by M. G. Herron
Enzo shook his head. “A few weeks, tops.”
Amon raised his eyebrows. The doctor shrugged. “A team at the LTA came up with a new 3D printer that can handle the types of strengthened metal alloys needed to build new reactors if we need them. It’s just a matter of mining enough helium-3 from the moon in that time frame to make it viable.”
“That’s great,” Amon said, before remembering his other problems and sighing deeply. “At least it’s a step in the right direction.”
“You’ll find Lucas,” Enzo said. “I promise.”
Amon nodded. “Enzo, I’ve been thinking. How would the LTA like to buy me out of the Translocator contractor?”
Enzo pursed his lips and stared through his thick square-rimmed glasses. “Why? It’s your brainchild.”
Early on in his work with the LTA, Amon had insisted on patenting his molecular reassembly designs under his own name. It had been a long discussion, but Amon eventually brought Enzo around to his way of seeing things. Amon fought hard for that. Amon understood if it was hard for Enzo to see why he wanted to give that up now.
“I’ll keep working on the project, but I’m an inventor. I need freedom of movement. But having it here under the same roof as the rest of Fisk Industries is like working in a military compound. It’s bad for business. And, frankly, it’s starting to cause problems in my marriage.”
“Ahh,” Enzo said. “I see.”
“The Auriga Project is over, Enzo. I want to split the business. You buy the Translocator from me, and I’ll take the rest of Fisk Industries somewhere else.”
“Who’s going to run the project if you go?”
Amon gazed across the room at Reuben, who was pointing at floor plans as the FBI spies nearby nodded and listened attentively.
“Reuben can do it. He’s been my second-in-command long enough. Time for him to pilot the ship.”
“Hm,” Enzo said. “I like the idea. But why don’t you think about it, eh?”
“Nothing to think about,” Amon said. “Now that Lucas has his own Translocator, I have to focus on finding and stopping him. I don’t know what his plans are, but I can’t imagine they’re good after what he went through to get that reactor. Maiming himself like that? I can’t let him use something I built to further his own dark purpose.”
“And you think chasing a madman around the world will help your marriage?”
Amon blushed. “No, but—”
Enzo held up a hand. “I’m sorry. That was unkind.”
“No. You’re right. It won’t. But what choice do I have? I feel it’s my responsibility to prevent or reverse any harm he may cause.”
“When you stare into the darkness long enough, the darkness stares back.”
Amon wrinkled his nose. “Are you really quoting Nietzsche to me?”
“Just because he went mad at the end doesn’t make his lucid thoughts any less true. If you’re going to stop Lucas, you need access to the Translocator. You will continue to work on the Translocator. But perhaps it would be good to give Reuben some more responsibility. And Jeanine.” The doctor nodded at Jeanine, who sat nearby working on her laptop.
“We’ll see,” Amon said. “In any case, I’m happy for you to make those calls. I’ve had some bad luck picking trustworthy people lately.”
“Don’t blame yourself. And don’t listen to what the press says, eh?”
Amon groaned. He’d forgotten all about Reagan Gruber until now. Well, one problem at a time.
“Ahh,” Jeanine said, the relief evident in her voice. “Here she is, Amon.”
Amon turned back to the holodeck, and activated the Translocator. Eliana appeared on the platform as the spinning rings came to a halt. The bald bomb tech and Eliana stood on either side of the young man in the loincloth, supporting his weight. The knife Reuben had given him was now buried in his gut.
“Paramedic!” Eliana shouted. “We need a paramedic!”
Amon rushed forward to help carry the young man down the long hall and up the elevator. Reuben had called ahead and EMTs met them outside. He was rushed off to the hospital.
When Eliana had wiped her hands, she came out and faced Amon.
“I’m sorry,” he said for the second time.
She looked at him and took a deep breath. Her mouth was a thin line of worry. “Thank you for saying that. But it’s my fault he got hurt.”
