"If I believed that," Sandecker snorted, "I'd buy stock in a buggy whip factory."
A knock came on the door and a bald-headed, cadaverous man with a great scraggly Wyatt Earp moustache stepped into the room. He was wearing a crisp, white lab coat. Sandecker acknowledged him with a slight nod and turned to the others.
"I believe you all know Dr. Bill Straight," he said.
Pitt extended his hand. "Of course. Bill heads up the marine artifact preservation department. We've worked on several projects together."
"My staff is still buried under the two truckloads of antiquities from the Byzantine cargo vessel you and Al found imbedded in the ice on Greenland a few years ago. 11
"All I remember about that project," said Giordino, "is that I didn't thaw out for three months."
"Why don't you show us what you've got?" said Sandecker, unable to suppress his impatience.
"Yes, by all means," said Yaeger, polishing one lens of his granny spectacles. "Let's have a look at it."
Pitt opened the case, gently removed the jade box, and placed it on the conference table. Giordino and Gunn had already seen it during the flight from the rain forest to Quito, and they stood back while Sandecker, Yaeger, and Straight moved in for a close look.
"Masterfully carved," said Sandecker, admiring the intricate features of the face on the lid.
"A most distinctive design," observed Straight. "The serene expression, the soft look of the eyes definitely have an Asian quality about them. Almost a direct association with statuary art from the Cahola dynasty of southern India.
"Now that you mention it," said Yaeger, "the face does have a remarkable resemblance to most sculptures of Buddha."
"How is it possible for two unrelated cultures to carve similar likenesses from the same type of stone?" asked Sandecker.
"Pre-Columbian contact by a transpacific crossing?" speculated Pitt.
Straight shook his head. "Until someone discovers an ancient artifact in this hemisphere that is absolutely proven to have come from either Asia or Europe, all similarities have to be classed as sheer coincidence. No more."
"Likewise, no early Mayan or Andean art has ever shown up in excavations of ancient cities around the Mediterranean or the Far East," said Gunn.
Straight lightly ran his fingertips over the green jade. "Still, this face presents an enigma. Unlike the Maya and the ancient Chinese, the Inca did not prize jade. They preferred gold to adorn their kings and gods, living or dead, believing it represented the sun that gave fertility to the soil and warmth to all life."
"Let's open it and get to that thing inside," ordered Sandecker.
Straight nodded at Pitt. "I'll let you do the honors."
Without a word, Pitt inserted a thin metal shaft under the lid of the box and carefully pried it open.
There it was. The quipu, lying as it had in the cedar lined box for centuries. They stared curiously at it for almost a minute, wondering if its riddle could be solved.
Straight zipped open a small leather pouch. Neatly arrayed inside was a set of tools, several different-sized tweezers, small calipers, and a row of what looked like the picks that dentists use for cleaning teeth. He pulled on a pair of soft white gloves and selected a pair of tweezers and one of the picks. Then he reached in the box and began probing the quipu, delicately testing the strands to see if they could be separated without breaking.
As if he were a surgeon lecturing to a group of interns over a cadaver, he began explaining the examination process. "Not as brittle nor as fragile as I expected. The quipu is made from different metals, mostly copper, some silver, one or two gold. Looks like they were hand formed into wire and then wound into tiny coil-like cables, some thicker than others, with varied numbers of strands and colors. The cables still retain a measure of tensile strength and a surprising degree of resilience. There appear to be a total of thirty-one cables of various lengths, each with a series of incredibly small knots spaced at irregular intervals. Most of the cables are individually tinted, but a few are identical in color. The longer cables are linked to subordinates that act as modifying clauses, similar to the diagram of a sentence in an English class. This is definitely a sophisticated message that cries out to be unraveled."
"Amen," muttered Giordino.
Straight paused and turned to the admiral. "With your permission, sir, I will remove the quipu from its resting place."
"What you're saying is that I'm responsible in the event you break the damn thing," Sandecker scowled.
"Well, sir. . ."
