Текст книги "Black Rain"
Автор книги: Graham Brown
Соавторы: Graham Brown
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Текущая страница: 27 (всего у книги 27 страниц)
AUTHOR’S NOTE
As a writer, reaching the end of a novel is something of a goal in itself. As a reader, I find that same point to be only the beginning of a journey. Whether it’s the Knights Templar, quantum mechanics or the cloning of dinosaur DNA, the best works of fiction have always made me want to know more.
In case this book has had that effect, I offer the following.
The Mayan Civilization
The main premise of the book, that a branch of the Mayan race existed in the Amazon, is of course fiction. There is no evidence of any Mayan presence that far south. As Professor McCarter comments early in the book: “The Maya in the Amazon? I don’t think so.” The choice to set the story there was a literary one, done for the purpose of separation, both to separate the Chollokwan as far as possible from the classic Mayan civilization and to separate the NRI team as far as possible from the modern civilization we all live in.
On the other hand, the legends quoted in the book are based on the Mayan manuscript Popul Vuh. This incredible work tells the Mayan creation story, the manner in which the world and humankind were constructed and the efforts of two heroes to make that world safe. It contains incredible imagery, fascinating adventures and a worldview both widely divergent from and surprisingly similar to our own.
There were probably many written versions of the Popul Vuh in the days prior to the conquistadors. Unfortunately, the mass burning of Mayan books stole from history not only any hieroglyphic copy of the Popul Vuh, but presumably thousands of other texts, charts and works of brilliance.
It’s a tremendous shame that we know so little about this once sprawling and multifaceted civilization, and a greater shame that members of the clergy were responsible for much of the destruction. And yet it was a clergyman who gave us the Popul Vuh as we know it today. Father Francisco Ximénez transcribed the text between 1701 and 1703, either from an earlier document or from listening to an oral recitation. Father Ximénez wrote his version in both the Quiché language and Spanish. The document he wrote still exists and resides at the Newberry Library in Chicago.
In the years since, there have been many translations of the Popol Vuh. Three that I found interesting were Book of the People: Popul Vuh, the 1954 translation by Delia Goetz and Sylvanus Griswold Morley, which is a clear, concise read; Popol Vuh: The Sacred Book of the Maya, a 2003 translation by Allen J. Christenson that includes a wealth of background information and even explanations of how specific terms and concepts were derived; and Dennis Tedlock’s translation in book form, The Popol Vuh: The Mayan Book of the Dawn of Life and the Glories of Gods and Kings, which is less like reading than like having the story told to you by someone who watched it all unfold. I urge anyone interested in this part of history to pick up a copy.
Fusion Power
As we begin to move through the new century, we remain heavily dependent on fuels discovered during the prior two, a situation not so different from being stuck using an abacus and a quill pen. But what will replace them? Can fusion actually become a legitimate power source? I guess we will have to wait and see. The big project, as described in this book, is the ITER, which is being funded jointly by most of the G-20 nations. While ITER has been translated as “the way,” the acronym actually stands for International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor. It’s a truly massive experiment, weighing 23,000 tons and standing a hundred feet tall. You can learn more at the official ITER website: http://www.iter.org.
As for cold fusion, it remains a mystery. In some ways the concept has become a scientific vampire, continuously rising from the dead. After being written off as a hoax in 1989, it made a comeback in the 1990s as venture capitalists and other scientists took a chance on the technology. When nothing panned out, it fell away once again.
But it may still be alive. Respected labs are now looking at it and once again reporting excess energy, neutrons and even traces levels of tritium, effects that can only come from a type of nuclear reaction. Even those who consider it a wasted effort seem willing to at least look at the data before pronouncing judgment. Who knows, some entrepreneur might yet find a way to light up the world.
