Ice Shock(35)
“Why is the Ix Codex written in English?”
Montoyo and Benicio stare at me. Benicio’s eyes become round and shiny. Montoyo sighs and turns to Benicio, who stands up.
“It’s okay, I know, I know. I’m going,” Benicio says and leaves the room. I just about hear him sigh as he goes out through the front door.
Montoyo turns a stern eye on me. “You don’t talk about the codex to anyone outside the Executive. Ever!”
“All right!” I say. “I’m sorry!”
“Benicio, as you’ve realized by now, did not know what you have just told us. For the sake of most of the citizens of Ek Naab, the Books of Itzamna are written in code—that’s all they know.”
“All right,” I say. “But Benicio’s okay, isn’t he? I mean, we can tell him.”
Montoyo pauses for a second. “Benicio is okay, yes, but the policy should not be changed.”
I’m starting to feel defensive. “You could have warned me.”
He nods. “Accepted. But from now on, you don’t speak of the codex to anyone outside of the Executive, okay?”
We watch each other for a second. He’s deadly earnest.
I say, “Okay.”
“I don’t have a good answer to your question,” he says. “It has been the subject of speculation for hundreds of years—the reason that we didn’t decipher the codices for so long—but no citizen of Ek Naab knew English. And then in 1842, we had a visitor, the American explorer Mr. John Lloyd Stephens.”
Montoyo and I exchange a long, knowing look.
“John Lloyd Stephens?” I blurt.
“Yes.”
“Who wrote the book … ?”
Montoyo nods, calmly. “Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatan … The one Simon Madison took from your house, yes, that one.”
I can hardly believe what I’m hearing. “John Lloyd Stephens came to Ek Naab? And kept it a secret?”
“It’s a long and fascinating story,” Montoyo says. “Remind me to tell you one day. Being economical, it is enough to say that from him, the members of the Executive learned enough English to deduce that the codices were written in English.”
“But how is that possible?” I’ve been thinking it over for days and it just doesn’t make sense. “I mean, I don’t know much about British history, but I’m pretty sure that when the codices were written, Britain was part of the Roman Empire. Did English even exist then, as a language?”
Montoyo says drily, “You know even less British history than you imagine. Roman Britain dates from after 50 BC. The Books of Itzamna were written around 350 BC.”
“But did anyone speak English then?”
Montoyo sighs. “What do they teach you at school? Of course not. In 350 BC, you’d find little trace of anything you’d recognize as English.”
“So the codices are fakes?”
“Fakes … meaning what?”
“They weren’t really written in 350 BC.”
“As I just told you, they were.”
“But how? If no one spoke English at the time?”
“Well, that’s the question, isn’t it?”
I hesitate. “Are you saying you don’t know why they’re in English?”
“I’m saying that in over fifteen hundred years, with all the resources at our disposal, we have no conclusive answer to that question.”
“But you have a theory.”
“A theory, of course. We have several theories.”
I pause, expectant. But he says nothing.
“… And?”
“Well, Josh, let me ask you: what do you think is the answer?”
I think about it again.
“Itzamna definitely wrote them?”
“So it is claimed.”
“Who claims it?”
“Itzamna himself. He claims to have copied them from the walls of a temple he found. Where—as you’ll know from reading the beginning of the Ix Codex—they were first written by the Erinsi.”
“Right,” I say. “Ollie mentioned that. The Erinsi—she knows all about them. So could you tell me: who are the Erinsi?”
Montoyo gives a tiny smile. “You don’t by any chance know any ancient Sumerian, do you?”
“Actually, I don’t.”
“I was just wondering if, maybe, you learned it when you weren’t learning British history.”
“No, I learn modern stuff, you know, that is actually useful for modern life,” I say, impatient. “What’s Sumerian?”
“Sumerian was an ancient language of Mesopotamia—what you now call Iraq. In old Akkadian, a dialect of Sumerian, Erinsi translates as ‘people remember’—or perhaps ‘people of the memory.’