Lawrence grinned. “Because you don’t sell movies and books and newspapers with the mundane.”
She leaned back, feeling a little disappointed that the epic catastrophe she had half believed in was explained away by something as simple as throwing out your old day planner at the end of the year and picking up a new one.
“So,” he continued, “wrong about the end of the world, if they ever even thought that. But right with their other calculations, the hidden ones.”
“You lost me.”
Lawrence switched his right hand to the mouse while his left tapped keys, his eyes rapidly tracking the moving images on screen. “The Mayans had their own algorithms concealed within the symbols of the calendar, and it’s taken me two years to uncover them. I also discovered that this Baktun, the one we’re in, is mathematically different from any that have gone before. On the final day of our current Baktun, the hidden Mayan equation finally falls into place.”
“Which means what?”
He looked sideways at her. “Every mathematical operation leads to something. Sometimes it’s an effect, usually it’s another equation, but there’s always something at the end of it. I don’t feel like waiting until it comes around by itself, so I’ve set up this program to simulate the final day of the Baktun, and apply the hidden algorithm, right now.”
“What’s going to happen?”
Lawrence shrugged. “Can’t say.” A massive calculation began scrolling across several screens, and the graphic image of the calendar itself, crafted so each ring could be turned independently, began rotating. “When they make me the president of MIT you can say you were here to see it first.”
“I don’t think you should be messing with this, Lawrence.” She was suddenly very uncomfortable.
“Will you relax? It’s only a computer model, all just theoretical. I need to test it before I present to the board.” The equation reached its terminus, and he hit the enter button with a dramatic flourish.
Lawrence Singh was right. And wrong.
Right about there being a hidden calculation which would trigger under precise conditions.
Wrong when he said theoretical.
At the moment he struck the enter key, five of his screens went black. On the one remaining, the one showing the calendar itself, an interior ring stopped rotating with the symbol of one of the Nine Lords of the Night in the uppermost position. The carving depicted a squatting skeleton with the head of a mantis.
If Lawrence had been dating an Anthropology major, she might have been able to tell him this symbol represented Mictlantecuhtli, a deity named by the Aztecs, and one to which the Mayans paid homage but dared not speak of or name for themselves. Both cultures regarded him as the God of the Dead, the King of the Underworld, and the Eater of Stars. Both cultures believed he waited just beyond this world to greet the dead and rip their souls apart, and worship of Mictlantecuhtli involved ritual cannibalism on a broad scale. Most others cultures in the world, past and present, had their own name for him.
One was Lucifer.
The gateway erupted not as a computer graphic on a flat screen, but as a vertical, nine-foot slash in the air just yards in front of them. It bowed at the edges, forming a sort of pulsing oval with red, meaty-looking edges and an absolute darkness within. A sickening odor spilled into the lab, making Lawrence clamp his hands to his mouth and nose and causing Kiera to vomit between her knees. The sound of a frantically-played violin running up and down the chromatic scales filled the air, almost a metallic hum, and then a black, seven-foot tall praying mantis scuttled out of the opening, claws clicking on the tile floor, barbed forelegs held in the classic prayer pose. An articulated head moved slowly in a three-hundred degree arc as it surveyed the room with its glistening, compound eyes. Its razored beak clicked, and it let out a long hiss.
Kiera crawled under the console and tucked into a fetal position, whimpering and biting her knuckles to keep from screaming. Lawrence couldn’t move, one hand resting on the useless mouse, eyes wide and locked on the thing before him.
The mantis let out a high-pitched squeal and skittered across the lab, quick and agile, banging through the double doors at the far end. Dozens more spilled out of the gate, hissing and shrieking, following the first, and still more emerged. Within seconds a steady stream of black-bodied giants was pouring out of the throbbing portal, flowing through the lab in a clicking, ravenous mass that had no end.
One of the black screens blinked to life, and announced it was processing a calculation to determine portal output. Simple calculations began to form, mostly multiplication and numbers Lawrence was familiar with; nines, thirteens, twenties, four-hundreds. His finely-tuned mathematician’s brain reached the sum even before the computer did, as a river of hungry insects chattered past and out the door.
