by Chris Fox
The smooth black slopes dipped down at a precise angle, absolutely perfect. Each jet-black slab was unbroken. There were no visible cracks or seams. Hell, the entire thing might have been carved from a single block of stone. The jet-black had a mirrored sheen, kind of like the banks of solar cells springing up on houses all over California. The thing drank in the late afternoon sun, a gaping black hole in the center of the ravine below.
He took a cautious step closer to the edge, the frigid updraft almost mocking. It was such a long way down—a two-thousand-foot drop to the valley floor, itself nine thousand feet in elevation. Its effects were palpable, and not just the vertigo or the animal inside of him screaming to flee. The trembling of his legs and the rapid shallow breaths that just couldn’t quite get enough oxygen were constant reminders both of the altitude and his fear of it.
None of that mattered now. He slid forward another foot, kicking a puff of dust over the edge. “I just can’t believe it. That has to be, what, a thousand feet tall?”
“Eleven hundred,” Bridget corrected with a smile, joining him at the ledge. She threaded her ponytail through the back of her cap, donned a pair of sunglasses, and then turned back to their escort. Two of the three jeeps had already moved off to the base camp erected on the south ridge, but the third idled nearby. “Thanks for the ride, Yuri. You can head back to camp. I’ll bring Blair down to the site and introduce him to everyone.”
“Is good,” the beefy Russian said with a nod. He romped on the gas, and the jeep shot away in a cloud of dust, leaving the two of them at the mouth of a very narrow trail threading down into the valley. It ended near the base of the pyramid. Bridget was right. The structure was more advanced than anything in premodern culture; yet, if the dating from the sediment was correct, it had been constructed in the Mesolithic. Before man had learned to farm or write. Before they’d formed anything beyond primitive tribes. Its existence destroyed everything modern anthropology took for granted. The accepted theory of Egyptians being the world’s first pyramid builders had been shattered. The whole field would be in chaos for years.
“What is it made out of? The Egyptians used limestone, but that’s too dark to be any variety I know. Shale? No, that would be too soft. The rain would have eroded it. Obsidian, maybe? No, that would have flaked off,” Blair muttered, shaking his head. He removed his sunglasses and cleaned them on his shirt.
“The outer surface is solid marble. Black marble is rare, but it exists in a few corners of the world. We’ve just never seen something of this size,” Bridget said. She waved away some of the dust left in the wake of the jeep.
“The weight must be incredible. How would they have gotten it this far up into the Andes? There’s no source of marble for fifteen hundred miles. Even if there were, how could they have moved it?” he asked, glancing at her.
“Let’s see how long it takes you to figure it out. Steve got it right away,” Bridget taunted, elbowing him in the side with a playful grin. He was too awed by the pyramid to be baited.
“They must have quarried it from one solid block—a piece that was already here. That’s why it’s built in such a remote location. They just carved it where they found it. It’s the only possibility that makes any sense,” Blair said, grinning in spite of himself. It was good being back in the field. He’d missed the wonder of exploration, of seeing the remnants of ancient peoples and trying to piece together their lives.
“First try. That’s why you’re so amazing,” she said, kneeling to tighten the laces on her hiking boots. He glanced down the trail, skin turning to gooseflesh. He knew he needed to go down, but did it have to be right this second?
“I still think the location is odd, if we use any other pyramid-building culture as a template,” he said, caught up by the majesty of the gleaming structure below. “The mountains around the ravine shield it. It could only be seen from the air or by pilgrims who could handle the hike up here. Every other pyramid was built as a monument. Kings wanted them to be found. Why hide this one?”
“Maybe they feared equally impressive tomb robbers, or maybe this was the only chunk of black marble they could find. Perhaps that material was important for some reason. In either case, the culture that constructed this place was clearly advanced,” Bridget said. She hefted her pack from the rock where Yuri had left their luggage, the wind tugging at her loose cotton shirt, exposing a simple black strap over her shoulder. Didn’t she feel the cold?
