NanoSwarm: Extermination Day Book Two

by William Turnage

  What the hell was it doing in a four-hundred-year-old Incan temple?

  The mystery was all she’d needed to get her butt out of Harvard and on a plane to Cusco.

  “Jose! Are we almost there yet? Estamos casi allí todavía?” she yelled out to her Peruvian guide in broken Spanish.

  “Si, Señorita Scarborough. Muy cerca ahora.”

  Holly might have believed Jose if he hadn't been saying they were close for the last three hours.

  They’d been hiking for two days through the mountainous terrain of Northern Peru between Cusco and Machu Picchu. They’d long since left the groomed trails followed by thousands of tourists each year from the town of Agua Caliente up to the ruins of the ancient Inca city of Machu Picchu.

  Professor Gustavson had sent Jose, who was part of the local team helping at the dig site, to guide Holly. She was in excellent shape for a woman in her mid-thirties but the altitude of nearly eight thousand feet was making it extremely difficult to climb without getting short of breath. Normally, tourists would spend several days getting acclimated to the higher elevation before setting out on a grueling hike. Holly didn’t have that luxury.

  “Aquí, aquí! Here!” Jose yelled out, pointing down the trail.

  They’d reached the end of a high ridge and could look down into a small valley. Just at the end of the trail, a campsite perched on the edge of a series of sharp ridges and extreme cliffs dropping thousands of feet. On the far side of the camp, several stone walls had been constructed along terraced landscapes. The site was cradled between the stunning peaks of the Andes that jutted high into the sky. Low-lying clouds passed over the area, drifting like smoke through the ruins. The isolated beauty of the site was breathtaking.

  Holly followed Jose down a series of steep steps that had been cut into the mountainside. Several of the archeologists saw them approaching and waved. One tall and very thin man wearing a broad white hat hurried over to them.

  “Holly, it’s nice to meet you. I’m Niles Gustavson.”

  He extended his right hand, then looked flustered and extended his left. Holly was used to the reaction. It happened every time she met someone new and they were the first to offer her a handshake. Since she had no right hand to extend, she usually tried to be the first to extend her left hand so people wouldn’t feel embarrassed or sorry for her. She was too tired and light-headed from the altitude to have thought that far ahead.

  She’d tried wearing a prosthesis for a while, but found it too awkward. Plus she still remembered the technology that was available in her future, where advances in biodermal circuitry had enabled brain-controlled movement of biomechanical limbs. Downgrading to what basically amounted to a hook had no appeal to her. So until the technology caught up, she would simply do everything with her left hand. She had actually gotten pretty good typing with one hand, although she was waiting for the creation of advanced voice recognition software so she wouldn’t need to hunt and peck anymore.

  “It’s nice to meet you as well, Dr. Gustavson. I have to tell you, it’s not easy getting out here.”

  “Please, call me Niles. No, it certainly isn’t. This site was only recently discovered, or rediscovered, that is, by the locals. We believe that it was built in the early to mid-fifteen hundreds, around the time the Inca began to abandon Machu Picchu. But come, before I get into a lecture, let’s sit in the tent and I can get you some coca tea. The locals say it’s great for altitude sickness, but personally, I just like the taste.”

  Holly dropped into a lawn chair in the largest of the tents set up on the site. She was thankful to be off her feet. Niles handed her a steaming cup of tea and after a few sips, the delicate taste and aroma had her feeling very relaxed.

  “So . . . our phone conversation certainly got my interest,” Holly said. “All this talk of the end of the world and such. Then sending me that physics equation. That is some cutting-edge stuff.”

  “You know what it means then?” Niles asked. “Because I sent it to some colleagues from the physics department at Geneva and they had no idea what it was. Although one particularly bright fellow seemed to think it had something to do with string theory.”

  “It does, and that is my field of expertise, but I don’t really know what it means beyond that,” Holly said, lying. “But back to our phone conversation. Aside from my knowledge of physics equations, why did you choose to contact me?”

