Chapter Twenty-seven

"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.Chapter Twenty-sevenAs I watched him depart, hallucinations swirling through my brain like furious fireworks, I had a bizarre thought. In an ancient rainforest all things are still possible. The old fairy tales we grew up with mostly took place in a deep wood where evil could lurk unfettered. Today, though, the earth's forests no longer symbolize the unknowable dark within us. Nowadays, the ogres of our nightmares descend from outer space or even from our inner selves, places we can't physi­cally know or subdue. Here, though, at this very moment, Steve and Sarah and I were marooned in a thousand-year-old forest where horror still lived.I got off the bed and steadied myself, breathing deeply, forcing my brain to clear. Steve was wearing a shift, but his clothes were hanging from a hook on the door. For a long moment I just stared at the bruises on his face."God, baby, what did he do to you?"No answer."Come on, love. Please wake up."He didn't move, but his breathing was normal, not labored. I immediately decided I'd slap him around if I had to, any­thing to get him going and able to walk."Honey, wake up. Please." I pulled his feet out of the bed and slid them around and onto the linoleum floor. I didn't know what kind of sedative he'd been injected with, but if I had to shake him out of it, fine. This was no time for half measures. "Comeon."I pulled him to his feet and dragged him across the floor to the slatted window at the rear of the room, where the predawn sounds of the forest beyond filled the air, mingled with the rain. What I needed was a gallon of black coffee, but the wet breeze would have to do.It took ten minutes of working on him, with me barely able to hold a grasp on my own reality, but then his eyelids began to flutter. I kept talking to him, pleading and badger­ing, and when he finally started coming around, I began to walk him back and forth in front of the window.Steve, I thought, I'm so sorry, so terribly sorry I dragged you into this."Can I please lie down?" His timorous voice startled me, but it gave me a burst of hope. Comeon."Baby, just walk a little more. Try to get the blood flowing and flush the damned chemicals out of your brain.""Morgy, are you okay?" His eyes had finally started to focus. And the first thing he asked about wasme. I impul­sively hugged him."I'm going to be." I pulled back and examined him. "You know where you are?"He grinned with only half his face, and I could tell even that hurt. Then he stared around the room."Tell you one thing," he said, "this ain't Kansas anymore. Last thing I remember is, Alan and I were setting down. Then out of nowhere, your Colonel Ramos and about twenty kid soldiers with AK-47's were all over us." He groaned. "They took me and then he told Dupre to get back in the chopper and disappear. I think that son of a bitch tipped Ramos off we were coming. Then Ramos worked me over and gave me an injection. About five minutes later I passed out. It's the last thing I remember."Ramos. Was he going to kill us both, now that Alex God­dard had gotten everything he wanted? I thought about it and decided this was not the moment to share that possibility with Steve. Instead I turned him around and lifted up his head."Are you really awake?" I loved this poor, beat-up man. More than anything, I just wanted to hold him."I'm not . . . but I'd damned well better be." He tried unsteadily, to straighten up. "Morgy, before he put me away, that Ramos bastard was talking about me, and you, in the past tense. Like we'd already been 'disappeared.' He didn't know I speak Spanish. What the hell's going on?"I wasn't sure how to tell him. But I was getting that super energy God gives you when you realize life is no longer a game. We had to get focused."Baby, where's your passport?" I asked.He looked around then pointed to his battered camera bag in the corner."It's in there. Or was. Central America. Never leave home without it." He grimaced then lightly pushed me away and stood by himself. "Jesus, do you know what they're doing? You were right all along. They're selling kids in the States. That Ramos prick is running the operation, not to mention Alex Goddard's slice of the action. And somebody at the American embassy here is handling all the paperwork, so they can grease everything through the INS. But I still don't understand how it is we're—""Honey, I know exactly what's happening." I'd long since figured out that Alex Goddard and Colonel Ramos were working hand in glove. But I still couldn't bring myself to tell him how he and I were going to be used. It was just too sick. "Listen, not long from now I think I'm supposed to be taken down there to the village for some kind of rite, as part of this whole disgusting operation, and then after that he's going to use . . . You don't want to hear. We've—""You know, Ramos and a bunch of G-2 thugs are here to take away a batch of little kids," he rambled on, not seeming to hear anything I was saying. He was off in his own world, trying to sort out things in his head. "But what I can't figure is, how can they just take children from here and nobody tries to stop them? Are theseindigenaso terrified—?""Listen, please." Now my hallucinations were returning in spite of all I could do, trails of light that glimmered off all the objects in the room, and I didn't know how much longer I'd be coherent. I'd have to talk fast. "We've got to get Sarah before daylight. She's down in the village. I tried to get her out of there yesterday, but—""Is she okay?" He stared at me and his eyes cleared for a moment. "I mean, is she able to—?""No, she's not okay. She's hallucinating worse than ever. I'm sure he's giving her more drugs. Really heavy stuff.""So how—?""Hopefully, we're going right this minute. There's a river. But if that doesn't work out, there's something I can do to buy us a month's time. Alex Goddard's got a laboratory here, just down the hall, in back of his office. It's the evil center of this place. So if I can get in there and dump all his petri dishes, his in-vitro culture mediums . . . Baby, it's all so dis­gusting. But I'm going to take care of it."I was starting to have real trouble just stringing words together into sentences. My hallucinations were still grow­ing, the loud whispers of light, but I did manage to tell him how I thought we could get Sarah and elude the Army, if we did it before sunup, though my plan probably came out pretty jumbled. Yet I felt that if we did it together, we could take care of each other. . . .Then, with my remaining strength, I launched into action."Let me check the hall. I just want to shut down his lab. Call it . . . call it insurance. Five minutes, and then we'll be out of here."It also would be a kind of justice, to even the score for what he'd done to Sarah and to me.I leaned Steve back against the wall, then walked slowly across the tile floor to the door and tested it. Surprise, sur­prise, it was locked. I again tried the knob, an old one, then again, but it wouldn't budge, just wiggled slightly. He'd locked us in.Now what?Then I remembered the time Steve and I were in a similar situation. When we got locked in my room at the Oloffson in Port-au-Prince, he'd just taken his Swiss Army knife and unscrewed the knob, then clicked it open. He'd made it look like a piece of cake, but he had a way of doing that.He was barely conscious, so this time I'd have to do it myself. I glanced around at his bag."Is your Swiss still in there?""I think . . ." His mind seemed to be wandering. Then he gave a weak thumbs-up.I went over and zipped it open. Be there, I prayed. We really could use a break.I rummaged through telephoto lenses and film canisters and underwear. Then I found it, zipped inside a water-repel­lent baggie and stuck in a side pouch.I snapped it open and went to work, him watching me, his head nodding as he struggled to stay conscious.The main difference between this time and Haiti was, here I didn't know what was on the other side and I was having hallucinations of multicolored snakes."You're doing great," he said finally, seeming to come a bit more alive.And I was. Out with the screws, off with the knob, in with the small blade, and click. Maybe we just think men's me­chanical skills are genetically hard-wired. Maybe it's all a secret plot to elicit awe.I closed the knife and shoved it back into his bag, then turned to him."Honey, I'm just going to be a second. While I'm gone, practice walking.""Be careful, please." He gave a cautionary wave. "They don't want us leaving here alive.""Just get ready." I quietly pulled back the door and peered out into the dark hallway. It was empty, abandoned, no snakes, with only a light breeze flowing through.When I stepped out, the fresh air hit my face and I had a moment of intensity that made me realize what I really wanted to do, first and foremost, was see Tz'ac Tzotz one last time. A last farewell to one of Sarah's children. Stupid, yes, a private folly of the heart, but I had to do it.I was halfway down the hall, experiencing flashes of color before my eyes, when I heard a voice."They're all praying for you. It's almost time."I turned back, startled, barely able to see. Finally I made out Marcelina, in her white shift. We were standing a few feet from the stairs, where I wanted to go, and I was tripping, my reality almost gone. I think she knew that, because she reached out to help me stand."Marcelina, where's Sarah?" I grasped her hand, which helped me to keep my balance. "Is she still down there in that . . . place?""She's been so looking forward to the ceremony. She wants them to bring her—""You don't know where she is?" I realized nothing was going to go the way I'd hoped it would."They all love her. They're taking good care of her.""Well, I love her too. And I have to get her. Now." I was whispering to her, trying to save my strength. "Marcelina, promise me you'll stop all this. It's so horrible. So