Thomas Hoover - Life blood

Finally he turned to me and held out his hands. "Now we will make a miracle, the miracle of Baalum."

Heavy smoke from the censer was pouring out into the rainy sky as we started a stiff pas de deux, the strains of a clay flute drifting around us. Was it the "ceremony"? Was I dreaming it?

As the incense billowed, our Maya dreamtime dance became ever more intense, and then a faint form began to writhe up out of the haze between us, an undulating serpent the deep color of jade. As Alex Goddard wrapped his arms around it, it began to form into two dark heads, then pirouette above us. Finally, as the two-headed specter opened its mouths and gazed down on the platform, Sarah stepped toward it and held out her arms.

"Sar, no!"

I screamed to her to get back, but as I did, the… thing reached down and swallowed her in flames. It was the Vision-Serpent come to receive her.

"Sarah…"

"Can you get up now?" said a voice, cutting through the haze that enveloped my consciousness. At first I thought it was more of the dream, but then someone was touching me and I opened my eyes to see Marcelina standing beside the bed I was in, dressed in white and holding a candle. For a moment I thought I was still atop the rainy pyramid but then I felt the moistness of the sheets and realized the storm Id been dreaming of was being blown in through the slats of the windows. I was shivering.

"Marcelina, where's Sarah?" The nightmare had seemed so real, and now I was hallucinating, having flashes of colors I didn't want to see. "I just had the most horrible dream. I was on the pyramid and there was smoke, rain and some kind of ghastly-"

"It's the elixir. From the toad. It makes you dream dreams of the Old Ones." She took my hand. "She's resting now. He gave her something to calm her."

More drugs, I thought angrily.

Then I caught the "he." Alex Goddard must be back. Everything had gone wrong.

"I've got to get her and-"

"Not now," Marcelina went on, helping me up. "Come. I want to show you the true miracle of Baalum. Now is the time you should know."

The upstairs hallway was dimly illuminated by rows of lights along the floor as she led me forward. There also was total silence, except for the occasional whimper of a baby in one of the rooms. Where was she taking me?

When she stopped in front of the third door from the end of the hall, I tried to get my mental bearings. I was still hallucinating; in control of only half my mind to the point where I wasn't sure I could find my hand in front of my face. But then she tapped on the door and when she heard a voice inside, something in the Kekchi dialect, she gently pushed it open.

When we moved inside, the room was dark and there was no sound, except a gasp from the bed when the woman realized I was a gringo. The dim slant of illumination from the doorway revealed a small night lamp just above the head of her bed, and Marcelina reached for it.

As the light came on, a pale glow filling the room, I noticed the woman was staring at me, her eyes wide and frightened.

"She's afraid you've come for her child," Marcelina whispered, pointing toward the bassinet. "She knows we have to give him back."

The woman was pure Maya, a powerful visage straight off that upright stele in the square. I walked over and took her hand, hoping to calm her fears. Then I lifted her hand to my cheek and realized my face was moist with tears. I held it there for a long moment, till the alarm in her eyes diminished.

Her newborn infant was sleeping quietly in a crib right next to her, on the opposite side from the table. When I looked closely at him, I finally understood everything.

I laid her hand back onto the bed and walked around. While the woman watched, I pulled away the stripped red and green coverlet and lifted out her groggy little boy, tender and vulnerable.

He made a baby's protest as I cradled him, then began sleepily probing my left breast, making me feel sad I had no milk.

"It's okay," I whispered, first to him and then to his mother. "Esta bien."

"Tz'ac Tzotz," the woman said, pointing at him. I could feel her deep, maternal love.

"His name?" I asked in English, before I thought.

When Marcelina translated, the woman smiled and nodded.

Then the blond-haired Tz'ac Tzotz started to sniffle, so I kissed him gently, turned, and took the woman's hand again. There was nothing else I could do.

Tz'ac Tzotz was Sarah incarnate. This was no hallucination. He had her special blue eyes and her steep cheeks, her high brow. I was holding her child.

"They are sent from Kukulkan," Marcelina was saying, "the white god of the plumed serpent. Then there's the ceremony on the pyramid and they go back."

The woman was staring at me, seemingly awestruck. Then she pointed at Tz'ac Tzotz and at me, saying something to Marcelina. Finally the woman bowed her head to me with great reverence.

"She says he looks so much like you," Marcelina explained. "You are surely the special one. The new bride."

I was still speechless, but then I noticed the baby had a little silver jaguar amulet tied around his wrist with a silken string, and on the back-as on Kevin's and Rachel's-were rows of lines and dots.

It finally dawned on me. They were digits, written in the archaic Maya script. What could they be, maybe his birthday? No, I realized, that was far too simplistic. This was the original bar code; it was his Baalum "serial number."

For a long moment it felt as if time had stopped. Sarah, and now me-we'd been lured here to provide the life force for Mayan surrogate mothers. This whole elaborate recreation wasn't about rainforest drugs and research into fertility; it was just a cover to use the bodies of these intensely believing Native Americans. Alex Goddard had perpetrated the greatest systematic exploitation of another race since slavery. The difference was, he'd found a way to get them to give themselves willingly.

Baalum was definitely a place of miracles. There could scarcely be another isolated spot on earth where he could find this many sincere, trusting people with powerful beliefs he could prostitute. And all of it hidden deep in an ancient rainforest.

But I had to be sure. I turned around, leaving Marcelina to watch in confusion, and marched out into the hall and into the next room. The Maya mother there cried out in shock as I unceremoniously strode over to her crib and checked.

Her baby was the same. Sarah stamped all over him. My God.

When I went back, Marcelina was still trying to calm Tz'ac Tzotz's mother with her bedside manner.

As I stood looking at them, the extent of what was going on finally settled in. All those new babies at Quetzal Manor, even Kevin and Rachel-they all looked alike because they all were from the same woman. The one who was here before Sarah. And now hers were ready.

I was going to be next. The new "bride." Those fresh petri dishes down in the lab… My God, why didn't I destroy them when I had the chance?

So whose sperm would he use? Of course. It would be from the man Alan Dupre was going to deliver to him.

"Marcelina, don't you realize what's happening?" I wanted to pound some sense into her. They didn't have to let him do this to them.

"I know that with miracles must come sadness," she said, reaching to touch Tz'ac Tzotz's tiny brow. "We all understand that."

"It's not a miracle. It's science, don't you realize? Ciencia. He's using you."

"We know he does many things that are magic. He makes powerful medicines from the plants we bring him, and when women want to bear a child-"

"No, Marcelina." I felt my heart go out to her, and to all the others. "It's black magic. It's all a lie."

The first thing to do was go down to the laboratory and dump every last one of my petri dishes into the sink, ova and all. Destroy the nest, then call Steve and warn him…