Beyond the concrete structure, Isela focused on a cluster of round thatched roof huts, brick cairns, built by her ancestors centuries ago for ritual sacrifices to the gods for a rich crop. Her father had kept the outside structures intact, but renovated their insides to create saunas and meditation huts for the New Agers who would make their pilgrimages to the resort in the tourist months. These cairns dotted the landscape, forming a line up into the mountains.
Forgetting about the plane, Isela zoomed her binoculars in on the last cairn bordering her father’s land.
Was that movement she could see behind the structure?
She held her gaze on the spot for a beat, reassuring herself that she had imagined it.
The minibus was right on schedule, having passed the first cairn on the canyon road, then the second, and was now close enough for Isela to see the driver with her binoculars. She recognized Juan at the wheel.
Shit, why did it have to be Juan? She liked him. He was loyal, which meant he would not give up the mark without a fight.
Eight minutes to go.
Isela turned her attention to the cóndor in the café, who was getting to his feet. He threw some money on the table and jogged along the cobbled sidewalk behind the café towards the airstrip and the boys playing football. Isela narrowed her focus on the scene. The boys stopped playing, and watched the man walk towards them.
He said a few words. They replied. From the hand gestures and the body language, Isela knew that they were negotiating. It was a skill everyone in the hacienda had perfected. The man passed money to Enrico, who Isela knew was her age and the oldest of the group. Enrico handed the ball to the man who tossed it in the air in front of his feet, booting it across the airstrip and over the flat roof of the hangar.
Why would he buy a football from them only to kick it into the trees? The boys sprinted after it, disappearing into the jungle behind the concrete hangar.
A piercing whistle broke Isela from her reverie. Peeking over the belfry wall at the piazza, she saw Antonio signalling to her to begin her countdown.
Isela nodded. Finally, she was going to get out of here. Get away from the madness and the sway this mountain had on her.
Setting her rifle in a tiny trench she’d dug out of a stone on the ledge, she sighted on the canyon road and waited her chance to be free of the mountain.
Gaia
12
Southern Peru, 1930
THE SUN WAS a blazing orange ball dipping into the sea as Gaia led the elders down from the mountain. They were carrying the man between them.
A young girl had met the procession midway with water for Gaia and the elders. Now she darted out ahead of them to alert the High Priestess. As soon as she knew of the procession’s proximity, the Priestess accepted a bouquet of condor feathers from another elder. Soaking the feathers in a clay bowl filled with goat’s blood and with another elder pacing behind her holding the pot, the Priestess marked the walls of the temple. It was a necessary part of the ritual so that when the underworld discovered the man from the heavens was missing, the temple would be protected from the wrath of the gods.
Every three steps, the Priestess stopped, prayed, and then brushed the Cuari symbol of the three interlocking circles on the stone blocks of the temple. While she marked, her chants called on the gods of the three worlds – the underworld, Uku Pacha, the overworld, Hanan Pacha, and the world of man, Hurin Pacha – to join as one as they once had been. The three must be united when the prophecy was fulfilled.
Gaia halted at the end of the canyon, letting the Priestess finish her ritual. When she had walked the perimeter of the temple, the Priestess placed the feathers into the bowl and then waved for Gaia to proceed. The twilight made it possible for Gaia to drop her hood as she crossed the dusty clearing, her shining eyes absorbing as much as she could withstand before hiding herself away to prepare herself and the cóndor for their journey. As soon as Gaia walked out of the canyon, the villagers dropped to their knees, prostrating themselves on the ground, pulling their small children beneath their bodies, terrified of seeing the man who had fallen from the heavens.
With Gaia still leading the way, the four elders carried the sling through the channel created by the villagers and set it down inside the circle the Priestess had made. Only the Priestess and Gaia were permitted to cross the circle.
Leaving the man wrapped in the sling, the Priestess and Gaia each gripped a wooden pole and awkwardly dragged his inert body into the temple. They stopped next to the reed mat Gaia had rolled out earlier.