“I wasn’t talking about Rakulo. I was apologizing for my own behavior.”
She nodded.
“I’ll understand if you can’t forgive me right away.”
“Just give me some time.”
Amon nodded as he felt his heart break. “Also, your archaeologists have arrived,” he managed to say.
When Eliana’s eyes lit up at that news, Amon felt his broken heart fall into a dark hole.
“Have they really?”
Amon nodded. “Audrey probably took them to her lab. I heard she had some other samples you left her.”
Eliana took a step closer to him, and reflexively leaned in…but stopped herself. She squeezed his arm instead. “I should go check on them. And apologize to Audrey for the way I left. I…We’ll talk soon, okay?”
Amon nodded, and forced a smile that fell as he watched his wife walk away.
46
The Same Era
“Easy, girl,” Eliana said weakly.
Lakshmi had wrapped her arms around Eliana’s neck as soon as she walked in the door, and the taller woman was now crushing her in her embrace.
“Oh, I’m so glad you’re okay,” Lakshmi said.
“We didn’t know what to think when I saw all those vans outside,” Talia said.
“And the security guards,” said Tanner.
“Good to see you in one piece, boss,” said Ross.
Eliana separated from Lakshmi and hugged the others each in turn, including Audrey, who wiped tears from her cheeks. Framed in her bright red hair, her watery blue eyes sparkled.
“Are you okay?” Eliana said.
“Still adjusting,” Audrey said. “I’m just this scientist, you know?”
They all laughed.
“I’ll be fine,” Audrey added.
Eliana gazed around at her friends’ grinning faces. “How did you figure out I was here, Lakshmi?” Eliana asked. “You couldn’t have seen my car from the perimeter where the guards are stationed now, could you?”
“We didn’t,” Lakshmi said. “Your phone was off. Your car wasn’t parked at your house, and the house lights were all off. So we came to see Audrey, instead.” Lakshmi shrugged. “We wanted to know about the radiocarbon dating on the second monolith samples. And show her the pictures, of course, so she knew what she was working with.”
“I’m dying to know, too,” Eliana said.
“I can tell you with some certainty,” Audrey said, “that the second set of samples dates to the same era as the first. They may have been built less than a few years apart.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” Eliana said. “But the real test is ahead of us.”
“What do you mean?” Audrey asked.
The others listened in rapt silence as Eliana explained how she had gone through the rift to Kakul. She told them how Reuben had followed, what happened when they encountered Rakulo and the others, who were fighting amongst themselves. At last, she came to the part where she had visited the stone city, in search of carvings…and been taken captive by Xucha, the alien being impersonating a god.
At first, her words were hesitant. She faltered and stuttered. But her voice gained confidence and power as she went on. Telling the story seemed to diminish the alien’s hold over her.
“He said his name was Remethiakara,” Eliana said. “And that your carbonado, Audrey…he called it a star shard. He told me that the stones were forged by intense heat at the center of a star when it explodes. The shards are cast outward into the universe. I guess that’s how one landed here. He seemed to be able to draw energy from it somehow like…electricity that he co
uld control. That’s the best way I can describe it.”
Audrey’s eyes widened as her mouth fell open. “Wow,” she finally managed to say. “Does he still have it?”
“I’m not sure we’ll ever know. Rakulo’s friends brought him back from the tower. I asked one of the girls if the shard was still up there, but she said they looked all over and there was no black rock or anything like it.”
“Damn,” Audrey said. “The only other piece of that meteorite is buried under hundreds of feet of Antarctic ice.”
47
For His People
Rakulo woke in a small white room full of so much sunlight that it made him squint. Except, it wasn’t sunlight, it was a brightness that came from rectangles set into the ceiling.
Eliana, Reuben, Amon, and several other people he had never met before, light-skinned people mostly, but one brown woman too, taller than any woman he’d ever seen, stood at his bedside.
