Ice Shock(84)

“You don’t remember anything about me and Mom,” I say. “How about something further back. Your mother? Your father?”

“I have these feelings … but I can’t remember names or faces.”

“How about archaeology? You remember any of that?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I could remember language. The language part of my memory seems to be untouched.”

Ixchel speaks to him in Yucatec, saying something I don’t understand. He replies and then looks astonished.

“You speak Yucatec,” she says. “Can you also read the writing on the Bracelet?”

“I’ve already tried. It’s a type of cuneiform writing—looks like an ancient Mesopotamian language, but with strange modifications to the symbols. It doesn’t make any sense.”

Montoyo didn’t make a big deal about the links between Itzamna, Ek Naab, and the Erinsi—the ancients named with old Mesopotamian words for People of Memory. But the Adapter, the Revival Chamber, and now the Bracelet of Itzamna all seem to have a link with ancient Mesopotamia.

How far back does this go?

The sorrow I’ve been feeling that my own father doesn’t recognize me is starting to melt. I sense the beginning of hope. If I can persuade my dad to leave this mountain with us, we can try to get him home. Maybe that will bring back his memories.

Dad stares at me again. “I wish I could remember you. You must be one heck of a boy, the kind of son a man can really be proud of.”

I stare back at him wordlessly, feel a lump rise in my throat.

“How did you find me?” he asks.

I tell him most of the story—how I came looking for the Ix Codex, how I found Camila and then Ek Naab, and how eventually I recovered the codex. When I come to the part about Camila drowning, I can’t go on. I can see from his reaction that he doesn’t remember who Camila is—and I don’t have the heart to tell him. So I skip the details—I don’t tell him that she was my sister; I don’t tell him that she died.

Talking about what happened helps to keep my mind off the utter misery of the situation. I’m talking to my father—and he’s engrossed by what I’m saying—yet he can’t think of me as his son.

Which makes it hard to feel like his son. That’s not easy to stand.

With help from Ixchel, I tell him about the message in the postcards, from Arcadio. The name doesn’t ring any bells with my father. He listens with intense concentration.

At a certain point, I remember that I have my dad’s iPod. Maybe he’ll recognize an object? Maybe it’s just people he can’t remember?

I show him the iPod, but he just shakes his head. “As far as I remember, I’ve never seen one before.”

Ixchel says, “What happens if you play something from it?”

I pass Andres the iPod and show him how to hook up the earphones. I select a playlist of Miles Davis tracks, beginning with “Blue in Green.”

Watching him listen to the tune that’s haunted me for weeks, I almost cry. Within a minute, tears are rolling down his cheeks and into his beard. He squeezes his eyes shut and grips my arm hard. His voice cracks with emotion as he whispers, “I remember this. I do.”

Ixchel goes to the kitchen to make tea from the water that’s just boiled.

I sit with my father as he listens to the music. I watch him wipe away his tears.

He looks into my eyes. “You’ve been in all this danger, because of me.”

“He got shot too,” chimes in Ixchel, before I can silence her.

“No …”

“It’s nothing,” I say. “Just a flesh wound.”

“But it happened because of me.”

“No, no way!”

“Yes,” he insists, sadly. “From what you’ve said, it’s obvious. I should have found this Ix Codex. Not you. It wasn’t your job.”

“Well, maybe it was my job.”

“No. You completed the mission I started. You succeeded where I failed. Meanwhile I’m holed up in here like a fox, afraid to leave.”

“Well, you know what they say … it’s not paranoia if they really are out to get you.”

But Dad ignores my attempt to be funny. “I still don’t know how I’m going to get away from here. It’s a physical thing. I can’t make myself go past the first hut.”

“We’ll help.”

“And I don’t even remember my own boy!” He rips the earphones off and stares in despair. “I can remember some lousy jazz track but I can’t remember my wife or son.”

Ixchel says, “With help, maybe you can get your memory back.”

“You say that only because you can’t imagine what it’s like. To have no memories! Just murky images, impossible to grasp; sounds that bubble up as if from the swamp of dreams.”