"Go ahead, man, get with it. I can't stand around here all day staring at some smelly old relic."
"Nothing like the aroma of rotting mulch to put one on edge," said Pitt drolly.
Sandecker fixed him with a sour stare. "We can dispense with the humor."
"The sooner we unsnarl this thing," said Yaeger anxiously, "the sooner I can create a decoding program."
Straight flexed his gloved fingers like a piano player about to assault Franz Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody Number Two. Then he took a deep breath and slowly reached into the box. He slipped a curved probe very carefully under several cables of the quipu and gently raised them a fraction of a centimeter. "Score one for our side," he sighed thankfully. "After lying in the box for centuries, the coils have not fused together or stuck to the wood. They pull free quite effortlessly."
"They appear to have survived the ravages of time extremely well," observed Pitt.
After examining the quipu from every angle, Straight then slipped two large tweezers under it from opposite sides. He hesitated as if bolstering his confidence, then began raising the guipu from its resting place. No one spoke, all held their breath until Straight laid the multicolored cables on a sheet of glass. Setting aside the tweezers in favor of the dental picks, he meticulously unfolded the cables one by one until they were all spread flat like a fan.
"There it is, gentlemen," he sighed with relief. "Now we have to soak the strands in a very mild cleaning solution to remove stains and corrosion. This process will then be followed by a chemical preservation procedure in our lab."
"How long before you can return it to Yaeger for study?" asked Sandecker.
Straight shrugged. "Six months, maybe a year."
"You've got two hours," said Sandecker without batting an eye.
"Impossible. The metal coils lasted as long as they did because they were sealed in a box that was almost airtight. Now that they're fully exposed to air they'll quickly begin to disintegrate."
"Certainly not the ones spun from gold," said Pitt.
"No, gold is practically indestructible, but we don't know the exact mineral content of the other tinted coils. The copper, for instance, may have an alloy that crumbles from oxidation. Without careful preservation techniques they might decay, causing the colors to fade to the point of becoming unreadable."
"Determining the color key is vital to deciphering the quipu, " Gunn added.
The mood in the room had suddenly turned sour. Only Yaeger seemed immune. He wore a canny smile on his face as he gazed at Straight.
"Give me thirty minutes for my scanning equipment to measure the distances between the knots and fully record the configuration, and you can keep the thing in your lab until you're old and gray."
"That's all the time you'll need?" Sandecker asked incredulously.
"My computers can generate three-dimensional digital images, enhanced to reveal the strands as vividly as they were when created four hundred years ago."
"Ah, but it soothes the savage beast," Giordino waxed poetically, "to live in a modern world."
Yaeger's scan of the Drake quipu took closer to an hour and a half, but when he was finished the graphics made it look better than when it was brand new. Four hours later he made his first breakthrough in deciphering its message. "Incredible how something so simple can be so complex," he said, gazing at the vividly colored simulation of the cables that fanned out across a large monitor.
"Sort of
like an abacus," said Giordino, straddling a chair in Yaeger's computer sanctuary and leaning over the backrest. Only he and Pitt had remained with Yaeger. Straight had returned to his lab with the quipu while Sandecker and Gunn went off to a Senate committee hearing on a new underwater mining project.
"Far more complicated." Pitt was leaning over Yaeger's shoulder, studying the image on the monitor. "The abacus is basically a mathematical device. The quipu, on the other hand, is a much more subtle instrument. Each color, coil thickness, placement and type of knot, and the tufted ends, all have significance. Fortunately, the Inca numerical system used a base of ten just like ours."
"Go to the head of the class." Yaeger nodded. "This one, besides numerically recording quantities and distances, also recorded a historical event. I'm still groping around in the dark, but, for example. . ." He paused to type in a series of instructions on his keyboard. Three of the quipu's coils appeared to detach themselves from the main collar and were enlarged across the screen. "My analysis proves pretty conclusively that the brown, blue, and yellow coils indicate the passage of time over distance. The numerous smaller orange knots that are evenly spaced on all three coils symbolize the sun or the length of a day."
