Ice Shock (30 page)

And now all that knowledge is lost …

I can't even imagine how long Dad's been away, or where he's been. For me, months have passed. But for him? It might be longer … If it weren't for the fact that like me, Dad has dark brown eyes, I'd even wonder, was Arcadio really my own father, traveling in time?

“Josh … do you know what this is?”

“I
think
it's the Bracelet of Itzamna,” I tell him, looking at Ixchel for confirmation. She only shrugs. I guess she's never seen it either. “You're right, people are looking for it. Maybe they're even looking for you. The people who captured you were agents from the U.S. National Reconnaissance Organization. It's part military, part secret service. They faked your death, to make it look like you died in a plane crash. They
really
didn't want anyone looking for you, I guess. But what I can't figure out is—how did they fake your dental records? The coroner identified the body, said it was you.”

Dad shrugs. “Maybe they bribed the coroner.”

Openmouthed, I say, “People can do that?”

“Not without connections, I imagine. But if what you say is right, then this agency must know pretty powerful people within the Mexican government.”

“You don't remember anything about me and Mom,” I say. “How about something further back. Your mother? Your father?”

“I have these feelings … but I can't remember names or faces.”

“How about archaeology? You remember any of that?”

“I don't know. Maybe I could remember language. The language part of my memory seems to be untouched.”

Ixchel speaks to him in Yucatec, saying something I don't understand. He replies and then looks astonished.

“You speak Yucatec,” she says. “Can you also read the writing on the Bracelet?”

“I've already tried. It's a type of cuneiform writing—looks like an ancient Mesopotamian language, but with strange modifications to the symbols. It doesn't make any sense.”

Montoyo didn't make a big deal about the links between Itzamna, Ek Naab, and the Erinsi—the ancients named with old Mesopotamian words for
People of Memory
. But the Adapter, the Revival Chamber, and now the Bracelet of Itzamna all seem to have a link with ancient Mesopotamia.

How far back does this go?

The sorrow I've been feeling that my own father doesn't recognize me is starting to melt. I sense the beginning of
hope. If I can persuade my dad to leave this mountain with us, we can try to get him home. Maybe that will bring back his memories.

Dad stares at me again. “I wish I could remember you. You must be one heck of a boy, the kind of son a man can really be proud of.”

I stare back at him wordlessly, feel a lump rise in my throat.

“How did you find me?” he asks.

I tell him most of the story—how I came looking for the Ix Codex, how I found Camila and then Ek Naab, and how eventually I recovered the codex. When I come to the part about Camila drowning, I can't go on. I can see from his reaction that he doesn't remember who Camila is—and I don't have the heart to tell him. So I skip the details—I don't tell him that she was my sister; I don't tell him that she died.

Talking about what happened helps to keep my mind off the utter misery of the situation. I'm talking to my father—and he's engrossed by what I'm saying—yet he can't think of me as his son.

Which makes it hard to
feel
like his son. That's not easy to stand.

With help from Ixchel, I tell him about the message in the postcards, from Arcadio. The name doesn't ring any bells with my father. He listens with intense concentration.

At a certain point, I remember that I have my dad's iPod.
Maybe he'll recognize an object? Maybe it's just people he can't remember?

I show him the iPod, but he just shakes his head. “As far as I remember, I've never seen one before.”

Ixchel says, “What happens if you play something from it?”

I pass Andres the iPod and show him how to hook up the earphones. I select a playlist of Miles Davis tracks, beginning with “Blue in Green.”

Watching him listen to the tune that's haunted me for weeks, I almost cry. Within a minute, tears are rolling down his cheeks and into his beard. He squeezes his eyes shut and grips my arm hard. His voice cracks with emotion as he whispers, “I remember this. I do.”

Ixchel goes to the kitchen to make tea from the water that's just boiled.

I sit with my father as he listens to the music. I watch him wipe away his tears.

He looks into my eyes. “You've been in all this danger, because of me.”

“He got shot too,” chimes in Ixchel, before I can silence her.

