Matt sat in the back seat with Shanny while Ethan drove. He listened while Ethan and Shanny brought him up to speed on what had happened since Ethan had been sent the box. When they got to the part about the trailer park and the murder of the kid, Matt got angry.
“His name was Billy Picket. He’d been a bully and a budding meth-head when I first met him, but I’d been working on him, and he’d turned himself around. He had prospects beyond what fate had laid out for him, and to hear that someone killed him—” Matt bit off whatever else he was going to say with under-his-breath curses.
“He died so that I’d live,” Ethan said. “I’m not going to forget that.”
“Nor should you.” Matt glared at Ethan in the rearview mirror. “I had enough people die for me during Vietnam. I still think about them. Every damned day.”
Ethan didn’t know how to respond, nor did Shanny. He realized that he’d think about Billy Picket every day, as well, and his valiant last words.
An uncomfortable silence filled the car.
Finally it was Matt who spoke. “Your father and I bonded in the Vietnam War. I was a chopper pilot, flew Hueys. I flew troop inserts and medevacs, and provided close air support. The Vietcong fired at my chopper so many times, I could see the jungle and sky through the bullet holes in the fuselage. Still, I flew. At the end of each mission, I’d go to the base club and your father would be there. We soon fell into a tight friendship. We both had asshole fathers. We both wanted to do better for our families.” He grinned as his face took on a faraway look. “Remind me sometime to tell you about when your dad and I got lost in the jungle.” He sighed. “As I was saying, we both wanted to have kids. He managed. I didn’t. I just couldn’t find anyone special enough to settle down with.”
Ethan glanced at Shanny in the rearview mirror. She was staring out the side window. He could only image what was going through her mind.
“It wasn’t the Six-Fingered Man who killed him,” Ethan said, bringing the conversation back around.
“It could have been. You just don’t know,” Matt said.
“I saw the killer. I’m never going to forget the image of him running at me. He had ten fingers. His hands were normal.”
Matt shook his head. “It doesn’t mean it wasn’t him… or them. Let me explain. I have this theory. First of all, I don’t think that you have the only box. There has to be more. Whoever started this had to have done it centuries ago, which means there are not enough comments in the document to account for it.”
“Seems like a reach,” Ethan said. “You don’t have the facts to back that up.”
Matt looked like he was about to argue, then chuckled. “That’s right. Your father told me you were a math teacher. You want absolutes.”
Ethan flashed to the Hodge conjecture. “Not absolutes, but what we believe has to be supported by facts.”
“Don’t you have theorems that have to be proved?”
Ethan shook his head. “Theorems have already been proven based on previously established facts, generally accepted statements, and axioms. For your belief to be a theorem, it would have to be proven by something.”
“Oh, I’m sure it’s proven, just not by us.”
“But that doesn’t count.”
“An axiom then. Couldn’t my theory be treated as an axiom?”
Ethan took an exit off the interstate. They needed gas, and he’d spied a truck stop off to the right. “An axiom is a premise or starting point for reasoning. It comes from the Greek axíōma, which means ‘that which is thought worthy or fit.’ It can also be translated as ‘that which commends itself as evident.’ Traditionally axioms are believed to be so evident as to be believed without argument.”
Ethan followed the signs to the Triple T truck stop and pulled into the station. As he got out of the minivan he said, “Hang on to your axiom. I want to hear what it is.”
To Shanny he said, “Can I get you anything?”
She turned to him, her eyes dull from staring out the window at the passing landscape. Then she brightened a little. “No, you get the gas, I’ll get us some waters and some snacks.”
Fifteen minutes later they were back on the road, heading south on Interstate 10. They were just trying to put distance between the trailer park and themselves until they hatched a plan. Matt had directed them to exit 322, where he said there was something special, as well as a hotel where they could stay.
“So I have an axiom. If we get more supporting statements, then it can evolve into a theorem, right?” Matt pressed.
“That’s the process. So let’s hear your… axiom.”
“Right. So, the secret has been around for ten thousand years or more. You can’t tell me that in all that time no one has found them out. The odds are that there must be groups like us all over the world who have been trying to get to the bottom of this mystery since the beginning of recorded history.”
Ethan grinned. “That’s not exactly how odds work, but go ahead.”
Matt took a drink of water, then lifted the finger of his right hand. “So if this is true, then it would be ridiculous for there to be only one six-fingered man. There have to be more, especially if they are emissaries from the giants to help keep the secret safe.”
Ethan reluctantly saw the logic in what Matt was saying, but it wasn’t supported by evidence.
“What I read was that polydactylism is the result of a giant and a human conceiving a child,” Matt continued. “If this is the case, and if my axiom is correct, then they’ve been sending their offspring out throughout the ages to track down people such as us.”
“To kill us,” Ethan added.
“Yes. To kill us. Stop us. Whatever. Polydactylism isn’t limited to the hands, you know. It could also refer to feet. Maybe the Nephilim who killed Billy had polydactyl feet. Ever think of that?”
Ethan blinked as he reran the idea through his brain. “I have to admit, I was confused about the situation. I get it that the six-fingered men support the giants. Because the warning never mentioned to beware of the Council of David, I thought that meant that they wouldn’t be concerned with us, unless of course we google them. So the killer could have been a six-toed man.”
“As could the woman in Boulder who fired the shotgun at you. A six-toed woman.”
Ethan laughed at the naming convention. The Six-Toed Woman. It sounded ridiculous. He said as much. Then added, “But I get it. You’re saying that there’s not one single Six-Fingered Man, instead they represent a group. Interesting axiom. It would explain a lot. It’s also kind of terrifying to think that there could be hundreds of them out there.”
“But you see there have to be,” Matt said.
Ethan nodded. After a while the conversation drifted to comments about the desert and some of the cars they passed.
Through it all, Shanny kept quiet. She merely stared out the window, deep in her own mind.