Oracle (5 page)

The administrator gave her an astonished look, but she was ready for him.
“I know what I’m doing,” she went on. “I have the equipment and will assume all the risk. I won’t touch anything or take a single step without consulting with you first. You have to let me do this Dr. Acosta. It’s the only way to know what’s down there.”

Acosta wasn
’t ready to give up yet. “Isn’t there any way we can send the robot deeper?” he asked Hodges.

“
I’d need more co-ax. But I’m not sure that would make a difference. It looks like a straight drop, and if that’s water down there, Shelob won’t be much use.”

Jade let Hodges
’ verdict sink in a moment, then instead of repeating her plea, she said simply, “I’ll go get my gear.”

This time, Acosta did not even try to stop her.

This is why
I love being an archaeologist.
Jade squirmed through the hole and looked down into the dark void.  The LED headlamp she wore showed nothing that Shelob’s light had not already revealed, but that was about to change.

She placed her hands—now covered in fingerless gloves with an extra layer of reinforcement in the palms—against the smooth tunnel walls and pulled herself the rest of the way through, trusting the belaying rope secured to her climbing harness to keep her from taking the fast way down. She wriggled around until her feet were braced against the wall and then squeezed the brake release handle on her rappelling descender
. The close confines of the tunnel kept her from making dynamic bounds, but the descent into the unknown was no less exhilarating.

She could make out Shelob at the bottom of the shaft looking like some kind metal drain screen. Four of its legs were stretched out, quartering the passage and holding the robot fixed in place, while the other four had retracted in close against its body. There was more than enough room for Jade to slip between the outstretched appendages, but she wasn
’t ready to do that just yet.

She continued letting out rope—what little was left of it—until the sole of one of her hiking boots touched the robot
’s slim central body. She tested her foothold, then let out a little more rope until all her weight was resting atop the robot. Something moved at one end of the body, presumably the camera turning to look at her.

She unclipped a small Motorola walkie-talkie from her belt and keyed the transmit button.
“Can you hear me up there?”

Under normal conditions, the radio would have been useless, the signal blocked by the surrounding rock, but her signal didn
’t have to reach the men in the chamber above. The receiving unit was wired into Shelob’s electronic guts, and the message would make the rest of the journey via the coaxial hardline.

Hodges
’ voice sounded from the speaker. “Loud and clear.”

“
Are you sure this thing can hold my weight for the next pitch?”

“
Better than any of the climbing gear you could use to set your belay.”

That assurance didn
’t fill her with enthusiasm, but she wasn’t about to turn back now. She peered down into the darkness below, noting the shiny spot almost directly underneath the robot. It was easier to judge the distance with her own eyes. “I think it’s only fifty feet or so to the bottom. Can’t tell if it’s submerged or not. I’m going to set the next rope.

She unlimbered a coil of
Kernmantle climbing rope from her shoulder, laying it carefully atop the robot’s thorax, and then went to work rigging a second belay, using the robot as her anchor. When she had checked and double-checked her knots, she shifted the rope into one of the gaps and let it fall. There was a faint rustling sound as the line uncoiled, and then just a second later, a dull thud as most of it landed on something solid.

“
No splash,” Jade said into the walkie-talkie. “Looks like we don’t have to worry about swimming. I’m heading down.”

There was a jumble of conversation—she heard Professor warning her to watch out for spiders—but Jade focused her attention on the task of unclipping from the first belay and switching to the one she had just rigged.

Because she was making a rope-only descent into the unknown, she proceeded more cautiously this time, slowly letting out the rope and keeping her eyes on what lay below. Once past the fixed body of the robot, she had a better view of her destination, but what she saw defied both expectations and explanations.

The source of the reflections appeared to be a large polished metal object—Jade assumed it was a mirror—positioned right below the shaft. She could see her rope trailing off one side. Her original estimate of fifty feet looked to be right on the money and after dropping half that distance, she was able to make out more detail about the cavern into which she was descending.

The shaft appeared to drop right into the middle of a stadium-sized hollow. The chamber extended in every direction further than her light could penetrate. Aside from the mirror—or whatever it was—the only evidence that the cave was not merely a natural formation was the uniformly smooth floor, which likewise seemed to go on forever.  There was nothing on the floor, no altars or statues, nothing at all to hint at the purpose this sealed-off vault had once served.

She was close enough now to see her reflection in the polished surface below, a weird blob stretched out from the focal point as if she was looking at the back of a spoon. The mirrored surface was convex, curving downward in every direction. The ancients might conceivably have used it for diffusing sunlight and illuminating the rest of the cavern, Jade knew, but it would only have been useful when the sun was directly overhead, and once the pyramid was built, it would have served no purpose at all.

Jade continued sliding down until she was almost touching the reflector. Up close, she saw that she had been wrong about the object. It wasn’t just a convex mirror; it was a perfect sphere.

She recalled the discovery made at the Temple of the Feathered Serpent—a strange and unexplained collection of spherical orbs, ranging in size from about two to five inches, covered in iron pyrite to give them a gold-like sheen. This object was considerably larger, easily ten feet in diameter, and although Jade was no metallurgist, she was fairly certain that the metal surface was not
“fool’s gold.” It was the real thing.

Jade hung there a moment longer, stunned by the discovery and perplexed by its significance. The sphere was like nothing she had ever seen before, certainly not in an archaeological dig. Unlike the hammered gold of most ancient American cultures, this enormous orb was perfectly smooth, as if polished by a machine. She decided she needed a closer look.

As her feet alighted on the sphere, it occurred to her—too late to do anything about it—that the ancients might have booby-trapped the orb. Nothing happened, but she decided to be more circumspect in her explorations. Pushing off from the top of the sphere, she swung her body out and squeezed the brake release, letting gravity do the rest. She touched down just a few steps away from the enormous golden ball.

