Masterson added, “You and John Porter are assigned to work together, and that you will. At the same time, you shall be fighting head to head with him. Only…Porter must never know it!”
CHAPTER SEVEN
April 10
9:54 a.m. PST
“Well it’s about time you showed up,” said Porter with a smile on his face and fire in his eyes.
“Good morning,” Alred said as she slid through the tight portal. The door wouldn’t open all the way.
“Sorry about the mess,” Porter said without enthusiasm.
The stuffy air choked Alred almost as badly as the tension she felt from her fellow student. She thought she smelled forgotten lettuce and bologna sandwiches and wouldn’t be at all surprised if a few hid beneath the disordered piles of papers, the open files, the scattered heaps of books.
“Need a bookshelf?” she said, only to regret it. The walls were naked and white, but there definitely were enough volumes in the tiny room to carpet at least two walls. Obviously, whole cases wouldn’t fit in the room. If Porter lined each wall with independently hanging shelves, his books would practically be falling on him. His desk wasn’t a desk, but a common four foot by two and a half foot classroom table, and some of the stacks on top of it stood two feet high. Florescent lights shined from behind a rectangular plate in the ceiling. There was no phone that she could see. His ergonomic chair squeaked with every movement.
“I’m fine, thank you,” Porter said, bending around his desk to remove a one-foot high mountain of pages from the only extra seat in the room.
Alred stepped carefully wherever she could see the floor. She really couldn’t believe it. “Nice office,” she said. If it sounded sarcastic, she didn’t care. Porter’s response would probably be bitter no matter what she said.
“I realize the room is disguised as a closet,” he said, landing noisily back in his chair. A pencil dropped from behind his ear, and he bent to pick it up while speaking. “I won’t be offended if you try to hang your coat on the door.”
Alred sat.
“How’d you manage to get an office?” she said, trying to see what he was doing. His back and shoulders shook quickly as he erased some unseen mark his stylus must have made on one of the open files on the floor, and the jiggle made the chair squeak like a captured rodent.
“Oh,” Porter said getting up. His short hair fell like the fur of a long-haired dachshund after hanging upside down. “I’m a research assistant.”
“I know plenty of research assistants without offices,” she said, measuring him with her eyes. He looked tall, but that may have been due to his thin bone structure. His face also looked thin and awfully plain. There was nothing attractive about him, but nothing unattractive at the same time. Well…his hair did look soft, but it caused no emotional stir. If only he could clean up his attitude.
Porter smiled again and sighed. “It’s who you know in the world that counts, they say.”
“Yes, but who is they?”
“The cause of all good and bad; the blamed in every society,” Porter said as she smiled. He stood and gave her his hand. “John D. Porter.”
She took his hand without getting up. “What does the D stand for?”
“Desirable,” he said, sitting down.
“I guess you…already know who I am.”
“Erma Alred. No middle name. Been with us at Stratford for…five semesters now? And you’re in the same position I am in.”
“What position would that be?” said Alred.
“The desperate need for a dissertation, of course,” his smile faded slightly.
“If I understand things correctly, the D in your name deserves the word desperate far more than I do.”
He scratched his head with one abrupt movement, focusing his eyes on his desk. John Desperate Porter. Why did that have such a natural ring to it?
“Why aren’t you married?” she asked suddenly.
“Why do I get the feeling everyone’s asking me that?”
“I thought Mormons were supposed to wed and have lots of little kiddies like the Catholics,” she said matter-of-factly.
“You know I’m Mormon.”
“It sounds like we know a lot about each other.”
He smiled at her. “And still so very little.” She watched him examine her medium-length auburn hair, green eyes, and fair, unfreckled skin.
“Just enough to get the job done,” she said.
“What?”
She tilted her head. “Mind wandering, Mr. Porter?”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “You have green eyes.”
“You always this perceptive?”
“Lived in Japan for a few years. Green eyes are highly praised there. If you were half Japanese and kept the eyes, you could make it big in the Nippon entertainment industry.”
“That’s good to know in case this dissertation ruins me.”
“You don’t want to do this?” Porter questioned as her eyes wandered down and over the papers throttling her chair.
From the floor, she lifted a thick pad of pages bound by one heavy paper clip and said, “Frankly, I was hoping to do a dissertation on early Athapaskin settlements.”
“Who are they?”
“The Athapaskins?” She looked up at him, her eyes wide and wondering if he was joking. “The ancestors of…many North American Indian tribes. Tell me, how is it that you are leading a study on an ancient Mesoamerican find without knowing the rudiments of American archaeology?”
“Just lucky I guess,” he said. “You already know I have religious interest in Mesoamerican history.”
“Yes, but I hardly believe someone’s religion validates a worthy academic assessment of an area outside one’s expertise.” She looked down and dragged her eyes over the paper in her hands. “This is written in Spanish. What is it?”
“Nothing you’d be interested in. Solid evidence of the authenticity of the Book of Mormon. It’s an ancient Indian history compiled by a Aztec prince.”
“Ixtlilxochitl?” she said, trying to find the first page-an impossible task.
Porter waved his head in what might have been a nod. “Seems his curiosity about the white, bearded god revealed some finds so disturbing that after the book was shipped to Spain, it got buried in the archives of a church until only recently. Of course, now that it has been so long since the original writing, scholars can say the man made the entire thing up based on his own religious system. But it does back up facts already in our grasp.”
“The white, bearded god,” Alred said. “And who would that be?”
“Don’t you know?” Porter said, glowing with his quirky smile.
She waited a few seconds before answering, her eyes examining the titles of stapled articles and worn books ganging up on her chair. She saw the words, “The Canaanite Text from Brazil” by Cyrus H. Gordon and “Who Discovered America First” by William F. Dankenbring. Some of the words leapt at her in Germanic, Arabic, and other languages that left her feeling like she didn’t belong in this office.
Looking again at Porter, she said, “Mormons believe Quetzalcoatl, Kukalkan, Tohil, or whatever one might call him…is none other than Jesus Christ, don’t they?”
Porter’s face didn’t change. “Some do.”
“Don’t you know Quetzalquatl was represented by a feathered serpent? The serpent in Bible stories represents the Devil, if I understand the symbolism correctly. How do you get Jesus in there.” She put the document back from where she’d snatched it, sorry she’d picked it up.
“You’re forgetting the caduceus,” Porter said, leaning back in his small chair. He crossed his arms and looked completely at ease.
“I beg your pardon?”
“The symbol of the medical profession?” he said. “Two serpents wrapping around a pole with wings? It was the staff of the Greek god Hermes.”
“I know what you’re talking about, but I don’t see how that has anything to do with Quetzalquatl or the Devil.”
“It is quite arguable that the caduceus is also based on an often forgotten Biblical story found in the book of Numbers,” said Porter.