BLACK CITY (Ulysses Vidal Adventure Series Book 2)

by Fernando Gamboa

  “Then…?” I said.

  “What if,”he said hoarsely and uncertainly, “instead of the island sinking, it was the sea that rose?”

  Cassie and I were silent, weighing up the possibility.

  “But we’d be talking about a rise of several dozen feet of water.” Cassie said after thinking for a moment. “As far as I know, there’s no record of the sea rising like that in the whole of history.”

  “Well…” the professor said leaving a long pause between his words, “actually, there is one.”

  It took Cassie a while to understand what he meant. When it dawned on her, her eyes nearly popped out. “You’re not talking about the Great Flood, are you?” Her eyebrows rose in disbelief.

  “Why not?” he said adjusting his glasses. “There are versions of the Flood in practically all cultures of the world, more than four hundred to be precise. From the Maya to the Incas, to the Hindus, Assyrians, and of course, the Jews, they all describe a global flood that wrecked the world and from which only a chosen handful were saved. I admit I’m not a believer,” he added, seeing our skeptical looks, “but what I see here makes me wonder whether there might be some truth behind the myth.”

  “I see…” I lied, curious to see what he was getting at. “But if we’re seriously considering the possibility of the Great Flood, what dates would we be talking about? Two thousand years ago? Five thousand? Ten thousand?”

  “On the basis of this writing, which is similar to cuneiform, and the architectural style, I’d say…”—he rubbed his chin and looked very serious—“that I have no idea.” He smiled and shrugged his shoulders. “It’s impossible to tell with such limited data, Ulysses.”

  “I just thought of a possibility,” I said bashfully, self-conscious about being the only person in the immediate area without a college degree.

  “Go ahead,” Cassie said putting her hand on my shoulder in a surprisingly familiar way.

  “I mean, I was thinking there’s a well-known, ancient legend that mentions a great city which was punished by the gods, very much like this one, and sank underwater.”

  They both looked at me with surprised amusement. She was the first to speak. “You don’t mean Atlantis, do you?”

  “What do you want me to say? I think it fits.”

  “Out of the question!” the professor said with conviction. “The myth of Atlantis is nonsense, something a lot of charlatans have been profiting from for years. Nothing more than a cock-and-bull story.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake! You’re prepared to accept the possibility of a Great Flood but not the existence of Atlantis? Why? Just because it wasn’t your idea in the first place?”

  “No, Ulysses. Because there’s evidence enough of a universal flood, more than four hundred similar tales all around the world, as I said before. Whereas the famous Atlantis is only mentioned in passing in Plato’s dialogues between Timaeus and Critias. They talk about what a man called Solon, who was a friend of Critias’s great-grandfather, and the story that was conveyed to him by Egyptian priests. A very flimsy story… a tall tale. Apart from that one fragment, there are no other references or tales that mention it even indirectly, let alone give it any credibility. Everything you might read about Atlantis is just made up to sell novels. It’s a tissue of fantasies and speculations with no basis whatsoever.” He pointed to Cassie and added, “If you don’t believe me, ask her.”

  Cassie, deep in thought, appeared lost in her own reflections. “Although, to me,” she said abstractedly, “there’s something in all this that doesn’t make sense.”

  “Seriously? What do you mean?” I asked sarcastically.

  “I can’t put my finger on it,” she said taking no notice of my tone, or simply ignoring it. “It’s a little of everything. What we have here”—she touched the relief that showed the colossal wave striking the island—“whether the professor’s theory is true or not, might just be the knot that ties up all the loose ends of the story, the many mysteries that still need solving. It would explain many things that have baffled us until now: the universal description of the flood, the impossible common points of reference in Mesopotamian and pre-Columbian cultures. The story of Quetzalcoatl, the bearded man who came from the East, according to the Maya tradition…”

  “The mystery of Atlantis…” I insisted.

