Mayan December (16 page)

CHAPTER 27

Alice stood on the sidewalk outside of the Cancun Marriott with Don Carlo. The endless sounds of engines and machinery and people in a modern city felt jarring after her long quiet night. The Secret Service interview hadn’t helped, either. What the heck did her second-grade teacher have to do with anything? “Wow,” she said. “That was tough.”

Don Carlo nodded, but said, “It wasn’t too bad.” He’d been through it the previous day, when Alice canceled, and somehow she suspected the security goons had been even harder on him. Damn good thing he was an American citizen, or he might not have been approved at all.

It had vaguely surprised her that no one had asked about the day before. Maybe she should be glad they were busy interrogating Don Carlos then. Direct access to the Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, and maybe even the president, not to mention other world leaders, came at a high price. She knew way too much protocol now. Don’t touch. Don’t speak unless spoken to, or as part of her tour guide job. Don’t bring up her own views unless asked. Don’t talk to reporters before or after the visit. Show up a half-hour early so you can be frisked completely. She’d bet dinner that diplomats didn’t have to go through that, although surely they were more actual threat than simple scientists like her and rich do-gooders like Don Carlo.

Rich do-gooder or not, she was glad to see him. “Coffee?”

His voice was soft. “I’d like that.”

“Let’s get over to the Gran Caribe,” Alice said. “I won’t have to worry about being late.” As it was, she wouldn’t have time to go over her notes.

“Of course.”

It took twenty minutes to get there and park, so they bought lattes from the lobby bar and sat in big, soft tan couches under bright skylights. As soon as they were settled, Don Carlo cocked his head at her, curiosity shining through his placid gaze. “What happened yesterday?”

“Something came up that I had to do. A . . . friend needed help.”

He seemed willing to accept her lack of information. “Thanks for getting me included.”

Actually, if the world were fair, the Mayans would be inviting her. She swallowed. “I’m a little nervous. It seems like such a responsibility.”

“You’ll do fine. You really are good with people.”

Well, she’d learned to get along with the native Mexicans, to be polite and dress modestly, and ask instead of demand. But that was completely different. “What if I say something stupid? Or don’t say something I should say?”

“You’ll do fine,” he repeated.

Or I miss the whole thing because Nixie or I or both of us decide to go time traveling? “Don Carlo?”

He waited.

“Do you . . . what do the Mayans think about time?”

He blinked at her and licked his lips. He was never quick to respond to questions, but he hesitated more than usual. Or was she making that up? Eventually, he said, “They studied time. You know that. They thought this time, our time, is important. You know that, too.”

She felt a hand on her shoulder from behind and looked up to find Steven standing there. “Hello.”

“Look, a miracle has occurred. They’re running a few minutes early. You should go now to get set up for your talk.”

Frustrated, she spread her hands apologetically toward Don Carlo. “This is Dr. Steven Blake, one of my old teachers.” After Don Carlo nodded a hello, she asked him, “Will you come hear my talk?” After all, he’d helped her get the funding for it.

But he shook his head. “I have a class to teach.” He smiled at her. “Good luck.”

She followed Steven to the Baile Plaza Room where the lectures were being held. She’d clipped a printed picture of Nixie’s shot of Tulum in color into her papers. Maybe Steven was the right person to give her perspective. “Can you meet me after the talk? Just for a few minutes?”

He slowed down and turned around, a big grin on his face. “Sure. If you tell me what you know about the turtles. That was Nixie, wasn’t it?”

“What turtles?”

“Really? You didn’t see the picture? She’s all over the Internet. Search for ‘Turtle Girl.’”

Alice fumbled with her phone. Steven must have seen her frustrated look because he said, “We’ll pull it up on the presentation screen.”

Well, that would be private. Not.

The conference was on a break. Nearly half the crowd stood by the wall-sized screens, pointing. As soon as she saw the two huge twin images, Alice drew in a sharp breath. Nixie. Twenty-feet tall in the projections, laughing, floating in the water in her good gold dress, surrounded by thousands of turtles. A professional quality picture, every golden hair on Nixie’s head visible, the turtles so clear their claws and tiny tails could be seen, the wet dress clinging to Nixie’s hips so she looked like a sixteen-year-old-goddess instead of an eleven-year-old girl.

