“Well, after this happy reunion it might be a good idea if we went on with what we were doing, don’t you think?” I said shaking the dust off my clothes.
“Studying the Nazi officer’s notebook?” the professor suggested.
“Wow, Doc. Forgetting about your daughter again?”
“Of course not,” he said blushing. “It’s just that so many things are happening…”
“Don’t you mind him either,” Cassie said clicking her tongue. “Don’t you know him by now?”
“Yeah, of course,” he said, still embarrassed. “So… um… where do you think we should head for now?”
“We should go back to the last place where we saw a footprint. Perhaps Iak can find the trail again.”
I pretended to clear my throat and said, “That would be a waste of time. We’ll stand a better chance if we follow the causeway, then look for a higher spot and make a bonfire with lots of smoke, or anything that might attract attention. If Valeria’s expedition is anywhere around, they won’t miss us.”
“Hmm, not a bad idea at all,” the professor said approvingly.
Iak said nothing. Cassie shrugged her shoulders as if to say that even though it was a suggestion of mine, it was not totally absurd.
In less than half an hour the Menkragnoti guided us back to the stone causeway. This went on further into the jungle in an absolutely straight line, flanked by unidentifiable buildings in ruins.
Cassandra walked a little behind us, chatting amiably with Iak about what the rediscovery of this place would mean for the survival of his people. The professor walked a few steps ahead of me, deep in thought. I had nothing better to do, so I caught up with him to find out what was on his mind.
“What’s with you, Doc?” I said as I patted him on the shoulder affectionately. “You can’t remember whether you left the lights on at home?”
“Huh, what? Oh, no, no…” he replied absentmindedly. “I was thinking about something that intrigues me.”
“What is it?”
“It’s about the place we were just in, that strange underground temple.”
“To me it was more like an old basement.”
“Whatever,” he said with a wave. “I don’t understand why, when there were so many places they could have set up camp, the Nazis chose the only one whose only entrance was practically blocked by rubble.”
“Perhaps there was another entrance we didn’t find.”
He shook his head. “You remember we went looking all around the building and we didn’t find any sign of one.”
“Or maybe they chose it for that very reason?”
“I don’t follow you.”
“I mean that for some reason, they might have been looking for a place with only one entrance and exit. They might even have been the ones who blocked the entrance.”
“Why would they do that?”
“I’d say… for the same reason they built a barricade? To protect themselves.”
“To protect themselves? Against what?”
Of course I had no answer to that, so I simply shrugged my shoulders.
The professor saw my gesture and nodded. Then he passed his hand over his forehead and stared at the beads of sweat that came off.
“Let’s take a rest,” he said, breathing heavily.
“Come on, Doc,” I urged him. “Don’t stop now. I thought you were much fitter.”
Ignoring me, he sat down on a fallen tree and took out a handkerchief to mop his face.
“I need to get my breath back, Ulysses. I can’t bear this humidity.”
“If you’d like some privacy, we’ll leave you alone,” Casandra said as she passed us.
“Jealous?” I said.
She gave me a look of indifference and sat down a few feet away, with Iak following her like a shadow.
The professor turned to me with a furrowed brow. “What the hell happened between you two to end up fighting like cat and dog?”
I looked at my bitten nails. “You know… shit happens.”
“No. I don’t know. You seemed to be so in love, the most perfect couple in the world. And the next thing I know, you broke up. What happened that was so bad?”
“Well, nothing, really.”
“So?”
I had been asking myself that question for months… and I was still not sure of the answer.
More to myself than to him I said, “I guess… I reached the conclusion that I’m just not made for having a partner. There’s something in me that drives me to live alone. So, rather than prolonging a relationship that was bound to end sooner or later, I thought it best to break it off. The sooner it happened the less painful it would be for both of us.” I raised my eyes to the treetops. “But I might have been wrong.”
The professor stared at me as if he were trying to assess the type of fool he had in front of him.
“But you had other relationships before,” he said, surprised. “I even remember a girl you were with for quite a while.”
“It was another lifetime, Doc. Then I took everything to be temporary. In a way, each woman was like a little adventure, and all I wanted was to enjoy it. But you know how your view of things changes with age. Cassie is…” I clicked my tongue and felt a pang of sadness.
He guessed my thoughts. “Cassandra is different.”
I couldn’t deny that. “I understood that what we had was more serious. Before I turned it into a slow agony of silence and reproach I suggested we took some time off. I had hopes of saving our friendship at least.”
“Well, I’d say your bet was off.”
“Very much off. It was a complete disaster. Besides, every time I look at her—”
“Do you miss her?”
“A lot more than I’d ever imagined.”
We remained silent, staring at the thicket. Men always find it awkward to talk about these matters.
Finally my friend broke the silence with the inevitable question.
“Have you told her?”
“Of course not. After forcing the break-up I can’t tell her that. It would be mean.”
“It’d be the truth.”