  “Chale, man” she conceded with a grin. “There could even be an explanation of the myth of Atlantis on these walls. Don’t you realize? It’s all here.” Her voice turned more passionate. “It’s as if the history of humankind were a puzzle we’ve almost solved, but there’s one last piece still missing. The central piece of the puzzle, the one that would make everything else fit together and answer all the questions.” She put her hand on the stone and concluded gravely, “I think this is the piece. And yet…”

  For a moment there was only the crackle of the torches and the murmur of our own breathing as we waited for her to go on.

  “And yet?” I asked at last.

  Cassandra shook her head as if she could make her ideas clearer that way. “And yet… something’s wrong.”

  “What?” the professor asked.

  “Don’t you see it either? Where are the Ancients? If they were so important in the story, why haven’t we ever heard about them? Why isn’t there any record of this place, not even in a children’s story? Even the most elusive civilizations left some sort of trace you can follow through time, but as for this one, nothing is known. Nothing, ever.” Her voice fell to a whisper. “As if the earth had swallowed them up.”

  For a brief moment the memory of the city sewers came to my mind. I wondered if that was exactly what had happened to its inhabitants: the earth had swallowed them up.

  66

  Shortly afterwards, as our torches were dying out, we went back upstairs to where Valeria, Claudio, and Angelica were talking animatedly around the fire.

  When they saw us arrive, the Argentinian looked up. “Did you enjoy the exhibition?” he asked smiling at Cassandra.

  “Unbelievable. I still don’t know what to think,” she said.

  “I know. It poses more questions than answers. We have work for years on end if we want to decipher that mural and check how much truth there is in it.”

  “You said before that you’re an archeologist too, right?”

  “That’s right...” He winked at her. “We have plenty to talk about, you and me,” Claudio said with smooth Argentinian charm.

  That wink felt like a kick in the balls to me. But when she returned the wink with a flirtatious smile, it felt as if she had pulled them off and then gone on to dance on them.

  “Well,” I said to both of them, “if we don’t worry about getting out of here first, there won’t be much to talk about.”

  “True,” the professor said. “If we don’t advise the world about what we’ve found, this city will end up under water. And then there won’t be anything left to decipher.”

  “That’s not what I meant, Doc. As soon as the day comes, Souza’s men will start looking for us. They’ll probably find us pretty fast, as I assume they’ll be able to follow the tracks we’ve left tonight. This place isn’t so safe anymore.”

  “Are you suggesting that we leave?” Angelica asked warily. “This sanctuary is the only place where we’re safe from the Morcegos. Leaving would be suicide.”

  “But if we stay,” the professor said, “as Ulysses says, those thugs from the construction company will find us and most certainly execute us all. Whichever way we look at it, the prospect isn’t promising. If we don’t think of some way of escaping,” he added with a bitter grin as he sat down in front of the fire, “it will all come down to which of the two we want to die at the hands of.”

  “Unless…” I said, thinking aloud.

  Cassie frowned. “Unless?”

  It took me a while to reply. What had come into my mind was only a fleeting idea, hard enough to follow and even harder to explain. “I was thinking—”

 
; “Don’t scare me,” the professor said putting his hand on his forehead.

  “…that there are two threats out there. Between them they add up to a risk we haven’t a hope of overcoming.” I took a deep breath. Very slowly, I continued, “But, if we managed to make them rule each other out…”

  Valeria squinted her eyes with skeptical interest. “Do you mean bring them up against each other?”

  “Something like that.”

  “But how?”

  “I haven’t figured that out yet,” I admitted with a shrug. “But if we succeed in one problem solving the other, we’ll have fifty per cent less problems.”

  “Don’t forget that we’ve already witnessed one such encounter, and the humans didn’t come out of it very well, did they?”

  “Well, that’s right,” I admitted. “But rest assured that what happened to Luizao won’t happen again. Those guys aren’t amateurs. Whether they think we beheaded the poor man or they have found out by now that we’re not alone, they’ll certainly be extra careful from now on. If the opportunity arises, they’ll sell their skins very dearly.”

