Revisions

Altun Ha performed the execution himself, in full regalia. As he straightened from delivering the blow, blood droplets fell from his mask of quetzal feathers. Amid the pounding of Tunkul drums, an apprentice came forward to take custody of the blade, and others adjusted King Bahlum Kuk’s body for proper drainage into the blood reservoir.

Pacal stood with the other Temple apprentices in a steep row from the bottom stair to the summit, witnessing the king’s sacrifice, his atonement for defeat in battle against the Eastern army. From the pyramid’s summit, Pacal looked out over the tree canopy, imagining enemy warriors stomping the jungle to the ground. But they were still far away, and they were not giants. Indeed, their religion proved how small they were.

The hard sun dried Pacal’s tears—a good thing, because he didn’t want Master Altun Ha to think him weak. As the solemn odor of blood soaked the air, Pacal sucked in a deep breath. With his investiture in eight days, he would wield the black knife for the first time, sanctifying once more the people, and the city of Tikal with the immemorial ritual.

Well, actually, he would rid the populace of another violent criminal. Looking out over the thousands gathered in the plaza below, Pacal knew that many of them saw Temple sacrifice in just those terms: as societal cleansing. Knowing each citizen’s genotype did allow some purging of villainy. As Tikal’s population geneticists read the citizens’ genomes, the sequencers would search for the genetic variations associated with violence, and those with the V-gene fell to the obsidian blade. But of course, the Temple’s ceremonies meant more than mere justice.

He watched as apprentices carried Bahlum Kuk’s body through the portal of the Temple, the doorway framed by stone snake jaws, symbolizing the threshold between the Middleworld and the Underworld, over which Heaven arched. Through these three worlds the Tree of Life rose, symbolically linking the domains.

Pacal was a modern student, trained in single nucleotide polymorphism analysis. But his cultural roots went deep, and he felt their tug. The sacred blood metaphorically nourished the three worlds, bringing prosperity to all. The king’s sacrifice was especially noble since he was no criminal, but the city’s highest symbol. Blood was the purifying sacrifice, and had been for a hundred twenty-year cycles of Mayan progress. Pacal looked at his bare toes and fingers, a sum of twenty, the logical basis of Mayan numbers. The numbers of the Eastern tribe were based upon half the number of human digits—another sure sign that their culture was inferior.

Poking through the jungle canopy was the summit of a neighboring Temple—by its presence helping to sanctify the landscape, physically linking geography and ritual. In this profound moment, Pacal felt tears accumulate again, but blinked them away as Altun Ha strode past, his face beaked and feathered, pocked here and there with the king’s blood.

Pacal followed his master into the robing room, deep and cool in the pyramid recesses, where he helped Altun Ha remove the feathered cape and regalia of office.

As Altun Ha removed the quetzal mask, Pacal could see a lingering trace of ecstasy on the old man’s face. Altun Ha and Bahlum Kuk had long been friends, but the master spoke with only the slightest quaver in his voice: “He was a good king,” he said. Such was the professionalism Altun Ha could command.

Nighttime was a good time for sex. So Pacal had been told by those who’d lain with women. Nighttime was the intoxicating reign of Xibalba, when the dark underworld rotated above the earth. It was also the time when thugs lurked in waiting to slit throats and steal the clothes off your corpse. So this night, to find Pacal a woman, his friends accompanied him well armed and in a group.

They sped along the branching canals in a power boat, with his friend Chel at the helm, dodging other traffic with ease, flying the pendant of the Temple, and commandeering the lanes by right of their Order. Overhead, Jupiter lay in alignment with Chicchan’s star, a fine configuration for first sex. It was nearly the same alignment that would, in six days, smile on Pacal’s investiture. He was eager to begin his purification rituals instead of carousing with friends, but it was a tradition that no executioner be a virgin, and Pacal was one who followed tradition.

Arriving in the grotto, Chel and the others found their girlfriends, leaving Pacal with a voluptuous older woman. The night’s magic settled over him as she poured their wine. Then a slim hand snatched the cup from the woman, and Pacal turned to face a beautiful girl with hair cut evenly at chin level.

