The Fifth Harmonic by F. Paul Wilson

abandoned me in the forest. She wasn't Xtabay.
    But though this Maya bore little resemblance to the woman I'd met back home, she was just as striking, if not more so. She'd plaited her hair into two long braids and was dressed in an ankle-length shift of coarse white cotton, embroidered at the neck and hem and cinched at the waist with a colorful cloth belt.
    “Dr. Burleigh!” she said, hurrying toward me. “Are you—?”
    “Care for a banana?” I said, holding up my leftovers. With food and fluid, my hoarseness had receded.
    She slowed her pace and grinned. Those dimples appeared, and her jade eyes flashed.
    Ambrosio began laughing, and rattled off a string of clicks, shhsh es, and hard consonants that definitely was not Spanish. Mayan maybe?
    Maya was sauntering toward me now, hands on hips, smiling. “I was so worried about you, and yet how do I find you? Looking as if you have been on a picnic.”
    That smile. I was glad I could make her smile.
    “Just because I'm the shining blind man in the fortress doesn't mean I'm not adaptable.”
    “Obviously this is true.”
    Over her shoulder I spotted a second man crawling out of the rear of her Jeep. He'd been cut from the same stuff as Ambrosio; looked like they even had the same dentist.
    “Buenos dias,” he said with a gilded smile.
    “That is Jorge,” Maya said. “He knows engines. He and Ambrosio are going to stay here and get this first Jeep going again while you and I travel on in the new one.”
    “Sounds good to me,” I said.
    I hauled out my duffel and carried it to the new Jeep. I waited for Ambrosio and Jorge to remove the tool box, oil cans, and gas jugs from the rear, then tossed it inside. I turned and found Maya in the driver seat, nibbling delicately on one of my bananas.
    “Want me to drive?”
    She shook her head. “Maybe later, but here I know the way better.”
    Ambrosio and Jorge waved as we drove off.
    I watched Maya drive. She was relaxed, almost casual, and worked the standard shift like a pro. Her long legs pulled at the fabric of her shift as her bare feet worked the gas and clutch pedals.
    “Is that a native dress?” I said.
    “It's called a huipil . It's very comfortable.”
    “That and the braids make you look like you belong here.”
    “Thank you. In Westchester the braids would be seen as an attempt to look girlish. Here they are simply practical.” She glanced at me. “And you . . . you look . . . different.”
    “Besides needing a bath and a shave?”
    “Yes. Different inside.”
    I told her about last night. She nodded often as she listened, smiling now and again.
    “You became closer to the Mother last night,” she said when I was done. “Some of the walls of your fortress were weakened.”
    I didn't know about the Mother business, but I knew the night spent sitting in that ancient temple had taken me farther from my old life than the whole day of flying that had preceded it.
    I began to wonder if that might have been Maya's plan all along: Have Ambrosio fake a breakdown and leave me alone overnight; a trial by fire, so to speak—or in this case, by storm.
    I wanted to ask her, but didn't know how she'd react. She might take it as an insult. I decided to see how things went and ask her later. I might ask about the “discrepancies” in her CV then too. Or I might wait until I heard more from Terziski.
    Right now, as we splashed along the green tunnel of the gully, I had another, more immediate question.
    “Where are we going?”
    “To find your first harmonic.”
    “Harmonic? What's that?”
    “Do you remember the tines I used to survey your chakras?”
    “Of course.”
    “We are going to find some for you and let you make them your own.”
    “Find? You make them sound like they spring from the ground, like mushrooms.”
    “They don't grow. They were fashioned, and then hidden away.”
    “By whom?”
    “No one knows.”
    This was starting to sound like science fiction. “Okay, we find these tines, then