  “We’ll walk over to the main site shortly, but first let me explain to you what we’ve found here and what this site is. We don’t have an official name for it yet, but the locals call it La Ciudad Celestial, the Heavenly City. Most archeologists have not paid it a whole lot of attention, preferring to focus on the larger Machu Picchu site. It wasn’t until a recent earthquake unveiled a previously hidden cave that the dig started to get interesting. You see, this small city is built over a larger cave system, and that’s where we found some amazing things.”

  Holly’s heart stopped at the word cave. She’d not been underground inside any sort of cave in over ten years, not since she and Jeff were trapped in the Lechuguilla cave system for nearly a week. Even now Holly had nightmares of running through a damp, dark cave being pursued by a swarm of creatures trying to eat her flesh.

  “Did you say cave?” Holly asked, the anxiety in her voice impossible to mask. “You see, I’ve got this thing about caves. It’s a bit of claustrophobia.”

  Niles dismissed her fear with a casual flip of his hand.

  “Don’t worry. We won’t be down there for very long, and it’s well carved out. We believe that the Inca lived there for decades hiding from the Spanish Conquistadores.”

  Holly began to nervously tap her feet. First ten taps of the right foot, then ten of the left, followed by a flick of the finger, then she repeated the sequence again. She tried to conceal these ticks, especially the insane counting, as best she could when people were around, but in times of high anxiety she had a hard time controlling them. She had a mild case of OCD and had tried medication before, but it made her sluggish and slow witted. When she was a child, the compulsions had been very difficult. The slightest variation in her routine would cause anxiety attacks, and the only way to calm that oversensitivity was through repetitive behavior that she could control. As she got older, she managed to get a slight handle on her OCD using tricks or shortcuts to help her get through the day, but she was still a slave to a lot of senseless rituals. This trip, for example, was definitely outside her comfort zone. She preferred just being in the lab or in front of her computer, working on equations.

  “I’m sure you’ve heard the story of Machu Picchu,” Niles continued. “It was built around 1450 to serve as an estate home for one of the Incan emperors and afterward was used as a refuge from the Spanish. That city lasted about a hundred years before the inhabitants either abandoned the site or died from smallpox. So the question then became, what happened to the ones who left? Did they go back to Cusco, where the Conquistadores ruled, and just assimilate with the population, or did they go somewhere else? Well, it’s my theory that they came here. The evidence shows that the Spanish never found this town, nor did smallpox ever reach the population. It was a sanctuary of peace for the remaining Inca deep in the mountains, well hidden and far from civilization.”

  “And the cave?” Holly asked, still dreading the thought of going underground.

  “The cave has extensive living quarters and a temple. You see, I believe that with all the death that these Incans had seen over their lifetime, from the Spanish and from disease, that they probably felt the safest underground. They were able to grow crops on the hillside here, but concealed their population underground. There aren’t a lot of caves in the area, so this was a valuable find for them. If you’re done with your tea, we can head over there now. It’s very spacious and well lit once we get through the first tunnel. Don’t worry, you’ll be okay.”

  Holly wasn’t so sure about that. She poured herself another cup of the steaming coca tea and gulped it
down, hoping a second shot of the herb would calm her nerves.

  She’d learned from her hiking guide that coca tea actually contained coca leaves, from which cocaine was made. It was illegal in the U.S., unfortunately so, thought Holly. However, it was legal and very popular in Peru, Bolivia, Colombia, and Ecuador.

  Holly and Niles left the tent and walked into the ruins of La Ciudad Celestial. The crumbled city didn’t look very heavenly to her, although she tried to use her imagination to picture what it may have looked like 550 years ago. The roofs of the buildings had for the most part fallen to the ground, lost to time, but many of the stone walls still stood. They weren’t constructed with cement, but instead various-shaped stones were fit tightly together, like a puzzle. Larger stones cut into rectangles were used to create windows. Steps led up and down between the rocky buildings and into the mountains.