“Advanced? In what ways?” he asked, prying his gaze from the pyramid and dragging it back to Bridget. He grabbed his pack, grunting as he fit the straps over his shoulders. Why had be brought so many books? He had a damn tablet on his desk at home.
“The structure is in perfect alignment with the cardinal directions, just like those at Giza. There are pictographs on the lowest part of the base that perfectly mimic our solar system. They’re just like those at Teotihuacan, and they include all eight planets,” Bridget explained, approaching the mouth of the trail.
“That’s incredible. We didn’t even find Saturn until Galileo in the sixteen hundreds. How the hell did they look that deep into space? They must have had an advanced telescope,” Blair theorized. The question was maddening because, barring the discovery of such a device in the structure below they might never know how the ancients had observed the night sky.
Astronomy was the hallmark of every ancient culture. The more advanced their astronomy, the better their math. Every advanced culture mankind had discovered had been fascinated by the cosmos. This culture was as far removed from predynastic Egypt as Egypt was from the present, and yet they’d shared that same love of the cosmos, passing it on to their descendants for over thirteen millennia.
He had to get down there and see it, so he took a step down the trail. The rational part of his mind knew it was a good three feet across, but the terrified kid still remembered the episode in the Grand Canyon. “Jesus, you didn’t tell me I was going to have to climb down a goat trail to get there. How many people did you lose on the way in?”
“Take my hand and stay close to the wall. I know you don’t do well with heights, but you’ve been through worse. Remember China? That little cliff we had to jump? This isn’t nearly so bad,” she said, offering an encouraging smile. That smiled dimmed when he ignored her proffered hand.
“I can handle it.” he replied, pushing past her with all the resolve he could muster. He would be damned if he’d trail after her like some wayward puppy. He had too much self-respect for that.
“Fair enough. So the pyramid raises a lot of questions, don’t you think?” Bridget asked, trotting after him as if they were strolling through a park rather than picking their way over a granite face that straddled the trail. “It could represent a common ancestor to both Egypt and Mesoamerica. If that’s true, it will change the world’s understanding of history forever. Hell, this culture might have even been responsible for Cambodia, too.”
“It’s possible, but that’s a little too alien conspiracy to me. Clearly, this thing is advanced, but that doesn’t mean that this was a global empire. It could have been localized to Peru or maybe South America,” Blair countered, trailing his left hand along the granite wall and avoiding any step that took him too close to the edge.
“Skeptic,” she teased. She was wielding her throaty laugh like a weapon.
“Scientist, you mean. What are the mounds of dirt around the structure’s perimeter?” Blair asked, finally taking in the area surrounding the structure. It resembled a gopher mound with the pyramid at the center.
“There was a seismic event here that we’re guessing revealed the structure. That’s how this place was originally discovered. The university in Cajamarca catalogued the event,” Bridget explained, pushing back the brim of the battered cap. “The pyramid was somehow entombed under layers of sediment. Either the earthquake pushed it to the surface—”
“—Or the pyramid pushed itself to the surface, triggering the quake,” he finished dryly.
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p; “Don’t be so dismissive,” she said, rolling her eyes. “The pyramid is at the epicenter for the quake. The exact epicenter.”
“That’s one hell of a coincidence,” Blair admitted. He glanced into the ravine. “If this thing was buried, why aren’t the slopes covered in dirt? Did you spend time cleaning it?”
“We found it like this—pristine—like it was constructed yesterday. No erosion, no discoloration. No damage of any kind,” she said. Blair winced as his foot landed within inches of the trail’s edge.
Before they’d made it a hundred yards down the trail, Blair regretted wearing such a thin cotton shirt. His teeth chattered as he struggled for breath. The seasons were reversed on this side of the equator, but summer hadn’t reached this elevation. Bridget seemed unfazed by the chill, her khaki shorts bouncing in time with her ponytail as she ducked past to his right.
“Are you crazy?” he asked. His voice rose at least half an octave as a stone bounced down the trail.
