A solitary figure climbed out through a small gap in the debris that had fallen outside his door. He stood on top of the loose stones and looked behind him at the shipping containers that hours previously had protected him from a rocky avalanche. One of the containers was unrecognisable, as if a giant hand had grabbed it at one end and crushed it. Any sign of royal blue paintwork on the corrugated steel walls was gone. The surrounding scenery was equally unfamiliar, an undulating moonscape blanketed in grey dust. He brushed his clothing and stood up straight. He was tired. The night had been long, the conditions brutal. Somehow he had kept going, hour after endless hour, willing the electricity not to fail.
He walked across the remains of the plaza. Some ceremonial stelae had survived, still pointing roughly skywards like neglected gravestones. The green lawn was more of a muddy battlefield, potholed and littered with bodies and bricks. He viewed the desolation with curious, analytical eyes. It was neither a bad thing nor a good thing. The destruction had merely occurred. It was a fact, and he was looking at it. The sight of mutilated bodies did not connect with him at any emotional level, and he greeted the mutilated temples with equal indifference. He threaded his way around the remains of Temple II. A particularly large rubble mound necessitated an awkward detour up the hill to the North Acropolis, which had survived almost intact, and then he scrambled back down to the West Plaza and on to the Tozzer Causeway.
His destination now lay immediately ahead. It was the precise location described by the twin stelae found by Karl Mengele and Bilbo Ballashiels in the nineteenth century. The point where the ancient pathway from Paxcamán to Uaxactún intersected the route from El Zotz to Topoxté. According to Mayan legend, the site contained a long-lost repository of knowledge that would empower whoever discovered it with the means to survive the upheaval predicted to accompany the end of the thirteenth baktun – the current Long Count period of the Mayan calendar, now just a few days away.
He had yet to encounter a living soul on his journey. Those who had not fallen to the attacking Americans during the night had retreated to quarters at the periphery of the reserve. Rapidly migrating rumours of a dead President had sent many of them out of the area altogether, seeking the comfort of home to wait out yet another unpredictable political vacuum. The relentless destructive machine of research and discovery had halted. Tikal had already regained its natural soundscape: toucans, woodpeckers, grasshoppers, rustling forest animals and softly whistling branches punctuated by the occasional shriek of a howler monkey. The long centuries of the current baktun were almost over. The process of renewal had begun.
At the end of his short walk he found the road impassable. When mounds of dust attempted to swallow him feet-first, he turned back and headed to one side. Boulders the size of cars blocked his way. In the other direction, a once-proud ceiba tree had snapped in two, leaving a stump and its undulating thick grey roots with nothing to support. He was able to climb over its scarred horizontal trunk and drop down to an area of low-lying rubble at the base of what had once been Temple IV. He knew that the dust, the boulders and the bricks had been part of the pyramid. It had lost half of its height and all of the stone facing on its eastern side, including the external staircase. It no longer dwarfed the forest; it would now sprawl in humble obscurity.
He steadied himself on the loose stones and turned his neck upwards. The pair of stelae that had led him to this scene had provided him with some clues as to what he might find there. He had expected some kind of durable marker to indicate the spot where the wisdom of the ancients had been concealed. He was prepared for a sign, another stele, a monument. The pyramid temple itself could not have been the marker. It was only one and a half millennia old, not nearly ancient enough to be what he was looking for. But it was in the right place. It had been constructed, along with all the other temples at Tikal and in other Mayan cities, on top of something created by earlier generations. Now that its top and side had been blown off, he could see clearly what lay beneath. It was beautiful. It warmed him. It connected with him deep down. The stresses of the previous night became distant memories. The future started here and now. He smiled.
* * *
‘Hey, Lord Dumbass,’ grumbled Matt as he opened unseeing eyes, not caring who he woke. ‘Get your arm off me.’
‘Mountebank? Terribly sorry, old chap. Thought you were someone else.’
