The Fifth Harmonic Read online

  My throat was so swollen I could barely swallow my saliva.

  I looked around and realized I was alone. I wanted her here, wanted to hold her, to tell her how curing me no longer mattered, that she'd transformed the remainder of my life. But Maya must have left during the night. I felt crushed. I hadn't heard her go. I'd slept like the dead.

  But just before I'd dropped off I had an idea . . .

  I struggled to my feet and stumbled to the door of my hut. I stared across the beach and the water to the spires of the La Mano Hundiendo. I thought I knew a way to reach the water tines.

  But why on earth should I want to? I felt weak and sick, and I knew this was probably the last day I'd be able to swallow anything, so why devote my rapidly shrinking time and energy on such a fool's errand?

  I couldn't explain it, but I felt driven to reach that last tine. Maybe it was because this was a task I'd begun and hadn't completed. Maybe I didn't want to leave behind any unfinished business. Maybe Captain Carcinoma was metastasizing through my brain and affecting my critical faculties. But as much as anything else, I wanted to do it for Maya.

  I was determined to win my fourth tine before I died.

  I spotted Maya standing with Ambrosio and my pulse quickened. Just looking at her gave me new strength. I realized then how completely I'd fallen under her spell.

  I started toward them. Her warm smile when she saw me approaching made me lightheaded. I started to reach for her but a fleeting look of warning and a quick shake of her head warned me off. Why? Wasn't the sabia allowed a public display of affection? To have been with her, within her last night and now not to touch her . . . I might have been devastated if I hadn't sensed that her response would have been different in private.

  “I want to try for the water tine again,” I said in a dry rasp.

  Maya looked at me with pain in her jade eyes. “But your rib, your strength . . .”

  “I think I have a way,” I said. “But I'll need Ambrosio's help.”

  “I do not know if this is right,” Maya said as Ambrosio piloted us toward La Mano Hundiendo.

  “How can it be wrong?” I said, straining to be heard over the little outboard. “I'll be entering the water as I was born, as you said I must.”

  “But you will be holding onto a stone.”

  “Yes. All stones belong to the Mother, right? I'll merely be taking one from the land and depositing it in the sea.”

  “I do not know,” she said.

  For the first time since we'd started this quest, Maya seemed unsure of what must be done and how to do it. And I felt like some sort of ersatz theologian, taking the premises of her mythology and interpreting them to my own advantage.

  “It is just that I have never heard of it being done this way before.”

  “Well, either we try this, or give up. Because there's no other way I can do it.”

  Last night's image of a stone dropping into a pool of water had haunted me, reminding me of the weight belt that was an indispensable part of scuba gear. Why not use a heavy stone to speed me into the depths?

  Before leaving shore, Ambrosio and I had scouted up a granite boulder that weighed in at a good fifty pounds. It sat beside me now in the front of the boat.

  I watched the thumb spire almost hungrily as it loomed above us. I was in a fever now. The imperative to obtain my fourth tine had ballooned out of all sensible proportion. I was going to accomplish this, even if it was the last act of my life.

  No longer inhibited about being naked before Maya, I stripped off my shirt and pants as soon as Ambrosio cut the engine. He came forward and helped me lift the boulder, then backed away when I had a good grip on it. My weakened legs trembled under the weight of the rock I clutched against my chest. Then I felt Maya's hands on my shoulders, felt her lips brush the back of my neck.

  “Let the Mother guide your hand,” she said.

  I nodded and thought that Mama had damn well better guide my hand—I had only one boulder, only one shot at this. If I missed on this try, I'd have to call it quits.

  I stared at the chubby fertility figure carved in the spire's flank and I took four breaths as deeply as the broken rib would allow, then I pushed the stone toward it and leaped off the boat. Keeping a deathgrip on the stone, I followed it into the water, letting it pull me into the depths. I kicked to boost our descent but almost let go when I saw the shark directly below me. It darted out of my path and out of sight as I plummeted past.

