.”
Dr. Stanton appeared to be studying her. She noticed that the doctor’s glasses were crooked and felt an unaccountable urge to fix them. He was at least a foot taller than she was, and she had to crane her neck to gaze at him.
“I need you to get him to dig as deep as he can,” Stanton said.
“I’ll do my best.”
“Did he say what he’s doing here? Did he come looking for work?”
“No,” she lied. “He didn’t say. He was fading in and out by the end and not really answering my questions.”
“People with this kind of insomnia can wax and wane by the minute. Let’s try it another way.”
Inside the room, Volcy now lay with his eyes closed, his breathing hard and labored. Chel was afraid of how he would react when he saw her, and for a split second she considered telling Stanton the truth—coming clean about the codex and Volcy’s connection to it.
But she didn’t. She was too worried about ICE or the Getty finding out. She was too afraid of losing everything she’d worked for and the codex at the same time.
“We’ve learned from Alzheimer’s that patients with this kind of brain damage sometimes respond better to questions if there are triggers,” Stanton said. “The key is to go one step at a time and lead them from question to question.”
Volcy opened his eyes and looked at Stanton before turning his gaze to Chel. When they locked stares, she waited for his hostility to surface.
Nothing.
“Start with his name,” Stanton said.
“We know his name.”
“Exactly. Tell him: Your name is Volcy.”
Chel turned to the patient. “At, Volcy ri’ ab’i’.”
When Volcy said nothing, she repeated it again. “At, Volcy ri’ ab’i’.”
“In, Volcy ri nub’i’,” he said finally. My name is Volcy. There was no hostility in his voice. It was as if he’d forgotten about their Fraternidad exchange.
“He understood,” Chel whispered.
“Now ask him: Did your parents call you Volcy?”
“My parents called me Daring One.”
“Keep going,” Stanton said. “Ask him why.”
So she went on, and with each back-and-forth, Chel was amazed at how Volcy’s eyes became clearer, more focused.
“Why did they call you Daring One?”
“Because I always dared to do what no boy would.”
“What was it no other boy would dare to do?”
“Go into the jungle as fearlessly as I did.”
“When you fearlessly went into the jungle as a boy, how did you survive?”
“I survived by the will of the gods.”
“The gods protected you in the jungle when you were a boy?”
“Until I offended them as a man, they protected me.”
“What happened when they stopped protecting you as a man?”
“In the jungle they would not let me pass to the other side.”
“The other side, into the dream state?”
“They would not let my soul rest or gather strength in the spirit world.”
Chel stopped the back-and-forth. She wanted to make sure she’d heard right, and she leaned in closer. “Volcy. You were unable to pass into the dream state since you were in the jungle? Since you got the ancient book?”
He nodded.
“What’s going on?” Stanton asked.
Chel ignored him. She had to know the answer. “Where was the temple in the jungle?” she asked Volcy. But he had gone silent again.
Stanton sounded impatient. “Why’d he stop talking? What’d you say?”
“He said he first got sick in the jungle,” Chel said.
“Why was he in the jungle? Is that where he’s from?”
“No.” Chel paused only a beat. “He was there to do a kind of meditation. He says that during this ritual was when he first had insomnia.”
“You’re sure about that?”
“I’m sure.”
What did it matter if she lied about why he was in the jungle? Whether he was there to get the book or to meditate, either way he’d gotten sick.
“Then he left the jungle and came north?” Stanton asked.
“That’s what it sounds like.”
“Why did he come across the border?”
“He didn’t say.”
“Would there be cattle ranches near the jungle where he was … meditating?”
“I don’t know what part of the Petén we’re talking about,” Chel said truthfully. “But there are cattle ranches everywhere in the highlands.”
“What would he have been eating during this jungle ritual?” Stanton asked.
“Whatever he could trap or find.”
“So he’s camping, living in the jungle or on the outskirts of one of these cattle ranches. He’s there for weeks, and he has to eat something. So maybe he decides to kill one of the cows.”
“I guess that’s possible.”
Stanton told her to keep pursuing this line of inquiry, continuing with his word-linking technique. Which she did, steering clear of any discussion of why Volcy was in the jungle in the first place.
“Did you eat the meat of a cow in the jungle?”
“There was no cow meat to eat.”
“Did you eat the meat of a chicken in the jungle?”
“What chickens are found in the wild?”
“Wild deer are found in the jungle. Did you eat the meat of a deer?”
