by Hep Aldridge
“Then we had best use our time wisely. Eduardo, how fast can you run and how far?” I asked.
Eduardo smiled and said, “You know I am very fast, Senor Colt, and I can run many miles.”
“Good, here’s what I’m thinking. The mercs won’t be heading out until morning, and that still puts them about two days behind us if they find our trail and the road. Since Eduardo is much more used to operating in this thin air, he goes out at first light and gets the camera you placed on the road today and runs it, say another mile or so, back down the road and sets it up. Joe, you can direct him from the rockpile and decide on the camera location. That would give us an earlier warning and advantage if the mercs do find the road.”
“Joe, we know our Comms RF signal and your connection with the cameras won’t pierce the cloak, but do you think you could rig a hardwire from the laptop outside the cloak to your tablet inside the cloak and get a signal?”
Joe was sitting there with a furrowed brow as he pondered the question.
“Not sure, but it should be easy enough to check out. I’ve got some shielded cables in my kit. In fact, let me finish eating, and give me about half an hour, and I can have an answer for you.”
“Excellent. Dimitri, I would like you and Reggie to work out a defensive strategy for the rockpile, firing locations, fall back positions; you guys know the drill.”
“You got it, Colt. We’ll take a look at it first thing in the morning,” Dimitri replied, and Reggie nodded her agreement.
“Tomorrow, the rest of us will start with a more thorough search of the city.” Now, I felt like we had a decent plan, but I still had a knot in my stomach. I wonder if this is what Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie felt like at the Alamo. Don’t dwell on it, Colt; let it go.
We sat in silence, all looking around as we finished our meal, taking in our fantastic surroundings. The architecture of many of the buildings was futuristic and unique, if not downright strange. Nothing about them was conventional, except for almost all having windows of some sort. There were round, oblong, rectangular, cone-shaped, and truncated pyramid shapes. Most all were multi-story, some turning into spires reaching skyward hundreds of feet. The pyramids were thirty to forty feet tall with multiple entrances—a strange mixture of futuristic yet visually pleasing styles for sure.
Finally, Joe broke the silence when he said, “These are some pretty diverse building styles. I can’t see any two that are the same.”
I said, “Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. Wonder what that’s all about?”
After a few thoughtful moments, Doc said, “Well, it could be one of a couple of things. The shapes may have something to do with their function—what they were used for. Or an even more interesting one from an anthropological perspective, they could represent different groups or cultural habitats—like families or businesses from foreign countries replicating part of their culture in their building style and design.
“Now, that would be interesting,” O’Reilly said. “So, instead of one alien culture, we may be dealing with inhabitants of multiple origins. If so, this rabbit hole we’ve jumped into is as weird as Alice’s.”
I laughed, as did the others. There may be more truth to that than we can imagine, I thought.
Joe got up, pulled out his gear, and started putting together a rig that I hoped would work. I wasn’t keen on leaving someone outside on guard duty the whole time we were searching the city.
Dimitri looked around and said, “And after we deal with all this stuff, we still have to figure out where the library is. And we have no idea if or how the crystal artifact we’ve been toting around is going to help us. We only have that professor guy’s notes that say it should; who knows if there’s any truth to that?”
“Here’s something else to chew on,” Doc said, “we were hoping to find some clue in the City of the Gods to help us find it, and now we are considering the idea that there may be another city close by. So, we don’t even know if that one or this one is the right starting point.”
As I thought about those comments, something clicked in my brain. I said, “Hang on for a second. In the priest’s journal, he said the chief told him the library was not in the city he had been taken to, right?”
“Yeah, that’s what he said,” Doc replied.
“And we are now of the opinion, based on his description, this isn’t the city he was taken to,” I paused before continuing, getting excited about where this logic thread was taking me.
“We also believe this to be a more important city than the one he saw, based on the roadway leading in and the cloak hiding it from outside view.” I saw people perk up as the light bulbs in their heads lit up.
O’Reilly jumped in, “So, if he never knew about THIS city, and since he was told the library was hidden somewhere other than the city he saw, maybe this is the secret location of the library. It could be in any one of these buildings.”
“Bingo,” I said. “We could have stumbled into its hiding spot and not realized it.”
Now there was some real excitement in the camp as we all talked through the logic thread that I had followed. For every question, we could find an answer. Of course, we knew we did not have all the facts and had to make some “logical” guesses, but in the final analysis, it still stood as a workable hypothesis, a solid starting point for our search. So, by pure luck, we found the trail to this city instead of the other one. If the drone hadn’t given us solid clues in our aerial search, we might not have found it.
It sure beat the heck out of stumbling around the mountainous jungle looking for the library, I thought. We should be able to do a search of the city and determine whether the library was here.
Then, as often happens, reality reared its ugly head. We still had the mercs to deal with, and our rations were going to become an issue soon. Joe had been working at the top of the staircase on the platform, going in and out of the cloak, checking and re-checking his work. We were still buzzing with this new level of excitement when Joe said, “Colt, get your tablet and turn it on.”
