Catch the Lightning (16 page)

“It must be coincidence then. Maya civilization isn’t that old.”

“This is what you are? Maya?”

“My mother was.” I hesitated. “I don’t know about my father.”

He considered me. “Our scholars believe my ancestors come from somewhere on Earth. How else we have DNA almost identical to human DNA?’’

“I don’t know.”

“Tell me more of your story.”

“The Xbalban god was enraged by his daughter’s pregnancy.” That was no surprise to me, after,seeing my mother’s life. “She escaped to the Middleworld, where the grandmother of the dead brothers took her in. The woman gave birth to twin boys, Hunahpu and Xbalanque. They became great ball players. One day they played in the court where their father and uncle had disturbed the gods. They too angered the Lords of Death. But they survived every trial the Lords put before them, even returning to life again after letting themselves be killed. Finally, wanting to know how the twins overcame death, the Lords of Death demanded the brothers kill them and bring them back to life. So the twins killed them. But they didn’t bring them back to life.”

“This is not so smart of Death,” Althor said. “To insist to die and be made alive again.”

I laughed. “I guess not.”

“Can you tell me more? Other stories?”

“There’s the hummingbird story. I especially liked that one when I was little.” I concentrated on the words, translating them in my mind from Tzotzil into English:

The hummingbird is good and big.
So that’s the way it is;
There were workers in hot country;
They were burning bean pods,
The fire could be seen well, it was so tall.
The hummingbird came,
It came out,
It came flying in the sky.
Well, it saw the fire;
Its eyes were snuffed out by the smoke.
It came down,
It came down,
It came down so that they saw that it was big.
Don’t you believe that it is little, it is big.
Just like a dove, its wings are white,
All of it is white.
I say they tell lies when they say that the hummingbird was little,
The men said it was very big.
Then they recognized how it was,
For none of us had seen it,
We didn’t know what it was like.
Yes, it says “Ts’un ts’un” in the evening,
But we didn’t know what size it was.
But they, they saw how big it was,
They saw that it was the same as, the same size as a hawk,
Having to do with the father-mother,
“One leg” as we call it.

Remembering the words made me miss my mother. To this day I can see her in my mind, her beautiful face rapt as she recited the lines. She loved telling stories, even acting them out with her hands.

Althor was staring at me. “How old is this story?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s a Zinacanteco myth.”

“What is father-mother?”

“It was the best translation I could think of for Totilme’il, the ancestral gods.”

“The hummingbird is a god?”

“No. Just a messenger for the gods.”

“This story is not about bird,” Althor said.

“It’s not?”

“It’s a starship.”

I laughed. “Oh, Althor.”

“It came flying out of the sky? It was big and white? This is how a hummingbird looks?”

“Actually, no,” I admitted. “Hummingbirds are tiny and dark.”

“They make this sound ‘ts’un ts’uri? They stand on one leg?”

“Well—no.”

He watched me closely. “A civilization must grow from roots. What are Maya roots, six thousand years ago?”

“Stone-Age Indians, I think.”

“Could this hummingbird story have roots six thousands years old?”

“I doubt it.”

He regarded me. “In our tales, the sisters come to Raylicon on the Star Path. It is a black fissure in the stars.”

“There’s a Maya legend similar to that.”

“Our scholars think it describes the trip my ancestors took from Earth to Raylicon.”

“But who took them? And why?”

Althor spread his hands. “If a starfaring race did exist six thousand years ago, one that could transplant a race from one planet to another, they are long dead and vanished.”

It made no sense to me. “Why would anyone move a bunch of Mesoamerican Indians to another planet?”

“The ancient Raylicans carried a pure strain of the Kyle genes.” The moonlight caught glimmers from his skin. “Perhaps the race that moved them intended to concentrate Kyle traits. That pure form is almost extinct now. It shows up only in descendants of certain Raylican high houses.”

“Like you?”

“Yes. Like me.”

“You think the Maya are your ancestors?”

“Maybe.”

“Althor, you look about as Indian as a cotton swab.” Actually, that wasn’t true.- But his metallic hues were far lighter than my skin.

“Indian?” Althor asked. “Is that what you are?”

