The Bone Labyrinth

by James Rollins

  Lena pointed out those anomalies. “According to archaeologists who examined the collection, the motifs and representations of many of the artifacts seemed to better fit other cultures—Assyrian, Babylonian, Egyptian.”

  She opened to a picture of a copper sculpture of a winged man with a lizard’s head. “For example, this is clearly the figure of Nisroch, a god of ancient Assyria, a Mesopotamian civilization dating back four thousand years ago.” She turned next to a set of golden plaques covered in a linear script. “And here are samples of proto-Phoenician writing. Experts have identified other pieces of the collection bearing Egyptian hieroglyphics, Libyan and Punic writing, even Celtic symbols. Father Crespi became convinced that these objects were proof of a connection between a lost civilization hidden in these jungles and the rest of the ancient world, a connection that predated recorded history.”

  She fanned through the book, stopping at another set of photos. “Even stranger, the natives also brought him steel-hard copper gears, along with strange brass tubes that showed no rifling. All examples of a metallurgy beyond the local tribes’ technical abilities to produce.”

  Gray took the book and looked through more photos of Father Crespi’s collection. Much of it was gold tablets and scrolls, depicting a kaleidoscope of astrological figures, pyramids, and gods. One gold plate even showed a bent-backed figure writing with a quill pen.

  He shook his head. “Surely some of this must be fake.”

  Lena shrugged. “Father Crespi admitted as much, believing that over time the natives might have crafted some of these gifts to please him. But even he could tell the forgeries from authentic items. I mean, who would freely give up so much gold just to fool an old priest?”

  As proof, she flipped to a page that showed a yard-long golden crocodile with large rubies for eyes. It had to be worth a small fortune, certainly not something a native would craft as a simple forgery.

  “Whatever happened to Father Crespi’s collection?” he asked.

  “That’s a mystery all its own. After he died in 1982, his collection was quickly dispersed. Most of it ended up locked away in museum vaults on order of the Ecuadorian government. You can only view them with special permission. Other pieces ended up at an Ecuadorian military base of Cayambe, deep in the jungle.”

  A military base?

  Lena glanced to the rear of the jet’s cabin. “And according to Roland, rumors persist that some key pieces were taken and shipped off to the Vatican.”

  Gray leaned back in his seat. “If that’s true, it sounds like Father Kircher wasn’t the only Catholic priest who was trying to keep something secret.”

  But what were they trying to hide?

  “For any more answers,” Lena said, “we’ll have to find that cavern system noted on Kircher’s map, the one marked with a labyrinth.”

  From across the aisle, Seichan spoke with an arm over her eyes. She must have been feigning sleep while he and Lena had talked, eavesdropping on their conversation. “All of this sounds like nothing more than folktales, rumors, or treasure-filled dreams.”

  “Maybe not,” Gray said.

  Seichan lowered her arm and turned toward him, arching an eyebrow doubtfully.

  While the others had studied various pieces of the puzzle, he had spent the past few hours researching the possibility of the existence of a lost city buried in the jungles of these mountains.

  “It’s been well documented,” he said, “that a vast cavern system does tunnel through the Andes in this area, stretching an immeasurable distance. Large sections of it were photographed and mapped by the British-Ecuadorian research team back in 1976.”

  “The one headed by Neil Armstrong,” Lena said.

  “He was the honorary president of that expedition. While they found no lost city, the group did discover the remains of an old tomb in those caverns, along with identifying hundreds of new species of plants, bats, and butterflies.”

  Seichan rolled her eyes. “Still, like you said, they found no lost city. And like I said, it’s folktales.”

  “I’m not so sure. There’s a persistent legend about this region, of secret caverns that hold a vast library of metal books and crystal tablets. According to accounts of a man named Petronio Jaramillo, a Shuar tribesman took him to those caverns when he was a teenager. This was back in 1946. Afterward, fearful that it might be looted, he kept its location secret for decades. He finally agreed to guide a handful of people to its location, but only with the assurance that Neil Armstrong would participate in this latest venture, too. Then in 1998, within weeks of this scheduled trip, he was assassinated outside his home.”

  Lena cringed. “Assassinated?”

  “Some believe it was done to silence him. Others that he was murdered while someone tried to extract his secrets. Either way, the location died with him.”

  Lena took the book from the table. “Do you think Father Crespi’s collection could have come from that same place?”

  “Possibly. From there or maybe from tunnels that connect to that lost library.”

  Seichan stretched in her reclined seat. “So why did that assassinated guy insist that Neil Armstrong be part of this new expedition?”

  Gray shrugged. “It could be the man wanted someone whose status and name were beyond repute. Or maybe there was another reason. I still find it odd that Armstrong would’ve agreed to be a part of either expedition. He wasn’t an archaeologist. And after the Apollo 11 mission, he became somewhat of a recluse, doing only a handful of interviews. So why become involved in any of this?”

  “I think I may know,” a voice said behind him.

  Roland had quietly joined them, his eyes glassy with exhaustion and amazement. He clutched Kircher’s journal to his chest while gazing toward a window, where a full moon was perfectly framed.

  “Why?” Lena asked him.

