"Tz'ac Tzotz," the woman said, pointing at him. I could feel her deep, maternal love.

"His name?" I asked in English, before I thought.

When Marcelina translated, the woman smiled and nod­ded.

Then the blond-haired Tz'ac Tzotz started to sniffle, so I kissed him gently, turned, and took the woman's hand again. There was nothing else I could do.

Tz'ac Tzotz was Sarah incarnate. This was no hallucina­tion. He had her special blue eyes and her steep cheeks, her high brow. I was holding her child.

"They are sent from Kukulkan," Marcelina was saying, "the white god of the plumed serpent. Then there's the cere­mony on the pyramid and they go back."

The woman was staring at me, seemingly awestruck. Then she pointed at Tz'ac Tzotz and at me, saying something to Marcelina. Finally the woman bowed her head to me with great reverence.

"She says he looks so much like you," Marcelina ex­plained. "You are surely the special one. The new bride."

I was still speechless, but then I noticed the baby had a little silver jaguar amulet tied around his wrist with a silken string, and on the back—as on Kevin's and Rachel's—were rows of lines and dots.

It finally dawned on me. They were digits, written in the archaic Maya script. What could they be, maybe his birth­day? No, I realized, that was far too simplistic. This was the original bar code; it was his Baalum "serial number."