by M. G. Herron
The first performer who took the stage wore a wooden mask painted with an image of a fanged snake. He threw a handful of herbs on the fire, and the flames turned a vibrant blue.
Snake spun a yarn about the serpent god, Xucha, who cracked open the sky with his split tongue and let the other gods in. Together, they fashioned the world from clay and stone, filled it with water, covered it with trees, brought forth animals to inhabit the jungle, and, as their final act, formed man out of clay. When the world was complete, Xucha wrapped his sinuous body around the world and squeezed the sky shut. But he squeezed too tight, and the sky turned a bruised purple as a result. The sky was broken, and even the gods were stuck here, and no one could go back through again.
Snake cast his hand out behind him, and the flames glowed a bright lavender.
Children oohed and ahhed in the front row. Adults near Eliana smiled at the familiar tricks.
Snake stepped back. Bird took his place. His mask, too, was carved of wood and painted in bright colors, but a sharp beak extended from the nose.
Bird told a story of the deluge, another classic myth. Eliana recognized the permutation: The world flooded, taking the evil sinners with it, and the Kakuli people survived by building a gigantic ark and floating around the world, waiting for the water to recede. Their voyage was not peaceful. They sent birds to find land, but the birds were eaten by a sea monster. The monster attacked their boat, and many died defending it. Bird pulled a stick from the fire and brandished it like a sword as he acted out the battle between the captain of the ark, Kakul himself, and the beast. Kakul jumped from the boat into the sea to wrestle with the monster and slew the beast by plunging a knife into the soft spot in its throat. When Kakul made it back to the ark, cold and wet but victorious, they sent out another bird, who helped them find their way to land, where Kakul and his family began to build their lives anew.
Bird receded into the background, and Jaguar sauntered forward.
“When this world was born,” he growled, ”the beautiful purple sky above us was empty except for clouds in the day, stars at night, and the smoky campfires of our people, who lived—” he pointed up, “—in Uchben Na.
“It was a peaceful city. The people led a simple life. They farmed the land and fished the sea. They ascended the temple steps to the observatory’s open dome to study the stars. They passed the time by painting beautiful art on the walls of the city, weaving fine cloth, and telling stories—much like we do this night in remembrance.”
Eliana, who had been watching the children fidget in their seats, tuned in to the story again. Unlike the stories that came before, this one was unfamiliar to her and extraordinarily detailed. She wondered how much of it was truth, how much legend, and where the blurred line between them might be drawn.
“The violent events of the world’s creation and the flood were long behind them. But one day, during the Summer Solstice Festival, blazing rocks rained fiery death out of the sky and laid waste to that great city. The world shook, and our people fled.
“For years, a blanket of gray clouds hung low over the land, and people lived off the sea, an endless diet of fish. With the sun blotted out, no maize grew. The waves of the ocean crashed on the shores, sometimes as tall as the trees. The ground heaved and shuddered.
“After wandering the coast for another place to settle, and finding none where the clouds did not cover the sky, two warrior twins, Ky and Kal, led the folk of the White Cliffs back to their ruined city. Fearing that the gods had been angry at them for building their cities of stone and forgetting the old ways, they settled outside of Uchben Na and named the village Kakul after the great ark builder of legend. Kal himself, having some skill with the land, cleared the overgrown fields and planted maize seeds he had kept safe.
“He waited and prayed. Despite his offerings of gems and cloth, of bone and blood, no crops grew. The clouds continued to blot out the sun, and the groundwater was poison to their plants.
“In a dream, Xucha came to Ky in the form of a jaguar, showing him how he could bring life to Kakul by going into the old city. So Ky went into Uchben Na and prostrated himself before Xucha on the summit of the great moon temple. He meditated there for three weeks, taking no food and only a cup of water each day. He waited for a sign from the gods, some hint that they might end the dark days and return light and life to the world.
“At the end of three weeks, when Ky had grown thin, Xucha spoke to him. He told Ky that prayer was not enough. Instead, Ky must sacrifice himself and offer his lifeblood to the gods.”
