But even when he began to understand what they were saying, he still did not understand them. Why they labored day after day from sunrise to dusk with little trowels, and brushes, and sifters, and machines designed to pass sound through things to tell when they were hollow, he could not imagine. Why they grew so excited when they found broken bits of pottery or other equally useless trash, he could not fathom. But it amused him to watch their child-like excitement over these things.
They seemed harmless enough.
He was less pleased to have the ‘people’ in his city. They were not the ‘people’ he had known before. They were a pale shadow of those old ones and still contemptible to him, maybe more contemptible. They had changed, but he could not see that it had been for the better. The ‘people’ who’d come with the pale skinned others exuded excitement, too, but their enthusiasm was focused on the others, not the city that so thrilled the pale ones. And beneath that the stench of fear oozed from their pores because they felt his presence. He recognized it, and he found it caused an unpleasant ripple of memories to stir, and he would have withdrawn further from their presence—except for her.
She stirred many, many things within him, drove the comforting apathy completely from his grasp and aroused—confusion, conflicting emotions, curiosity.
She drew him from his comfortable shell of apathy before he had even quite grasped that he had left it behind and that it was not something he could easily regain if he found that she was not nearly as interesting as he had thought she would be.
By the time he had realized that, though, it no longer mattered. She fascinated him. She was not quite like any other of her kind that he had ever known, either among the people or the others. Like a flower, she was complicated, an intricate puzzle that fascinated him more with each petal he plucked to examine her further. She was a study in contradictions, strong but delicate, wise but impetuous, hard and yet soft.
Her façade appealed to him, pulled at him in a way that he could not entirely understand because when he studied her he could not detect a single feature or physical attribute that was extraordinary in any way.
Her face was pretty, but not beautiful.
Her body was pleasing—soft, and rounded, and womanly—but he had seen many women whose bodies were as pleasing or even more pleasingly shaped.
He liked the pale skin. It reminded him of the soft glow of moonlight.
He liked the pale hair for the same reason.
The eyes were like a clear summer sky.
But none of those traits were unique only to her. The others were all pale skinned, pale eyed, their hair darker or lighter than hers but still much the same—and those things were intriguing and appealing to him mostly because they were nothing like the people.
His puzzlement over the strength of her appeal to him had finally drawn him closer, far closer than he had approached one of her kind in many, many years.
But he had not regretted it, even though it had opened him to the world of pain he had sealed himself off from long ago.
Because there he found her beauty, in her heart, her soul, her mind. It was so beautiful it took his breath away.
And it aroused something within him that he had long forgotten … hunger.
* * * *
Leaving the tents behind, Gaby moved to the edge of the pit and carefully climbed down the first ladder. There were three. The city Dr. Sheffield had discovered was beneath ruins of an Incan village that had been discovered years earlier by Dr. Oldman.
The original discovery had been somewhat disappointing. The village, it seemed, hadn’t been one of much consequence and had provided very little in the way of artifacts, mostly because more recent settlers had used whatever they’d found useful and disposed of everything else.
The city beneath it had been found entirely by accident. Ordinarily, a good deal of research went into to tracking down the most likely location of cities mentioned in historical texts, found mentioned on other items of antiquity, or that had become a part of folklore. This city shouldn’t exist at all. No mention of anything like it had ever been discovered anywhere, and beyond that, it appeared to date back much further than any known civilization in this part of the world—further even than the Toltecs.
Drs. Oldman’s and Sheffield’s reputations were on the line. The initial speculation on the date of the site had already sent ripples through the scientific community and brought back flack. No one believed the city could possibly date back as far as they’d speculated because it was an accepted theory that man had barely been walking upright at the time, little more than animals, and certainly not capable of building a city.
It had been the possibility of finding skeletal remains that would bust that theory wide open that had generated enough excitement in her to entice her from her nice, comfy museum into … hell.
Because the conditions could only be termed hellish.
Having managed the last ladder, Gaby pushed the thoughts from her mind. At the moment, all she wanted was distraction from the latest accident. Her excitement had waned long since, along with her belief that they were going to find skeletal remains of any kind, much less … prehistoric Einsteins that existed at a time when man was supposed to be little more than an ape.
The students glanced at her disinterestedly when she joined them. It shouldn’t have bothered her. They were hardly Indiana Jones types and way too young to interest her even if any of the bunch had been better than average looking, but she supposed she was still smarting from Sheila’s cutting remarks.
Ignoring the skepticism she caught in several of the glances, she picked up a trowel, chose a spot and began to carefully scrape at the dirt. She might not, ordinarily, be a field scientist, but she knew what she was doing … the uppity shirt tailed snots!
She’d only been working maybe twenty minutes and had just gotten deeply enough into her work to shrug off her irritation when the trowel she was wielding scraped against something that sent back the sound of stone. She sensed rather than saw several of the young men glance up at the sound. Setting the trowel aside, she grabbed up a brush and dusted at the stone so that she could see it better to determine whether she’d actually found something more than just a buried rock.
