Hunt at the Well of Eternity (16 page)

Gabriel thought bitterly about the turn events had taken. He would soon see the ruins of Cuchatlán for himself…but not the way he had intended.

The valley was beautiful, no doubt about that, Gabriel thought as the group topped a small rise that gave them a good view of the land spread out before them. Lush and green, stretching for miles between the gorge known as the Blade of the Gods on the west and a wall-like range of cloud-wreathed mountains to the east, the valley gave every appearance of being, as Mariella had said, paradise.

What looked, at first glance, like several small hills rose from the valley floor about a mile away. Gabriel looked closer and realized that instead of hills, they were Mayan pyramids that were so covered with the vines that had grown over the centuries they looked like natural formations rather than man-made structures. A shorter, squatly built hump near the pyramids was probably some sort of ancient palace.

“I don’t believe it,” Cierra said as she trudged along beside Gabriel. “Why has this place never been discovered before now?”

“Think about how inaccessible it is,” Gabriel said. “If you came up to that gorge and didn’t know there was a bridge over it, you might just turn back. And Mariella said there are no passes through those mountains to the east, so nobody could get in that way.”

“Yes, but it should have been spotted from the air,” Cierra insisted. “That’s the way some of the other lost Mayan cities have been found, by people searching with planes and helicopters.”

“Again, the mountains probably have something to do with it. They’re high enough so that an approach from that direction wouldn’t be easy. Not impossible, mind you, but not easy, either. And even if somebody flew over the valley, what would they see? Some hills?”

Mariella was walking in front of them, flanked by two of Esparza’s men. Esparza was up ahead, striding along with Podnemovitch beside him. Mariella turned to look at Gabriel and Cierra, and it was obvious she had been listening to their conversation as she said, “Cuchatlán was abandoned by the Maya earlier than any of their other cities. The vegetation has had more time to cover the old ruins. That’s why they’re so well hidden. You would have to know it was there, like Granville did, to have much of a chance of finding it.”

“You still insist that fantastic story about the Well of Eternity is true?” Cierra wanted to know.

“Of course it’s true. Would so many people have died because of it if it was only a legend?”

Gabriel refrained from reminding her how full history was of men dying because of legends.

Mariella stumbled a bit as she turned toward the front of the group again, caught herself, and passed a hand wearily over her face. Gabriel thought she looked more fatigued, more haggard, than she had earlier.

Almost like she was starting to show those more than one hundred fifty years she claimed to possess.

Gabriel moved up beside Mariella. Esparza’s men watched him closely but didn’t try to stop him. “Who exactly lives here now?” he asked. “You said the Maya abandoned the city when they began moving northward into Chiapas and the Yucatan.”

She nodded. “Other Indians in the region moved in once the Maya were gone. When Granville and his men—and I—reached Cuchatlán…I think it was in 1866, though of course it was hard to keep track of dates here in the jungle…the Indians who had established a village near the ruins welcomed us. They shared the waters of the Well with us, though we didn’t understand yet what they could do. Granville’s men liked it here, and so did I. We persuaded him to stay for a time, to let the men rest. He’d been talking about taking samples of the water overseas, offering it to Queen Victoria if Great Britain would throw all its power and influence behind a new Confederacy.” Mariella smiled. “But he’d been talking about it less and less as time went on, and he talked about it less still once we were here. Finally the beauty of this place seduced Granville, just as it did the rest of us. He has never left. His men married into the tribe. Over the decades we have all become one people, the people of Cuchatlán.”

“Wait a minute,” Cierra said. “If this is true, if all of you who live in this valley are well over a hundred years old, the population should have increased exponentially until there were thousands and thousands of you…perhaps hundreds of thousands.”

Mariella shook her head. “The waters of the Well do not confer invulnerability, just immunity to aging. It’s true that they allow us to recover quickly from illness or injury, but if someone is hurt badly enough, he dies. Accidents happen. People are crushed by snakes or mauled by jaguars. They have falls. Such things keep the population down.” A sad smile came over her tired face. “And truly, everything comes with a price. People who drink from the Well of Eternity…have very few children.”

“It causes sterility,” Gabriel said.