It looked even more impressive at floor level, looming above her, almost double her own height, showing her stretched reflection. It reminded Jade a little of the Cloud Gate sculpture in Chicago
’s Millennium Park. Satisfied that her arrival would not trigger some ancient anti-theft device, she unclipped from the belay and turned to take in the rest of the strange cavern.

“
Hello! Echo!” It took so long for the sound to return to her that Jade was almost startled when it came. The chamber had to be enormous, at least a thousand feet across.

Before she could begin exploring, the rope trailing down from the shaft started to move, squirming like a snake. She jumped back, startled, and looked up to see someone abseiling down to join her. It was Professor.

Jade waited until both of his feet were on solid ground to let him have it. “What are you doing? Who said you could come down here?”

He flashed an indulgent smile.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize I needed anyone’s permission. But if you must know, your boss, Dr. Acosta, gave me the green light. Just between you and me, I think he has trust issues.”

Before Jade could complain further, Professor turned to look at the sphere and gave a low whistle.
“Holy…that’s gold!”

“
I think so.”

“
What’s it doing here?”

“
I haven’t figured that out yet.” An idea occurred to her. “Hey, since you’re here, you can help me with something. Stay right there.”

Jade turned away and headed out across the cavern floor, ignoring his questions. With nothing to orient herself, there was a very real possibility, however small, that she might get lost in the vast emptiness of the cavern and spend hours wandering in circles trying to find her way back to the rope. If that happened, Professor could talk her in, using a variation of the childhood
“hot and cold” game.

Fifty steps out from the sphere she caught the glint of another reflection in the darkness off to her right. She headed toward it and soon saw that it was another sphere, albeit much smaller than the enormous golden globe at the center; this sphere only reached slightly above knee height. That was not the only significant difference. This sphere appeared to be made of polished white stone. A second light reflecting off its surface alerted her to the fact that someone was approaching.

“What’s that?” asked Professor, making his way toward her.

Jade could still make out the golden orb glinting with the reflection of Shelob
’s headlight, perhaps a hundred yards behind him. “I thought I told you to stay put. I might need you to help me find my way out of here.”

“
You should have brought along a bag of breadcrumbs. Not to worry though. Paul can guide us back if needed.”

“
Paul? He came down too?” Jade’s surprise at this development almost eclipsed her growing irritation. She couldn’t imagine why Dorion would be interested in venturing into the cavern, and he certainly had not struck her as the kind of person who would volunteer to rappel into a dark hole. “It’s turning into Grand Central Station down here. I suppose Acosta is coming down, too?”

“
Just Noe, I think. The boss didn’t seem too eager to make the rappel. Brian’s going to stay topside as well, just in case we need a hand getting out.” Professor stepped around her for a better look at the second orb. “Two perfect spheres.” He turned to Jade. “Got a theory?”

“
Well, the obvious interpretation would be that the gold sphere is the sun. Maybe this one is the moon.”

“
I hear a ‘but.’”

“
But there’s no evidence that the ancient American cultures thought of heavenly bodies as spheres. When they weren’t personified, the sun and moon were most often represented as disks. Never spheres.”

“
We are dealing with one of the oldest and least understood cultures in the Americas,” Professor pointed out. “Maybe the Teotihuacanos did use spheres for their cosmological map. That big one is right underneath the Pyramid of the Sun, after all.”

“
The Aztecs gave it that name. We don’t know what the Teos called it, but I doubt very much the Aztecs knew about any of this.” Jade knew it was foolish, and sometimes even dangerous, to speculate with so little information, but it was hard not to draw such a conclusion.

“
There’s another one over here!” came an eager shout from the other side of the central orb. Jade recognized Noe’s excited voice.

Jade flashed Professor an irritated frown and got a helpless shrug in return.
“Let’s go take a look.”

They found Sanchez and Dorion standing in front of another sphere, this one about twice as big as the white globe, reaching almost to Jade
’s waist, and fashioned out of shiny blue-green stone. Unlike the white sphere, which had been a uniform color, this one was shot through with veins of black and flecks of iridescent white.

“
I think it’s supposed to be Venus,” Sanchez said, excitedly. “This is a map of the solar system.”

“
Not exactly to scale,” remarked Professor. “Venus would actually be about the size of a grapefruit and about half a mile farther away from the sun.”

“
Still, you must give them some credit. Early Mesoamerican cultures like the Maya believed in a heliocentric universe. They understood the movement of heavenly bodies better than anyone before the invention of the telescope.”

Jade had to concede that point to her colleague, but before she could comment, she noticed Dorion staring at the sphere. His expression reminded her of their initial meeting, only now his almost creepy intensity was focused on the globe. It
’s like he’s seen it before.

She dismissed the idea.
“Let’s keep looking. If this really is a model of the solar system, then we’re short a few planets.”

“
The ancients were aware of six planets,” Professor said, offhandedly. “Counting Earth of course.” His eyebrows drew together as if suddenly making another connection. “Venus and Mercury aren’t aligned in this model.”

“
Why is that important?”

“
Well, in the standard model of the solar system that we all grew up with, the planets are usually shown in a line, but a true planetary alignment is actually pretty rare. The planets all move at different orbital speeds. Mercury is over there…let’s call that six o’clock. Venus here is somewhere around nine thirty.”

“
So this could be more than just a model,” Jade said. “It could be a calendar, indicating a specific day.”

Professor nodded.
“If we can plot the other planets, it should be fairly easy to calculate corresponding dates. This particular configuration has probably happened several times throughout the history of the solar system, but one of those times might be linked to a specific date that was important to the Teotihuacanos.”