Phobos

by Steve Alten

  The light becomes daylight and a cloudless blue sky.

  He crawls out of the cave, gazing in wonderment at a horizon rippling with snowcapped mountains. The altitude is high, the air temperature a brisk forty degrees. He pulls the fur cloak hanging from his neck across his brown shoulders and discovers his Indian heritage. He winces at the pain pulsating along the right side of his throbbing skull and realizes his head is bleeding.

  The memories play back in his mind’s eye, settling the rising fear.

  I ascended the sacred mountain to seek wisdom from the great teacher about my enemy. The stone gave way and I tumbled, striking my head.

  “I am Chilam Balam, Jaguar Prophet—seed root of the Hunahpu.”

  The dark-haired warrior gazes below at his kingdom—a fertile valley fed by freshwater streams flowing steadily from the snowcapped mountains. Steeped terraces have been carved into every mountainside as far as the eye can see, yielding bountiful crops. The city below this agricultural potpourri ripples outward from a centrally located palace and marketplace before becoming an organized maze of aqueducts and canals, bridges and temples—all servicing the Itza commerce centers. Farther out are the populace dwellings, teeming with a new generation of followers—all originating from the loins of the 620 who awoke on the shores of the alien sea during the first hour of the creation event.

  It has been thirteen tuns since the followers of Chilam Balam experienced their rebirth in the New World. While historians recount their arrival as a blessed moment, the Jaguar Prophet’s account in the Council Book tells a different story.

  The air had been far colder than the wind now chilling Chilam Balam’s bones, churned by a raging sea specked with floating white mountains. The Jaguar Priest and his people had no concept of frozen water back then, or the vastness of the icebergs that flowed north from the glacier-impacted South Pole. Reasoning that the colder climate had birthed these white temples of the ocean gods, Balam led his people north in search of warmth and food and sanctuary.

  Seven cruel months of winter claimed a third of their people. Balam’s female, Blood Woman, had nearly perished from sickness and had to be dragged on a stretcher for weeks by her soul mate. At times they came upon parcels of bare earth and the remnants of a past civilization, the bones crushed under the weight of time and ice.

  Believing the land cursed they had moved on, continuing their journey along the Pacific coastline of South America.

  And then, out of a morning mist appeared the sign of the great teacher himself—a three-pronged spear as tall and wide as the Kukulcan Pyramid, the trident carved into the side of a mountain. Arriving at the entrance of the valley they discovered a freshwater river flowing into the sea, teeming with fish. Following the waterway to the east led them into a lush forest overgrown with fruit trees, wildlife, and edible plants. Uncountable streams wound down from the surrounding mountains, bringing with them fertile soil.

  The Jaguar Prophet immediately proclaimed the land to be the site of their future kingdom.

  For the next ten tuns, peace and prosperity reigned over the Itza. Sheltered from the weather by the mountains, with no worldly enemies to fear, the task of building their city remained uninterrupted—buoyed by their leader’s blossoming knowledge of agriculture, architecture, and engineering.

  But every Eden has its snake, every leader a rival. And so it came to pass that Chilam Balam once more ventured up the sacred mountainside to access the cave of wonders, hoping to ask the great teacher how best to deal with Seven Macaw.

  It had been Blood Woman who had discovered the cave. Walking alone by the shoreline, still barren of child after two tuns in the New World, she had been praying to the creators of the trident when she noticed birds flying out from a location near the summit.

  It took Chilam Balam a full day of climbing to reach the top of the engraved symbol, another hour to achieve the summit and cave entrance, which actually faced east. He remained at the holy site for three uinal cycles, drawing fresh water from a stream and sustenance from the fruit of a grove of jac trees.

  The cave itself descended deep inside the mountain, bringing him into the godly dwelling of another legendary wise man.

  What Kukulcan was to the Maya, Viracocha was to the Inca. Inscriptions and reliefs describe the creator-teacher as a bearded Caucasian man with silky white hair and turquoise-blue eyes set in an elongated skull. Legends of the Aymara Indians of South America tell how Viracocha rose from Lake Titicaca during the time of darkness to bring forth light. Like Kukulcan, Viracocha brought great wisdom to his people. He eventually left the Indians, crossing the Pacific Ocean by walking on water.