sad.""It's our life," she whispered back, then turned her face away.I didn't know what else to say, and I was terrified Alex Goddard might materialize, so without another word, I pulled away and started up the steps.When I reached the top of the stairs, the hallway was lighted by the string of bulbs along the floor, and I made my way as fast as I could to my room at the end. I pulled my passport out of my bag, along with a charge card, slipped them both into my pants pocket, and headed back down the hall.When I got to the door of the room where Tz'ac Tzotz and his mother were, I gave it a gentle push and peered in, but the glow from the lamp above the bed showed it and the crib were both empty. . . .No! They must have already taken the children. Next they'd be coming for me. I realized I'd been a fool not to head straight for the lab. I should have just gone—The room went completely dark, together with the hallway, a pitch-black that felt like a liquid washing over me. The main power, somewhere, had abruptly died, or been deliber­ately shut off.Then I heard a thunder of footsteps pounding up the steps, hard boots on the marble.I made a dash, hoping to slip past them in the dark hall.I'd reached the top of the stairs when I felt a hand brush against my face, then a grip circle around my biceps. Some­body had been too quick.I brought my elbow around hoping to catch him in the face, bring him down, but instead it slammed against some­thing metal, which clattered onto the floor."Chingado!" came a muffled voice.I drew back and swung, and this time my arm scraped hard against the flesh of a face and the bastard staggered backward his grip loosening.I twisted away and dropped to the floor to begin searching for what had fallen. Surely it was a pistol.The marble was cold against my bare arms as I swept my hands across the floor. Then I ran my fingers down the edge of the stair.And there it was, on the first step. My left hand closed around the cold barrel of an automatic. I shifted it to my right, grasping the plastic grip, not entirely sure what I should do with it. But at least I had a gun. I'd never actually held a real one before, but it was heavy and I assumed it was ready to fire.I was halfway down the first set of stairs, on my way to the landing, when I felt an arm slip around my neck. I ducked and twisted away, stumbling down the last three or four steps, and landed on my feet, staggering back against the wall to regain my balance. All I knew was, the next steps loomed somewhere to my right. Just a few more feet . . .But he was there again, moving between me and the final stairs. Get around him, I told myself, but at that moment he grabbed me at the waist.Dancing in the dark, but the swirl had no music and no swing, just a quick, dizzying pirouette. I aimed the pistol as close as I could to his face and pulled the hard metal trigger."Mierda!"Blinding light, a face lost in the burst of flame, stars filling my head. The fiery explosion tongued out past his ear like a brilliant sword of reds and yellows, sending a round off into space. The noise left a ringing in my ears and multicol­ored hues stuttering across my eyes.It hit me who I'd just seen. It was Ramos. With a gun! Shit.The flash of my pistol had given me the advantage for a second, since I knew it was coming, and with that edge I swung an elbow across his chin, then kneed him in the groin. It should have been enough to bring him down, but instead he merely sank to one knee and redoubled his grip.Hey, I thought, maybe I know something he doesn't. How to take a fall. I'd seen enough movie stunts to know what you're supposed to do. It'd be risky, but I knew I wasn't going to win a wrestling match.I opened up with the automatic, firing everywhere again and again and again, getting off five rounds in a crescendo of light and sound, like a huge firecracker in my hand, enough to illuminate the stairwell like a strobe and catch him off guard. In that fleeting moment I slipped a foot behind his ankle and shoved.I think I yelled as I felt myself being pulled forward. Then I realized he was wearing a heavy bracelet that had tangled in my hair. I'd been planning to roll down the remaining stairs, protecting my head, and let him bounce, but the pull of his bracelet ruined it. I felt myself being swept into empty space, my gun flying away.Then something glanced off my face, the wooden banister of the stair, which had mysteriously come up to meet me. I turned and felt his body beneath mine, arms flailing, a soft landing, till we rolled and I was beneath him again.I struck out, a right fist, and he fell away, his bracelet disentangling as he tumbled farther down the stairs. Then I rose and tried to take a step, but it wasn't there. In the pitch dark the angle was wrong, off by just inches, and as I toppled forward into empty space I reached out, taking a handful of dark air.Finally I felt something clenching my wrist, and the nextthing I knew I was being swung around. I twisted sideways one last time, but then my head hit the wall. The hard marble caught me just above the ear, and I saw the darkness of the space grow brilliantly light, then transmute to vibrant colors.Or maybe the hall lights had come back on. I only know I felt a set of arms encircle me."Come," Alex Goddard was saying as he lifted me up. "They're ready."Chapter Twenty-eightWhen we reached the parking lot, several more Army thugs were waiting, grown-ups now, khaki shirts and dense mustaches, the regulation G-2 sunglasses even though it was still dark, with 9mm automatics in holsters at their belt. I took one look at them and I think I blacked out. Steve and I were about to "disappear," and possibly Sarah too. Probably in another hour or two. My tattered mind finally just slipped away.Soon afterward, I sensed myself being transported in a large vehicle, and after that I was being carried, up, up, as though I were floating into the coming dawn. When I re­gained consciousness, I realized I was standing in a rain­storm near a small stone building. A dozen Army men were huddled inside, shielding their cigarettes from the blowing rain while they guarded a row of olive-green bassinets. Around me, censers were spewingcopalsmoke into the soggy air.I became aware of the cooling sensation of the fresh rain across my face, and wondered if it might clear some of the toad venom (surely that was what it was) from my brain. Maybe it was working. Instead of seeing vivid colors every­where, I was abruptly experiencing a hyper acute clarity of every sensation. The stones beneath my bare feet were be­coming so articulated, I felt as though I could number every granule, every crystal, every atom. The paintings and carvings on the lintel above the door to the stone room—I rec­ognized it as where I'd spent the first night—sparkled, leapt out at me."Stand there on the edge of the platform," Alex Goddard commanded, urging me forward. It was only then I realized we'd come up the back steps of the pyramid, where the G-2 men had parked their black Land Rovers, unnoticed and ready.Looking down at the crowd of people gathered in the square, I realized they couldn't really see much of what was going on atop the pyramid. To them it was just a cloud ofcopalsmoke and foggy rain. Although the sun was starting to brighten the east, the only real light still came from the torches stationed around the plaza.Then like a ghost materializing out of the mist, Marcelina moved up the steep front steps, leading a line of Maya moth­ers from the clinic—I counted twelve—each carrying her newborn, the "special" baby she would give back to Kukulkan, perhaps the way Abraham of the Old Testament offered up his son Isaac in sacrifice to Jehovah. It was a sight I shall never forget, the sadness but also the unmistakable reverence in their eyes. I wanted to yell at them to run, to take Sarah's votive babies and disappear into the forest, but I didn't have the words.Next the women arrayed themselves in a line across the front of the pyramid, facing not the crowd below, but toward Alex Goddard and me. Then, holding out a jade-handled ob­sidian knife, he walked down the line, allowing each woman to touch her forehead against its flint blade. I assumed each one believed it was the instrument that would take her child's life, ceremonially sending it back to the Maya Otherworld whence it came. Had he drugged them too, I fleetingly won­dered, hypnotized them or given them some potion to prevent them from comprehending what was really going on?I kept remembering . . . a hundred other insane episodes of immortal yearning leading to a mass "transport" to some other "plane." This, I thought, must be what it was like in the jungles of Jonestown that death-filled morning. And Alex Goddard was their "Jim Jones," the spiritual leader of the moral travesty he'd imposed upon the lost village of Baalum.I was going to stop it, somehow. By God, I was. I stared at the women and felt so sad at the sight of the hand-woven blankets they held their babies in, primary greens and reds and blues lovingly woven into shimmering patterns that mir­rored the symbols across the sides of the stone room. Their faces, especially their eyes, were transcendent in a kind of chiaroscuro of darkest blacks and purest whites, as though all their humanity had been caught by their blankets and shawls, surely created for this ultimate moment. And the mother of Tz'ac Tzotz was there, carrying him, the baby I'd so wanted to hold one last time.Next Alex Goddard emerged from the stone room bearing a basket filled with sheets of white bark-paper. He ap­proached Tz'ac Tzotz's mother, then took a wide section of the paper and secured it around her face with a silk cord, covering her vision. Down the line, one after another, he carefully blindfolded the women, while they stood passively, some crying—from joy or sorrow, I could not tell. Finally, at the last, he also covered Marcelina's face.So she's not supposed to know what's really happening. Nobody's