“Not in everyone. But the women of the valley have a hard time getting with child. And when they do, the pregnancies are difficult. The babies often do not survive.”

“It sounds like something in the water causes genetic mutations,” Cierra muttered reluctantly, realizing, Gabriel figured, that this admission on her part was tantamount to an admission that everything Mariella had told them might be true.

“The gods give with one hand and take away with the other,” Mariella said.

Esparza looked back at them. He had evidently been listening, too. “Once my scientists have analyzed the water and unlocked its secrets, something will be done about the side effects. The water will be perfected by the time I am ready to share it with the world.”

“You mean sell it to the world, don’t you?” Gabriel asked.

“Anyone who brings such a boon to mankind as eternal life deserves to be rewarded, don’t you think?” Esparza chuckled. “And with more than mere wealth. How does…emperor sound to you?”

“Of Cuchatlán?”

“Of the world, Mr. Hunt.”

“It sounds like the ravings of a madman,” Gabriel said.

Esparza’s mouth tightened into an angry line, but he didn’t say anything else to the prisoners. Instead he turned to Podnemovitch and ordered, “When we get there, have them taken to the palace with the others.”

“The others?” Mariella repeated. “My husband! Where is my husband?”

“Don’t worry about General Fargo,” Esparza said. “He’s alive, merely a prisoner now, like the rest.”

Gabriel wondered how Esparza had managed to conquer the whole valley with only a handful of men, but he got the answer to that question a few minutes later when they entered the village and he saw the machine guns. Previously mounted on the trucks, they had been taken loose from their mounts, hauled all the way here, and set up to rake the village’s wooden huts with deadly .50-caliber fire. Several of the huts had been shot practically to pieces. General Fargo must have ordered his men to surrender rather than have all the people of Cuchatlán slaughtered.

“Didn’t you have any modern weapons to defend yourselves?” Gabriel asked Mariella in an undertone. “Your people must have some money if they travel out of the valley from time to time, like you said. You could have bought some.”

“Granville gave up war when he decided not to leave the valley,” she said. “He said the weapons his men had were enough to protect us from wild animals and for hunting. He said he had had enough of killing.”

That was an admirable attitude, thought Gabriel…but only if everybody else you were likely to encounter shared it. If they didn’t, then sooner or later you were in for a lot of trouble. As General Fargo had discovered today.

Though it had worked for him for a long time. Gabriel had to admit that much. Fargo had had almost a hundred and fifty years in these idyllic surroundings, with a beautiful, intelligent woman at his side. That was way more than any normal man could hope for.

The three pyramids formed a rough triangle, with the palace sitting along one leg of the triangle between two of them. In the center of the triangle was a broad, round plaza made of intricately interlocking flat stones. The stones had been painted subtly differing shades of green and brown and tan, so that from the air they would look like a clearing in the jungle, but not necessarily a man-made one. A large, flat, circular stone sat in the middle of the plaza. It was probably ten feet in diameter, a couple of feet thick, and must have weighed at least a thousand pounds. It wasn’t so heavy that it couldn’t be moved if enough men were pushing it, though. That was obvious from the markings on the flagstones where it had been shoved aside.

The circular stone was a well cover, Gabriel realized as he saw the four-foot-wide hole that had been revealed when the rock was moved. “The Well of Eternity,” Esparza said in a voice that betrayed a touch of awe as he came to a stop beside it.

“The Maya used to sacrifice virgins by throwing them in wells like that,” Cierra said. “They were considered entrances to the realm of the gods.”

Esparza smiled at her. “Don’t worry, my dear. Such a fate won’t befall you. As I’m sure Mr. Hunt can attest, you would hardly qualify anyway.”

Cierra’s eyes narrowed angrily, but she didn’t say anything else. Esparza motioned to his men, and the prisoners were prodded on toward the palace.

Although it was a lot shorter than the nearby pyramids, no more than thirty or forty feet tall rather than a hundred feet or more, its base shared the same sort of construction. A series of terraced steps, only rising to a long, columned building instead of continuing on up to tiny temples.

