The Mayan Secrets - Cussler Clive - Страница 23

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“What are those flat areas I’m seeing? Roads?”

“We think they’re surfaces built to catch the rain and direct it here to the pool. They are all slightly tilted toward the center and they go only a couple hundred yards.”

Sam stood close to Remi and said, “We also think the hills along the sides of the strips are buildings — one of them is quite large.”

“So the site could be a city?”

“Let’s just say they invested a lot of labor on architecture,” said Sam.

“You’ve accomplished your mission,” Selma said. “Congratulations. Well done. Are you coming home?”

“Not just yet,” Remi said. “I think we’ll dive the pool tomorrow morning and see what’s down there. After carrying a scuba rig through a dry jungle, I want to make use of it.”

“I can’t blame you,” said Selma. “I’ll forward the pictures to David Caine right away, along with your description.”

“Good,” said Sam. “We’ll talk to you soon.”

As they hung up, Sam said, “We need to get the rest of the gear here. Do you want to drive the Jeep down or are you still worried about the ghosts?”

“Let’s leave the Jeep where it is and bring the gear. It shouldn’t take more than a couple of trips with the other pack and the dive equipment.”

They pitched their small tent in the enclosure around the pool, collected firewood in the nearby forest, and built a fire to boil a pot of water for their dehydrated food. After they’d eaten, they used the last hour of light to photograph the site from the nearest hills.

As they were about to go to sleep, Sam’s phone buzzed. “Hello?”

“Sam! It’s Dave Caine.”

“Hi, Dave,” Sam said. Then he put the phone on speaker.

“The pictures are fantastic. You’ve proven the codex is an accurate rendering, not a myth or vague historical rumors. From the looks of the place, it could have been a ceremonial center. The stone around it seems to be limestone, and the crumbling by the pool makes that seem even more likely. A sinkhole gets bigger as the limestone dissolves in the water.”

“We’ll get a closer look tomorrow when we dive.”

“Be prepared for a sight,” Caine said. “The Mayans believed that everything depended on their relationships with a complicated pantheon of gods. They will almost certainly have tossed valuables into the pool as sacrifices to Chac, the rain god.”

“Whatever else went wrong here, it wasn’t because of a lack of water.”

“We’ll be waiting to hear.”

“Good night.”

Sam and Remi woke at dawn, and, as soon as they’d had breakfast, began to prepare for exploring the pool. They put on their dive equipment. Each had an underwater flashlight, a net bag, and a dive knife.

“I can’t wait to get down there,” Remi said.

“I’m pretty curious myself,” Sam said. “Don’t get carried away. Remember the buddy system. Stay close no matter what’s down there.”

“Agreed,” she said. “I may lose my enthusiasm if it’s a pile of skeletons.”

“Ready?”

“Yes.”

They lowered their masks and put their mouthpieces in, then slipped into the water. The water was cold and surprisingly clear. Now that the sun was rising higher, it shone deeper into the pool’s depths.

In a short time, they reached the bottom, which was all bare gray limestone. Finding nothing like the objects David Caine had told them to expect, they widened their search, shining their flashlights around them. Sam found a disk, lifted it and brushed the limestone dust off it, and saw that it was made of green jade and was heavily carved. He showed Remi, and bagged it.

Remi caught a glint of something to her left, touched Sam’s arm, and moved in that direction. When she did, she could tell that going that way was easier than it should be, as though there was a faint current. She moved beyond the circle of light from above into an area that was dark.

The first object she found was a wide bracelet made of gold. She held it up so Sam could see, and he nodded. They moved along the limestone bed, picking up objects as they went. There were more carved objects of jade and, farther on, more pieces made of gold. There were disks, masks, necklaces, ear plugs, bracelets, flat chest ornaments.

They continued picking up objects for a time, and then Sam touched Remi’s arm and pointed. The circle of light that had been directly above them at the start was now about a hundred feet behind them. They had moved along, picking up the objects they’d seen, and now they’d drifted farther than they’d thought.

Together, they swam back toward the opening, bringing their net bags with them. When they reached the light, they slowly floated upward toward it, then broke the silvery surface. They took off their masks and held on to the side of the pool. Sam lifted his net bag to the deck above them, then Remi’s. Next, he pulled himself onto the stone and held out his hand to Remi so he could pull her up.

“That was a lot of fun,” she said. “You just dive down and pick up things where they threw them.”

“It reminds me of an Easter egg hunt.”

“There’s a bit of a current down there, though. The jewelry and things had all been moved downstream.”

“If this place was abandoned at the end of the classic period, everything has been down there awhile. A bit of a current can make a difference in a thousand years.”

“I’ll bet some of the jewelry moved out of sight as it fell,” she said.

“That’s possible. When the people looked down and the gifts were gone, I’ll bet they thought the gods had accepted them and been pleased.”

They laid out all their finds on the limestone surface and photographed them, then sent the pictures to Selma. They secured the finds in a zippered bag, placing them in Sam’s pack.

“We haven’t found everything that’s down there,” Remi said. “Don’t you want to dive again this afternoon?”

“Whatever this place is — city, fort, ceremonial center — we’re not going to find everything or learn everything about it in one trip. The archaeologists will be at it for years. The best we can do is verify what we can and get out.”

“You’re right,” said Remi. “This is about the codex, not about the two of us finding all the treasures in Guatemala.”

“I think we should spend the rest of today and tomorrow mapping, measuring, and photographing the complex. The next day, we should get out of here before we run low on supplies.”

“There are tapirs in the jungle. I can make you a nice tapir sandwich.”

“I’m afraid that in another day tapir will start to sound good.”

After changing, they walked the length of each flat strip of land. It was nearly evening when they found a pair of stone pillars at the end of the third strip, placed like gateposts. They were about eight feet tall and carved, one of them a male figure, with the feathered headdress, shield, and war club of a king, and the other a female, in a dress, with a basket at her feet and a jug in her hands. There were Mayan glyphs in all the spaces around the two figures. Remi photographed the two from every angle, and sent the photographs to Selma.

She looked up from her phone. “We’re losing the sun. I’ll take a couple of flash pictures just to be sure the writing is clear.”

She took two flash photographs of each pillar, and then Sam grabbed her arm and pointed. “Remi, look!”

Up the hill, on the trail that Sam and Remi had followed to reach this site, they could see a line of men approaching. There seemed to be about fifteen of them, and they were still a quarter mile off but coming down the last gradual slope before the ruins. “Uh-oh,” she said. “I guess the flash was a bad idea.”

“I don’t know. Certainly not as bad as leaving the Jeep out in the open for anyone to see,” he said. “I can’t tell if they’ve seen us, and I don’t know if they’re friendly or not. Maybe we can get back to the cenote and out of sight before they get here. That way, we can avoid finding out.”

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