supposed to know except him, and me. And, of course, Ramos and the G-2 secret police and whoever else is in on this crime. But, secretly, she does know. The God of the House of Darkness.When he finished, he put down the basket, then turned to me. "Stand at the front edge of the platform and lift your hands in benediction. They all want to see you, the new bride."I took a couple of steps, then looked back to see him adding morecopalto the main censer, sending a fresh cloud of smoke billowing out into the rain. As the incense poured around us, the Army thugs who'd been loitering at the back of the stone room began coming forward, each carrying one of the bassinets. They set them down on the stones, ready to start taking the children. My outraged mind flashed on Ghirlandajo's "Massacre of the Innocents." Here, though, Sarah's children weren't being stabbed to death; they were being—kidnapped and stolen.Revulsion pierced through me as though I'd been hit by a jagged shaft of lightning, but instead of being knocked down, I was energized. Or maybe the final effects of the toad venom were giving me a spurt of adrenaline. Letting his criminal charade continue one second longer became unbear­able. What would happen to me, I didn't know, but I couldn't let it go on."No," I yelled, startling myself by the sound of my own voice. "In God's name, stop."The rain was growing more intense, and I was soaked and bleary-eyed, but before I could think I found myself stalking over to Tz'ac Tzotz's mother, shouting at her. The next thing I knew I was ripping the paper from her frightened eyes. I hugged her as best I could, then yelled back at Marcelina."Tell them all to take off their blindfolds. This is obscene."Then I went on autopilot, shutting out everything around me—the rain, the perilous sides of the pyramid, the pistol-carrying G-2 thugs, even Alex Goddard. The way I remember it now, it all took place in slow motion, like some underwater dream sequence, but surely it was just the opposite.Anyway, I do know I snapped. I started shouting again, and with the G-2 hoods momentarily frozen, I started fling­ing the still-empty bassinets down the steep side of the pyra­mid, where they just bounced away into the rain. As I watched them disappearing, one after another, I felt marvelously em­boldened. I would throw one and watch it go flying, and then I would throw another. Yes, damn it, yes!I wanted to show anybody with two eyes that it was all a sham. Once they realized what was really happening, surely they would rise up and drive Alex Goddard from their home.For a moment it seemed to be working. A stunned silence was slowly spreading over the square, while everybody around me was paralyzed, like waxworks. Maybe it's the same way you're temporarily caught off guard when a stranger on the street goes berserk.By the time I'd flung away the last bassinet, the women had all removed their blindfolds and were staring at me, dumbfounded. Finally, Tz'ac Tzotz's mother whispered something to Marcelina, and she turned to me."She wants to know why you're angry. You're the bride. They only want to please you."Angry? I was terrified, but also fighting mad."Marcelina, this is all a ghastly lie." I'd finished throwing and I was moving to the next stage. Get control. Could he risk killing me in front of all these people? "Tell them to take their babies and hide in the forest."That was when I heard a cry that pierced through the rain and across the square beyond, and I turned back to see Alex Goddard shoving toward me. He's coming to murder me, since I've exposed him. But I wouldn't let it happen without a fight. I clenched my fists, waiting, feeling my adrenaline surge.Instead, though, he just brushed past me, headed toward the edge of the platform. At first I didn't know why, but he was intent on something off in the mist, his open hands thrust up at the rainy skies.That was when I heard the Guatemalan Army hoods yell­ing curses."Vete ala chingada!"They also were staring off to the south, in the same di­rection.Hadn't they noticed I'd just dismantled their sick pageant? I wanted a reaction that would drive home the truth to Mar­celina, to the mothers, to everyone."Damn it, look at me," I yelled, first at him and then at the G-2 thugs. "Mira!" But their focus still was on some­thing beyond the square.Finally I turned, following their gaze, and for a second I too forgot all about everything else. An intense red glow was illuminating the morning sky from the direction of the clinic, a vibrant electric rose weaving its hues in the mist. Then I saw spewing spikes of flame, orange and yellow, dancing over the top of the clinic. There was a finality about it that momentarily took my breath away.Then it hit me. Steve's in there. It was a horror that, in my initial shock, I couldn't actually process, the thought just hovering in the recesses of my brain defying me to accept it.Then Alex Goddard turned back, shouting at the Army men in rapid Spanish—I recognized the word for fire—that galvanized them to action. They snapped out of their mental paralysis and headed down the pyramid, toward two Land Rovers parked at the back.Next he turned around and fixed his gaze on me. At last he knew / knew he was capable of unspeakable evil, and I knew he knew I would do everything in my power to stop him."All my records." His voice sounded as though it was coming from another world, and it held a sadness that touched even me. "You have no idea what's been lost."He was distraught, but also obsessed. With his wild mane of hair, he did, finally, look like Shiva the Destroyer. He stalked over and seized the obsidian knife, then turned to­ward me.I looked for something to defend myself with. The bassi­nets, which I might have used as a shield were gone. I only had my bare hands.I had to get away from him, get down the pyramid and find Sarah and Steve. But as I started toward the front steps, the women were all clustered there, blocking my way.Then, for no reason I could understand the mother of Tz'ac Tzotz stepped out of the group and handed me her baby, saying something in Kekchi Maya and reaching to touch my cheek.I was so startled I took the bundle that was Sarah's child. But then I thought, No! Alex Goddard will just kill him too."She said he must not harm you," Marcelina whispered moving beside me. "You are the special one. She wants you to give her child back to Kukulkan."She still believes, I realized. They all do.Holding Tz'ac Tzotz, my eyes fixed on Alex Goddard, I’d entirely failed to notice a new presence on the pyramid a ghostlike waif in a white shift who now stood silently in the doorway of the stone room. Sarah!Marcelina had said she'd wanted to come for the cere­mony. She was being helped to stand by the two Maya women who'd fed me theatole. Somehow, she'd gotten them to bring her."Morgy, are you there?" Sarah asked gazing up at the rainy skies, the downpour soaking her blond hair, her eyes unblinking. At that moment, I felt we'd joined become one person—me the dogged rational half who'd just gone over the line, her the spiritual part that needed to float, to fly free. "I wanted to be with—""Sar, get back," I yelled and started to go to her, but there wasn't time. Now Alex Goddard was moving toward me holding the knife, as though tracking a prey, oblivious to Sarah, to everything. He'd concentrated all his hatred on me and me alone, and I hated him back as much. Death hovered between us, waiting to see whom to take.But then the woman who had borne Tz'ac Tzotz said something in Kekchi Maya, pointing back at me and her child, and lunged at him. They collided together in the rain and next she slid down, first seizing his leg, then losing her grip and slipping onto the stones, her long black hair askew in the hovering smoke.She's trying to save me, I realized. Why—?Then I saw Sarah pull away from the women supporting her and slowly move across the platform."Morgy . . ."She was walking in the direction of Alex Goddard, but then she stumbled over the fallen woman's leg and her hand went down as she sprawled across her. She must have touched something, because she recoiled backward, and only then did I notice the flare of a torch glinting off the obsidian knife now protruding from the woman's chest.Sarah rose up, her eyes full of anger, and awkwardly flung her arms, searching. I could feel the passion that had been pent up all those months she lay in the coma, feeding her madness. She managed to catch hold of Alex Goddard's arm, and they began an awkward minuet, neither realizing how close they were to the stone platform's edge. I stood mes­merized a moment, then dashed toward them, but only in time to watch them vanish into the rain and haze. It was as though there had been some sleight of hand. One second they were there and the next they weren't. At first I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me, but then I realized it was real. They were gone."Sarah!"I reached the side in time to see them land on the first tier of stones below. She'd fallen near the edge, but she was solid and safe. Alex Goddard, however, hit with one foot on and one foot off, and the result was he slid away, then van­ished into the dark rain.It's her final act of self-destruction. She's joined me in my rage, but we've both been spared. That's the miracle ofBaalum."Sar, don't move." I finally found my voice. I was still holding Tz'ac Tzotz, who'd begun to shriek, his blue eyes flooded with fear.Now several village men from the square were running, shouting, up the slippery steps. Their faces looked like they'd been painted at one time, but now the rain had washed most of it away.While I yelled down to Sarah, again begging her not to move, Marcelina was asking them something, and their an­swers were tumbling out.Finally I turned to look at her, the screaming Tz'ac Tzotz still in my arms."No one knows where he is," she was saying as she looked down over the side. "He's gone into the forest.""Good." I pulled