2040 Revelations (34 page)

Heaving a sigh, she took off the hat and handed it back to the woman. ‘
Muchas gracias, señora
.’

The woman smiled again and nodded in acknowledgement.

After their scare they made quick progress, although they did pass a couple of vehicles carrying more armed men on the way.

‘Aren’t there any government forces around here?’ Sarah asked Javier as they passed another one.

Javier shook his head. ‘No, señorita, they do not operate out here any more. It’s too dangerous for them.’

‘Does that mean there is no curfew in these parts?’

‘Yes and no,’ he said, ‘the rebels want to appear in control in the area, so they act like they are the government and try to protect the people as they would. They aren’t as strict, though, and they are more likely to just reprimand you rather than lock you up or worse.’

‘Good to know,’ Jason said from nearby.

Half an hour or so later they pulled up at a stop just outside of a small town. The locals got off first and then Sarah, Trish and Jason followed suit.

‘Will you be going back from here tomorrow?’ Trish asked Javier.

‘Yes. When I was speaking to the men in the road I asked them if I could keep running my service even after the GMRC alert. They said I could, although I may have to pay some kind of toll for the privilege.’

‘That’s great,’ Sarah said, ‘does that mean you’ll be travelling as normal throughout the week?’

‘I hope so,’ he replied.

That was excellent news, as Sarah was unsure how long they would be there for. Thanking Javier for the ride and bidding him farewell, they picked up their gear and made towards the location Jason had brought up on his phone.

He pointed due west. ‘It’s about three hundred yards that way.’

They stood near the top of a valley and the view was stunning. Tobacco farms dominated the lush, green and fertile landscape. A variety of animals and birds made their presence known in and around them as their squawks and calls drifted along on the light breeze, the tall trees set against a clear blue sky. A river could be seen in the distance, weaving its way through the landscape, glistening like crystal clear diamonds.

‘Have either of you ever been here before?’ Sarah said, taking a deep breath and filling her lungs with the fresh sweet smelling air

‘No, but I’ve seen pictures,’ Trish replied.

‘I know someone who’s been here,’ Jason said, ‘they told me it was breathtaking in the height of summer and the Mayan ruins are something else.’

It looks pretty idyllic now
, Sarah thought as they made their way down through some sparse trees and plants which had been cultivated in order to provide easy access to the complex.

The ruins appeared deserted; tourists had stayed away for obvious reasons and the local workers had apparently thought likewise. The meteor had its advantages after all, it seemed, as digging about in a world heritage site without authorisation was a sure way to get arrested.

As they moved towards the interior of the long abandoned city, Jason carried the scanner and pulled other gear – including the precious canister – behind him in a small trolley. Sarah and Trish had the tubing on their backs containing the bones, plus they also bore food and camping supplies. Their bulky clothes and other non-essentials for the search had been stowed back at the bed and breakfast accommodation.

Approaching a clearing, Sarah was able to make out a large stone structure through the trees.

Trish let out a shriek. ‘What the hell is that!’ she said, pointing into the undergrowth.

Sarah squinted into the shadows to see what had terrified her friend and then she saw it, a large black shape moved in the bushes. She took a step back as it headed towards them.

Jason laughed when a pig-like creature came ambling into view. ‘Oooo scary,’ he said.

Sarah grinned in relief and Trish gave him the finger as he continued to chuckle.

With the less than frightening creature snuffling its way back into its habitat, they forged ahead once more. As they bypassed a large monument, the view gave way to reveal low slung pyramids, and a massive stepped building with a huge tower reaching towards the skies.

‘Wow, that’s pretty spectacular,’ Trish said.

Sarah had to agree, it was a marvel to behold. She paused for a moment, taking it in, and then reinstalled the reason for them being there in the forefront of her mind. ‘Jason, where now?’

‘Err—’ he murmured, as he pointed his phone around in front of him, ‘there,’ he said, at last getting a fix. He now pointed at a large temple right next to the imposing tower.

Sarah glanced up at the sun pulsating directly overhead. ‘Let’s get going then.’ She gestured at a smaller enclosed temple off to one side. ‘Trish, you set up camp inside there. Jason, dump your stuff and get the scanner ready.’