She cocked her head to dismiss the other woman, and handed Pacal the wine. “I thought you’d be taller,” she said. It was a rude thing to say, but her eyes smiled over the edge of the cup she was draining.

“I am taller when I do my duty.” He meant when he stood on the Temple stairs, but her mocking grin informed him what she interpreted as “duty.”

Laughter rose and fell in the grotto like the chatter of birds. He noted Kina’s dark beauty, and her half smile. He wondered which side of her smile was meant for him. She resolved that question, taking him by the hand, and leading him into the forest.

Wet leaves slapped at his face as the path narrowed. He followed her, drunk with the prospect of unwinding the cloth that tightly bound her hips. When at last she stopped, they stood before a dark cave entrance, a portal exhaling a cold breath. Distant sounds of the grotto’s revels merged with the nearer jungle chitter.

Did she want him to follow her, or had he driven her from him? He peered into the cave, into what might be a black portal to Xibalba. Then he walked inside, where his skin sprouted an icy sweat. “Kina?” The cave’s version of his voice was pitifully small. No answer. She had shed him like an old garment.

He spoke into the blackness. “What would happen if we didn’t remove criminals from our land?” If she was there, she could hear. “If we let those with the violence gene procreate and transmit their violence to future generations? You see how criminals prey on decent folk. How a few hoodlums terrify us with killings and rape. Isn’t it better to cull such things from our genomes? Or would you rather have us dispatch undesirables in secret? Would you feel more pure if you didn’t observe?”

An arm slithered along his waist. “No,” Kina said from close behind him. “I think you can change, that’s all.” She pressed her naked skin against his back.

He found himself quite willing to save moral discussion for another time. Pacal followed her to a bed of palm fronds on the cave floor. “I’ll never change, you know.”

Hearing this, he thought she might be as new to sex as he was. To spare her the embarrassment of his fumblings, he said, “I’m supposed to lie with someone who knows what they’re doing.”

The realm of Xibalba stripped their inhibitions, setting its dark powers loose in their blood. She kept pulling back from him, helping him last, sharpening his desire. During that hour Pacal fell deeply in love with this stranger who now knew his body better than anyone.

It was with some disgust, then, that he learned why she had lain with him. She rumpled the fronds to refresh them, and lay back in his arms. From the darkness she brought out a small square and held it aloft at arm’s length.

His heart sinking, he reached out and touched it, feeling the bumpy leather, the tissue-thin pages. “Tell me this is not the Book of the Eastern god.” Tikal’s enemies called themselves the People of The Book, and they were intent on converts, whether by war or stealth.

Her pause made him sick. Rising up on one elbow, he stared at her, a dark soul in a world of blackness. He stood, snatching up his clothes and throwing them on. “Bahlum Kuk lost 15,000 warriors to the barbarians. How could you love them?”

Shadows stirred as she fumbled with her own clothes. “Pacal, what would happen if we didn’t allow all books to be read? Wouldn’t we be the barbarians?” Insufferably, her tone mimicked the one he had used earlier to defend his Order.

At the cave opening he paused. “How could you turn sex into preaching? Is this what your Eastern god commands?” He strode from the cave, feeling debased by what they had done together.

From the darkness her voice came, even clearer than when she lay next to him: “Your Temple doesn’t kill those with the violence gene, you know. They kill the People of The Book. That’s how they get rid of us. Not such a high calling after all, is it?”

He laughed, though it was far from what he felt. How could he be better than Master Altun, or the Order that tried to eradicate cruelty from their lives? With ritual cruelty. It was better so. Better, he said with each stomp of his feet through the underbrush. Better.

As Xibalba occupied the sky, the brazier’s smoke carried Pacal’s blood to the Heavens. The strips of paper that had caught his few drops of blood curled on the embers. Pacal reached down to cut himself one more time.

“Enough,” came the voice from the western portal. Altun Ha stood there, dressed now in the simple tunic of an educator and scientist. “It’s supposed to be purification, not torture,” the master said.

