Evil Star (28 page)

Horowitz, Anthony - [Gatekeepers 02] - Evil Star

"It may not mean anything of the sort!" the professor snapped.

"There is no gate in the desert. That is to say, there are no standing stones, no markers, no buildings. There's just the sand and the lines."

"But there's a platform," Matt returned. "Salamanda said he needed to find the platform."

"Well, good luck to him. I've been into the desert a thou-sand times and I've never seen a platform." Chambers tapped ash into a saucer on the table. "Mind you, it could be bur-ied," she muttered. "I suppose that's always a possibility."

"Are you sure there's no swan?" Richard asked.

Professor Chambers slammed her cigar down, extin-guishing it.

"Mr. Cole!" she exclaimed. "The day I started studying the lines, you were still in diapers. How dare you suggest.. . ?"

Matt thought she was going to throw something at the journalist, but she forced herself to calm down.

"I'm sorry," she said. "But you have to understand. The Nazca Lines are my life. I've devoted my whole life to them. I visited them for the first time when I was twenty-three years old, and since then they've never let me go. Can you understand that? There are so few things left in the world that we don't know. Science has explained almost everything away. And yet here we have one last, great mystery. A whole desert filled with drawings that nobody understands. It's been my life's journey to solve the mystery before I die.

"And the fact that you should walk into my life right now —just three days before Inti Raymi — is mysterious as well. You come with your extraordinary story and maybe what you've told me will finally unlock everything. I've been waiting for this for more than Horowitz, Anthony - [Gatekeepers 02] - Evil Star thirty years. So I mustn't quarrel with you. You have to let me think about what you've had to say."

"Inti Raymi. . ." Richard muttered.

He was remembering what the Inca had said.

Before the sun had risen and set three times . ..

"That's right, Mr. Cole. That's the one thing we do know. We have less than forty-eight hours. At midnight, two days from now, the gate is going to open."

Chapter 17 Night in the Desert

They drove out of Nazca as the sun began to set. Professor Chambers was behind the wheel. Richard was next to her, while Matt, Pedro, and Atoc were in the back. The car was a soft-top Jeep.

They were planning to go off road. But it was an uncomfortable journey for the two boys. The vehicle had little suspension and they felt every bump and crack in the road. Although the windows were closed, dust came in underneath the flaps and it was often hard to breathe. The engine was deafening and made the seats vibrate. It was like traveling in an oversize washing machine.

"I'd much rather do this by day," the professor shouted. "But all things- considered, it looks as if we may be a little short of time.

And anyway, we may find it easier to sniff around without planeloads of tourists buzzing over our heads every ten minutes."

"Won't there be guards?" Richard asked.

"There are supposed to be. But there's never enough of them, and the Horowitz, Anthony - [Gatekeepers 02] - Evil Star ones who are out here will probably be asleep. Anyway, I have a special permit to go into the desert. . . which is more than I can say for Mr. Salamanda! If I'd found him or his people tramping over the lines, I'd have had his guts for garters — and I don't care how important he thinks he is."

Mm glanced at Pedro, who was looking out the win-dow, even though there was very little to see. “You okay?" he asked.

Pedro nodded.

"You should get some sleep," the professor said. "This could be a long night."

Two hours later, she stopped and checked her map. The sun had virtually disappeared below the horizon but there was still a red glow in the sky, as if it were unwilling to let go of the heat of the day. The professor pushed the gear stick into four-wheel drive and spun the wheel. Almost at once the Jeep began to bounce up and down as it swapped the bitumen surface of the highway for the rough sand and rock of the desert floor.

They drove for another hour. The professor glanced a couple more times at the map but she had a good idea where they were going.

After all, she had been visiting this place for more than thirty years and knew just about every inch of it. At last she stopped.

"We can walk this final part," she said. "There are three spades in the back. Also water bottles, sandwiches, and — most important of all — chocolate. Peruvian chocolate is absolutely first-rate, by the way. Nothing like those sickly little bars you get in England."

Matt stepped out of the Jeep.

