The Festival of Bones: Mythworld Book One (19 page)

“Zero?” asked Galen.

“A beginning that is not; an ending which doesn’t,” said Jude. “Zero was the day when the current month’s God abdicated it’s responsibilities and the incoming God picked them up. A day of transference. The Maya had six different calendars, but this is the common aspect all six shared: the Zero Point. And where it became crucial was when different calendars shared the same Zero Point.”

“How did the calendars differ?” Michael asked. “You said that the Mayans had an understanding of Kairos time, so …”

“They did,” Jude interrupted, “but Kairos time often has little or nothing to do with the ordinary cycles of birth and death and planting and harvest and all of those things which we do to get through the days. The Maya had the Kairos calendar—what scientists call The Long Count; they had a civil year, which corresponded to the solar year; a sacred year, the Tzolkin, which had cycles based on numbers representing both men and Gods; there was the ‘Death God’ calendar, which ran on a cycle of nine glyphs representing the Lords of the Night, who also ruled their corresponding days; the lunar calendar, which was no great shakes; and then oddly, a calendar based on the conjunctions of earth, Venus, and the sun.”

“It’s no wonder their culture died out,” said Michael, shaking his head. “They counted themselves to death.”

“That’s very close to the truth,” Jude said, much to Michael’s surprise. “What’s more, they knew it was coming.”

“How?”

“It wasn’t the counts in their calendars which were important—it was the coincidences.

“The Maya’s greatest fear was the ending of things, which is one of the reasons that the ends of cycles or months were looked at as transitions rather than actual endings. But, the Maya reasoned, nights and days cycled and ended—could not the world, the universe itself also stop? The implication is that everything could end, which the Maya saw as the greatest flaw in linear, or Kronos time. So, they took extraordinary measures to ensure the continuity of their world.

“They transferred the cyclicity of the heavens to linear time, establishing a nonlinear loop which had no stopping point along its circumference—but there was still a starting point, and so there might also be a stopping point, which was intolerable to the Maya. A zero, or transference point had to be added. So, another cycle was created to augment the first, but it was set out of sync—meaning that time would not stop except at those rare moments when the endings of both cycles coincided. The periods between those dates were called Calendar Rounds, and the ending points were seen as times of great strife. Sacrifices were made to the various Gods, who the Maya hoped would revive themselves and take up the mantles of the new cycles, allowing the world to begin again.”

“And because Mayan mathematicians were projecting these calendar cycles millions of years into the past and the future, time had no beginning, and no end,” said Michael, his eyes wide with amazement. “Astonishing.”

“It was,” agreed Jude. “But the Hat Trick was still to come—what if the Long Count
itself
were cyclical?”

“You mean Kairos Time?” asked Galen. “But I thought that was the
point
—that Kairos Time wasn’t constrained by the boundaries of linear time.”

“It’s not,” said Jude. “Theoretically, the Long Count stretches infinitely into the past and the future. But think on it a moment—if somehow Kairos time were itself periodic, then the coincidences take on a vastly more significant role.

“The Calendar Rounds of any conjunction of cycles were determined by multiplying the number of days in the cycles, then dividing by the greatest common divisor. So consider this: what do you think the Maya thought would happen if there was ever a conjunction of endpoints of all of their calendars, including that of a Long Count?”

“The literal end of the world,” said Galen. “They’d see it as an endpoint they couldn’t recover from, or ‘recycle’, as it were.”

Jude didn’t answer. His shoulders relaxed and he sat sedately, letting the theories wash through them.

“For me, you’ve just squared a cube,” Michael said, puffing out his cheeks. “Too much to visualize.”

“I don’t know,” Galen said skeptically. “We’ve gone quite a distance from ‘what is time’.” He looked around at the glade, as soft winds stirred the warm grasses at their feet and up the hill. “I can’t believe all of this began with an Icelandic—pardon—
Tibetan
manuscript. But where is this going? What does time or ‘Time’ have to do with the
Edda
? We’ve translated it, we’ve verified its origins to the limits of credulity. How does it relate to anything you’ve told us here?”