“I have never cooked the meat of a deer on my hearth.”
“When you we
re in the wild, did you bring a stone hearth to cook on?”
“We cooked only tortillas on the hearth.”
“Was this hearth used to prepare meat back in your village?”
“Chuyum-thul would not allow meat on the hearth. I am Chuyum-thul, who presides over the jungle from the sky, who has guided my human form since birth.”
Chuyum-thul was a hawk and must be Volcy’s spirit animal, which Chel knew he would have been assigned by the village shaman. A man’s wayob was a symbol of who he was: The brave man, like a king, was a jaguar; the funny man, a howler monkey; the slow man, a turtle. For both their ancerstors and the modern Maya, a man’s name and his wayob could be used interchangeably, exactly as Volcy was now doing.
“I am Pape, the tiger-stripe butterfly,” Chel said. “My human form honors my wayob form daily. Chuyum-thul knows you have shown him reverence, if you have followed his guidance about what to prepare on your hearth.”
“I have followed his guidance for twelve moons,” Volcy said, his eyes softening again when he saw she understood. “He has shown me the souls of the animals of the jungle and how he watches over them. He told me how no human shall destroy them.”
Stanton cut in. “What is he saying?”
Again Chel ignored him. She had earned back Volcy’s trust, and she needed answers of her own before he faded away again.
“Was it the hawk who led you to the great temple, to the place where you could provide for your family?” she asked. “For Janotha and Sama?”
Slowly he nodded.
“How far from the village was this temple Chuyum-thul led you to?”
“Three days’ walk.”
“In which direction?”
He didn’t answer.
“Please, you must tell me in which direction you went three days’ walk.”
But Volcy had shut down again.
Frustrated, Chel shifted gears. “You followed the guidance of Chuyum-thul for twelve moons? What was his guidance?”
“He commanded I subsist for twelve moons, that he would give me guidance to bring splendor to the village,” Volcy said. “Then he led me to the temple.”
When she heard the words, Chel was confused. Subsist for twelve moons?
How could that be?
Subsistence was a practice that went back to the ancients, in which shamans would retreat to their caves to commune with the gods and survive on only water and a few fruits for months at a time.
“You have subsisted for twelve moons, brother?” Chel asked Volcy slowly. “And have you kept that oath?”
He nodded.
“What the hell is he saying?” Stanton demanded.
Chel turned to him. “You said this disease came from meat, right?”
“All non-genetic prion disease comes from meat. That’s why I need to know what kind of meat he’s eaten. As far back as he can remember.”
“He hasn’t been eating any meat.”
“What are you saying?”
“He’s been on a subsistence diet. For our people that means no meat.”
“That’s not possible.”
“I’m telling you,” Chel said. “He says he’s been a vegetarian for the past year.”
SEVEN
VOLCY’S MOUTH, HIS THROAT, AND EVEN HIS STOMACH WERE AS dry as if he’d sowed plots for two days straight. Like the thirst Janotha said she had felt when she delivered Sama, a thirst that couldn’t be quenched. The lights flickered in and out as he opened and closed his eyes, trying to grasp how he’d gotten into the bed in the first place.
I’ll never see Sama again. I’ll die here, and she won’t know I took the book from the ancients for her, only for her.
When the drought came, the shaman chanted and made offerings to Chaak every day, but still no rain came. Families broke up, children got shipped off to relatives in the cities, elders died from the heat. Janotha worried her milk would dry.
But you—the hawk—would never let that happen—never.
When Volcy was a boy, and his mother would go hungry to feed the children, he would creep across the floor of their hut while his parents slept, sneak out of their house, and steal maize from a family with more than they needed.
The hawk, never afraid.
Years later, Volcy had heeded the call of his wayob when his family was in need again. While he fasted, the hawk heard the call that would lead him to the ruins. He and his partner, Malcin, traveled three days into the forest, searching. Only Ix Chel, goddess of the moon, gave light. Malcin was afraid they might anger the gods. But slivers of pottery were being sold for thousands to white men because of the coming end of the Long Count cycle.
The gods had led them to the ruins, and, between towering trees, they found the building with walls wrecked by wind and rain. Inside the tomb was glory: obsidian blades; stucco-painted gourds and crystals; beads and pottery. A head mask and jade teeth on skulls. And the book. The cursed book. They had had no idea what the designs or words on the bark paper meant, but they were mesmerized.
Now Volcy was alone in the darkness—but where? The man and the Qu’iche woman were gone. Volcy reached for his water glass again. But the glass was empty.