“No …”

“It's nothing,” I say. “Just a flesh wound.”

“But it happened because of me.”

“No, no way!”

“Yes,” he insists, sadly. “From what you've said, it's
obvious. I should have found this Ix Codex. Not you. It wasn't your job.”

“Well, maybe it
was
my job.”

“No. You completed the mission I started. You succeeded where I failed. Meanwhile I'm holed up in here like a fox, afraid to leave.”

“Well, you know what they say … it's not paranoia if they really are out to get you.”

But Dad ignores my attempt to be funny. “I still don't know how I'm going to get away from here. It's a physical thing. I can't make myself go past the first hut.”

“We'll help.”

“And I don't even remember my own boy!” He rips the earphones off and stares in despair. “I can remember some lousy jazz track but I can't remember my wife or son.”

Ixchel says, “With help, maybe you can get your memory back.”

“You say that only because you can't imagine what it's like. To have no memories! Just murky images, impossible to grasp; sounds that bubble up as if from the swamp of dreams.”

His voice trails off and he gazes, unfocused, into his hands. Then he looks up at me again. “Did you miss me very much? You, your mother?”

I gasp. “Well, yeah! What do you think?”

To my surprise, he actually shakes his head, smiling. “I think you're managing pretty well without me.”

I'm speechless. He continues. “To find the codex, to get all the way here, really, it's amazing. That you don't see it only shows me how normal this has become for you. What high expectations you have of yourself. Someone taught you to believe in yourself like that. It would be wonderful to think I had anything to do with that.”

“But … of course you did,” I whisper. “You're my dad!”

We stare at each other. “Well, your old man's got a dangerous streak too, Josh. I seem to be drawn to trouble.”

“No—it's not that. It's the adventure you like. You always have.”

“Oh,” he says. “That must have been rough on you and your mom. Did you mind?”

“Dad! Of course not. That's … that's what's so great about you. I wanted—I want—to be just like you.”

He ruffles my hair. “You're already better. When I was your age I was just wasting my time, hitting on girls and …” Abruptly, he stops talking, becomes deadly serious. I watch his eyes, hold my breath.

“Dad … do you remember? Try!”

“There was a girl. God! I wasn't much older than you. We had a baby!”

He stares at me, astonishment mixed with delight. He grabs hold of my arms. “Josh! I remember something! You have a sister!”

There's a rush of excitement as I realize what this means. His memories are coming back to him. Maybe eventually, they all will. But what a thing to remember first. I feel sick with nerves when I think about it.

I'll have to tell him that my sister, Camila, is dead—murdered.

Outside, the wind whips around the hut, louder by the second. Powdery snow slaps hard against the single window. There's another sound then, one that I can't quite place. It sounds like a low rumble.

The effect on Dad is like an electric shock. He leaps to his feet. “Turn off the gas! Turn it off, quick!”

He dashes to an apparatus next to the sink. He picks it up, and staring at it in horror, he crosses the room to where a bulky, granite-colored North Face ski jacket hangs on a hook by the door. From one of the pockets he takes a walkie-talkie. He barks questions in Spanish, spitting each word. “What readings are you getting? I've got 5.5. Right. How many people are on the way to the summit? How many rescue crew can you spare? Okay. Okay. I've got two with me. Okay.”

The second he gets off the radio, he starts to put on his jacket. “Get your jackets back on,” he instructs. Now that he's in mountain-rescue mode, a change sweeps through his personality. He's become confident, methodical, precise. “Ropes too. And your backpacks. Get your crampons in place. We're leaving. There's seismic activity.”

Ixchel and I reel with alarm. “The volcano … is going to explode … ?”

He hesitates. “No … but … there's a lot of fresh powder near the summit.”

“And … ?”

Through tensed lips he says, “Avalanche.”

My father, Andres, has to lean hard against the door of the hut to push it open—the wind pressure is so high. Outside, I feel a surge of fear. Occasional gusts blow hard enough to throw me off balance. Yards away, on the glacier, it will be almost impossible to stay upright when those gales blow.