“You know I am,” she shot back with a grin, pace increasing.
Blair yanked his gaze from her, like a child touching a hot stove, and instead turned it to the trio of pavilions below. They’d been erected on the pyramid’s south face, just a simple work camp. They would never erect a full base camp anywhere near the pyramid since it was impossible to know how far underground the site extended. There could be more structures right under the camp.
Several figures congregated around a collapsible table. He couldn’t make out much detail from this distance, but he thought he recognized one of them.
“Bridget, is that Sheila?” he asked, steadying himself against the rock wall as he navigated a particularly terrifying stretch of trail.
“Yep,” Bridget replied, pausing to beam a radiant smile over her shoulder. “We were lucky to land her, especially on such short notice. She just finished a dig down in Norte Chico.”
“I thought she was an Incan scholar. What was she doing all the way down there? Norte Chico predates the Incans by at least two millennia.”
“She thinks that there’s a connection between the ancestors of the Inca and the tribes that built Norte Chico,” Bridget replied. A spray of dirt tumbled down the cliff as she continued her daunting pace. He was starting to lag behind. “Given what we’ve discovered thus far, I’m betting she’s right.”
“Who are the other two?” Blair asked, focusing on his footing as they continued. The cliff was harrowing, but—thankfully—their elevation was dropping as they approached the valley floor.
“Doctor Roberts is a geologist from Cal Berkeley. He’s handling the quake investigation, obviously. The man with the curly hair is Alejandro Rodriguez. He’s an artist from Mexico City who did some amazing sketches of what Mayan culture at Teotihuacan might have looked like. We’re hoping he can do something similar here.”
“That’s a pretty impressive roster, especially on such short notice. How did you pull it off?” Blair asked. They both knew exactly what he meant by “pull it off.” An operation like this took months or even years to get funding, and when it did, they weren’t paying anthropologists six figures to excavate.
“Steve was approached by a representative of the Peruvian government and asked to investigate the pyramid. They let us put together a dream team, though we were all required to sign the same NDA you did,” Bridget answered with a simple shrug. Her eyebrows knitted together though, a sure sign that something about this made her less comfortable than she was willing to admit.
“Why do we need soldiers, especially ones that well armed? I counted at least six at base camp.”
“They mostly keep to themselves, and we’re happy to let them. The only one we talk to is their leader, Commander Jordan. He’s the type of guy that can kill you with his bare hands, and just uses guns as a courtesy,” she said over her shoulder, still moving confidently down the trail. At least they were nearing the bottom.
“You sound like you’re happy they’re here,” Blair said, more than a little surprised. There was a longstanding feud between the military and almost every group of scientists. If they were funding a dig, it always meant strings were attached.
“The government’s worried that someone else will find the site, and they want to be able to protect their interests.”
Bridget’s words were practiced, as if she were parroting back a message she’d been taught.
“You have to admit this place is pretty unique. What we find inside could be very valuable to them.” She continued.
“Makes sense, I guess,” he conceded, though not without reservations. “They paid me enough that I probably should just leave well enough alone. Am I the last one to arrive? Or did you manage to get Connors on board?”
“With you here, I didn’t think we’d need him,” she said, pausing at the base of the trail. She lowered her cap to shade her eyes, face growing somber. “Besides, Steve refused to even consider it. He got…violent when I suggested it.”
“Steve?” Blair asked, finally catching up to her. A hundred pounds of stress melted away now that he was on more or less flat ground. “There’s no way. Steve’s the most non confrontational person I know. He’ll avoid you for weeks just to prevent a minor argument. Violent?”
“I know. Completely out of character, right?” She turned back to the trail, setting a dogged pace.
Blair let the silence stretch as they approached the pavilions. He didn’t like all the cryptic hints about Steve, but now wasn’t the time to interrogate Bridget. The people at the makeshift camp had spotted them, and Sheila was moving in their direction. She wore her self-created uniform: khaki pants with a flannel shirt covered by bright-blue suspenders. A wide-brimmed leather hat that covered a shock of black hair worked with a pair of thick glasses to complete the outfit. He doubted he would even recognize her without it.
