Fallon switched on the projector and we ran through them again. I stopped at the best one which showed a very clear view of the cenote and the surrounding forest. ‘Can you get down over the water?’ I asked Rider.
‘I guess I could,’ said Rider. ‘But not for long. It’s goddamn close to that hillside at the back of the pool.’
I turned to Fallon. ‘How did you make this clearing we have here?’
‘We dropped a team in with power saws and flamethrowers,’ he said. ‘They burned away the ground vegetation and cut down the trees—then blasted out the stumps with gelignite.’
I stared at the photograph and estimated the height from water-level to the edge of the pit of the cenote. It appeared to be about thirty feet. I said, ‘If Rider can drop me in the water, I can swim to the edge and climb out.’
‘So what?’ said Halstead. ‘What do you do then? Twiddle your thumbs?’
‘Then Rider comes in again and lowers a chain saw and a flame-thrower on the end of the winch.’
Rider shook his head violently. ‘I couldn’t get them anywhere near you. Those trees on the edge are too tall. Jesus, if I get the winch cable tangled in those I’d crash for sure.’
‘Supposing when I went into the water I had a thin nylon cord, say about a couple of hundred yards, with one end tied to the winch cable. I pay it out as I swim to the side, then you haul up the cable and I pay out some more. Then you take up the chopper, high enough to be out of trouble, and I pay out even more line. When you come down again over the cenote with the stuff dangling on the end of the cable, I just haul it in to the side. Is that possible?’
Rider looked even more worried. ‘Hauling a heavy weight to one side like that is going to have a hell of an effect on stability.’ He rubbed his chin. ‘I reckon I could do it though.’
‘What would you reckon to do once you got down?’ asked Fallon.
‘If Rider will tell me how much clear ground he needs to land the chopper. I’ll guarantee to clear it. There might be a few stumps, but he’ll be landing vertically, so they shouldn’t worry him too much. I’ll do it—unless someone else wants to volunteer. What about you, Dr Halstead?’
‘Not me,’ he said promptly. He looked a bit shamefaced for the first time since I’d met him. ‘I can’t swim.’
‘Then I’m elected,’ I said cheerfully, although why I was cheerful is hard to say. I think it was the chance of actually doing something towards the work of the expedition that did it. I was tired of being a spare part.
I checked on the operation of the saw and the flame-thrower and saw they were fully fuelled. The flame-thrower produced a satisfactory gout of smoky flame which shrivelled the undergrowth very nicely. ‘I’m not likely to start a forest fire, am I?’ I asked.
‘Not a chance,’ said Fallon. ‘You’re in a rain forest and these aren’t northern conifers.’
Halstead was coming with me. There was so much weight to be put into the helicopter that there could be only two passengers, and since it was going to be a job for a strongish man to attach the gear to the winch cable and get it out of the helicopter Halstead was chosen in preference to Fallon.
But I wasn’t too happy about it. I said to Rider, ‘I know you’ll be busy jockeying this chopper at the critical moment, but I’d be obliged if you’d keep half an eye on Halstead.’
He caught the implication without half trying. ‘I operate the winch. You’ll get down safely.’
We took off and were over the site within a very few minutes. I waggled my hand in a circle to Rider and he orbited the cenote at a safe height while I studied the situation. It’s one thing to look at photographs on solid ground, and quite another to look at the real thing with the prospect of dangling over it on the end of a line within the next five minutes.
At last I was satisfied that I knew where to aim for once I was in the water. I checked the nylon cord which was the hope of the whole operation and stepped into the canvas loops at the end of the cable. Rider brought the helicopter lower, and I went cautiously through the open door and was only supported by the cable itself.
The last thing I saw of Rider was his hand pulling on a lever and then I was dropping away below the helicopter and spinning like a teetotum. Every time I made a circuit I saw the green hillside behind the cenote coming closer until it was too damned close altogether and I thought the blades of the rotor were going to chop into projecting branches.