Tz'ac Tzotz to me and kissed him, trying to tell him to calm down. It wasn't working."Marcelina, here, please hold him. I've got to get down to Sarah."She took him. Then I walked over to where his mother lay bleeding on the stones. The woman wasn't moving, the obsidian knife still protruding from her chest. She'd saved me, but now death had taken her. There was nothing anyone could do.I was trembling, but I turned and began easing myself over the side of the stone platform and onto the first tier of the pyramid."Sar, don't move." I inched my way across to her. "Juststay still." The rain was pouring again, but the electric bloom of sparks and flames from the direction of the clinic was unabated. It would be completely gutted. Was Steve awake enough to get out? He'd seemed alert when I left him."Morgy, is that you?" She was holding out her fingers. "I can't see you. Where are—?""I'm here, Sar. Right here." I reached down and took her hand, which was deathly cold. "Come on. Let me help you get up."Carefully, leaning against the wet stones of the side of the pyramid, I gradually pulled her to her feet and away from the treacherous edge. Then it hit me what she'd said."Sar, what do you mean, you can't see me?""I'm okay. It's just . . ." She was gripping my hand now, and then she brushed against the stone side of the pyramid and put out her other hand to cling to it. "Morgy, I took it again. To go to their sacred place. But sometimes you can only see visions and then after a while everything goes blank."That bastard. Alex Goddard had given her the drug again. Now she was lost in a world of colored lights, a place I'd just traveled through myself. She probably had no idea she'd just pushed him off the pyramid and into the dark."Your hand feels so soft," she was saying. "You're like warm honey.""Sar, try to walk. We're going to turn a corner and then we'll be at the back of the pyramid. Next we'll come to some steps, and then we're going down."As I inched our way along, scarcely able to keep our foot­ing because of the rain, I wondered again about Steve. Please, God, let him be all right.When we finally got to the steps, Marcelina was there, standing expectantly, holding Tz'ac Tzotz. He was still cry­ing, intermittent sobs."He belongs to you now," she said, holding him out for me. "It's what she wished."What—?" I took him before I realized what I was doing.As I cradled him, gazing down at his tender little face, I realized he truly was Sarah all over again. And I was so glad she couldn't see him. Never, I thought, she must never, ever know.I finally forced myself to place him back into Marcelina's arms."You've got no idea how much I want him, but I can't. Let one of these women give him her milk, have a twin for her own child."For that wrenching moment I'd held the very baby my heart longed for. But he was the last one on earth I could have. Just go, take Sarah and find Steve and go as far fromBaalumas you can, before you lose your compass and do something terribly selfish."Marcelina," I said, reaching to hug her, "tell them these 'sacred' children are all from hismedico. Look up 'in vitro' in your dictionary. That's all it is."She hugged me back, though I wasn't sure whether she understood. Then I asked her to take Sarah's hand for a mo­ment while I went back up the steps to the platform. I felt a primal anger as I took one last look at the women Alex Goddard had wronged, now clustered around the body of Tz'ac Tzotz's mother. Then I bade them a silent farewell, turned, and walked, holding my tears, back through the stone room.The rear of the pyramid was deserted, the steps slippery and dangerous, but it was our way out. I began leading Sarah down, step by treacherous step. Everything had happened so fast I'd barely had time to think about Steve. Those flames, my God. It was finally sinking in, truly hitting me. Had he gotten out in time?Then the slimy Rio Tigre, now swelling from the rain, came into view. I stared at it a second before I noticed the three young Army recruits leaning against the trunk of a giant Cebia tree next to the trail, their rifles covered in plastic against the rain. When they saw us, they stiffened, shifted their weapons, and glanced up at the top of the pyramid, as though seeking orders. Neither group had any idea why the other was there. Sarah and I were an unforeseen contingency they hadn't been briefed on.What are they going to do? They have no idea what just happened."Morgy," Sarah said, gazing blankly at the sky, "the colors are so beautiful. Can we—?""Shhh, we'll talk in a minute."I smiled and nodded and began walking past the young privates, holding my breath. Then a spectral form emerged out of the rain just behind them.It took me a moment to recognize who it was. I was hoping it might be Steve, but instead it was a man dressed in white, now covered with mud, and holding a knife, not obsidian this time but long and steel. His eyes were glazed, and I wasn't sure if he even knew exactly where he was. Why had he come down to the river? Had he known I'd come here, too?For a moment we just stood staring at each other, while the Army privates began edging up the hill, as though not wanting to witness what surely was coming next."Why don't you put an end to all the evil?" I yelled at him finally, trying to project through the rain. "Just stop it right now.""Baalumwas my life's work," he said. Then he looked down at the knife a moment, as though unsure what it was. Finally he turned and flung it in the direction of the river."It could have been beautiful," I said back. Thank God the knife was gone. But what would he do next? "But now—""No," he said staring directly at me, his eyes seeming to plead. "It is. It will be again. To make a place likeBaalumis to coin the riches of God. I want you to stay. To be part of it. Together, we . . ." But whatever else he said was lost in the cloudburst that abruptly swept over the embankment. In an instant it was a torrent, the last outpouring of the storm, powerful and unrelenting. Nature had unleashed its worst, as though Kukulkan was rendering his final judgment."Morgy, I'm falling," Sarah screamed. The ground she and I had been standing on began turning to liquid as though it were a custard melting in the tropical heat. As we began slipping down the embankment toward him, I gripped her arm with my left hand and reached up to seize a low-lying branch of the Cebia with my right.Then, under the weight of the water, all the soil beneath us gave way, tons of wet riverbank that abruptly buckled outward.Alex Goddard made no sound as the mass of earth lifted him backward toward the river. His sullied garb of white blended into the gray sludge of mud and rain, then faded to darkness as the embankment dissolved into the swirling Rio Tigre."Sar, hold on. Please hold on." I felt my grasp of the tree slipping, but now the mud slide had begun to stabilize.I managed to cling to the limb for a few seconds more, the bark cutting into my fingers, and then my hold slipped away, sending us both spiraling downward till we were tem­porarily snagged by the Cebia's newly exposed undergrowth. I still had her hand though just barely, but the torrent of rain and mud was subsiding, and finally we collapsed together into the gnarled network of roots.After a moment's rest, I managed to crawl out and pull her up."Come on, Sar. Try and walk."Together we stumbled and slid down the last incline before the river's edge, then turned upstream along the bank. After about fifty yards, sure enough, the nativecayucos, the hollowed-out mahogany canoes I'd told Steve about, were still there just as I'd seen them that first morning, bobbing and straining at their moorings. In the rain I couldn't tell how usable they were, but I figured going downriver was the only way we'd ever be able to get out. We'd have to flee the way Sarah had that first time.For a moment I thought they all were empty—dear God, no—but then I realized there was a drenched figure in the last one in the row. When I recognized who it was, I think I completely lost it; all the horror of the last two days swal­lowed me up. I grabbed Sarah and hugged her for dear life, feeling the tears coursing down my cheeks. I literally couldn't help myself."They were tied up here just like you said." Steve wiped the rain from his eyes, then reached to take my hand. His bandaged nose was bleeding again, and he looked like he'd just been half killed. "I told those little ArmychicosI was a big amigo ofel doctorand they saluted and showed me where these were tied up.""Thank God you're okay. What happened? Did—?""Ramos, the son of a bitch. He came in and ... I guess it was time to finish me off. But I wasn't as drugged out as he thought." He was staring at Sarah, clearly relieved but asking no questions. "I brought along his nine-millime­ter"—he indicated the silver automatic in his belt—"in case we run into problems."I wanted to kiss him, but I was still too shaken up. Instead I focused on helping Sarah in without capsizing everything.After I'd settled her, I pulled myself over the side and reached for a paddle."If we go with the current," I said, "we'll get to the Usumacinta. Hopefully the flooding will help push us down­stream.""Honestly, I didn't think the fire would get away from me like it did." He shoved off amidst the swirling debris. "Jesus. I heard them taking you away, and I assumed you didn't get to mess up his lab. So I figured there was one way . . . I just threw around some ether and pitched a match. The place was empty, so . . ."I looked around at the roiling waters, snakes and croco­diles lurking, and felt a lifetime of determination. Was Alex Goddard still alive? I no longer cared. . . .Sunrise was breaking through the last of the rain, laying dancing shadows on the water as we rowed for midstream. Someday, I knew, what was real aboutBaalumand what I'd dreamed here might well merge together, the way they had for Sarah. But for now, true daylight never looked better.