“But I can’t. I shouldn’t.”
“You can and you should.”
“You know what, Doc.” I sighed deeply and stood up. “I don’t feel like talking about this any longer.”
“But I’m your friend, and I can’t bear to see you like this.”
Trying to avoid getting trapped in a neverending debate about my love life, I reached for my backpack.
“Well… you’d better get used to it, as long as we’re in this damned jungle,” I said with a feeble grin.
Then I stood up and walked on, passing Cassie and Iak without even giving them a glance.
I had always been very jealous of my privacy, even with my closest friends (although there had never been that many, I have to say). But my break-up with Cassie had been so upsetting and there had been so much to explain—particularly to my mother, who could not believe that just when I seemed to be getting ready to settle down I would separate for no apparent reason—that I decided to close the subject and not talk about it at all. Every time I found myself doing this, I felt my wounds opening again, bringing back a pain I had thought long gone if not dead.
I knew that any psychotherapist would tell me to fix that part of my life and my sentimental problems—or plain mental ones, come to that—before I could move on. The fact that I refused to talk to anyone about it, least of all Cassie herself, was indication enough that I did have a problem. Something I must fix.
But what the hell do they know.
As I was walking deep in thought, trying to justify to myself why I had done what I had done, my heart suddenly skipped a beat and I stopped in my tracks, petrified.
There was something at the end of the way.
Something terribly familiar, but at the same time impossible to accept as what it seemed to be.
47
An impossible sculpture could be seen
through the branches. It stood erect, black, and imposing on top of a rocky mound only a few feet above the ground.
It was a perfect monolith thirty feet tall, rising to the sky, defying all common sense.
We stared at it in silent awe and total disbelief. How could that thing have any connection with history or archeology? It seemed no more than some crazy delusion of our imagination.
The significance of that mysterious monolith was obvious, underlined as it was by the network of paths that ended in it, just as the spokes of a wheel end in its axis. It was as if this and nowhere else was the true center of the Black City, with the city itself no more than an accessory, an ephemeral and unnecessary decoration.
I had never before been so overwhelmed by any building, any sculpture. Neither the pyramids of Egypt, nor Machu Picchu, nor the Roman Coliseum had aroused in me anything like the indescribable magnetism and attraction of that simple yet extraordinary structure. Something in it drove me to bow my head in a sign of respect to an unknown, archaic force. At the same time a chill ran down my back giving me goose bumps even under the suffocating sun of the rainforest.
That perfect rectangle was as tall as a three-story house, twelve feet across and three feet wide. It seemed to have been carved in some kind of black marble, although the matt surface gave the lie to this. Not only did it fail to give back the slightest reflection, it seemed to absorb into itself every particle of light that touched it. It made me think of a doorway into nothingness, a sinister black hole that might swallow everything that came in contact with it. It felt as though we might fall into it, as though into a fathomless well.
So when I saw Cassandra step forward to climb the rocky mound and then reach out with her arm to touch the monolith, my first reaction was to shout: “Stop! Don’t do it!”
She turned to me, frightened.
“What?” she asked as she looked around with alarm. “What is it?”
“I don’t know, but I don’t think you should touch that.”
She raised her eyebrows in disbelief and searched the professor’s face for an explanation.
“Are you high on anything?” she said with a frown. Passing me by, she climbed onto the base and stood beside the big black slab.
“Be care—” I began.
Before I could finish the sentence she had already placed her hand on the monolith.
For a few endless seconds, she remained silent as though taking its pulse. Then she turned her head slightly and said in surprise, “It’s warm.”
A moment later the professor and I were at her side by the monolith. There was no way we could convince Iak that there was no danger and that he could come up with us. We went over those perfect lines, those exact angles, that immaculate appearance… It was as if the elements of nature which had brought that city down had not dared to lay their hands on it.
Like Cassandra, Professor Castillo caressed it with a reverence I had never seen him show before.
“Unbelievable,” he murmured. “It has an… unexpected feel.”
“It’s not granite, or marble,” Cassie said. “It’s more like graphite, only far, far harder.”
In the end my curiosity got the better of me. I touched it in turn, trying to identify the material with my fingertips.
“It’s smooth,” I said, “but also very hard. It reminds me of carbon fiber.”
“But it’s not, it’s pure rock,” the professor said.
“And warm,” Cassie reminded us. “How can it be warm?”
“That could be because it’s black,” I suggested. “It doesn’t reflect the warmth of the sun during the day. It absorbs it and accumulates it like a battery.”
“A battery?”
“Well, not exactly. Rather more like a… well, like a heat accumulator.”
She raised an eyebrow scornfully. “Yeah, sure,” she said.
“Have you noticed there isn’t a single mark on it?” the professor interrupted. “No writing… no carvings… nothing.”
“I’ve never seen anything like this, not ever before,” she said. “In all my years as an archeologist, I’d never even heard rumors of anything like it.”
