Ruins (2 page)

She ran her hands along the fused stone surface, and in a breathless voice continued to record her impressions. "Normally I would have expected to see fragments of the whitewash or stucco the Maya used to decorate their tem-ples—but I see no remains of paint, not even any carvings. The walls are completely smooth."

Cassandra followed the inner perimeter. The air inside smelled more and more stagnant; no currents had disturbed it in countless centuries. She sneezed, and the sound echoed explosively throughout the catacombs. Trickles of dust rained down from between ceiling blocks, and she hoped the ancient support beams would hold.

"This is clearly the remains of the first temple," she dictated, "the innermost structure that was once the heart of Xitaclan, the first structure on this site."

Very excited now, Cassandra followed the inward spiral, brushing her fingers against the cool slick surface of the stone. She kept to the new wall—actually, it was the oldest wall—wondering what secrets might be con-tained at the core of the pyramid.

From all the evidence she had uncovered, Xitaclan's glory was no mere stepping-stone in Maya culture. Tales of the legendary city were so deeply implanted in the psyche of the native people that the locals still talked about the curse and the spirits that clung to the place. Many people had supposedly disappeared in the area, too, but Cassandra put that down to local mythology.

What had caused the ancient Maya to place their hub of religious significance here, in an uninteresting portion of the jungle with no roads or rivers, no copper or gold mines nearby? Why here?

Rubble had fallen across the passage ahead, block-ing her way. But Cassandra felt her adrenaline pump-ing. Now that she had reached the center of the pyramid, she needed to see what lay beyond. It was possible that she stood on the brink of a great discov-ery—but not unless she could go all the way.

Stuffing the tape recorder into her pocket and the scribbled graph paper inside her shirt, she laid the flash-light down and worked with both hands to pull away fallen limestone bricks from the top of the pile. She ignored the clouds of dust and grit raised by her efforts. She had been dirty before.

Digging bare-handed in the rubble, Cassandra man-aged to make an opening just wide enough to wriggle her slender body through. She clambered up to the opening and thrust the flashlight forward; then, bumping her head as she strained forward to see, she crawled partway into a new corridor that sloped steeply down.

Ahead, the echoing chamber seemed much larger than the numerous other alcoves she had found in the pyramid, large enough to hold dozens of people. A curved shaft led away from it, a spiral ramp that went even deeper. She played her beam around the new room and nearly dropped the flashlight in her surprise.

She had never seen anything like this.

Cassandra's white light reflected off walls made of peeling metallic plates, bent girders, crystalline panels. When she moved the flashlight beam away, portions of the newly exposed interior continued to glow with an eerie, pale afterlight.

From her knowledge of ancient history and culture, these bizarre fixtures seemed impossible to her. The Maya had never been known to use any kind of metal extensively, mainly satisfied with obsidian and flint for their needs.

But here, unmistakably, she saw smooth, untarnished metal as if it had been made in modern smelters. It was an unusual alloy—certainly not the crude gold and bronze the ancient Maya had used.

Astonished, she stared for a while, still practically facedown in an opening barely large enough for a bad-ger. She drew out her tape recorder, squirming and wedging herself deeper into the opening so she could hold the flashlight in one hand and the tape recorder near her mouth with the other. She pressed the record button.

"This is amazing," she said, then paused for a long, silent moment as she searched for words. "I'm seeing metal with a silvery consistency, but not dark like tar-nished silver. It gleams white—aluminum or platinum? But that can't be, since the ancient Maya culture had no access to those metals."

Cassandra recalled reading how some artifacts recovered from Egyptian tombs had gleamed shiny and new despite being locked away for millennia; yet, once exposed to post-Industrial Age air clogged with sulfur-bearing pollutants, the artifacts had tarnished and deteriorated within weeks. "Note—we must explore this chamber with extreme caution," she said. "It seems to be quite an exceptional find."

She desperately wanted to climb all the way inside, to explore to her heart's content. But common sense warned her not to.