It wasn’t actually a word I used for myself. Nor did I feel comfortable with Latina; it sounded too much like Ladino, the descendants of the Spaniards who conquered the Maya. Mejicana, maybe. Chicana was what I had always checked off on forms. “I’m probably mestiza,” I said.

He blanked again, then said, “Mixed blood.”

“Yes. Half Spanish descent and half Maya.”

“You look like my grandmother. I look more like my father.” His father. I’ve always wondered if I look like mine. Do we sound alike, laugh alike, think alike? I wonder if he asked my mother to come with him when he left Chiapas. Perhaps she refused as I refused Althor, too afraid to chance the unknown.

My voice caught. “It’s all dreams anyway.” I took off my bracelet and gave it to him. “This is the truth. It’s been passed from mother to daughter for generations, from mother to son if there was no daughter to inherit it, and from father to daughter. It’s all I have. Someday I’ll give it to my daughter.”

Althor pulled me into his arms. “Come with me, Tina. Don’t stay here. The loneliness will kill you.”

“No.” I laid my head against his chest. “I can’t.”

He pushed me back, gripping my shoulder while he shook the bracelet in front of my face. “Why is this so important? It’s just a damn ring of metal.”

“It’s all that’s left of my clan.” I didn’t know how to put into words what it meant. As long as I knew my father existed somewhere, I could hope to find him someday, once again to have a family, a heritage, a clan. Althor was asking me to give up that dream. And for what? An uncertainty so total it was a nightmare.

But he wasn’t looking at me anymore. He was staring at the bracelet.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“I need a light.”

He crossed to Joshua’s desk and took the desk lamp, then sat on the floor and leaned over it. When he switched it on, gold light filtered around him like a leak in the darkness. I went over and'sat next to him. He was holding the bracelet under the lamp, turning it over and over, running his fingers along the faint hieroglyphs engraved inside it.

“What are .these symbols?” he asked.

“Mayan glyphs. They’re just a copy, though. The bracelet isn’t old enough to be authentic. The ancient Maya didn’t make jewelry like that, either.”

“Why do you have this?” he asked. “And your mother, and her mother, and on back? Inheritance on Earth goes through male lines, doesn’t it?”

“Not always. I don’t know why we pass it from mother to daughter. That’s just the way we’ve done it.”

“Raylicon was a matriarchy.”

“What does that have to do with my bracelet?”

Althor showed me the hieroglyphs. “The inscription inside. It’s Iotic.”

I stared at him. “How can my bracelet have your language on it?”

He spoke softly. “Maybe because Iotic was your language before it was mine.”

“On my bracelet? That makes no sense.”

“It’s not a bracelet.”

“It’s not?”

“It’s a fitting for the tubing on the exhaust of a Raylican transport shuttle.”

My mouth fell open. “What?”

“The shuttles are ruins on the shore of the Vanished Sea in the Sleeping Desert.” His face gleamed in the lamp’s glow: “They are the oldest artifacts on Raylicon, dating from six thousand years ago. These shutdes, they are not built for humans. The proportions are wrong.” He turned the bracelet in his hand. “I have seen others of these. On the transports.”

“A bronze bracelet in that good of condition can’t be six thousand years old.”

He shook his head. “It’s not bronze. It’s an alloy called cor-donum, made atom by atom using nano-bots to place the particles. It endures much better than bronze.”

“Mayan glyphs like that didn’t exist six thousand years ago.”

“I don’t know how,” Althor said. “But it is Iotic. The ancients brought the language with them, a remnant of their lost home.” His voice caught. “Before tonight, I had no past. Do you know what that means? My ancestors ceased at six thousand years. Now you may have given me a past.” He swallowed. “When I may never be able to return home again.”

“Althor, no.” I pulled him into my arms. “Don’t say that.”

He turned out the light and held me. We sat there for a long time, rocking back and forth in the silver night.

The Mojave Desert rolled by as Daniel drove his Jeep down Highway 14. Dry land stretched out for miles, gray green and dust yellow, feathery strands of ocotillo plants reaching out fingers and prickly spikes of mesquite patching the land in earthy colors. Tumbleweed blew across the road, rolling lumpily, and the sky was a pale blue plain above us. Although it was only eight in the morning, heat already shimmered on the asphalt.