Fifty-four billion.
He blinked, his lips moving soundlessly. Was that even possible? Without meaning to, he broke the number down in his head. If a thousand giant mantises emerged from the gate every hour, twenty-four hours a day, it would take about eight years before the sum was achieved. Eight times the planet’s population. What would be left of mankind?
Screaming from the campus beyond the glass walls of the lab building answered that question. Praying mantises were among the most efficient predators in the insect world, so utterly ruthless that – like the Mayans who worshipped their dark patron – they did not hesitate to turn to cannibalism when other prey wasn’t available. Boston was just across the Charles River, with the whole world waiting beyond that. There would be no shortage of prey.
So involved in his calculations had he been, that Lawrence didn’t notice when one of the shiny black killers, a big female, stepped out of line and pranced quickly up behind the desk, head pivoting with sharp, quick movements as she hunted. Finding what she sought, she squealed and used her front legs to drag Kiera out from under the desk. The girl screamed and babbled and flailed at her attacker until the mantis disemboweled her with the slash of a foreleg, dropping her jittering body to the tile.
Lawrence kicked violently backwards in his swivel chair, ramming into the edge of the workstation table, staring up at the monster towering over him. The female rocked from side to side, antennae twitching as she regarded him with her big eyes.
A single, organized thought managed to cut through his fear. If the computer had caused the portal to open, might shutting it down cause it to close? The whole system fed to a big surge protector under the desk, and he risked a glance down to see that his right shoe was only inches from the glowing red kill switch.
He glanced up and saw she had her head tilted, staring at him as if curious. His foot moved-
-and the mantis bit his head off as if he was a mate who had performed his primary task.
The body slumped to the floor, and the female quickly joined the flow towards the exit doors, one more player in the final act of the world.
OF CRIMES AND CROWS
In the moonlight, the coyote was just a shadow against a desert backdrop. It stood at the edge of the road, head lowered and motionless, looking at the man who had come to a halt twenty feet away. The coyote made a noise in its throat which was part growl, part whine, and took a single step onto the asphalt.
Thomas Jumping Crow stood as still as the animal in front of him. He licked his lips, tasting the whiskey, and clutched the bottle close to his chest as if the coyote might wish to take it from him. He was almost upon the animal when it stepped from behind a clump of sagebrush, looking as if it intended to cross the highway. It had startled him.
“Go back,” he whispered, and saw one of the animal’s ears flicker. “Let me pass.”
The coyote lifted its head, sniffing the night air, fragrant with the tang of alkali and the softer scent of sage. It took another step, and Thomas tensed. Coyote, the Trickster, was without question an evil spirit, but it could also be playful. Was that what Coyote was doing now? Playing with him? Testing him? Every Navajo knew that if a coyote
crossed your path, you must turn back. To continue would lead to injury or even death. He believed, but enough to walk back into the night, return to…nothing? Not that anything was waiting for him ahead, either. Did it really matter whether this scrawny desert dog walked across the road now or later?
The night had no answer. It was silent and empty, isolated. Like the two living things on the road.
“Do as you will,” he muttered, taking a step forward. The coyote yipped and darted across the road, disappearing into the shadows beyond. For Thomas to go on would be a serious taboo, not broken lightly. He hesitated, suddenly afraid. Would this be the one, he wondered? Would defying Coyote be the final trigger? After a moment he forced himself to move forward, pretending he didn’t feel an involuntary shudder when he crossed the path the animal had taken. Nothing happened in that instant, but then it wasn’t supposed to. Coyote would work his tricks at his own pace, in his own time. Under his broken boots, Route 191 stretched on under a cool-eyed moon.