The stone she’d unearthed was smooth but rounded. It appeared to be worked stone.
Frowning, she took up the trowel again and worked at the dirt surrounding the stone, trying to contain the spark of excitement that surged through her. It looked like a section of carving, but it was too small an area to be certain. It could still just be a rock, rounded by movement of water over it.
Sweat had begun to roll down her forehead and sting her eyes by the time she’d removed the bulk of the dirt over a section approximately two foot square. Absently, she brushed at the moisture with the back of her forearm, dropped the trowel, and picked up the brush again.
A face began to emerge from the centuries of dirt that had settled over the stone carving.
“Hey! I’ve found something!” she exclaimed, allowing the excitement she’d been holding at bay to quicken her heartbeat. “A part of a frieze, I think … maybe.”
“Hold on! Let me have a look at it!” Dr. Sheffield called from somewhere behind her.
Irritation flickered through her and she glanced around to see him hurrying toward her. Before she could spit, or object, she was surrounded by rubber-neckers blocking her light. Dr. Sheffield shoved his way through the students and shouldered her aside. “It’s a face. You might be right!” he said, excitement threading his voice. “What do you think, Richard?”
The crowd parted for Dr. Richard Oldman, who winced as he settled on his knees beside his younger colleague and peered at the segment of stone. “Could be Toltec, Carl,” he muttered. “It’s hard to say at this point. But it certainly isn’t Incan. Look at the tool marks here.”
Slowly but surely edged out of the way, Gaby stood behind them, craning her neck to see as they carefully worked at the dirt around the spot sh
e’d cleared.
“There’s a crevice here,” Mark, one of the students pronounced excitedly. “Regular … I think it might be a door.”
Dr. Oldman chuckled good naturedly. “There wouldn’t be a door … not made of stone. It’s probably just a fissure, either from shifting of the structure or possibly where the stones were joined.”
Mark reddened, his face tightening with anger, but he didn’t argue with Oldman. Instead, he pursued the crack he’d found until he had managed to reveal a perfectly straight line about eighteen inches long.
No one said anything when he’d uncovered it. After staring at it for several moments, Oldman and Sheffield got to their feet. “Get shovels and get this dirt removed here. Carefully, though. This may be part of a much larger structure.”
Gaby watched them for a while, debating with herself. She didn’t know if she was more irritated that they’d taken over her find and shoved her out of the way, or if it was simply that she was tired of being on the outside looking in. She discovered it didn’t matter, though. As tempted as she was to do as she usually did and simply walk away, she stayed—watching mostly like the born spectator she was—but she at least meant to stick around and see what it was that she’d found and not learn of it second hand down the road when they were discussing it.
The diggers struck stone only a few feet below the section she’d found, ruling out the possibility that the segment was a door … unless it had been designed for midgets. The sun had settled well below the tree tops by the time the men had cleared a section large enough for them to see that the rock wasn’t just bedrock. It was worked stone, revealing that the structure jutted outward some six feet before dropping away again.
Pyramid like, Gaby wondered?
The Aztecs had built those, though, and if it was a pyramid it might well blow Sheffield’s theory out the window … unless it transpired that the Aztecs weren’t actually the first to build pyramids in South America?
Mark had doggedly pursued his door theory, she saw, scraping at the dirt and following the line he’d found until he’d discovered perpendicular lines at the top and bottom. Gaby watched him, or rather the relief he was slowly revealing despite the fact that his focus was obviously on tracking down the function of the piece to prove his theory.
She wasn’t an expert. Her field was bones, but the style of the carving didn’t look like anything that had previously been attributed to any of the known architects of South American civilization. There were symbols around the outer edges of the block, forming a decorative border around the strange face, which she finally decided might not be intended as a face at all, but rather a mask. Deteriorated with age and weather, the symbols weren’t easy to identify, but it looked like all sorts of two headed, many legged beasts. It wasn’t until Mark had briskly brushed the dirt from the surface that she saw it wasn’t monstrous two headed beasts at all.
The depictions were of men and women in various sexual positions.
Ancient porn? Gaby wondered, feeling a jolt of shock.
Setting his brush aside once he’d finished cleaning the piece, Mark began to move his hands over it, pushing along the sides and corners. It clicked in Gaby’s mind that he was trying to pull it loose. Surging toward him, she stepped on a piece of stone that had a hollow ring to it when her boots struck it. She barely had time to register the sound, certainly not enough to time to assimilate the implications of a hollow beneath her. Mark braced himself and shoved at one edge and almost instantaneously the ground beneath her opened.
Gaby sucked in a sharp breath as she dropped. Her brain, like the shutter of a camera, registered a still impression of light and still-life people wearing frozen, startled expressions, and then darkness. Her heart leapt into her throat, choking off the ability to scream, and her stomach went weightless as she plummeted downward.