I turned and started digging through my pack. I pulled out the tablet, turned it on, and said, “Okay, Joe, I’ve got it,” as its screen came to life. We all had our own tablets, all the same as Joe’s, but we usually relied on his and didn’t often use ours.
“Okay, got a signal yet?”
“No, not yet.”
“Okay, how about now?”
My screen jumped for a second, then nothing.
“I got a blip, but now nada.’”
“Alright, give me a second.” There was a pause, and then, “How about now?”
My screen came to life, and I could see the menu for choosing which trail cam I wanted to view.
“Got it,” I said as I tapped the icon for camera five, and a view of the road appeared.
“Hot damn, Joe, you got it. I can access all the cameras from my tablet now.”
“Great,” he said as he descended the stairs and walked over to me. I handed him my tablet as he sat down on the step.
He proceeded to go through and check each camera. They all came up when he remotely activated them.
“A little fuzzy but good enough. The cloak is still messing with the signal a bit, but the hardwired link worked. I can set the alarms now, and when the motion sensor on the camera spots movement, it will send an alert to your pad and show you the image from that camera.”
“Nice going, Joe,” Doc said as he and the rest of the team peered over his shoulder from the steps behind us.
“I think I can safely say we can roam about the city and still have a signal. Let me give it a quick check,” and took my tablet and headed down the main street. He must have gone a couple of hundred yards and disappeared into some of the buildings before returning to us.
“Yep,” he said, “had a good signal everywhere, even in the buildings.”
“That’s beyond good news,” I said and then explained our library hypothesis to him.
“Now, that would b
e cool,” he replied, “if the library were actually located here.” After a slight pause, “Oh, here’s some more potentially good news. While I was working on this set-up, I had the camera on at the village, monitoring the mercs, and guess what?”
Not waiting for the answer, he said, “There was a big argument going on. I turned up the volume on the camera remotely but couldn’t really hear much. It was evident that one of the mercs was upset with one of the locals because there was pushing and shoving going on and loud cursing; I could hear that. They were working this guy over pretty good.
“Sounded like there may be trouble brewing in their ranks. And, Colt, I think the local being abused was one of the elder brothers that we interviewed in Tamara’s village.”
Chapter Twenty
“What?” I blurted out. “One of the elders?”
“I’m pretty sure. It was getting dark, and the image moved quickly, but I think it was. I don’t know which one, though.”
Doc said, “That must be how they found the old village, bastards. They must have discovered Tamara’s village looking for us and got him to give up the information on the elders.”
“You know he didn’t give up the information willingly,” I said.
“Didn’t look that way. They were smacking him around pretty good,” Joe added.
“Aw, hell, now our search has gotten them involved—innocents—and they’re suffering because of it. Those rotten sons of bitches. The native elders are being brutalized in order to find us,” I said in a combination of anger, disgust, and guilt.
Reggie asked, “Do you think he will lead them here?”
“I don’t know. They never mentioned the road or cloaking device over the city when we spoke with them. They may not have known about this place,” I said.
“Or maybe they weren’t completely forthcoming in what they told us,” Dimitri added.
“They seemed willing enough to speak with us, and I believed them,” Doc said.
“That may be true,” Dimitri replied, “and it looks like all they told us was true, but, what if it wasn’t everything, they knew… just sayin’.”
“I never thought of that; I took them at face value.”
“Maybe that was a mistake, Doc. This is a huge secret to entrust strangers with and one that must have been covertly passed down one generation to the next,” I said.
“But for them to hold back information of this magnitude would posit that they knew there was something of great import that must stay hidden, and I’m not talking about gold or silver,” Doc replied.
“Well, we can no longer count on having more than a couple of days to check out the city. Let’s grab some shut-eye, and I would say at first light, get on with our search.” As I looked up, furrowing my brow, I added, “But I’m not sure it gets dark here.” It was still twilight, and we had no way of knowing if it would change. Joe checked the camera feed one more time and then set the alarm on it for six hours later. We all agreed whoever woke up first would wake the others, hoping for at least six hours of sleep.
We unrolled our sleeping bags and prepared to turn in. As we did, the cloak overhead started to darken, and night fell—luck, coincidence, or something else. In this strange world, anything seemed possible. The darkness provided us with the six hours of sound sleep I had hoped for, but it passed all too quickly, and Reggie roused us.
A quick breakfast was consumed, and a check of the mercs camp still showed darkness and no movement. Overhead, dawn had appeared, and as we moved around, getting our gear ready, I swear it started getting brighter out. The others noted it too, and we shared glances all around.
Doc said, “You don’t think it can sense…” he didn’t finish his question.
I looked at him as I pulled on my backpack and said, “In this world, nothing would surprise me.”
We broke into two groups to cover the buildings on both sides of what I’m calling Main Street and speed up our sweep of the city. Dimitri, Joe, and Reggie took one side. Doc, O’Reilly, Eduardo, and I took the other with instructions to sound off if they found anything that might be important and to meet in the middle of the street in an hour so we could visually check our progress.