  I saw the geode approaching and released the stone as I came abreast of it. The granite continued dropping. My lungs were complaining as I reached for one of the green-hued tines among the crystals, but I still had air to spare. Why hadn't I thought of this before? I could have saved myself so much angst.

  I snapped off the first tine I touched and kicked back toward the surface, my natural buoyancy drawing me upward. I glanced around for the shark but saw no trace of it.

  As I had on every other try, I broke surface next to the boat, but this time I wasn't empty handed.

  “Got it!” I croaked as I grabbed the gunwale.

  I saw tears on Maya's smiling face as I immediately reached over and dropped the tine into the boat—the last thing I needed now was to drop it back into the water. As I heard it hit the floorboards, a feeling of peace swept through me. Mission accomplished: no more unfinished business.

  But as Ambrosio was helping me into the boat I felt something sharp tear into my right leg, clamp on it like a vise, and jerk me back into the water. I gasped half a breath before I was dragged below the surface.

  The shark! It could only be the shark!

  I fluttered my arms in frantic, panicky strokes, fighting back to the surface, but it kept pulling me down. A strange mix of thoughts and images cascaded through my brain—I saw Annie in her wedding gown, Kelly in the newborn nursery, Maya leaning over me last night, and I thought, Is this how it all ends—eaten by a shark?

  And then the terrible tearing pressure on my calf was gone, replaced by the sting of salt in an open wound. Dazed, numb, fighting shock, I clawed my way toward the surface, half expecting another attack.

  Air! Where was the surface? How far down had the shark dragged me? I felt hands grab my arms before my head even broke the surface, and then Maya and Ambrosio were hauling me out of the water and into the boat.

  Black spots were flashing and growing in my vision. I heard Maya's voice, high pitched with fear, saying “Oh no! Oh no!” I had a glimpse of my bloody leg before she wrapped a shirt—mine?— around it. A roaring grew in my ears, and from somewhere far away I heard Ambrosio.

  “Lucky you so thin, señor. The shark he like the fat man. He spit out the skinny man.”

  I clutched at consciousness, desperately trying to hold onto it—I had so few moments left, I didn't want to waste a single one—but its hem slipped from my grasp and I dropped into darkness.

  PART THREE

  The Fifth Harmonic

  1

  Maya's voice draws me from the bottom of the sea. I struggle upward toward the sound, shivering from the cold of the depths.

  Finally I pry open my gummy lids and see her face, that wonderful face with the jaguar eyes, shimmering above me. The image wavers and I let my lids drop, ready to sink back into the depths, but the voice hauls me up again like a fish on a gaff.

  This time I keep my eyes open and look past Maya. I'm in the hut. Through the doorway I see a crimson sun sitting on the ocean.

  Morning?

  No. This is the west coast. That sun is setting . . . setting on my right leg, igniting it.

  I open my mouth to speak but only a whistling gust of air escapes.

  Maya shushes me and says, “Don't speak.”

  But I must. This time I form words, and my voice sounds like sand pouring on dry corn husks.

  “The shark . . . my leg . . .”

  “You have deep cuts,” she says. “I have coated them with another unguent, and wrapped them. They will heal, but . . .”

>   “But what?”

  “I will take you to a hospital if you wish.”

  “No!” Propelled by a vision of myself in a hospital bed, flattened between the sheets like a faded, desiccated plant in the pages of a scrapbook, I bolt upright and grab her arms. “No! Please!”

  “But I don't know what else to do,” she says.

  “The Fifth Harmonic . . . isn't that why we came here?”

  “But you are too weak. You cannot climb to the top of the hill.”

  She's right. I'm lightheaded just sitting up—the room is tilting and spinning around us, but I hang on. And I'm cold. In all this rabid Mesoamerican heat and humidity, I'm shivering.

  I know what's wrong: the recurrent night sweats, plus a steadily diminishing fluid intake have left me severely dehydrated. My mouth is dry, and even if I had a normal amount of saliva I wouldn't be able to swallow it. My blood pressure must be in the basement.

  Maybe if I go to a hospital . . . just long enough to get rehydrated . . . a couple of liters via IV . . .

