PART FOUR Scene 59

“I’m taking the outer belt,” says Myron. It’s morning now. Blinky is still studying the Hopewell texts. Myron steers the vehicle onto a highway that circles Columbus, Ohio. It’s loud in the cab.

“It says here,” says Blinky, “that these mounds were like portals.”

“Portals?”

“If you watched even a little science fiction, this would be easier.”

Blinky points at the illustration of the earthwork. “You remember what this thing looks like? It’s got a circular side, and a little connector piece, and then an octagonal part over here. They call them enclosures. This says that the circular end was like a model of the earth. And the octagon was meant to be a model of the sky.”

“They’re guessing,” says Myron.

“No, this is a real archaeologist. I understand about 70 percent of this.” Blinky turns back a few pages. “This is about burial practices. They would make a little house--they call it a “charnel house”--and they’d take the dead guy, and they’d cremate him. Then they’d pile a bunch of dirt on the house, and make a mound.” Blinky pages back to the drawing, and points to it. “The charnel mounds are inside the big circular thing. See? Inside this enclosure is a special area. It’s the model.”

“Of the sky.”

“No. The round part symbolizes the earth. Which is why these little burial mounds are there. At least I think so.”

“So if the circular part is supposed to be the earth,” ask Myron, “then how does the octagonal part relate to the sky?”

“Somehow,” answers Blinky, reading, “it’s aimed at the moon.”

“Aimed at the moon. The moon moves around.”

“So maybe it’s a calendar? Okay, it says that the moon comes up in different spots along the horizon, on a 19-year cycle.” Blinky looks up. “Did you know that?”

“No,” says Myron. “I didn’t.”

“So the mounds are aligned with the moonrise at different points of the cycle, or something to that effect. Bottom line, the points on the octagon relate to some aspect of the moon.”

He closes the book.

“Basically, it’s astronomical.”

“Stonehenge.”

“More or less.”

Myron adds, “More dirt, less rocks.”

Blinky chuckles.

Morning sun is streaming into the cab.

“Okay,” continues Myron, curious, “go back to the portal concept.”

Blinky opens the book back up and flips around for a minute. “Alright,” he says, “here it is. The idea is that when the dead guy gets burned in his charnel house, his soul is released. Remember, this is the circle enclosure, the Earth side of things. So the smoke from the fire floats up with the soul in it. Through the circle. Which is, I gather, sort of like the “hole in the world” that Little Turtle mentioned.”

Blinky reads on.

“So then, when the soul in the smoke travels up in the atmosphere, he passes into like the domain of the moon. He’s over in the octagon then, and I guess he sort of looks down at the diagram, or maybe it’s a map. Supposedly the moon thing tells him where to go.”

“Which is where.”

“I don’t know. You’d have to be dead to know that.”

The rumbling sound in the cab seems to get louder in the silence that follows.

“Maybe,” says Myron, “your friend Tom is up there.”

“I hope so,” says Blinky. “I just hope he takes his time and figures it out.”