BLACK CITY (Ulysses Vidal Adventure Series Book 2)

by Fernando Gamboa

  “Weeks…” Iak said looking up at the sky as if assessing the possibility of rain at that moment. Then he looked back, toward the horizon we were leaving behind and paddled to turn the canoe around. “I have to go back.”

  “No!” the professor said reaching to grab the side of the other canoe. “You have to help us go downriver!”

  The native shook his head firmly. “Very sorry. Iak must go back to village and warn people. They not like Iak but me Menkragnoti and fight for my village.”

  Our little rescue mission was in danger of being over before it had even begun.

  I decided to improvise. “You’re wrong, Iak. If you turn around now, you and your people will lose everything. The only way to save your village is to come with us and guide us.”

  Iak stopped without understanding what I meant. Well, and neither did the professor or Cassie. The three looked at me intrigued.

  “I think you’re right,” Cassandra whispered, looking at the professor out of the corner of her eye, “but, how is finding Valeria going to help Iak’s people?”

  “Don’t you see?” I said opening my arms to encompass the river, jungle, and all. “The Menkragnoti can do nothing against the power of a construction company or the political interests behind it. What can they do? Shoot arrows at the dam?”

  “I don’t follow you,” the professor said.

  “Let’s see. What do you think would happen if we found the remains of a lost civilization in the middle of Amazonia?”

  The professor only needed a moment to work out the answer.

  “Surely archeologists would pour over the area from all corners of the world. Research of all kinds would begin, and there would be a pretty good article about us in National Geographic.”

  “That would mean it would be declared a world heritage,” Cassie said. “And they’d be forced to stop the flooding!”

  “Exactly.”

  “Híjole! You’re right!” she said almost throwing herself around my neck. But she stopped herself at the last minute, whether for fear of falling overboard or for some other, more prosaic reason, I could not tell.

  Iak, though, remained unmoved with the canoe heading in the opposite direction to where we wanted to go.

  “You say if we find city of ancient men… me save my people?”

  “You can be sure of that,” I said, as much to convince him as to convince myself. “Not only will you save them. If they are fair, they might even make you a member of the Menkragnoti Council.”

  Cassandra and the professor supported my words by nodding energetically.

  As a reply, the blue-eyed native turned his canoe again and began to paddle downriver with big strokes. It was a race against time, his past and his dark future.

  29

  We followed the strong rhythm Iak had set with his paddling. Carried by the current, we covered about thirty miles or so in just a few hours until we reached a point where he told us to steer near the left-hand side of the river, to one of the few sandy beaches scattered along the shore.

  The bad news was that with all the excitement of leaving we had left our headlamps at the Menkragnoti village. Our only comfort was the thought that without any spare batteries they would only have lasted a couple of hours longer.

  We ran the canoes on the sand at Iak’s signal. Once we had landed he pointed a few hundred yards ahead to where the water turned, from a gentle current into a boiling surface of spray with breakers more than several feet high.

  “Corredeira Tareraimbú begin there,” Iak said with an eloquent wave of his hands. “Very dangerous. We carry canoes on path until pass corredeira. After continue on river.”

  A quick look at the rapids he was pointing at was enough for us to agree.

  “Now that I was just getting the hang of paddling…” the professor said.

  “Easy, Doc,” I said as I put my arm around his shoulder. “When we return to Barcelona, I promise to take you to the park so you can paddle for a while and feed the ducks.”

  “Ask your mother!” he said, pushing my arm off.

  “If you want.” I laughed. “I’ll call her. But I’m not sure she’d want to join you.”

  The professor’s expression changed abruptly from a smile to a frown.

  “By the way, speaking about your mother,” he said hesitantly, “Does she still hate me for… that business about your father?”

  To be honest, the question took me by surprise. I did not expect it to be something that could still be bothering him.

  Many years before there had been a tragedy, and in a way the professor had been responsible. It happened when he was still an active professor of History at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. He asked his best friend and collaborator, my father, to do him the favor of going in his place to a small church in the Pyrenees to study and photograph a fourteenth-century altar piece.

  Unfortunately there had been a heavy snowfall in the area, and the road was covered by a thin layer of frozen snow which made it extremely slippery that night. On the way back, on a bend, the car skidded and my father lost control. The car went over a cliff. He did not survive the fall.

  I took it as nothing more than an accident, and gradually the professor became a kind of surrogate dad. But my mother, looking desperately for someone to blame for her husband’s death, turned all her anger toward the man who had now become my best friend. I really had no idea whether she had forgiven him yet.

  “I honestly don’t know,” I said coming back to the present. “She still believes you were responsible for what happened that night.” I scratched my stubble, uneasy about talking about it at all. “But I’d say that as time goes by she’s come to her senses. That initial hate has turned into simple resentment.”

  “Resentment…” he repeated.

  “Yes, you should be happy with that.” I patted him on the back. “She’s still angry with me for cutting out figures from her favorite curtains when I was only four.”

  Once we had beached the canoes Iak caught some piranhas for lunch, leaving me to behead, gut, and cook them. Then we set off again with renewed energy.