  Who am I kidding? Once they get their tubes into me they'll never let me go.

  Tubes . . . IVs . . .

  “My duffel,” I say. “Get me my duffel.”

  Maya gives me a puzzled expression. “Why?”

  “The Kevorkian kit.”

  Her jade eyes widen. “No, Will! It is not time yet.”

  “It will help me.”

  “No! I know I promised but—”

  “Listen to me, Maya. I don't want the potassium now—just the fluid. The dextrose and water . . . directly into my circulation. It'll give me enough strength to—”

  She smiles as her eyes light with understanding. “Of course! Of course!” She turns toward the duffel, then stops and turns back. “This is not a trick, I hope.”

  “No. Not a trick. I promise.”

  But if this doesn't work, I think it'll be time for the real thing.

  I look down at the red-stained bandages on my throbbing right calf and feel the heat there. Ambrosio's words about the shark spitting out the skinny man drift back to me and I shudder. What if I'd been healthier and heavier? Perhaps Captain Carcinoma saved my life.

  But if not for Captain Carcinoma I wouldn't have been in the water with the damn shark in the first place. I wouldn't even be in Mesoamerica.

  And I wouldn't have met Maya . . . wonderful, wonderful Maya.

  Trying to unravel that Gordian knot of chance and circumstance makes me even dizzier.

  So strange how things work.

  Reflected horizontal light from the sinking sun catches my eye and I see a rolled oilcloth. I uncoil it and there is my green tine. I hold it a moment, than arrange all four tines—red, gold, blue, and green—beside me, just like Maya's collection when I'd first seen them a world away in Katonah.

  Maya returns with the kit and I remove one of the dextrose-andwater solution bags. Only 250ccs . . . I wish I'd brought the liter size. I unwrap the tubing and insert an end through the port at the bottom of the bag. I open the wheelcock and let enough run into the tube to chase out the air, but stop the flow before it spills—every drop is precious. I hand the whole assembly to Maya who holds the bag in one hand, the end of the tube in the other.

  “Hang onto that for a minute and be ready to plug it in when I tell you.”

  Now I tie the tourniquet around my left biceps. I pump my fist to fill the veins. Considering the impoverishment of my body fat, I expect them to pop out like mole burrows in a barren lawn, but they barely rise . . . further evidence of my dehydrated state. I tap and slap at the antecubital veins to tease the blood into their lumens, and finally one begins to rise.

  “There,” I say, and reach for a butterfly—a short, high-gauge needle with plastic flaps attached to facilitate taping to the skin.

  We have no alcohol, so I do without. My fingers tremble as I uncap the needle and press the beveled end against the flesh. I've got one vein here, and not a very good one. If I cause a blowout, I'll have to try the other arm, which means working with my left hand—not something I want to depend on.

  I pump my fist a few more times, take a breath, then poke the needle tip through the skin. An instant's sting; I tighten inside as I see the vein begin to roll laterally; I push harder, chasing it, and am rewarded by a scarlet backflush into its short leader tube.

  “Gotcha,” I say to the vein.

  I hold up the end of the leader and Maya plugs the IV tube into the receptacle. She raises the bag, I open the wheelcock to max, and the solution begins to flow. Since we don't have tape, I hold the needle in place as the solution bag deflates . . . slowly . . . the small bore of the butterfly restricts the flow, but at least it's flowing.

  Maya remains standing and together we watch the bag like two couch potatoes before a television.

  Finally the bag is flat.

  “Squeeze it,” I tell Maya, and she does.

  After I milk the tubing, squeezing the last drop into my veins, I remove the needle and seal the hole with my thumb.

  “How do you feel?” Maya says, watching me closely.

  “Better.”

  No lie. I could do with a liter or two, but I'm amazed at the energizing effect of a mere eight ounces of sugar water infused directly into my circulation.

  I glance through the doorway. The sun is gone, leaving only a bloody smear on sky and water to mark its passing.

  “We'd better get moving,” I say. “Take me to your leader.”

  “You must go alone,” Maya says.

