Then he moved over to a waist-high censer stationed there on the edge
of the platform and began adding balls of sticky white _copal_ resin,
together with bark and grasses, which he ignited by the quick friction
of a fire stick spun by a bow.
Finally he turned to me and held out his hands. "Now we will make a
miracle, the miracle of _Baalum_."
Heavy smoke from the censer was pouring out into the rainy sky as we
started a stiff _pas de deux_, the strains of a clay flute drifting
around us. Was it the "ceremony"? Was I dreaming it?
As the incense billowed, our Maya dreamtime dance became ever more
intense, and then a faint form began to writhe up out of the haze
between us, an undulating serpent the deep color of jade. As Alex
Goddard wrapped his arms around it, it began to form into two dark
heads, then pirouette above us. Finally, as the two-headed specter
opened its mouths and gazed down on the platform, Sarah stepped toward
it and held out her arms.
"Sar, no!"
I screamed to her to get back, but as I did, the . . . thing reached
down and swallowed her in flames. It was the Vision-Serpent come to
receive her.
"Sarah . . ."
"Can you get up now?" said a voice, cutting through the haze that
enveloped my consciousness. At first I thought it was more of the
dream, but then someone was touching me and I opened my eyes to see
Marcelina standing beside the bed I was in, dressed in white and
holding a candle. For a moment I thought I was still atop the rainy
pyramid but then I felt the moistness of the sheets and realized the
storm Id been dreaming of was being blown in through the slats of the
windows. I was shivering.
"Marcelina, where's Sarah?" The nightmare had seemed so real, and now I
was hallucinating, having flashes of colors I didn't want to see. "I
just had the most horrible dream. I was on the pyramid and there was
smoke, rain and some kind of ghastly--"
"It's the elixir. From the toad. It makes you dream dreams of the Old
Ones." She took my hand. "She's resting now. He gave her something to
calm her."
More drugs, I thought angrily.
Then I caught the "he." Alex Goddard must be back. Everything had gone
wrong.
"I've got to get her and--"
"Not now," Marcelina went on, helping me up. "Come. I want to show you
the true miracle of _Baalum_. Now is the time you should know."
The upstairs hallway was dimly illuminated by rows of lights along the
floor as she led me forward. There also was total silence, except for
the occasional whimper of a baby in one of the rooms. Where was she
taking me?
When she stopped in front of the third door from the end of the hall, I
tried to get my mental bearings. I was still hallucinating; in control
of only half my mind to the point where I wasn't sure I could find my
hand in front of my face. But then she tapped on the door and when she
heard a voice inside, something in the Kekchi dialect, she gently
pushed it open.
When we moved inside, the room was dark and there was no sound, except
a gasp from the bed when the woman realized I was a gringo. The dim
slant of illumination from the doorway revealed a small night lamp just
above the head of her bed, and Marcelina reached for it.
As the light came on, a pale glow filling the room, I noticed the woman
was staring at me, her eyes wide and frightened.
"She's afraid you've come for her child," Marcelina whispered, pointing
toward the bassinet. "She knows we have to give him back."
The woman was pure Maya, a powerful visage straight off that upright
stele in the square. I walked over and took her hand, hoping to calm
her fears. Then I lifted her hand to my cheek and realized my face was
moist with tears. I held it there for a long moment, till the alarm in
her eyes diminished.
Her newborn infant was sleeping quietly in a crib right next to her, on
the opposite side from the table. When I looked closely at him, I
finally understood everything.
I laid her hand back onto the bed and walked around. While the woman
watched, I pulled away the stripped red and green coverlet and lifted
out her groggy little boy, tender and vulnerable.
He made a baby's protest as I cradled him, then began sleepily probing
my left breast, making me feel sad I had no milk.
"It's okay," I whispered, first to him and then to his mother. "_Esta
bien_."
"_Tz'ac Tzotz_," the woman said, pointing at him. I could feel her
deep, maternal love.
"His name?" I asked in English, before I thought.
When Marcelina translated, the woman smiled and nodded.
Then the blond-haired Tz'ac Tzotz started to sniffle, so I kissed him
gently, turned, and took the woman's hand again. There was nothing else
I could do.
Tz'ac Tzotz was Sarah incarnate. This was no hallucination. He had her
special blue eyes and her steep cheeks, her high brow. I was holding
her child.
"They are sent from Kukulkan," Marcelina was saying, "the white god of
the plumed serpent. Then there's the ceremony on the pyramid and they
go back."
The woman was staring at me, seemingly awestruck. Then she pointed at
Tz'ac Tzotz and at me, saying something to Marcelina. Finally the woman
bowed her head to me with great reverence.
"She says he looks so much like you," Marcelina explained. "You are
surely the special one. The new bride."
I was still speechless, but then I noticed the baby had a little silver
jaguar amulet tied around his wrist with a silken string, and on the
back--as on Kevin's and Rachel's--were rows of lines and dots.
It finally dawned on me. They were digits, written in the archaic Maya
script. What could they be, maybe his birthday? No, I realized, that
was far too simplistic. This was the original bar code; it was his
_Baalum _"serial number."
For a long moment it felt as if time had stopped. Sarah, and now
me--we'd been lured here to provide the life force for Mayan surrogate
mothers. This whole elaborate recreation wasn't about rainforest drugs
and research into fertility; it was just a cover to use the bodies of
these intensely believing Native Americans. Alex Goddard had
perpetrated the greatest systematic exploitation of another race since
slavery. The difference was, he'd found a way to get them to give
themselves willingly.