"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.

As I watched him depart, hallucinations swirling through my brain like furious fireworks, I had a bizarre thought. In an ancient rainforest all things are still possible. The old fairy tales we grew up with mostly took place in a deep wood where evil could lurk unfettered. Today, though, the earth's forests no longer symbolize the unknowable dark within us. Nowadays, the ogres of our nightmares descend from outer space or even from our inner selves, places we can't physi­cally know or subdue. Here, though, at this very moment, Steve and Sarah and I were marooned in a thousand-year-old forest where horror still lived.

I got off the bed and steadied myself, breathing deeply, forcing my brain to clear. Steve was wearing a shift, but his clothes were hanging from a hook on the door. For a long moment I just stared at the bruises on his face.

"God, baby, what did he do to you?"

No answer.

"Come on, love. Please wake up."

He didn't move, but his breathing was normal, not labored. I immediately decided I'd slap him around if I had to, any­thing to get him going and able to walk.

"Honey, wake up. Please." I pulled his feet out of the bed and slid them around and onto the linoleum floor. I didn't know what kind of sedative he'd been injected with, but if I had to shake him out of it, fine. This was no time for half measures. "Comeon."

I pulled him to his feet and dragged him across the floor to the slatted window at the rear of the room, where the predawn sounds of the forest beyond filled the air, mingled with the rain. What I needed was a gallon of black coffee, but the wet breeze would have to do.

It took ten minutes of working on him, with me barely able to hold a grasp on my own reality, but then his eyelids began to flutter. I kept talking to him, pleading and badger­ing, and when he finally started coming around, I began to walk him back and forth in front of the window.

Steve, I thought, I'm so sorry, so terribly sorry I dragged you into this.

"Can I please lie down?" His timorous voice startled me, but it gave me a burst of hope. Comeon.

"Baby, just walk a little more. Try to get the blood flowing and flush the damned chemicals out of your brain."

"Morgy, are you okay?" His eyes had finally started to focus. And the first thing he asked about wasme. I impul­sively hugged him.

"I'm going to be." I pulled back and examined him. "You know where you are?"

He grinned with only half his face, and I could tell even that hurt. Then he stared around the room.

"Tell you one thing," he said, "this ain't Kansas anymore. Last thing I remember is, Alan and I were setting down. Then out of nowhere, your Colonel Ramos and about twenty kid soldiers with AK-47's were all over us." He groaned. "They took me and then he told Dupre to get back in the chopper and disappear. I think that son of a bitch tipped Ramos off we were coming. Then Ramos worked me over and gave me an injection. About five minutes later I passed out. It's the last thing I remember."

Ramos. Was he going to kill us both, now that Alex God­dard had gotten everything he wanted? I thought about it and decided this was not the moment to share that possibility with Steve. Instead I turned him around and lifted up his head.

"Are you really awake?" I loved this poor, beat-up man. More than anything, I just wanted to hold him.

"I'm not . . . but I'd damned well better be." He tried unsteadily, to straighten up. "Morgy, before he put me away, that Ramos bastard was talking about me, and you, in the past tense. Like we'd already been 'disappeared.' He didn't know I speak Spanish. What the hell's going on?"

I wasn't sure how to tell him. But I was getting that super energy God gives you when you realize life is no longer a game. We had to get focused.

"Baby, where's your passport?" I asked.

He looked around then pointed to his battered camera bag in the corner.

"It's in there. Or was. Central America. Never leave home without it." He grimaced then lightly pushed me away and stood by himself. "Jesus, do you know what they're doing? You were right all along. They're selling kids in the States. That Ramos prick is running the operation, not to mention Alex Goddard's slice of the action. And somebody at the American embassy here is handling all the paperwork, so they can grease everything through the INS. But I still don't understand how it is we're—"

"Honey, I know exactly what's happening." I'd long since figured out that Alex Goddard and Colonel Ramos were working hand in glove. But I still couldn't bring myself to tell him how he and I were going to be used. It was just too sick. "Listen, not long from now I think I'm supposed to be taken down there to the village for some kind of rite, as part of this whole disgusting operation, and then after that he's going to use . . . You don't want to hear. We've—"

"You know, Ramos and a bunch of G-2 thugs are here to take away a batch of little kids," he rambled on, not seeming to hear anything I was saying. He was off in his own world, trying to sort out things in his head. "But what I can't figure is, how can they just take children from here and nobody tries to stop them? Are theseindigenaso terrified—?"

"Listen, please." Now my hallucinations were returning in spite of all I could do, trails of light that glimmered off all the objects in the room, and I didn't know how much longer I'd be coherent. I'd have to talk fast. "We've got to get Sarah before daylight. She's down in the village. I tried to get her out of there yesterday, but—"

"Is she okay?" He stared at me and his eyes cleared for a moment. "I mean, is she able to—?"

"No, she's not okay. She's hallucinating worse than ever. I'm sure he's giving her more drugs. Really heavy stuff."

"So how—?"

"Hopefully, we're going right this minute. There's a river. But if that doesn't work out, there's something I can do to buy us a month's time. Alex Goddard's got a laboratory here, just down the hall, in back of his office. It's the evil center of this place. So if I can get in there and dump all his petri dishes, his in-vitro culture mediums . . . Baby, it's all so dis­gusting. But I'm going to take care of it."

I was starting to have real trouble just stringing words together into sentences. My hallucinations were still grow­ing, the loud whispers of light, but I did manage to tell him how I thought we could get Sarah and elude the Army, if we did it before sunup, though my plan probably came out pretty jumbled. Yet I felt that if we did it together, we could take care of each other. . . .

Then, with my remaining strength, I launched into action.

"Let me check the hall. I just want to shut down his lab. Call it . . . call it insurance. Five minutes, and then we'll be out of here."

It also would be a kind of justice, to even the score for what he'd done to Sarah and to me.

I leaned Steve back against the wall, then walked slowly across the tile floor to the door and tested it. Surprise, sur­prise, it was locked. I again tried the knob, an old one, then again, but it wouldn't budge, just wiggled slightly. He'd locked us in.

Now what?

Then I remembered the time Steve and I were in a similar situation. When we got locked in my room at the Oloffson in Port-au-Prince, he'd just taken his Swiss Army knife and unscrewed the knob, then clicked it open. He'd made it look like a piece of cake, but he had a way of doing that.

He was barely conscious, so this time I'd have to do it myself. I glanced around at his bag.

"Is your Swiss still in there?"

"I think . . ." His mind seemed to be wandering. Then he gave a weak thumbs-up.

I went over and zipped it open. Be there, I prayed. We really could use a break.

I rummaged through telephoto lenses and film canisters and underwear. Then I found it, zipped inside a water-repel­lent baggie and stuck in a side pouch.

I snapped it open and went to work, him watching me, his head nodding as he struggled to stay conscious.

The main difference between this time and Haiti was, here I didn't know what was on the other side and I was having hallucinations of multicolored snakes.

"You're doing great," he said finally, seeming to come a bit more alive.

And I was. Out with the screws, off with the knob, in with the small blade, and click. Maybe we just think men's me­chanical skills are genetically hard-wired. Maybe it's all a secret plot to elicit awe.

I closed the knife and shoved it back into his bag, then turned to him.

"Honey, I'm just going to be a second. While I'm gone, practice walking."

"Be careful, please." He gave a cautionary wave. "They don't want us leaving here alive."

"Just get ready." I quietly pulled back the door and peered out into the dark hallway. It was empty, abandoned, no snakes, with only a light breeze flowing through.

When I stepped out, the fresh air hit my face and I had a moment of intensity that made me realize what I really wanted to do, first and foremost, was see Tz'ac Tzotz one last time. A last farewell to one of Sarah's children. Stupid, yes, a private folly of the heart, but I had to do it.

I was halfway down the hall, experiencing flashes of color before my eyes, when I heard a voice.

"They're all praying for you. It's almost time."

I turned back, startled, barely able to see. Finally I made out Marcelina, in her white shift. We were standing a few feet from the stairs, where I wanted to go, and I was tripping, my reality almost gone. I think she knew that, because she reached out to help me stand.

"Marcelina, where's Sarah?" I grasped her hand, which helped me to keep my balance. "Is she still down there in that . . . place?"

"She's been so looking forward to the ceremony. She wants them to bring her—"

"You don't know where she is?" I realized nothing was going to go the way I'd hoped it would.

"They all love her. They're taking good care of her."

"Well, I love her too. And I have to get her. Now." I was whispering to her, trying to save my strength. "Marcelina, promise me you'll stop all this. It's so horrible. So sad."

"It's our life," she whispered back, then turned her face away.

I didn't know what else to say, and I was terrified Alex Goddard might materialize, so without another word, I pulled away and started up the steps.