Even with a hat pulled over my hair, the wind still snapped out blond curls from my wig and threw them around my head. I pushed at my glasses, trying to setde them on my nose. I felt stupid wearing a business suit. Anyone who saw me would surely -know I was a fake.

Heather had loaned me the suit and wig. Joshua found Althor a stage beard left from a play put on by the chemistry graduate students, and Daniel dug up a boring blue suit for him. We dyed his hair blond. So now Althor sat in the Jeep with his bluejacket across his knees, tie loosened and collar open, his newly yellow curls dancing in the wind. He squinted and raised his hand to his eyes, but he stopped himself 'before he rubbed anything.

“Are the contacts bothering you?” I asked. When he. cupped his hand to his ear, I raised my voice. “Heather’s eye lenses. They still bothering you?” The contacts turned her green eyes blue; on Althor, it was more of a blue-violet color.

“Everything blurs,” he said.

Heather turned around in the front and looked at the three of us—Althor, myself, and Joshua—scrunched in the back. “Can you see enough to walk?” she asked him.

Althor rubbed under his eye. “I think so.”

“Try not to rub your face,” I said. “It makes the gold show.”

I took a bottle of foundation out of my purse and touched up the gold streak under his eye. I had to be careful: if I used too much makeup, it would show, making people wonder why this macho guy in a conservative suit wore it; if I used too little, it wouldn’t cover the shimmer of his skin.

Daniel pointed to a sign: Rosamond blvd. yeager military FLIGHT TEST CENTER. NASA-AMES-DRYDEN RESEARCH FACILITY. Under it, a second sign in faded letters said EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE.

“Edwards.” Althor snapped his fingers. “I recognize this. They renamed it?”

“In honor of Chuck Yeager,” Daniel said. “After he died.”

“In my universe,” Althor said, “General Yeager lived well past the 1980s.”

Daniel turned onto the exit. Other cars came behind us and more were on the road ahead. We drove through land dotted with blue and yellow flowers, and the orange glow of California poppies. Then we crossed a dry lake bed and entered a wrinkled-blanket terrain covered with yellow flowers that spilled everywhere like paint.

After about six miles, we reached a security checkpoint. Lines of cars waited; both lanes were backed up, as well as a third made by coming off one usually used by traffic leaving the base. As we waited, Daniel looked back at us. “This is the West Gate.”

“Does it always have so many security police?” Althor asked.

“Security police?” Daniel asked.

Althor motioned toward the booth, where harried guards were trying to deal with the rush hour traffic. “The guards. There are at least six of them.”

“Milcops,” Daniel said. “Usually there’s only a couple. All you need most days is a sticker on your car and they wave you through.” He eased the Jeep forward as the milcops let another car through.

“How many people work here?” Joshua asked.

“About 5000 military,” Daniel said. “Maybe 6000 civilian and 8000 contractors.”

Heather whistled. “Sounds more like a city than a base.”

“Do you think the guards know why security has been increased?” I asked.

“I doubt it,” Daniel said. “They don’t have any need to know.”

We moved forward again, again—and it was our turn. Daniel pulled alongside the milcop and held up aJPL badge. When Joshua elbowed me in the ribs, I opened my purse and took out the MIT badge they had fixed up for me. I sat stiff in my seat, certain the milcop would realize we were fakes.

Thorough planning had gone into this attempt. Heather found a file in the Yeager system about a group expected at the base later in the day, specialists brought in to study.the “test plane.” We came early because the specialists weren’t scheduled to arrive for several hours. Despite our careful work, though, too much could go wrong. At least that was how I felt. Althor was hard to read; I later learned he had switched into a combat mode used for special operations. The others were tense, quiet—and eager. The previous night, during our planning, Daniel had said that if we pulled this off, it would be ten times better than the time students took over the computer running the scoreboard at the Rose Bowl and changed the teams to Caltech and MIT.

The milcop looked over our badges and asked for our on-site contact. As Daniel gave him the number, I held my breath. The milcop went into the guard booth and picked up a phone. I watched through the tinted glass, trying to stay calm while he spoke to whoever was on the other end.

He came back out. “They’re waiting for you up at North Base,” he said, waving us through.

And that was it.