Dad shouts some incomprehensible words into his walkie-talkie and then listens, nodding. The second he finishes talking, he turns to us.

“We're going to go down as fast as possible, okay? Roped together. If you feel yourself slipping, lean back hard, all right? Dig your crampons into the ice. We'll be zigzagging down. Step exactly where I step, okay? There are some crevasses, but I know where they are.”

There's another rumble. This time I feel it beneath my feet. Terror pours through me like hot water through ice. I can see it in Ixchel's face too.

“Shouldn't we stay in the hut?” I yell above the wind. How is my leg going to hold up?

Dad shouts back, “It's in the path of the avalanche. We need to move.”

He leads us out onto the lip of the glacier. We scramble up the two feet of ice, then start walking—first Dad, then me, then Ixchel. We zigzag across, taking tiny steps. One second the air is still; the next, there's a roar of freezing snow.

Another deep rumble. It's strong enough to shake us off our feet. We're thrown back against the mountain. We lean against the slope, dig our boots into the ice. When the tremor passes, Dad shouts, “That was good. Keep doing that when it quakes.”

As I prepare to pull myself to my feet, I glance upward. I'm slightly surprised to see a light aircraft circling the top of the volcano. I hadn't heard it before, over the wind. I point it out to Dad. He looks up curiously. “Vulcanologists, probably,” he says. “They like to take photos of the crater when we get seismic activity around here.”

Then, to our amazement, a tiny figure falls out of the plane. It flips and floats around in a crazy, eccentric manner for a few seconds. A parachute opens, a brilliant blue canopy behind the skydiver, yanking him skyward.

“What the … ?” shouts Dad in disbelief. “That guy is crazy! He's gonna get himself killed!”

The blue parachute floats gracefully toward the summit.
Passing the crater, it turns. We watch, paralyzed with astonishment.

Attached to the skydiver's feet is a snowboard. The parachute lowers him toward the leading edge of the crater. He suddenly releases the chute. He free-falls and lands on a huge bank of powder snow. There are other climbers close to his position. We're transfixed with horror as a layer of snow begins to crumble and collapse. The skydiver snowboards right through the chaos. Snow billows around him, almost obscuring him completely. He thunders on ahead, leaving a snowstorm in his wake.

Part of me is thinking that it's the coolest thing I've ever seen in my life. Another part notices that climbers are being knocked down in the first wave of rushing snow.

“That's done it now,” says Dad. It's the first time I hear real fear in his voice. “Use your ax to get a hold on the ice. And hold tight, kids! Hold on tight!”

There's no possible way to make it off the glacier in time. The avalanche doesn't seem to be headed straight for us just yet, so I don't quite understand my father's panic. I hurl my ax into the ice as hard as I can manage. Ixchel does the same. Our eyes meet. We're both white with fear.

The snowboarder sails across the glacier in one long heelside turn. He swerves out of the path of the tumbling snow. He's headed straight for us, getting closer by the second. Dad stares in disbelief.

“This guy is out of his mind …”

Only now do I see what's really happening here.

It's Madison
.

I struggle to pull my ax out of the ice. Dad shouts at me, “Josh! Stay where you are! Leave it there!”

“We need a weapon,” I shout back, grappling with the ax, which won't budge. My leg feels like it's on fire from all my twisting movements. I glance over my shoulder just in time to see the snowboarder careering toward me. In one outstretched hand is a knife.

He carves up the snow between Ixchel and me, cuts through our rope with his knife. He flips around sharply, turning back toward me. In the next second, he grabs hold of my backpack, drags me along behind him. The rope attaching me to my father snaps taut for a second. And then I feel his weight added to mine. The snowboarder slows down. He brakes to a standstill. I can't see his face behind the helmet and snow goggles. Hearing his voice confirms my worst suspicions.

Madison
.

“Give me the backpack, Josh,” he yells. “I only want the Adapter.”

He leans forward with the knife, slices at my backpack. One strap breaks free.