When I reached the top of the stairs, the hallway was lighted by the string of bulbs along the floor, and I made my way as fast as I could to my room at the end. I pulled my passport out of my bag, along with a charge card, slipped them both into my pants pocket, and headed back down the hall.

When I got to the door of the room where Tz'ac Tzotz and his mother were, I gave it a gentle push and peered in, but the glow from the lamp above the bed showed it and the crib were both empty. . . .

No! They must have already taken the children. Next they'd be coming for me. I realized I'd been a fool not to head straight for the lab. I should have just gone—

The room went completely dark, together with the hallway, a pitch-black that felt like a liquid washing over me. The main power, somewhere, had abruptly died, or been deliber­ately shut off.

Then I heard a thunder of footsteps pounding up the steps, hard boots on the marble.

I made a dash, hoping to slip past them in the dark hall.

I'd reached the top of the stairs when I felt a hand brush against my face, then a grip circle around my biceps. Some­body had been too quick.

I brought my elbow around hoping to catch him in the face, bring him down, but instead it slammed against some­thing metal, which clattered onto the floor.

"Chingado!" came a muffled voice.

I drew back and swung, and this time my arm scraped hard against the flesh of a face and the bastard staggered backward his grip loosening.

I twisted away and dropped to the floor to begin searching for what had fallen. Surely it was a pistol.

The marble was cold against my bare arms as I swept my hands across the floor. Then I ran my fingers down the edge of the stair.

And there it was, on the first step. My left hand closed around the cold barrel of an automatic. I shifted it to my right, grasping the plastic grip, not entirely sure what I should do with it. But at least I had a gun. I'd never actually held a real one before, but it was heavy and I assumed it was ready to fire.

I was halfway down the first set of stairs, on my way to the landing, when I felt an arm slip around my neck. I ducked and twisted away, stumbling down the last three or four steps, and landed on my feet, staggering back against the wall to regain my balance. All I knew was, the next steps loomed somewhere to my right. Just a few more feet . . .

But he was there again, moving between me and the final stairs. Get around him, I told myself, but at that moment he grabbed me at the waist.

Dancing in the dark, but the swirl had no music and no swing, just a quick, dizzying pirouette. I aimed the pistol as close as I could to his face and pulled the hard metal trigger.

"Mierda!"

Blinding light, a face lost in the burst of flame, stars filling my head. The fiery explosion tongued out past his ear like a brilliant sword of reds and yellows, sending a round off into space. The noise left a ringing in my ears and multicol­ored hues stuttering across my eyes.

It hit me who I'd just seen. It was Ramos. With a gun! Shit.

The flash of my pistol had given me the advantage for a second, since I knew it was coming, and with that edge I swung an elbow across his chin, then kneed him in the groin. It should have been enough to bring him down, but instead he merely sank to one knee and redoubled his grip.

Hey, I thought, maybe I know something he doesn't. How to take a fall. I'd seen enough movie stunts to know what you're supposed to do. It'd be risky, but I knew I wasn't going to win a wrestling match.

I opened up with the automatic, firing everywhere again and again and again, getting off five rounds in a crescendo of light and sound, like a huge firecracker in my hand, enough to illuminate the stairwell like a strobe and catch him off guard. In that fleeting moment I slipped a foot behind his ankle and shoved.

I think I yelled as I felt myself being pulled forward. Then I realized he was wearing a heavy bracelet that had tangled in my hair. I'd been planning to roll down the remaining stairs, protecting my head, and let him bounce, but the pull of his bracelet ruined it. I felt myself being swept into empty space, my gun flying away.

Then something glanced off my face, the wooden banister of the stair, which had mysteriously come up to meet me. I turned and felt his body beneath mine, arms flailing, a soft landing, till we rolled and I was beneath him again.

I struck out, a right fist, and he fell away, his bracelet disentangling as he tumbled farther down the stairs. Then I rose and tried to take a step, but it wasn't there. In the pitch dark the angle was wrong, off by just inches, and as I toppled forward into empty space I reached out, taking a handful of dark air.

Finally I felt something clenching my wrist, and the next

thing I knew I was being swung around. I twisted sideways one last time, but then my head hit the wall. The hard marble caught me just above the ear, and I saw the darkness of the space grow brilliantly light, then transmute to vibrant colors.

Or maybe the hall lights had come back on. I only know I felt a set of arms encircle me.

"Come," Alex Goddard was saying as he lifted me up. "They're ready."

When we reached the parking lot, several more Army thugs were waiting, grown-ups now, khaki shirts and dense mustaches, the regulation G-2 sunglasses even though it was still dark, with 9mm automatics in holsters at their belt. I took one look at them and I think I blacked out. Steve and I were about to "disappear," and possibly Sarah too. Probably in another hour or two. My tattered mind finally just slipped away.

Soon afterward, I sensed myself being transported in a large vehicle, and after that I was being carried, up, up, as though I were floating into the coming dawn. When I re­gained consciousness, I realized I was standing in a rain­storm near a small stone building. A dozen Army men were huddled inside, shielding their cigarettes from the blowing rain while they guarded a row of olive-green bassinets. Around me, censers were spewingcopalsmoke into the soggy air.

I became aware of the cooling sensation of the fresh rain across my face, and wondered if it might clear some of the toad venom (surely that was what it was) from my brain. Maybe it was working. Instead of seeing vivid colors every­where, I was abruptly experiencing a hyper acute clarity of every sensation. The stones beneath my bare feet were be­coming so articulated, I felt as though I could number every granule, every crystal, every atom. The paintings and carvings on the lintel above the door to the stone room—I rec­ognized it as where I'd spent the first night—sparkled, leapt out at me.

"Stand there on the edge of the platform," Alex Goddard commanded, urging me forward. It was only then I realized we'd come up the back steps of the pyramid, where the G-2 men had parked their black Land Rovers, unnoticed and ready.

Looking down at the crowd of people gathered in the square, I realized they couldn't really see much of what was going on atop the pyramid. To them it was just a cloud ofcopalsmoke and foggy rain. Although the sun was starting to brighten the east, the only real light still came from the torches stationed around the plaza.

Then like a ghost materializing out of the mist, Marcelina moved up the steep front steps, leading a line of Maya moth­ers from the clinic—I counted twelve—each carrying her newborn, the "special" baby she would give back to Kukulkan, perhaps the way Abraham of the Old Testament offered up his son Isaac in sacrifice to Jehovah. It was a sight I shall never forget, the sadness but also the unmistakable reverence in their eyes. I wanted to yell at them to run, to take Sarah's votive babies and disappear into the forest, but I didn't have the words.

Next the women arrayed themselves in a line across the front of the pyramid, facing not the crowd below, but toward Alex Goddard and me. Then, holding out a jade-handled ob­sidian knife, he walked down the line, allowing each woman to touch her forehead against its flint blade. I assumed each one believed it was the instrument that would take her child's life, ceremonially sending it back to the Maya Otherworld whence it came. Had he drugged them too, I fleetingly won­dered, hypnotized them or given them some potion to prevent them from comprehending what was really going on?

I kept remembering . . . a hundred other insane episodes of immortal yearning leading to a mass "transport" to some other "plane." This, I thought, must be what it was like in the jungles of Jonestown that death-filled morning. And Alex Goddard was their "Jim Jones," the spiritual leader of the moral travesty he'd imposed upon the lost village of Baalum.

I was going to stop it, somehow. By God, I was. I stared at the women and felt so sad at the sight of the hand-woven blankets they held their babies in, primary greens and reds and blues lovingly woven into shimmering patterns that mir­rored the symbols across the sides of the stone room. Their faces, especially their eyes, were transcendent in a kind of chiaroscuro of darkest blacks and purest whites, as though all their humanity had been caught by their blankets and shawls, surely created for this ultimate moment. And the mother of Tz'ac Tzotz was there, carrying him, the baby I'd so wanted to hold one last time.

Next Alex Goddard emerged from the stone room bearing a basket filled with sheets of white bark-paper. He ap­proached Tz'ac Tzotz's mother, then took a wide section of the paper and secured it around her face with a silk cord, covering her vision. Down the line, one after another, he carefully blindfolded the women, while they stood passively, some crying—from joy or sorrow, I could not tell. Finally, at the last, he also covered Marcelina's face.

So she's not supposed to know what's really happening. Nobody's supposed to know except him, and me. And, of course, Ramos and the G-2 secret police and whoever else is in on this crime. But, secretly, she does know. The God of the House of Darkness.

When he finished, he put down the basket, then turned to me. "Stand at the front edge of the platform and lift your hands in benediction. They all want to see you, the new bride."