"I have decided not to proceed into the chamber yet," she dictated, struggling to keep the dejection out of her voice. "Nothing must be disturbed until the entire team is here to assist me and provide second opinions on ques-tionable items. I'm going back for Kelly and John. They can help me clear the rubble from this opening and sup-port it with overhead beams. We'll need Cait to photo-graph the objects in state before anyone else goes inside."

After a long pause, she spoke again. "For the record, let me say that I think this is it... the Big One."

Cassandra switched off the microrecorder, then swal-lowed hard. After crawling back out, she unenthusiasti-cally brushed herself off, then gave up, leaving the grit and dust. She began to retrace her steps, winding through the labyrinth to reach the exit, forcing herself to be calm. She thought of her wiry old father and imagined how proud he would be to see his daughter making dis-coveries that rivaled—even overshadowed!—those at the high point of his own career.

She quickened her pace. Her footsteps whispered and echoed through the stone passageways. As she approached the low exit to the pyramid, bright rays from the setting sun shone in her eyes like the light of an oncoming train. She rushed forward and stumbled out of the pyramid into the open air. "Hey, Kelly!" she shouted, "I've found something! You have to get the team, quick.

Wait'll you see this!"

No one answered her. She stopped, blinking, and stood outside for a moment in the silence. She held on to the edge of the pyramid doorway for support.

The ruins seemed abandoned again. She heard only the murmur of jungle sounds, nothing else. She looked toward the high levels of the ziggurat, expecting to spot a couple of students on the heiroglyphic stairs . . . but the pyramid stood deserted.

By now the sunset was fading into dusk, the worst time of the day for visibility, when the shadows took on dim colors. Only a thin curve of the retreating sun remained above the treetops in the west, like an orange beacon backlighting the scene with an incomprehensible glare.

Cassandra saw no one, no members of her team, none of the vanished Indian helpers.

"Kelly, John, Christopher!" she called. "Cait, where are you?"

Shading her eyes, she peered out into the open plaza where Cait had earlier erected an easel for her water-color work. Now the easel lay smashed on the ground. Cassandra could clearly make out a muddy bootprint stomped across one of the new paintings.

Greatly uneasy now, she again scanned the steep staircase that ran up the outside of the ziggurat. There Christopher and Kelly had painstakingly cleaned the chiseled glyphs and sketched them on pads, translating the chronicle of Xitaclan's mythic history as they went.

No Kelly, no Christopher ... not a soul in sight.

Across the plaza where young John Forbin had been studying the collapsed ruins of a minor temple, she spotted his case of equipment, his small wooden stakes and colored ribbons marking line-of-sight intersection points— but found no sign of the grad-student engineer.

"Hey! Kelly? This isn't a damn funny joke," she shouted. Her stomach knotted.

She felt utterly isolated, engulfed by the surrounding forest. How could the bustling, verdant jungle be so damned quiet? "Hey!"

She heard movement to the side—footsteps coming around the pyramid from the direction of the deep sacri-ficial cenote. She heaved a sigh of relief. Here were her friends after all.

But then the shadowy silhouettes of strange men appeared—obviously not any members of her team. In the dim light she could barely discern their features, but she did see without a doubt that they carried guns. Rifles.

The men pointed their weapons at her.

One spoke in heavily accented English. "You will come with us, Senorita."

"Who are you?" Cassandra demanded, the old fire within her flaring up enough to burn away her common sense. She gripped her flashlight as if it were a club. "Where is my team? We're American citizens. How dare you—"

One of the other men jerked up his rifle and fired. The bullet ricocheted off one of the pyramid's stone blocks, barely six inches from her face. A spray of nee-dle-sharp stone fragments peppered her cheek.

With a sharp cry, she ducked backward into the tem-ple, seeking refuge in the ancient darkness. She ran down the long tunnel, hearing loud shouts in Spanish outside. Angry curses. More gunfire. Merciful confusion.

Her heart pounded, but she wasted no mental energy trying to guess who the men could be or what they wanted. She didn't dare think of what they might already have done to Cait, John, Christopher ... and Kelly. She would think about that later—if she survived.

She glanced behind her. The men were barely dis-cernible outside the temple.