For no particularly good reason other than raw curiosity, Gabriel counted the steps as they were marched up to the palace. There were thirty of them, each a little more than a foot tall. When they reached the top, they were herded through an arched entrance into a room with more steps, these leading down.

“See that they’re locked up,” Esparza told Podnemovitch. “I’ll decide what to do with them later.” He smiled at Mariella. “We might as well allow Señora Fargo to be reunited with her husband for a short time. We are not brutes, after all.”

Podnemovitch and his men marched the three prisoners down the stone stairs, which were lit by occasional candles guttering in niches set into the walls. The walls were made of large blocks of stone, and as the group went deeper, beads of moisture began to appear on the walls, trickling down them. Gabriel estimated that they had descended far enough to be underground now, and the dampness confirmed that guess.

The stairs finally came to a stop in front of a door that was nothing more than a single massive slab of stone. Several of Esparza’s men occupied the space in front of the door. They were holding automatic weapons.

Podnemovitch motioned for the guards to step back. The big Russian pushed a small lever that protruded from the wall, and with a grating sound the door began to move inward in a slow, ponderous swinging motion. It was a good two feet thick.

“A counterweight and balance mechanism,” Cierra said under her breath. “Fascinating.”

Gabriel found it interesting himself, though it wasn’t the first time he’d seen such a mechanism. Ancient architects in vanished civilizations all over the world had been capable of some amazing things, despite the rather primitive tools with which they had to work. They had some surprising holes in their knowledge, though, he thought, recalling that the Maya, for example, had never mastered the concept of the wheel. If they had, there was no way of knowing how far their empire might have extended.

“Inside,” Podnemovitch ordered. Heavily outnumbered and under the gun, the prisoners had no choice but to obey. Gabriel, Cierra, and Mariella moved into the vast, open space on the other side of the door. Sunlight filtered down through occasional cracks in the ceiling and it was just bright enough for Gabriel to be able to make out shadowy figures spread around the room. As the door scraped shut, those figures began to converge on the newcomers. Gabriel felt a shiver go through him. They were like phantoms flocking around newly lost souls who had just arrived in purgatory.

That sensation went away, though, as the other prisoners came closer and he saw that they were just men and women like himself…well, just like him other than the fact that some of them might be hundreds of years old.

And some of them looked it, too. Many of the faces peering at him were lined and cracked by the ravages of time. He wondered what the hell was going on here. Wasn’t the Well of Eternity supposed to keep these people young and vital?

“Mariella!” a husky voice rasped. “My God, is it really you?”

The crowd of prisoners parted to let a tall man through. As he stepped forward, Mariella cried, “Granville!” and rushed into his arms.

He held her tightly and trembled with emotion. “That..that scoundrel who calls himself Esparza said that you would soon be his captive, but I was praying that it wasn’t so! Oh, my dear, I wish you had never come back to Cuchatlán.”

“I would have come back no matter what,” she whispered. “I could never be away from you for long, my love.”

The man kissed her, hugged her, stroked her hair. Then he looked past her shoulder at the other newcomers and asked in a voice that still held a soft Southern drawl, “Who are these people?”

Gabriel hadn’t gotten a good look at the man yet, but as Mariella turned and led him forward into one of the slender shafts of light, Gabriel saw him clearly. The man was tall and lean, with deep-set eyes and a closely trimmed beard. The beard was completely white, as was the shock of hair on his head. Deep trenches were etched in his cheeks. He looked a lot older than he had in the picture Gabriel had seen in the book at Olustee, but that made sense considering that this man was probably more than a hundred and seventy years old. Gabriel’s heart thudded hard in his chest as that realization sunk in. He didn’t doubt Mariella’s story anymore, not at all.

“Gabriel Hunt,” Mariella said, “I would like for you to meet my husband, General Granville Fordham Fargo.”

The general extended his hand. “Mr. Hunt,” he said. “I’m very pleased to meet you, sir, although I wish it had been under better circumstances.”

“So do I, General,” Gabriel said as he gripped Fargo’s hand.

“Excuse me,” Cierra said. “You’re really…General Fargo…fromthe U.S. Civil War?”