‘I am sorry,’ said the Priestess, breathless from the task. Gaia waited until the old woman had caught her breath and mopped her forehead dry. Gaia tasted potatoes from the old woman’s sweat.
Lifting a roll of black cotton gauze from a basket next to the door, Gaia wrapped the thin fabric round her head, covering her mouth and nose. She looked like a bandito.
‘We must follow the prophesy as precisely as we can,’ said the Priestess.
Gaia nodded, swallowing the high sharp chords shooting across her skull and the aching in her joints from the odours of blood and sweat emanating from the man. She had become skilled at carrying her suffering because she knew it was a gift from the gods. This day would fulfil her destiny. Soon she’d be dancing on the stars.
Placing a bowl intricately patterned with bands of red and black next to the man’s head, the Priestess knelt and untied the leather straps binding the sling. She glanced up at Gaia, who nodded, and then with a graceful flourish the Priestess threw open the sling.
The old woman fell back on her heels, knocking over two of the clay pots, their oils absorbed instantly into the soft wool rugs carpeting the temple floor.
The man’s clothing was torn and bloodstained, but his bones were no longer broken, and the mass of tears and cuts to his legs and arms were almost healed. Gaia lifted the golden mask from his face, and both women looked at each other in astonishment, tears of awe filling Gaia’s eyes.
The man’s face remained bruised, his eyes swollen, his lips cracked, but his face had no other injuries.
‘Have you ever seen anything like this… like this being in your experience, Gaia?’
‘Never,’ said Gaia, kneeling at the other side of the man, stroking the dark hair away from his forehead.
Both women remained at his side, sitting cross-legged in silence until the sun fell completely from the heavens and dropped into the sea, and beams of moonlight filtered into the hut through the slits in the stones. The fire had long since gone out. When moonlight touched the top of his head, the Priestess slowly rose to her feet, her bones creaking. Gaia remained seated, her eyes closed, drifting in and out of sleep.
The Priestess relit the fire, then touched Gaia’s shoulder. ‘It is time. Uku Pacha has opened. We must prepare for your descent.’
For all of her young life, Gaia had been practising and praying for this honour, to be the one to guide the star man to the underworld so that the ancient prophesy might be fulfilled. Since the beginning of time, the Cuari had been the protectors of the mountain, first waiting for a guide to be born among them and then, when she was waiting, preparing her to accompany the deity.
Gaia accepted a bowl of warm milk from the Priestess, drinking all of it without even noticing the dots of colour that danced before her eyes as she did. Returning the empty bowl to the Priestess, Gaia slipped her ceremonial hunting knife from its sheath. With trembling hands, she began the ritual that until this day she had only dreamed about.
First, Gaia sliced the blade through the sleeves of the man’s coat, peeling back the cloth, exposing his shirt, braces and trousers. While the priestess removed his boots, Gaia stripped off his bloody clothes, tossing them into a pile near the temple door. The Cuari elders would take the clothes up to the mountain where they would burn them, sending the smoke into the mountain as a sign that he was coming. When he was naked, Gaia soaked a piece of cotton in warm eucalyptus oil, bathing his face and his body.
Gaia had never seen a naked man until now, but the images on the walls of the temple and the glyphs on the ancient scrolls had prepared her for the sight. When she finished, she spread a blanket she had spent most of her childhood embroidering with a sleek black puma circling a giant condor. She spread the blanket across the man’s naked body.
The Priestess crouched behind Jack’s head and painted the Cuari symbol on each of his temples using inks from the row of clay pots, while Gaia washed the man’s feet.
Soon the air in the hut was thick and pungent, the aromas from the oils and the steam from the water basin clouding the space. The man moaned and stirred under the blanket.
The Priestess looked at Gaia. ‘The time has come.’
13
JACK HARKNESS OPENED his eyes. He sat bolt upright and inhaled. He was not breathing.
Dead. Again.
He had experienced this awakening too many times before. He knew what to expect.
He inhaled. He exhaled.
Nothing.
No gasping. Nothing.
