Blood Sun

worker bee desperately trying to complete his task. Huge wooden doors stood open before him. Other side rooms were being closed by the security staff, heavy chains and padlocks rattling through handles, securing interleading glass doors. Max lengthened his stride. He dared not miss this meeting. He ran through the gallery, past the exhibition cases. The room was labeled LIVING AND DYING. He hoped that wasn’t a bad omen.

Max found the north stairs. The last few tourist stragglers were making their way out of the building’s rear entrance. Another security guard stood ready to lock up. Max had left it too late. The glass doors to the library were on his left and they were locked. Max rattled them. A keypad was the only way in. There were still lights on inside, but no sign of anyone.

“Hey!” the security guard called. “It’s closed.”

“I have to see someone. I have an appointment. He’s expecting me.”

“Not at this time of night, son. C’mon. Think you’d better be off.”

Desperation triggered a surge of energy. Max rattled the glass doors, pushed his face against the slim join between them and shouted into the book-filled room. “Please! It’s Max Gordon! I must speak to you!”

“All right! That’s enough.” The security guard moved quickly toward him. A shadow appeared behind Max. An older man, wispy hair unkempt, wearing a rather dilapidated jacket over a faded cardigan, unlocked the door.

“Evening, Freddie,” he said to the guard. “My fault. Entirely my fault. I was expecting this young man.” He waved the guard away in gentle dismissal. As he ushered Max into the library, Max noticed there were crumbs clinging to his front; some lay captured by the spectacles hanging from a cord round his neck.

“I was just having an Eccles cake and a cup of tea while perusing an extremely boring unpublished manuscript on the elongated shape of Mayan heads. The writer thought such deformed heads indicated they were originally extraterrestrials. Any fool knows they bound their children’s heads to misshape them.” He brushed a crumb from the corner of his mouth. “I was expecting you, wasn’t I?”

“Yes, sir. My name is Max Gordon, and I wanted to talk about Danny Maguire.”

The old man straightened up. Any guise of dreamy forgetfulness suddenly cleared from his eyes.

“And you have brought the khipu with you?” he asked eagerly.

Charlie Morgan watched Professor Blacker stack manuscripts and files into the crook of his arm. He switched off the library lights and made his way to the door where she waited.

“I think you may have wasted your time, Officer,” Blacker told her as he clicked the door closed. “I doubt this boy you’re looking for is coming here. Certainly not tonight.”

“And he has made no contact with you?” Morgan said.

“None. Bit of a wild-goose chase by the sound of it. Well, I’d better be off. Papers to mark before tomorrow. Good night.”

Morgan gnawed her lip. Max Gordon would have been here by now.

“He’s fooled us,” she muttered to herself. “He’s laid a false trail. Where is he?” She called after Blacker, “Professor, is there another academic who might know about khipus?”

London groaned and coughed with the millions of people who lived, worked and visited. Dozens of languages whispered in the back alleys, called to friends, shouted in argument or promised undying love to another.

But where Max sat in the Anthropology Library of the British Museum, all was quiet. The museum had closed; the lights had flickered down, leaving shadows of giant statues watching blindly over the great halls.

Sayid had done his homework, just as Max had asked. He’d hacked into the school’s mainframe computer and found the man who had sponsored Danny Maguire’s request to spend a couple of years in South America: Dr. Raymond Miller, curator of South American ethnography at the British Museum.

When the efficient and threatening Ms. Morgan had swept quickly through Max’s files at Dartmoor High, she had seen no mention of the curator’s name. It had been tucked away in a cyber-vault by a fourteen-year-old boy who felt a warm glow at getting his own back.

“Khipus are devilishly difficult to decipher,” Dr. Miller said as he fingered the knotted cords. “Some of them are the size of grass skirts. Huge things. The main cords can often be five or six meters long. Specialists have spent years and years getting to grips with the messages they hold. But this one …” His fine-boned fingers teased the cords apart. “This is quite simple. It is, I should say, not genuine, but made, I am sure, by our young friend Danny Maguire.”

“Then he was trying to tell me something,” Max said.

“It is crude and amateurish, but that is not a criticism. It is a fact. One could expect little else, but it was a clever thing to do. Young Maguire must have known there were people wanting this information-why, we cannot say-so he did his best. Bless him. I liked that boy.”

Max could barely restrain his impatience. The academic was taking so long to tell him anything, but he did not want to rush the elderly man, desperately hoping his knowledge would be the key.

Dr. Miller rambled on about how a khipu’s main cord was always thicker than the pendants tied on to it. How the different knots meant different things, how the colors dyed into the knots were significant. Come on! Tell me! Max shouted in his head, but sat on his hands in case his irritation began to show.

Fancy loops and dangles, entwined knots and subsidiary cords all made up a fascinating and confusing intricacy from an ancient people who were thought to be illiterate. Not so, Dr. Miller assured him. Finally he gave a sigh and a grunt of understanding at what lay between his fingers. He pushed his spectacles back up the bridge of his nose. He looked at Max and saw the boy’s controlled agitation.

“Forgive me. I’ve been going on, haven’t I? I’m sure you don’t want an anthropological explanation of khipus’ origins. This is important to you; I can see that. Look here, these knots are stained red. Traditionally that means ‘soldiers’ or ‘armed men.’ The arithmetic is simple. Each knot means ten; joined knots like these three mean thirty. Thirty armed men-here.” He fingered another knot. “A temple. These other knots denote men and women. These mean clusters of children. Or so it would seem. One can never be certain. Khipus guard their knowledge like sacred secrets.”

Max tried to picture the message in his head. Armed men near a temple where there were women and children. Though it seemed the children were separate. What did this have to do with his mum?

“Danny was trying to tell me something about my mother. But she was nowhere near Peru, where Danny was studying. She was in Central America.”

“Is this about your mother?”

“I think so. I hope so.”

“Where is she now?”

“She’s dead.”

Dr. Miller grunted. “Oh, I see.”

Max pulled out the photos taken of his mother in the rain forest. “These are the only clues I have.”

The professor settled his glasses and quickly thumbed through the pictures, then handed them back to Max. “Right, come on. I’ll show you something.”

He ushered Max back into the corridor, up the stairs that led out onto Montague Street and through the room Max had crossed to get to the library. It was dark now, except for the exhibits’ distorted shadows looming grotesquely up the walls.

The interleading doors to each of the galleries left Max’s head spinning. He was losing all sense of direction. Even though he followed Dr. Miller’s rapid footsteps, it felt as though he was being led into a labyrinth. A moment of regret tugged at him. He wished he’d picked up a museum map from the visitors’ desk. Don’t go blindly into a place of danger. Wherever possible, know your ground-Dad’s words as he once pointed out a difficult route on a map. That’s what maps are for. Max’s thoughts swirled. His dad hadn’t needed a map when he ran away and left his wife to die!

Dr. Miller stopped. Breathless, he tapped his chest. “Indigestion. Too many cakes,” he said, then fumbled a small bunch of keys. The doors to the next room were bolted by a heavy-duty chain and padlock. Max heard a movement behind him as the clanking chains rattled through the door handle. A shaft of light caught them both like animals blinded on a country road.

“Hey!” a voice commanded. “What the hell are you doing?” The torchlight barely wavered as the figure moved quickly toward them. Dr. Miller turned. Waved and rattled his keys.