"What brought you to that conclusion?"
"The key was the occasional interspacing of large white knots."
"Between the orange ones?"
"Right. The computer and I discovered that they coincide perfectly with phases of the moon. As soon as I can calculate astronomical moon cycles during the fifteen hundreds, I can zero in on approximate dates."
"Good thinking," said Pitt with mounting optimism. "You're onto something."
"The next step is to determine what each cable was designed to illustrate. As it turns out, the Incas were also masters of simplicity. According to the computer's analysis, the green coil represents land and the blue one the sea. The yellow remains inconclusive."
"So how do you read it?" asked Giordino.
Yaeger punched two keys and sat back. "Twenty-four days of travel over land. Eighty-six by sea. Twelve days in the yellow, whatever that stands for."
"The time spent at their destination," Pitt ventured.
Yaeger nodded in agreement. "That figures. The yellow coil might denote a barren land."
"Or a desert," said Giordino.
"Or a desert," Pitt repeated. "A good bet if we're looking at the coast of northern Mexico."
"On the opposite side of the quipu," Yaeger continued, "we find cables matching the same blue and green colors, but with a different number of knots. This suggests, to the computer, the time spent on the return trip. Judging by the additions and shorter spacing between knots, I'd say they had a difficult and stormy voyage home."
"It doesn't look to me as if you're groping in the dark," said Pitt. "I'd say you have a pretty good grasp of it."
Yaeger smiled. "Flattery is always gratefully accepted. I only hope I don't fall into the trap of inventing too much of the analysis as I go."
The prospect did not sit well with Pitt. "No fiction, Hiram. Keep it straight."
"I understand. You want a healthy baby with ten fingers and ten toes."
"Preferably one holding a sign that says `dig here,' " Pitt said in a cold, flat voice that almost curled Yaeger's hair, "or we'll find ourselves staring down a dry hole."
High on the funnel-shaped peak of a solitary mountain that rises like a graveyard monument in the middle of a sandy desert there is an immense stone demon.
It has stood there, legs tensed as if ready to spring, since prehistoric times, its claws dug into the massive basalt rock from which it was carved. In the desert tapestry at its feet ghosts of the ancients mingle with the ghosts from the present. Vultures soar over it, jackrabbits leap between its legs, lizards scurry over its giant paws.
From its pedestal on the summit, the beast's snakelike eyes command a panoramic vista of sand dunes, rocky hills and mountains, and the shimmering Colorado River that divides into streams across its silted delta before merging with the Sea of Cortez.
Exposed to the elements on the top of the mountain, which is said to be mystic and enchanted, much of the intricate detail of the sculpture has been worn away. The body appears to be that of a jaguar or a huge cat with wings and a serpent's head. One wing still protrudes above a shoulder, but the other has long since fallen on the hard, rocky surface beside the beast and shattered. Vandals have also taken their toll, chipping away the teeth from the gaping jaws and digging their names and initials on the flanks and chest.
Weighing several tons and standing as high as a bull elephant, the winged jaguar with the serpent's head is one of only four known sculptures produced by unknown cultures before the appearance of the Spanish missionaries in the early fifteen hundreds. The other three are static crouching lions in a national park in New Mexico that were far more primitive in their workmanship.
Archaeologists who had scaled the steep cliffs were mystified as to its past, They had no way of guessing its age or who carved the beast from one enormous outcropping of rock. The style and design were far different from any known artifacts of the prehistoric cultures of the American Southwest. Many theories were created, and many opinions offered, but the enigma of the sculpture's significance remained shrouded in its past.
It was said that the ancient people feared the awesome stone beast, believing it to be a guardian of the underworld, but present-day elders of the Cahuilla, Quechan, and Montolo tribes that live in the area cannot recall any significant religious traditions or detailed rituals that pertain to the sculpture. No oral history had been passed down, so they simply created their own myth on the ashes of a forgotten past. They invented a supernatural monster that all dead people must pass on their journey to the great beyond. If they led bad lives, the stone beast came to life. It snatched them in its mouth, chewed them with its fangs, and spat them out as maimed and disfigured ghosts doomed to walk the earth forever as malignant spirits. Only those good of heart and mind were allowed to proceed unmolested into the afterworld.
