4
A few minutes later, Field had spoken to Ramirez and
Showalter, two other geophysical scientists working in the
area. They had confirmed it: they were getting the same
readings as Field. It wasn’t an equipment problem:
something had changed at the heart of the crater itself.
“But why?” asked Altman.
Field shook his head. “Who knows?” he said. “Showalter
thought it might have to do with seismic activity focused
directly at one of the sensors, but even as he suggested
this was already talking himself out of it. Ramirez is as
confused as we are. He’s talked to a few others, none of
whom seem to know what’s going on. Something’s shifted,
something’s different, but nobody knows why it’s changed
or even what it could be. Nobody has ever seen anything
quite like it.”
“What should we do?” asked Altman.
Field shrugged, thought for a moment. “I don’t know,” he
said slowly. He sat running his fingers through his thinning
hair, staring at nothing. “Nothing much we can do on our
own,” he finally said. “I’ll file a report with CASRC and see
what they advise. Until I hear back, I suppose I’ll just keep
on with the readings.”
With a sigh, Field turned back to his screen. Altman just
stared at him, disgusted.
“What’s wrong with you?” he asked. “Are you even
curious?”
“What?” said Field, turning back. “Of course I am, but I
don’t know what to do about it. We tried to figure it out, and
everybody else is just as confused as we are.”
“And that’s it? You’re just going to give up.”
“Not at all,” said Field, his voice rising. “I told you: I’m
filing a report with CASRC. They’ll be sure to have some
ideas. That seems the best way to handle it.”
“And then what, you wait a few weeks for someone to
read the report and then a few more weeks for a response?
What goes on in the meantime? You just keep taking
readings? What are you, a company man?”
Field’s face flushed dark. “There’s nothing wrong with
following protocol,” he said. “I’m just doing my job.”
“This could be huge,” said Altman. “You said yourself it’s
not like anything you’ve seen before. We’ve got to try to
figure it out!”
Field pointed one shaky finger at him. “You do what you
want,” he said in a low, quavering voice. “Go ahead and be
a maverick and see where it gets you. This is a big deal,
and it needs to be handled properly. I’ll do my job the way
that I know it should be done.”
Altman turned away, his lips a tight line. I’m going to find
out what’s going on, he vowed, even if it kills me.
Hours later, Altman still hadn’t gotten any further than Field.
He called every scientist he knew in or around Chicxulub,
anybody at all with an interest in the crater. Each time he hit
a wall, he’d ask the person on the other end who else they
thought he should call and then called them.
By a quarter to five, he still hadn’t gotten anywhere and
had run out of names. He ran back over the data and
correlated it with what he could get his colleagues to send
him. Yes, there definitely was a gravitational anomaly.
Something had shifted with the electromagnetic field as
well, but that was all he knew.
Field, who like any good bureaucrat quit promptly at five
every day, had begun to transmit his data and to pack up.
“You’re leaving?” asked Altman.
Field smiled and heaved his pear-shaped bulk out of the
chair. “Nothing left to do here today,” he said. “I’m not paid
overtime,” he explained, and then walked out the door.
Altman stayed on another few hours, going over the data
and maps again, searching for precedents for shifts like
this in records about the crater itself or about similar sites,
records that stretched all the way back to the twentieth
century. Nothing.
He was just on the way out the door himself when his
phone sounded.
“Dr. Altman, please?” said a voice. It was barely louder
than a whisper.
“This is Altman,” he said.
“Word has it you’ve been asking around about the
crater,” said the voice.
“That’s correct,” he said, “there’s this odd anomal—”
“Not over the phone,” the voice whispered. “You’ve
already said too much as it is. Eight o’clock, the bar near
the quay. You know where that is?”
“Of course I know,” said Altman. “Who is this?”
But the caller had already hung up.
5
By the time Chava came back, dragging along his mother
and a few of the other people from the nearby shantytown,
the creature had changed again. The wet gray sacs on its
back were larger now, each almost the size of a man when
fully inflated. Its arms and legs had somehow joined,
melding into one another. The flayed quality of the neck had
changed, the flesh now looking as if it were swarming with
ants.