A gentle smile appeared on Fargo’s weathered face. “That was a long time ago, my dear. I’d like to think I’ll be remembered more for what I’ve done in the fourteen decades since. But yes—I am that man, and yes, I once fought that war. And you are…?”

“Dr. Cierra Almanzar. Director of the Museum of the Americas in Mexico City.”

Fargo took her hand, and for a second Gabriel thought he was going to bend over it and kiss it. Most Confederate cavalry officers had fancied themselves cavaliers in the old-fashioned sense of the word, he recalled reading, and that would be a very cavalier-like thing to do.

Instead, Fargo merely shook Cierra’s hand and said, “I’m very pleased to meet you as well, Dr. Almanzar. I have heard of you. I believe your museum houses one of my battle flags, the one I left with my father-in-law.”

“It used to,” Gabriel said. “Not anymore.” He began unbuttoning his shirt. “I have it here, along with the one you drew the map on.”

“My standard?” Fargo murmured in surprise. “You brought it with you? I was hoping that your brother had it by now, along with the sample of water I sent with Mariella.”

“The sample was…destroyed, Granville.” Mariella’s voice caught a little as she broke the news to him. “It was lost before I ever got the chance to tell Señor Hunt about it.”

Gabriel stopped unbuttoning his shirt. After the news that Mariella had just broken to the general, the flags didn’t seem so important anymore.

A pained look appeared on Fargo’s face. He expelled a long, disappointed breath.

“I’m dismayed to hear that. Not so much for myself, but for all my friends and loved ones here in Cuchatlán who are now doomed.”

“Doomed?” Mariella repeated as she clutched at her husband’s arm. “Granville, what are you talking about?”

Fargo turned to her and rested his hands on her shoulders. “I didn’t tell you the full extent of your errand, dearest. My hope was that Michael Hunt and the scientists he could hire would be able to find out what gives the waters of the Well their special power.”

“I know that,” Mariella said with a nod. “You told me to tell Señor Hunt that he should have the water analyzed and find out everything that’s in it.”

“But I didn’t tell you why. It wasn’t simply in the hope that the water’s special ingredients could somehow be duplicated. It was because the water here…the water from the Well…”

Fargo couldn’t bring himself to go on. He looked stricken now, and his hands tightened on Mariella’s shoulders.

Gabriel finished the sentence for the general as everything fell into place. “The water from the Well of Eternity is losing its power,” he said.

Fargo turned to look at him and slowly nodded. “I’m afraid that is correct, Mr. Hunt. I first noticed a few years ago among the older citizens of Cuchatlán. After the Ritual of the Well, they didn’t recover their vitality as quickly as they used to. Their muscles regained less elasticity. Their skin remained lined, their energy depleted. I felt it myself.”

“Granville, no,” Mariella cried. “The water of the Well still works—it must! It always has!”

Fargo shook his head. “Look around you, my dear. Look inside yourself.” He turned to Gabriel and Cierra. “The last ritual was a month ago, not long before I sent Mariella to you. I knew then that time was short, because I could tell that there was only a small effect when our people drank from the Well. Its power is almost gone. If there was to be any chance of ever fathoming its secrets, I had to act.”

Mariella put her arms around him and buried her face against his chest. “You should have told me,” she said, her voice muffled by the embrace. “If our time was running out, we should have spent all of it we had left together.”

“I wanted to,” Fargo told her. “You don’t know how badly I wanted to. But I thought…if there was still a chance of helping our people…”

Mariella nodded her head against his chest. “I understand. You’ve always looked out for those who followed you.”

“It’s ironic,” Gabriel said. “Esparza has come all this way, wreaked so much havoc and killed so many people, and what he’s after doesn’t even work anymore.”

Fargo stroked the back of his wife’s head. “It would have been worth the greatest fortune in the world at one time. But no longer.”

“Wait a minute,” Cierra said. “Let’s think about this. Assuming the water ever had any power, the fact that its power has diminished wouldn’t mean there’s nothing of value here at all. You could still analyze it, figure out what produces the life-extending effect. Once the cause were isolated, a well-equipped lab working on the problem might be able to find a way to enhance its activity. And even if they couldn’t, if the water still has any effect at all…wouldn’t men still kill for even a less potent elixir?”

