by Jack Geurts
Once again, this reaction began instantly.
The world started to shift as it had before, rewinding through time. The river began slithering like a snake through the landscape as it changed course and position over the centuries. Every few seconds, it would rise up and flood the land, then return to its serpentine form.
Around it, the farms moved also, always staying close by. Newer ones were abandoned and turned back into jungle as the river moved away, while older ones were re-made on the banks. The snake-like river moved on through the trees that were cut down to make room for farmland, then as it moved, the jungle slowly crept in again, regaining its former territory.
All the while, the river was continuing north, every move inching in that direction. They followed its reverse progress toward the horizon, flying slowly over jungle that had only moments ago been a flooded rice paddy.
“There it is!” said Io, pointing down.
And there it was.
A gleaming metal pyramid on the riverbank, in the midst of a cleared section of jungle. The clearing had been made, no doubt, by the Precursors who laid the Marker, though now the undergrowth was starting to creep back – vines climbing its polished sides, saplings rising from the earth all around.
Jasper smiled. They had found it.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Journey Of The Second Marker
Time had stopped moving in reverse, and Io brought the Flight Pod down to land right in front of the pyramid. The legs were lowered, then the ramp, then both of them emerged onto the riverbank, leaving Dia curled up on the saddle.
A muddy clay slope fell away behind them into the water and on the other side rose a great, forested ridge. A fine rain was misting down – beads of moisture were running off the leaves, his hair, her feathers.
“Do you suppose we just...touch it again?” Io said.
Jasper squinted, uncertain. “I don’t know.”
They moved forward. The vines were like long, leafy fingers coming out of the jungle, trying to consume the pyramid, to drag it back into the trees. Jasper reached out cautiously, expecting the thing to explode again like the last one did.
But this time when he touched it, nothing happened.
He waited. She waited.
He touched it again. Nothing.
Jasper looked over at Io, who shrugged. He turned back to the pyramid, studied it. He touched its slippery metal surface a third time. On this occasion, he thought he saw the tip of the pyramid glowing slightly blue, but the day was too bright to tell.
“Did you see that?”
Io stepped forward to get a better look. “What?”
“The tip looks like it’s glowing when I touch it.” He demonstrated again, and this time he was sure. Io saw it too.
“But why?” she said. “What does it do?”
“I don’t know. Maybe we should fast-forward, see what happens when people come across it for the first time.”
They climbed back into the Pod and Io took it up into the air. She explained that if they were landed when she did a Time Shift, the ground could open up beneath them or a tree could fall and damage the vessel – safer to just be above it all.
Io raised her glowing hand and now the world began to shift forward. A Time Progression, she called it, rather than a Time Reversion. They watched the first hunter-gatherers emerge from the jungle to approach the pyramid at super-fast speed. Soon, there were dozens of them milling about, trying to decide what it was, clearing off the vines that had grown over it.
Within seconds, a village began to take shape. Huts were built and people sat around communal fire pits. Men hunted, women gathered, and people ate and fished in the river. Slowly, the surrounding forest was cleared to make way for rice paddies.
Amid the hustle and bustle, for a split second, Jasper could make out an old man sitting by the fire, playing a flute made from the wing-bones of a crane. Time seemed to slow down in that moment, at least for him, and he saw the villagers gathered in front of the old man, sitting and listening intently. He found himself remembering the woman playing her lyre in Eridu. A mirror image, reflected over thousands of miles and years. Different, but the same.
Then the river rose up at hyper-speed and flooded the entire plain, washing away the village. As it receded in the following instant, Jasper saw another settlement being established on higher ground nearby. He also saw the metal pyramid where it had previously been, unmoved by the massive amounts of water, but abandoned by the early settlers.
“They left it there,” Io said, surprised.
“Maybe they thought it was cursed, like it brought the flood or something. Bring it back to the present day, now that we know where it is.”
Io stared at him, waiting for something.
“Could you please bring it back to the present day?” Jasper said, realising his rudeness, but sounding more exasperated than sorry.
Io complied, and the world suddenly reverted to Jasper’s own time. No fast-forwarding, just a sudden snap back to the present. A lush rainforest was draped over the land like a blanket. No sign of the Yellow River though – that was far to the south, where they had originally found it.
There was only one problem.
The pyramid was gone.
Both of them leaned forward, trying to see it. True, the jungle canopy was in the way, but it was thinner here than in other places, and you could still see through to the ground. There was no mistaking the absence of a ten-foot metal pyramid.
“What...?” said Io. “Where did it go?”
Jasper frowned. “It must have been moved.”
“Moved? By who?”
“I don’t know. Someone, obviously. That flood couldn’t move it, so it didn’t get washed away. Someone must have come and taken it somewhere else.”
Io was already on it, winding the clock hands back with her mind. At least that’s what Jasper thought she was doing – not much seemed to be happening down below. It was a fairly remote stretch of jungle, he supposed, unlikely to be inhabited by anyone in the last few thousand years, especially without a river there to draw them.
