“If you had any brains at all, Porter, you’d see I’m the only one with you on this!” she said pressing herself forward.
“How can you say that?!?” he said, his eyes wide, his hands spread as he gawked at her. “Every time I tell you what’s in the codex, you turn to ice! You’d rather be in a mortuary than in my presence! You know my arguments are valid, my proofs are sound, and that rightfully disturbs you! But instead of opening up to the facts, you’ve been looking for holes, haven’t you!”
“You sound like an infant who’s had his candy stolen,” she said, leaning back. “Listen to your own words.”
“You hear me,” he said slowly, poking himself in the chest. He took a deep breath to calm himself before starting. “There is an old Arabian tale about a poet named Maymun ibn Qays, who I’m sure you’ve never heard of. Al-A’asha is his more common name. This man, living into the days of the prophet Muhammad wished to see the holy man. But in his time, a poet in a royal circles had great power to turn the heads of political courts. He could change the balance of power if he sided with the Prophet. So on his way to the Prophet, Muhammad’s rivals, the Quraysh, met Al-A’asha and tempted him with reasons to not join the prophet’s party.”
Porter spoke in rapid fire, spitting out the story.
“‘He won’t let you mess around with women,’ they told him.
“‘No skin off my back,’ Al-A’asha said.
“‘Muhammad forbids gambling!’ they told him.
“‘There’ll be other benefits,’ he said.
“‘The prophet doesn’t allow you to make loans with interest!’ they said, trying to appeal to al-Asha’s financial needs.
“‘Never borrow or lend anyway!’ the poet replied.
“‘You can’t drink alcohol!’ the Quraysh shouted.
“‘I’ll drink water!’ Al-A’asha said.”
Alred shook her head. “What does this have to do with-”
“I found the same story in KM-2!” said Porter.
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t Muhammad live about a thousand years after you think the Kalpa codex was written?” Alred said.
“These stories are eternal. This one is attributed to Al-A’asha, but it could very easily have been based on an earlier tale told by Bedouin for millennia. The version in Ulman’s codex is different, but basically-”
“Ambiguous,” said Alred. “You’re the king of Ambiguity.”
Porter dropped his hands against his sides and huffed. “Okay,” he said and paused. “I have been hiding something from you.”
Alred lifted her head, her red lips tight, her eyes attentive.
“Remember I’d found something-”
“Are you going to tell me?” she said.
“It won’t matter to you!” he said, turning to her old Celica.
“Porter, I have to-”
“All right, I’ll give it to you,” he said, spinning around, “just to get it off my chest. I found a word-”
“You’re being irrational,” she said.
“-in the codex that I figured would lead me to harder evidence of a Near Eastern connection than anything else. But without KM-2, I’ll never have all the evidence I wanted.”
With her arms folded again, she demanded, “What is the word.”
“Letters, really: Y, X (Sh, really), A, and Y, H. Recognize it?”
She thought for a moment. “Expect me to?”
“Not really. What letter is linguistically interchangeable with a Y?”
“An I. You could have spelled it that way initially, why didn’t you?” she said.
“Dealing with transliterations here, remember?” said Porter.
“Isha-ih?” she said, putting the bits together.
Porter turned his voice into a whisper. “Isaiah! He was a Hebrew prophet from a little more than two hundred years before the date I gave the codex. It’s the same letters in old Hebrew.”
“And the Arab story? Do Jews often tell the tales of their enemies? How does that fit in?”
“The Book of Mormon clearly has connections with the ancient Bedouin. Names, cultural attributes, social organizations-”
“You’re stuck on this, aren’t you,” said Alred.
Porter caught his breath in the back of his throat. He heard the high cries of a red- tailed hawk lost in the night. He listened to the brisk wind, which evidently had forgotten the meaning of ‘spring.’
“Your dissertation, your schooling…all tossed away because of your religion? You’ll go to jail, Porter, and die a martyr for your church someday…and they won’t even realize it, because there won’t be anything to back up your babbling.” Alred walked to her car as she spoke, gathering her keys quietly.
Porter lagged behind.
Unlocking her door, she said, “I really hope it’s worth it. I heard you were an eccentric…but you used to be a respected one. Your ideas were far-fetched, but even I was impressed by your scholarship. Regain your cool, Porter-”
“What do you care, Alred,” said Porter with water rising in his eyes. Her words were true, and they stung deeply. His life was a capsized boat with little hope of flipping upright. He was thirty-three and unmarried, no good at anything but scholarship, no future to speak of with his current plans. The old stranger in the cafe was right.
But he had to do it. He had to translate the rest of the codex. It must go public…and he had to be the man that brought it forth.
Alred pinched the bridge of her nose. “I have to-”
“I know you don’t believe me, Alred. Don’t bother…speaking to me anymore.” He turned from the Celica and headed away.
“Porter,” she said, behind him.
“It doesn’t matter,” he called back. “Good-bye Alred.”
“Wait!”
He didn’t.
10:32 p.m.
Porter was walking blindly, and he knew it. He staggered like a drunk man down the hallway, and if someone waited with a gun, he didn’t care much.
Three doors from his office. Three doors till he reached the closed vent concealing the codex and his remaining notes.
The door was unlocked when he turned the handle. Everything looked normaclass="underline" piles of volumes lining the walls and scattered over the floor and desk; sheets of forgotten papers, files, translations, and essays on the chairs or wherever he’d found foot room. But nothing was the way he’d left it. It had all been moved, rummaged through, kicked aside and forgotten.
He looked at the vent.
Two screws held the metal grating in place.
He reached over the heaps on his desk, knocking over two books with titles worn off the blue covers, and pulled his pocket knife out of the top drawer.
Slowly, he worked the screws.
The cover came away from the wall…only to reveal a dark hole blowing hot air that smelled of dust.
He threw the grating onto his desk and banged the wall with his head.
April 29
7:51 a.m.
“Come on in, Ms. Alred,” said Professor Masterson, looking down at the bag in her hands. “You got my message.”
She entered the room with the rectangular table and looked at the faces staring up at her. Here it had all begun, here it would end.
“I thought I was to-”
Arnott was the first to smile. Then she saw Goldstien who looked even happier to see her.
“-to give it to Dr. Kinnard,” she said.
Porter’s supervisor sat farthest away, his hands together, his elbows on the table. He watched her with intense silence.
“You’ve done good work, young lady,” said Arnott. He sat like a black scorpion ready to strike, perfectly still.
“Oh, the silent one,” she said to him without reservation. “Why haven’t I taken any of your classes, Dr. Arnott? Come to think of it, I’ve never heard a thing about you, and I was unable to find your name in this semester’s schedule. Are you supposed to be new here?”
Goldstien’s smile died and he shot Arnott a glance as if she’d blasphemed against the school deity.
But Arnott’s cold grin only relaxed more. “Did you bring the manuscript as requested?” he said glancing at the package in her right hand.