01-01-00 (49 page)

“Good. You're thinking geometrically, like the Maya. Now, create a file that is formed by rows as defined by the zero one, zero one, zero zero code, concatenating the following days also segmented based on this code and let's take a look at the resulting binary map.”

She did, creating 91 binary segments, or rows, 13 for each of the seven days that they had intercepted a virus. Each segment contained 160 bits, lined up according to the 010100 code, creating an array of ones and zeros 160 bits wide and 91 bits long. Susan rotated the array by ninety degrees, making it 91 bits wide and 160 bits long. Still, her small screen could not display all 91 bits in each row, leaving the last two out.

“Great,” Susan said, inspecting the array, quickly detecting a set of geometrical patterns. “Let me transfer the file to Reid. See if he can display the entire array on the HP and then get it to match another landsca—”

“Not so fast.” Cameron ran a finger over the screen, tracing the ones over the background of zeroes. “I don't think this is a landscape.”

“Oh? What is it then?”

“Glyphs. The last piece of the puzzle.”

Susan narrowed her eyes and inched closer to the screen. “Can you read them?”

“Looks like they're in a row, like a cartouche.”

“Cartouche? You said those were the equivalent of a modern sentence, with the glyphs making out the individual words, right?”

“That's right.” He reached for his field notebook, tracing out the first one. He grinned. “That's the symbol for the city of Palenque. Send Reid an E-mail. I'm going to be needing my decoding books down here.”

9

The cartouche was incomplete, as expected, since they had only downloaded seven of the first eight messages and they still had twelve to go before 01-01-00. The binary file so far contained seven and a half glyphs, which Cameron had managed to decode, putting together a story that complemented the reliefs in this secret temple. He began with what he already knew from the ancient carvings.

“Pacal was exhumed by his son, Chan-Bahlum, as depicted in the reliefs adorning the walls of this temple, and brought over here, again as shown by numerous glyphs and pictographs etched in the limestone. This information, as I stated earlier, explains why the mummified body found by Alberto Ruz in the Temple of the Inscriptions lacked an elongated head and filed teeth, as was so typical with Mayan leaders. Chan-Bahlum, in his rush to get his father's body out of the city and to a safe location, probably grabbed the first body he could find and shoved it in the crypt, beneath the famous mask of jade and the other precious offerings found in 1952. Then this site was founded and construction began immediately under extreme secrecy. That's how far the story goes according to the reliefs in this temple. What we were missing was the continuation of this incredible story. And here we have it, in this final cartouche. Problem is, that we're getting it piecemeal, a couple of glyphs per day. Also, the Maya are still being the Maya and are giving us the story backward, with the ending first, which explains why the first glyph in the sequence is for the city of Palenque, where it all converges on zero one, zero one, zero zero. The rest of the glyphs provide instructions on the necessary arrangements to be made to the original crypt in Palenque, including relining the interior of the tomb with cinnabar, the reddish material always found in Mayan tombs, on the walls, or on objects accompanying dead persons. In Mayan cosmogony this coloring symbolizes resurrection and hope of immortality. The other glyphs provide clear instructions on additional arrangements to be made around the Temple of the Inscriptions in preparation for the celebration of the end of the Great Cycle and the beginning of the new one, like the relative position of certain stelae and other small structures.”

“What about the tomb itself? What is supposed to go in there if the body found by Ruz was not the real Pacal?”

“The glyphs stop before telling us that, though I'm quite sure it'll be included in the captured viruses over the next week and a half.” His eyes shifted to the large sarcophagus monopolizing the center of the crypt. “But I do have a pretty good guess who needs to be moved back home.”

Susan nodded. “Problem is, it won't be as easy as clicking your heels three times and saying the magic words.”

“Maybe,” said Cameron, walking over to the relief of Pacal being lowered into his current resting place, placing his hand on the mosaic of the Mayan chief's seal, and pressing it. The stone caved in almost a full foot. Several things happened at once. First, the door to the crypt slid shut with the force of a steel safe. Next the sarcophagus's lid scraped back, reaching the back wall, which also began to move out of the way, revealing a tunnel that seemed to angle up, toward the surface.

“Then again, maybe not,” added the archaeologist in a triumphant tone, inspecting the coffin's reddish interior, finding a human skeleton, its face covered by a mosaic mask of jade quite similar to the one found by Ruz at Palenque. Dozens of jade necklaces adorned him, as well as several bracelets.

Susan was speechless, inspecting Pacal's mortal remains as well as what appeared to be their way out of this place. “How—how long have you known that this was the way to get out?”

He tilted his head toward her. “Like I told you before, I had my suspicions, but it was too early to tell for certain. The glyphs describing the preparations needed at Palenque gave it away.”

10

The tunnel led them to another flight of stairs, this time flanked by plain stone walls. After thirteen steps they reached a landing with a U-turn, similar to the one they had taken on the way down. After twenty more steps, they reached the top of the stairs and another landing. A stone slab blocked the way. Next to it was another array of mosaics.

“The way out,” said Cameron, starting on the lower left quadrant and working his way counterclockwise.