“There are several connections, if you take the time to look—and I did. As a matter of fact,” said Jude, “the Tibetan calendar is so similar to the Mayan that it’s entirely possible that they share a common origin—which relates very strongly to the origins, and I think, the ultimate functions of the
Edda
. What do you think would be the point of the Library of Meru, except to create a pattern from which could be discerned the date of the end of the world?”

“The end of the world,” Galen mused, questioning. “And no other culture ever saw this coming?” he asked.

“Oh, the Aztecs had a good idea that it could happen,” replied Jude. “The Aztec Calendar was essentially identical to that of the Maya. Where the Aztec differed most significantly was in their more primitive number system and in their less precise way of recording dates.

“The Aztec, however, believed in the periodic destruction and re-creation of the world, but unlike the Maya attempted only to record such events, rather than direct them through the manipulation of their calendars. The ‘Calendar Stone’ in the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City suggests the date on which the Aztec anticipated that their current world would be destroyed by an earthquake, as well as the dates of previous holocausts. What isn’t widely known is that those dates correspond to the endpoints of Mayan Calendar Rounds, as well as to certain Babylonian historical events.”

“The Flood,” mused Galen.

“Very perceptive,” said Jude. “And quite possibly the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the Fall of the Tower of Babel, and the invention of unleavened bread.”

“You said we knew of two Zero Points,” said Michael, also looking at the manuscript. “What was the second one?”

“When the world switched to the Era system, they were essentially attempting to do the same thing the Maya had managed to accomplish with the Long Count—establish an objective calendar system which did not rely on any previous method of measurement. Purely by accident, they came close to starting it on an actual Kairos-based Zero Point; unfortunately, the differences in the calendars being used at the time of the switch were arbitrarily discarded, and much valuable information was lost. Usher’s date was wrong, because he extrapolated backwards from the wrong date; and the Chinese calendar was weakened because everything which made it significant was transferred to the new calendar.”

“But,” said Michael, “if the Usher date and the Chinese Zero Point are that close…. In total, doesn’t the Christian and pre-Christian calendar add up to roughly the same number as the current Chinese date? If so, then we can’t possibly use either to extrapolate another Zero Point—especially if there were inaccuracies. There’d have to be other indicators—perhaps another Zero Point in between then and now.”

“Of course,” put in Galen, “but there is a division in the Western Era calendar —”

“Ah,” said Jude. “Pardon the interruption, but you’ve nailed it, so to speak.”

“How do you mean?”

“The division. That was a time of fundamental change in the world, and enough of the world’s dominant cultures were perceptive enough to realize this, and adjust accordingly—but no one culture was perceptive enough to get it right when the time came for a new Kairos-based calendar.”

“The Nativity?” Galen said, wrinkling his brow. “The Era system’s Zero Point is a Zero Point?”

“Yes,” said Jude. “It’s just the
wrong
one.”

“Are you saying there wasn’t a fundamental change in the world when Christ was born?” Michael asked.

“No,” Jude replied drolly, “I’m saying the change took place with the
death
of Jesus. The Era system missed the Kairos Zero Point by more than thirty years.”

* * *

“So the Era system is not precisely in line with Kairos Time,” said Galen. “So what? What would we be missing if it were different?”

“Perhaps nothing,” Jude replied. Perhaps
everything
. Take this place, for example—that mound Michael is sitting on? What would you say if I told you that it’s in fact a seven-thousand-year-old mud house?”

“Yow!” Michael cried, jumping up and dusting the seat of his pants. “Are you
serious
?’

“Deadly so. There are thirty or so mounds here, all of which constitute a stone-age village called Lepinski Vir, which was built approximately 5000 B.C.”

“Has that been verified?” Galen asked. “I thought even the Sumerian settlements only dated back three thousand years themselves. Now you tell us there are older villages elsewhere?”

“I think he’s right, Galen,” said Michael. “I mean, Jericho—the first Jericho—has actually been suspected of being three times older than
Rome
. Maybe even ten millennia old. It’s not out of line to believe there are others—we just have to, ah, know where to look,” he finished, glad the gloom of evening blanketed the blush he felt on parroting Jude’s words.