“Hello,” Eliana said in his language. “How are you feeling?”
Rakulo patted gently at his ribs. A thick padding of white bandages were wrapped around his ribcage.
“Alive,” he said. “Where am I?”
“On my world.”
“Your world is very bright.”
Eliana chuckled. “Not all of it.”
She spoke to the others in her own language and they laughed. It made him feel very uncomfortable.
“Thank you for healing me,” he said.
“I was worried you wouldn’t make it for a while,” Eliana said. “But the doctors have cleared you to leave. Do you want to go home now?”
“Yes. Very much. I need to be there for my people.”
48
What She Was Looking For
Lakshmi seemed surprised when Amon agreed to let Eliana and her team go back through the Translocator with Rakulo.
Eliana wasn’t surprised. The hangdog look Amon gave her made his motives transparently obvious.
It would take more than that to make it up to her for the way he’d acted. She wanted to forgive him. She really did. She had been inches away from saying, “I forgive you,” several times, but the words wouldn’t come out. It was like her tongue had been tied in a knot.
Amon had given the rest of the team their safety brief, proper protocols for using the transponder bracelets he made them all wear. But he wasn’t at the office the day they went back to Kakul. She thought that might have been intentional. Reuben and Jeanine operated the Translocator. They both hugged her before she went through. They didn’t mention Amon once.
Her team arrived in the village to a riotous, chaotic greeting. Once people had settled down, Rakulo asked a few warriors to take Eliana and her friends where they wanted to go. A sizable escort of young warriors gathered and led them to the ruined city of Uchben Na. The protection turned out to be truly unnecessary. Nothing bothered their visit except for the ever-present tickle of mosquitoes at their sweaty necks. The humidity had ratcheted up again as well, she noticed.
Soon, they crossed under the archway into the main courtyard.
“This is incredible!” Turner whispered.
“I’ve never seen a ruin so well preserved,” Lakshmi said.
“If the city was only recently abandoned—as in, the past few hundred years—what do you think happened?”
“They took care of the city for a long time,” Eliana said. “And then one day they didn’t.” She had slowed to look at the carvings underneath the arch one more time. This would be the first thing she recorded. She would give the rest of them a tour first…
But as Eliana walked under the arch and saw the courtyard in the daylight, she gasped and put her hand to her mouth.
Where the great central pyramid had once been—a pyramid as big as Chichen Itza’s famous wonder—a pile of rubble now stood. The pyramid had collapsed to the ground since her last visit only a few days ago.
“What’s the matter?” Lakshmi asked.
“The pyramid collapsed,” Eliana said. “It was standing just a few days ago. How…”
“Oh,” was all Lakshmi could say. “What happened to it?
“Why don’t we ask their Chief?” Eliana said.
Rakulo entered the city behind them. Though he walked slow and carefully, his hand at his side, he crossed toward them, tall in the sunlight. His chest had filled out and he seemed to have lost much of the adolescent awkwardness that Eliana had seen in him when they first met almost two years ago. He looked so much like Chief Dambu that Eliana felt uncomfortable for a moment…until he smiled. Rakulo’s smile filled his whole face and wrinkled the brown skin at his eyes.
“Rakulo,” Eliana said. “What happened to the pyramid?”
“I don’t know,” Rakulo said. “The others said there was an earthquake. The ground shook for several minutes. When people came here to investigate, it was like this. The earthquake must have taken it down.”
Eliana translated Rakulo’s explanation to her team.
“They say the pyramid at Chichen Itza was built on top of a cenote,” Lakshmi said. “Maybe this one was, too, and the earthquake took it down.”
“Maybe,” Eliana said.
Rakulo interrupted her reverie. “Did you find what you were looking for?” he asked.
Eliana saw Lakshmi’s eyes light up, and her lips murmur something under her breath. She was still in awe of the natives—and maybe a little bit in lust, too, Eliana thought.