“Isn’t there something like this at Stonehenge?” I asked. “There are monoliths there, right?”
“Are you kidding me? Those are megaliths, Ulysses, not monoliths. Rough alignments of worked stone, made by people who lived in mud huts. It’s like comparing a ceramic ashtray with Michelangelo’s David.”
“And what about Tiahuanaco, in Bolivia?” the professor said as he began to walk around the monolith. “There are great carved rocks there, aren’t there, pretty similar to these?”
“Similar in size and design, perhaps,” Cassie admitted as she looked up. “But those are part of a group. They have a clear purpose as walls of a temple that no longer exists, or else of more complex structures with an astronomical or religious element. Nobody’s ever found a block as large and perfect all by itself, apparently with no purpose except just being. And besides,” she went on, although the professor had already reached the other side, “there’s something very strange about this stone. It seems to be immune to erosion—”
“Quick!” the professor shouted from the other side of the monolith. “Come and see this!”
We went around the monolith and found him on the other side, by a perfectly round well. It opened in the rock bed and went down into the darkness like the access to a sewer that someone had forgotten to cover.
The professor was crouching beside the rim with his hands on his knees. “It’s like a well,” he said.
“And some animal must have fallen in,” I said, “because it smells of rotting flesh.”
“Let me see…” Cassie said as she bent over the black hole.
She took us completely by surprise by clearing her throat like a lumberjack and leaning over the well to spit into it.
Three seconds later she looked up with the expression of a mischievous child. “If this was ever a well,” she said, “it’s completely dry now.”
“Well, in that case, we’ll just have to keep on drinking from the lianas,” the professor said. He sounded resigned, like a castaway who finds a crate of empty bottles of beer washed up on the beach.
I looked around. “You know what?” I said to change the subject. “This rocky area here is high enough up and it’s dry and clear for several miles around. It looks like a good place to light that signal fire, don’t you think?”
As I gathered wood and branches, I saw Iak leaning against a tree. He was obviously unconcerned about our task and gave no sign of wanting to help. He was staring at the monolith as if he was expecting it to move any moment.
“Come on, Iak, don’t you think you could give us a hand?” I said as I passed him.
The Menkragnoti lowered his gaze and remained silent, as if he had not heard me.
“At least help me carry it,” I insisted, showing him my armful of wood.
He shook his head slowly. “This sacred place of ancient men,” he said as he eyed the monolith warily.
Professor Castillo, who was behind me, took his glasses off and passed his hand over his face.
“Look Iak,” he said, “we can’t force you, but I can assure you that the ancient men you’re referring to are no longer here. There’s no one left who cares whether we go into their temples or study what they left behind. In fact, we’re honoring their memory by studying who they were and what happened to them.”
“Besides,” Cassie said coming closer, “anything we find out about this city and the people who lived in it could be of real help to your people. Remember that if we’re going to prevent the flood that’s threatening your village, the importance of this place could really matter.”
The blue-eyed Menkragnoti seemed to be considering her last words. He finally nodded faintly, although his expression showed he was far from convinced.
48
As soon as we had gathered enough dry wood, we lit a fire to attract the attention of
anybody who might be in the vicinity, in the hopes that it would be Valeria, or some other member of her expedition who might be able to warn her.
Then we set to pick up all the fruit we could to build up our supplies, as hunting had by now ceased to offer much of an alternative. Finally, we decided to check the surroundings for any sign that Valeria had ever been in the city.
During our search we discovered another pyramid very much like the one we had been on the day before, although there was no stone chamber at the top of this one. It looked as though it would be a good place to spend the night, a fair way above the ever increasingly puddle-strewn forest floor, and with a good view of the surrounding area.
The real reason, however, was that none of us relished the idea of spending the night near the intimidating monolith.
It was as if something beyond our perception, a forgotten atavistic instinct, were whispering in our ears that we should get away. That something weird and definitely dangerous emanated from that apparently inert monolith.
Something we should keep away from, as far as possible.
In the late afternoon, we left the fire burning and climbed to the new pyramid. It was covered by a layer of vegetation, and to the unknowing eye it would have passed as no more than a rocky formation, albeit a singularly vertical and symmetrical one.
On the platform at the top a few trees had managed to take root. We hung our hammocks, then sat down to watch the sunset as we ate a pile of mangoes, guavas, and wild bananas.
By the time we finished our meal, twilight had already fallen over the forest. As on previous nights, an ominous, overwhelming silence surrounded us.
A silence that was more disturbing than the nocturnal cacophony of any other jungle I had ever been in.
A silence too much like that of a graveyard.
To provide some warmth and cheer, we lit a small camp fire under the stars. We sat around it without speaking, each lost in our own thoughts.
“Your daughter’s going to get quite a surprise,” Cassie said, breaking the quiet of the moment, “when she finds out that her father’s come looking for her.”
BLACK CITY (Ulysses Vidal Adventure Series Book 2) Page 20