And perhaps it will come none too soon. According to a recent U.N. study, by 2050 at least nine billion souls will inhabit Earth. Without new sources of energy and a massive effort to reduce, recycle and reuse, what will become of our atmosphere, of places like the Amazon? What will become of the seas, fished to near extinction and filled with plastic leftovers? The current path is unsustainable. If we do not turn, we will eventually go off the cliff. And if it is adaptation that ensures human survival at that point, then who can say what the people of the thirty-first century will look like? As Professor McCarter states near the end of this book, in some ways we’re creating a world more suited for life other than our own.
Thank you for spending the time with me.
Sincerely,
Graham Brown
READ ON FOR A SNEAK PREVIEW OF
GRAHAM BROWN’S NEW NOVEL
BLACK
SUN
COMING SOON FROM
BANTAM BOOKS
Southern Mexico, November 2012
Danielle Laidlaw scrambled up the side of Mount Pulimundo, sliding on the loose shale and grabbing for purchase with her hands as much as her feet.
Passing through nine thousand feet, her legs ached from the effort and her lungs burned as they tried to cope with the decreased level of oxygen in the thin air. But with everything that was at stake, she had no time for rest.
She glanced back at the two men who accompanied her: a twenty-year-old Chiapas Indian named Oco, who was acting as their guide, and an old friend and colleague, Professor Michael McCarter. McCarter was struggling, and she needed him to move.
“Come on, Professor,” she urged. “They’re getting closer. We have to keep going.”
Breathing heavily, McCarter glanced behind them. Imminent exhaustion seemed to prevent a reply, but he pushed forward with renewed determination.
A few minutes later, they crested the summit. As McCarter fell to his hands and knees, Danielle pulled a set of binoculars from her pack. A mountain lake filled the broken volcanic crater of Mount Pulimundo a thousand feet below. At the center, a cone-shaped island burst upward, its steep sides thickly wooded but unable to disguise its volcanic nature. Yellowish fog clung to it, drifting downwind from vents and cracks concealed by the trees and the water.
“Is this it?” Danielle asked.
Oco nodded. “Isla cubierta,” he said. Island of the Shroud.
“Are you sure?”
“The statue is there,” he insisted. “I saw it once. When I came with the shaman. He said the time was coming, the time when all things would change.”
Danielle scanned the terrain. The lake sat a thousand feet below them, down a steep embankment of loose and crumbling shale on the caldera’s inner cone. It would be a hazardous descent, but much easier physically than the climb they’d just completed.
She retied her hair and looked to McCarter. He’d made it to a sitting position, though his chest was still heaving.
“We’re almost there,” she said. “And it’s all downhill from here.”
“I’ve been hearing that load of tripe,” he said between breaths, “ever since I turned forty. And so far nothing has gotten any easier.”
He waved her on. “Go. I’ll try to catch up.”
“We stick together,” she said. “Besides, you’re the expert. You’re the one who needs to see this.”
“And what happens when they catch us?”
“They want the statue. We’ll learn what we need to know and head downstream. They’re not going to follow us.”
She extended a hand, which McCarter eyed suspiciously before reaching out and grasping it.
She helped him to his feet and the three of them went over the side together, skidding and sliding and running where they could.
As reached the bottom, she could hear shouting far up above. Their pursuers had come to the crest.
“Come on,” she said, racing across the last ten meters of solid ground and diving into the cold mountain lake.
McCarter and Oco plunged in behind her. The three of them raced toward the wooded island at its center.
Halfway across, gunfire began cracking from the ridge. Shots clipped the water to her right, and she dove under the surface and kept kicking until she could no longer hold her breath.
She came up shrouded in the sulfurous mist. McCarter and Oco surfaced beside her.
The gunfire had ceased, but another sound caught her attention, a distant rhythmic thumping reaching out across the mountains: the staccato clatter of helicopter blades, somewhere to the east. Apparently, their enemies had a new trick in store.
“Where is it?” she asked.
Oco pointed toward the summit. “At the top,” he said. “Hidden in the trees.”