Chapter Two
The freefall was blessedly brief. Gaby’s mind had barely grasped the horrific possibilities when she collided solidly with a smooth, cold surface. She didn’t stop moving, however. She slid down and down, so quickly that it seemed she was sliding at a breath taking speed.
It did take her breath. It closed off brain function for many, many dangerous moments before she could even command her body to struggle to stop the slide.
For all the good it did. She clawed ineffectually at the slick surface, finding no purchase at all. Her screams, when she finally recalled the breath and inspiration to utter them, echoed back at her at a deafening volume that drowned out every other sound.
She didn’t even realize the shaft was curved until the gently curving shaft took a sharp turn that slowed her descent. She’d just had time to register that when the surface beneath her disappeared altogether. She was airborne again for a split second before she slammed into a hard surface, skidded several feet, and stopped.
She lay perfectly still once she’d finally stopped moving, trying to gather her wits to mentally inventory her body for injury. Pain finally registered, but it was nothing unbearable. Her palms stung from friction burns. Twinges registered from her chin, one arm, and one knee. She pushed herself up and looked around.
Profound blackness so thick it seemed tangible surrounded her. A dim light in front of her was all she could see, but it took her several moments to realize that it was the weak light of a failing day above her, channeled downward by the curving shaft she’d slid down.
Grunting, she pushed herself up on her hands and knees and crawled toward the light and the sound of voices.
“Are you injured?”
It was Dr. Sheffield’s voice, she realized.
“I don’t think so,” she gasped, her voice still shaky and hoarse from fright. “No,” she added after a moment. “Just shaken up and scratches. Nothing broken.” Her ankle, she discovered when she tried to get up, hurt like a son-of-a-bitch, but she could put her weight on it. She’d twisted it, but not enough to break or sprain.
“Can you climb back up?”
She thought about her attempts to halt her fall. “I’ll try.”
She did, for all she was worth, keenly conscious of the blackness behind her and the rapidly diminishing light from above. As soon as the shock had begun to subside, her skin had begun to prickle with uneasiness, especially the skin along her back and neck, as if she could feel eyes boring into her.
She tried not to think about the possibility of snakes and spiders and scorpions in the pit with her, but her ears pricked for any furtive movements that could be interpreted as death on legs or the slither of a serpent.
She managed to crawl up the nearly flat area of the shaft, but she could get no higher. Each time she tried, she slid down again until she was wet with sweat, her clothes clinging to her all over.
“I can’t,” she acknowledged finally. “The surface is too smooth.”
“I’ll look for rope!” someone above announced, though she could tell he wasn’t talking to her but rather someone up top.
“Get some lights while you’re at it!” Oldman commanded, his voice raised as if whoever had gone for rope had already moved off.
“Could somebody drop a light to me?” Gaby called up. “It’s really, really dark in here.”
“Just hold on, Dr. LaPlante! We’ll get you out.”
“What do you see?”
That was Shelia—not hard to figure out even if she hadn’t been familiar with the voice. There were only two women on the dig.
“I can’t see a fucking thing!” Gaby snarled.
“Try to stay calm,” Dr. Sheffield said in a soothing voice, reminding her that she had an audience above that consisted of the entire dig team. She didn’t care. Ordinarily, she watched her language, but she’d grown up around rough, streetwise kids at the orphanage. Fostering was like a revolving door. Just about everybody made it out of the orphanage, but they almost always came back, usually more fucked up than before they’d left, angrier, more rebellious, sometimes quieter and more withdrawn, and sometimes sporting bandages and ca
sts.
Fuck had been everyone’s favorite word, probably mostly because it sent the dorm mothers into gobbling spasms of shocked outrage every time one of them uttered it.
When she’d been very young, she’d envied the ones that got homes. She hadn’t been cute, though. She’d been fat, had flat, listless hair that was so fine it refused to lay down. And she’d had allergies, most of which she’d finally outgrown, but just enough health issues that nobody wanted to be bothered with her.
Later, when she’d finally realized what the behavior of the others meant, she was just as glad to stay where she was. She was ignored for the most part, but that beat the hell out of trying to fight off nasty old men looking for sexual playthings, women looking for live-in baby sitters and domestic slaves, and foster parents who took out their frustrations on the children entrusted to their care by beating the living shit out of them whenever they were in a bad mood—or drunk, or high.
She didn’t like dark, closed in spaces, though.
She tried to tell herself that was why she felt the prickling all over her skin as if eyes were crawling over her.
“Is it a large chamber?”
That was Dr. Sheffield again. She couldn’t decide whether he thought talking to her would calm her down or if he was more fucking interested in what she’d found than her predicament.
“A tomb, you think?” Sheila called down.
She was going to plant her foot up that bitch’s ass when she got out, Gaby fumed inwardly.
“If you want to know, send me a light down!” she yelled angrily.
“Mark and Billy went to get some things. They’ll be back soon,” Carl Oldman told her. “We’ll have you out of there before you know it.”
Alien's Concubine, The Page 2