I was now a long way below the helicopter, as far as the winch cable would unreel, and my rate of spin was slowing. Rider brought the chopper down gently into the chimney formed by the surrounding trees and I touched the water. I hammered the quick-release button and the harness fell away and I found myself swimming. I trod water and organized the nylon cord, then struck out for the edge of the cenote, paying out the cord behind me, until I grasped a tree root at water-level.
The sides of the cenote were steeper than I had thought and covered with a tangle of creeper. I don’t know how long it took me to climb the thirty feet to the top but it was much longer than I had originally estimated and must have seemed a lifetime to Rider, who had a very delicate bit of flying to do. But I made it at last, bleeding from a score of cuts on my arms and chest, yet still holding on to that precious cord.
I waved to Rider and the helicopter began to inch upwards, and slowly the cable was reeled in. I paid out the cord, and when the helicopter was hovering at a safe height, five hundred feet of cord hung down in a graceful catenary curve. While Halstead was no doubt struggling to get the load on to the end of the winch cable I got my breath back and prepared for my own struggle.
It was not going to be an easy task to haul over a hundred pounds of equipment sixty feet sideways. I took off the canvas belt that was wrapped around my middle and put it about a young tree. It was fitted with a snap hook with a quick release in case of emergencies. There was very little room to move on the edge of the cenote because of the vegetation—there was one tree that must have been ninety feet high whose roots were exposed right on the rim. I took the machete and swung at the undergrowth, clearing space to move in.
There was a change in the note of the chopper’s engine, the pre-arranged signal that Rider was ready for the next stage of the operation, and slowly it began to descend again with the bulk of the cargo hanging below on the winch cable. Hastily I began to reel in the cord hand over hand until the shapeless bundle at the end of the winch cable was level with me, but sixty feet away and hanging thirty feet above the water of the cenote.
I wrapped three turns of the cord around the tree to serve as a friction brake and then began to haul in. At first it came easily but the nearer it got the harder it was to pull it in. Rider came lower as I pulled which made it a bit easier, but it was still back-breaking. Once the chopper wobbled alarmingly in the air, but Rider got it under control again and I continued hauling.
I was very glad when I was able to lean over and snap the hook of the canvas belt on to the end of the winch cable. A blow at the quick-release button let the cargo fall heavily to the ground. I looked up at the chopper and released the cable, which swung in a wide arc right across the cenote. For a moment I thought it was going to entangle in the trees on the other side, but Rider was already reeling it in fast and the chopper was going up like an express lift. It stopped at a safe height, then orbited three times before leaving in the direction of Camp Two.
I sat on the edge of the cenote with my feet dangling over the side for nearly fifteen minutes before I did anything else. I was all aches and pains and felt as though I’d been in a wrestling match with a bear. At last I began to unwrap the gear. I put on the shirt and trousers that had been packed, and also the calf-length boots, then lit a cigarette before I went exploring.
At first I chopped around with the machete because the tank of the flame-thrower didn’t hold too much fuel and the thing itself was bloody wasteful, so I wanted to save the fire for the worst of the undergrowth. As I chopped my way through that tangle of leaves
I wondered how the hell Fallon had expected to travel half a mile in an hour; the way I was going I couldn’t do two hundred yards an hour. Fortunately I didn’t have to. All I had to do was to clear an area big enough for the helicopter to drop into.
I was flailing away with the machete when the blade hit something with a hell of a clang and the shock jolted up my arm. I looked at the edge and saw it had blunted and I wondered what the devil I’d hit. I swung again, more cautiously, clearing away the broad-bladed leaves, and suddenly I saw a face staring at me—a broad, Indian face with a big nose and slightly crossed eyes.
Half an hour’s energetic work revealed a pillar into which was incorporated a statue of sorts of a man elaborately dressed in a long belted tunic and with a complicated headdress. The rest of the pillar was intricately carved with a design of leaves and what looked like over-sized insects.
I lit a cigarette and contemplated it for a long time. It began to appear that perhaps we had found Uaxuanoc, although being a layman I couldn’t be certain. However, no one would carve a thing like that just to leave it lying about in the forest. It was a pity in a way, because now I’d have to go somewhere else to carve my helicopter platform—the chopper certainly couldn’t land on top of this cross-eyed character who stood about eight feet tall.
