Blood Sun by David Gilman Page A

looking for is coming here. Certainly not tonight.”
    “And he has made no contact with you?” Morgan said.
    “None. Bit of a wild-goose chase by the sound of it. Well, I’d better be off. Papers to mark before tomorrow. Good night.”
    Morgan gnawed her lip. Max Gordon would have been here by now.
    “He’s fooled us,” she muttered to herself. “He’s laid a false trail. Where is he?” She called after Blacker, “Professor, is there another academic who might know about khipus?”
* * *
    London groaned and coughed with the millions of people who lived, worked and visited. Dozens of languages whispered in the back alleys, called to friends, shouted in argument or promised undying love to another.
    But where Max sat in the Anthropology Library of the British Museum, all was quiet. The museum had closed; the lights had flickered down, leaving shadows of giant statues watching blindly over the great halls.
    Sayid had done his homework, just as Max had asked. He’d hacked into the school’s mainframe computer and found the man who had sponsored Danny Maguire’s request to spend a couple of years in South America: Dr. Raymond Miller, curator of South American ethnography at the British Museum.
    When the efficient and threatening Ms. Morgan had swept quickly through Max’s files at Dartmoor High, she had seen no mention of the curator’s name. It had been tucked away in a cyber-vault by a fourteen-year-old boy who felt a warm glow at getting his own back.
    “Khipus are devilishly difficult to decipher,” Dr. Miller said as he fingered the knotted cords. “Some of them are the size of grass skirts. Huge things. The main cords can often be five or six meters long. Specialists have spent years and years getting to grips with the messages they hold. But this one …” His fine-boned fingers teased the cords apart. “This is quite simple. It is, I should say, not genuine, but made, I am sure, by our young friend Danny Maguire.”
    “Then he was trying to tell me something,” Max said.
    “It is crude and amateurish, but that is not a criticism. It is a fact. One could expect little else, but it was a clever thing to do. Young Maguire must have known there were people wanting this information—why, we cannot say—so he did his best. Bless him. I liked that boy.”
    Max could barely restrain his impatience. The academic was taking so long to tell him anything, but he did not want to rush the elderly man, desperately hoping his knowledge would be the key.
    Dr. Miller rambled on about how a khipu’s main cord was always thicker than the pendants tied on to it. How the different knots meant different things, how the colors dyed into the knots were significant. Come on ! Tell me ! Max shouted in his head, but sat on his hands in case his irritation began to show.
    Fancy loops and dangles, entwined knots and subsidiary cords all made up a fascinating and confusing intricacy from an ancient people who were thought to be illiterate. Not so, Dr. Miller assured him. Finally he gave a sigh and a grunt of understanding at what lay between his fingers. He pushed his spectacles back up the bridge of his nose. He looked at Max and saw the boy’s controlled agitation.
    “Forgive me. I’ve been going on, haven’t I? I’m sure you don’t want an anthropological explanation of khipus’ origins. This is important to you; I can see that. Look here, these knots are stained red. Traditionally that means ‘soldiers’ or ‘armed men.’ The arithmetic is simple. Each knot means ten; joined knots like these three mean thirty. Thirty armedmen—here.” He fingered another knot. “A temple. These other knots denote men and women. These mean clusters of children. Or so it would seem. One can never be certain. Khipus guard their knowledge like sacred secrets.”
    Max tried to picture the message in his head. Armed men near a temple where there were women and children. Though it seemed the children were separate. What did this