“That’s not too far from the truth,” she said. “One of the things we know from studying the Brazil stone is that a portion of its signal resonates in the frequency of human brain waves. The brain is nothing more than an extremely complex electrochemical processor. Thinking and emoting and deciding are the result of synapses discharging electrical pulses. When I was a med student I watched a brain surgery where minor electrical currents were applied to the patient’s brain. The subject, wide awake, could then not remember certain things, such as his name, or, when shown pictures of a dog, what that animal was called. Stimulation to other sections of the brain caused a rise in emotions: fear in one place, anger in another.”
Hawker’s look went from interest to concern. “What are you telling me?”
“We believe that this final initiation, where the candidates were allowed to hold the stone, was done to program the brains of those deemed worthy.”
McCarter could see Hawker’s mind whirling, making the connection. It took only an instant. The lead effort on this quest had been taken by McCarter, despite all reason to the contrary, despite the fact that he’d almost been killed by the NRI’s treachery, despite the fact that he was not cut out for dealing with men like Kang and Saravich. Even after being shot and losing Danielle he had still refused to give it up.
“You touched the stone in Brazil,” he said.
McCarter nodded.
“Both he and I did,” Danielle said. “But you didn’t. And I didn’t want you to touch this one, either.”
“It affected you?”
“When I was back in New York, I could never sleep through the night,” McCarter said. “I thought it was some type of delayed stress reaction to all that had happened, but as the months wore on the insomnia got worse. I started taking sleeping pills and they worked for a while, until one night in the summer a massive thunderstorm woke me up. I thought I was back in the Amazon for a second. And from that moment on, I could not stop thinking about the stone. When Moore and I finally spoke he mentioned that he, Danielle, and another technician who had handled the stone were all suffering from the same symptoms. Little sleep, obsessive thoughts, a need to do something in regard to the stone.”
“You’re saying this thing programmed you.”
“It’s not as far-fetched as it sounds,” Danielle said. “Lots of things program the human mind in subtle ways. Studies have shown that the sound of a baby crying will affect women’s thought patterns, particularly if it is the voice of their own child. Addictions do a similar thing: drugs and alcohol actually affect brain chemistry and thought patterns to where the brain of the addict has been reprogrammed to be biased toward the drug over all else. Including food, water, and sex.”
McCarter pointed to the map. “The Brotherhood’s continued devotion to the stones and their apocalyptic message, without them creating their own false apocalypse, is pretty much unheard of. We think the stones were designed to instill that type of devotion.”
“Okay, but why?”
Danielle replied. “If you were sending some very important items to people who might not have a clue what they were, wouldn’t you want to wrap them in a package that would get them accepted?”
Hawker’s eyes narrowed. “The stones generate this brain-wave-matching pulse, which creates endorphins or something within the mind of the person touching it. Is that what we’re talking about here?”
McCarter nodded.
“So they love the rock and they’re willing to die for it,” Hawker said.
As McCarter watched Hawker’s face, he noticed a subtle change in his demeanor. A new level of guardedness, a slight clenching in his jaw. To McCarter he seemed more disgusted than pleased by their honesty.
“In Africa,” Hawker told them, “you’ll find whole villages of children, most now in their teens, missing hands or arms or legs. It’s because for a decade or so it was fashionable to use what they called butterfly mines, explosives made to look like toys that would be scattered near the enemy’s towns and villages. The theory being, it’s easier to convince someone to blow themselves up if they think what they’re finding is a prize.”
McCarter looked at Danielle. A similar thought had occurred to them in a discussion months before. It was a possibility.
“And that’s why I wouldn’t let you touch it,” Danielle said. “As strongly as I believe they’re meant to do good, I don’t know how much of it is my own conviction and how much of it has been planted there. I figured one of us should remain uncompromised.”
Hawker seemed to appreciate that. He relaxed a little and then looked over at McCarter. “Have you figured out what all that devotion was designed for? I mean isn’t that the end goal here, to decide what these things are going to do in a few days?”
“Draw your own conclusions,” McCarter said. “The books of Chilam Balam tell of the unfolding darkness. The information on Tortugero Monument Six tells us the god of change will descend from a place we are guessing is referred to as the Black Sun, and he will do something catastrophic. And now this, from the Temple of the Initiation.”
He looked at his notes.
“It is written: ‘At the end of the Katun, the eyes of the sky were made blind and the kings of the land waged war, and kings of the sea did likewise and all the malice of time is released, and the children shall be punished for their sins of their fathers.’
“We think the eyes of the sky are satellites,” McCarter said. “Like the ones that got wiped out in this burst a few days ago.”
“There’s only one real reason to take out a nation’s satellites,” Danielle said. “That’s to blind them. And in such a case, military doctrine leans heavily toward using your WMDs or losing them.”
“So darkness falls and everyone pulls the trigger,” Hawker said.
“If darkness falls,” McCarter said. “Perhaps the stones can prevent it.”
“Prevent it?” Hawker said. “In case you forget, the stones are what caused the satellites to fail in the first place.”
McCarter took a deep breath. Hawker’s logic made sense, but he felt it only made sense given their limited data. Like the man who runs into an elephant’s leg and thinks he’s found a tree.
“I dread to see what would happen if all the world’s satellites were swept from the sky at one time,” McCarter said. “But I can’t imagine that being the purpose here.”
By the look on his face, Hawker was imagining precisely that.
“Whatever the case is, we need more information,” Danielle said. “So what do you have for us?”
McCarter went back to his notes. “Glyphs in your underwater temple give us instructions for how to find the next stone, the master stone if I’m reading them right.”
“Where?”
“At a place called the Temple of the Jaguar, somewhere in the mountains.”
They looked on as he smoothed out the map of southern Mexico. Using a straightedge and beginning at the location of the underwater temple, he drew a line calculated from another series of numbers. It stretched across Mexico and into the highlands of Guatemala.
“We take this angle,” he said, pointing to his line. “It leads to the next stone, the Sacrifice of the Body.”
“Where exactly do we stop?” Danielle asked, examining the line.
McCarter looked down at the map. His course cut across low jungle filled with mangrove swamps and up onto the foothills, traveling across the ridges of the Sierra Madre Occidental before continuing out to the Pacific.
To follow that line they’d have to hike through the jungle and then up and down a series of five- and six-thousand-foot peaks. It would take months.
McCarter scratched his head. “I’m not exactly sure,” he admitted. “The glyphs were written in Mayan form, but they read like someone was telling the artisan a story. It says: ‘The Brotherhood shall follow the path of those who were as gods, but moved like men. Frail and mortal, mere fragments of the gods, attempts at the human kind like the Wooden People of old. There was built the Mirror and the Temple of the Jaguar at the end of the shining path, in the footsteps of the gods.’”