He passed a gravel turn-off which led to White Mesa, a cluster of shacks encircling a trading post a mile or so beyond the high sandstone hills. Thomas Jumping Crow was not welcome in White Mesa, just as he was not welcome many places in San Juan County. He was what his people called a Shadow Man, one who had no place in either the Spirit World or the world of men. Over his forty years – though his wind-burned face made him look closer to sixty – he had drifted across the southeastern corner of Utah, in and out of Colorado and Arizona, working menial, labor-intensive jobs, mostly on ranches. Each stay was usually brief, ending once his alcohol consumption became unbearable, or when his nature came to the attention of his employers, as it always managed to do.
The year he worked for the Bureau of Indian Affairs hadn’t helped his reputation, either. In 1935 the Bureau – citing soil erosion and overgrazing – ordered the Navajos to slaughter vast quantities of their herds, compensating them with only a fraction of their worth. Jumping Crow signed on with the government, and aided its agents in going after those Navajo ranchers who were reluctant to comply, entering their lands and driving their sheep off cliffs by the thousands. To him, a job was a job, and in these times he took whatever he could get. But to the Navajo people, who measured wealth by the headcount of sheep, he was no better than a white man.
Yet regardless of his time among the whites, and despite being a drifter and petty thief frequently unable to work due to drunkenness, it was his nature which drove him out of communities and onto the road again and again. And that was something he could not change.
He shuffled over a rise, boots scraping the asphalt as he walked the yellow line, a man in dusty jeans and denim jacket, his long hair tied back under a blue bandana and a single crow’s feather tied into his braid. As a child he was told that he must forever wear the black feather, so that the people would know what he was. He was also told that if he did not wear the feather, he would be taken by a whirlwind, where he would spend an eternity of pain spinning within it.
The desert unfolded before him, a barren sea painted in shades of gray and black, a near-full moon riding high above. Jumping Crow didn’t look at the moon, knowing it would follow him if he did. He did not look at the stars for fear he might see one falling, bringing him bad luck. He did not eat corn when it was raining, for fear of being struck by lightning, and he did not whistle because it would summon the wind. There were many taboos among his people, and he, like all Navajo, had long ago been educated that breaking them could expose one to evil spirits. This was especially dangerous for someone like Thomas Jumping Crow.
And yet I crossed Coyote’s path, he thought. Do I fear death less than wind and lightning? It was yet another point of confusion in a life both complex and simple at the same time.
He spotted the car pulled off the road about a quarter mile down a dirt trail, partially hidden by sage, its curved white roof gleaming under the moonlight. Abandoned, perhaps? It would be worth a look. There might be something of value inside, something he could trade. The car itself would be useless, of course. Jumping Crow had never driven an automobile.
Within fifteen minutes the highway was behind him and he was scraping along the trail, his boots kicking at the tire imprints in the rocky sand. Theft was a taboo too, of course, but one he had broken before without ill effect. There were greater worries, like avoiding high places because they were home to the Holy Ones and monsters, and the prohibition against killing a spider without first drawing a circle around it and saying, “You have no relatives.” Handling crow feathers was said to cause boils, but he knew this wasn’t true. Perhaps for other Navajo, but not for him, which made sense. He drank from his bottle as he walked, relishing the liquid burn as it went down.
The car came into view from behind the sage and Thomas staggered to a halt. A ’33 or ’34 four-door Pontiac, it was white with black fenders and doors, and on the door facing him were white block letters reading SHERIFF’S PATROL SAN JUAN COUNTY curving over and under a white star. The car was shaking.
Thomas turned and began walking briskly away. Then he heard the girl scream. He told himself it was a cry of passion, and then it came again, young, piercing, in pain. His legs kept moving. It was white man’s business, none of his business. Another scream, long and shrieking, filled with terror. He was running now, not thinking, not wanting to think, and suddenly realized he was running at the car, boots sliding in the sand and dirt. He saw figures moving in the back and jerked open the rear passenger door. The man – boy – in back was naked from the waist down, his pale rear end pumping furiously as his arms fought to restrain the figure beneath him. Jumping Crow caught the strong whiff of sex and fear, and he gripped the boy’s ankles and heaved backwards. Years of ranch labor, days spent slinging hay bales and the strength which came with it, sent the boy flying through the air with a frightened squawk before he landed on the desert floor and tumbled across rock and cactus. Within the car, a Navajo girl of sixteen, wearing only a torn blouse and nothing else sobbed and crawled backwards against the far door, trying to cover herself.
