Book Excerpt for The Chaos Formula

The Chaos Formula-- Extract

Richard Stooker

Cover graphic design by Drew at idrewdesign on Fiverr.com.

The right of Richard Stooker to be identified as the author of this book has been asserted in accordance with Sections 77 and 78 of the Copyrights and Patents Act 1988.

Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying, and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the author.

All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

"What's he into now?" Jaxon asked.

Ken sighed, and sorrow lined his face. "He's not like the old days, when you kids came here every Saturday, so curious, so interesting in learning everything, so--"

"What's he into now?" Jaxon asked.

"I don't know, I swear."

"He claims he works for you."

"He does. The store's now too big for only me. I evicted my last tenant four years ago, just to put the Tarot cards in that old living room. You ought to see my collection now. I found a woman in Jeff City who does the most fantastic art. She's producing a custom Tarot deck based on Tibetan Buddhism. It's incredible."

"Ken . . . "

"I sold him an old book. I wanted to keep it for a Japanese collector, but when he saw it, he insisted I sell it to him. He paid me the money, even though it was two thousand five hundred dollars, so I couldn't refuse."

"Keith paid two and a half grand for one book? What book?"

"I've got other expensive books."

"Keith is not wealthy. What was the book?"

"I don't remember."

"You remember every book I bought for twenty bucks. What was it?"

"Don't hate me, Jaxon. And don't ask me where I got it, I can't tell you that."

"What was it, Ken?"

"The Secret Black Rites of the Shadow Giants by Father Otto v Wolff. Also known as Suppressed Mysteries of the Neolithic."

Jaxon grabbed Ken by the throat and began choking him.

"You sold Keith the most evil book in the world!"

"Jaxon, it's not so bad. Really. Just a lot of nonsense about ancient animistic beliefs in the Mideast. You know how Christianity stamped out pagan religions as it spread through Europe. It did the same everywhere it spread, including the Middle East."

"Keith is sacrificing babies to Baal?"

"I didn't say that. I just mean, there were lots of pagan gods and belief systems lost or nearly lost to history. Anyway, that book was written by a renegade priest who claims he obtained access to secret Vatican records about mythologies going back even before the pyramids."

Jaxon didn't like Ken's body language. It was too straight-forward, too honest-appearing. Ken's eyes looked directly into his. He stood with his backbone straight, shoulders back, perfect posture.

He had to be hiding something.

"Okay, there were a thousand names for nature gods," Jaxon said. "The sun, the moon, the Earth, the sky, all the obvious stuff. Yeah yeah yeah. And stories. Primitive Stephen Kings entertained the masses with myths. So what? Why'd my brother care so much?"

"I don't know." Ken shrugged with elaborate thoroughness, contorting every muscle to demonstrate his ignorance.

Ken might charm the West County wives who wanted New Age channeling and astrological counseling for a birthday party, but he didn't fool Jaxon.

He looked around at the clean, well-lit shelves. Somehow, despite the type of merchandise he carried, Ken kept the converted apartments looking more like a department of Wal-Mart than something out of a Harry Potter book.

Jaxon also knew the store possessed dark, dusty corners holding items you wouldn't see unless you were somehow Meant to find them. Covering up secrets the New Age wannabes and Secret suckers didn't want to learn.

"You have to know Keith can't afford to pay two and a half thousand for any book in the world."

"High quality leather binding and gold embossed."

"For the superstitions of primitive farmers. Great."

"Jaxon, what've you got against primitive farmers?"

"They did the best they could to survive, they couldn't know any better. What's Keith's excuse?"

"And . . . mine?"

"I didn't say."

"But you implied it. Never mind." He waved his hand in a casual motion of dismissal. "Jaxon, it's good to see you again. Really, I mean that. Don't be stranger."

Jaxon looked around. He could still understand how when he was a a teenager this place had seemed so mysterious and wonderful. A tribute to the human imagination. But now its success seemed also a monument to human ignorance.

Like casinos and stock pickers, including mutual fund managers, Ken earned his daily bread by profiting from the emotional needs of people who failed to get the facts and think rationally about them.

"I've been busy," Jaxon said. "School and part-time work. Now I've got a great full-time job."

"Good, I'm glad to hear that. Your brother says you make a lot of money. Not just good money, like you're rolling in the stuff."

"True enough." Jaxon didn't like discussing his income with anybody, but he didn't want to deny his success.

"I remember you buying lots of prosperity books and spells and guided meditations and stuff."

"Too much stuff. Finally I figured out I made money by delivering pizzas and collecting tips. The more hours I worked, the more I earned. Magic had nothing to do with it."

"Maybe it helped you more than you realize. Not every college boy meets a mentor like your boss lady."

"Keith told you about her?"

"I know plenty Bosnian boys and girls graduate from college, high grades, very smart, but no office jobs for them yet. They still wait tables for the family."

"Then what good are a bunch of ancient stories? Don't sell Keith any more books until he has a real job."

Neolithic Dream 15

7988 BCE

On the west bank of Lower Nile River

Because of the strong southern breeze at their backs, Taurek failed to smell the village ahead of them.

When Taurek spotted the men and women wading in the Big River, far ahead of them, while holding a large net, he dropped to his knees and ducked his head down.

Loraa followed.

They scrambled behind a clump of bushes. This stretched Taurek's wounds. His stiff muscles could not move quickly.

"Did they see us?" Loraa asked.

Taurek lifted his head. "I don't think so. They're focused on the fish. Do you want to go around?"

"We'd lose a lot of time."

"I know you're in a hurry, but people are dangerous. We haven't rescued any of these people's children from slavers."

"We don't know how far inland their fields go. What if some of them are shepherds herding sheep or goats? Maybe some kids playing in the woods would see us. And you're still too weak to cover so much distance without a rest."