The air around it had taken on an acrid yellow sheen. It
hung in a heavy cloud, and when they got too close, they
found it difficult to breathe. One man, a small but dignifiedlooking
old drunk, wandered into the cloud and, after
staggering about coughing, collapsed. Two other villagers
dragged him out by the feet and then began to slap him.
Chava watched until the drunk was conscious again and
groping for his bottle, then turned back to stare at the
creature. “What is it?” Chava asked his mother.
His mother consulted in whispers with her neighbors,
watching the thing. It was hard for Chava to hear everything
they were saying, but he heard one word over and over
again: Ixtab. Ixtab. Finally his mother turned to him. “Who is
Ixtab?” Chava asked nervously.
“Go fetch the old bruja,” she told him. “She’ll know what
to do.”
The bruja was already heading toward the beach when he
came across her. She was moving slowly, leaning on a
staff. She was old and frail, most of her hair gone and her
face a mass of wrinkles. His mother claimed that she had
been alive when the Spaniards killed the Mayans, a
thousand years before. “She is like a lost book,” his mother
had said another time. “She knows everything that
everyone else has forgotten.”
She carried a pouch slung over one shoulder. He started
to explain about the creature, but she silenced him with a
gesture. “I already know,” she said. “I expected you sooner.”
He took her arm and helped her along. Others from the
shantytown were coming down the beach as well, some
walking as if hypnotized. Some wept; some ran.
“Who is Ixtab?” asked Chava suddenly.
“Ah, Ixtab,” said the bruja. She stopped walking and
turned to face him. “She is a goddess. She is the rope
woman. She hangs in the tree, a rope around her neck, and
her eyes are closed in death, and her body has begun to
rot. But she is still a goddess.”
“But is she dead?”
“The goddess of suicide,” mused the bruja. “She is the
hanged goddess, the goddess of the end. And she gathers
to her those who are dead by uncertain means.” She stared
at the boy intently. “She is a very harsh mistress,” she said.
Chava nodded.
“Tell me,” the bruja said to him, “did you dream last
night?”
Chava nodded.
“Tell me your dream,” said the bruja, and then listened
carefully as he recounted it confusedly, in bits and pieces.
She gestured forward, at the people running in front of
them, at the crowd of people around the strange creature
up ahead. “These, too,” she said, “they have shared our
dream.”
“What does it mean?” asked Chava.
“What does it mean?” she asked. She pointed a shaky
finger at the creature ahead, its gray sacs now almost twice
the size of the man, the cloud of noxious gas growing.
“Here you see what it means.”
“We dreamed it and we made it real?” asked Chava,
amazed.
She gave him a toothless smile and cackled. “You think
you are so powerful?” she asked, and started shuffling
forward again. “You think we are so powerful? No,” she
said. “We could not make this. Our dream is a warning.”
“A warning?”
“The dream tells us there is something wrong,” she said.
“We must set it right.”
For a time they walked through the sand without
speaking, the old woman breathing heavily. Chava could
already hear the hissing from the creature, louder than the
crash of the surf.
“Have you begun to dream awake?” the bruja asked.
“What do you mean?” he asked, frightened.
“Ah, yes,” she said. “I can hear in your voice that you
have. You must be careful. It found you first. It means to take
you. Chicxulub: you know what this word means?”
The boy shook his head.
“And yet you have lived in this town all your life,” she
scolded him. “You have lived within a word that you do not
know.”
He was silent for a moment, then asked, “Is that bad?”
She made a noise with her lips but did not answer.
Apparently it wasn’t a question worth answering.
“What does Chicxulub mean?” he asked after another
moment.
She stopped briefly and with the tip of her stick drew a
figure in the sand. It was two lines twisting around each
other.
He crossed his fingers and imitated it by making the sign
of protection he had learned as a child. She nodded. “What
is this?” he asked.
She didn’t say anything. She spread her toothless mouth
wide, which looked for a moment disconcertingly like the
jawless maw of the creature on the beach.
“Tail of the devil,” she said. “The devil has started to
wake and thrash its tail. If we cannot coax it back to sleep,
then this will be the end of us.”
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