“Some need more purification than others,” Pacal dared to say. Though his investiture was only three days away, his former devotion was receding from him. Kina’s voice needled at him: Not such a high calling, is it? She had given him her body, but taken his certainty. It was not worth the trade.

Altun Ha said, “Let us be the judge of who is pure and who is not.” With more warmth he added, “I cut myself a lot when I was your age. I felt responsible for what our Order must do.” He turned to gaze at his student. “But I learned that I am not that important. Only the Temple, our city, our people have that importance.”

Altun Ha motioned for an apprentice to remove the brazier, lest Pacal attempt further mortification. “Tonight I go to sit by the new king’s bedside, to soothe his dreams. He, too, doubts his worthiness of office.” He smiled. “It’s contagious, perhaps. Get some sleep, boy.”

Pacal obeyed for a while. Then he rose from his bed, and walked the Temple halls. His aimless steps led him to the Repository. Flickering lights threw shadows on the walls storing the genomes of the 700,000 residents of Tikal. Though all the genomes had been sequenced, not all had been read. It was the difference between a library and a deepened scholar, between information and knowledge.

The genomes were organized by birth year and designated by engraved names: Kan-Xul, Lady Zak-lay, Uayeb, Mah-Cit, Yax-Ikal . . . and so on, across the vast wall, displaying the work of the last five cycles of Mayan scholarship. The implications of this knowledge were terrible and profound. Once knowing the trajectory of a life, Pacal’s Order could prevent its fruition. For the sake of the larger society.

Just ahead in the dim hall was Master Altun’s domain, a small stone cubicle with a simple chair and several digital machines. A light still burned, although the master was gone for the evening.

It took only a moment to find the data files for the next Temple ceremony. A person named Wac Chanil Ahau would meet the obsidian blade tomorrow.

Pacal glanced through the portal toward the Repository, but all remained quiet. Quickly, he scanned for the V-gene. He missed it the first time through. Hands slick with sweat, he keyed in a closer look at the genetic code, then scanned more deliberately for the telltale segment. Still nothing.

Xibalba held the heavens, and the Temple slept. Altun Ha could return at any moment, or the guards come checking, but Pacal persisted. Next he looked up the last person to require sacrifice, just a few days ago. No V-gene. Nor the one before that. He checked a dozen names.

Then, selecting the date of his investiture, he searched for the identity of the intended sacrifice. When the name appeared on the screen, he paused, his hands like claws on the keyboard. Here was a young woman who could not have the slightest violence in her. Her only unkindness had been her half smile, when he had wanted the full one. So he was to sever her neck for the crime of reading The Book. His world tipped out of balance.

In his intense concentration, he didn’t notice that he had company. The master. Pacal looked up. No, not the master. It was Chel.

Pacal could barely look at this young man that he thought he’d known, a man of the Temple’s highest Order, his friend Chel—his corrupt friend.

Chel closed his eyes for a moment. Then: “It is unusual. But Altun Ha doubts you.” He glanced away, saying the next thing with as much dignity as he could muster: “He saw your tears at Bahlum Kuk’s ceremony.” Then, meeting Pacal’s gaze, he added, “You have another chance. Kina will be your test of loyalty. Sometimes we must perform the ceremony on those we know. It does happen. We have to be professional.”

Chel caught up with him, grabbing Pacal’s elbow and spinning him around. “Listen to me. The Temple is the glue that holds society together.” He pointed past the stone walls, toward the kingdom of jungle and temples. “How long before the masses run riot in the streets, overtaking the king, the Temple, all that keeps order? Even if they have no violence gene, they’re doing a fine job of running riot.”

Chel frowned. “Who said we were? We read the genomes, but so far we can’t figure out how beliefs are encoded.” He paused. “We’re culling those without the V-gene.”

At Pacal’s look of consternation, he went on: “Tikal needs to be strong. The Eastern army is only one predator. There’s Calakmul and Uaxactun, both drooling at the prospect of our fields and temples.” He held up his hands against Pacal’s objections. “How do you think Tikal stays strong? Through violence, that’s how. Matching our strong warriors against theirs. Only a courageous people send their young fighters against invaders. We can’t afford the gene variants that make us soft.”