_Baalum_ was definitely a place of miracles. There could scarcely be
another isolated spot on earth where he could find this many sincere,
trusting people with powerful beliefs he could prostitute. And all of
it hidden deep in an ancient rainforest.
But I had to be sure. I turned around, leaving Marcelina to watch in
confusion, and marched out into the hall and into the next room. The
Maya mother there cried out in shock as I unceremoniously strode over
to her crib and checked.
Her baby was the same. Sarah stamped all over him. My God.
When I went back, Marcelina was still trying to calm Tz'ac Tzotz's
mother with her bedside manner.
As I stood looking at them, the extent of what was going on finally
settled in. All those new babies at Quetzal Manor, even Kevin and
Rachel--they all looked alike because they all were from the same
woman. The one who was here before Sarah. And now hers were ready.
I was going to be next. The new "bride." Those fresh petri dishes down
in the lab . . . My God, why didn't I destroy them when I had the
chance?
So whose sperm would he use? Of course. It would be from the man Alan
Dupre was going to deliver to him.
"Marcelina, don't you realize what's happening?" I wanted to pound some
sense into her. They didn't have to let him do this to them.
"I know that with miracles must come sadness," she said, reaching to
touch Tz'ac Tzotz's tiny brow. "We all understand that."
"It's not a miracle. It's science, don't you realize? _Ciencia_. He's
using you."
"We know he does many things that are magic. He makes powerful
medicines from the plants we bring him, and when women want to bear a
child--"
"No, Marcelina." I felt my heart go out to her, and to all the others.
"It's black magic. It's all a lie."
The first thing to do was go down to the laboratory and dump every last
one of my petri dishes into the sink, ova and all. Destroy the nest,
then call Steve and warn him. . . .
I glanced at my watch. NO! The time was 4:58 A.M. He was coming at nine
o'clock last night. . . .
I was standing there in horror, unnatural colors flitting across my
vision, when I heard . . .
"It's almost morning."
I jumped as Alex Goddard walked into the room, dressed in white, hair
falling around his shoulders. He took Tz'ac Tzotz from his crib,
checked the number on his amulet, and then absently put him back. Next
he examined me, his eyes brimming with concern.
"How're you feeling?" He placed his hand on my brow. When I looked
around for Marcelina, I realized she'd vanished.
"Where's Steve?" I felt the bottom dropping out of my world, my whole
body trembling. "If you've harmed so much as a hair on his head, I'll--"
"He's here," he said quietly.
"I want to see him." Dear God, what had I done? I wanted to die.
"He's been given something to help him rest. Are you sure you want to
disturb him?"
"I told you I want to see him." I could barely get out the words. "Now."
"If you insist. He's just downstairs."
We slowly walked down the marble steps, my mind flooding with more and
more hallucinations. When we reached the first floor, he opened the
door of a room adjacent to his office. I realized the window slats were
open, sending a rush of moist air across my face. Then he motioned me
forward and clicked on the bedside light.
Steve was there on the bed, comatose. I walked over and lifted his
upper torso, then cradled his head in my arms. Baby, I love you. Please
forgive me. Please.
His eyes were firmly shut and he didn't stir in the slightest. He was
in a deathlike stupor, and there were large bruises on his face and a
bandage across his nose. Then his bed shift fell open and I noticed
another bandage on his groin.
"You've already done it!" I whirled back, ready to kill the bastard.
"As I said, he was injected with a mild sedative." He had walked over
and started taking Steve's pulse. "Given the . . . condition he was in,
I decided to go with the simplest procedure possible. After he was
brought in, I made a small incision in the _vas deferens _and extracted
a substantial quantity of motile sperm." He was turning down the
lights. "Don't worry. I've performed the procedure before. The last was
a Swedish tourist who was in a car accident up by Lake Atitlan and then
lay in a coma in Guatemala City for weeks on end."
I listened to him, my mind racing. I'd thought Kevin and Rachel looked
Nordic, big and blond. That Swede must have been their father.
"Those ova of mine you took, the way you stole Sarah's, and all the
other women you've brought here--you don't use them for research."
"I have ample leftover embryonic material here for that." He started
helping me onto the bed next to Steve. Now his face was undulating
through my vision, as though I were seeing it in a wavy mirror. "Please
understand, it's very expensive to run a laboratory up here. But the
good I'm doing--"
"You're a criminal." I remembered the frightened eyes of the women
upstairs and felt myself seething with anger.
"No! I am, in my special way, giving them back a small part of what
they had taken away by people exactly like us. I'm providing them
proof, living proof, their truths are still powerful."
He strolled over to the window and looked out. "The women come to me
for my blessing whenever they hope to bear a child. They know that if
they wish, I can cause their first child to be a descendant of their
white deity Kukulkan. For them it is a sacred event."
"They believe that?" It was sickening. I felt a knot growing in my
stomach, even as my hallucinations flashed ever bolder, bright rainbows
that flitted about the room, then wound themselves around me.
"A great philosopher once said, All religions are true.' Who are we to
judge?" He paused. "Let me try and explain something. Those patterns
you see the women weaving on the fabrics down in Baalum, those patterns
are actually just like the designs on that thousand-year-old pyramid.
But though that pyramid had been buried and lost to them for so many
years, they still made the designs all those years, because those
symbols are a road map of their unseen world. Not the forest here where
we are now, but their real world, where the gods dwell who rule the
lightning bolts, the germination of corn." He was at the door,
preparing to leave, but he paused. "They also understand the . . .
special infants who come are miracles that must be returned. They
receive but they also must give. Now they wish you to be part of that."
With that he closed the door with a swing of his long hair, a slam
followed by a hard click.