Torrent (9 page)

"Be reasonable."

"I don't need you to find the library." Miranda reached into her pocket and retrieved a pistol. "In fact, I don't need you at all."

With a loud scream, Emily threw her hands up in front of her face.

A few seconds passed.

Slowly, Emily lowered her hands. Miranda was nowhere to be seen.

She twisted her neck. Miranda stood in the middle of the chopper with Tum and Graham. All three of them stared at her.

Looking past them, she saw Beverly and the Maneros. They stared at her as well.

Her face felt hot as she turned her attention back to her book. Unfortunately, the hallucinations were getting worse. This latest one had been the most vivid and lifelike yet. And that meant just one thing.

She was running out of time.

Chapter 26

I felt uneasy as I stepped out of the cockpit. Despite intense questioning, Dr. Wu had refused to expand upon his comments about Emily.

I looked around. Emily was huddled with Crowley. I'd heard her scream just minutes earlier. I tried to approach her to ask what had happened, but she waved me off.

Shifting my gaze, I saw Graham talking to Miranda and Tum. Further back, Beverly chatted with the Maneros. We'd agreed to split up in order to tackle all of the expedition members. But since I'd finished early with Dr. Wu, I decided to make the rounds.

The helicopter bumped. Lifting a hand, I steadied myself against the roof. Then I made my way to the middle of the cabin.

"What about food?" Graham asked as I drew near. "And water?"

"They've got weeks worth of supplies," Miranda replied. "We made sure of that."

"How about predators?"

"Rigoberta and Pacho are smart," Tum said. "They'll keep to themselves."

"I hate to interrupt." I cleared my throat. "But we haven't officially met each other yet."

He looked at me. "Carlos Tum."

"Cy Reed." I shook his hand. Tum was younger than me. His face appeared weathered. His black hair was cut short. He carried himself with quiet confidence and a regal air of authority.

"Keep to themselves?" Graham shook his head. "That only works until a jaguar decides they look like an easy lunch."

"I understand your concern," Tum said softly. "But they're used to working in the jungle. They'll be fine."

I glanced out the window. Through the stains and scratches, I saw dark clouds enveloping the sky. A steady rain shower poured from above, splattering against the pane. It was the first rain I'd seen in weeks.

Beneath me, shrouded in hazy sunlight, I noticed a sea of muted colors. Thick, green forest. The lighter greens and browns of a clearing. Trickling lines of blue water. Together, it formed one giant mass swaying gently from side to side, as if dancing to some hidden beat.

"Stunning, isn't it?" Miranda said. "Gives me goose bumps every time I fly over it."

"You've done this before?" I said.

"I give occasional sky tours of the jungle to raise money for climate change awareness."

"You must know a lot about it."

"The Lacandon Jungle is North America's last tropical rain forest. We're flying over part of the Montes Azules Biosphere Reserve. It covers about fifteen hundred square miles of jungle, indigenous settlements, and ancient Maya ruins. The Mexican government established the reserve in the 1970s and handed guardianship of it over to the Lacandon tribe." She smiled at Tum. "Our people."

Tum's eyes were wide open and he looked like he was in some sort of mystical trance.

Graham frowned. "You're both from the jungle?"

"Not just us," Tum replied. "The Maneros too. All of us were born and raised near Lacanjá. In fact, I still live there."

"How about you?" I asked Miranda.

She shook her head. "I moved away to pursue a degree in archaeology."

"Do you ever go back?"

"Well, I fly the tours and work at my dig sites. But I rarely get an opportunity to visit home these days."

I nodded. "So, you were surrounded by Maya ruins as a kid. No wonder you became an archaeologist."

"She's more than an archaeologist." Tum grinned. "In case she hasn't told you yet, Miranda is one of Mexico's most outspoken environmentalists."

"One doesn't grow up in the jungle without a deep desire to preserve it," Miranda explained. "And the ruins of my ancestors have been around so long they're practically one with the jungle. So, for me, the ruins and environmentalism are intertwined."