  “That is, if they still have any skin on them,” Valeria said with dark humor.

  We had been sitting around that fire for so many hours that I calculated dawn could not be far away. With the thought that this might be our last day alive, none of us thought about sleeping. We spent the night making impossible plans for escape and talking about just anything, from the trivial to the deepest.

  For whatever reason, we had formed ourselves into two groups. One consisted of Cassie, Angelica, and Claudio. In the other were Valeria, her father, and yours truly.

  “What must have happened to Iak?” the professor asked me, with sincere concern. “Do you think he’s still alive?”

  “No idea, Doc. I’m sure he has more resources than we do to keep away from the Morcegos and the guys from the construction company, but even so… I don’t know.” I scratched my two-week-old beard as I tried to calculate the possibilities open to one man in that infernal forest. “Maybe,” I said at last. “You never know.”

  Professor Castillo nodded as he held onto that “you never know,” even though he knew as well as I did that it would be a miracle. Then he turned to his daughter as if trying to dismiss the fate of the Menkragnoti from his mind. “Anyway,” he said, going back to an old subject we had already forgotten, “you haven’t told us what shape of animal this temple is built in.”

  “Oh, that’s right,” she said looking up from the fire. “It’s a puma, of course. That’s why there are so many pentagons all over the city.”

  The professor took several moments to digest the answer. “I… I don’t understand, Valeria,” he said at last. “What do pentagons have to do with the fact that this temple is built in the shape of a puma?”

  His daughter made a baffled face. “Gee, I thought that since she’s an archeologist, she would’ve explained,” she said referring to Cassie, but not deigning to look at her.

  “Explain what?”

  “The relationship between the two symbols.” She picked up a twig with a charred end and drew a five-sided polygon on the stone floor. “Pentagons are really a schematic representation of the constellation of Orion.” She looked at her father and saw that he was nodding in understanding. “This constellation is called Chuquichinchay in the native zodiac. It doesn’t represent a mythical hunter like it does in the West, but an animal. Can you guess which?”

  “Don’t tell me, a puma!” I said as if I were a forgotten student in the last row.

  “Exactly, a puma. The “Great Golden Feline” to be precise. It’s the totem animal par excellence of all the Andean cultures. Even cities like Cuzco, in Perú, were built on a layout in the form of a puma.”

  “Cuzco has the form of a puma?” the professor asked in surprise.

  “It did when it was built and its name was Qosqo.”

  The professor rubbed his eyes under his glasses. “Let me get this straight…” he said, then paused for some time. “Are you suggesting that the worship of pumas in pre-Columbian cultures originated in this city?”

  Valeria shook her head. “No, no. It’s way before that. Probably the founders of this city brought it with them from the other side of the ocean when they migrated here. Just like they brought the cuneiform writing that you find all over the city, or the tiered pyramids which are identical to the Mesopotamian ziggurats. In fact, the old world still worships the “Great Golden Feline,” just as it used to. We still do, if it comes to that.”

  I raised a finger. “Excuse me if I contradict you, Valeria. There are no pumas anywhere else except America.”

  “There aren’t? And what about all the great felines you see on so many banners? Or on flags, shields, entrances to parliament buildings, religious texts, for example?”

  “But those aren’t pumas,” I retorted. “They’re lions.”

  “Golden felines.” She pointed at the twig she was still holding in her hand. “And what’s a puma, or a lion, if not a great feline with golden fur?”

  “What the hell, it’s true!” the professor exclaimed, excited by the unexpected coincidence. “A puma is just a lion without a mane!”

  “I’ll go even further,” she added, pleased. “Doesn’t the shape of this temple remind you of anything?”