  “Because of the moon . . . it’s not what we think it is.”

  9:02 P.M.

  Roland ignored their incredulous reactions. He struggled to find the words to explain what he had found buried within Father Kircher’s journal.

  No wonder the reverend father had kept all of this secret.

  Just forty years prior to the reverend father’s discovery of Eve’s bones, the Inquisition had sentenced Galileo to death for daring to suggest that the earth was not the center of the universe. The revelations written within Kircher’s journal would have equally doomed the man and anyone associated with his discovery.

  “If the moon isn’t what we think it is,” Gray asked, “what is it?”

  Roland lifted Kircher’s book. “The reverend father came to the conclusion that the moon is not a natural object.” Before anyone could object, Roland stood straighter. “And I agree with him.”

  Seichan pulled her seat upright and swung around to face them all. She pointed toward the window, toward the full moon. “You’re saying that’s not real.”

  Roland sank into a seat amidst the group. “I spent all night researching details I found in Kircher’s book. Seeking ways to disprove his conclusions. But instead, I only found more corroboration.”

  “Maybe you’d better take us through this,” Gray said, nodding to the book. “What did you learn?”

  “It’s not just what I found in the reverend father’s journal.” He looked to the shining face of the moon. “Have you never wondered why during a total solar eclipse the face of the moon fits exactly over the surface of the sun? Doesn’t that perfect visual alignment seem like an odd astronomical coincidence?”

  From the others’ expressions, he saw that this odd fact had escaped them.

  Like it does most people.

  “That phenomenon happens because the moon is 400 times smaller than the sun, while sitting 1/400th of the distance between the earth and the sun.” He shook his head at the amazing relationship. “And that’s not all. The moon precisely mirrors the annual movement of the sun. A midsummer full moon will set at the same angle and place on the horizon as a midwinter sunset.
Again, doesn’t that symmetry seem to defy coincidental chance?”

  “But that doesn’t make it fake,” Lena said softly, as if talking to a madman.

  And maybe I am . . . maybe I’ve fallen too far down the rabbit hole.

  Still, he refused to relent. “Researchers aren’t even sure how the moon formed. The current hypothesis is called the Big Whack theory, that some object the size of Mars impacted with the earth early in its formation and knocked enough material into orbit that it formed the moon.”

  “What’s wrong with that theory?” Gray asked.

  “Two things. One: astronomers all agree that such a planet-sized impact would have set the earth spinning faster than it does today. To compensate for that and to make their theory work, they hypothesized a second impact to our planet, this one striking from the opposite direction with the same force.”

  “To brake the faster spinning of the earth.” Gray’s brow furrowed at the improbability of such an event.

  “Even astronomers admit there is no actual evidence of such an impact having occurred. Which brings us to the second problem of the Big Whack theory. It concerns the strange amount of material ejected from the earth that coalesced into our moon.”

  “How is it strange?” Gray asked.

  “Because once the dust settled, the earth ended up with a circumference precisely 366 percent larger than the moon’s. Doesn’t that percentage seem odd to anyone?”

  “The number 366.” Lena frowned. “That’s almost the same as the days in a year.”

  “In fact, the earth rotates 366 times during one trip around the sun.” Roland looked down at the journal in his lap and traced a finger along the labyrinth of ancient Crete gilded on the cover. “It’s why the Minoan astronomer-priests of Crete divided a circle into 366 degrees. The Sumerians did the same, further dividing the degrees into 60 minutes and subdividing those minutes into 60 seconds.”

  “Like we do today,” Lena said.

  “Except we rounded this to an even 360 degrees,” Roland corrected. “But back to the moon. There are other oddities concerning our sister satellite: how it’s lighter in mass than expected; how its gravitational field has stronger and weaker patches; how its core is abnormally small. Yet without this strange moon, there would be no life on this planet.”

  Lena frowned. “Why’s that?”

  “Biologists believe that the gravitational pull of the moon—which produces tidal changes and tidal pools—is probably what helped early aquatic life transition onto land. But more important, astrophysicists know that the mass of the moon orbiting our planet helps to stabilize the earth’s axis, to keep it at a slightly tilted angle toward the sun. Without the moon’s presence, the earth would wobble more, leading to extreme fluxes in temperature and weather, making it almost impossible for complex life to form.”

  “So without the moon, we wouldn’t be here,” Seichan said. “But at the same time, its perfect symmetry and existence defies rationality. Is that what you’re saying?”

  Roland shrugged, letting them reach their own conclusions. “Maybe that’s why Neil Armstrong became involved in all of this. Maybe he experienced something during his time on the lunar surface that compelled him to pursue this line of investigation.”

  Gray frowned, glancing toward the full moon framed in the jet’s window. “NASA’s missing two minutes,” he mumbled.

  Everyone stared at him.

  “What missing two minutes?” Seichan asked.

  9:07 P.M.

  Gray wasn’t sure how much weight to give to Roland’s revelations. Still, Neil Armstrong’s puzzling participation in this archaeological expedition reminded him of another mystery concerning the Apollo 11 mission.