The person in the seat next to her brushed Eliana’s arm. She startled. Coming back to herself, she realized that her breath came in short gasps. She glanced behind her at where Chief Dambu had been standing, but he was nowhere in sight. She wanted to run, but she held her seat, her palms sweaty.
“When Kal found out that Ky wanted to cut his own heart out, he cried out in anguish and threw himself at his beloved brother’s feet, offering himself in his place.
“It was worse than he believed. Xucha not only wanted Ky to offer his heart, but he wanted Kal to hold the dark knife himself—” Jaguar pulled a sharp stone from his belt, “—making Kal the first shaman since the day Uchben Na was abandoned.”
Jaguar bowed his head and held out his free hand with his palm up. He gripped the obsidian blade and pulled away in a single, smooth motion, opening his palm with a long, shallow cut. Jaguar passed his bloody hand over the heads of the children, who raised their faces and held out their hands to receive the dark liquid. They rubbed it into their faces and arms, ecstatic. The adults murmured their approval.
Eliana put her hand over her mouth and masked a silent scream. This is wrong, she thought. This is all wrong.
“Ky instructed his brother to make himself a mask with Xucha’s face on it. Then, at midnight, they made their way to the top of the temple. The whole village was there—their very livelihood at stake. A massive stone had been placed on the summit of the temple, perfectly square with a bulge in the middle. No one knew how it got there, but Ky lay down on his back and opened his arms to receive the blessing of the gods.
“Kal closed his eyes tight and plunged the knife into his brother. His aim was bad, and the blade bit into his brother’s shoulder. Crying out, he pulled the knife up and plunged it down again, straight into his brother’s chest. He drew the blade across, pulled out Ky’s heart, and offered it to the gods.
“But nothing happened. Thinking that he had ruined the sacrifice with his bad aim, and determined not to let his twin brother die in vain, Kal set his brother’s body aside, lay on the wet stone himself, and cut his own heart out. He offered that to the gods, and then his body went still. His heart fell from his hands, bounced down the temple steps, and landed in the courtyard, splashing the people with his blood.
“For a single moment, all was silent. No one dared to touch Kal’s warm heart on the ground.
“Slowly, a cool breeze picked up. No one had felt a breeze since the day of the calamity. This breeze was refreshing. It smelled of the sea. The wind moved faster, faster, faster. Junrakan lifted the hearts and bodies of Ky and Kal into the sky then blew the clouds away.
“Where before, a deep-purple expanse stretched across the night sky decorated only by stars, now there were two moons, casting a light as bright as day on the stones of Uchben Na. The large moon had a chunk taken out of its shoulder. Our people named it Ky. The loyal, smaller, bloodied moon that traveled always near him they named Kal.”
Jaguar pointed at the two moons waxing toward full in the sky as he named them.
“The next morning, the sun came up, the corn grew tall, the water ran pure. Our people celebrated. To this day, we honor their sacrifice with one of our own, in sight of the gods, when the eyes of Ky and Kal are open.”
Eliana followed the gaze of the bloody-faced children. The moons would both be full, for the second time since she had arrived, in a matter of days.
How had she been so foolish
as to come to trust these people? Surely, when the time came, she would be the first to be stretched over the stone. They had nearly done it once. What would stop them from doing it again?
She stood and left the gathering, bumping knees with those seated near her as she squeezed out of the row. When she reached the edge of the pressing crowd, she didn’t try to contain her anxiety. She let it stretch its legs as she stretched hers, running down the beach, fast and away. She pumped her arms, paying no attention to the sand at her feet. She knew the way.
When she reached the place where she had carved Amon’s name in the sand, she fell atop the last letter, blurring it. She heaved ragged breaths, drawing in the balmy night air and feeling grains of sand in her mouth. Rivers of sweat poured down her body, yet she shivered.