I took a couple of steps, then looked back to see him adding morecopalto the main censer, sending a fresh cloud of smoke billowing out into the rain. As the incense poured around us, the Army thugs who'd been loitering at the back of the stone room began coming forward, each carrying one of the bassinets. They set them down on the stones, ready to start taking the children. My outraged mind flashed on Ghirlandajo's "Massacre of the Innocents." Here, though, Sarah's children weren't being stabbed to death; they were being—kidnapped and stolen.

Revulsion pierced through me as though I'd been hit by a jagged shaft of lightning, but instead of being knocked down, I was energized. Or maybe the final effects of the toad venom were giving me a spurt of adrenaline. Letting his criminal charade continue one second longer became unbear­able. What would happen to me, I didn't know, but I couldn't let it go on.

"No," I yelled, startling myself by the sound of my own voice. "In God's name, stop."

The rain was growing more intense, and I was soaked and bleary-eyed, but before I could think I found myself stalking over to Tz'ac Tzotz's mother, shouting at her. The next thing I knew I was ripping the paper from her frightened eyes. I hugged her as best I could, then yelled back at Marcelina.

"Tell them all to take off their blindfolds. This is obscene."

Then I went on autopilot, shutting out everything around me—the rain, the perilous sides of the pyramid, the pistol-carrying G-2 thugs, even Alex Goddard. The way I remember it now, it all took place in slow motion, like some underwater dream sequence, but surely it was just the opposite.

Anyway, I do know I snapped. I started shouting again, and with the G-2 hoods momentarily frozen, I started fling­ing the still-empty bassinets down the steep side of the pyra­mid, where they just bounced away into the rain. As I watched them disappearing, one after another, I felt marvelously em­boldened. I would throw one and watch it go flying, and then I would throw another. Yes, damn it, yes!

I wanted to show anybody with two eyes that it was all a sham. Once they realized what was really happening, surely they would rise up and drive Alex Goddard from their home.

For a moment it seemed to be working. A stunned silence was slowly spreading over the square, while everybody around me was paralyzed, like waxworks. Maybe it's the same way you're temporarily caught off guard when a stranger on the street goes berserk.

By the time I'd flung away the last bassinet, the women had all removed their blindfolds and were staring at me, dumbfounded. Finally, Tz'ac Tzotz's mother whispered something to Marcelina, and she turned to me.

"She wants to know why you're angry. You're the bride. They only want to please you."

Angry? I was terrified, but also fighting mad.

"Marcelina, this is all a ghastly lie." I'd finished throwing and I was moving to the next stage. Get control. Could he risk killing me in front of all these people? "Tell them to take their babies and hide in the forest."

That was when I heard a cry that pierced through the rain and across the square beyond, and I turned back to see Alex Goddard shoving toward me. He's coming to murder me, since I've exposed him. But I wouldn't let it happen without a fight. I clenched my fists, waiting, feeling my adrenaline surge.

Instead, though, he just brushed past me, headed toward the edge of the platform. At first I didn't know why, but he was intent on something off in the mist, his open hands thrust up at the rainy skies.

That was when I heard the Guatemalan Army hoods yell­ing curses.

"Vete ala chingada!"

They also were staring off to the south, in the same di­rection.

Hadn't they noticed I'd just dismantled their sick pageant? I wanted a reaction that would drive home the truth to Mar­celina, to the mothers, to everyone.

"Damn it, look at me," I yelled, first at him and then at the G-2 thugs. "Mira!" But their focus still was on some­thing beyond the square.

Finally I turned, following their gaze, and for a second I too forgot all about everything else. An intense red glow was illuminating the morning sky from the direction of the clinic, a vibrant electric rose weaving its hues in the mist. Then I saw spewing spikes of flame, orange and yellow, dancing over the top of the clinic. There was a finality about it that momentarily took my breath away.

Then it hit me. Steve's in there. It was a horror that, in my initial shock, I couldn't actually process, the thought just hovering in the recesses of my brain defying me to accept it.

Then Alex Goddard turned back, shouting at the Army men in rapid Spanish—I recognized the word for fire—that galvanized them to action. They snapped out of their mental paralysis and headed down the pyramid, toward two Land Rovers parked at the back.

Next he turned around and fixed his gaze on me. At last he knew / knew he was capable of unspeakable evil, and I knew he knew I would do everything in my power to stop him.

"All my records." His voice sounded as though it was coming from another world, and it held a sadness that touched even me. "You have no idea what's been lost."

He was distraught, but also obsessed. With his wild mane of hair, he did, finally, look like Shiva the Destroyer. He stalked over and seized the obsidian knife, then turned to­ward me.

I looked for something to defend myself with. The bassi­nets, which I might have used as a shield were gone. I only had my bare hands.

I had to get away from him, get down the pyramid and find Sarah and Steve. But as I started toward the front steps, the women were all clustered there, blocking my way.

Then, for no reason I could understand the mother of Tz'ac Tzotz stepped out of the group and handed me her baby, saying something in Kekchi Maya and reaching to touch my cheek.

I was so startled I took the bundle that was Sarah's child. But then I thought, No! Alex Goddard will just kill him too.

"She said he must not harm you," Marcelina whispered moving beside me. "You are the special one. She wants you to give her child back to Kukulkan."

She still believes, I realized. They all do.

Holding Tz'ac Tzotz, my eyes fixed on Alex Goddard, I’d entirely failed to notice a new presence on the pyramid a ghostlike waif in a white shift who now stood silently in the doorway of the stone room. Sarah!

Marcelina had said she'd wanted to come for the cere­mony. She was being helped to stand by the two Maya women who'd fed me theatole. Somehow, she'd gotten them to bring her.

"Morgy, are you there?" Sarah asked gazing up at the rainy skies, the downpour soaking her blond hair, her eyes unblinking. At that moment, I felt we'd joined become one person—me the dogged rational half who'd just gone over the line, her the spiritual part that needed to float, to fly free. "I wanted to be with—"

"Sar, get back," I yelled and started to go to her, but there wasn't time. Now Alex Goddard was moving toward me holding the knife, as though tracking a prey, oblivious to Sarah, to everything. He'd concentrated all his hatred on me and me alone, and I hated him back as much. Death hovered between us, waiting to see whom to take.

But then the woman who had borne Tz'ac Tzotz said something in Kekchi Maya, pointing back at me and her child, and lunged at him. They collided together in the rain and next she slid down, first seizing his leg, then losing her grip and slipping onto the stones, her long black hair askew in the hovering smoke.

She's trying to save me, I realized. Why—?

Then I saw Sarah pull away from the women supporting her and slowly move across the platform.

"Morgy . . ."

She was walking in the direction of Alex Goddard, but then she stumbled over the fallen woman's leg and her hand went down as she sprawled across her. She must have touched something, because she recoiled backward, and only then did I notice the flare of a torch glinting off the obsidian knife now protruding from the woman's chest.

Sarah rose up, her eyes full of anger, and awkwardly flung her arms, searching. I could feel the passion that had been pent up all those months she lay in the coma, feeding her madness. She managed to catch hold of Alex Goddard's arm, and they began an awkward minuet, neither realizing how close they were to the stone platform's edge. I stood mes­merized a moment, then dashed toward them, but only in time to watch them vanish into the rain and haze. It was as though there had been some sleight of hand. One second they were there and the next they weren't. At first I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me, but then I realized it was real. They were gone.

"Sarah!"

I reached the side in time to see them land on the first tier of stones below. She'd fallen near the edge, but she was solid and safe. Alex Goddard, however, hit with one foot on and one foot off, and the result was he slid away, then van­ished into the dark rain.

It's her final act of self-destruction. She's joined me in my rage, but we've both been spared. That's the miracle ofBaalum.

"Sar, don't move." I finally found my voice. I was still holding Tz'ac Tzotz, who'd begun to shriek, his blue eyes flooded with fear.

Now several village men from the square were running, shouting, up the slippery steps. Their faces looked like they'd been painted at one time, but now the rain had washed most of it away.

While I yelled down to Sarah, again begging her not to move, Marcelina was asking them something, and their an­swers were tumbling out.

Finally I turned to look at her, the screaming Tz'ac Tzotz still in my arms.

"No one knows where he is," she was saying as she looked down over the side. "He's gone into the forest."

"Good." I pulled Tz'ac Tzotz to me and kissed him, trying to tell him to calm down. It wasn't working.

"Marcelina, here, please hold him. I've got to get down to Sarah."

