Free Phobos: Mayan Fear by Steve Alten Page A

to arrive, Immanuel had dozed off. Now, as a wave of energy zaps his brain like a neurological tuning fork, he opens his eyes to an ebony sky seasoned with a billion stars: a tapestry of glittering perfection—spoiled by a cosmic fissure. Dividing the heavens like a celestial spinal cord, the dark zigzagging rift bulges with sporadic cloudlike clusters, each cosmic vortex representing a million suns.
    So bewitched is Immanuel Gabriel by the Milky Way’s galactic womb that several moments pass before he realizes he is no longer buried. He looks around, baffled. There is no hole. No cave. He is lying on the ground, his groin covered by a breechcloth made of cotton. Sitting up, he discovers that his chest hurts and his right shoulder burns and his hands are covered in blood.
    “Beck? Kurtz?”
    He stands in the clearing surrounded by a dense forest and hears heavy breathing. In the darkness revealed by a waxing moon rising above the jungle canopy, he sees the jaguar. A big male, it is on its side panting blood, the hilt of an obsidian dagger protruding from its heaving chest. One of its front paws is cleaved with blood, its sharp claws matching the four dripping track marks oozing from Manny’s wounded shoulder.
    The forest rustles.
    He drops to his knees by the dying beast and yanks the blade free, releasing a tortured growl and a reflexive upward twist of the wounded predator’s head.
    The big cat’s heart ceases beating before gravity returns its skull to the hard limestone earth.
    Weak, Manny staggers into a defensive crouch and waits.
    The Spanish conquistadors seep out of the jungle. White men and facial hair and fire sticks that spit out hot insects. The blood drains from his face. The heavens spin and the forest swoons and his body folds beneath him, his glazing eyes staring up at the dark canyon splitting the midnight sky.

    Daylight burns red behind his closed eyelids. He opens them to morning streaming in from a rectangular hole set high in the straw and mud hut.
    “Balam?”
    The female native lying on his chest looks up at him through dark brown pools, her raven hair wild and unkempt. She is naked, her warm brown skin sepia … like his.
    “Another vision?” She speaks in the Nahuatl language of the Toltec and somehow he can understand her—his brainwaves tracking his shifting consciousness, completing the transformation of his altered identity.
    He is Chilam Balam.
    He is the Jaguar Prophet.
    Communicating in her native tongue, he responds to his soul mate’s question. “I saw the bearded white man.”
    “The great teacher returns?”
    “No, Blood Woman.” He slides out from beneath her, his body void of the wounds from his dream. “The bearded white ones are invaders. On one Imix they shall arrive by sea from the east bearing a symbol of their god. By violence and death they shall introduce their new religion.”
    He kneels by the long parchment lying on the bare floor and begins painting new images, translating his last vision into Mayan glyphs. “Go to the Council. Advise them that I shall seek the assistance of the great teacher in his sacred temple tonight.”

    It is nearly sunset by the time Chilam Balam leaves his dwelling.
    He follows the sacbe , the raised dirt road cutting through the dense Yucatan jungle. Farmers work the fields, growing maize and other crops. Laborers clear brush for new trails. Faces turn, heads bow. Chilam Balam is revered.
    He heads south in the direction of the blood-red pyramid, the Kukulcan rising in the distance like a giant ant colony to tower a hundred feet over the vast ceremonial center. Thousands crowd the esplanade, bartering their wares. Potters display vases and plates, growers their food, weavers their breechcloths and dyed skirts—the fabric provided by the ceiba, a pentandra tree whose fruit is a six-inch pod containing seeds surrounded by a fluffy, cottonlike yellowish fiber.
    Thirty thousand Maya: drawn together to discourage enemy raids, bound by