"Let's try to get by fast. Cover your arms and legs completely, and hood your face with your robe. Maybe they won't notice your skin."

But of course the people will look closely. Two strangers -- one a woman and the other a soldier -- walking along the river?

Taurek jammed his spear into the back of his belt so he could reach it if necessary, but still appear nonthreatening. The rest of his weapons hung from their places on his belt.

As they drew close to the men and women, Taurek raised his arms to show his open, empty hands.

"We come in peace," he shouted. "Our business is farther upriver. We want no trouble."

The people murmured back and forth to each other as they stared, and drew back, not trying to stop them.

They kept walking, stared at but unmolested. Not long, now.

Close to the upriver edge of the village, however, a fat woman ran out of a hut and, shrieking, jumped in front of them, dancing and waving her hands.

Naked, her large breasts flapped up and down and to the side. A large necklace of bones, including a baby's skull, jiggled under her throat. She painted her face with hideous streaks of red, blue, green, and white. She shaved half her head bald, but let the hair on the other side grow down her back like a tangled, fluffed out bush.

She wore several cloaks around her shoulders, but they looked dark and spongy, not like flax cloth. Skin, Taurek realized. Dried human skin.

Although downwind, her odor choked his nose -- river mud, gases from putrefying corpses, and lion dung.

She squatted and stuck her tongue out at them, wiggling it so they could see the ivory pin piercing it.

She held out a short stick with a polished river stone at one end, and waved it.

"Be gone, demons!" she shouted at them while shaking her stick. "Away from this village, now! Vanish! Now!"

Anxious to leave, Taurek and Loraa stepped forward, but instead of getting out of their way, she jumped in front of them, screeching.

She looked at the surrounding villagers. "I told you they were coming! I told you! The demons I predicted last night are here. Ahhhheeeeeyyiiiaa!"

The villagers took up the cry. "Vanish, demons! Now! Ahhhheeeeeyyiiiaa!"

The villagers wanted the woman to use her magic to get rid of them, but Taurek feared that would change.

"Do demons bleed?" he shouted.

The unexpected question forced a moment of silence.

Taurek held up his empty hands. "Look at me," he said. "I have many wounds. You can see my scabs and my stitches. I am no demon."

"Trick!" the witch screamed, pointing her stick at them. "He lies! He lies!"

A rangy man with all white hair and a stunted left arm dropped the section of net he was holding and stepped forward through the water and mud.

"Let me see," he said.

"Stay away!" the witch shouted, scowling. "He lies! He lies!"

The man pointed toward the cluster of village huts. "It's my son you sacrificed last night, woman! My last, only surviving son."

Taurek turned his head and spotted the body of a small boy impaled on three sticks jammed into the ground. Flies buzzed thick around him.

"My wife is dead. Now I have no one to work for me when I am too sick. You said the sacrifice would protect the village, but it did not stop these strangers, and they have offered no harm."

"Thanks to the sacrifice!" the witch screeched to everyone standing around. "The ghost of the boy is stopping them from destroying us all."

The old man looked at Taurek. "Stranger, your left arm is mangled as is mine. On the life of my son, I would see you bleed like a man."

Taurek held out left arm, scratched off several scabs and squeezed his flesh.

Blood dripped from one wound, and flowed from the deeper one.

The man shouted to the rest of the village. "He bleeds!"

The witch ran in circles. "Lies. Lies! What about the woman? She is a devil."

Loraa gave Taurek her hand. He drew his dagger and slit open the tip of one finger. He held it up so everybody could see the red blood spurting out.

The villagers murmured with excitement, though Taurek could not tell whether from anger or happiness.

He pulled out his sword and held it out, high above his head.

"Villagers!" he shouted. "I am but a man as I have proven. I am a soldier of the King of the Big River. I am out of his kingdom, but I am on a mission only to take this woman upriver, not to spread war.

"You see I am greatly wounded, but I am alive. The men who gave me these wounds now haunt the spirit wastelands. This sword has sucked the blood of many enemies. It brings bad luck only to enemies who fight me and force me to kill them. Do not attack us, and the sword remains unused at my waist."

Taurek shoved the blade back into its scabbard.

"This woman is a foreigner who asks nothing from you except to let us leave in peace as we came in peace. She has white skin, yellow hair, and blue eyes because that is the look of her people. My sword is here to protect her from all harm. Let us pass."

The witch ran and jumped, shrieking, "Trick! Trick! They are here to curse our village."

Loraa spoke out. "Let the spirits of many fish give their lives to nourish this village."

The men and women standing knee-deep in the river holding on to the net suddenly looked surprised. They tugged it to shore, but so many fish filled it they had to leave most of it in the water. Inside the net flapped many catfish as long as a man's arm.

Excited, everyone ran to look, then shouted with happiness.

"More fires," a man shouted. "We need more fires to cook and dry these fish."

They scrambled to dig more fire pits and gather more sticks from the surrounding trees.

The old man shoved the witch woman out of the way of Taurek and Loraa.

"Why did my son die?" he asked her.

"To fight the demons for us! See, that proves I'm right. They came here to destroy us, but they could not."

"I gave you a sack of barley to cast a spell to make me pregnant," a woman called out. "But I am still barren."

"You didn't say it right, you must--"

"You wear my brother's skin on your back," a man said. "In my dreams he looks at me with sadness."

"You have cast many spells to catch more fish," another man said. "We have danced and sacrificed babies and given you much food raised by our sweat. Yet only a few fish swam into our nets until this woman blessed them, without asking for anything in return."

"Who brings bad luck to this village?" a woman asked. "Who eats but does not work? Who demands our lives and fails to protect us?"

The old man with the lame left arm stooped down and with his one useful hand picked up the first stone.