She took him. Then I walked over to where his mother lay bleeding on the stones. The woman wasn't moving, the obsidian knife still protruding from her chest. She'd saved me, but now death had taken her. There was nothing anyone could do.

I was trembling, but I turned and began easing myself over the side of the stone platform and onto the first tier of the pyramid.

"Sar, don't move." I inched my way across to her. "Just

stay still." The rain was pouring again, but the electric bloom of sparks and flames from the direction of the clinic was unabated. It would be completely gutted. Was Steve awake enough to get out? He'd seemed alert when I left him.

"Morgy, is that you?" She was holding out her fingers. "I can't see you. Where are—?"

"I'm here, Sar. Right here." I reached down and took her hand, which was deathly cold. "Come on. Let me help you get up."

Carefully, leaning against the wet stones of the side of the pyramid, I gradually pulled her to her feet and away from the treacherous edge. Then it hit me what she'd said.

"Sar, what do you mean, you can't see me?"

"I'm okay. It's just . . ." She was gripping my hand now, and then she brushed against the stone side of the pyramid and put out her other hand to cling to it. "Morgy, I took it again. To go to their sacred place. But sometimes you can only see visions and then after a while everything goes blank."

That bastard. Alex Goddard had given her the drug again. Now she was lost in a world of colored lights, a place I'd just traveled through myself. She probably had no idea she'd just pushed him off the pyramid and into the dark.

"Your hand feels so soft," she was saying. "You're like warm honey."

"Sar, try to walk. We're going to turn a corner and then we'll be at the back of the pyramid. Next we'll come to some steps, and then we're going down."

As I inched our way along, scarcely able to keep our foot­ing because of the rain, I wondered again about Steve. Please, God, let him be all right.

When we finally got to the steps, Marcelina was there, standing expectantly, holding Tz'ac Tzotz. He was still cry­ing, intermittent sobs.

"He belongs to you now," she said, holding him out for me. "It's what she wished.

"What—?" I took him before I realized what I was doing.

As I cradled him, gazing down at his tender little face, I realized he truly was Sarah all over again. And I was so glad she couldn't see him. Never, I thought, she must never, ever know.

I finally forced myself to place him back into Marcelina's arms.

"You've got no idea how much I want him, but I can't. Let one of these women give him her milk, have a twin for her own child."

For that wrenching moment I'd held the very baby my heart longed for. But he was the last one on earth I could have. Just go, take Sarah and find Steve and go as far fromBaalumas you can, before you lose your compass and do something terribly selfish.

"Marcelina," I said, reaching to hug her, "tell them these 'sacred' children are all from hismedico. Look up 'in vitro' in your dictionary. That's all it is."

She hugged me back, though I wasn't sure whether she understood. Then I asked her to take Sarah's hand for a mo­ment while I went back up the steps to the platform. I felt a primal anger as I took one last look at the women Alex Goddard had wronged, now clustered around the body of Tz'ac Tzotz's mother. Then I bade them a silent farewell, turned, and walked, holding my tears, back through the stone room.

The rear of the pyramid was deserted, the steps slippery and dangerous, but it was our way out. I began leading Sarah down, step by treacherous step. Everything had happened so fast I'd barely had time to think about Steve. Those flames, my God. It was finally sinking in, truly hitting me. Had he gotten out in time?

Then the slimy Rio Tigre, now swelling from the rain, came into view. I stared at it a second before I noticed the three young Army recruits leaning against the trunk of a giant Cebia tree next to the trail, their rifles covered in plastic against the rain. When they saw us, they stiffened, shifted their weapons, and glanced up at the top of the pyramid, as though seeking orders. Neither group had any idea why the other was there. Sarah and I were an unforeseen contingency they hadn't been briefed on.

What are they going to do? They have no idea what just happened.

"Morgy," Sarah said, gazing blankly at the sky, "the colors are so beautiful. Can we—?"

"Shhh, we'll talk in a minute."

I smiled and nodded and began walking past the young privates, holding my breath. Then a spectral form emerged out of the rain just behind them.

It took me a moment to recognize who it was. I was hoping it might be Steve, but instead it was a man dressed in white, now covered with mud, and holding a knife, not obsidian this time but long and steel. His eyes were glazed, and I wasn't sure if he even knew exactly where he was. Why had he come down to the river? Had he known I'd come here, too?

For a moment we just stood staring at each other, while the Army privates began edging up the hill, as though not wanting to witness what surely was coming next.

"Why don't you put an end to all the evil?" I yelled at him finally, trying to project through the rain. "Just stop it right now."

"Baalumwas my life's work," he said. Then he looked down at the knife a moment, as though unsure what it was. Finally he turned and flung it in the direction of the river.

"It could have been beautiful," I said back. Thank God the knife was gone. But what would he do next? "But now—"

"No," he said staring directly at me, his eyes seeming to plead. "It is. It will be again. To make a place likeBaalumis to coin the riches of God. I want you to stay. To be part of it. Together, we . . ." But whatever else he said was lost in the cloudburst that abruptly swept over the embankment. In an instant it was a torrent, the last outpouring of the storm, powerful and unrelenting. Nature had unleashed its worst, as though Kukulkan was rendering his final judgment.

"Morgy, I'm falling," Sarah screamed. The ground she and I had been standing on began turning to liquid as though it were a custard melting in the tropical heat. As we began slipping down the embankment toward him, I gripped her arm with my left hand and reached up to seize a low-lying branch of the Cebia with my right.

Then, under the weight of the water, all the soil beneath us gave way, tons of wet riverbank that abruptly buckled outward.

Alex Goddard made no sound as the mass of earth lifted him backward toward the river. His sullied garb of white blended into the gray sludge of mud and rain, then faded to darkness as the embankment dissolved into the swirling Rio Tigre.

"Sar, hold on. Please hold on." I felt my grasp of the tree slipping, but now the mud slide had begun to stabilize.

I managed to cling to the limb for a few seconds more, the bark cutting into my fingers, and then my hold slipped away, sending us both spiraling downward till we were tem­porarily snagged by the Cebia's newly exposed undergrowth. I still had her hand though just barely, but the torrent of rain and mud was subsiding, and finally we collapsed together into the gnarled network of roots.

After a moment's rest, I managed to crawl out and pull her up.

"Come on, Sar. Try and walk."

Together we stumbled and slid down the last incline before the river's edge, then turned upstream along the bank. After about fifty yards, sure enough, the nativecayucos, the hollowed-out mahogany canoes I'd told Steve about, were still there just as I'd seen them that first morning, bobbing and straining at their moorings. In the rain I couldn't tell how usable they were, but I figured going downriver was the only way we'd ever be able to get out. We'd have to flee the way Sarah had that first time.

For a moment I thought they all were empty—dear God, no—but then I realized there was a drenched figure in the last one in the row. When I recognized who it was, I think I completely lost it; all the horror of the last two days swal­lowed me up. I grabbed Sarah and hugged her for dear life, feeling the tears coursing down my cheeks. I literally couldn't help myself.

"They were tied up here just like you said." Steve wiped the rain from his eyes, then reached to take my hand. His bandaged nose was bleeding again, and he looked like he'd just been half killed. "I told those little ArmychicosI was a big amigo ofel doctorand they saluted and showed me where these were tied up."

"Thank God you're okay. What happened? Did—?"

"Ramos, the son of a bitch. He came in and ... I guess it was time to finish me off. But I wasn't as drugged out as he thought." He was staring at Sarah, clearly relieved but asking no questions. "I brought along his nine-millime­ter"—he indicated the silver automatic in his belt—"in case we run into problems."

I wanted to kiss him, but I was still too shaken up. Instead I focused on helping Sarah in without capsizing everything.

After I'd settled her, I pulled myself over the side and reached for a paddle.

"If we go with the current," I said, "we'll get to the Usumacinta. Hopefully the flooding will help push us down­stream."

"Honestly, I didn't think the fire would get away from me like it did." He shoved off amidst the swirling debris. "Jesus. I heard them taking you away, and I assumed you didn't get to mess up his lab. So I figured there was one way . . . I just threw around some ether and pitched a match. The place was empty, so . . ."

I looked around at the roiling waters, snakes and croco­diles lurking, and felt a lifetime of determination. Was Alex Goddard still alive? I no longer cared. . . .

Sunrise was breaking through the last of the rain, laying dancing shadows on the water as we rowed for midstream. Someday, I knew, what was real aboutBaalumand what I'd dreamed here might well merge together, the way they had for Sarah. But for now, true daylight never looked better.

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