The slab at the bottom of the stairs closed as this one creaked open, revealing thick jungle, along with a stream of fresh night air, which Susan inhaled deeply.

“Freedom,” she whispered as they stepped away from the edifice, realizing that they had exited at the other side of the temple.

A moment later the slab shifted back, as if controlled by an ancient timer, closing the passageway.

Cameron pointed a thumb at it. “The reset mechanism. Now we know the secret to completing the whole cycle.”

Susan kissed him on the cheek. “Thanks,” she said.

“Why?”

“For the greatest and scariest experience of my life.”

Cameron smiled. “Stick around, Susan. And you'll be kissing me every day.”

The couple walked around the temple, reaching the tunnellike entrance to the left side, by the stone pillar, where only two days ago they had been threatened by Strokk and the terrorists as they tried to make their way into the jungle. Now that same spot was being guarded by a pair of Navy SEALs, who turned their camouflaged faces at them, eyes narrowing in suspicion.

“Hi,” Susan said. “We're the ones who were trapped down there.”

One of the SEALs looked toward the temple and back at the scientists in their soiled clothes. “Ma'am?” he said. “How did you…?”

“Long story,” said Cameron, putting an arm around Susan, who also ran an arm behind him as they walked side by side, her thumb stuck into his back pocket.

“But quite a story,” said Susan as they walked past the startled SEALs and waved at Reid and the Japanese team.

Epilogue

In the Year of our Lord, 1999, the Earth continued to rotate along its longitudinal axis relative to the Sun, just as it had for the past 4.5 billion years, along an eternal path defined long before the Solar System was born, long before a spinning nebula of boiling gas shot away from billions of exploding stars and became its own galaxy, the Milky Way; long before the entire universe, an infinitesimal mass of super-heavy matter, began to expand following the cosmos's most phenomenal and unequaled release of galactic energy.

Planet Earth continued to spin as the new millennium neared, continued to radiate the crimson energy of thousands of digital clocks counting down to the sequence of numbers that would bring total planetary alignment with a distant life-form, one whom none of the scientists involved in this historic quest could even begin to dream about, for it existed far before everything else known to mankind, and it would exist long after the Sun expanded at the end of its life and swallowed the Earth, before shrinking to a dark, smoldering mass of heavy metals.

In the days that followed what Cameron Slater called the single most important discovery in the history of pre-Columbian studies, much activity took place both at the temple of Kinich Ahau as well as in Palenque, all directed by the original four scientists, whom together had unlocked the key to achieving galactic synchronization. Even the special envoy of scientists, deployed to the site at the request of the U.S. president to witness and record the event, followed Cameron and Susan's direction.

As the days leading to 01-01-00 unfolded, adding more glyphs to the cartouche, Cameron made further adjustments to the site deep within the Temple of the Inscriptions, making sure that not only the true mortal remains of Pacal Votan were deposited in the stone coffin, just as it had happened over twelve hundred years before, but also positioning the right offerings according to the information downloaded from the virus each day.

The millennium clocks froze across the Earth, the succession of numbers required for total planetary synchronization washing the heavens from Washington, D.C., to Seoul, from Tokyo to Rio de Janeiro, from Singapore to Moscow, from Delhi to Paris. The visual energy propagated across the sky, scattering through the galaxy, acknowledging a state of readiness that matched the recent events taking place in a remote clearing in the Yucatán Peninsula, also matching a similar series of numbers from a previously unknown planet 139 light-years from Earth.

As thousands of clocks flashed the final series of numbers, presenting it to the firmament with undeniable clarity; as the millennium came to a close, also completing the Great Cycle, the thirteenth
baktun,
the heavens filled with a new kind of energy, one that was immeasurable by man's systems, but which did pulsate across the galaxy at infinite speed, crossing the boundaries of space and time, rushing through the scorching core of the Sun, and striking the third closest planet with uncanny accuracy.

Cameron and Susan were sitting on the steps of the Temple of the Inscriptions when it hit, blinding at first, like a thousand high beams, but much more powerful, and warm, but not the warmth that's associated with ambient temperature. Susan felt an inner heat, one that warmed her core, her very soul, as the light enveloped her, vanishing her surroundings, swallowing the jungle, the limestone edifices, the sky itself.

Then a vision came to Susan Garnett, from the very distant past, and then another, this one more recent, and yet another from ten years ago. The back flashes came with no relative order, rapidly, one after the next, like in fast-forward video, but much faster and far clearer too, for every vision carried its own set of feelings, of emotions. Susan watched them all not as she had remembered or perceived that they had occurred, but as they had
actually
occurred, without her personal bias, envy, greed, or pride to distort reality. She found herself reliving each image, smoldering guilt or overwhelming joy expanding through her in exhausting, alternating cycles. She saw in vivid detail the pain she had inflicted on others, knowingly or not. And she also experienced the happiness that she had spread during her lifetime. But another realization chilled her, for she was judging not just what she had done or said—or failed to do or say—but also what she had
thought.
In fact, thoughts carried far more weight in this hazy, self-assessing courtroom than her actions, for the level of pain or joy seemed stronger, sharper.