was grinning.
"Good work. I was hoping to find something that can help date the outlying sites so I'd know whether they were inhabited at the same time as the main area. That'd help us get an idea of the population that this center supported." She stood up and looked around as if she expected to find more. "You're as lucky as Liz at this game."
We searched the rest of the area and found no more monuments. Maggie discovered a tree filled with stinging ants. I found a tree loaded with thorns and managed to forget about the two men in the dream.
Nothing else of note. On our way back, we laid a transect line adjacent to the line we had laid going in.
Chapter Nine: Elizabeth
At dinner that night, Maggie sat beside John and kept up an animated conversation over the chicken and stewed tomatoes. I assumed that she had quarreled with Carlos and wondered how long it would take for them to make up. Diane and Barbara were talking quietly about the book that Diane was reading.
"I read about the Mayan calendar today," Diane said to me. "It seems confusing: twenty days to a month, eighteen months to a year, twenty years to a ..." She stopped. "I've forgotten."
"A katun," I said. "It gets worse. From the sound of it, you were reading about the Long Count. There's also the haab, a cycle of three hundred and sixty-five days divided into eighteen months, with five days at the end for bad luck. There's the tzolkin, a cycle of two hundred and sixty days divided into thirteen months.
And then there's the cycle of the katuns, which repeats every two hundred and fifty-six years. But you don't have to worry about the names and numbers. You just need to understand the intent. The calendar let the Maya follow the cycles of time and predict the future by knowing the past. Whatever happens at a particular time will recur when that time returns. If the last Katun 8 was a katun of upheaval and discord, this one will be too. A h'men, a Mayan priest, can determine which gods influence a certain day—and because he knows the gods, he can predict what will happen at that time. He can advise you on whether you should expect a particular day to be lucky or unlucky, good for planting corn or for hunting or for burning incense. The Maya looked for patterns."
Diane nodded and smiled in a strange sort of way. We were in a little island of quiet: Tony was talking with Robin; Carlos was watching Maggie flirt, his face expressionless; Barbara was listening without comment. "It makes a sort of sense," Diane said. "They believed you must know and understand your past to understand your future."
"Yes," I said slowly. "I suppose so."
She nodded again and said no more about it.
I stayed in the plaza to drink coffee after dinner. Barbara was discussing her survey plans with Tony.
Tony nodded sagely and smoked his pipe. Diane had moved to the edge of the plaza. She sat in a folding chair in the fading light of the setting sun. She was reading a hardcover book—one of Barbara's texts on the Maya.
I found myself watching my daughter. She had been swimming in the cenote before dinner and she had combed her hair out to dry. It flowed down around her shoulders. Her hands, holding the book open before her, were soft and slender, each nail perfectly shaped. She was leaning forward, and the collar of her loose shirt had fallen open to show the strong muscles of her neck. She lifted one hand to her head to push back the tide of hair, and I watched the muscles of her arm flex and shift.
She glanced in my direction and caught me watching her. Her eyes widened and a look of doubt crossed her face, but she smiled. I believe that she smiled in self-defense, using the open vulnerability of her smile as a shield, the way a puppy bares its neck to a stronger dog. The smile was a peace offering, made before the conflict began.
The inevitable card game had begun at the other table. Maggie, Robin, and John were playing. Carlos had not joined them. He was still at the dinner table, smoking a cigarette and looking pensive. A calculated pose, I was sure. He held the cigarette loosely in one hand and leaned back in his chair, his white shirt open at the collar and