Caine shrugged. “The Mayans had a strong belief in an afterlife in which they would be rewarded or punished. They also believed that the universe was kept in balance by what they did. Much of the knowledge they accumulated in books about astronomy and mathematics was intended to tell them what they should do to keep the universe from spinning out of control and destroying itself like an unbalanced machine. By 1537, this man’s universe had been showing signs of coming apart for hundreds of years. There had been terrible droughts from 750 to 900 A.D., a series of wars between cities, disease. And then the Spaniards came. Their arrival in 1524 was like the landing of aliens in a horror movie. They carried weapons nobody could fight or make for themselves. They were bent on destroying what remained of Mayan civilization and killing or enslaving every Mayan person. It was the final curse after a long series of curses. A Mayan—and this was a person of the royal class—would have taken the long view. These are people whose calendar was divided into cycles 5,125 years long. He might have believed that the book he was saving contained information essential to keeping the world intact or rebuilding it in the future.”

“I suppose, then, he wouldn’t hesitate to sacrifice himself to save the book.”

Caine said, “Imagine that powerful, humanlike creatures arrived here in spaceships, killed or enslaved everyone they could find, and then began the process of finding every computer, every book, and burning it. Oops! There goes the history of art, and, after it, every painting. There goes calculus, algebra, even arithmetic. They’re burning the books of every religion—all Bibles, the Koran, the Talmud, everything. Did they forget philosophy? Nope, it’s all going into the fire. Every poem, every story, ever written? Up in smoke. Physics, chemistry, biology, medicine; the history of the Romans and Greeks, the Chinese, the Egyptians. All gone.”

“What a terrible, sad idea,” Remi said. “We’d be back in the stone age with no map for the way back here.”

“It also makes me even more curious about the codex,” said Sam. “What was it that our friend managed to save from the fires? What’s in here?”

Caine shrugged. “That’s what’s been keeping me awake for two days.”

There was a knock on the door. “Come in,” Sam called.

Selma entered. “Am I too late?”

“No,” said Remi. “Professor David Caine, this is Selma Wondrash, who is kind enough to work with us as our chief researcher. Whatever the subject is, if Selma doesn’t know the answer, she knows where it can be found.”

Caine stood and they shook hands. “Wondrash. It’s not a common name. Are you related to the S. I. Wondrash who helped catalog the Inca quipu?”

“I am S. I. Wondrash,” she said. “But the quipu project was a long time ago.”