Cupping his palm at his mouth, he exhaled again. Nothing. He wasn’t breathing. What the hell?
Renso. The Hornet. The mountain. Jack’s chest felt light. He pressed his hand on his heart. Still beating. So maybe not dead.
In limbo? Still healing?
Strange.
Jack took deep breaths in and out, but nothing went in or wheezed out from his lungs.
So did that make him dead?
Confusion rushed over Jack in a cold wave. Never experienced this before.
And then the wisp of an image – a girl, the sun, a kiss, darkness.
And so much pain. Jack gasped, the memory flitting away.
Sitting up, Jack could feel he was lying on a platform of rock. He squinted, running his hands over the surface, eventually seeing he was on a lip of rock that ran the circumference of a massive stone chamber. The walls were black granite marbled with veins of silver that were pulsing in the darkness. Above him the chamber formed a square opening, a faint glimmer of moonlight filtering down. Far below him the ground rippled like a satin robe in a soft breeze.
Could rock do that?
Jack was acutely aware of his body, of the fact that he was wearing nothing except a long, intricately embroidered tunic, that the soft wool was caressing his skin, that he was enjoying the sensation immensely, that he was hearing water flowing somewhere in the distance, that despite the darkness he was now seeing clearly, and that in the face of an overwhelming thirst he was tasting lemon and ginger and a hint of chocolate.
Had he fallen from the plane to this place? Into the mountain itself? The plane exploding on the ground flashed in front of Jack, Renso’s last moment like a black and white newsreel running above Jack’s head. He reached out a hand to touch him. The image dissolved. Renso. Poor Renso.
Jack heard himself think the words, but he felt no sadness, no ache in his loins or his heart. He adored Renso, had adored Renso, and yet Jack couldn’t make himself feel even a fleeting moment of grief.
Staring down at his hands, Jack turned them over and over. Long fingers, no calluses, flat round nails. Definitely his hands. Then he pushed up the wide sleeves of the tunic and stared at his arms. He parted the tunic, running his hands across his skin. No puncture wounds, no damage anywhere on his body.
So he had healed from the fall.
But did he fall? When did he fall? Minutes or months ago? The memory of it felt small and thin and kept darting from him.
‘I’m Jack Harkness,’ he said aloud, his voice carried no echo. In a stone chamber of this size, it should have. Strange.
‘I’m a Time Agent, a time traveller.’ Jack smiled. His voice felt soft and sensuous in his throat. ‘I know a Time Lord, the time of the day, the time of the night, tea time, two times two is not too many times,’ he said, laughing, the words bouncing playfully in his brain.
His laughter echoed, but his voice had not. He laughed again. The silver veins in the walls pulsed brighter each time he did. Jack had never seen anything like this place, and he had been strapped into and locked down in a lot of strange places. This had to be one of the most fantastic.
Leaning back against the rock wall, Jack felt a warm rush of desire flood his being. He felt himself grow hard beneath the tunic. Wow. His body felt ethereal, weightless, but grounded, experiencing this moment, substantial. The silver veins from the rock, reached out like long probing fingers and they danced across his body.
Jack closed his eyes, but instead of darkness he saw himself languishing on the platform of rock experiencing a powerful rush of pleasure.
For a beat Jack realised the chamber was inside his head and outside it. Behind him and in front of him. He laughed at the absurdity and let himself sink back into the rock. The silver veins threaded themselves across every muscle, every limb, every part of him. Closing his eyes again, he could see himself being folded into the rock.
The sensation was wonderful, yet Jack heard himself thinking that this was not a good wonderful. It was a bad wonderful. It was the wonderful at the end of a thrilling journey. It was the wonderful after intimacy. It was the last hurrah, the final chapter, the kiss goodbye, the beginning of the end.
Jack lifted his arm and tore it away from the wall, snapping the threads.
He heard a sob. It tasted like ginger.
Maybe this was a good thing after all. He let his arm fall to his side again. The threads slithered over his hand instantly. Jack’s body had never felt so warm, so wholly satisfied, so welcomed, so at peace.