  “Well…”

  Again, I was quicker than the professor, like an eager schoolboy looking for the teacher’s approval. “The Sphinx of Giza!” I blurted out stumbling on the words as I visualized the image. “I knew it reminded me of something. Except that the Sphinx has the head of a pharaoh, not an animal, right?”

  Valeria laughed softly. “Yes, but originally it was the head of a lion. That was before Kephren decided to change it around 2500 B.C.” She winked at me. “But you’re right. Both buildings are almost identical, which suggests a common origin, although I couldn’t tell which is the original and which the copy.”

  “I suppose this is the copy, right?” I said. “If the other one is more than four thousand years old…”

  This time it was the professor who shook his head. “According to the latest theories, it might be even older. Recent investigation by a Boston University geologist named Robert Schoch has shown that the erosion on the pyramid was made by water, not sand.”

  “By water?” I repeated in surprise. “But it doesn’t rain in Egypt!”

  “True, it doesn’t rain now,” he said with a mysterious grin. “But it used to.”

  “Used to?”

  “When the Sahara wasn’t a desert but a fertile savannah.”

  “But that was thousands of years ago, wasn’t it?”

  “Ten or twelve thousand at least.”

  “Wait a minute, wait a minute…” Valeria said with a sneer. “Are you suggesting that the Giza Sphinx was built ten thousand years ago? Are you out of your mind? Back then there weren’t any organized societies or settlements big enough to build anything like the sphinx. And they most certainly wouldn’t have spent their time building a stone temple two hundred feet high. I’m surprised you’d even think of it.” There was a touch of disappointment in her voice as she said this. “It’s the most absurd thing I’ve heard in years.”

  Eduardo breathed deeply and adjusted his tortoiseshell glasses. “It’s only a theory, Valeria,” he said in a placating tone, “a theory that less than a week ago I wouldn’t have taken seriously. But after having seen the wonders I’ve seen in this incredible place…”—he took in the whole city with a sweep of his arm—“well, let’s say I’m open to any possibility, no matter how farfetched it might sound.”

  Unexpectedly, when Valeria was about to give another caustic reply, Cassandra’s voice sounded right behind me. “I don’t think it’s so farfetched,” she said as she joined us. “In fact,” she added as she crouched down by the fire, “I think it’s the most likely explanation.”

  “Are you serious?” the professor asked, surprised by his own success.

  Cas
sie smiled beatifically at him. “Absolutely.” She winked. “I think that without meaning to, you’ve just solved the greatest riddle of the Black City.”

  67

  Drawn by the turn our conversation was taking, Claudio and Angelica had joined our circle. There we were, all six of us, debating about archeology in what might be the last night of our lives.

  “The greatest riddle of the Black City?” the professor asked. There was a skeptical look on his face as he pointed at himself. “And you say I solved it?”

  “As I was listening to you, I remembered a theory I read about years ago, when I was still in college. Combined with what you said just now, it might be the answer we’re looking for,” she said twining her fingers together in front of her.

  “The answer to what exactly?” Claudio asked, intrigued.

  “To the dating, of course.”

  “You mean, of this city?”

  “I mean the dating of everything,” she said with confidence. “On the one hand we have a civilization that we call the Ancients.” She opened up her left palm to expose this. “At some point in the story, although we don’t know exactly when, they arrived here by ship, after crossing the Atlantic Ocean because of a great flood. Presumably from some place in Africa or Europe. On the other hand, we have a sphinx which is very similar to the one in Egypt, which we can’t date either. Although if the two are contemporary, it might be more than ten thousand years old, on the basis of the theory the professor mentioned earlier.” She stretched out her other hand to mimic a pair of scales.

  “That’s not an answer,” Valeria said arching an eyebrow. “It’s just a summary.”

  Cassie turned to her with pretended tolerance. “We come to the answer now.”

  “Could you get to the point, please?” The professor sounded impatient. “You have us on edge. What is it that you’ve remembered?”

  “The ice age!” she said. There was excitement in her voice. “I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before!”