Her fingers caressed the black diamond while she caught her breath. It had bounced out of her tunic in the run. She stroked the ring with wet, sandy fingers, holding in her mind the image of her husband. She missed him so bad it felt like a physical ache.
She had to face it. Amon wasn’t coming. She was on her own. It felt like she had been here for years, though it had only been a few months if her count was right. The weather, a continuous strangling heat, gave no sign of ebbing. Who knew how long she had really been on this lost planet?
Most likely, Amon had no idea where she was. He would have come for her by now if he did. Eliana had no idea, not really, where in the universe she had ended up after she got sucked through the Translocator. Gazing up at the foreign sky, she felt a pang of homesickness in her chest. What she would give to see the shape of the Big Dipper again, or the face in Earth’s moon!
As she stared up, searching for answers among foreign constellations, she noticed a soft red glow coming from behind her.
Carefully, she crept to the edge of the trees where the beach butted up against the jungle in undulating dunes. She kept her body low, nestled in the curve of the sand, her face hidden by the fractal leaves of low bushes.
When she got close enough to see through the bushes, she noticed something she had never seen before: a small game trail a few yards into the dense jungle.
On the trail, two men stood facing each other. One was huge, bare-chested, tattooed, with a thick ring through the septum of his nose. The other was taller but slimmer, dressed more like a man on earth than a Kakuli, with all his limbs and skin covered by his clothes. Black clothes.
Eliana recognized the big man as Chief Dambu. He had removed the headdress he wore at the storytelling. But in the dim glow of the red light, it was hard to mistake him.
The other man was a few inches taller than the chief. The smooth, shiny fibers he wore appeared to be synthetic. His hands were covered with gloves. His head was hidden completely by a helmet, like a motorcycle helmet or an astronaut’s helmet, but made of a seamless piece of glass.
Eliana stifled her own gasp of shock as she recognized him from the sacrifice ceremony: the god they called Xucha.
Painted on the front of his helmet was the open mouth of a snake like the paintings on the storytellers’ masks—but more detailed, more realistic than an artist’s depiction. And it was strange, because it seemed to move in sync with the voice coming from the man, the snake’s maw gaping and closing, its fangs protruding from the glass, shifting, expressing itself.
The red light came from a metal orb, about two feet in diameter, which hovered above and slightly behind the helmeted man’s left shoulder. It emitted a low humming sound like a small engine.
Eliana trembled and pressed her body deeper into the sand dune, rustling the leaves that served as her cover. The two glanced her way. She exhaled softly.
They looked away and spoke again in low tones, apparently unaware of her presence.
“Please,” Dambu said, “it is not his time.”
Xucha’s voice came out garbled like it had been chewed by metallic teeth. “That is not for you to decide.”
“I did what you asked. She lives among us. Why is she still unsuitable?”
“She has another purpose.”
Dambu clenched his fists.
“Need I remind you the price you paid for disobeying me?” Xucha asked. The tongue of the snake flickered.
Dambu cast his eyes down.
Xucha said, “The child’s life will be a great boon for the gods. Your predecessor understood these things. He was grateful for his role.”
Perhaps it was the red glow, but Dambu seemed to gaze up at the helmeted man with haunted, hate-filled eyes. “The last chief was right,” he said. “There is no end to it. Each cycle, a younger one is chosen. This time, a child? I won’t do it.”
“You must, and you will.”
Dambu’s nostrils puffed out with his breath like a gored bull staring down the matador.
“No,” he said.
Xucha made a fist, and Dambu cried out, the veins in his neck bulging, his jaw clenching. Dambu fell to his knees and writhed on the ground in agony. Eventually, Xucha relaxed his fist. Dambu lay panting on the forest floor. When he pushed himself to his feet again, Dambu said, “Praise Xucha,” then turned and staggered into the night.
The helmeted man’s voice lashed out in anger, but the sound cut out abruptly. He turned around and walked into the trees in the other direction. The orb mirrored his movements precisely as it floated along several feet behind him. His form blurred and slowly vanished from the feet up. The glowing orb finally floated behind a copse of trees and left Eliana in darkness.