  Flat, grassy areas surrounded the structures cut into the mountainside. It looked like the flat areas may have been used for farming. A few alpaca ambled lazily through the ruins, munching away at the grass and staring at Holly. In the middle of the whole thing was a large mound of heavy stone slabs.

  “Right in here,” Niles said, pointing to a dark narrow hole between the gigantic stone slabs. It looked like a rabbit hole. The ground had been dug out under it to make it a little bigger, which made it feel even more like an animal’s den.

  “Ummm. That looks pretty narrow, Niles.” Holly felt the tension and anxiety building as she stood frowning at the hole.

  “Trust me, Holly. Once you get through this narrow opening, it widens up. I’m six foot six and crawl through it all the time with no problem. Come on. I’ll go first.”

  Niles got down on his hands and knees, then lay on his stomach to crawl through the hole. He inched his way forward, his long skinny body disappearing like a rat getting swallowed by a giant anaconda.

  Holly could hear Niles’s voice echoing from inside the tunnel, urging her to come on. She tried to calm herself by tipping her face to the sky, then glancing at one of the buildings behind her and counting 823 stones in the south-facing wall. Then she tried to clear her mind as she crawled down into the tunnel.

  Time to go down the rabbit hole, Alice. Let’s get that white rabbit.

  Holly inched her way forward, stomach dragging in the dirt, the stump of her right arm scrapping against the rocks. A few feet in front of her was a bright light. She was almost there. She reached out with her left hand, and someone grabbed it. Then with a strong pull she was yanked into an underground chamber. There was a big drop off at the end, so Niles had to catch her in his arms.

  “Didn’t want you to have to do a summersault like the rest of us have to do to get in here,” Niles said, laughing. “That was the hardest part. We can take steps the rest of the way down.”

  Narrow beams of light shone through the slabs of collapsed stone that lay like a thick roof above them. Other broken rocks and foundation stones lay strewn on the ground. Holly stepped over several that bore intricate carvings as she followed Niles along a narrow set of steps leading down.

  “There are living quarters all around us, but many of those collapsed during the recent earthquake. The main worship center is this way. It had the least damage and seems to have the best structural support.”

  As they walked along, Holly studied the carvings and paintings depicting scenes from Incan life—the harvesting of crops and the herding of llamas and alpacas. The images had faded, but Holly could tell that when they were new, the frescoes had probably displayed a vivid array of colors. The cave opened up even more as they moved further down the steps, allowing her to see that the walls had been polished smooth. It felt like they were in a building instead of an underground cave, and so Holly relaxed. The archeological team had set up lights all over the place, and Holly recalled the generator she’d seen above ground a few minutes earlier. They passed several workers clearing areas and cleaning off small ceramic artifacts using little toothbrushes. Each greeted Holly and Niles with a wave or a nod.

  “The Inca didn’t have a formal writing system, so they used ceramics and quipus to record knowledge,” Niles said, lecturing. “Quipus are cords of spun thread made from llama or alpaca hair. Through an elaborate system of knots, the Incas were able to convey complex information like accounting systems, literature, and religion. Most of the quipus were destroyed during the Spanish conquest, and knowledge of how to read and interpret them was suppressed. We were lucky to find many intact quipus in this cave. And we were even more fortunate a local villager was able to interpret their basic meaning. His knowledge isn’t perfect, but it was good enough to get us started. I have linguist and symbologist colleagues back at the university who were able to fill in the blanks.”

  “So that was how you were able to figure out the Incan calendar?” Holly asked.

  He rubbed his hands together, revealing his excitement. “The quipus and ceramic collection we’ve found here is extensive. It was almost like the Inca knew that their civilization was about to come to end and they wanted to preserve everything they could here in this secret place. It was their ark.”

  Holly thought about what the Inca must’ve felt as they were being exterminated, the horror, the hopelessness, and the utter despair of an entire race being wiped out by an advanced force that they didn’t understand. It sounded eerily familiar to her.