“Why, Cierra,” Gabriel said, “you sound like a believer suddenly.”

“I am a scientist. I believe in evidence. The only other explanation for what we see here is that all these people are delusional and suffering from mass hysteria.”

“We’re quite sane, doctor, I assure you,” Fargo said with a sad smile.

“Well, then, the power of the water must come from somewhere, from something. Some mineral deposit buried deep in the mountains, something the water passes through or over before it emerges here. Over enough centuries, even the most massive mineral deposit will eventually be eroded to nothing. That’s one hypothesis that might account for the diminished potency. In that case it wouldn’t be the water itself that has the life-extending effect, it’s whatever the water picks up as it flows underground. And if we could learn what that is—”

“That’s what I hoped the Hunt Foundation could do,” Fargo said to Gabriel

“That’s Michael’s area, not mine,” Gabriel said. “He’s no chemist himself, for that matter. But he’s got access to some of the finest minds in the world.”

Fargo nodded. “I wanted to get those men to work on our problem. Not necessarily to save all of
us
, mind you, because I fear it’s too late for that. But for the sake of all the good it could do in the world. And if I could at least save Mariella, well…”

She shook her head. “You old fool,” she said softly. “Do you think I would want to live without you? It was only being with you that made all these years worth-while in the first place.”

Fargo sighed. “No matter. Now it’s too late for us all. Those…those barbarians with their Gatling guns—” He waved a hand. “I know, they’re not Gatling guns. They’re something even worse. I never wanted the artifacts of warfare to pollute this valley.”

“That’s an unusual attitude for a man who was a warrior,” Gabriel pointed out.

“That was a very short period in a very long life, Mr. Hunt. I was a professor first. And when I got here, I discovered more than just this—I discovered that I’d had my fill of war. I couldn’t stomach it anymore. And I came to understand that some of the things I’d fought for…just weren’t worth fighting for.” Fargo held out his hand. “Can I see those flags you brought with you?”

Gabriel untied the strips that held the folded flags to his torso. “I’m afraid they have more blood and sweat on them than they started out with,” he said as he handed them to the general.

“A good man’s blood and sweat are worthy stains, sir,” Fargo said.

A couple of men stepped forward from the crowd of other prisoners. “Gen’ral?” one of them said. “The fellas would sure admire to see those colors again.”

“Of course, Boone,” Fargo replied. He handed the flags to the men, who unfolded them and held them up for the other prisoners to see. The men of the Fifth Georgia looked on them with silent reverence.

“I hate to tell you, General, but a hundred forty years later, those flags aren’t exactly a popular sight where I come from,” Gabriel said.

“They weren’t always popular even back then, Mr. Hunt,” Fargo said. “We lost the war, I’ll remind you. But my men still rode below those colors. Don’t begrudge them a moment of remembrance.”

“They can have all the moments they want,” Gabriel said. “At least till Esparza comes back.”

“I wish,” Fargo said after a moment, and then paused. “I almost wish…” His voice choked, he couldn’t go on. But Gabriel got the gist of what he was trying to say.

“You wish that, if you have to go, you could go out fighting?”

“Now that we have something that really is worth fighting for? More than you know, Mr. Hunt. More than you can know.”

“Well, why can’t you? It’s better than lying down and dying.” Gabriel put an arm around the general’s shoulders. “Let’s see if we can figure something out.”

“Hey!” Gabriel yelled as he put his mouth close to the crack at the edge of the door. “Hey, out there! Open up! I’ve got something your boss wants!”

“By God, sir!” General Fargo bellowed. “Give me back those flags!”

“Stand back,” Gabriel shouted “or I’ll break your damn neck. Those flags are my ticket out of here. Guards! Tell Esparza I have the general’s secret!”

“Damn your eyes,” Fargo yelled, “I’ll never let you do it!”

Gabriel heard the guards talking in low, urgent voices on the other side of the door and gave the general a silent thumbs-up. Fargo looked puzzled by the gesture and by the A-OK gesture Gabriel replaced it with. What gesture had they used back in Civil War days? Gabriel settled for nodding and this, at least, the general seemed to grasp.