Miranda desperately wanted to play the role of environmental guru. But I sensed it was partly a facade. While she was clearly passionate about climate change, she seemed to have little interest in natural settings.

Tum, however, was the real deal. He radiated nobility. Not the kind of nobility that came with a title. Rather, it was mystical nobility, the sort of thing one would expect to find in an old wise man. One look into his eyes and you knew you were looking into the soul of someone who was one with the jungle, one with nature.

"So, I've got a question." Graham studied Miranda's face. "Do you really believe all that crap you say about climate change?"

She blinked. "Excuse me?"

"Climate change is a scam."

"You're a denier?"

"It's better than being a fool."

An amused look crossed her face. "Tell me, why do you consider climate change to be a scam?"

"The whole field of study—if you can call it that—is based on modeling. But weather is a chaotic system. It's impossible to model."

"Chaotic systems aren't random. Cause and effect still exist."

"Maybe so, but they become increasingly difficult to model over time. And since climate change is supposed to occur in the distant future, it can't be modeled with any accuracy. Besides, chaotic systems depend on perfect measurements of initial conditions, something that's impossible to obtain."

"Weather is chaotic, I'll give you that much." Miranda's voice took on an edge. "But consider this … if you go north of the equator, temperatures are generally warmer during the summer than during the winter. Snow and ice occur during fairly predictable periods of the year."

"So what?"

"So, chaos in weather is just noise. It can be averaged out of the system."

"No it can't," Graham insisted. "And that's not all. Climate research is based on ridiculously inaccurate historical information. We've got temperature data of varying quality for maybe the last one hundred and fifty years. Prior to that, we’re forced to depend on tree rings, ice cores, and the sedimentary record to reconstruct temperatures. Those things are far from exact and anyway, they only take us back a couple hundred million years. That's not much time, considering the earth’s been spinning for some four billion years."

Miranda rolled her eyes. "I don't have time for this. Suffice it to say human-induced climate change is a real thing. Despite what you may think, it's not just some crazy idea cooked up by environmentalists. It's science, supported by consensus."

"Consensus is a political term. It's meaningless when it comes to science. All that matters is verifiable results."

Miranda's eyes smoldered, like burning chunks of coal. "I guess we'll have to agree to disagree."

I was tempted to step in, to end the argument. But something caused me to stay out of it.

"I'm not the only one who disagrees with you," Graham said. "Bureaucrats have spent billions of dollars trying to scare people. Yet only about half of the population considers climate change to be a global threat. Why do you think that is?"

"It's a mystery." She blinked. Her eyeballs returned to normal. "Personally, I think it's a failure of leadership. Bureaucrats should make policies based on science, not opinion polls. They should reduce carbon emissions. Make people use less energy."

I arched an eyebrow. "Make them?"

"Yes, make them." Her lips turned upward into something resembling a smile. "Sometimes people don't know what's best. They need a leader, someone to show them the way."

"What if they don't want to listen?"

Her eyes glinted. "Then someone has to make them listen."

Chapter 27

"Dang it woman, why do you have to be so pigheaded?" The man's voice, masculine and brusque, sparked with energy.

"You're just angry because I'm smarter than you."

"Why you little—"

"Hey there." I cleared my throat. "I don't think we've met yet."

Beverly shot me a grateful look. For the last twenty minutes, she'd been trying to engage the Maneros in conversation. Unfortunately, they seemed more interested in arguing with each other than in talking to her.

"These are the Maneros." Beverly nodded at the couple. "They specialize in translating ancient Mesoamerican writing systems."

The woman stuck out her hand. She looked young, about the same age as Miranda. Her face was round and plump. Her eyes were large and lively. "I saw you at the last excavation, but we didn't get a chance to talk," she said. "I'm Dora Manero."

"Cy Reed."

The man offered his hand from the opposite aisle. He was bald and in his mid-forties. His limbs were long and he possessed a distinguished visage. "I'm Renau." He nodded at Dora and gave me a wink. "I'm married to that harpy over there."

Dora rolled her eyes. "You'll have to forgive my husband. He was born without a brain."