  And it will happen again if we don’t stop it.

  They walked past living quarters which consisted of small rooms carved out of rock. Holly could imagine families huddled in these tiny rooms, hiding from the horror above, babies crying, mothers consoling them, telling them that life would be better one day while knowing full well that their lives would never be the same again. She could see elders reflecting on their civilization’s former glory and wondering what happened, all the while fearing that the evil, sadistic Spanish would find them at any moment.

  Several hundred feet down the stairwell they entered an open circular chamber. More carvings and paintings covered the walls and more rocks and ceramics were strewn across the floor. Artifacts were being organized by young archaeologists.

  “This way,” Niles said, pointing to an opening at the side of the chamber.

  When they walked in, Holly could readily see that the designs on the wall were starkly different from those in the outer chambers.

  “The Inca believed in an afterlife very similar to our Western European Christian concept of heaven, with beautiful snowy mountain peaks and fields covered in bright-colored flowers,” Niles said. “But they believed it was very difficult to get there. It’s not like our notion of heaven where if you get in, you get in easily. They believed that the spirits of the dead needed to follow a long dark road to reach heaven. To help them along the way was a black dog that could see in the dark. If you look here on the wall, you can see the black dog depicted very clearly.”

  Niles pointed to the wall in front of them, where a fluffy black dog that looked a bit like a cocker spaniel stared out at them with glowing yellow eyes.

  “Hmmm. He looks friendly,” Holly said. “I’d have thought the Inca would’ve depicted their afterlife guide as some type of vicious wolf-like creature.”

  “I was surprised at the depiction myself. This is one of the clearest representations that we’ve been able to find anywhere in the Incan world. But look here on this wall. This is where I found the equations I sent you.”

  On the wall facing the black dog drawing was an array of physics equations. All were complex, and Holly recognized most of them, including the one in the center, the time travel formula Niles had emailed to her. She pulled out her camera and took several pictures of the wall. There were a couple notations she would need to check on. They looked familiar, but something didn’t quite match up.

  “So, Niles, I still don’t understand how you found me and why you wanted me here. I am the expert in this field, but you could have easily asked me any questions about these equations over the phone and through em
ail.”

  “This way; let me show you.”

  Niles led Holly back out into the main chamber and across to the other side into another room. When they walked in, Holly’s breath caught. There, painted on the wall in front of them, was a blond Caucasian woman wearing traditional Incan clothing. Her right arm was blue, and she looked remarkably like Holly.

  Holly glared at Niles, disgusted with the put-on. “You’ve got to be kidding me. You’re either incredibly naïve or this is the lamest joke I’ve ever experienced. Do you expect me to believe that Incas painted my picture on the wall of this cave over four hundred years ago? Give me a break, Niles.”

  “Holly, I swear to you, this is no joke. We’ve carbon dated the pigments from the paint; this mural was painted here in 1550, give or take five years or so. I don’t know how it got here. I was hoping you could shed some light on this.”

  Holly looked closely into the green eyes of the painting. Possible explanations began running through her mind. Sometime in the future would she time jump to the distant past? It was possible, of course, but she couldn’t see the reasoning behind it. The more immediate dilemma was figuring out how she was going to explain this to Niles.

  “I have no idea how this got here,” Holly said. “Have you been able to interpret any of these drawings?”

  “We’re working on it. And we found a large stash of quipus in this room as well. We’re trying to interpret those, but they’re proving a bit more difficult than the quipus that represent numbers. I’m hoping that they may explain this,” Niles said, gesturing toward the painting on the wall.

  “But, honestly, this is so unbelievable that I don’t even want to tell anyone. I would be the laughing stock of the scientific community, and any explanation I could come up with for why this is here would be dismissed as science fiction. I mean really, Holly, you have to admit that this painting bears more than just a passing resemblance to you. The artist’s skill is not the greatest, but the blue right arm where yours is now missing could be logically construed as an artificial limb of some type. And then there are the physics equations in the other room—your area of expertise.”