She saw them appear at the doorway, arguing with each other. One figure cuffed another, then raised a fist high in anger. More shouts in Spanish.

Cassandra ran around a sharp corner. Her flashlight beam bobbed ahead of her.

She had forgotten to turn it off when she came out of the pyramid. Perhaps the mur-derous strangers didn't have lights of their own, but they could see the reflection of her beam on the stone walls. She switched off the light and plunged blindly ahead.

More rifle shots rang out behind her. Bullets bounced along the pyramid walls, whining a high-pitched song of death. Regardless of how poorly these men could shoot, a ricochet could still kill her.

Cassandra had no choice but to keep running head-long into the dark, labyrinthine passages, deeper into the barely explored depths. Rounding one corner, and then another, she finally switched her flashlight on again, although she still heard the sounds of clumsy pursuit behind her. Back in the direction of the opening she saw flickering orange lights splashing against the walls, and guessed that the armed men had taken to striking matches and cigarette lighters to find their way after her.

Cassandra had the advantage—for now. She had been down here before, she had a flashlight, and she had a vague idea of where she was going: back toward the center of the pyramid.

But she had no place to go from there.

Going deeper inside would only drive her more firmly into the trap. She had to think, use her wits to out-smart these men, whoever they were. No problem.

She took out the microcassette recorder and rewound it, hoping that her breathlessly dictated directions and notes could help her to retrace her path to the strange chamber that had remained hidden for centuries. Maybe she could hide there until the men gave up looking for her.

Right. No problem.

The strangers might just post a guard at the outer doorway, then return better equipped to hunt her down. They could search relentlessly until they found her and gunned her down in a corner of the ancient ruin. Worse still, they could just lie in wait for her until she staggered out in a few days, nearly mad from hunger and thirst.

She couldn't think about that. Survive for now. She kept moving.

Cassandra pressed the play button, listening for directions on her microcassette. She heard only a faintly crackling hiss. Her words had been erased! Something had blanked her tape.

"Dammit!" She groaned and added another item to the list of things she didn't understand but couldn't think about at the moment. Well, the route was fresh enough in her mind that she could find her way without any other assistance.

She had to.

The corridors of the outer pyramid wound down-ward on a slope, littered with fallen limestone blocks and rough debris. She stumbled, scraped her hands against the rough walls, but kept moving. Moving. She heard another gunshot.

Why did they keep wasting ammuni-tion? The men couldn't possibly have a good shot at her. Maybe they were just spooked by the echoes of their own footsteps. Frightened men with guns were the most dan-gerous kind.

Finally, Cassandra found the smooth, vitrified walls of the inner temple and knew she had nearly reached her destination—though what she intended to do there was another question altogether.

Casting her flashlight beam ahead, she discovered the small opening she had recently excavated. It looked like an open wound....

No. It was an escape hatch.

Gritting her teeth and panting for breath, Cassandra crawled onto the pile of rubble and squirmed into the hole like a snake. Before, the opening had seemed too cramped, too constrictive. But now panic propelled her forward. The rocks scraped her elbows, her shoulders, but she didn't care.

She fought her way over the rubble barricade into the isolated chamber and dropped down. Her feet echoed on the floor—a floor that was inexplicably metallic.

The passageways became oppressively silent again.

Her flashlight beam reflected off polished surfaces, curves, and spheres with a geometrical perfection that should have been far beyond Maya capabilities.

The light flickered, as if her batteries were rapidly dying.

Another volley of gunfire echoed through the wind-ing labyrinth far behind, separated from her by walls of stone. Then more shouts came, much louder, possibly nearer—but she couldn't be certain due to the reflective rock of the twisting corridors.

Inside the weird chamber, Cassandra was in totally unexplored territory. She rushed ahead to the final descending passage, the spiral ramp at the exact core of the pyramid. The steep tunnel looked as if it burrowed well beneath ground level. Without pausing to think, she hurried down it, moving farther and farther from her pursuers.

A faint wave of hope splashed across her mind. She wondered if this ramp might lead to some unknown exit from the pyramid, perhaps far down the wall of the lime-stone sinkhole. Maybe she could get out of this after all!