The Lost Origin (33 page)

We found the second plaque with the warrior’s helm at the same distance from the Gate of the Moon as the first, but to the east. We thought that it would be a good idea to find it before starting to stab staffs, in case it was necessary to pierce both at once. It was exactly the same as the other, although much more damaged, and since we were there, we decided to start with that plaque and not waste any more time. Jabba firmly gripped the smallest staff, the thirty-inch one, and stuck it slowly into the eye of the extraterrestrial animal until the eye’s circumference stopped it, and then the plaque, along with ten square feet of the vegetation around it, started to sink slowly and silently, with Jabba and one of my feet on top of it. Alarmed, we jumped back to get off the small elevator that was disappearing into the depths of the earth, while Proxi let out an exclamation of joy and bent down to look.

“The entrance!” she shouted over the distant sound of stones that was coming from the bottom.

My heart pounded a thousand beats a minute, so, given the scant oxygen available, I felt myself getting dizzy and had to sit down immediately. But I wasn’t the only one: Marc, white as paper, dropped to the ground at the same time as I.

“What’s wrong with you guys?” Proxi asked, surprised, looking back and forth between the two of us. Since she had knelt down to look, our three heads were at the same height.

“This country’s miserable excuse for air!” Jabba blurted, opening and closing his mouth like a fish on the deck of a boat.

“Right,” I panted, “blame the air.”

We looked at each other and broke into laughter. There we both were, as agile as drunk ducks, while Proxi was radiating enthusiasm.

“We’re worthless,” Jabba told me, the color returning to his face, little by little.

“I agree.”

From the bottom of that hole, there came an intimidating breath of the tomb, a whiff of earthy humidity that turned the stomach. I knelt next to Proxi to look, and saw some dangerously sloped stone stairs disappearing into the shadowy depths. I took the flashlight out of my bag and turned it on: The stairs went so far down that we couldn’t see where they ended.

“Do we have to go down there?” Jabba mumbled.

I didn’t answer him because the response was obvious. Without thinking twice, I stood, wrapped the strap of the LED headlight around my head, turned it on, and like a miner, I began very carefully to descend that steep and narrow stairway that seemed to lead to the center of the Earth. My whole foot didn’t even fit on each step, so I had to step with my feet twisted a little bit sideways so I wouldn’t lose my balance immediately. As I descended, the wall facing me became a roof, rising into the air and narrowing the angle it formed with the surface, a change that was going to leave me soon with nothing to steady myself on. I stopped for a few seconds,
indecisive.

“What’s happening?” Proxi’s voice asked from far above me.

“Nothing,” I answered, and continued downward as I choked back the desperate cries of my survival instinct. I felt my pulse in my temples and a freezing chill on my forehead. To make my feet continue their descent, I forced myself to think of my brother, there in Barcelona, lying in his hospital bed with his brain charred.

“I don’t have anywhere to hang on anymore,” I warned. “The shaft has become too wide for me to be able to reach anything with my hands.”

“Light up your surroundings.”

But, as much as I lit, turning my head from one side to the other, around me there was nothing but space, interrupted, beyond my reach, by walls of stones that fit together perfectly, like those that stood all over Tiwanaku. Luckily, the stairs also began to get wider and longer.

“Is everything alright, Root?” Jabba’s deep voice came to me, bouncing off the walls of that shaft.

“It’s fine,” I shouted, but it was one of those phrases that you say when you don’t really have a clear idea.

The descent took longer than I would have liked. Compared to that one, any of the vertical tunnels of the Barcelona’s underground was an eight-lane freeway. My palms were sweaty and I missed my spelunking tools: the smallest slip on that soapy black moss covering everything would end with my bones striking the stones at the bottom, and, if I was still alive, Jabba and Proxi were going to have a very hard time getting me out of there. Which is why I descended slowly, taking all possible precautions, steadying one foot very carefully before placing the other, and with all my senses alert to prevent any loss of balance.

The first sign I had that I was nearing the end was a subtle change in the air: suddenly it turned less heavy, more fluid and dry, and I knew I was nearing a large space. One minute later, my headlight was illuminating the end of the shaft and the beginning of a passage wide enough for the three of us to fit comfortably shoulder to shoulder.

