The Alien Element

by M. G. Herron

  “Thank you for coming, Quen,” Rakulo said. “Now, we must be careful.”

  “Of course. Rakulo—” He hesitated. “We have known each other many years. I’ll admit, when your father was honored by the water that night after he named you chief, I hated the idea. I thought you were too weak. But now I see that your father was right to pick you. I don’t know if what we’ve done is good or bad, but things are different now. People know, even if they’re not rising up against Maatiaak, that the world is changing. I’m sure my mom and dad are scared as anything, but they want to know the truth about Xucha and what’s beyond the Wall as much as anyone.”

  Rakulo absorbed the backhanded compliment slowly, and puzzled through the end of Quen’s short speech. That many words from the mouth of quiet Quen was not something to be glossed over lightly.

  “Thank you for your faith in me, Quen.”

  The big man nodded.

  “And I think you’re right,” Rakulo said. “About all of it. I don’t know if what we’ve done is good or bad either. And I grieve for those we’ve lost. But as long as I’m moving and breathing, I’m not going to quit looking for a way out—for all our people. Not while that Wall still stands. We weren’t meant to be kept in a cage, Quen. We’re free people!”

  “Aye!” Gehro said from the other side of the stalactites. “Free people!”

  Rakulo blushed, realizing how worked up he’d gotten while he was talking. But Quen gripped his shoulder under the water with one hand and nodded as he locked eyes with Rakulo.

  “Good. Let’s do this. You get in first while I hold the canoe.”

  Rakulo nodded, gripped the side of the canoe with both hands, and hopped up into it. He used a clay bowl they’d brought to bail out the rest of the water, then leaned over and gripped Quen’s forearm.

  “One, two, three!” he said, and hauled the bigger man into the boat, rocking the wooden craft into the middle of the tunnel as Quen steadied himself and found a seat. Quen, being heavier, took the back of the canoe. He reasoned that the heavier man would have a better chance of slowing their advance. The current swiftly began to carry them to the left and around the corner.

  “Safe journey, boys!” Gehro’s voice came softly as they drifted away on the current, into the darkness.

  It was already dim, but the tunnel narrowed their vision to an inky darkness almost immediately. Rakulo strained to see two feet in front of him. The sound of Quen’s breathing and the soft rushing noise of moving water was all he heard.

  Seconds later, Rakulo shouted, “Left!” and they were both clawing the wooden oars deep into the water, pushing back hard toward the wall to avoid being smashed against a sharp outcropping of rock. Their boat jolted as they clipped it, near Quen’s hip.

  The river leveled out after that. It was clear and fast, then carried on slowly for a stretch as the water leveled out, spreading under the walls in both directions. Then the tunnel narrowed again and the river suddenly deepened. Rakulo let out a little yelp as his stomach fell out from under him. He glanced back at Quen, whose face was pinched.

  “Hold on,” Rakulo said.

  Rakulo felt his hips rising from his seat and then slam back into the canoe. Foam sprayed into his eyes. His feet flopped up and he pitched backward. Icy water washed over him, he thrashed in the water, and held his breath while up sorted itself from down. A moment later, gasping for air, his head broke the surface.

  The fight seemed to have gone out of the water. The tunnel had broadened, the water seeping back under the walls and forming a pool ahead. Raindrops sent cascades of ripples on the water—it was not just a pool, but a sinkhole, a cenote, one of the many openings in the ground where water gathered in this jungle. The low-hanging vines and vegetation would make it difficult to spot them from any angle above, but Rakulo could see from his seat where a second fork of the river fed into the pool from left, and a third fork directly across the pond. Three rivers feeding this pool, all connected underground.

  Where are we? Rakulo wondered. There were six or eight options, but how many cenotes were this big? It was difficult to tell because all the landmarks he used to locate them from the ground were unavailable from this angle. The pool seemed to radiate light, a very slight greenish hue. Or was that the moonlight reflecting off the water, mixing with it in the green vegetation around the opening? Rakulo had never known before tonight that an underground river connected the systems. But it made a sort of sense.

