Sarah was hovering around me, a sylphlike presence, as I watched myself drift up the steps of the pyramid there in the square, my senses waxing and waning like the waves on a distant ocean shore. There seemed to be rain, or fog, or smoke, but it had a luminous, purple cast one moment, a Day-Glo orange the next. In fact, all the colors were swirling and changing, shimmering from hue to hue. A pack of howler monkeys was cavorting up and down the steps on my left, like circus Harlequins in electric red-and-blue suits, doing pratfalls and huffing as they flew through the air and tumbled one over another.
Sarah was floating silently beside me, but where was Steve? Had he come? Were we escaping?
No. I sensed his face drifting across my sight like a cartoon cloud before dissolving into nothingness. He wasn't here. I was having the eeriest dream I'd ever had.
When I reached the stone-paved platform at the pinnacle, I felt Alex Goddard clasp my arm and turn me around to face the plaza below.
"They are waiting," he said, pointing toward the hazy square.
I looked down, and at first I couldn't see anything except rain and smoke, but then slowly a crowd materialized. The scattering of men I'd seen earlier had become an undulating sea of upturned faces painted with stripes and swirling circles of blue and white and red, a torch-lit garden of brilliant blossoms. They all were looking up at us, at Sarah and me.
Next he held out a mirror whose reflecting surface was a polished silver metal.
"Behold yourself, Morgan. As befits a royal one, a special one, your nose has been built up with clay and pierced with lustrous blue feathers and a giant topaz. Your front teeth have been filed to a point and inlaid with jewels, your royal skull has been shaped back and flattened."
I gazed into the mirror and gasped. I was monstrous, a Halloween harpy.
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.