I went back to the edge of the cenote and started to carve a new path delimiting the area I wanted to clear, and a few random forays disclosed no more pillars, so I got busy. As I expected, the flame-thrower ran out of juice long before I had finished but at least I had used it to the best advantage to leave the minimum of machete work. Then I got going with the chain saw, cutting as close to the ground as I could, and there was a shriek as the teeth bit into the wood.
None of the trees were particularly thick through the trunk, the biggest being about two and a half feet. But they were tall and I had trouble there. I was no lumberjack and I made mistakes—the first tree nearly knocked me into the cenote as it fell, and it fell the wrong way, making a hell of a tangle that I had to clean up laboriously. But I learned and by the time darkness came I had felled sixteen trees.
I slept that night in a sleeping-bag which stank disgustingly of petrol because the chain saw around which it had been wrapped had developed a small leak. I didn’t mind because I thought the smell might keep the mosquitoes away. It didn’t.
I ate tinned cold chicken and drank whisky from the flask Fallon had thoughtfully provided, diluting it with warmish water from a water-bottle, and I sat there in the darkness thinking of the little brown people with big noses who had carved that big pillar and who had possibly built a city on this spot. After a while I fell asleep.
Morning brought the helicopter buzzing overhead and a man dangling like a spider from the cable winch. I still hadn’t cleared up enough for it to land but there was enough manoeuvring space for Rider to drop a man by winch, and the man proved to be Halstead. He dropped heavily to the ground at the edge of the cenote and waved Rider away. The helicopter rose and slowly circled.
Halstead came over to me and then looked around. ‘This isn’t where you’d intended to clear the ground. Why the change?’
‘I ran into difficulties,’ I said.
He grinned humourlessly. ‘I thought you might.’ He looked at the tree stumps. ‘You haven’t got on very well, have you? You should have done better than this.’
I waved my arm gracefully. ‘I bow to superior knowledge. Be my guest—go right ahead and improve the situation.’
He grunted but didn’t take me up on the offer. Instead he unslung the long box he carried on his shoulder, and extended an antenna. ‘We had a couple of walkie-talkies sent up from Camp One. We can talk to Rider. What do we need to finish the job?’
‘Juice for the saw and the flamer; dynamite for the stumps—and a man to use it, unless you have the experience. I’ve never used explosives in my life.’
‘I can use it,’ he said curtly, and started to talk to Rider. In a few minutes the chopper was low overhead again and a couple of jerrycans of fuel were lowered to us. Then it buzzed off and we got to work.
To give Halstead his due, he worked like a demon. Two pairs of hands made a difference, too, and we’d done quite a lot before the helicopter came back. This time a box of gelignite came down, and after it Fallon descended with his pockets full of detonators. He turned them over to Halstead, and looked at me with a twinkle in his eye. ‘You look as though you’ve been dragged through a bush backwards.’ He looked about him. ‘You’ve done a good job.’
‘I have something to show you,’ I said and led him along the narrow path I had driven the previous day. ‘I ran across Old-Cross-eyes here; he hampered the operation a bit.’
Fallon threw a fit of ecstatics and damned near clasped Cross-eyes to his bosom. ‘Old Empire!’ he said reverently, and ran his hands caressingly over the carved stone.
‘What is it?’
‘It’s a stele—a Mayan date stone. In a given community they erected a stele every katun—that’s a period of nearly twenty years.’ He looked back along the path towards the cenote. ‘There should be more of these about; they might even ring the cenote.’
He began to strip the clinging creepers away and I could see he’d be no use anywhere else. I said, ‘Well, I’ll leave you two to get acquainted. I’ll go help Halstead blow himself up.’
‘All right,’ he said absently. Then he turned. ‘This is a marvellous find. It will help us date the city right away.’
‘The city?’ I waved my hand at the benighted wilderness. ‘Is this Uaxuanoc?’
He looked up at the pillar. ‘I have no doubt about it. Stelae of this complexity are found only in cities. Yes, I think we’ve found Uaxuanoc.’
