One of the huts on the other side of the village toppled over. The story stone in the center of our common vibrated, sending rock dust down in plumes.
My father, who had been preparing a skin by the fire outside his hut, hurried over to see if anyone was in danger and needed help.
A small child, who had been knocked over by the tremor, screamed in fear, not understanding, even as he threw his arms out for his mother. She raced over and scooped him up in her arms.
My father and I shared a quick glance, but it seemed as if a collapsed hut and a frightened child was the extent of the damage.
“Tohil,” Bil’al, a young warrior-in-training who had stayed back from the hunt because of a broken ankle, said to my father, “is everyone all right?”
Nodding, my father surveyed the village, taking a head count of everyone who should be there.
“Everyone seems to be unharmed,” he said, but then he changed his expression.
A moment later, I realized there was one person who had not come out of their house at the commotion: the priest, Balam Ix.
As quickly as I could, I headed for the priest’s home. It was a larger dwelling than my hut, but not as big as the family houses. My father got there well before I did, and looked inside. Instead of going in, he paused at the doorway, and I could see his shoulders slump.
He backed out just as I arrived.
“What?” I asked, searching his face before I ducked inside the priest’s hut to see for myself.
Balam Ix had been the oldest person in our village, and had lived for many more years than most would. Everyone suspected he would not live for much more, but witnessing him lying on his bed without moving, his eyes open but not seeing, lips slightly parted but not breathing, I felt a momentary twinge of disbelief. Balam had been a part of everyday life in our village all my life, and now he was gone.
My father spoke in a muted tone. “The Underworld has called for him.”
“It is an omen,” I said, though I kept my voice too low for anyone to hear.
My father put his hand on my shoulder. He said, “When the others return from the hunt and patrol tonight, we will prepare him for burial.”
One other result I had not immediately considered became alarmingly clear when Bil’al, who had come up behind us, asked, “Is Subo the priest of the village, now?” Widening his eyes, he added, “I hope you can remember all the words to the prayers.”
∞
I spent the rest of the day sweating, and not because of the heat. Only a short while ago, I was on the path of the warrior, moving toward the future I desired. Now, the villagers were expecting me, who had not yet seen eighteen summers, and who had not spent a single day in religious study, to be their spiritual leader—at least for the time being.
In cases where the high priest of a village died without an apprentice, the elders would send a request to the High Priest of Copán to provide them with a temporary holy man. The elders had, indeed, charged one of the warriors to travel to the city to deliver the news, and he’d returned at dusk. Because of the earthquake, the Holy Order was too busy aiding the citizens of Copán, where the damage had been more severe than in our village. It could be several days before they sent anyone, perhaps longer.
It was up to me to lead the ritual.
We’d had several burials in the past few years, and I had to admit that I had not given them my full attention. To my relief, my father and the other warriors took charge of preparing the priest’s house for the burial. After gathering the priest’s story stones and calendars, they tore the building down. All the construction materials were removed from the site except for the floor, which they raised high enough so that several others could dig a grave for the priest.
The three elders, Yax Kuk, Ohtli Ti, and Nentil Mo’Nab, brought me to their house, where they instructed me on how to wear the priest’s headdress and costume. It did not fit me very well; I was much taller than the priest had been, and rounder of the shoulder. I endured and followed the elders back to the priest’s house.
Balam’s body lay on the ground in front of the remains of his home. Ensuring that I assisted throughout the entire process, the elders prepared the priest’s body. First, they wrapped him in a cotton shroud and then they filled his mouth with maize. Without thinking about what I was doing, I began the ritual.
“Accept this food to sustain you through your journey through Xibalba.”
At the elders’ prompting, I placed a jade bead in the priest’s mouth on top of the maize.
“The road to rebirth may be long; the jade will give you breath in the Underworld.”
The elders wrapped his head with the shroud.
“We wrap you to protect you from the cold of the Underworld.”
The slaves picked up the priest’s body and carried him to the grave they had dug under where his house once stood. Gently, they placed him in it.
I lifted a ceramic pot full of water and slowly poured it over the priest, starting at his head and moving down to his torso.
“The Underworld is a world of water. You must enter the water to begin your journey.”
One of the elders lit sticks of incense and placed them in the ground outside the grave as the others arranged the priest’s possessions around his body.
“Accept these gifts. May they help you on your path to rebirth.”
I stepped back as other members of the village came forward to make offerings of their own and to speak prayers for the man who had been their priest all their lives.
Catching my father looking at me thoughtfully, I realized that I had spoken the ritual word-for-word. I did not make a single mistake. It was as if I had performed the rites of burial a hundred times before. The thought came to me that, had I never met Ekahua and learned his Song, I would never have been able to remember the words of prayer today. Somehow, when he’d touched me with light, he’d changed me.
The men filled in the grave, and then lowered the platform floor over it.
We would begin building my home on top of the priest’s grave tomorrow. His spirit would watch over and guard the new dwelling, and perhaps visit me in my dreams.