They climbed the steep angle of the island’s slope, using the trees as handholds. They found the statue at dead center—a great block of stone with the outline of a man carved into it, a Mayan king in full regalia. In his right hand, he carried what looked like a net holding four stones. In his left, he held a shield. Hieroglyphic writing scrawled across the bottom and a great snake twisted across the top, with its large open mouth stretching down as if to devour the king with a single bite.
“Ahau Balam,” McCarter said, reading the title glyphs. “The Jaguar King. Spirit guide of the Brotherhood.”
Oco, who like many of the people in the Chiapas area was of Mayan descent, fell silent in awe. McCarter did likewise.
Danielle was more concerned with the danger closing in on them. The helicopter was growing closer, the men behind them no doubt scrambling down the cliff. They needed to get the information and disappear.
“What does it tell us?” she asked.
McCarter studied the writing, eyes darting here and there. He touched one glyph, and then another. He seemed confused.
“Professor?” she asked.
“I’m not sure,” he said.
The sound of the helicopter lumbered towards them, growing into a baritone roar.
“We have a minute,” she said. “Maybe less.”
He shook his head in disbelief. “There’s no story here. No explanation. It’s just numbers.”
“Dates?”
“No. Just random numbers.”
Her mind reeled. She couldn’t believe what he was saying.
“Maybe if I—”
She cut him off. “No time.”
She pulled out her camera, snapped off a shot, and then checked the screen. The stone was so weathered that the glyphs didn’t come out clearly. She took another from a different angle, with a similar result. There just wasn’t enough definition.
The helicopter was closing in. She could hear the men on foot shouting as they came down the caldera’s embankment.
“It’s not clear enough,” she said.
McCarter stared at her for a second and then tore off his shirt, dropped to the base of the statue, and pressed it up against the raised hieroglyphs. Holding it there with one hand, he began rubbing fists full of the volcanic soil against the surface of the shirt. Oco helped him.
The helicopter thundered by overhead. Slowing and turning. Looking for a place to land.
She dropped down beside him to help. The shapes of the carving began to emerge, the edges and the details. It looked like a blurry, charcoal drawing, but it was working.
Pine needles, leaves and chaff began to swirl around them. The helicopter was moving in above them, its downwash blasting everything about.
“That’s it,” Danielle said. “No more time.”
McCarter rolled up the shirt and tucked it into his backpack as she pulled her gun.
Weighted ropes dropped through the trees, unfurling like snakes.
“Run!” she shouted.
Men clad in midnight blue came sliding down the ropes, crashing through the trees, aiming and firing strange weapons.
McCarter and Oco took off. Danielle wheeled around to fire. Before she could pull the trigger, she was hit in the back. Two prongs penetrated her shirt and a shock racked her body. She fell forward, unable to move or even shout, crashing like a sack of flour, convulsing from the Taser.
Lying on her side, she saw McCarter and Oco running. Wires stretched out toward them as flights of Taser darts were fired their way. Oco went over the side safely and McCarter dodged the metal darts, only to fall suddenly at the hammering of a submachine gun. A thin spatter of blood flew as he tumbled over the steep embankment.
The next moments were a blur. Another jolt from the Taser; men surrounding her and zip-tying her wrists behind her back, while the trees bent and whipped beneath the helicopter’s thunderous symphony.
She glanced up. The dark shape of the helicopter filled a gap in the trees. A Sikorsky Skycrane, a huge beast shaped like a hovering claw, with an empty space for a belly where it could secure incredible payloads. Tractor trailers and small tanks could be suspended beneath it. The thing would have no trouble with the stone monument.
Heavy chains dropped from the monster, and moments later, the whirling blades roaring even louder, the chains pulled taut and the statue that had topped this volcanic rock for three thousand years was pulled free and hauled away.
A radio cackled on the lead man’s hip.
He grabbed it. “Tell Kang we have one of them,” he said. “And better than that, at long last we’ve found the key.”
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
A Dell Mass Market Original
Copyright © 2010 by Graham Brown
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Dell, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
DELL is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
eISBN: 978-0-553-90669-1
www.bantamdell.com
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