In The Falling Light (27 page)

“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.

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.