  So close in appearance was Viracocha to Kukulcan that Chilam Balam believed he was channeling the spirit of the Mayan wise man when the pale Inca prophet first appeared to him in the cave. Viracocha explained that both teachers were Hunahpu—the future of mankind. The Jaguar Prophet had been chosen to seed their species into the New World.

  After sixty days in seclusion, Chilam Balam returned to his people, claiming to have been given a secret wisdom that would ensure the Itza’s survival. The people dared not question their prophet’s claim, for his eyes now radiated the same turquoise-blue of the great Mayan teacher himself.

  Nine months later, Blood Woman gave birth to twin boys. Balam named the fair-haired child Hunahpu, his dark-haired brother Xbalanque. Once each solar year, Balam returned to the cave with his sons to pay their respects to Viracocha.

  On their last visit to the mountain they had been followed.

  Not everyone who had ascended to the New World had supported Chilam Balam. Many, in fact, had merely been caught in the tide of Maya pushing the prophet’s followers into the sacred cenote and were driven over the edge by the frenzied crowd.

  Though Seven Macaw claimed himself a wise leader and seer, his promotion to the High Council had been secured not on merit but as part of a debt owed to his grandfather, Five Macaw, a great warrior whose Toltec ancestors had joined the Itza, Xio, and Cocom tribes at Chichen during the reign of Kukulcan.

  A practitioner of black magic, Seven Macaw was convinced Chilam Balam had summoned a giant serpent to rise from the sacred cenote. The serpent’s throat was Xibalba Be—the black road to the Mayan underworld. Certainly the extreme cold and alien geography, littered with the bones of the dead, indicated they were now in Xibalba.

  Better to leave Chilam Balam to confront the dark underlords himself, Seven Macaw reasoned. He would observe and learn, biding his time.

  What Seven Macaw observed was that the Jaguar Prophet clearly drew his wisdom and strength from the sacred cave. And so the Toltec seer followed the prophet and his sons, intent on possessing the dark magic for himself.

  Three moons passed before Seven Macaw returned to the city from the cave of wonders, his transformation complete. His eyes now glittered like red rubies and his teeth were stained blue, as sharp and as fanged as a jaguar’s. His body was as powerful as the strongest five warriors among them.

  Standing by the palace steps, flanked by his sons, Zipacna and Earthquake, he addressed the gathering crowd: “I am Lord Seven Macaw and I am great. My place is now higher than that of the human design. I am your sun; I am the foothold of the Itza that keeps you from falling prey to the underlords of Xibalba. Worship me and I shall protect you. Follow Chilam Balam and you shall perish, for my wisdom is greater, my light is greater. This is why I have been summoned to replace him. I am Lord Seven Macaw!”

  The crowd parted, allowing Chilam Balam to approach his challenger.

  Seven Macaw circled the Jaguar Prophet, dancing and prancing and calling up to the gods of the sky—his right hand concealing a white powder he had prepared from the borrachero plant. Spinning around, Seven Macaw flung the white dust in Balam’s face, causing the Jaguar Priest to inhale the burundanga powder.

  His jaw locks. His muscles turn to stone. His vision constricts behind a white haze. He cannot move. He cannot think.

  For the first ti
me in his life, Chilam Balam is deathly afraid.

  The sons of Seven Macaw bind the paralyzed prophet to a post. The new lord of the Itzas demands the wife and sons of Chilam Balam be brought to him so they may be sacrificed to the underlords of Xibalba.

  A search of the city yields nothing. Blood Woman and her twins are long gone, having heeded Viracocha’s warning.

  Fear has pushed Chilam Balam beyond the brink of sanity. Seven Macaw whispers into his brain, his torturer lurking in the shadows of his mind. The demon crawls beneath his skin and suffocates all rational thought. Held within the bonds of the borrachero plant’s drug-induced narcosis, Balam is helpless to prevent the Mayan sorcerer from injecting more terror into the Jaguar Prophet’s already damaged psyche. In vivid nightmares Balam witnesses his soul mate skinned alive by Seven Macaw, his sons sodomized by the black magician’s offspring. Each dream ends with a bloodcurdling scream, each scream unraveling another stitch in the fabric of his existence until the terror had become his identity.