He threw his legs onto the floor and lurched away unsteadily. His limbs were failing him like his vision. But he had to drink. He dragged the pole he was attached to into the bathroom, got to the sink, threw the handles wide, and shoved his head under the stream, forcing gulps. But it wasn’t enough. Water doused his nostrils and mouth and ran down his face, but he needed more. The curse of the book was sucking him dry, parching every inch of his skin. He had let the white man’s obsession with the Long Count compel him to sacrifice the honor of his ancestors.
The hawk lifted up from beneath the faucet and saw his face in the mirror. His head was soaked, but his thirst was still there.
STANTON, ON THE PHONE with Davies, paced in the courtyard in front of the hospital. Red and blue lights flashed everywhere; LAPD had been called in to hold back the metastasizing press. The leak about John Doe and his mysterious medical condition had apparently come from an orderly, who’d overheard Thane talking to an attending physician and posted something in a mad cow chat room. Now every major news organization in the country had dispatched reporters here as well.
“What if John Doe is lying?” Davies asked.
“Why would he lie?”
“I don’t know—maybe his wife’s some kind of rabid vegan, and he doesn’t want her to know he’s been chowing down on Big Macs.”
“Come on.”
“Okay then, maybe he got sick before he stopped eating meat?”
“You saw the slides. He got sick much more recently than a year ago.”
Davies sighed. “Your translator said it’s possible he could have had cheese or milk, right? It’s time to start talking about dairy.”
They had only the testimony of one patient up against decades of research, and Stanton was still skeptical of a vector other than meat. But they had to explore the possibility. E. coli, Listeria, and salmonella had all been found in cow’s milk, and Stanton had long feared that prion could get into the dairy supply. Per capita beef consumption in the United States was forty pounds a year; dairy was over three hundred. And milk from a single cow was often used in thousands of different products over its life-span, making finding the source that much more complicated.
“I’ll see what infrastructure the Guatemalans have for tracking their dairy,” Davies said. “But we’re talking about a Third World health service investigating a disease they won’t want anyone to know came from inside their borders. Not a recipe for good epidemiology.”
“How’s the hospital search here going?”
“Still nothing,” Davies said. “Team called every ER in L.A., and I sent Jiao down to look at a couple of suspicious patients, but they were false alarms.”
“Have them check again,” Stanton said. “Every twenty-four hours.”
They hung up, and Stanton hurried around the edge of t
he building. The press weren’t the only ones crowding the parking lot; a cavalcade of ambulances was outside the ER, lights blazing. Paramedics swarmed, and doctors and nurses barked orders as patients were unloaded on stretchers. There’d been a major car accident on the 101 freeway, and dozens of critical patients had been transported here.
Stanton made another quick call as he headed back for the front door of the building. “It’s me,” he said quietly when he got Nina’s voice mail again. He glanced around to make sure no one was listening. “Do me a favor and throw your milk and cheese overboard too.”
INSIDE THE ER, Stanton squeezed himself against the wall to make room for gurneys from the car accident flying by. An elderly man, with his arm wrapped in gauze and a tourniquet, screamed in pain. Surgeons were operating in the non-sterile ER on patients too critical to get to the ORs. He gave silent thanks that triage wasn’t his area of expertise.
Back on the sixth floor, Stanton found Chel Manu in the waiting area. Even in her heels she was tiny, and he again found his eyes drifting down to the nape of her neck, where her black hair fell. It wasn’t just that she was attractive—she was clearly sharp too. She’d already managed to get key information from Volcy, so he’d asked her to stay.
“You want coffee while we wait for the nurses to finish?” he asked, motioning toward the vending machine.
“No, but I could use a cigarette,” Chel said.
Stanton dropped quarters into the slot, filling a Styrofoam cup. It was hardly Groundwork, but it would have to do. “Probably won’t find many of those in here.”
She shrugged. “Promised myself I’d quit by the end of the year anyway.”
Stanton sipped the weak coffee. “Guess that means you don’t believe the Mayan apocalypse is coming.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Me neither.” He smiled, thinking they were just making easy banter, but didn’t get one in return. Maybe it wasn’t something she wanted to joke about.
“So what now?” she asked, deadpan.
“Soon as the nurses are done in there,” Stanton said, “we should try to get Volcy to tell us all the dairy items he might have had in the last month or so.”
“I’ll do my best,” she said, “but I’m not sure he completely trusts me.”
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