The only way he could really tell time was moving backwards was by the sky. The clouds racing overhead, the sun setting and rising every millisecond. Torrential rain and scorching sun, one after the other for a thousand years or more.
Then, she stopped.
Or slowed, rather. Time was still going backwards, but at a lesser speed, and Jasper noticed what it was that made her pull back.
The trees around where the pyramid ought to have been were suddenly a little smaller. She kept rewinding. They grew smaller still, diminishing until they were nothing at all – until below the Flight Pod was a clearing. A man-made clearing. But it wasn’t just that.
It was a path.
The end of a path.
A long, wide trail carved through the trees and the undergrowth.
It passed beneath them and continued south, toward the river. They followed it with their eyes and saw the pyramid coming their way – coming back from wherever it had been taken to. It was being rolled somehow, accompanied by dozens of men.
As the pyramid arrived at its original place and the men disappeared, the jungle path grew narrower, until it was barely visible at all.
Io brought the Flight Pod in closer and they saw a team of six men milling around the pyramid, in a clearing they had evidently made themselves after hacking through the rainforest. They were probably among the first people to set eyes on the Marker since it had been abandoned by those early hunter-gatherers.
And these were no hunter-gatherers.
Three of them had on leather caps and armour plating similar to that worn by Terracotta Warriors, and Jasper realised he must be in at least the ancient period now. They were sitting by a fire they had made, eating and resting after having felled all the trees.
The other three seemed to be government officials of some kind, dressed in black silk robes, with long moustaches and goatees. Their hair was coiled
tightly in buns atop their heads, and they possessed a certain patrician quality that came from years of looking down their noses at lesser people. People like the soldiers who were accompanying them now.
Two officials were walking in reverse around the pyramid, measuring it with ropes. The third was seated on a tree stump, writing down the measurements on a strip of silk affixed to a bamboo clipboard. They seemed to be trying to work what it was, where it had come from, what it meant.
“Okay, take us forward now,” Jasper said. He quickly added, “Please.”
With a satisfied smile, Io stopped the Reversion and engaged the Progression. The officials and their bodyguards vanished, and soon enough, the jungle path widened again as a larger group arrived, hacking their way through.
“Okay, slow it down.”
Io did, and they both watched as dozens of slaves set to work hauling the thickest logs into place in front of the pyramid. They were being directed by an official, who had with him a detachment of soldiers armed with whips and spears.
Io sped it up slightly until the slaves had somehow managed to lift the front edge of the pyramid up onto the first log. From there, it was a matter of festooning the structure with ropes, which the slaves out in front used to haul the pyramid across the logs, while the slaves at the back pushed with all their might.
As the pyramid passed over the rearmost log, the slaves at the back picked it up and carried it around to the front so the pyramid could keep rolling forward. In this way, they moved forth through the jungle, with the invisible Flight Pod following overhead.
At the rate Io was going, days were passing in a matter of seconds – the sun rising in the east, circling overhead and setting in the west. Each day, the pyramid made significant progress south across the landscape. At night, the slaves would light small fires and camp beneath the stars. A handful of soldiers kept watch, changing guard every few hours (or every half-second to Jasper’s eyes), and in the morning, they began again.
It was an incredible achievement to be sure. Nothing but sheer human strength, ingenuity and cruelty. Jasper was reminded of the way the ancient Egyptians had moved blocks of limestone to build the pyramids. Of course, slaves hadn’t been used to build the pyramids, but the method of moving impossibly heavy objects over long distances was more or less the same.
In an age before steam, before electricity, it seemed like a miracle to Jasper that people were able to do much of anything. The fact that these ancient civilisations accomplished what they did was made all the more impressive because they had so little to work with – at least, relative to what people had in his own time.
Eventually, the procession came to the river, where a great barge was waiting. A ramp had been laid out to the shore, made to be as flat as possible to ease the loading of the pyramid. In what must have taken hours but was here only a second or two, the front slaves hauled the giant metal structure onto the barge while the back slaves had to carry the logs around through the mud and water to post them onto the ramp in front of the pyramid.
As the Marker moved across the ramp, the water got deeper and deeper, until some of the slaves couldn’t even touch the bottom any more. None of them seemed to be confident swimmers, but with the soldiers’ lash the only alternative, there was really no choice at all. In the sped-up chaos of loading the pyramid, Jasper saw at least a few of the slaves go under, and stay under.
The barge was wide and flat. It seemed to have been built for this very purpose. Nevertheless, with the weight of the pyramid, its sturdy hull sank a metre or two into the river. Once the Marker was loaded and the soldiers had marshalled the remaining slaves on board, they set off.
Jasper and Io continued following the barge as it made its way downstream, a row of slaves on either side, pulling at oars. At night, paper lanterns would be hung out on lines over the deck, their flames reflected in the still, black water.
“Where do you think they are taking it?” Io said.
Jasper considered. “Do you know what year it is?”
Suddenly, a few holographic letters and numbers were projected up from the Window. They read ‘215 BCE’.