“We will,” Eliana said in the Kakuli language. “We just need to take some samples and pictures and we’ll be on our way.”
“Dirt?” Rakulo said. “What do you need with dirt?”
“It will tell us how old this place is.”
Rakulo regarded the city for a long time, gazing among the stones, and then shrugged. “If you want to, go ahead. I don’t care how old it is. I am happy to see the pyramid destroyed. People are saying that Xucha destroyed his temple in anger because we have turned away. But it has been peaceful ever since. These stones could sink into the sea for all I care.”
“Don’t you want to use the stones to rebuild?”
“This is the past,” Rakulo said. “Our future is in the village, not among these cold stones.”
“Now that you can go beyond the Wall, will you always stay in the village?”
“We’ll stay for now,” Rakulo said. “There are crops to harvest still. If we leave, we will need time to prepare. There is no danger now except to protect what we have left.”
Eliana nodded. She guessed, based on what the alien had told her, that their population had been slowly declining for centuries.
“I have a favor to ask,” Rakulo said. “Can you get me more of those”—he expanded his hands and made a rumbling noise with his mouth—“things you used to punch through the Wall?”
“I can ask,” Eliana said. “Although there are probably more practical ways. I’ll work something out.”
“Thank you,” Rakulo said.
Eliana and her team took several soil core samples from different spots all around the stone city in the week they spent there. Then they went home.
49
A Particular Kind of Justice
The old man, Reuben, was the one who brought the new tools back with Eliana. Rakulo was astonished the first time he watched Reuben use the light-cutter describe a circle in the sheer, unmarked Wall. The circle could then be battered out, leaving a gaping hole with a sharp, curving edge.
They couldn’t take down the Wall, so Rakulo did the next best thing. He and Citlali used the light-cutter to make dozens of exits, each about a thirty minute walk apart. No matter where you were, there was always a way through the Wall.
Rakulo felt this served a particular kind of justice. Even if there turned out to be nothing for them beyond the desert on that side of the Wall, his people would never be trapped here again.
It was only once this had been done that he was able to sleep at night.
Eliana left behind one of those bracelets with him.
Rakulo kept it tied and hidden in the thatch roof of his hut like he had with her ring for so many months. She said that if he ever wanted to visit their world again, or reach them, all he had to do was hold the button to send them a “signal.”
Strange word, “signal.” But having the object also brought him some peace.
They held a big memorial with a bonfire for all those they had lost. At midnight, when no one else could see, Rakulo threw the obsidian knife that had once belonged to his father, and before that to generations of shamans, into the ocean, as far as he could hurl it.
It had served him well, but he didn’t want to carry a symbol of the old ways on his person any more.
Instead, he armed himself with the other object he had acquired that came from Eliana’s world, the big knife that Reuben told him was made of “metal.” Another new word for him.
Carrying the thing that had brought him closest to death reminded him how precious life was. How fragile. And what he had done to rescue hope for his people.
“Good news, Raku!” Citlali said as she came up to him at the cliff’s edge. “Yeli thinks she is with child.”
“So soon?”
“She says it is Quen’s.”
Rakulo grinned. Their tribe would begin to grow once again.
50
The Half of It
Eliana kicked off her sandals and sat cross-legged on the shore of the turtle pond at the University of Texas at Austin. She placed the blue folder thick with loose pages on the grass next to her. The summer air was dry and hot, but her skin felt thirsty for the sun. She didn’t mind sweating a little as long as her hair was pulled up off her neck. She watched the turtles battle for the sunny dry spot on the end of the log while she waited for Renee to arrive.
The fall semester was still several weeks away, so the campus was sparsely populated. Only two people shared the pond with her—a old lady power-walking across the campus, and a young woman with her headphones in, strolling along the opposite bank.
Eliana had refused an invitation to return for more guest lectures during the fall semester. Since the last trip to Kakul, her mind filled with thoughts of her research, and what they had discovered.