  Like an autumn breeze, Viracocha moves through the mist, the great teacher’s presence extinguishing the burners in his brain, allowing his white-hot synapses to cool. Surrounded by the soothing quiet, Balam’s mind crawls out of its shell, exploring an existence void of his torturer’s demonic coos.

  He opens his eyes to darkness. He lacks all knowledge of where he is, who he is, or how he came to be here. He stands and strikes his head on stone. Lying on his back, he presses his feet to the object. With a primordial yell, he engages his powerful legs, launching the five-ton lid away from the ancient limestone coffin.

  Immanuel Gabriel climbs out of Lord Pakal’s burial tomb, his mind returned, his Mayan fear gone.

  12

  It shall burn on Earth; there shall be a circle in the sky. It shall burn on Earth; the very hoof shall burn in that katun, in the time which is to come. Fortunate is he who shall see it when the prophecy is declared, who shall weep over his misfortunes in time to come.

  —CHILAM BALAM, BOOK OF OXKUTZCAB

  Earth News & Media

  July 2, 2047: An estimated one billion delighted onlookers living in the Northern Hemisphere gazed skyward with cameras last night at what may go down as the most unusual aurora borealis ever viewed. Originating approximately 150 miles over the North Pole, the lights materialized just after 9:00 p.m. EST. A brilliant bloodred halolike ringlet filtered down in ever-widening circles that changed from shades of bright green to blue, ending in a violet band that could be seen as far south as Sacramento, California. Appearing during intense sunspot activity, the aurora borealis and its southern twin, the aurora australis, are composed of fast-moving electrons and protons that reach Earth, only to become trapped in the planet’s protective Van Allen radiation belts. The electrically charged particles then collide with air molecules in the planet’s atmosphere to form hydrogen atoms, emitting luminous colors in the process. Though breathtaking to behold, the invisible magnetic particle waves can severely damage power grids and satellites. Dr. Kassandra Horta, an atmospheric scientist from the University of Wyoming, seemed unconcerned. “There’s been no unusual sunspot activity over the last six months. Nature’s simply treating us to her light show, and we should enjoy it while it lasts.”

  CERN LARGE HADRON COLLIDER (LHC)

  GENEVA, SWITZERLAND

  The seventy-six-year-old physicist paces back and forth in front of the twelve-foot-high virtual lecture hall screen like a caged tiger. Every word spoken is simultaneously translated in more than thirty languages, every outburst transmitted to more than a million personal computers across the world.

  Jack Harbach O’Sullivan pauses to drain his coffee mug, reflecting before a dry-erase board filled with chaotic mathematical equations. “We scientists are an awesome company of tailors, always attempting to fit our theories into the perfect set of clothes. It never works. It didn’t work for Isaac Newton, it didn’t work for Einstein. And the reason it doesn’t work, my little flock of moths, is that our perception of the flame is all wrong.

  “While the singularity remains the prime model for just about every energy object in our observable quasi-knowable universe, string theory has distracted the scientific community from scrutinizing the monumentally nonproductive shortcomings of quantum physics—a field accorded near-religious status. Call me a heretic if you wish, but heed my advice: the answers to our existence lie in the virgin realms of the exotic—dark energy and gravion waves, and super M-brane theories that deal with ten dimensions, all but our shared parcel of physical universe void of any concept of time.”

  He glances at his watch. “Interesting concept, time. I used to refer to time as space-time-normal. Now I think of time as a function of our three-dimensional linear world—a nonreal concept that is simply the illusion perceived by our particular species of bioplanetary hominids so that we can keep track of our activities within our hyperbubble of nonreality.

