Using assumptions the NRI had come up with, he changed the inputs several times. The numbers skewed slightly high.
He changed them again.
The numbers were off to the low side.
Frustrated, Moore ordered the simulation to do a reverse analysis, to take the actual data and back out to what the numbers should be.
He waited. The screen flashed.
Operational parameter invalid.
Something in the equation was preventing the operation, like dividing by zero.
Moore typed. Suggested parameter adjustment?
The computer ran through a series of calculations and then offered its best guess.
Parameter with highest likelihood of successful adjustment: Number of Magnetic Fields.
Moore stared at the blinking cursor. Number of Magnetic Fields. What the hell could that mean?
Sliding a pair of reading glasses back onto his nose, he clicked over to the input page and scrolled through all of the preset parameters. Among them he found a box to input number of magnetic fields. It currently was set at 1.
Moore looked around, feeling foolish. Could there be more than one magnetic field? The program came from the North Pole survey group; it was designed to calculate the speed and magnitude of future changes. Moore’s people had modified it to assess the impact of the stones.
The stones.
Could they be considered their own magnetic field? Moore looked over his glasses and changed the number to 2. He then designated the output for field number two to match the believed power level of the stones. Hitting ENTER, he ran the reverse query again.
The screen blinked. Operational parameter invalid.
“Damn,” he cursed.
He went back and changed the number to 3. The computer asked for the strength of the third field and Moore had no answer. He typed “X” and hit ENTER.
The computer began to think. It was connected to a group of mainframes and networked through an advanced system of processing that one of the NRI’s former member companies had developed. Working together, the mainframes had the power of a supercomputer. But by entering “X,” Moore had created a massive need for calculating power. And as he stared at the nonresponsive screen, Moore wondered if he’d crashed the system.
After several minutes, Moore sighed. He was about to give up when the screen flashed. A series of numbers came up relating to field strength, where the pole was, and where it should be. Moore studied the numbers. They matched exactly.
If the computer was right, they were dealing with not one earthbound magnetic field but three.
CHAPTER 57
Professor McCarter found himself struggling once again. Beneath the exposed bulbs in the church’s wine cellar, he found he could not focus.
He sat back and looked at the notes he’d written so far, from glyphs he’d already translated. These were the words of the Fallen Jaguar, the last of the Brotherhood. I write them in the language that is no more.
He guessed that this was the author of the scroll, and that the language he referred to was the hieroglyphics of the Maya.
McCarter glanced at his next line of notes. He could see his own handwriting deteriorating. He noticed his hand shaking visibly now, but it must have been doing so even then.
In their wisdom the gods gave the four stones to the first people, the Wooden People. After the great storm, the falling of the Black Rain, only the Brotherhood remained to carry the secret.
McCarter was certain that this referred to the Mayan creation story, in which the gods of the Maya tried to bring forth the human work. After several failed tries they used wood as the catalyst in the effort and succeeded, creating beings that looked somewhat like humans but were more like stick people, with deformed bodies and dry cracking faces.
Some scholars said these people were actually monkeys who ended up living in the trees, but McCarter had always rejected that notion, as the Wooden People were never described to have fur, or tails, or any type of grace or athleticism. Instead they were said to be ungainly and weak. Much more like the body they had found in the cave below the Amazon temple. The body of a human from the future.
And if he was right, after the Wooden People were killed in the storm and the flood, the regular people, whom they seemed to have exercised control over, left, fleeing the Amazon and heading north. Most of these people, and indeed the legend itself, gloried in the destruction of the Wooden People. But the Brotherhood, perhaps a group of priests or acolytes, knew better. They had taken the stones that were accessible and brought them on a journey, several journeys to be exact, and placed them as they’d been told.
The Sacrifice of the Heart remains at Zuyua.
This was the Brazil stone, which he and Danielle had found two years earlier.
The Sacrifice of the Mind has followed the sun, over the great sea.
McCarter guessed this was the Russian stone. The one they had yet to look for.
To the Temple of the Initiation was taken the Sacrifice of the Soul, and the last went to the mountains. Here I have placed it: The master stone, The Sacrifice of theBody lies beneath the Mirror, in the Temple of the Jaguar.
The Brotherhood, the regular humans from the current time period, stretched all the way back to the original shrine in Brazil. It made sense. The travelers from earth’s future appeared weak and deformed; they needed help, assistance. They could not be expected to do the task alone. They must have recruited certain members in secret, and thus the Brotherhood was formed.
McCarter gazed at his notes, pleased that the past made sense now, but he realized that nothing he’d found would tell him what they really needed to know: what they should do now.
Feeling dizzy, he went back to translating.
He leaned over the hieroglyphic book and a drop of sweat fell from his face and hit the parchment. He dabbed the parchment with a towel, wiped his face, and studied the next group of symbols.
One for the earth, the land. One that represented healing, and another that he’d come to realize indicated the stones.
Would the stones heal the earth? And from what?
He leaned forward again, studying a glyph that represented men or mankind or the human kind. Another glyph represented nature, the earth in a sense, and a third glyph represented darkness. He had seen glyphs before that signified that nature would destroy man, as when a volcano erupted or an earthquake flattened a village, but here the order was reversed. Could it mean what he thought it meant? So much of the prophecy, especially as it was treated today, seemed to indicate nature destroying man, but this was different: The parchment in front of him suggested that man destroys nature. Was the catastrophe not natural in origin but in fact man-made? Or was it his liberal prejudices coming out? He remembered a debate with a conservative friend who told him he put trees ahead of people. He could not be sure, but the words were there.
His eyes blurred suddenly, watering and burning. His body ached. He wrote his notes and looked to the next set of glyphs. They seemed familiar to him, in fact he was certain he knew them, but he could not divine a meaning. It was an odd sensation, like not being able to recall the name of someone you knew well. He traced the outline of the first one with his finger, hoping it would jog his memory, but nothing came to him. He drew it with his shaky hand but still his mind was blank.
A jolt of anger and frustration hit him. It was almost impossible to do what he was trying to do without a database, or at least his old notebooks or an anthology of known glyphs. But he had nothing to work with, nothing but his failing memory.