Pacal leaned against the wall holding the genomic Repository. He rubbed at the etched name under his fingertips, thinking that all this should be erased. No one had the right to know so much. The notion surprised him. He was a scientist. He’d never thought there should be a limit to knowledge.

“One more thing,” Chel said. “About Kina. If you don’t follow through with the ceremony, someone else will. You can’t save her, any more than Altun Ha could save the king. The difference between Kina and Bahlum Kuk is that he knew he had to die for his city. Kina is not so wise.”

Close to dawn on his investiture day, Pacal had slept little. In the sweltering predawn, he sat alone on the altar at the head of the Temple stairs, where the massive stones pumped out their stored heat. The day that he had anticipated for so long now began to color the sky. But he would rather hurl himself down the endless stairs than wear the feathered mask.

Kina waited in the cells beneath the Temple, along with all the other innocents. She was one of Tikal’s best, one of the soft ones. Pacal looked at the obsidian blade in his hand, its edge one molecule thick. Turning it on himself, his death would be swift. But it wouldn’t save Kina.

Bird cries arose from the jungle, as they began their daily plea for mates, calling their songs to demonstrate their genetic superiority. And the female birds, what sequencers did they have, to judge worthiness?

Without turning around Pacal said. “No, it’s closer than that, really.” He had never said no to the master before, and its sound now charged the silence between them. Pacal turned to face his old teacher.

Balanced on the edge of the stairs, Pacal planned to tumble down before he would relinquish the blade to this man. “No. I love what she is.”

The old man drooped his head. When he raised it again, his face had sagged with age. “Oh, Pacal, I worried about you from the start. Yet I hoped . . .”

Pacal felt tears welling. He clutched the knife so close to his chest that it nicked his tunic. “Why, Altun? Why not just develop a micro-reservoir of the kind of genes you want, and infuse them into the peaceful? Why kill them?” He waved his bladed hand at the Temple. “Is it just for showmanship? All this blood, just for show?” He was crying openly. And the tears this time were true, not some whipped-up allegiance to culture.

Altun Ha was close enough now that Pacal could see the anger hardening his features. “You of all people should know that keeping power requires a commitment to violence. You, Pacal, have the V-gene. As do I.” Seeing the expression on Pacal’s face, he shook his head. “Why else were you drawn to this Order?”

“It’s not a bad thing. We need it to do our job. Who else could stand to kill friends?” He looked down at the altar, perhaps remembering his own tests.

The sun sprayed its first light through the screen of the jungle, lighting up Altun Ha’s face. Pacal saw him clearly for the first time in his life: the easy grace, the good will, the evil. But he was no worse than Pacal himself.

Altun Ha knew what was coming a moment before Pacal himself. A look of alarm, like a frightened bird, lit in his face for a moment, replaced by the shock of the blade slicing in, as Pacal threw his weight behind the thrust. Altun fell forward, collapsing on the altar, sheltering the blade with his body.

V-gene, indeed. Pacal had it, in full. As he trembled, sweat ran from his body, releasing the accumulated poisons. Every cell in his body was contaminated. And not just genetically, but by all that he had done, by the ceremonies he had witnessed, by the apologies he had made for his Order. Everything was overturned, like the Underworld crawling into the sky at night.

Leaving Altun Ha’s body, he walked through the portal to the Temple’s inner world. He paused at a fountain, rinsing the blood from his hands and arms. A few drowsy acolytes were now afoot, but hardly noted him. Pacal found himself walking into the lower reaches of the Temple near the holding cells. There he roused a guard and, pointing to the stairs and the upper levels, babbled of murder and evil.

Their only chance was to travel swiftly toward the encroaching army, hoping for asylum. Pacal and Kina paddled unceasingly through the morning, using not the great canals, but the waterways overhung with jungle, too shallow for power boats.