The batteries in Matt’s army-issue torch had lasted long enough the night before to convince them that the rocky chamber contained no other exit. The choking dust that had accompanied the arrival of the debris reduced the torchlight visibility to just a few inches. And though the night vision goggles enabled them to find and crush a dozen furry spiders and a scorpion, and to reassure them that no bats were in residence, the image eventually faded with the power. It was hopeless to attempt a strenuous dig back to the surface under those conditions. Everyone had covered their faces as best they could and lain still, waiting for the dust to settle. Coughing subsided; edgy sleep came and went.
The burial chamber in which they had spent an uncomfortable night was a squeeze for four dead people, let alone four living ones. The tight, sloping access tunnel had halved in length. The detritus blocking the entrance would have to be cleared by hand, working blindly. Ruby knew that if one of the obstructing rocks turned out to be too heavy for the strongest among them to manage, their chances of survival would be bleak.
‘We have to find a way out,’ she said, already trying to pick up an invisible stone. ‘Those scrolls are in Tikal somewhere. I’m sure of it. Between us we can find them.’
‘Rubes, forget the scrolls,’ said Matt.
‘Why do you keep telling me to forget the scrolls?’
‘Because there are no scrolls.’
‘They’re here. Orlando told me. Don’t you realise? The Sphinx is a time machine. The scrolls are a message from the past, sent into the future for the benefit of the world. We have to get them into safe hands and find out what that message is.’
‘Mmm,’ said Matt. ‘Tricky.’
‘I know, but we have to try.’
‘There was an accident, Rubes.’
‘What?’
‘They got ruined.’
‘Don’t be stupid, Matt. They’re the most valuable artefacts on the planet. They would have been well protected. Orlando wouldn’t damage them.’
‘He didn’t. It was me.’
‘What was you?’
‘I kinda destroyed the scrolls.’
‘Stop it, Matt. You’re scaring me.’
‘I didn’t mean to do it.’
Matt trembled during the ensuing silence as Ruby attempted to process the enormity of his claim. At length, she spoke with a force that reminded Matt of an erupting volcano.
‘You destroyed the scrolls? The sole surviving written records of humanity’s lost past? The archaeological treasure I spent a whole chunk of my career searching for? Tell me it’s a sick joke, Matt.’
‘I’m sorry, Rubes.’
‘OK,’ she said, her voice already hoarse, her breath coming in rapid gasps, ‘let’s be scientific. Tell me precisely the extent of the damage. I need to know how much survived and in what condition. We may still be able to salvage some of the text.’
‘I don’t know. Nothing. They kind of exploded into dust and then the dust became a sort of goo.’
‘How?’
‘There was a bullet, then a spray of glass fragments, and then green juice. And probably some of Orlando’s blood. It was collateral damage when I shot him.’
‘No!’ she screamed, and it sounded as if she were lashing out blindly at him. ‘If I could see you I’d throw this bloody rock at you,’ she added, her voice wobbling on the precipice that marked the transition from civilised speech to primeval wailing. ‘How could you be such an imbecile? Such a vandal?’
‘Would now be convenient to have a little chat about Larkin?’
‘No, Ratty,’ she barked, finding his idiocy almost a relief fro
m the horror of Matt’s confession. She wiped her eyes and took deep breaths. She needed to focus. The scrolls were gone, but she had to go on living. She had to find a way out. ‘We need to form a chain,’ she said. ‘I’ll pass the stones back. Someone stack them at the far end of the tomb. Is anyone ready to take the first stone from me?’
Slender hands softly cupped themselves around hers. The rock was transferred. The escape was underway. The blind tunnelling progressed for several minutes, Ruby passing to Ratty, Ratty to Matt. A pile of stones started to form at the back of the chamber next to Nichols, but there was still no ingress of light from anywhere. Ratty was clumsy, finding it harder than the others to judge direction and distance, quickly losing the rhythm of movement as soon as it got started. Matt became impatient with him, grumbling and swearing under his breath. Ruby announced that it was already time for a short break.
‘I say, would anyone care for a cigar?’ offered Ratty.
‘Since when did you start smoking?’ Ruby challenged, sounding like an unamused wife.