“Blair Smith, is that you?” Sheila said, dipping backward in mock shock. Her exaggerated southern drawl made him smile. Sheila had been born in Los Angeles. She’d never been near the south. “I haven’t seen you in ages. I heard a nasty rumor that you took a job as a professor. I must have heard wrong. Though I guess that would explain the beer belly…”
“Wine belly. It happens when you live in Wine Country. That Zin isn’t going to drink itself.” Blair hefted her tiny frame in a fierce hug. “I missed you too, by the way. Even if you did get old. What are you, like forty now?”
“Forty? I’ll show you forty. God, it’s good to see you, Blair.” She returned the hug just as fiercely.
She leaned in close and whispered the rest. “We should talk in private when you have a minute.”
What didn’t she want the rest of them to know?
Blair set her down, giving her a quizzical look. She shook her head slightly and resumed her smile as she led him and Bridget toward the pavilions. Neither woman acknowledged the other. Guess he shouldn’t be surprised, given their history.
He was thankful the moment he stepped beneath the blue canvas, because someone had the foresight to set a large space heater near the center. A pair of men stood next to the collapsible table, a black plastic top with aluminum legs. The map atop it was an aerial survey.
“When was this taken?” Blair asked, stabbing the center of the map with a finger.
“Boy, you get right to work.” The shorter of the two men laughed. He had a dark complexion and an easy smile. His accent had probably landed the man a lot of tourist girls. “I’m Alejandro, and this dour fellow behind me is Doctor Roberts. That’s his first name, Doctor. I’m convinced of it.”
“Ignore the artist. He doesn’t appreciate the rigors of science,” the taller man droned, glancing up from a thick textbook. Seismic Wonders was emblazoned on the cover in blocky red letters. The man placed an arm over the cover when he realized Blair was staring. His face sported a bristly black beard badly in need of shearing. “I’m Doctor Roberts and prefer to be addressed as such. To answer your question, that survey was done three months ago. It’s a Google Earth satell
ite image, and as you’ve deduced it shows no trace of the structure behind me. That’s why I’m here. To determine where it came from and how it appeared. If I understand correctly, you’re here to tell us who built it.”
“Let’s hope so,” Blair said, offering Doctor Roberts a hand. The man’s grip was surprisingly firm. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
Blair offered Alejandro his hand, but the man swept him up in a hug.
“We are beyond handshakes, my friend. Together, we will unlock a world not glimpsed in thousands of years. We are more than friends. We are family.”
“Uh, nice to meet you too. So where’s Steve?” Blair asked, disengaging from the strange little Latino. There was no sign of his former friend among the makeshift pavilions. He scanned the area around the pyramid but saw nothing else of note. Perhaps there was another set of pavilions on the far side?
Everyone looked pointedly at Bridget, who dropped her gaze. Jesus. Given how uncomfortable everyone looked, Blair thought maybe she wasn’t being melodramatic about Steve’s condition.
“Blair, why don’t I show you your tent?” Sheila said, trying to fill the lengthening silence.
“I’d appreciate that. It would be good to drop this pack and get settled in. Afterwards, maybe you can show me the site.”
Bridget raised a hand as if about to say something, and then she let it fall limply to her side. She turned to examine the aerial photo, though he seriously doubted she saw any part of that map. He’d seen that expression before. She wasn’t concerned. She was terrified.
Chapter 6- Ahiga
Crouching atop the tree’s limb many feet over the jungle floor, Ahiga knew despair. The strangely armored warriors with their deafening armaments had driven him from the Ark. The fight had been brief but bloody, and he had fled when his energy waned. True, he could have stayed and likely slain them all, but at what cost had he failed? His role was vital. If he did not wake the Mother, this new world would be naked before the coming storm.