  “Up that cliff?”

  “The way is marked. I have brought you this far, but I can bring you no farther. What happens next is between you and the AllMother.”

  I try to stand and I need Maya's help to get to my feet. A deep aching throb augments the burning in my right lower leg as I make a limping circle about the interior of the hut.

  “How am I going to do this?”

  “You must.”

  The thought of climbing to that plateau is daunting enough, but to tackle it without Maya . . . and then to face whatever it is I'm supposed to face, without my guide . . .

  My heart starts to hammer in my chest. I don't want to be alone. Not now.

  “Where will you be?”

  “Down here, praying to the All-Mother that I have broken down enough of your walls to allow her power to enter you . . . and for you to recognize and accept that energy when it comes.”

  “But what do I do when I get up there?”

  She begins to explain. . . .

  The path is marked—if you call steps carved into the rock marked—but the climb is steep, and more often than not the whereabouts of the next step isn't obvious.

  And the energy boost from the IV infusion is fading.

  And my right leg is a molten lead weight.

  I'm drenched with sweat, leaking the fluids I've so recently absorbed, filled with dread and yet strangely comfortable on this night so laden with expectation, no longer feeling apart from but a part of this place.

  I see octets of spider eyes glinting from the shadows, I hear the sensuous rub of anaconda and poisonous fer-de-lance, the scurries and whispers of tiny night things, I sense the foliage around me coming alive and writhing to a primal rhythm beyond my auditory threshold, plucking at my clothing, inviting me to join their dance to the beat of the heart of the world.

  Is all this the sum of my disease—fever, delirium, metastatic madness—or am I climbing into some sort of altered reality? I can't tell. Dehydration and its attendant electrolyte imbalances can do strange things to your brain, make you rammy, see things that aren't there, converse with people long dead.

  I think I see Kelly sitting on one of the steps above me, but she disappears when I near. I see my parents, both dead now, frowning as they appraise the doomed, wounded, disheveled being their son has become. They fade too, replaced by Terziski holding a picture of the brown-eyed Maya-faced woman. I don't stop. I climb right through him, I leave them all behind, hauling upward, e
ver upward like an old, old man with a ruined leg, using vines and branches as banisters to take the steps one at a time—raise the good leg, drag up the bad, raise the good . . .

  Until the bad leg will no longer support itself and I must crawl, conquering each step on hands and knees.

  Light floods from on high. I look up and see the full moon, Gaea's barren daughter as Maya calls her, cresting the hill, and never in my life has she been so clear, so intolerably bright, so frighteningly close that I can trace each mountain and crater on her sad, wounded face.

  I'm late. I should be there now, on the plateau, arranging myself and my tines as Maya directed. If I miss the moon's zenith point . . .

  Only twenty feet to go. I must double my efforts to reach the top on time, but I can't move. The tines are now leaden weights in my pockets. I have no reserves to call on. Aching with exhaustion and the heartbreaking sense of defeat, I look up and see someone standing on the steps above me, blocking my way.

  You idiot, he says. Look at you—risking life and limb to haul your sorry ass and a bunch of metal doodads up a hillside in the middle of nowhere. For what? For nothing. Because you know damn well that's what will happen up there—nothing!

  I stare at him and mouth the word, “Who?”

  But he ignores my question and laughs.

  A “Fifth Harmonic”? A “new level of consciousness”—give me a break, will you? Admit it, Willy boy. In your heart of hearts you know this is an empty exercise, the last act of a puerile symbolic rebellion against the science that failed you. So okay, you've made your point, and now it's time to cut the crap, get real, and find some modicum of comfort in what little time is left to you.

  I recognize him now. The old me . . . fuller featured, better hydrated, better nourished. Was that what I was like? I hope not. The old Will doesn't seem to understand what's happened here in Mesoamerica. Maybe he's right that no new level of consciousness will be waiting for me up there. But that's not the point.

  What is the point, then, Willie boy?

  I'm not exactly sure. I have no double-blind, randomized, statistically significant answer to that. In other words, I don't know what will happen up there.