  His thoughts were distracted when he finally strained his good ear and made out a rhythmic pulse that seeped through the tunnel walls—the drums.

  His jaw hung open when the realization struck him.

  “Quen!” Rakulo whispered. “Where are you?”

  “Over here.”

  Rakulo steadied himself and turned toward Quen’s voice in the dark. It was easy to locate him by the glowing outline of his broad frame atop the canoe, like a statue in the darkness. This time, Quen hauled him, soaking wet, up into the boat by his arms.

  As Rakulo straightened in the canoe, he finally located the source of the glowing light—a bulbous, bushy plant that protruded from the wall, submerged and blocking the mouth of the second branch of the river. The iridescent green glow was faint, but unmistakably coming from the plant.

  The drums grew louder. Rakulo guided their canoe nearer to the glow.

  “Close enough, Raku,” Quen said.

  “I need to see.”

  “You remember what happened to Tolen?”

  Rakulo paled, and swallowed past a lump in his throat. Then he paddled back toward the fork they’d taken down the rapids to get here. They sat in the placid water, gazing through the low-hanging vines—thick walls of interwoven tendrils threading through the mossy earth. It completely veiled these rivers from ground level above, and also veiled the surface above from their sight.

  They waited a while. Eventually the drums stopped, and a dark shadow fell from ground level into the mouth of the cenote, down, down, like an X in the air, to splash in the water by the mouth of the second river.

  Rakulo and Quen, both gripping their paddles, were unprepared for the sudden rush of current that propelled them toward the open pool. Rakulo had the impression that a giant had taken a sudden breath inward, if the rivers were the air he breathed. As a result, the object that had fallen into the water was pulled into the root system of the bulbous plant.

  “Get back, get back,” Quen said, rowing against the water with his paddle to push their boat back again. Rakulo eagerly joined him.

  That wasn’t just any object, that was a sacrifice to Xucha, and this was about to get—

  A burst of bright green light ignited the plant as the body of the sacrifice was eviscerated. The gods rejoiced, suffusing the water with a brighter green glow to show their thanks. The glow subsided, and seemed to be pulled off down the second fork of the river.

  “Gods of the Sky and Sea,” Quen murmured.

  “I’ve seen it a hundred times,” Rakulo said. “But never like that.”

  “We’ve got to get back.”

  “Wait,” Rakulo said. “Where do you think that fork goes?”

  “Are you crazy? I don’t want to find out.”

  “I think it leads to the other side of the Wall, Quen. When Xucha’s demon came through the Wall, I saw a green glow in the cracks of the dry land on the other side. That fork must leads on the other side of the Wall, Quen. To Xucha’s tower.”

  “Why didn’t you say anything before?”

  “I didn’t realize that it might be connected until now. The tower must be where Xucha lives. He needs our sacrifices for some reason. It’s almost like…”

  Quen was nodding eagerly, a somber, serious, and quite dangerous expression on his face, more dangerous than Rakulo had ever seen the big man. “Like their life energy gets sucked out of them.”

  “Xucha is harvesting their souls.”

  “That’s why he needs us. Not just our souls, but our bodies. There are no bodies lef
t after that.” Quen gestured to the rooted plant, which still pulsed with a faint green aura.

  “We have to get back,” Quen said. “To tell the others.”

  They laboriously began to make their way back up stream, keeping to the walls where the current ran less swiftly, and hauling the heavy load of the canoe up behind them by long straps they had attached for this purpose.

  26

  Palaver

  Eliana ran through the black rift in the air and barely stopped herself before she launched off the top of the great stone pyramid that towered over the ruined city of Uchben Na.

  Well that was unexpected, she thought.

  She surveyed her options. Strangely, the city spread below her was empty. There were drumbeats coming from somewhere, but they were off in the distance, muffled by the jungle and the thick air.

  She felt something sticky beneath her feet, glanced down and saw fresh blood on the stones. She sucked in a deep breath, shoving away thoughts of what that implied.

