Full Episode Description In Chapter 3 of Revelation at Tikal, the search for Floey takes Cutty up into the mountains north of Pasadena, where Rocinante grinds her way through hairpins with the BMW lashed to the stern rack like a pendulum trying to drag the whole rig into the canyon. A glossy billboard for Villa Viejo, a paper retirement project that exists only in an architect's hallucination, gives way to a smaller, hand-painted sign tilted in the weeds: WELCOME TO THE TEMPLE OF THE RISING MOON. A yellow moon orbits a blue-and-green planet on the emblem, like a bumper sticker for cosmic sincerity. A dirt track climbs through ragged ivy past sagging houses and storm-damaged sheds. In the dirt lot at the top, Floey's wood-sided 1959 station wagon is parked outside a tired-looking house, and two bearded men built like mafia bouncers are loading duffel bags into it. The man directing them is small, soft-bodied, and dressed in slacks and a tight black turtleneck. He has the angular bone structure of a low-budget movie Jesus and the calm, judgmental brown eyes of a man who has rehearsed his patience. He introduces himself as Ayer Dada, founder of the Temple of the Rising Moon. The car, he says serenely, has already been sold. Pink slip and all. Floey gave it up when she joined the Brotherhood and surrendered her material possessions, the way all members do. Cutty doesn't believe a word of it. The wagon was their father's. Floey would not have let it go without a fight. Ayer cannot be openly challenged on commune doctrine, so Cutty does the next best thing. He asks to look around, and Ayer, smiling, lets him. Then Ayer climbs into the woody and drives off with one of his bouncers, leaving the larger one planted in the lot, eyes locked on Cutty with the tense expectation of a guard dog. Inside the main house, Cutty walks through a converted living room reeking of damp wool, dust, and incense. The fireplace has been turned into an altar to a silver-framed photograph of Ayer himself. The walls are crowded with tapestries, gurus, politicians, and Ayer always conveniently included in the shot. Between them run glossy posters of Palenque and Tikal with luminous flying saucers hovering above the pyramids and beams of light hauling stick-figured humans up to helmeted "gods." A red-underlined caption explains, helpfully, that the Maya were waiting all this time for Ayer to decode their space program. A small procession of robed members shuffles past Cutty toward the temple bell, heads bowed, eyes on the floor. He drifts deeper into the building looking for any trace of Floey. In a back hallway, an open door reveals a small cot, a slump-shouldered young woman, and a Yale University Law sweatshirt that has clearly been through too many washings. Her name is Paula. Soft pink-blond hair, a small arc of freckles, blue-gray eyes still sharp under the tiredness. She quit a third year of law school after deciding she believed in billable hours more than justice, got dragged up the mountain by her sister, and bought the routine for one bad week. Now her parents and aunt have sent her a five-hundred-dollar check meant for traveling, and Ayer is refusing to hand it over. He has put her on a vow of silence as punishment, claiming the devil scrambled her soul segments. Cutty offers a deal. He'll get the check back from Larry the ex-accountant in the office behind the garage. She gets her choices back. A bus ticket, a plane, anything not stocked with true believers. Paula stands up. The motion is deliberate enough to register, a small instinctive test of what the rescuer does with it, and she catches Cutty looking. "If we're caught, you're carrying me out bridal style," she says. "Deal," he answers, "though I'm more of a fireman-carry romantic." A few lines of crooked banter later, the two of them are walking toward the garage stairs in lockstep, like a lawyer and a client about to commit some tidy white-collar crime while the rest of the Brotherhood is locked into two hours of chanting up at the temple. The bearded enforcer Ayer left behind is still tracking them. He follows them across the dirt lot, breathing close to Cutty's neck, and when Cutty starts up the office stairs, the big man lunges. Cutty goes off the side, rolls down the ivy bank, and comes up dirty and laughing about needing a stunt double. What he does next is the kind of decision Cutty makes in a heartbeat and pays for later. He remembers a German shepherd that once charged him in Reno, and how he stopped it by yelling and charging back. He decides to test the same principle on a cult enforcer. He yells from the bottom of his lungs, runs straight at the bigger man, and snaps a karate kick at his solar plexus. The kick lands lower than intended. The enforcer folds like someone hit a kill switch and goes down in a tight, agonized knot. Paula stares, then lets out one short, disbelieving laugh. "You really do your own stunts. Remind me never to argue ...
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