Damn.

Alice was going to kill her for going in the water in that dress. No, she wasn’t. At least it was in this time. Damn it. She tried to keep Nixie out of pictures and off the nets. Safer that way. Damn.

“You’re gaping,” Steven said.

She breathed out slowly, unable to tear her eyes away from Nixie’s bigger-than-life features, the pure joy the photographer had captured on her face. A spiritual joy, as if Nix were a water nymph instead of a girl. My god, her baby. On display for the whole world. “You’re right. It’s Nixie.”

“You didn’t know about it?” Steven prodded. “It’s an AP photograph—all over the world in thirty seconds.”

She bet the photographer uploaded it right from the spot. Didn’t they need permission for that? Her voice shook. “Is there more?”

“There’s a story with it. And some tourist’s grainy YouTube video from a bad angle. But you’d better get your presentation loaded up.”

She turned the external display off before shoving the USB drive into a free port and starting the copy. While she waited, her fingers flew across the keyboard bringing up major news sites. Nixie was on all of them, one of those weird stories that gets the world’s attention for thirty seconds. In this case, because of the picture, and the heading “Turtle Girl.” The story itself was simple:

This morning, a flood of turtles approached a hotel beach near Xcaret on the Mayan Riviera coast. They seem to have come to see young Nixie Cameron, and gathered around her for a half hour. Soon after Nixie left the water, the turtles disappeared. Local naturalists have no explanation. Some people are tying the strange visitation to the impending end of the Mayan calendar.

Below the article, streams of comments had already shown up. There was no time to read them—the conference moderator was already calling people back to their seats. But she could imagine what they said: a sign of the times, a portent. How pretty Nixie looked, how nearly magical. People were probably seeing the Virgin Mary in her daughter.

To hell with the crowd. Alice turned around, put her back to the room full of people, and called Oriana. “Is everything okay?”

Oriana answered almost immediately, her words coming fast and furious. “I’m sorry. I don’t know how that happened. The man asked someone, it wasn’t even me, for permission, and the story was on the television before we got back to the room.”

“All right. Stay inside. Download Nixie’s pictures from last night or something.”

Oriana hesitated. “We can’t stay. We’re packing. There’s reporters banging on the door. The hotel is sending someone to pick us up in a cart and take us someplace they can secure.”

Damn. They should have just stayed packed. She couldn’t deal with it now. “Just keep her safe,” Alice hissed as the moderator started to introduce her.

Turning to look at the crowd she froze. She wasn’t ready. She’d prepared, but the last week felt like a year.

She took two deep breaths, letting a long silence fall before starting. Three or four sentences into her talk, she hit her stride, focusing on Mayans and Venus, Venus’ position in the sky now and when the Long Count calendar was created. A half-hour of excruciating detail, smiling at people when she really wanted to bolt away from the wooden podium and run home.

She took three questions, giving short answers but at least making the crowd laugh once. There were still hands up in the audience, but she’d done enough. She could walk away and feel like she’d delivered.

The moderator held up a hand. “Just a few more questions?”

Alice nodded and took a sip of water to gain a moment of peace. A tall thin woman in a conservative blue dress in the back looked like the kind of questioner most people ignored.

Alice called on her.

“I saw the picture of your daughter with the turtles.”

Alice stiffened.

“Three people swore they saw a family of quetzals at Xamen Ha yesterday and there’s been reports of lights on top of the Temple of the Inscriptions at Palenque. Is all of this tied to the coming solstice, to the end of the calendar? Will it be the ending of this world or the beginning of a new one or both?”

The question skewered Alice in place. She stood there for so long the audience shifted uneasily. Whispers floated up from the seated crowd.

A week ago she would have said something like, “People see what they expect. And if they expect strange things, that’s what they see. But that’s not science. For science, we have to wait, and watch, and measure.” She’d have had to bite her tongue to keep from saying it was all delusions. Now all she could croak out was “I don’t know.”

More hands went up. She shook her head. “I’m sorry, but we should leave time for the next speaker.”