15
Qin Station :
Sol System :
Alex knew he couldn’t use any more delaying tactics right then, at least, not under direct threat of being shot.
“As long as you can promise to give me periodic updates on my friends’ progress home, I will cooperate. I gave Chow Yin my word.”
“His Highness,” Alice corrected, but it sounded more like an automatic response. “So,” she said, “what’s the big secret?”
“The big secret is that I don’t know what Klaus discovered.”
Seeing Alice’s eyes widen in outrage, Alex held his hands up. “However, I know the road he took to get there.”
“The Song of the Stars. Is the formula hidden in it?”
“Yes, though it’s not precisely what you think.”
Alice folded her arms across her chest. “I’m waiting.”
“The words in the story are unimportant. It’s the melody itself. There are certain notes that translate to sound frequencies. These sound frequencies have a corresponding light-wave frequency. Those light-wave frequencies are used to bombard Kinemet before initiating a reaction—in essence, priming it—to achieve the desired effect on a person. The result, of course, is irradiating that person, and attuning them to the radiation signature of Kinemet.”
“What notes?”
“I’m not certain. I believe Klaus wrote a computer program that disseminated the most likely possibilities. Unfortunately, that program was destroyed along with the station on Venus.”
Alice chewed her lip. “We have many computer programmers with us. I’m sure we can reproduce that algorithm. I assume you have some idea which notes are important and which ones aren’t?”
Nodding, Alex said, “I listened to Yaxche recite the song several times. I have some ideas.”
“Good.”
Alice went to her computer and typed something. “Sian is my father’s best programmer. We’ll get him here to write the code.” A moment later, a message came back on-screen, and Alice smiled. “Good. He’s currently finishing an assignment, but should be here in a few hours.”
She logged off the computer and faced Alex. “I will have some food delivered here for you. If you require rest, there is a cot set up in the storage room over there.” She pointed to a door on the other side of the lab.
“Thank you,” Alex said. There was no point in being impolite. After all, the more cooperative he seemed, the easier it would be to delay their progress.
“A guard will be posted in this room at all times. He has my permission to shoot you if you do anything to arouse suspicion.”
“Understood,” Alex said amicably.
Narrowing her eyes at him once more, she strode out of the lab.
∞
Alex presumed Alice was off either to report to her father, complain about the working arrangement, or have something to eat. No matter which it was, Alex wouldn’t have much time.
Confidently, he walked over to the computer Alice had used to contact the programmer. Just as he started toward it, the guard turned his rifle on him.
As casually as he could, Alex took a seat in front of the console and typed in Alice’s password—she had not been careful enough to hide it from him. Perhaps she thought he could not see what she typed from across the room, or that he couldn’t use a keyboard with Chinese characters on it. Though there was a Kinemetic damper in the room, that only prevented Alex’s electropathy and his sight. His eidetic memory was intact, and though he didn’t know how to interpret the characters on the keyboard, he remembered precisely which keys Alice pressed and in what sequence.
“What are you doing?” The guard took a few steps forward, and pointed his rifle directly at Alex.
Forcing a calmness into his voice that he didn’t feel, Alex said, “Cooperating. What did you think I was doing?”
The guard didn’t reply, but neither did he lower his weapon.
Affecting a sigh of irritation, Alex turned in the seat to face the suspicious guard. “If you must know, I’m going to access the recording of the Song the Stars and begin logging the sound waves of each note. It could take some time.”
Without waiting to see if his explanation satisfied the guard, Alex turned back to the computer and tapped a key to see what it would do. A navigation screen appeared. “After all,” he said, “that’s what they brought me here to do, isn’t it?”
He tapped another key, and then another and another, memorizing each of their functions. Once he had a baseline, deciphering the remaining characters only took a few minutes. By the time he had a working knowledge of the computer’s operation, he noticed the guard had retreated to his post, and had adopted his previous watchful position.
What Alex needed was more information, both on how much they knew about Klaus’s progress, and about their empire.
The first database Alex accessed prompted him for a password. He entered Alice’s and smiled; she was one of those people who used the same password for everything. It occurred to him that he had no idea what that password was, and opened a translator and frowned when it spat out the English letters: qinguangwangfoursevensevenzero.
At first, he thought it might be a random string of characters, but then he had an idea, and did a general search. Qin Guang Wang was the Chinese ruler of the first court of Feng-du, the equivalent of the Western version of hell. He judged the dead and decided whether their souls went to paradise or were sent into hell for punishment.
Using her password, Alex accessed Alice’s personnel file and confirmed the date of her birth. 4770 was the Chinese equivalent to 2073 in the Gregorian calendar.
Alice used the Chinese god of retribution and her birthday as her password.
What events had occurred to make Alice Yin the person she was? There was such anger in her.