  “I heard a story from a colleague, an astrophysicist who worked at NASA,” Gray explained. “During the televised moon landing, a pair of cameras supposedly overheated, resulting in two minutes of radio silence. Afterward, sources claimed that NASA was covering something up, something Armstrong and his fellow astronauts witnessed upon landing. This was substantiated later by a retired NASA communications engineer, who admitted that the event was deliberately staged to hide something found on the lunar surface.”

  “What?” Lena asked. “Like extraterrestrials?”

  “That’s one of the theories floated.” Gray turned to Roland. “But others believe they were covering up some mystery tied to the moon itself.”

  “Maybe they were right.” Roland admitted. “Father Kircher certainly became convinced there was something miraculous about the moon. He spent pages and pages exploring this possibility in his journal.”

  “What else did he learn?” Gray asked.

  Roland gripped the old book with both hands. “Most of it centers on the strange symmetries between the earth and the moon. For example, can you guess how many times the moon orbits the earth over the course of 10,000 days?”

  No one bothered to answer.

  “It’s 366 times,” he said. “And that number is important in so many other ways. You could almost consider it the fundamental code for our planet. And that’s been known for far longer than you could imagine.”

  “How long?” Gray asked.

  “Do you remember that staff we saw with Eve’s bones?” He pulled out his phone and brought up the photograph that Lena had taken of the remains, showing those bony hands clutching a length of carved mammoth tusk. “The reverend father named this de Costa Eve, or the Rib of Eve. And if you look closely, you can almost make out small gradations inscribed along its length.”

  He zoomed in and passed the image around.

  “What about it?” Gray asked.

  “It’s marked that way because it’s an ancient measuring tool.”

  “To measure what?” Seichan asked.

  “Everything. It may be the key to our very world.”

  Gray gave him an exasperated look, but Roland forged onward.

  “Back at the chapel in Italy, I measured the staff’s length,” he said. “It’s 83 centimeters long.”

  Gray shrugged. “So just shy of a meter or yardstick.”

  “That’s right, but—”

  “Oh, my God!” Lena suddenly blurted out, cutting him off and drawing their attention. “That length! I know what you’re getting at. It’s not a regular yard like we use today. It’s a megalithic yard.”

  Roland nodded at Lena. “Precisely. I came across that same term while cross-referencing some of Kircher’s claims.”

  “What’s a megalithic yard?” Gray asked, searching between Roland and Lena.

  Lena spoke excitedly. “There was a Scottish engineer back in the thirties. I can’t remember his name . . .”

  “Alexander Thom,” Roland filled in.

  She nodded and rushed on. “He was surveying megalithic ruins throughout Scotland and England and noted how those prehistoric builders had laid out their giant stones along lunar or solar lines. Curious, he did a statistical analysis of ancient Neolithic sites across both the UK and France and noted a strange anomaly. Basically they all seemed to have been constructed using a standard unit of measurement.”

  “The megalithic yard,” Roland explained. “It’s the same length as the staff held by Eve. That length appears again and again throughout history and cultures. The old Spanish vara, the Japanese shaku, the gaz of the Harappan civilization of ancient India . . . they’re all very close in length to this megalithic yard. Even going back to the ancient Minoans of Crete. A thousand Minoan feet is equal to 366 megalithic yards.”

  “That number again,” Gray mumbled.

  “And if I remember right,” Lena added, “the area found within the sarsen ring of Stonehenge is exactly a thousand square megalithic yards.”

  Seichan turned to Lena. “How come you know so much about all of this?” she asked, plainly wondering how a geneticist had come upon such knowledge.

  “Maria and I had studied markers such as this, indications of knowledge spreading globally during Paleolithic times. All of this ties to
our hypothesis that there was a small band of people who helped with mankind’s Great Leap Forward, guiding the path to modern civilization.”

  “Like the Watchers that Roland mentioned before,” Gray said. “Those otherworldly teachers from ancient scripture.”

  Seichan scowled. “So what you’re saying is that some universal unit of measure was shared between societies, spread by these Watchers.”

  Gray stared down at the phone’s screen, at the bones of Eve. He studied the unique features that marked her as a hybrid between early man and Neanderthals.

  Am I looking at the face of one of those Watchers?

  He finally returned his attention to the others. “But what’s so important about this length? Why is it the key to the world, like you said before?”

  Lena stepped up and tried to explain. “Because the megalithic yard was calculated from the dimensions of the planet . . . specifically on the circumference of the earth.”

  “Even Father Kircher came to realize this.” Roland opened the journal to a page of calculations surrounding an illustration of the sphere of the earth. “You can see here how the reverend father divided the circumference of the earth into 366 degrees, then sliced those degrees into 60 minutes, then again into 60 seconds. Here at the bottom you can see his final calculation, where he determined the length of 1 second of the earth’s circumference.”

  He tapped that final number.

  “It’s that same sequence again—366,” Gray noted.

  Seichan stared down at the page, too. “But how could these prehistoric people have come to know the circumference of the Earth and calculate something like this?”

  “Most likely by indirect means. All of this could have been derived by simply using a string, a pebble, and a pole.” Roland turned to another page in the journal showing a crude pendulum. “Father Kircher diagrammed it out here, using the planet Venus as a positioning point.”