He saluted her. ‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘Very good, soldier,’ she said with mock gravity.

Sarah dropped off her burden and joined Jason as he made his way to the scan site. They calculated exactly where the search area would be, marked it out with some tape and sticks, and then got underway. It was quite a large grid to cover so they took it in turns to carry the heavy scanner.

Many hours had passed by the time Trish called them for dinner and the two trudged back to the camp looking as weary as they felt.

‘Any luck?’ Trish asked them.

‘None so far,’ Sarah said. ‘We’ve nearly covered the area, but we’ve only been scanning at one level due to having to penetrate the dense rock of the temple. We’ll have to go over the site a few times at various depths to make sure we don’t miss anything.’

The next day came and went and then on the third, Jason found what they were looking for – a telltale void deep underground. This time, though, there was no cave and no excavation machine. They mapped it out and then transferred the data to Sarah’s computer phone. Unfolding a larger screen, she brought up and analysed the new image.

‘It looks bigger than the other one we found,’ Jason said, looking over her shoulder.

‘You’re right. Do you see this section?’ Sarah pointed to the right hand side of the void. ‘It looks like there might be another, larger, structure further down, and not a natural formation, either, like the cave in South Africa.’

‘That’s pretty wild. I wonder what’s down there?’ Trish said, when they showed it to her. ‘Perhaps the one back in South Africa had extra chambers, too; that tunnel had to lead somewhere, the one that had collapsed.’

‘Maybe, we’ll never know now.’ Distracted, Sarah rotated the image in a manner almost akin to the ancient parchments they’d found.

‘Whatever’s buried under these Mayan ruins, we’re not going to be able to get at it, either,’ Trish said in glum realisation as Sarah passed the image to her so she could take a closer look. ‘Even if we had the equipment, no one is going to allow us to disturb this site.’

‘Unless there’s a secret door or something we’ve missed,’ Jason said.

Sarah smiled at the thought while Trish gave a despairing sigh at his naive optimism.

‘What? There could have been,’ he said defensively, noting the two women’s scepticism.

‘Now that you mention it,’ Trish said, trying to keep a straight face, ‘I did see an ancient jewel in the wall; perhaps if we’d turned it anti-clockwise, it would have opened the secret passage to Narnia.’

‘Very funny,’ Jason said, lacking his usual retort.

Sarah experienced a sense of achievement at the find, but utter frustration that they could do nothing with it. If a chamber, or even a whole complex, existed down there, who knew what treasures might lie waiting to be discovered? It was too much to bear; she jumped up and went outside to walk off the gnawing irritation that sought to drive her mad.

The day drew to a close as she moved amongst the ancient ruins. Exotic birds sang sweet music in the dusk, deep shadows casting themselves across her path as the sun dipped and hid behind monuments and trees alike. As she walked, her mind wandered along with her body. She passed a stepped pyramid and a few stelae, narrow stone structures rising up out of the ground, perhaps five metres in height and one in width. On one side the stelae consisted of intricate relief carvings of a deity or king and on the flat reverse, or other three sides, detailed hieroglyphic text adorned the surfaces. Each one was a wonderful work of art and yet also acted as an ancient record of events over a thousand years past.

As she moved back the way she had come she passed close to a stela near to the area they’d been scanning. This one had a lot more detail than the others she’d seen and the limestone had been carved more in the round, too, a high relief. An imposing image of a man with a huge feathered headdress threatened to leap out from the substrate itself, such was the craftsmanship. And then she saw it, a lone symbol. She stopped dead in her tracks and took a backwards step. Peering up at the figure, she saw a familiar form, one she had seen recently. And based on her limited knowledge of the subject, it was not Mayan – at least as far as she knew it wasn’t. She held out the larger of her two pendants; the top symbol was identical to the one on the statue before her. The Mayan had no alphabet and so the symbol she was looking at could not be there by chance. She walked around the stela, delving into its detail with her eyes. No other unusual markings appeared evident on the front, so she moved around the other three faces which brimmed with hieroglyphs.

