by Samuel Fort
Chapter 5 - Legend of Tiwanaku
Fiela left the apartment with the policeman’s gun tucked into a purse Lilian had brought her. As he was seeing her out of his apartment, she ambushed Ben, wrapping her arms around his neck and kissing him before exchanging a knowing look with Lilian and darting into the elevator. Lilian seemed amused.
A few minutes later Ben was buckling himself into the passenger side of the Mercedes. Lilian gunned the engine, accelerated rapidly, and turned onto the road outside the gate of his apartment complex without bothering to look for oncoming traffic.
“I like to drive,” she explained above the din of the twelve-cylinder engine. She headed toward the mountains. “How do you feel?”
“Better, thanks. I don’t suppose you’d like to explain to me why this is such an emergency?”
“Would it suffice if I said the world will end in a week?”
Ben chuckled. “I’d need something better than that.”
“Then we are at an impasse. Why don’t we talk about the tablets?”
“Fine. You can start by telling me how Ridley obtained them.”
She took a moment to collect her thoughts. “My father gave them to him, but they were found by a member of a little-known organization called the Delphic Order of the Nisirtu.”
Ben turned toward her. “Fiela asked me if I was Nisirtu. I’ve never even heard of them, or their order”
“Its existence is unknown to almost anyone. For now, let’s just say that the Order of the Nisirtu is one of many societies of the uber-wealthy, and that it has been around for a very long time. I am a member, as are Ridley and Fiela. But I’d rather let Ridley discuss our little club. He’s much better versed than I am.”
The researcher nodded. “Tell me how tablets were found, then.”
“I can tell you the legend – that’s all I’ve got.”
“Go for it.”
“Alright. Apparently they were discovered in a place now called Tiwanaku, in the Bolivian Andes. You’re familiar with the location, I assume.”
“Of course, ” replied Ben. “It’s the location of those large stone structures that conspiracy theorists believe were built by aliens. I once led a small team there to inspect some inscriptions.”
Lilian nodded. “Oh yes, Ridley mentioned that to me. Anyway, the story goes that several hundred years ago the region was ruled by a king called Pumuk.”
“How many hundreds?”
The driver turned towards him. “Ben, this is a legend, not an excerpt from a textbook. I have no idea.”
“Sorry – go on, please.”
Lilian adjusted her rearview mirror. “One day old King Pumuk was told that a strange man dressed in odd yellow garments was requesting an audience with the king. The king, curious, went to meet the newcomer, who was a pole of a man with flesh stretched taught over his bones and large, unblinking eyes.
“The newcomer introduced himself as the Sillum - ‘the Unseen.’ The Sillum said he had come to Tiwanaku because his god had directed him to build a gateway through which its minions could come into the world and take possession of it. The alignment of the stars dictated that the portal be built in Tiwanaku. The Sillum said that he would require the king’s population to be enslaved for that purpose because the design parameters were unforgiving, the schedule pressing, and movement of megalithic stones a necessity.”
“I’m guessing the king wasn’t receptive to the request.”
“Your guess is correct. King Pumuk was outraged. How dare a stranger come to his kingdom demanding that his people be enslaved to build a portal for a foreign god! The king directed his guards to arrest the Sillum but as they moved to obey, the stranger spoke a word and the guards turned against their own king and slew him, instead.”
“What did the stranger say?”
“One word.”
“What was it?”
Lilian shrugged. “The legend doesn’t tell us. But it says that he then spoke another word and everyone within earshot of the Sillum fell under the stranger’s spell. In due course the man had the entire population constructing giant stone buildings, walls, and the gateway itself, upon which the Sillum attached tablets with cryptic writings. He said the tablets contained the history of his god and foreign lands and the workings of the universe and that it was written in the language of the heavens.”
“Wait a second…what did this portal look like?”
“I think you can guess, Ben.”
“The Gate of the Sun?”
“Bingo!”
“Ha! Perfect. When does the movie come out?”