The river current was with them, flowing into the ocean, the great half circle gulf that separated the great peninsula lands from the northern lands. Kina had spoken of life on those vast plains, filled with bison and the tribes she called “close cousins,” but Pacal hardly cared. It was only for Kina that he paddled. Because her life should not be forfeit.

Before long they did encounter the Eastern forces, who let them pass because Kina had The Book, and could quote it. They looked askance at Pacal, but during the last few days he had learned to lie, among other things.

They came to the blue gulf, where Kina said they could paddle north, hugging the coast. Pacal would leave her now that she was safe. Surely he could no longer be her favorite. He hadn’t changed as she’d hoped—in fact he had proved his violence. But he was unwilling to convert to a religion. Religion had ruined so much. Could the Eastern religion be far different?

As night fell, they made their camp on the beach. It was just an ordinary night, no great myth of antiquity. The stars poked through, their alignment a matter of indifference.

Pacal jerked away. “We had a tree of life in Tikal—the one that grows between the three worlds. It was full of rot. So is this one.”

“The Maya aren’t the only ones that have been working on gene analysis. Across the ocean, our sisters and brothers have been working on genomes, too. All the genomes.” As Pacal took The Book in his hands, he peered more closely at the branches depicted there. Each one held not a leaf, but a species of plant or animal.

Kina went on, “They’ve finished it, Pacal. The Tree of Life. Look.” She sidled closer to him, pointing to the center page, one so large it had to be folded out.

“Here’s what the genomes—all the genomes—teach us: the unique pattern of evolutionary branching. On these branches and twigs you can read the names of every creature, every plant known to us, and how closely each is related to each.” She looked at him squarely, without a zealot’s fire, but with a firm resolve. “It’s our kinship system. This is what we revere now. This is the new religion.”

She shrugged, turning the pages of The Book, showing yet more diagrams, more details of the links between and among creatures. “Maybe it’s not a real religion. But it’s something to honor. We honor each other, because we’re kin to each other. And to every living thing.” She stirred the fire, and it burned brighter. “The human genome isn’t the only one that matters. It all matters. It’s all part of a grand progression. We have to revere that.”

The surf pounded, somehow louder now that it was cloaked in darkness. Pacal had to wonder if the lessons nature taught were violent or peaceful ones. He asked,

“They’re not. They’re protecting their boundaries from Tikal’s armies. Eventually the Eastern tribes will bring news of The Book to Tikal. Maybe it will compete with the Temple. Maybe it won’t.” She looked at him with mischievous dark eyes. “But meanwhile, you and I will be heading north to spread the word on the northern plains.”

She turned the pages of The Book. “Pacal, do you see any individual genomes here? Any attempts to say what an individual is or may do?” He saw the branches of cousinship, but no personal genomes. Kina went on, “The Book says that reading a genome isn’t the same as understanding that animal.”

Although she offered him a way out, he couldn’t help but pursue the topic. “But Kina, I have the V-gene, and I did kill Altun Ha.”

She forgave him his crimes. But was that a fatal softness in her, or a deeper wisdom? He had to admit that just because the V-gene and the murder of Altun Ha happened together, it didn’t mean that one caused the other. He wanted to believe he could change. And so he resolved to justify her faith in him, to be better than what he’d done so far. To be worthy of her. To prove his genome didn’t rule.

He watched Kina as she closed The Book. She carefully wrapped it in heavy cloth, and tucked it into their knapsack. “The Book is a good size for traveling,” she said, smiling with both sides of her mouth. “Nice and small.”

Lying next to Kina, Pacal thought about the Temple’s Repository, with its 700,000 names. He was glad they would be traveling light.

Revision Point

In May, 1995, the bacterium that causes meningitis became the first free-living organism to have its entire DNA sequence revealed. On June 26, 2000, a draft sequence of the human genome was announced by the Human Genome Project led by Francis Collins, and Celera Genomics, led by Craig Venter. In the twenty-first century, what if functional genomics, identifying what specific genes do, provides the basis for extraordinary new knowledge of the machinery of life, and perhaps the gene variants that influence behavioral differences in individuals?

K.K.