Jasper tried to remember his studies of ancient China. This was nothing the teachers at his school made him do, just his own insatiable curiosity about the past. He tried to recall what was happening there in 215 BCE. The Romans were fighting Hannibal at Nola, but that was a few thousand miles to the west. Then it hit him.
“Qin Shi Huang,” he said, finally. “The First Emperor of China.”
Io frowned, not understanding. “What would he want with the pyramid?”
“Well, right about now, he’s building his giant, pyramid-shaped mausoleum. So that might have something to do with it.”
Io gave him a look, and they kept following the barge along the Yellow River south to where it forked off onto the Wei. The boat took this smaller river westward, winding through farmland that grew more and more densely populated. More houses, more people. Various settlements and strongholds along the way.
And then the capital city of Xianyang opened up before them.
A vast, ancient metropolis, Xianyang was the centre of the first empire in Chinese history. After Qin Shi Huang had defeated all his enemies in a long and bloody war, he moved his capital here, between the river and the foothills beyond. Great towers, temples and palaces with sloping rooftops rose up from leafy gardens and pools. Wide, stone streets passed through arched gateways, and boats were moored at the wharves jutting out into the river. The whole city was surrounded by a huge rectangle of high, outer walls. A smaller rectangle at the centre formed the inner city and contained the most important buildings, such as the Emperor’s main palace.
It was here that the barge put in one afternoon. Jasper and Io watched as the ramp was laid out flat to the wharf. The slaves, exhausted from their countless days of rowing, were put to work once again unloading the Marker.
A crowd of people had gathered to watch this momentous event. Clearly, word had spread about the discovery of the pyramid out there in the jungle, but to see the thing with their own eyes, to have proof of its existence – that was another thing entirely.
Jasper and Io followed overhead as the Marker was transported via ox and slave and rolling log down a road that ran parallel to the river. They were heading east, back the way they came, but it wasn’t long before they arrived at the mausoleum – or what would one day become the mausoleum.
Presently, it was still under construction.
The giant building towered over the surrounding landscape, dwarfed only by Mount Lishan behind it. The structure looked like a stepped pyramid that had been cut in half and separated a little, with paths coming in to the centre from east and west. The top had been cut off and the middle hollowed out, so what was left were two square “U” shapes facing one other, each made up of nine terraces.
“What is that?” Io said, amazed.
“That’s the mausoleum.”
Io couldn’t believe it. “That is the mausoleum? It looks more like a city.”
She was right. All around the pyramidal structure was a replica of Xianyang. It wasn’t as big as the original, but it came pretty close. It had the same rectangular inner and outer walls, with guard towers and gateways and palaces. In between was well-kept grassland and planted trees along the paths. There were no living quarters or workshops here – those had all been built beyond the outer walls, along with stables and mass graves for the workers who died during construction.
Further east, Jasper knew, were the pits dug especially for the Terracotta Army – almost ten thousand soldiers, horses and chariots in total. All of them fashioned out of clay and garrisoned about one-and-a-half kilometres east of the Emperor’s tomb, to protect him in the afterlife from all the people he had conquered.
It wasn’t a mausoleum at all, but a funerary complex. A city built to house one man for all eternity. It was something that had taken almost forty years and seven hundred thousand workers to build. All f
or one man.
“It’s not finished yet,” Jasper explained. “See the passageway there.”
He pointed to the gap between the two halves of the pyramidal structure. Set into the ground there was a large tunnel boring into the earth at an angle, so that it led directly beneath the hollowed-out centre of the pyramid.
“Yes,” she said. “Where does it go?”
“That leads down to the mausoleum.”
Io paused, thinking. “So if his actual mausoleum is underground, what is all this for? The city, the pyramid?”
“To honour him,” Jasper said. “To protect him in the afterlife. The guy was terrified of death. As he got older, he’d send people all over the place looking for the elixir of life.” He stopped, then realised some explanation might be necessary. “Something that would make him immortal.”
Io narrowed her eyes. “I know what an elixir of life is.”
Jasper held his hands up. “Alright. But, I mean, obviously, they never found one. Still, it’s said the Emperor surrounded himself...”
“I’m sorry, did you just say ‘it is said’?”
Jasper looked over and noticed she was smiling. He realised his mistake. “According to tradition, then...How’s that? Is that better?”
“I usually just go with ‘it is said’, but I know how that annoys you.”
“It is said,” he went on, adding extra emphasis now. “That the Emperor surrounded himself with all kinds of mystics and alchemists who were trying to prolong his life. And when they couldn’t, he’d usually have them put to death.”
“That does not sound very fair. Asking someone to do an impossible thing, then killing them when they cannot do it.”
Jasper shrugged in agreement. “Qin Shi Huang wasn’t really a fair guy. He had most of his workers buried alive him after they completed work on the tomb so they couldn’t reveal its secrets. Not to mention all his concubines.”
Io scrunched her nose up in disgust. “He sounds like a charming fellow.”
“Oh, yeah, he was. No doubt about it. One of the substances they’d bring to him was mercury, in a pill form. And he’d take it, thinking the pill was making him immortal, when really, it was probably what killed him.”