‘Smoke? Never could get the hang of all that malarkey. Charming local fellow, Paulo, gave me a rather splendid Nicaraguan.’
‘Do you have any matches or a lighter?’ sighed Ruby.
‘Good grief, no. Forgot to ask for one.’
‘So why offer it? If any of us had matches we’d be using them to see, dummy,’ said Matt.
‘Mountebank,’ wheezed Nichols. ‘Grab bag. Feel inside it. Should be a flint and striker.’
‘What the hell’s a flint and striker?’ Matt replied, feeling the unfamiliar objects within the bag.
‘Creates a spark. How could you not know that? Get the cigar lit. We’ll be able to see for a few minutes.’
Matt pulled a random device from the bag. It wasn’t the flint and striker, but it had a button. That meant it had power, and maybe he could get some light from its display. He pressed it and recoiled when it beeped loudly and simultaneously dazzled him with the seedy glow of a faint green diode, indicating the presence of a radar signal.
‘What the hell?’ whispered Nichols. ‘Everyone quiet.’ The sound of moving rocks agitated him. ‘I said shut it. Quiet, woman. They’re on top of us.’
‘Don’t you “woman” me,’ she hissed back at him. ‘And for your information I didn’t touch any stupid rocks.’
The sound continued, louder this time. Ruby stepped back. The full force of the morning light flooded through a small hole. She grabbed a rock and made the opening larger. A hand outside did likewise. Now there was a face. She squinted through dilated pupils to see the features of her rescuer. With the sun at his back he was just an indistinct shape, a living shadow. The spicy aroma was unmistakeable, however. Oscuro Presidente. Rolled in Nicaragua. Smoked by Paulo. After Orlando, he was the person she least wanted to meet again.
* * *
The Patient had observed. He had noted. He had been fascinated. He had learned. The sight of the raw, exposed heart of Temple IV had taught him much, but he would need technological assistance to take his work further.
He turned his attention to the man who had arrived at the nearby remains of Complex N. The Patient recognised the ground scanning device he was using. It appeared to be the machine belonging to the English aristocrat who had brought him to Tikal, a man who had been the first to show him what he believed was known as kindness and sympathy. A man who came closest to his understanding of the concept of a ‘friend’. But this was not the kindly Englishman using the device. He knew of this man. It was Paulo Souza.
The Patient stood on a boulder overlooking Complex N as Paulo appeared to pluck a person from a hole in the rubble at the base of a small temple. Three more people emerged from the same hole. They were grey from head to toe, blinking in the daylight, dusting themselves and each other down. One of the grey people had the same body shape and peculiar mannerisms as he recalled his friend having. The man was tall, slim and had a tendency to stoop. The Patient felt a pleasurable sensation accompanying this realisation. He wondered if this was a normal reaction to the unexpected recognition of a friend.
There was a female. She appeared agitated, angry, fierce. She was pointing at things and slapping Paulo. Then she hit some of the other men. None retaliated. She was an interesting human, he mused. There was a man who moved in a way that suggested strength and another who was weakened by an ailment. From this distance it was difficult to diagnose his condition, even for a man who had spent a lifetime secretly studying the collection of medical textbooks in Otto’s library.
The Patient decided to pick his way through the debris field and join them.
‘Mr President?’ gulped Paulo, suddenly aghast that his apparent defection had been discovered by a man who had been seriously wounded just hours ago and now seemed miraculously healed. He had always dismissed rumours of the President’s immortality as the ignorant superstitions of the peasant class. Now it felt to him as if the laws of physics and nature, as he understood them, had been rewritten.
‘Shit, it’s that asshole President,’ mumbled Matt, hoping to be unrecognisable under the chalky layer of dust that was caked on his face and edging behind Ratty just in case.
Having expressed her vitriol at Paulo and at Nichols, one for beginning the destruction of Tikal and the other for completing it, Ruby lacked anything coherent to say to Orlando. It seemed all over for him anyhow. The soldiers had scarpered, the research project had been destroyed. Whatever he had been preparing himself and his people for, well, he’d have to take it on the chin with the rest of them.