  “More heresy, you say? Not when one realizes that our perception of reality is poisoned by our own three-dimensional existence. Let’s begin with a few basics: everything in our physical universe is composed of atoms, only atoms exist in the virtual world of no-time. Atoms are the reality, it is we who are the illusion. Consider space, be it the distance between objects in the micro world or the macro world of colliding galaxies. In his limited theories on gravity, our lord and savior, Albert Einstein, suggested gravity occurs as a result of the curvature of space, as if the cosmos were a giant canvas made of foam. According to Lord Albert, Earth acts like a giant revolving bowling ball, its weight causing the moon to circle our planet like a roulette wheel in the same manner the planets circle the sun. Wrong, Mr. Patent Office Clerk! Not every object in our solar system, let alone space, fits into your tailor-made two-dimensional gravitational well theory. As evidence, I submit that Uranus’s moon, Oberon, orbits its planet over the poles while Charon, Pluto’s moon, also refuses to conform. Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, quantum physicists refused to refute Brother Albert’s bowling-ball-on-the-mattress theory of gravity, fearful of being labeled a heretic. Instead, they simply tailored his theory to fit our needs.

  “The answer to gravity, like time, is held within the atom. As first alluded to by Sir Isaac Newton, every atom in the universe is bound to every other atom by what can be described as an electromagnetic rope. Imagine two hydrogen particles, each possessing four atoms. Imagine each of the four atoms in particle one linked to each of the four atoms in particle two by electromagnetic ropes. That’s a total of sixteen ropes, for you non-mathematician-types counting at home. Now, imagine these ropes as spiderwebs. As the two particles move away from each other, the sixteen spiderwebs lengthen and superimpose, thus appearing and acting as one. As the particles move closer, the tension increases as the spiderwebs again fan out among the two sets of four atoms. This is important to gravity because proximity among atoms alters the angle of tension. Since weight is location-specific, the approaching objects actually accelerate toward one another. The closer together the hydrogen particles get, the stronger the tension and the faster the object will move to its next location. We call this increase in speed acceleration.

  “Why does an object in space spin? Because its atoms are tugging on other atoms in space, causing the object to spin. Our electromagnetic rope theory continues to make even more sense when we remember that gravity penetrates all objects, which is why the space industry will never succeed in building an effective gravity shield. Can’t be done. Not when every atom in the entire universe has a symbiotic relationship with every other atom in the universe.

  “Let me toss another log on this exotic flame: If Nature-slash-Creation-slash-Existence-in-the-Physical-Universe relies on the electromagnetic spiderwebs linking atoms, then splitting the atom technically violates the laws of Nature-slash-Creation-slash-Existence. Think about that a second. Split the atom and we get nuclear power, which begets atomic bombs, which begets nuclear radioactive waste. Collide atoms, and we may ultimately pay a
n even bigger price.”

  With a mischievous smile, Jack O’Sullivan waves to his CERN handlers standing in the wings—shocked to see his old colleague, Dave Mohr.

  “You spent a decade working on a transdimensional nano-bio starship capable of traveling at hypergravionic tachyon velocities, and you didn’t call me! I hate you, Mohr. You’re not Mohr to me, you’re less. David Less. As in less than a friend.” Jack O’Sullivan leads the physicist and his friend inside his private office and slams the door.

  Dr. Mohr makes his way across a minefield of stacked books and open files strewn across the floor to a worn denim sofa. Tossing aside an empty pizza box, he sits. “You’re a pig, Sully. Did you steal this sofa from our old frat house?”

  “Don’t change the subject. I should have been running Golden Fleece, not you.”

  “Stop whining. The president wanted someone not affiliated with the military industrial complex. While I was trying to find a can opener exotic enough to access the interior of the Balam, you were technical advisor to NASA’s Advanced Propulsion Research Project, a black ops space program.”

  Mitchell Kurtz sidesteps a cat sleeping on an old army blanket, accidentally kicking over its litter box. “NASA was involved in a black ops space program?”

  Jack shoots the bodyguard a look. “Who is this guy? He smells like Intel.”

  “Relax. Dr. Kurtz is a scientist.”

  “A scientist, huh? What’s your chosen field, Dr. Kurtz? Quantum physics? Chemistry?”

  “Actually, I prefer to dabble in gynecology.”

  “Just what we need, a comedian.”