  Dear God, what am I doing?

  Speaking of Gods, Xucha wouldn’t be far behind her. She could either go back home right now, or get moving—fast.

  Her mind was still reeling at the sudden shift in environment. She turned back to look at the rift one more time—on this end, the window in the air was not jagged at the edges or suspended in the air, but evenly spread in a doorway of stone built in the room on top of the pyramid.

  She grimaced as she gazed closer and saw that the rift did not edge up against the doorway of stone, but was instead framed by thick, intertwining tentacles that seemed to be alive, pulsing with energy.

  What in the hell?

  There was no time to consider this strange discovery—Eliana knew that it wasn’t natural, and that was enough for her.

  Part of her wanted to go back, but she was so close now. She had her phone in her pocket. If she found the carving she needed to verify the connection between the jungles of Mexico and Kakul, she could take photos with her phone.

  Which civilization had been there first? Were these stones older than the ones they had found in Mexico? Hell, who cared? A clear connection between the two locations would send new theories and rumors reverberating across the anthropology community. If humans made it to this planet, where else had our species traveled? Was Earth even our original home?

  She stared at the black rift in the air, through which she could see the shadow of Amon’s lab beyond, like a reflection in deep water. The rift answered one question, yet raised so many others.

  Eliana was standing, rooted to the spot, paralyzed by her inability to make a decision, when Reuben suddenly barreled through the rift. Eliana grabbed him and pulled him aside before he could make the same mistake she almost did and tumble them both down the pyramid steps.

  “Eliana!” he whispered, clutching at her arms. “We shouldn’t be here.”

  She felt at his wrist. “Is this a transponder? To send messages to Amon?”

  “Coordinates, not messages. But yes. Eliana, what was that…that monster in black. Is it one of the people you met, in some kind of ceremonial dress? Or is it—”

  “No time. We have to go.”

  “Yes, and quickly. What—”

  “Come on!”

  She yanked him down the stairs as rapidly as her feet would carry her, and sprinted across the courtyard. Reuben raced along behind her. The old man would be sore, no doubt. But as she looked back she saw a look of elation on his face. He glanced around the vast stone city with an expression of sheer, childlike wonder.

  They passed through a stone archway out of the city to the north. She wanted to stop, but with Xucha close behind them it wasn’t safe. She knew the arch was richly carved and decorated, so much like the ruins her team had discovered in Mexico.

  It seemed to be night in Kakul as well as on Earth—a coincidence if she’d ever known one—but even if she could see by the light of the two moons overhead, she didn’t dare stop moving yet. Not here. Not without someone who knew the area to watch her back. Not with Xucha behind them.

  Leaves slapped her face as they waded into the jungle. The brush grew thicker and they had to slow their pace. Now that she had spent more time in Mexico, she recognized the plants in Kakul, names that Lakshmi had taught her—tamarind trees, strangler figs, and ferns among much taller, much older trees that rose like watchtowers into the ancient canopy. She had the sense that this jungle was far more ancient than the one in Mexico she had recently been searching. The trees here were huge.

  Eliana slowed her pace as she came to a decision. “We have to find my friend Rakulo.”

  Reuben stopped and braced his hands on his knees as he caught his breath. Eliana waited for him, scanning the area around them for danger.

  “He’ll be able to help us,” she said. “I never saw predators in this jungle, but that doesn’t mean it’s safe…” Her voice trailed off.

  A rustling sound came to her left and then a woman appeared, wearing a brown homespun tunic wrapped around her chest and waist, with ochre-colored skin and dark hair in dreadlocks pulled back into a messy bun on her head.

  “Eliana?” the woman said. “Eliana, is that you?”

  Only she didn’t say “is that you” in English, she spoke in the dialect of Kakul that was so similar to Yucatec Maya and yet so different. She made Eliana’s name sound like a birdsong. It had been over a year since Eliana had used the language, so her tongue stumbled as she formed words to respond.

  “Citlali,” she said. “Hello. Nice to meet you…No, nice to see you again.”