“I can see the end,” I announced. “There’s a passage.”

“Finally this damned staircase is ending!” I heard Jabba thunder.

At that moment, I was stepping down from the last step and lighting the tunnel in front of me. There was nothing I could do but follow it and go forward. Proxi caught up with me, and the sound of Jabba’s feet announced his imminent appearance at our side.

“Forward?” I asked, although it wasn’t really a question.

“Forward,” she replied bravely.

We took the tunnel in the same order in which we had descended. It was very long, almost as long as the shaft, but horizontal and perfectly square. The ground, roof, and walls were also built with big stone blocks fit together. I don’t know what I was expecting to find at the end of that long interminable hallway, but of course it wasn’t what I found. The blood almost froze in my veins from the shock. I noticed Proxi silently position herself next to me and hold onto my arm hard while both of us stood facing a giant condor head that was looking at us with blind eyes from the end of the passage.

“Wow!” she murmured, recovering from the fright. “It’s amazing!”

I heard a sharp whistle and saw a third bright beam on the monster and knew Jabba had arrived and that he was also looking at the enormous head that blocked the corridor some ten feet ahead of us.

“And now what do we do?” he asked warily.

“I have no idea,” I mumbled.

The stone curved down from the top of the tunnel, outlining the forehead of the animal and sliding down to the big round eyes, a pair of perfect circles placed above an enormous beak that fell vertically, tapering almost to the floor. A little of the bottom part of the beak was showing on both sides. Proxi shot several photographs with the digital camera, which automatically calibrated the flash to maximum intensity because of the darkness, and made some impressive flashes.

“Well, we can’t get through there,” Jabba continued.

“We’re about to find out,” Proxi said, very decided, putting away the camera and going to the colossal sculpture which looked like it was going to eat her up in one snap of its beak.

“Wait! Don’t be crazy!” Jabba exclaimed. I turned swiftly to look at them and at that moment of confusion the bright rays of the headlamps danced over the condor and the walls. In the blink of an eye, I thought I saw something next to the bird’s head, so I ignored my colleagues and swept the area with my light again and saw a strange panel of engravings on the wall on the right hand side.

“Oh, oh…,” Proxi blurted when she spotted it.

“I hope it’s not one of those Aymara curses,” Jabba said.

“Remember it wouldn’t be able to affect us,” I muttered.

“I’m not so sure about that.”

We moved closer as cautiously as we could, just in case, and we stopped at last in front of five
tocapus
carved in the rock and bordered by a small frame. At our backs, the giant right profile of the condor’s beak was dreadfully threatening.

“Fine, come on, get out the laptop,” Proxi suggested, with the camera back in her hands, ready to take more photographs. “This has to be translated with “JoviLoom.”

“Let’s just hope nothing bad happens to us!” the cowardly worm said, upset.

Looking apprehensively at the sculpture, I sat on the ground and rested my back against it while I took the computer out of the bag and turned it on. I crossed my legs, and when the system was ready, I launched my brother’s translator program. The two windows opened, and I transferred the five
tocapus
carved on the wall from one to the other, dragging them with the laptop’s small mouse. The first contained a rhombus; the second, a kind of sundial with a horizontal stripe in the middle; the third, something that looked like an elongated tilde, but more curved; the fourth, an asterisk made up of three small lines crossed in the middle; and the fifth, two parallel horizontal stripes, very short, similar to an equal sign.

I confirmed that I was done “weaving,” and the program began its partitions and alignments. It didn’t take long for it to give a strange result: “Six cut in two root of three.”

“‘Six cut in two root of three’?” I exclaimed loudly, surprised.

“A division?” Jabba couldn’t believe what he heard. His eyes were as round as plates. “A division! And what the hell do you suppose we have to do with a ridiculous and absurd division? How does it help us to know that six divided by two equals three?”

“That’s not exactly what it says,” I objected.

“But that’s what it means!”

“We don’t know.”

“Are you going to tell me that…?”

