Mayan-”
“Means in Avilix,” said Alred. “Tell me your amazing fact.”
Porter didn’t speak, his face shining as if it was obvious. “The Mayan prefix p can be defined in?”
“That’s right.”
“The letter b is simply a voiced p.”
“Are we back to sound shifts?”
“The Hebrew mirrors the Mayan in this case. B is the prefix used at the very beginning of the Torah or the Old Testament: B-reshit bara Elohim et ha-shamaim vet ha-aretz. B-reshit, in the beginning… See it?”
“And what does this have to do with our precious KM-2?”
Alred realized she was sitting in a tight ball, limbs wrapped together like tape, strapping her to the chair. Her eyes had found their usual hard stare. Her skin had paled in the dim library light. Her auburn hair had turned to dark gray.
Licking his lips, Porter visibly debated his response. “I…found something even better while translating. Something I know…you won’t believe.”
“I’ll believe anything less subjective than the ride you just took me on,” she said. “What.”
Porter scratched his forehead and gazed at the shelves around him, holding volumes of their own secrets. “I probably shouldn’t…say…yet.”
“Because we’re at war?” she said, leaning forward and propping her hands on her knees as if about to spring at him. She tried to loosen at least her shoulders. “Or because you’re not sure about your facts?”
Porter sagged in his seat. The fire in his pupils dimmed. “Alred…I’m not trying to fight you. I really wish we could work together on this. That’s what Kinnard wanted us to do.”
So little he knew, she thought, squinting with her eyes and her lips.
“Do you have the codex here?” she said.
“I do,” he said.
“You go everywhere with it?”
“No,” he said, before holding his breath. “I hide it in the vent in my office. The heat’s not too bad for it.”
“We should trade off,” said Alred, thinking him foolish with the manuscript, “a day at a time.”
Porter made his mouth into a tight line and nodded.
Alred stood.
“I guess you got the carbon dating results,” Porter said.
“That why you forgot about our meeting at Bruno’s?” Alred drew a manila envelope from her portfolio.
“Are you asking me if I’m insecure about the results?”
Alred stood in silence, waiting, the envelope in her hands.
He stared at it. “Tell me, when was the Valley of Guatemala populated…according to the facts?”
She said nothing.
Porter listened.
The delicious smell of dry paper moistened the air around them-the splendor of all good libraries.
“Archeological evidence suggest 600 BCE,” Alred said.
He smiled. “Then I’m not worried a bit!”
Taking a breath, Alred looked at her package. “There’s been a delay. Dr. Atkins wants to take another cut of the codex.”
“She’ll burn it all if she has the chance.” Porter took KM-2 carefully in his hands and slipped it into a brown paper sack. “What’s that,” he said, looking at her envelope.
Alred pushed her lips to one side of her mouth, looking at it. She pulled at the manila flap and withdrew a folded sheet of newspaper. “Dr. Masterson wanted me to give this to you.”
Porter stood and took the gray paper, the ink smudged all over it. The obituaries stared at him. Highlighted, he found the name Dennis GEOFFREY Albright, Ph. D.
“What?!” He scanned the words too fast and had to back up to figure out what had happened. “A heart attack?”
“While jogging,” said Alred. “Some at the University…seem to think he was murdered.”
Porter slumped back into his seat. He touched the corner of his mouth with a couple fingers and stared at nothing. “We never found out what happened to Dr. Ulman…Wilkinson.”
Her right eyebrow lifted and she frowned. She came close to the table. “Porter. Albright died of natural causes.”
“I bet Kinnard doesn’t think so? He knows Albright personally, if I remember right.” Like a hypnotized bug, Porter gazed at the florescent light on his table. “What’s their…connection?”
A flash of memory hit Alred like a two-by-four. She saw Kinnard slumped on one end of the table, his hands rubbing his temples; Masterson standing as she walked into the room; Goldstien smiling at her…too much; Arnott, quiet like a little devil with sharp eyes; and Wilkinson in his dusty suit…
She shook away the image and said, “You think someone wants Dr. Ulman’s KM codices.”
Porter said nothing for a moment. He looked at Alred with a serious grin. “Scholars are human too. Mankind has this nasty habit of doing things they really shouldn’t…including genocide. Question is, where does that put two doctoral candidates working a hundred-miles-an-hour on the same task as dying professors?”
Alred pulled her head back.
She looked troubled when she left. Porter couldn’t blame her.
But he had too much work to do. And if someone wanted to kill him over it, he had to do it even more quickly. Time to figure things out. All the implications.
His eyes stung with lack of sleep. He didn’t dare look at his watch.
He glanced for only a second at the manila envelope with the edge of the obituaries poking out.
The library would be open all night. The same every weekday. It was a new policy the students had fought for just last year. A bit revolutionary, but Porter took advantage of it. Librarians dimmed the lights after 10:00, probably as a tactic to dissuade students from coming after that hour. If no one came, the managers could fight the board for the right to close at a decent hour again. They’d win.
Porter rubbed his face and looked around.
He knew someone was on the lower level, but the fourth floor was devoid of life, save himself…and a cricket he thought he’d heard half-an-hour earlier somewhere beyond the stairs. Fourth floor! What a feat that must have been for a little black insect that couldn’t fly! He thought about it until he saw himself as the insect, climbing the cream-colored walls, the naked stairs, the bookcases, not knowing where he was going.
Lost among the stacks, Porter the cricket dug his way through the volumes. Skipping from one title to the next. Hoping he’d find some direction, a clue to the way up or out.
Whisper.
What was that? He spun around too fast. His cricket legs rubbed and a chirp erupted.
Cats weren’t aloud in the library. But he could sense them sliding through the bases of the shelves.
He couldn’t outclimb the creatures. He couldn’t hide motionless forever. If the felines didn’t see him, they’d hear him, smell him, track him down by following his droppings…
“Shhhh!”
Porter lifted his head from his books and note pads.
He’d dropped to sleep.
But he heard the whisper again.
In his mind, he replayed the shush shouted in silent breath, like a wind let loose among the catacomb halls of manuscripts. Yet, he knew no sound escaped anyone’s lips.
He thought about Albright, running…
Footsteps on the stairs.
He pictured Wilkinson with the letter opener in his back.
Closer now, but slower…more careful…quiet…
Dr. Ulman…
Silently, Porter stood.
Wailing metal against wood, the chair betrayed him. The sound echoed from each shelf to the wall to the