My eyes drifted to a small table situated between the Maneros. The large gold plate from the sarcophagus sat on top of it. It was nestled in a thick white cloth.

The plate measured roughly twelve inches by sixteen inches. It was two to three times as thick as a normal sheet of paper. Strange markings glinted brightly on its surface.

I leaned in for a closer look and noticed the small triangular-shaped plate that had once belonged to Wallace Hope. It was a perfect fit with the larger plate's crimped top right corner.

"So, you're the epigraphers?" I asked.

"Actually, Dora is the epigrapher," Beverly said. "She's also a linguist, specializing in ancient Mayan script. Reconstruction, translation, dating, analysis. She can do it all."

Dora's face took on a studious, somewhat solemn appearance. "Everything but interpretation. I leave that to the eggheads."

I smiled.

Beverly nodded at Renau. "He specializes in computer science and artificial intelligence. He's developed a computer system capable of deciphering ancient languages."

"Not long ago, most experts thought computers were incapable of deciphering ancient script," Renau replied. "Language requires logic, intuition. And computers are obviously limited in that regard."

"How'd you get past that problem?" I asked.

"Most languages share similarities to others. The trick is finding the right ones. Once that's done, it's a simple matter of probabilistic modeling. My program runs thousands of iterations, looking for consistent features between languages. Eventually, I'm able to map the alphabets, shared roots, and word structures of an unknown language onto a known one."

"It's a bunch of hocus-pocus," Dora said. "Computers have come a long way but they're nowhere near replacing people. Renau's little program is always getting words mixed up."

"It's not perfect," he admitted. "I haven't figured out a way to check words for context. And if a language has multiple meanings for the same word, my program will sometimes get it wrong. Still, I can decipher an ancient text much faster and far more accurately than," he tilted his head at Dora, "you know who."

"Is that right?" Her eyes flashed. "Care to bet on it?"

I cleared my throat. "Why do you need a computer program anyway? Experts deciphered the Mayan language decades ago."

"Well, our knowledge still leaves much to be desired." Dora waved her hand at the gold plate. "Also, these inscriptions haven't aged well. So, it'll take some time to gain a decent understanding of them. But that's not the real problem."

"Oh?"

Dora gripped the plate in a clean cloth and gently flipped it over.

I leaned in for a closer look and saw unusual etch marks. They were quite different from the ones on the other side. "Is this the same script?"

"No," Dora replied. "I've devoted my entire life to studying ancient Mesoamerican scripts. But I've never seen hieroglyphics like these before."

"Do you have any idea who might've written them?" Beverly asked.

"Dora's got her own ideas," Renau replied. "But we know they predate the Maya hieroglyphics. I'm thinking the etchings are a sort of Proto-Mayan script. A common ancestor, if you will, of the various written languages—Olmec, Zapotec, Epi-Olmec, Classic Mayan—that sprung up in Mesoamerica over the centuries."

I nodded. "So, the plate is like the Rosetta Stone?"

In 196 BC, ancient scribes had etched a decree from King Ptolemy V onto a granite-like rock now known as the Rosetta Stone. The decree had been written three times in three separate scripts: ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, Egyptian Demotic, and classical Greek. Since the inscriptions basically said the same thing, a series of scholars were able to use the classical Greek etchings to decipher the Demotic language and the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, respectively.

"Maybe," Dora said. "Or maybe not. Remember, Xbalanque was tasked with recording knowledge for the library. So, it stands to reason he wrote original work rather than merely recopy that of some other civilization. Regardless, it could take years to fully understand how this new language works."

It was interesting, but not particularly useful. We wouldn't be able to read the language until long after we'd excavated the library.

Dora seemed to read my mind. "Obviously, we're not spending too much time on this. Not yet anyway. Still, it does have interesting ramifications."

"Like what?" Beverly asked.

"We know the library was etched on gold plates. Most likely, those plates—like this one—predate the Mayas. But where'd Xbalanque get them from?"

Beverly shrugged.

"We think it's possible he got them from the same place where the library is now stored. So, maybe the Mayas weren't the first society to occupy that spot." She paused. "Maybe someone else beat them to it."