At least no one had the guts to mention there were fifteen more minutes scheduled for her presentation. As she walked away from the podium, she felt as if a tsunami were tumbling her carefully preserved academic life, pouring magic and fear onto the foundation of her very soul.

Steven trotted up to her and put a hand in the small of her back, guiding her through a door into an empty hallway. She was clutching her papers, and the Tulum picture, to her chest. “Wait,” she said. “Just a minute?”

“Sure.”

She stepped away, staying where she could see Steven, and called Oriana again. “Okay. I’m done with the talk. But how are things?”

Oriana laughed. “Fine. They took us to Xcaret and gave us a guard and tickets to swim with the dolphins. There’s only so many people allowed in at a time, and we can’t get mobbed. We put Nixie’s hair in pigtails and changed her clothes, and the worst thing that’s happened is a little kid came up and asked her if she was the turtle girl.”

“What did she do?”

“She just looked at him and asked if he liked dolphins. When he said yes, she asked him to stay close to her when they swam.”

The very Nixie reaction made Alice smile. It was an hour’s drive back to the resort, but her hands shook with the need for food. “Are you okay for a few hours? I want to eat before I come back.”

“We’re fine. I’ve done this before. It’s safe.”

So had Alice. But not Nix. She’d love it. “I wish I were there. I’ll be home in time for dinner. Thanks.” She hesitated. “Did you hear from Ian?”

“No.”

“All right, call me if you do.” She closed the connection.

Steven’s hand on her arm pulled her focus back to the Gran Caribe. “Is there someplace quiet we can go? Someplace to eat?”

Bless his soul, Steven led her out a back door and through the parking lot and into a smallish restaurant one block off the beaten path. “This place has the best empanadas in Cancun, and,” he swept his arm around at mostly local patrons, “it’s where the locals go.”

Trust Steven to know about food. She never could figure out why he wasn’t so fat you had to roll him down the street. But he wasn’t. Except for a little belly that was as much from being old as eating, he looked good. He immediately ordered chips and bottled water, and virgin margaritas for them both, and had the common sense to wait until she ate enough to feel like she was back in her body. The way he watched her, she could tell he was waiting for her to start a conversation. “I didn’t know about the turtles. But Nixie swam with one in Tulum a few days ago—said it was huge, though, as big as her.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Big turtles are rare.”

She licked at the salt on her glass. “So are hundreds of little ones in one place. But . . . hold on.” She fished through her papers and found the picture Nixie had taken of Hun Kan, with her flat forehead, the beaded necklace, and the restored—no original—Temple of the Descending God. She pushed the picture across the table at Steven and waited, almost wishing that there was tequila in her margarita.

Steven looked at the picture for a long time, silent. When he looked up, he was very confused. “Where did you get this?”

“Nixie took it.”

“When?”

The same day she swam with the big turtle at Tulum.” She had to think about it. “Three days ago.”

“That’s the necklace you brought me day before yesterday. But who modeled it? Shaping the forehead like that is illegal now. I’ve never actually seen it.”

Alice needed him to come to his own conclusion. She waited.

“You know it wasn’t taken at Tulum. It couldn’t have been.” He raised his eyebrows. “Unless it was altered?” He sat back for a moment, holding the picture up to the light as if trying to see through it. “What about this lady who’s watching Nixie? She was there this morning, too. She could be staging these things. This morning could have been staged, too.”

Right. As if Oriana owned a turtle farm. She licked her lips and forced her hands to stop toying with her glass. “I don’t think it was doctored,” she said. “We don’t have the software to do it at my hotel, not that well, and Oriana and Nixie didn’t go anywhere.” Why couldn’t she just tell him what she’d experienced?
I dreamed about a battle in the time the sacbeobwere new and freshly-made, used as roads by wild Mayans. I traveled back in time. I found ants finishing off the bloody remains the next day. And I saw the stars the way the old Mayans saw them, a wheel of brightness the likes of which can’t even exist in modern times.

If their positions were reversed, she wouldn’t believe herself. “A lot of strange things are happening. And a lot of them are happening to me.”