‘Jack, move!’
Closing his eyes again, he saw himself closing his eyes again, and closing his eyes again, and closing his eyes, his mind in a fun-house mirror of its own making. He spoke out loud, he yelled, he howled, the sound of his own voice keeping him aware, forcing him to be aware that he was not ready for the end.
He was inexplicably conscious and unconscious at the same time. Self-aware, trapped in a chamber, somewhere underground, and more than a little freaked out.
‘The time of the prophesies is at hand.’
Jack glanced up. Not his voice. The opening in the top of the chamber was widening. Jack could see the full moon. Jack liked the moon. He smiled at the thought, the veins pulsing as they tightened their grip on his legs, his thighs, his cock, thousands of them now like thin threads of electricity pushing and probing through his hair, pouring out of the black rock, engulfing Jack, absorbing him. Suddenly the veins were wrapping his body, mummifying him, swarming and slithering, engulfing Jack’s shoulders, his neck, his head.
A low growl, seductive, echoed in the chamber. Jack licked his lips. He tasted mint. His hands tingled. Jack’s head was almost fully covered in silver threads, and he could see in front of himself, behind himself. The universe floating around him. He was in the stars. He was home.
‘Hey! Hey! Are you OK?’
‘Wait,’ shouted Jack. He felt hands pulling his head and shoulders from the soft rock. ‘I’m not ready.’ They were his hands.
Jack watched the silver veins retreating, screaming, into the granite.
Looking down, Jack could see a school of blue fish with bulging marble eyes and spiny scales gliding in and out of his line of sight.
The growls were louder, less seductive, angry and feral.
Jack stared at the fish, mesmerised, a memory from his childhood playing out before him like a hologram inches from his eyes. Jack was a teenager, running into the Boeshane Sea with his brother, Gray, trying to catch blue anchoa. An almost impossible feat, but if you caught one when its eyes were open then you could see your future.
Had we caught one that day? Am I still a boy and this is my future?
Jack looked down. The fish were gone, and Gray, and their past too.
The growling became a word, ‘Fall!’
The word pulsed from the veins shooting like electricity from the granite again, attaching to Jack’s head. A thunderous roar erupted from beneath him.<
br />
‘Come on, Jack. We’ve got no time left.’
The roaring was getting louder and as it did the taste in Jack’s mouth was intensifying, ginger and lemon and eucalyptus.
‘Fall!’
Jack stood and took a step towards the precipice, staring down at the three rings of fire, all circling in unison, chasing each other, the end of one the beginning of the other.
‘You must fall together,’ howled the voice, animalistic, deep, and not human. Like Jack was hearing an electrical charge, a sound wave, a force of nature.
The veins throbbed brighter and pulled tighter around Jack, even as he stood on the edge.
‘No!’
Jack tore himself from his cocoon and when he did the entire chamber began to crumble around him. Jack threw himself across the ledge as a massive rock crashed down from the wall behind him. Jack rolled from its path, but as soon as he did, the rock raised itself up on the ledge. Shifting its shape into a petrified version of Jack, it lunged at him.
Jack locked his fingers together into a double fist and swung at the monster’s head. The rock crumbled in front of him, sending pieces of smouldering rock and ash into the abyss below.
Jack felt as if his skull was cracking. He stared at his hands, willing them to move again. He ripped the rest of the silver vines from his head, his chest, his arms, and his legs. The mountain screamed, the rock rumbled, a thunderous roar burst from the rings of fire, sending a flaming serpentine fissure up from below. The fissure shot along the lip, chasing Jack across the ledge. The chamber shook. Jack skidded, scrambling for a foothold. Hot bubbling lava began rising from the rings beneath him.
‘Fall!’
‘No!’
The keening shriek whistled angrily from every crevice. ‘This is how it must be.’
14
JACK’S EYES FLEW open.
‘Jesus, amigo,’ said Renso, tossing a bloodied rock down into the dark abyss of the mountain. ‘How the hell did you get all the way down here?’
Torchwood_Exodus Code Page 5