It was a few minutes before she spotted another anomaly amongst the norm, a shape she recognised this time from the parchments they had been using. The location of this letter, if that’s indeed what the symbols were, was lower down than the other, close enough to reach. She touched it with her fingers, tracing its outline. What did it mean? Did the earliest Mayans have direct contact with Homo gigantis? Surely not. What was more likely was that they knew of their existence. Perhaps they had found or accessed the chamber that even now sat undisturbed below them.

Eyes straining in the fading light, she reached the final side, on which something much more amazing greeted her. Yet another familiar symbol, but below it a shape embedded deep in the stone. It would have looked innocuous to anyone else, but Sarah knew this shape and its size well, very well. It was pentagonal and seemingly identical in size to the large pendant that even now hung around her neck. Hers fingertips caressed its features as her other hand instinctively went to her chest to touch the metal artefact.

Unclipping it, she looked at it and then at the hole. She then slowly but purposefully sank the pendant into the stone. Nothing happened except for the arrival of her disappointment. What did she expect; the statue to light up and open out to reveal a hidden staircase? Well, yes, that really was what she’d been hoping for in the deep recesses of her mind. This, however, was real life and things were never that easy or convenient. Their recent successes had woven a sense of fantasy into her life and she’d begun to ride its heady wave.
Stop daydreaming, you fool
, she admonished herself. Taking the pendant back out, she clipped it back onto the chain. Then she had an idea and she hurried back to camp to collect the scanner.

‘Doing another sweep?’ Jason said as she came in.

‘Something like that.’

‘I’m doing a cup of tea in a while, do you want one?’

‘Sure,’ she said, her mind elsewhere, and disappeared back outside again.

Back at the stela she heaved the scanner upright after adjusting its settings and started a sweep of the stone. Due to its weight and the position in which she held the machine, the screen wasn’t visible, so she made one complete three hundred and sixty degree pass and then put it down to inspect the results. Disappointingly most of the interior appeared to be plain limestone, but directly behind the statue’s front face, twelve inches in from the surface, was a dense metal object. To make sure this wasn’t a normal occurrence within these stelae, she quickly scanned three more which stood close by. After looking at the results and seeing no such objects buried underneath these surfaces she concluded it highly likely the first one was unique and worth investigating further; especially considering the gigantis symbols weren’t apparent on any of the other stelae, either.

She returned once more to the camp and dropped off the scanner, telling Jason to download its data onto her computer.

‘What have you found now?’ Trish said.

‘I’m not sure; I’ll let you know.’ Sarah grabbed a small pick and some hand tools from one of the packs, along with a torch, and departed out the front of the temple once more.

Intrigued, Trish got up and followed her.

When they reached the stela, Sarah passed Trish the light. ‘Can you point that on the carving, please?’ She indicated the face of the Mayan king.

Trish powered up the beam and shone it on the location, as instructed. ‘Sarah, what’s going on? What have you found?’

Sarah didn’t reply, too wrapped up as she was in concentration and purpose. Dropping the hand tools to the ground, she grasped the pick and swung it with full force at the statue’s face. The point bit deep and the light Trish provided jerked to one side.

‘Are you mad!’ Trish screamed at her. ‘You can’t do that, it’s a priceless relic!’

‘
That
,’ Sarah said, emphasising the word and pointing at the stela, ‘is not ancient.
This
,’ – she grabbed her large pendant and brandished it at Trish – ‘is. Now, put the damn light back on it, will you? There’s something in there that doesn’t belong.’

‘Like what?’ Trish said, still fuming.

Jason sauntered up to join them. ‘Like a metal plate of some description.’

‘I don’t care what it is,’ Trish said, outraged. ‘You can’t go around desecrating ancient monuments. I don’t care what else we’ve found, this is humanity’s history, we can’t destroy it!’

‘Trish, look, I have to dig this thing out,’ Sarah said in a conciliatory tone. ‘You’ve got to understand, this is huge, it may even link early human civilisation to Homo gigantis.’

Trish wasn’t having it, however. ‘I don’t care; I won’t let you do it.’