We now had the opportunity to really inspect these buildings. As we passed the first obelisk, we could see engravings on all sides of it. It was the same type of unusual markings we had found on the silver cubes from the galleon—undecipherable but obviously important. The first few buildings, while beautifully made, didn’t provide us with any information. The next one we inspected had some writing or an inscription over its entryway, and when we entered, we found what looked like a stone counter and a couple of stone benches in the first or main room. Going into the next room, we saw shelves everywhere, all carved or made from the same material as the building and the road we had followed.
Doc said, “Look at this, Colt; the stones on the wall show no mortar, just smooth joints and surfaces. They fit as tightly as the giant stones that make up the Incan ruins I’ve seen in Peru. But there is no irregularity. These are perfectly rectangular shaped.
As I looked around, I said, “Maybe this was a store front of some kind or a distribution center, where they had to store their products back here, and distribution was up front.”
“Could be,” he said, “unfortunately, we have no way of knowing.”
We left the building and moved on to the next; this one was igloo-looking with a rectangular extension attached to the back. Again, there was some sort of lettering over the doorway. This time, there was similar lettering on both sides of the curved walls inside. There was a long table, maybe twelve to fifteen feet long, in the middle of the room with benches running down both sides. The open doorway to the back area showed us more shelves with nothing on them. The building walls were the same as the last—beautifully cut stones, no mortar, and unbelievable tightly fitting seams.
We walked out and were heading to the next structure when Dimitri came over the Comms, “Colt, you guys need to come over here and see this,” he sounded excited.
“We’re in the small pyramid-shaped building. There’s an ante room; go through it and come into the main chamber.”
“Roger that, on our way,” I responded.
We hurried out and saw the building a little further back from where we were on the street. We got to its front entrance and noticed more script above the door and even more inside. The unique thing about it was the script was faintly glowing the blue color we had been seeing. We entered the next room, and they were all standing there, wide-eyed and mouths agape. I started taking in the room and saw a raised circular dais maybe a foot high and a large carved chair to one side of it. The room had more benches up against the walls, but the chair and the dais were the focal point.
Again, everything in the room looked like it had been carved from one piece of stone. I mean, there were no seams visible. The chair looked like it had sprouted out of the floor, and the room was filled with a bluish glow. I looked at Joe, and he said, “Colt, check out the chair.”
I walked up to it. It was completely smooth stone, no ornamentation or carvings, only handprint indentations, one on top of each of the chair’s arms. They were slightly larger than my hand when I compared them, and I have big hands.
Joe walked to the chair and said, “Watch this,” as he sat down and placed his hands palm down in the indentations.
I was totally startled by what happened next. From the floor at the center of the dais, a very bright blue glow appeared, growing upward in the form of a person. My mouth dropped open as the form of a female in long flowing robes appeared. Her facial features were different, somewhat elongated, almost aquiline, but exquisite, and she stood at least seven feet tall. She had a Mona Lisa smile, and the hands extending from under the robes were long and slender, crossed in front of her. I was standing there, stunned and immobilized, as the figure took full shape with an almost expectant look on her face.
“A hologram?” I muttered.
“Umm, I don’t think so,” Joe replied. “I worked with all types of holographic projections at DARPA, and there is something very different about her. She is a solid figure; you can’t see through her. It’s as if she is really standing there in person.”
As I stared, I realized he was right. I slowly walked around the dais, trying to look at her from all angles, and she turned her head to follow my progress. I’m sure my jaw was still dropped when I came around to stand next to the chair.
“Did you see that?” I said in an astonished voice. “Her gaze followed me the whole way.”
Joe was looking at the figure before us now, smiling that enigmatic smile, and managed to say, “Yeah, I did. As I said, I don’t think she’s a holograph or projection.”
Everyone was now staring wide-eyed at her as I whispered, “Then what the heck is she?”
As I stood there, Joe asked, “Who are you?”
The female figure turned her gaze to Joe and said something in a strange, almost melodic language.
“What?” I said to no one in particular and noticed Joe staring at her, mesmerized and smiling. She stopped talking, and Joe looked at me and said, “She indicated she is the teacher or guide, or something like that.”
“You can understand her?” I sputtered.
Before I could say more, Joe asked her, “Where are we?”
The figure raised one arm and pointed to a section of the wall, and on it appeared a map of South America; it slowly zoomed in to what was now Ecuador and continued its zoom until mountain ranges were clearly visible. Suddenly, it stopped, and a blue dot appeared. We had been using topo maps of this area enough lately that I recognized our location. The figure then spoke in a soft but well-enunciated voice again in the language I did not understand. As she talked, I looked at Joe, who was staring intently at her and nodding his head. In a few moments, he removed his hands, the figure disappeared, and he turned to me.
“Well, is that amazing or what?” he asked. “I think this could be an encounter of the fifth kind; you know direct contact with some type of an alien, or goddess, or who knows?”