Horowitz, Anthony - [Gatekeepers 02] - Evil Star He guessed that the great rectangle — the place of Qolqa — must be somewhere in front of him but he could see nothing of it. The rapidly fading light didn't help. He understood now why the Nazca Lines had remained undis-covered for so long. There was nothing to see at ground level apart from a flat, empty plateau. He was like an ant, crawling across a tabletop. The landscape was simply too big to make any sense. Only from above would the pictures become visible. He had seen them clearly from the plane. Now he was among them and they were gone.

"Look here!" Professor Chambers called out.

She turned on the flashlight and pointed it down. The beam of light picked out tire tracks — freshly made, Matt guessed. It seemed that the desert was a bit like the surface of the moon in that any mark stayed there permanently. The professor followed the tire tracks a short way, then swung the flashlight around. Two cars had come.

This was where they had stopped. There were dozens of footprints.

Several people must have gotten out.

"This is going to be easier than I thought," Professor Chambers muttered.

"What do you mean?" Richard asked.

“Your poem tells us to stand in front of the place of Qolqa. That's where we are now. And somewhere here there must be . . .

something. As I've already made per-fectly clear, it must be below the surface, because if it wasn't, I'd have seen it. In which case, I thought we'd have to spend half the night digging. But that's not the case. All we have to do is follow the footsteps. Mr. Salamanda may think he's clever but he's left us a path."

They followed the footsteps away from the Jeep and ever farther Horowitz, Anthony - [Gatekeepers 02] - Evil Star into the desert. After about two hundred meters, they came to an area where some sort of digging had obviously taken place. The earth was loose. And in the light of the flashlight, the color was quite different.

"This is it!" Richard said.

"Yes." Professor Chambers handed him the flashlight. "The four of you can start digging. I'm going back to the Jeep."

"What for?"

"Isn't it obvious? I'm going to make the tea!"

There was one spade for each of them, and together they began to dig. There was barely enough light left to see by. To Matt, it seemed that the other three were little more than shadows. It was still hot.

After just a few minutes of digging, the dust had clogged in Matt's throat. It stung his eyes and settled in his hair. He could feel the sweat making muddy tracks as it trickled down his face. Pedro had stopped digging. He was now holding a flashlight for the others.

Luckily the earth, already disturbed once, came away easily. In just a few minutes, they had dug a trench half a meter deep. Meanwhile, the professor had returned with the food hamper and a Primus stove.

Matt heard the hiss of gas and then the pop of the flame as she lit it and began to boil some water for tea. She clearly had no fear of being seen — but then, the stove let out only a tiny pinprick of light in the great emptiness of the desert, and it was highly unlikely there was a guard anywhere near.

Atoc's spade hit something with a loud clang. "Here . . ." he said.

Richard and Matt stopped and went over to where he was working.

He had struck some sort of brickwork.

Horowitz, Anthony - [Gatekeepers 02] - Evil Star

"Be careful!" Professor Chambers called out. Was she afraid of what they might find? Or was it that she didn't want them to do any damage to something that might be of archaeological interest?

Quickly, the three of them began to scoop away the earth, using the side edges of their spades. Professor Chambers came back over, adding her flashlight beam to Pedro's. Something flat and square had been revealed. She swung the light over it and saw a brick platform, decorated with a design in the center. As they scraped off the last of the earth, more of the design was revealed. At last they could see it.

Professor Chambers looked down and frowned. "I take it that this is the sign that you described to me," she said. "The sign of the Old Ones."

“Yes," Matt whispered. He shivered. The heat seemed to have evaporated. "This is the sign."

"But what is this thing that it's on?" Richard asked.

"It's a platform." The professor peered more closely at it. "About five meters square, I would say. The bricks are made of andesite.

Nothing unusual about that. But the design! Arrows and squiggly lines. That's quite wrong!"

Pedro asked a question. Atoc translated. "What is it doing here?"

"Do you know?" Matt asked.

"As a matter of fact, I do have a pretty good idea." Professor Chambers ran the flashlight over the surface one last time. "Let's have some tea before we cover this back up," she suggested. "And while we're sitting down, we can have a talk."