  Citlali glanced uneasily at Reuben, then back at Eliana.

  “What are you doing here?” Citlali asked.

  “I…”

  And then she remembered.

  “Xucha came to my…” She paused, realizing her Kakuli was very rusty and she couldn’t remember the word for “World.” Instead, she said. “Xucha came to my home. He hurt people. I came here to make sure you were unharmed.”

  That’s a lie, but a banal one. She hadn’t come here to check on them at all, but to find stone carvings for her research. A wave of guilt washed over her.

  Citlali didn’t seem to notice. “Come,” she said. “You are lucky that most people are at the ceremony. The old men have been patrolling this area nonstop for several days. We were using this opportunity to make our way back to find Rakulo and the other warriors.”

  “Where’s Rakulo? Who are the old men?”

  “Later,” Citlali said.

  Eliana remembered how strong and confident this young woman was. She seemed even stronger now, leaner, harder, like she’d been training. Her cheeks were gaunt and she seemed tired. Yet her eyes remained alert, darting to the jungle around them.

  “Lead the way,” Eliana said.

  Citlali nodded. She gestured and another young woman Eliana didn’t know appeared out of the jungle. The new woman took up the front, Citlali the rear, and off into the jungle they went.

  “What did they say?” Reuben whispered as they walked.

  “They’re friends. They’re going to take us to Rakulo. I’ll fill you in on the details when we get somewhere safe.”

  “Shh,” the woman in front hissed.

  Eliana shut her mouth and focused on walking.

  Eventually they approached a low stone wall like a spine in the earth. The ground was treacherous, uneven stone concealed underfoot by a bed of leaves. Citlali took the lead and told them to only step where she was stepping. They walked until one of the cutouts went deep into the Earth and became a cave. The cave’s opening been carefully covered with cut branches, the edges of the opening shored up with heavy boulders and fallen trees.

  “It’s like a bunker,” Reuben said to her as they approached. “No one’s getting in here without a fight.”

  “Why the decorations?” Eliana asked Citlali.

  Citlali snorted a small laugh. “Decorations, like for your home? No. Not decorations. These are—” She used a word with a harsh
fricative that Eliana didn’t know, but which she interpreted as “defenses.”

  “I see,” Eliana said.

  Citlali gave a soft call, and someone responded. Then the branches were parted, and they were let in with a subdued cheer from the dozen or so people inside.

  Eliana did not see Rakulo among them. She and Reuben stood to one side as the young women were welcomed. Reuben fiddled with the transponder bracelet on his wrist.

  “Everything okay?” she asked.

  “I think so,” he said.

  The transponder showed the time—Earth time—and a set of coordinates. A four-way directional pad and two buttons controlled the numbers and the transmission. Simple and compact, no bigger than a small watch. “We should make contact soon to let Amon know we’re okay.”

  “I’m not ready to go back yet,” Eliana said.

  “Okay. But soon. I’m worried about him.”

  “Me, too,” she said. She knew how dangerous Xucha was. “Soon.”

  After exchanging greetings with her comrades, Citlali came over to where they waited. “They tell me that Rakulo and Quen have gone down the river. Have some onion and mushroom stew while we wait for them to return.”

  So they ate and waited. And waited more. Eliana drifted off for a while, and when she woke, Rakulo was standing over her, dripping wet, and grinning from ear to ear.

  She stood and he embraced her warmly.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked. “I thought I would never see you again.”

  “Here I am,” she said.

  “Who is this? Not your husband, is it?”

  “No, this is Reuben.”

  Reuben held out his hand, and Rakulo gripped it firmly. They sat around the fire while Rakulo and the big warrior Quen ate as well. Between bites, Rakulo filled her in about how he had convinced the villages to stop the sacrifices for a year after he became chief, and all about his warriors, their training, and the search for a way beyond the Wall. He had mentioned the Wall before, but she sensed a new determination to get beyond it. The youthful hopefulness he used to exude had been replaced by a very adult determination.