IV
We had a hell of a job getting Fallon away from his beloved pillar and back to Camp Two. He mooned over it like a lover who had just found his heart’s desire, and filled a notebook with squiggly drawings and pages of indecipherable scribblings. Late that afternoon we practically had to carry him to the helicopter, which had landed precariously at the edge of the cenote, and during the flight back he muttered to himself all the way.
I was very tired, but after a luxurious hot bath I felt eased in body and mind, eased enough to go into the big hut and join the others instead of falling asleep. I found Fallon and Halstead hot in the pursuit of knowledge, with Katherine hovering on the edge of the argument in her usual role of Halstead-quietener.
I listened in for a time, not understanding very much of what was going on and was rather surprised to find Halstead the calmer of the two. After the outbursts of the last few weeks, I had expected him to blow his top when we actually found Uaxuanoc, but he was as cold as ice and any discussion he had with Fallon was purely intellectual. He seemed as uninterested as though he’d merely found a sixpence in the street instead of the city he’d been bursting a gut trying to find.
It was Fallon who was bubbling over with excitement. He was as effervescent as a newly opened bottle of champagne and could hardly keep still as he shoved his sketches under Halstead’s nose. ‘Definitely Old Empire,’ he insisted. ‘Look at the glyphs.’
He went into a rigmarole which seemed to be in a foreign language. I said, ‘Ease up, for heaven’s sake! What about letting me in on the secret?’
He stopped and looked at me in astonishment. ‘But I’m telling you.’
‘You’d better tell me in English.’
He leaned back in his chair and shook his head sadly. ‘To explain the Mayan calendar would take me more time than I have to spare, so you’ll have to take my word for a lot of this. But look here.’ He pushed over a set of his squiggles which I recognized as the insects I had seen sculpted on the pillar. ‘That’s the date of the stele—it reads: “9 Cycles, 12 Katuns, 10 Tuns, 12 Kins, 4 Eb, 10 Yax”, and that’s a total of 1,386,112 days, or 3,797 years. Since the Mayan datum from which all time measurement started was 3113 B.C., then that gives us a date of 684 A.D.’
He picked up the paper.
‘There’s a bit more to it—the Mayas were very accurate—it was 18 days after the new moon in the first cycle of six.’
He had said all that very rapidly and I felt a bit dizzy. ‘I’ll take your word for it,’ I said. ‘Are you telling me that Uaxuanoc is nearly thirteen hundred years old?’
‘That stele is,’ he said positively. ‘The city is older, most likely.’
‘That’s a long time before Vivero,’ I said thoughtfully. ‘Would the city have been occupied that long?’
‘You’re confusing Old Empire with New Empire,’ he said. ‘The Old Empire collapsed about 800 A.D. and the cities were abandoned, but over a hundred years later there was an invasion of Toltecs—the Itzas—and some of the cities were rehabilitated like Chichen Itza and a few others. Uaxuanoc was one of them, very likely.’ He smiled. ‘Vivero referred often to the Temple of Kukulkan in Uaxuanoc. We have reason to believe that Kukulkan was a genuine historical personage; the man who led the Toltecs into Yucatan, very much as Moses led the Children of Israel into the Promised Land. Certainly the Mayan-Toltec civilization of the New Empire bore very strong resemblances to the Aztec Empire of Mexico and was rather unlike the Mayan Old Empire. There was the prevalence of human sacrifice, for one thing. Old Vivero wasn’t wrong about that.’
‘So Uaxuanoc was inhabited at the time of Vivero? I mean, ignoring his letter and going by the historical evidence.’
‘Oh, yes. But don’t get me wrong when I talk of empires. The New Empire had broken up by the time the Spaniards arrived. There were just a lot of petty states and warring provinces which banded together into an uneasy alliance to resist the Spaniards. It may have been the Spaniards who gave the final push, but the system couldn’t have lasted much longer in any case.’
Halstead had been listening with a bored look on his face. This was all old stuff to him and he was becoming restive. He said, ‘When do we start on it?’
Fallon pondered. ‘We’ll have to have quite a big organization there on the site. It’s going to take a lot of men to clear that forest.’
The Golden Keel / The Vivero Letter Page 44