When man and god were gone, Eliana let out an explosive breath, her whole body shuddering with tremors. Her mind raced. The moving snake face on the man’s helmet, the floating orb of light…how was it possible that it could exist right next door to pole-and-thatch houses, obsidian knives, and blood worship?
Something rustled the branches mere feet from Eliana’s hiding place. She slid deeper into the sand as a large shadow passed in front of the moon.
14
The Blast Door
“Get on the ground,” Montoya said as he advanced. He held the pistol out steadily. Semper Fi was tattooed on the inside of his left forearm. “Slowly.”
Amon fumbled the beaker in the crook of his arm like a wet football, trying to get both hands out to examine the transponder.
“I said drop it!”
“Are you kidding?” Amon said, stalling for time as he untangled the wires leading into the exposed circuit board of the digital clock display. “This is volatile material, man! If I drop it, we all go kablooey.”
Montoya regripped his pistol. A bead of sweat tracked down the ridge of his nose. His eyes darted toward Fowler.
The clock dropped when Amon freed the tangle of wires from the grips of their neighbors. He saw that one of the wire connectors, a small comb-like rectangle with metal pins, had come undone, possibly as he’d removed it from his pocket. He snapped it back into place with a thumb and forefinger.
“He’s bluffing!” Fowler said between her teeth. “Cuff him already.”
Butterflies seized Amon’s stomach, and the beaker slipped through his grasp. Glass shattered. Oil sloshed over his shoes.
Amon’s head snapped up. The curved bank of monitors of the Hopper’s control unit were visible through overlapping bands of blue-green alloy. A vast roar of echoing silence filled the large room, an intense contrast to the furor of shouting and thrumming helicopter blades he’d left behind. Once again, Amon found himself alone in his lab.
Broken glass and oil covered the translocation platform. After some searching, he found the meteorite sample, which had been washed over the side of the platform after the beaker burst.
He cleaned the meteorite off in the kitchenette sink, set it down to dry, then checked the computer. The internal teleconference line didn’t record call history, but out of habit, he pulled up the anonymized chat program. To his surprise, a message from Reuben waited for him. It read:
> BRING ME IN.
Amon blinked. He double checked the timestamp on the me
ssage. It had come in at five that morning, nearly two hours before he’d translocated into the NASA facility to go after the meteorite.
His gut clenched. Someone had spooked Reuben and then tipped off Fowler and Montoya. How could he be certain this wasn’t another ruse? He typed back,
> PROVE IT’S YOU.
While Amon waited for a response, he ransacked the lab, hedging against a worst-case scenario.
Say it wasn’t Reuben. Or if it was Reuben, say he was being coerced into sending those messages. If an impersonator made it into the lab, Amon would have to be ready for whatever happened next.
The lab didn’t contain any weapons, however. At least not if you didn’t count the glass shards littering the platform.
So Amon made the best out of what he had available. Instead of cleaning up the oil and glass, he swept it onto the ramp leading down from the platform, making it slick and sharp. Then he cranked the brightness of the wall monitors up until they were a solid white and pointed all the other table lamps in the direction of the platform. Finally, he grabbed two fire extinguishers and set them by the computer.
This was a particle physics lab, not an armory.
He could get the jump on two, maybe three, people with the fire extinguishers, the bright lights, and the oil-slicked ramp covered in broken glass. If they managed to sneak through more than three—and the translocation platform, built for industrial use, could surely accommodate more—they’d overwhelm him.
Another message from Reuben waited for him on the computer.
> WHO DO YOU THINK YOU’RE TALKING TO? I’M NOT SOME OLD PUTZ. AND YOUR TRANSPONDER DESIGNS ARE SLOPPY.
Amon smiled. It was Reuben dictating the messages, all right. Whether he was being coerced remained to be seen.
If Amon really was going to go through after Eliana, he needed someone in the lab to man the Hopper while he was gone. He couldn’t use the timer trick, for the search could take days, even weeks.