“Not for a few hundred years,” Lilian said mirthlessly, accelerating. Checking the speedometer Ben saw they were traveling at ninety-five miles per hour.
He said, “These are the tablets in Ridley’s possession?”
“That’s right.”
“Given that civilization continued unimpeded, I’m guessing the portal didn’t work as advertised.”
Lilian moved her head left and right. “Not exactly. When it and the other buildings were finished, the Sillum conducted a ceremony and begged his god to send armies into this world to claim it in his name. The legend is that the god answered the call and sent its vassals through the portal in the tens of thousands. Hideous beasts that sent the population fleeing.”
“And yet?”
“Yet almost immediately after emerging from the portal, they began to die.” The woman’s tone became humorously sinister. “All of them, with horrific cries of alien pain and anger. Their corpses began to putrefy, to stretch and bloat and burst into thousands of pieces. Every inch of the ceremonial site was blanketed by a foot of purple and pink slime that smelled worse than…” She stumbled, at a loss for words.
“Rotten eggs?” suggested the passenger.
Lilian scrunched up her nose. “I was hoping to do better than that.”
“Still, pretty cool,” said Ben, because it was. “What happened next?”
The storyteller blew through one red light and then a second. A cacophony of car horns chased after them. Seeming not to notice, she said, “With a howl of frustration the stranger allegedly passed through the portal to the land of his god. His priests - locals who had adopted his god of their own free will – fled into the jungle. Most were tracked down and killed.”
“Which brings me back to my original question. How did Ridley end up with the tablets?”
“Ah. As luck would have it, a member of our society, a Nisirtu, was being escorted through the region by a local resident the evening the ceremony was conducted. He claimed to have witnessed the entire episode and made a record of it.”
Ben laughed. “Okay, you’re telling me that the he actually saw monsters?”
“Of course not. I am telling you that is what the he reported seeing, probably after chewing on a few too many cocoa leaves.”
“Any idea what turned the monsters into purple goo?”
“According to our legendary explorer, ‘twas time that killed the beasts.”
“Huh?”
“He said he interviewed one of the Sillum’s captured followers, who implied that the ceremony had failed because the beings came from some place very near ‘the Nothingness,’ a place where time is almost, but not quite, at a standstill. Thus they were unable to acclimate to this reality, which is ‘rich’ in time. Their physical bodies couldn’t handle it.”
Ben pushed out his lower lip. “‘Time depressurization?’”
“Or pressurization, if you like. But according to the disciple, the Sillum had other followers who would pursue their master’s cause and someday they would find a way to bring him back to try again; that there were things that could be done when the stars were right. It was only a matter of time, the prisoner said, before the ceremony succeeded. He was beheaded shortly thereafter.
“Said Nisirtu had the Sillum’s tablets removed from the failed gateway and shipped to one of our society’s buildings in what is now Argenti
na. There they sat neglected for a very long time, until my father came across them. When my father died he left them to Ridley, who was his closest friend.”
Lilian cut across three lanes of traffic to reach an exit ramp. More horns blared behind them. “And that, sir, concludes the legend of the tablets.”
Ben grunted his approval. “If the tablets end up being authentic, I’ll include the backstory as part of my research paper. The media will love it.”
“Ridley can add to the narrative. I’m sure I missed some juicy parts.” She reached out with one hand and ran her fingers playfully through his hair. “Perhaps we should take a break for a little while, though? You look like you’re about to pass out.”
Ben sighed, disappointed that she had noticed. The painkillers and the lack of sleep really were beginning to make him lightheaded.
He said, “What kind of perfume are you wearing?”
“Private label.”
“It’s nice.”
“Thank you.”
His eyelids began to droop. “Maybe I’ll just shut my eyes for a few minutes.”
Lilian nodded. “That would be best.”
As his seat was whirring to a reclined position, he said, “Lilian?”
“Yes, Ben?”
“Try not to kill us on the way to Steepleguard.”
The driver tapped the brakes, skidded fifty feet, and downshifted to navigate a hairpin turn. She said, “You worry too much.”