  After several miles carrying the canoes along a path that bordered the rapids, Iak indicated us to stop at the spot where they ended between two slender blocks of granite, rounded by erosion. He pointed at the narrow gap between them.

  “Legend Mengké tell ancient men say way to Menka tamú begin between Fangs of Tareraimbú.” He pointed at the two vertical blocks of granite and went on: “Those Fangs of Tareraimbú.”

  “Seriously?” the professor asked. “He didn’t mention that when he told us about the Black City.”

  “Mengké not want you know this. He not tell everything.”

  “But are you sure? Couldn’t it be something Mengké just added to the legend?”

  Iak crossed his arms, pursed his lips, and shrugged. He did not answer the question but his attitude left no doubt.

  “It’s good enough for me,” Cassie said, after a moment’s thought. “I’m tired of hauling the pinche canoe, and those two rocks are certainly shaped like fangs. They could well be the entrance to some place.”

  “That’s true,” the professor said after studying them from top to bottom. “But they could also mean nothing at all.”

  “Well now,” I said. “For what it’s worth, I gather we’ve already walked about thirty miles due north and I think we should go west now. So…” I nodded toward the gap between the two rocks.

  “Okay, this could be as good a way as any other,” the professor said. He exhaled loudly. “If we’re going to get lost, let’s do it in style.”

  With determined strides, leaving us no time to think, he passed between the Fangs of Tareraimba, followed closely by Iak.

  Cassie and I exchanged glances, knowing that as we entered the jungle we were leaving behind the river, our only means of getting out of there. But this was what we had come for, after all, so without a word, we took deep breaths and followed Iak who had already disappe
ared between the rocks.

  30

  We set off along the course indicated by Jack Fawcett’s compass which I was carrying around my neck. It turned out to be hard going in comparison with the path parallel to the river which we had followed so far. That, though muddy and littered with obstacles, had at least been a real path.

  Now we had to go much slower, with Iak at the front pulling aside lianas and slashing them with his machete, struggling through bushes as thick as hedges. We also had to watch where we put our feet and hands. Statistically speaking, in that tangle of vegetation the risk of coming across a poisonous snake which would not be happy to see us was only a matter of time.

  We were traveling light, but still drenched in sweat. On top of this, the painful rhythm we were keeping as we cut our way through the undergrowth was beginning to affect our spirits. Our initial enthusiasm had given way first to a heavy silence and finally, after only a couple of hours, to a symphony of huffing and puffing. From my own experience I knew it was the prelude to a series of complaints and curses.

  I tapped Iak’s shoulder. “I think we should rest a while.”

  He looked past me, and when he saw the professor’s flushed face he nodded in agreement. We cleared a small space around us the size of an igloo and huddled together, more tired than any of us cared to admit.

  We were surrounded by a thick wall of vegetation which the sunlight could not fully penetrate. It kept us in a permanent half-light in which we could barely see each other’s faces. Iak took some strips of smoked meat out of his bag and offered each of us a piece. It was as tough as the sole of a shoe and smelled slightly rotten. Still, as I realized how hungry I was, I ate it without asking where it had come from.

  “How long did you say it was to the coordinates of Z?” the professor asked as he struggled to bite off a piece he could chew.

  I tried to evade the question. “It was only an estimate. I don’t think we should take it very—”

  “How long?” he insisted.

  “From the river, about four or five miles… maybe six.”

  He looked back at the way we had cleared. “And in two exhausting hours we’ve walked less than five hundred yards.”

  “I’d say not more than three hundred,” Cassie said.

  “Well, I don’t suppose it’ll all be as hard as this.” I was a little worried about the turn the conversation was taking.

  “You don’t know that,” the professor said.

  “No, I don’t. But dwelling on it isn’t going to help. If that”—I pointed at the thicket—“is the only way to go, then we follow it and that’s that. Complaining about it isn’t going to make it any easier. If we have to carve our own path, then that’s what we’ll do.”

  Professor Castillo looked around as if he were trying to verify where we really were.

  “Mmm, that’s exactly what’s worrying me. It’s obvious that no one has been through here in a long time. Which means Valeria hasn’t either.”

  “No, Doc,” I said cheerfully. “Your daughter’s expedition may have followed another route. In fact if they still had their GPS they could have… no, they should have followed a straight line toward where they were heading for, instead of taking a detour like us.”

  He seemed to chew on my words and make a serious effort to swallow them.

  “Professor, your daughter Valeria is somewhere in that direction,” I said sternly, pointing west, “and we’re going to find her even if we have to cut our way through the whole fucking rainforest! So stop worrying and grumbling because if we don’t do our best we just won’t make it!”

  My friend’s blue eyes flared in the shadows behind his dirty glasses.

  “You’re right,” he said with a nod and leapt to his feet, “I’m behaving like an idiot.”

  He grabbed the machete out of Iak’s hand. Without another word he began to attack the thicket as if it were responsible for our misfortunes.

  The rest of us watched his change of attitude as we sat on the ground still chewing on our pieces of meat.