“There’s more here!” Proxi cried from the other side of the condor.

Holding the computer by the cover, I jumped to my feet and ran after Jabba who had bolted over. On the left side of the creature, carved on the wall, were another five
tocapus
, almost
identical to the previous ones, also bordered by the same small frame.

“This is amazing!” I exclaimed, going up to the panel. The first, fourth, and fifth
tocapus
were the same, while the second and third differed. When my colleagues’ glances converged on me, questioning, I knew I had to sit on the ground again and introduce the pieces into Jovi’s Loom. The translation turned out to be complete nonsense again: “Six increased in five root of three.”

“Okay, it’s all the same to me if the Yatiri decorated their walls with mathematical formulas,” Jabba said. “The problem is this little birdie,” and he gave the monstrous beak a couple of sonorous slaps, “puts an end to the passage. That’s it. Period. Let’s go back to the surface.”

“Maybe we have to solve some problem,” I reasoned.

“Exactly. And if we’re smart enough to solve it, the condor head will open like a door and we’ll be able to cross to the other side. What a way to help a supposed humanity in trouble! Big bunch of….”

“Listen to me, both of you,” Proxi interrupted, putting an end to the discussion, “we have two clear and simple proposals: on one side, ‘Six cut in two root of three,’ and on the other, ‘Six increased in five root of three.’ The same number, six, is cut in two and increased in five, giving the result of three in both cases. Obviously, there’s something fishy here.”

“Yes,” I admitted, “there is, but what?”

“The difference. It has to be the difference,” she pointed out. “The divergent
tocapus
are the ones that give information.”

“Well, come on,” I encouraged. “Maybe we have to push them or something. Try it and see what happens.”

Very decided, she went up to the panel we were facing and pushed the second and third
tocapus
. Nothing happened.

“Really,” she explained, “they aren’t depressed under pressure. They’re fixed.”

“Let’s try it on the panel on the right,” I proposed.

We headed over there and Proxi repeated the operation. But nothing happened there either.

“The same as the other one,” she murmured. “You can’t press them.”

“And the others?” I asked.

She tried, and then, without coming back, shook her head.

“Let’s go back to the other panel to press the rest of the
tocapus
,” I murmured.

But again we met absolute failure. None of the ten
tocapus
responded to the pressure of our hands. They weren’t loose pieces. They were carved directly onto the wall.

“I don’t understand it…,” the mercenary complained. “Now what?”

“Maybe we still have to find something,” I reasoned. “Maybe these two panels are only an example, a sample to show us how to find the solution.”

“Of course, and then we shout it to the wind,” Jabba sneered. “This is absurd!”

“No, it’s not. Let me think,” I replied. “It has to make some kind of sense.”

“But what sense do you think it should make?” he continued to protest. “The idea is that the Yatiri hid their secret so it could be recovered by a destroyed humanity in need, right? Well, this seems like an obstacle course! And besides, who told us it’s a test? We can’t know that!”

“Make no mistake, Jabba,” I explained. “What’s inside there isn’t food. The Yatiri weren’t the Red Cross. There’s no medicine or blankets. What they hid there before they left was knowledge, teaching…. If, as we believe, it’s the power of words, of an oral programming code, it makes sense that they put encoded access keys here. Maybe it’s not a test, really. Maybe
they’re teaching us something. I think that by resolving this enigma, we’ll learn something that will be of use to us further on.”

“Don’t strain yourself, Root,” the worm teased, putting his hands on his hips and looking at me perversely. “Or haven’t you noticed? If these two panels are an example, there has to be another one where we enter the solution. And where is it, huh?”

“Here!” Proxi yelled from some indeterminate place.

“What the hell?” I began, quickly following Jabba, who was already running in search of Proxi. Luckily, my colleague’s robust back, which was wobbling from the sudden stop, also halted my run, because when we rounded the beak, we would have tripped over the body of the mercenary, who was sprawled face up on the ground with her head under the bird’s head.

“There are nine
tocapus
here,” she said, her voice muffled by the sculpture. “Should I describe them to you, Root, or do you want to come look at them?”