Jumping Crow stood unsteadily, looking at her, unsure of what to do and not believing what he had already done.
“You filthy Nav!” Jumping Crow turned to the voice just as a fist connected with the side of his head. He fell to his knees, the scene spinning, trying to make sense of the boy in a khaki shirt with the star pinned to his breast, looking comical with his skinny legs and shriveling privates, and at the broken whiskey bottle on the ground nearby. When had he dropped that?
The deputy wrenched open the driver’s door, cursing and fumbling inside, as Jumping Crow climbed slowly to his feet, head pounding. He heard the car door on the other side creak open.
“You stop right there!” The boy’s voice was high and frightened, and it was followed a second later by the BOOM of a gunshot. Jumping Crow flinched, seeing the boy standing near the hood of the Pontiac, his gun belt in one hand, pistol in the other. Beyond, the girl was running into the desert. BOOM-BOOM! The white muzzle flashes lit the night, and the girl fell.
Jumping Crow felt the whiskey coming back up, and he vomited into the sand as the boy turned towards him. The Navajo wiped a palm across his lips and started to straighten, seeing the boy’s face contorted into a mask of hatred, his lips peeling back from his teeth in a snarl. He raised the barrel of the pistol, and Jumping Crow lunged forward, grabbing his wrist and slamming his larger body against the young deputy, crushing him against the Pontiac’s fender, the pistol between them.
BOOM! They both jumped, and Thomas saw the boy’s eyes go wide a moment before his body went slack. Jumping Crow released him and stepped back, and the deputy slid to the ground, dropping onto his side next to a whitewall tire. The belly of his shirt was a spreading darkness which quickly darkened the sand beneath him. His eyes stared sightlessly up at the stars.
Jumping Crow stood over him, trembling, his own blue work shirt wet with the boy’s blood. He looked at his palms, dark and glistening in the moon
light, and somewhere in the distance a coyote howled.
He started to run.
San Juan County sat in the extreme southeast of Utah, part of the “Four Corners” territory where Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico met. It was bordered on the south by the Navajo Nation, and was as desolate and remote as the southwest got, a place of wind-carved canyons and strange sandstone sculptures, deserts and mountains, sagebrush and lonely stretches of desert. Its isolation made it attractive to Bad Men, and it was the Mormon Church who first sent in settlers to establish the county, creating a “point of interception” for bank and train robbers, horse thieves, cattle rustlers and renegade Indians. It was a place which quickly established a tradition of men rushing home – even from church services – to get their horses and guns to take up the chase of outlaws. In its history, gunfights between lawmen and outlaws were far more common than in more notorious locations like Tombstone and Dodge City.
Sheriff Edgar Bybee was proud to be a part of that tradition, proud of the star on his chest and the big handled six-shooter on his hip. As he drove along Route 191 in his 1936 black and white Pontiac – purchased new for him by the county two years ago – he cocked an elbow out the window and enjoyed the pink glory of a desert sunrise. The little town of Bluff wasn’t too many miles down the road, and his plans included an easy day checking in on Glen Parsons, along with a meal and a slice of apple pie at Rawling’s Luncheonette.
At forty-three, Bybee made $1,830 a year, plus the car, gas and a uniform allowance. In these hard times – the papers were calling it the Great Depression – he considered himself lucky to have a stable, good-paying job and a place to live when so many across the country didn’t. Bybee was grateful for his many other blessings, as well. Last night he had taken his wife to see the new Spencer Tracey movie “Boy’s Town” in Monticello, and after the movie he basked in her affection over ice cream. He had the respect of his deputies, the county and the church, his daughter Jeanie was set to marry a fine young man, and FDR was in the White House setting things right. All was well in his world.
In The Falling Light Page 20