  “Come on!” he said, impatiently. “What are you waiting for? The way to my daughter is through here!”

  A few hours later I was at the front of the line, having taken Cassie’s place while she gave the professor a rest. I cut through bushes that bristled with long woody thorns. Iak explained they were used as darts for hunting, as they could pierce through the thick fatty layer of wild pigs. As I had experienced on my own flesh, they also went through cotton and skin to bore a hole in the muscle beneath.

  Luckily we had left behind the claustrophobic, impenetrable vegetation along the river margins. This had forced us to walk almost in darkness in the middle of the day, even though the immediate scenery was not exactly something to write home about. Although now we were making faster progress, the neverending mass of lianas, both thick and thin, hanging from the trees made me feel like a fly caught in an enormous spider’s web. I could not even use the machete freely enough to open a way.

  Just then, like a mirage out of the blue, a small tree was there before me—small by Amazon standards, of course. It was standing all alone, isolated from everything else. It had small red flowers and gray bark, and there was no vegetation around it for several yards. It was as much an invitation to rest as a couch and a cold beer would have been.

  Without thinking twice I went to the tree, dropped the machete and after checking there were no snakes, scorpions, and all the rest, I sat down on the soft bed of dead leaves to wait for the others to catch up.

  The first one to do so was the Menkragnoti. I beamed at him leaning against the trunk and patting the ground beside me.

  “Look what I found,” I said. “Come and rest, the waiter will soon be here to take our order—”

  But the native’s blue eyes popped open. He shouted something in his own language as he launched himself at me, then grabbed my arm to pull me away from the tree before I could even realize what was happening.

  “What the hell are you doing?” I said getting up. “Are you out of your mind? There are no snakes or anything, I already checked!”

  “No snakes, no spiders, no nothing.”

  “Yes, that’s what I said!”

  “That, palo santo tree. Everything dead around it. You sit beside tree and you dead too.”

  I nearly burst out laughing. “What are you talking about? The tree is going to kill me?”

  Iak clicked his tongue impatiently. He took the machete, cut down a thin branch from a nearby tree, and turned it into a long spear. He held it by one end and cautiously touched the bark of the palo santo with it a couple of times.

  Professor Castillo and Cassie arrived just then. They looked questioningly at me when they saw this grown man warily sliding close to the tree, as if it were a Bengal tiger.

  I shrugged in reply.

  Cassie raised her eyebrows in disbelief.

  “Qué carajo…”

  Like a sudden shower, thousands of ants dropped from the top branches of the tree, raining down onto the empty space around it and spreading out like a boiling amber-colored plague at the foot of the palo santo.

  Iak turned to me in fury. He scolded me like a mother scolding her naughty son. “If you sit beside palo santo, Tangarana ants fall over you, bite you with poison, and you…” He hung his head and poked his tongue out.

  He turned around and left it at that. There was no need to finish the sentence.

  With the exception of a lazy anaconda nearly thirty feet long that crossed our path right in front of us as though taking a stroll, or Iak showing us how to get water out of lianas and bamboo trunks (by knocking on every segment until we found one that did not sound hollow), nothing remarkable happened until evening.

  Before the inevitable appearance of the mosquitoes Iak, who did not seem to be bothered by them himself, told us to cover any exposed skin with mud. I suggested we did the same with our shirts and pants as the blasted beasts had already managed to bite me through my clothes. So we all en
ded up covered in mud from head to toe, with only slits for eyes and mouth, which we needed to curse the myriad insects that tormented us. Our clothes were torn by the thorny bushes, and the way we walked bore witness to a whole day fighting the rainforest. Anyone who saw us would have sworn we were some band of filthy zombies on their way back from a party.

  When night fell we cleared a space to camp. We swept the ground with sticks in order to scare any hidden snakes. Then, while the rest of us were hanging our hammocks, Iak opened his bag as he had done hours before by the river and took out a miniature bow and a short stick with its tip burned to a sharp point. He gathered some dry wood from inside a fallen tree and wound the cord of the bow around the stick. He began to slide it fast from one side to the other so that it rotated like a drill, until finally a thread of white smoke came out of the wood. In a few more seconds the smoke turned into a bright red flame. Once he had blown on it a couple of times we had a fire that lit up not only our faces but our spirits too.

  I was so fascinated by the process of making fire in such a primitive way that I forgot I was carrying a simple but practical lighter in one of my pockets.

  We still had no fresh meat, as Iak had had no luck catching anything in that chaos of vegetation. But we had been picking fruit from the ground on our way— guavas, mangoes, and a kind of grape that did not taste remotely like one, with a large stone in the middle—and together with the remains of the smoked meat we made quite a decent dinner around the fire. It was like a boy scout’s camp.

  Beyond the circle of light behind us, the bushes and branches did not stop moving. The tree frogs croaked as though their life depended on it, and thousands of birds, monkeys, insects, and reptiles shouted, clucked or roared somewhere beyond the darkness, so we were reminded every minute that we had ventured into their territory uninvited.