They went back to the stove, and Professor Chambers filled five mugs with hot, sweet tea made with mint leaves she had picked from Horowitz, Anthony - [Gatekeepers 02] - Evil Star her garden. Apart from the hiss of the gas, all was silent in the great emptiness of the desert.

"I'll try to keep this simple," she began. "Although it isn’t. It’s

actually bloodwy complicated. But I've told you about the
mystery of
the Nazca Lines. Now I've got to explain to
you my solution to the mystery. I actually wrote a book about it a while ago, although not many people believed me." She fell silent for a moment. "Maybe Salamanda read it. Maybe I'm partly responsible for every-thing that's happened. I'll try to explain.

"As I told you, I've studied the lines for most of my life. I was fascinated by them, the moment I first saw them. At the time I thought it was because they were so beauti-ful.. . so very perfect.

But as the years went on, I realized that I was wrong. I can't explain how it happened but I began to believe that they . . . that there was something evil about them. The pictures of the animals are wonderful. I don't deny it. But it crossed my mind that to the ancient Nazca people two thousand years ago, they must have been terrifying, too. Huge spiders. Monstrous whales. Even the monkey is grotesque, reaching out with its spindly arms. It has only four fingers on one hand. Why do you think the people who drew the lines gave it one finger too few?"

"Maybe they couldn't count," Richard said.

"No, no. They could count perfectly well. But, you see, in primitive societies, deformity is something to be feared, a bad omen. Maybe that's the point. All the animals could have been drawn simply to scare people."

She took out another cigar and lit it. The smoke shone silver against the black night sky.

Horowitz, Anthony - [Gatekeepers 02] - Evil Star

"Most people now agree that the Nazca Lines have something to do with the stars," she went on. "I actually studied astronomy at university a long time ago, and from the very start it was my opinion that the lines were nothing more or less than a huge star map.

"This is how it would work. A line would point to a star at certain times of the year. That is to say, you'd stand on the line and look down it and if you saw a star rising up over the horizon right in front of you, you'd know it was April fifth and time to start planting the grain or what-ever. Easy enough! But later on, I started to think.

What would happen if there was a moment, perhaps no more than a few minutes in a thousand years, when
all
the lines pointed to
all
the visible stars — at exactly the same time? Now that would be . . ."

She stopped. "Am I boring you, Matthew?"

Matt's head was craned upward. His eyes were search-ing the night sky. He had been listening to begin with, but something had distracted him. What was it? There were no sounds in the desert.

Could he have imagined it? No. There it was again, a soft beating in the air like a flag caught in the wind. He waited, his ears pricked.

But it had gone.

"Are you listening?" Professor Chambers asked.

Matt turned to her. “Yes. Of course."

"Good. Because this is where things get a bit more com-plicated.

"As I was saying, I wondered if all the stars could align with the all the Nazca Lines. But how would this happen? Well, imagine that you could lie on your back on the desert floor and take a photograph of the night sky. You'd end up with a big sheet of paper with lots of little dots on it. Then you could go up in the air and take a photograph of the lines, making a second picture. What I was Horowitz, Anthony - [Gatekeepers 02] - Evil Star looking for was a time when the stars
in the first picture would fall exactly on the lines in the second picture. . . ."

"A sort of
connect-the-dots on a cosmic scale," Richard said.

"Exactly. Of course, this wouldn't happen very often. It might never happen at all. You see, the stars always seem to be moving when you look at them from the Earth. The reason for this is that it's the Earth that's actually moving — spinning on its own axis. That's why the stars never seem to be in the same position.

"And the Earth isn't only spinning. It's also orbiting around the sun.

And as it orbits, it wobbles. Astronomers call this wobble

precession.
And what it means is that the Earth is in exactly the same position only once every twenty-six thousand years.

"So to go right back to where I started, what I wondered and what I wrote about in my book was, suppose that the Nazca Lines were drawn as a sort of terrible warning. Sup-pose that what they were doing was recording one moment in twenty-six thousand years when they would finally line up with the stars, and the world would come to an end. That would explain why the pictures were so frightening.