Many of the living made the difficult climb up the sharp walls of the mountain to lay gifts of hand-modeled clay dolls, and ancient seashells etched with the figures of animals, at the feet of the sculpture as tribute, a bribe to ease the way when their time came. Bereaved family members often stood on the desert floor far below the menacing sculpture and sent an emissary to the top while they prayed for the beast to grant their loved one safe passage.
Billy Yuma had no fear of the stone demon as he sat in his pickup truck under the shadow of the mountain and gazed up at the forbidding sculpture far above him. He was hopeful his parents and his friends who had died had been allowed to freely pass the guardian of the dead. They were good people who had harmed no one. But it was his brother, the black sheep of the family, who beat his wife and children and died an alcoholic, that Billy feared had become an evil ghost.
Like most Native Americans of the desert, Billy lived in the constant presence of the hideously deformed spirits who wandered aimlessly and did malicious things. He knew his brother's spirit could rise at any moment and throw dirt on him or tear his clothes, even haunt his dreams with horrible visions of the restless dead. But Billy's greatest worry was that his brother might bring illness or injury to his wife and children.
He had seen his brother three times. Once as a whirlwind that left behind a trail of choking dust, next as a wavering light spinning around a mesquite, and finally as a shaft of lightning that struck his truck. These were ominous signs. Billy and his tribe's medicine man had huddled around an open fire to discuss a way to combat his brother's ghost. If not stopped, the apparition could pose an eternal threat to Billy's family and his future descendants.
Everything was tried, and nothing worked. The tribe's old shaman prescribed eating a mixture of cactus buds and herbs as a measure of protection while fasting for ten days alone in the desert. A cure that failed miserably. Near-starvation induced Billy to see his brother's apparition on a
regular basis and hear eerie wails during the lonely nights. Powerful rituals such as ceremonial chanting were tried, but nothing appeased the brother's evil spirit, and his manifestations became more violent.
Billy was not the only one of his tribe with problems. Ever since the tribe's most sacred and secret religious objects were found missing from their hiding place in an isolated ruin belonging to their ancestors, whole villages had suffered ill fortune. Poor crops, contagious sickness among the children, unseasonably hot and dry weather. Fights broke out when men became drunk, and some were killed. But by far the worst calamity was the sudden increase of ghost sickness. People who had never before seen or heard an evil spirit began describing haunted visitations. Ghosts of early Montolos suddenly appeared during their dreams, often materializing in broad daylight. Almost everyone, including young children, claimed to have seen supernatural phantoms.
The theft of the wooden idols that represented the sun, moon, earth, and water shattered the Montolos' religious society. The anguish of not having their presence during the initiation ceremony for entering adulthood devastated the tribe's young sons and daughters. Without the carved deities the centuries-old rituals could not be performed, leaving the young ones in adolescent limbo. Without the sacred religious objects, all worship ceased. To them it was the same as if the world's Christians, Muslims, and Jews woke up one morning and suddenly found that the entire city of Jerusalem had been torn from the earth and carried into deep space. To non-Indians it was a simple case of theft, but to a Montolo it amounted to blasphemy that bordered on atrocity.
Around fires in the underground ceremonial structures, the old religion's priests whispered of how they could hear the mournful pleading of the idols on nocturnal winds, pleading to be returned to the safety of their hiding place.
Billy Yuma was desperate. The medicine man had given him instructions while reading the embers of a dying fire. To send his brother's ghost back to the underworld and save his family from further disaster, Billy had to find the lost idols and return them to their sacred hiding place in the ancient ruins of his ancestors. In a desperate attempt to end the hauntings and avoid more ill fortune he decided to fight evil with evil. He resolved to climb the mountain, confront the demon, and pray for its help in returning the precious idols.
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