venture capitalists and other scientists took a chance on the technology. When nothing panned out, it fell away once again.
But it may still be alive. Respected labs are now looking at it and once again reporting excess energy, neutrons and even traces levels of tritium, effects that can only come from a type of nuclear reaction. Even those who consider it a wasted effort seem willing to at least look at the data before pronouncing judgment. Who knows, some entrepreneur might yet find a way to light up the world.
And perhaps it will come none too soon. According to a recent U.N. study, by 2050 at least nine billion souls will inhabit Earth. Without new sources of energy and a massive effort to reduce, recycle and reuse, what will become of our atmosphere, of places like the Amazon? What will become of the seas, fished to near extinction and filled with plastic leftovers? The current path is unsustainable. If we do not turn, we will eventually go off the cliff. And if it is adaptation that ensures human survival at that point, then who can say what the people of the thirty-first century will look like? As Professor McCarter states near the end of this book, in some ways we’re creating a world more suited for life other than our own.
Thank you for spending the time with me.
Sincerely,
Graham Brown
READ ON FOR A SNEAK PREVIEW OF
GRAHAM BROWN’S NEW NOVEL
BLACK
SUN
COMING SOON FROM
BANTAM BOOKS
Danielle Laidlaw scrambled up the side of Mount Pulimundo, sliding on the loose shale and grabbing for purchase with her hands as much as her feet.
Passing through nine thousand feet, her legs ached from the effort and her lungs burned as they tried to cope with the decreased level of oxygen in the thin air. But with everything that was at stake, she had no time for rest.
She glanced back at the two men who accompanied her: a twenty-year-old Chiapas Indian named Oco, who was acting as their guide, and an old friend and colleague, Professor Michael McCarter. McCarter was struggling, and she needed him to move.
“Come on, Professor,” she urged. “They’re getting closer. We have to keep going.”
Breathing heavily, McCarter glanced behind them. Imminent exhaustion seemed to prevent a reply, but he pushed forward with renewed determination.
A few minutes later, they crested the summit. As McCarter fell to his hands and knees, Danielle pulled a set of binoculars from her pack. A mountain lake filled the broken volcanic crater of Mount Pulimundo a thousand feet below. At the center, a cone-shaped island burst upward, its steep sides thickly wooded but unable to disguise its volcanic nature. Yellowish fog clung to it, drifting downwind from vents and cracks concealed by the trees and the water.
“Is this it?” Danielle asked.
Oco nodded.
“Are you sure?”
“The statue is there,” he insisted. “I saw it once. When I came with the shaman. He said the time was coming, the time when all things would change.”
Danielle scanned the terrain. The lake sat a thousand feet below them, down a steep embankment of loose and crumbling shale on the caldera’s inner cone. It would be a hazardous descent, but much easier physically than the climb they’d just completed.
She retied her hair and looked to McCarter. He’d made it to a sitting position, though his chest was still heaving.
“We’re almost there,” she said. “And it’s all downhill from here.”
“I’ve been hearing that load of tripe,” he said between breaths, “ever since I turned forty. And so far nothing has gotten any easier.”
He waved her on. “Go. I’ll try to catch up.”
“We stick together,” she said. “Besides, you’re the expert. You’re the one who needs to see this.”
“And what happens when they catch us?”
“They want the statue. We’ll learn what we need to know and head downstream. They’re not going to follow us.”
She extended a hand, which McCarter eyed suspiciously before reaching out and grasping it.
She helped him to his feet and the three of them went over the side together, skidding and sliding and running where they could.
As reached the bottom, she could hear shouting far up above. Their pursuers had come to the crest.
“Come on,” she said, racing across the last ten meters of solid ground and diving into the cold mountain lake.
McCarter and Oco plunged in behind her. The three of them raced toward the wooded island at its center.
Halfway across, gunfire began cracking from the ridge. Shots clipped the water to her right, and she dove under the surface and kept kicking until she could no longer hold her breath.
She came up shrouded in the sulfurous mist. McCarter and Oco surfaced beside her.
The gunfire had ceased, but another sound caught her attention, a distant rhythmic thumping reaching out across the mountains: the staccato clatter of helicopter blades, somewhere to the east. Apparently, their enemies had a new trick in store.
“Where is it?” she asked.
Oco pointed toward the summit. “At the top,” he said. “Hidden in the trees.”
They climbed the steep angle of the island’s slope, using the trees as handholds. They found the statue at dead center—a great block of stone with the outline of a man carved into it, a Mayan king in full regalia. In his right hand, he carried what looked like a net holding four stones. In his left, he held a shield. Hieroglyphic writing scrawled across the bottom and a great snake twisted across the top, with its large open mouth stretching down as if to devour the king with a single bite.
“Ahau Balam,” McCarter said, reading the title glyphs. “The Jaguar King. Spirit guide of the Brotherhood.”
Oco, who like many of the people in the Chiapas area was of Mayan descent, fell silent in awe. McCarter did likewise.
Danielle was more concerned with the danger closing in on them. The helicopter was growing closer, the men behind them no doubt scrambling down the cliff. They needed to get the information and disappear.
“What does it tell us?” she asked.
McCarter studied the writing, eyes darting here and there. He touched one glyph, and then another. He