“Perhaps. But I bet I could find researchers who could just as accurately date elements of this site to ten times that period, and conversely, researchers who would swear it was built last Thursday.”

“I agree,” said Jude.

“You do?” Galen said in surprise.

“Yes. And I think they’d all be correct.”

“How is that possible?”

“I have a theory,” said Jude, “that the endpoints of the Calendar Rounds of Time happen more frequently than we know—and I think that, relatively speaking, they happen all the
time
.”

“The end of the world?” Michael said.

“In a manner of speaking,” said Jude. “But I don’t think it’s as final as that. I think that when the world ‘ends’, not every aspect is replaced or obliterated—I think some things carry through.”

“Based on what?” Galen said, smirking. “Mud huts?”

“No,” said Jude, “fish.”

Michael snapped his fingers. “That’s right—the coelacanth. You never did explain where they came from.”

“The Meruvians never told me. All I knew is that the fish were found in one of the lakes near Kailas—but think: if the aspects of Meru were as I have said, wouldn’t that mean the library were just such a fixed point, where nothing changes during the inversions?”

“Inversions?”

“That’s what I have come to call the convergence or transition zones between endpoints—Weltanschauung Inversions.”

“What?” Galen said.

“Weltanschauung Inversions. The word means ‘a comprehensive conception of the world’. I think that’s what the Meru anchorites were collecting in the library—because they were in the only place on earth where it
could
happen—the mountain at the center of creation. I think the books were all accounts of inversion points.”

“Mm,” said Michael, thinking. “That would explain an awful lot, especially about Meru. It also meshes with a lot of the Mayan dates intersecting with massively earth-changing events.”

“It doesn’t necessarily mean world-changing events,” said Jude. “A lot of those books were pretty benign—some were even quite boring.”

“Does that mean,” Galen interjected, “that the
Prime Edda
is describing one of these … Inversion points?”

“It’s possible,” said Jude.

“Great,” said Michael. “I always wondered what Ragnarok would look like.”

* * *

“If you’ll excuse me,” said Galen, rising from a crouch, “I need to attend to a personal matter.”

“But Galen,” said Michael, “we flew in together, remember?”

Jude laughed and Galen scowled, tromping off to a stand of trees. “You moron,” said Jude. “He isn’t leaving—he has to pee.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

Jude sat near the bank and dropped twigs into the swirling water, while Michael shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot.

“What?” Jude said, noticing his companion’s nervous movements, “do you need to pee, too?”

“No,” said Michael, sitting quickly. “It’s just, I … I was wondering …”

“Ask. I don’t mind.”

“You say these inversions could be shaped by a single worldview, right?”

“A comprehensive worldview, yes.”

“What shaped your worldview, Jude?”

Did a slight frown cross Jude’s face? Michael couldn’t tell in the deepening shadows.

“What makes you think my worldview was shaped?” Jude said in reply as he leaned across the mound between them and put a stem of grass in his mouth. “Myself, I like to consider that some of us may have been born fully equipped, like Athena from the head of Zeus. I don’t claim to have been such an
enfant capabilis
, but it is not inconceivable that some perspectives were not the result of circumstance, but instead merely
are
.”

“Not inconceivable,” Michael agreed.

Jude looked at him with the faint trace of a smile which stressed the fact that both of them knew he had avoided the question, and in doing so acknowledged its veracity. He swirled the dark water at his feet with a stick for a few moments, then, in as much surprise to himself as to Michael, he began to speak.

“When I was a child, I found myself in an intolerable situation—the man my mother was with found in himself a grave and profound dislike for me. I would not have been surprised if he said he wished me dead.”

“Gosh,” said Michael. “What did your mother think?”

“She didn’t. Nor did she care—not about me, not about whether I lived or died. Nothing but her bottle.”

“Why didn’t you run away?’

Jude paused a moment before answering. “I had a sister. I called her May. I stayed, because she wasn’t old enough to leave.

“One day, the old man decided he’d had enough of us, threw us in a burlap bag, rowed us out to the middle of the bay, and dumped the bag overboard.”