6

There was no reason to go, Altman thought. It was silly, probably someone’s idea of a joke. You ask enough questions, and it was inevitable that someone would screw with you. The last thing he needed was to start thinking espionage and conspiracy. He needed to figure this out rationally and scientifically. So instead of going to the bar, he just went home.

When he arrived, Ada was already there. She was sitting at the table, leaning back in the chair, asleep, her long dark hair tucked behind her ears and cascading over her shoulders. Altman kissed her neck and woke her up.

She smiled and her dark eyes flashed. “You’re later than normal, Michael,” she said. “You haven’t been cheating on me, have you?” she teased.

“Hey, I’m not the one who’s exhausted,” he said.

“I didn’t sleep well last night,” she said. “Had the worst dreams.”

“Me, too,” he said. He sat down and took a deep breath. “Something weird is going on,” he said. He told her about what he and Field had discovered, the calls he had made, the general sense that he felt, and that others seemed to share, that something was off.

“That’s funny,” said Ada. “And not in a good way. It was the same with me today.”

“You discovered a gravitational anomaly, did you?”

“Kind of,” she said. “Or at least the anthropological equivalent. The stories are changing.”

“What stories?”

“The folktales, they’re starting to change, and quickly, too. That doesn’t happen, Michael. It never happens.”

Altman was suddenly serious. “Never?”

“Never.”

“Shit.”

“They keep speaking of the devil’s tail,” she said, “a kind of twisted pronged thing. When they mention it, they cross their fingers, like this.” She raised her middle and index fingers, crossed them. “But when I try to get them to talk about it, they fall silent. They’ve never been like that with me before. It’s like they don’t trust me anymore.” She brushed the top of the table with her hand. “You want to know what’s strangest of all?”

“What?”

“Do you know how they say ‘tail of the devil’ in Yucatec Maya? Same name as the crater: Chicxulub.”

Altman felt his throat go dry. He looked at the clock. A quarter to eight. Still time to make it to the bar after all.