Quickly, Alex skimmed the rest of her file. It gave some basic details, but not enough to paint a complete picture. Alex didn’t know how much access he had, but he did a comprehensive search throughout the entire station’s databases for any document that would give him a hint to Alice Yin’s background.
With his enhanced memory, he only needed to glance at each document once to retain everything on it. By the time his lunch arrived, Alex had read all the information in the database concerning the Emperor’s daughter. Whatever wasn’t there, he could fill in himself.
∞
When Chow Yin had started to build his criminal organization in the depths of Luna Station, he’d done so despite his disability. For the kind of man he was, he believed the only women who would be attracted to him were those seeking his money, power, and security. To let himself become romantically involved with someone was a weakness, a vulnerability he could not afford. He was still a man, however, with a man’s needs. Those needs were met by those women who provided such services.
To prevent any possibility of such a woman becoming familiar with him or his operation, he never contracted the same person twice, and always ensured they were on Luna temporarily.
Chow Yin took as many precautions as he could, but no safeguard was infallible, as he found out when one of the women contacted him and attempted to extort money: their union had produced a baby girl. Alice.
In an attempt to plug the breach in security, Chow Yin sent a man to eliminate the two. Some paternal weakness in him made him change his orders at the last moment: let the baby live.
Since the woman had no living relatives, Alice ended up in China’s orphanage system. Though Chow Yin had no desire to meet or publicly acknowledge his daughter, he nevertheless checked in on her from time to time.
When he received a report that Alice had an affinity for the sciences, he arranged a scholarship to Peking University in their Astrophysics department, and ensured various professors and university officials monitored and encouraged her progress.
After Chow Yin was arrested on Luna Station, the media dug into every aspect of his life.
A reporter from Beijing broke the story, linking Chow Yin to Alice.
It became a media circus for her: daughter of the most infamous criminal of the century. Her scholarship funds were seized by the government. Trying to dispel any suspicion of bribery, the university administration immediately expelled her from their program. She lost her apartment and all her friends.
No legitimate company would hire Alice after that, and—homeless, destitute, and desperate—she ended up working for an arms dealer who was developing biological weapons.
Three years after her father was prosecuted and sent to the penal colony on the other side of the Sun, the organization Alice worked for was raided. Alice was convicted and sentenced to life in Chongqing Prison.
A follow-up piece several years later illustrated how prison life was unkind to Alice. The prison had a reputation for torture by the male guards, severe deprivation, and brutality among the inmates.
The last article Alex read was about an unexplained fire in a poorly maintained section of the prison that killed more than a dozen inmates and guards, including Alice Yin, a month before Chow Yin’s own escape from the remote penal station.
Alex guessed Chow Yin had arranged for her escape and brought her to Qin Station to work for him.
She’d been working on the Kinemetic process since then. The only means of testing any Kinemetic theory was to use human subjects; and there had not been any successes in all that time.
With horror, Alex wondered how many people had died in her experiments.
At thirty-six, Alice Yin was as brilliant and insane as her father.
16
Tegucigalpa, Honduras :
Central American Conglomeration :
As much as the radical events that had occurred in the four years he’d been away had alarmed Michael, the overwhelming sameness of the Honduran capital was a sharp contrast. The country had always ha
d a struggling economy, and the war that had ravaged the world since Michael had left hadn’t improved the standard of living for the people of Honduras.
The last time Michael had been here was with George, and they’d been on a fact-finding mission. This time, the only difference was that he was accompanied by Yaxche. For the duration of the flight, through the landing at the Toncontin International Airport, and the sluggish wading through the country’s customs procedures, neither of them spoke of anything of importance. They kept their conversation light, and off-topic from their mission, just in case any other curious passenger or official overheard them.
Yaxche, as a returning national, had an easier time passing the customs interview, but when Michael offered up his identification, he was flagged. He had to spend an hour in a small room while the officers contacted Canadian officials. Michael’s name had been plastered all over the local newsvids after his involvement in the events at the Ruiz plantation four years before, then again after his disappearance from Canada Station Three. Whoever the Honduran officers contacted back home, they managed to convince them that Michael was not only not under suspicion for any wrongdoing—any outstanding charges had been rescinded—but he was a fully authorized government agent, whose current mission was to escort Yaxche to his home.
Michael’s first task was to check in to the consulate, and then head to the bus terminal to catch the daily shuttle to Santa Rosa de Copán. Customs had taken so long, they only had half an hour to get to the Tegucigalpa bus terminal, which was almost across the city.
It proved harder to find an autotaxi than to get through customs. When Michael, with Yaxche quietly trailing behind, went to the kiosk to get one assigned, there was an attendant there, a young kid who couldn’t have been more than fifteen.
Though his Spanish had improved over the past while, Michael was glad he’d remembered to bring his translator with him.
“Sorry, sir,” the attendant said. “All the computers are down this morning. The autotaxis are grounded.”
“For how long?” Michael asked.
Worlds Away (The Interstellar Age Book 3) Page 11