‘I say, it’s Mister Patient chappy,’ chirped Ratty with a smile and an effete wave.
‘Patient?’ asked Ruby. ‘This megalomaniac is one of the most impatient people –’
She stopped speaking when the man inexplicably approached Ratty with a broad grin on his elastic face and embraced him like an old friend.
‘Paulo,’ said the Patient, ‘attend to the injured man. He has an impact wound to the shoulder and a broken clavicle. He needs hydration and a sling to take the strain.’
A flash of realisation hit Ruby. Her mouth opened wide in pure unmitigated annoyance. She walked to Matt and slapped him hard in the face for the second time this morning. Then she went up to Ratty and did the same to him, albeit for the first time, realising as she did so that he would probably enjoy the physical contact no matter how bruising.
‘What the hell?’
‘I say!’
‘That was for lying about your soldier boy stuff,’ she yelled at Matt. ‘I’ve had enough of your fantasies. To think I let myself believe you when you said you’d shot Orlando!’
‘Who the hell do you think this blood belongs to, then?’ whispered Matt, pointing at the bloodstains on his clothing. They were now inconveniently invisible beneath the dust.
She just glared at him.
‘And as for you, Ratty, I should have known you were in cahoots with Orlando all along. I can’t believe you let me suffer all that I’ve been through when you were bosom buddies with my kidnapper from the start.’
‘I hate to contradict, Rubes old caldo de pata, but this is the Patient chappy. He was recently in the care – and I use that word entirely perversely – of Doctor Mengele. The Patient’s a jolly nice bloke. Never mentioned anything about having a totalitarian régime to run.’
Ruby rubbed more dust from around her eyes. If this was Orlando, there was something anomalous about the texture of his skin. The President looked great for his age, she had to admit, but right now he seemed to glow with a luminescence that was positively childlike. And he hadn’t recognised her.
‘My friends,’ announced the Patient, gesturing to all present, ‘and I hope that you are – or will become – my friends, for, after all, without friends, no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods. I certainly have all other goods now – I have been granted executive powers by the President to rule this nation for a short period. But those powers and the wealth that must inevitably accom
pany them are of no concern to me. I merely hope that I can do justice to my brother whilst I wear his shoes. Aristotle wrote that he who is to be a good ruler must have first been ruled. My life until yesterday has been one of total subjugation. I have been dominated, humiliated, experimented upon and treated with a degree of disrespect that not even the lowest animal should have to endure. If the wise philosopher is correct, I shall excel in my role.’
‘Well, jolly good luck to you, then,’ applauded Ratty.
‘The best friend is the man who, in wishing me well, wishes it for my sake. I thank you for that, Lord Ballashiels.’
‘Forget all that Ballashiels twaddle. Call me Ratters.’
‘Brother?’ asked Ruby after a delay of sufficient seconds to absorb meaning from the Patient’s casual mention of his sibling. ‘You’re Orlando’s brother? So what happened to him?’
‘All in good time, my friends. I would like to show you something first.’ He looked over towards the stump of Temple IV, still impressively high above them even after half of it had gone.
When he started walking, no one questioned whether to follow. Despite fatigue, thirst, hunger and discomfort, no one stayed behind. Four strong-willed, independent-minded individuals – plus Ratty – all tagged along without a word. The serene personality of the Patient had an almost hypnotic effect on their exhausted minds. The tattered rabble followed him unthinkingly across the debris field, climbing as high as the stones would take them.
The mound levelled off a little short of the highest intact part of the pyramid’s face. The Patient leaned against the surviving course of blockwork and peered inside. One by one, the others did the same. No one spoke. The natural orchestra of the rainforest spoke for them. What else could they say? There was nothing to add to the symphony nature already provided: a timeless, endless chorus that had been playing – unchanged – when the pyramid was originally sealed, and ten millennia before that when the exquisite item within it was created. This thing had outlasted every human since the Ice Age. It was as close to an eternal marker as mankind had ever been capable of constructing. It was a symbol of its age, a weighty anchor in the ever-flowing oceans of time.
The Sphinx Scrolls Page 32