“I apologize, Mr. President,” Moore said, adding, “I’m very tired. What story are we going with?”
The president turned to him and shrugged. “Give me one,” he said. “What can we tell them?”
Moore paused. He couldn’t think; it was as if his mind didn’t work anymore. He couldn’t fathom any type of explanation that would make much sense. He looked down. The floor of the trailer was uncarpeted, to prevent static buildup that could affect delicate instruments. Fatigued to the point of exhaustion, the cool, metal floor looked inviting and Moore wondered what the president would think if he stepped off his chair and lay down to take a nap. Probably, it would just confirm that he’d lost it.
He looked toward the science section of the laboratory. He’d had a sense, since first viewing the stone, that it was important somehow, vitally important. Had his conviction brought him too far? There were reasons, he had to keep reminding himself, to question his own judgment.
Despite two years of study, the thing was still beyond their understanding. It presented itself as an object of great power, and had at least temporarily linked itself to the second stone, boosting that power tenfold. Did that mean three stones would have a hundred times the power and four stones a thousand? If that was the case they were now talking about the equivalent energy release of several hundred nuclear warheads simultaneously.
As far as they could tell there was no radiation, no explosive component, nothing beyond the massive electromagnetic wave, but how could they be sure? The stone had surprised them once already. Maybe he was the one that had it wrong; maybe the stone should be destroyed before things got out of hand.
“Tell them the truth,” he suggested.
The president just looked at him.
“Share the data with the whole world, instead of keeping it secret. With a lack of information, they’re being forced to make their own conclusions, usually based mostly on fear.”
Onscreen the president looked surprised and then glanced off to the side, exchanging words with someone outside the frame. Moore guessed it was his chief of staff.
“I’ll take that under advisement,” he said finally.
“Maybe they’ll understand,” Moore added, feeling suddenly proud of himself. “Hell, they might even have a few ideas as to what we should do about it.”
An aide came up to the president. A folder was placed in front of him. A few words whispered in his ear. The feed was muted but the look on his face became increasingly strained. He turned back to the screen, to Moore.
“We have another problem,” he said. “The Russians have just shot down a pair of Chinese spy planes.”
Moore turned his attention back to the UN screen, cringing at this latest development. The Chinese ambassador had apparently gotten the word and was already railing at the Russian delegation, and worse yet, he was threatening retaliation.
Things were beginning to spiral out of control.
CHAPTER 41
McCarter had spent most of the night and all morning focused on the photographs that Danielle had taken in the submerged temple. Some of them were strikingly clear and others less so. They were low-resolution shots, taken in poor light, but with what he already knew, they gave him enough to piece together a larger part of the legend.
He began explaining it to Danielle, but she held him up. “I think Hawker needs to hear this,” she said solemnly.
They exchanged a look and McCarter offered a resigned nod. Danielle had a good point, though it was something he didn’t want to think about. There were reasons Hawker might be more important in the decision-making process than either of them.
So far, however, Hawker had asked for little in the way of information about what they were studying. He understood the basics and he’d pressed them on details related to Kang and the threats they might face, but as for details of legends they were mining, he seemed less than interested. McCarter guessed that would have to change.
Danielle called him over. “We’re making progress,” she said to him. “But you should be part of it.”
A suspicious look flashed over Hawker’s face and it left McCarter feeling like he was back in the classroom or on the lecture circuit.
“Do you remember our time in Brazil?” he asked Hawker.
“Of course,” Hawker said. “Angry natives, mutated animals, people trying to kill us. Great fun. We should do it again sometime.”
The joke put McCarter at ease. “Right,” he said. “Well, if you remember, we went down there looking for Tulan Zuyua. A place we compared to the Mayan Garden of Eden, because in their legends it was the first place that humans gathered and it was also where the different Mayan tribes were given their gods.”
“I remember something like that,” Hawker said.
“The thing is,” McCarter said, “in the story, the Mayan tribes are given their own patron gods. And some of them, including the Quiche people, left Tulan Zuyua carrying the essence and power of these gods in special, glowing stones.”
Hawker clearly understood the significance. “Like the one we just found.”
“And the one we found in Brazil,” Danielle added.
“When Moore and I first spoke, a year and a half ago, we talked about the Mayan culture, the Mayan religion, and the Mayan prophecies. He wanted me to explain the 2012 prophecy and what it meant to the Mayan people and culture as a whole.
“I had to remind him—and myself—that there is no ‘one’ Mayan culture, religion, or specific set of prophecies. Just like there is no ‘one’ Christianity, Islam, or any other religion. There are schisms and divisions and differences of opinions. Just like you have Catholic, Protestant, Eastern Orthodox, just like you have Shiite and Sunni, there were many different sects of Mayan life, often divided along the lines of the different city-states.”
“And each state has its own interpretation of things,” Danielle added.
“Exactly,” he said. “They worshipped the same gods in general, but each nation had its own take on things. Different philosophies, different rituals.”
He needed to make the point clear because it would color everything he was about to tell them. “Unification of any religion is difficult if not impossible. In Christian faith, we have the church getting together in the fourth century to decide which books would be part of the official canon. The rest become apocryphal. But despite their official ex parte status they still exist and some believers still put faith in them. Other documents that are part of the official body are less accepted than the rest. Martin Luther considered the books of James to be heresy because they required acts—not just faith—as an instrument of salvation. The Eastern Orthodox Church rejects the Book of Revelation for different reasons. So you can see the difficulty in creating uniform religion even when you try. But in the Mayan world, you have no canonical gathering to unify the code. And the cultural and religious differences are widespread.”
“Each to his own,” Hawker said, grasping the concept easily. “Why does that matter to us?”
“Because this concept of 2012 being the end of time, the end of civilization or existence, did not ever gain widespread acceptance anywhere in the Mayan world.”
Hawker looked surprised. “It seems to have gained widespread acceptance now,” he said.
McCarter had to laugh. Indeed it had, mostly because it was interesting, exciting, and mystical in a safe way. Few of the people talking about it believed in the slightest that anything might occur.
“To us it’s a ghost story,” he said. “Good conversation around the campfire. But to them, the Maya of that time, it was not a popular idea. Nor, I might add, one that leads to productively motivating the troops. If all is for naught, then who wants to work? Who wants to build temples or carve idols or glyphs?”