“Back off in there!” one of the guards called a moment later. “We’ll cut you all down if you try anything.”

With a low rumble of stone against stone, the door began to swing inward.

Cierra had her ear pressed to the wall near one side of the door. She glanced at Gabriel and nodded, then stepped back away from the wall as the door opened the rest of the way. Gabriel and Fargo had backed away from it as well. Gabriel held both battle flags.

One guard came into the chamber while the other two remained outside, their automatic weapons leveled.

“What the hell do you want?” he demanded. “What was all the yelling about?”

Gabriel showed him the flags. “Take me to Señor Esparza,” he said. “He’ll want these.”

One of the other guards said, “I remember Podnem’vitch saying something about flags. Maybe these are the ones.”

“Give me those,” the first guard snapped, reaching out for the flags.

Gabriel stepped back, but the other two guards pointed their guns at him. He stopped, grimaced, and then finally handed over the flags.

“All right. But you be sure and tell Esparza that I gave them to you. They’re very important.”

The flags meant nothing now, of course. But Esparza’s men didn’t know that.

“And tell him there’s a hidden message on them. I can tell him how to read it.”

“Don’t do it, Hunt,” Fargo growled. “You’ll burn in hell for it.” He was laying it on a bit thick, Gabriel thought, but the guards showed no signs of doubting his sincerity.

Holding the flags in one hand and his gun in the other, the guard backed out of the chamber. As soon as the closing door cut off his view, Cierra darted forward and pressed her ear to the stone again, this time at a spot a bit lower on the wall.

“Well?” Gabriel said, once the door was fully shut.

She hurried over to Gabriel and said in a low voice, “No question, the mechanism is on that side, about four feet up. The stone must be hollow there—I could hear the mechanism working. If we can get to it, we might be able to trip it from in here.”

“And that would cause the door to open.”

“It should, exactly the same as pushing the lever from outside.”

Gabriel nodded. “The question now is whether or not we can loosen one of these blocks of stone enough to move it out.”

He took off his belt and began using the buckle to scrape away at the layer of crude mortar between the blocks. The passing centuries had weakened the mortar and made it crumble easily, but even so this would be a long, tedious job.

At least, it would have been for one man. Several other prisoners gathered around, including Fargo and Boone. They took off their belts and began scraping at the mortar as well.

As they worked, Boone said, “I heard you talkin’ to Miz Fargo, Gen’ral. Is it true what you said, about the water not keepin’ us young anymore?”

“I’m afraid so, Boone,” Fargo said.

“I thought I’d been feelin’ a mite puny lately. And Virginia, she’s got a whole heap more gray in her hair than she did even a week ago. All those years are gonna catch up to us in a hurry, ain’t they?”

“That looks to be the case.”

“Well, hell.” Boone shook his head. “Can’t complain too much, I reckon, after all the years we cheated death outa’. When we rode away after Gen’ral Lee surrendered, I don’t reckon any of us figured on livin’ another hundred and fifty years in the prettiest place on God’s green earth.” The sergeant smiled ruefully. “With some of the prettiest gals, too.”

“It’s been a good sojourn, hasn’t it?” Fargo said.

“It surely has, sir. It surely has.”

They kept working. The beams of light slanting down into the prison chamber moved as the day wore on and finally began to wane. It would be easier to move around Cuchatlán without being spotted after dark, but Gabriel didn’t know if Esparza would allow them that much time. Esparza didn’t really need to keep any of them alive anymore, unless he believed that story about a hidden message on the flags.

By the time the direct sunlight had faded entirely, leaving them in a sepulchral twilight gloom, the men had gouged out enough mortar around the stone that they could get their fingers into the gap all around it. They began heaving on it, trying to work it back and forth. At first the remaining mortar resisted their efforts, but finally, with tiny grating sounds and even tinier movements, the stone began to shift.

With each movement of millimeters, the block loosened a little more. The men began to tug on it. It didn’t want to budge, and for the longest time it didn’t—but then gradually it began to come free. The men hauled it out slowly and, straining under the weight, set it carefully on the floor.