Expedition Beyond Read online

  Anastasia led him slowly past displays on basket weaving, pottery wheels and farming—the harvested crops were corn, beans and squash. Next to the food were waist-high clay vases brimming with water.

  “Educational,” Des said.

  Anastasia’s eyes flirted with his. “Abba. Sussaquintaconica.”

  Lost in her sea-blue bedroom eyes, Des wondered what she’d said.

  He took one last look at the displays as she pulled him into a dark stone corridor, where she lit a torch with flint and striker.

  As they walked, the surrounding walls changed abruptly from granite to chiseled, black volcanic rock that arched one meter above them. Des could hear the dripping of water from the rock walls.

  “Where are we going?”

  Anastasia didn’t respond.

  After seventy meters, the passageway ended at an oval opening, through which Des saw a chamber where dark figures moved about in shadowy torchlight.

  As Anastasia stooped to enter the room, Des said, “Wait.”

  He directed her torch towards the black wall, where he’d seen a flat, cylindrical stone that could be rolled to fit over the chamber’s oval opening.

  “Des,” Anastasia said impatiently, “Itar waits.”

  Des went inside with her and saw Itar sitting in a litter flanked by his two guards. The litter had carry poles at each end.

  The old man stood slowly, then greeted them graciously, talking and laughing with Anastasia.

  Using his canes, Itar moved laboriously over to an upright, polished log; it was two meters tall and too wide to be a war club; the ball on its top had been covered with a white linen cloth. Lit torches surrounded the log, their handles stuck into holes in the stone floor.

  “Tah-dah!” Itar announced, removing the linen with a flourish, revealing an enormous gemstone.

  Green velvet cradled a pure, colorless quartz crystal that had been fashioned into a detailed human skull. Des had never seen such exquisite craftsmanship. Artisans must have worked for decades—if not centuries—to carve and polish the flawless gem without the aid of lasers or diamond-cutting tools. When Des inspected the smooth surface of the skull closely, Itar thumbed open the articulated jaw.

  Des said, “Beautiful, Itar. Magnifico!” He turned to Anastasia. “This…is a crystal skull. I’ve heard the fourteen original artifacts that have been found were from the lost continent of Atlantis! I’ve never seen one before, except for photos in archeological magazines.” He was so excited he forgot he was using words and concepts he’d not yet taught her.

  “You know this…crystal skull?” Anastasia asked. “You know how it works?”

  How it works?

  Itar sprinkled powder from a pouch onto the cranium. When he lit the particles, Des knew from the brilliant white flame that it must have been magnesium. The skull’s interior glowed, then Des heard a low-pitched resonating sound. The eye sockets pulsated red, and the sound changed to a squelch as bright beams of light emanated from the eyes to pierce the room’s shadows. Somehow the prismatic crystal had concentrated radiant energy from the burning magnesium and turned it into vibrant lasers.

  “Hermoso!” Des exclaimed, clapping. “Beatifico!”

  The lights extinguished as rapidly as they’d begun. But the brighter light had illuminated the flat rock wall. Des went over to examine the multicolored circles that had been drawn on it.

  “Des,” Itar said from behind him.

  “Yes?”

  “Show not over,” Itar grunted.

  Waves of static electricity branched and faded inside the skull.

  “Itar only start…begin…” Anastasia explained.

  Des motioned for Itar to continue.

  Itar bowed, then opened the skull’s jaw and filled the crown of one molar with powder. Blinding white light flashed as the magnesium ignited. The skull’s eye sockets glowed again.

  A huge photograph projected from the eyes to hang in midair. Des estimated it was twelve meters wide and four meters tall; the three-dimensional effect reminded him of looking through his grandfather’s Viewmaster as a child. Des recognized not only the photograph’s setting, but also its subject matter. Balcony House was the name given to the alcove of the cliff dwellers of Mesa Verde; it was that which appeared before him now in vibrant colors. The cubiform arrangement of the sandstone brick walls in their cave made Balcony House so easily identifiable. To the left of the central dividing wall were two kivas—sunken, cylindrical ceremonial rooms, each with a flat roof and a central opening. To the right, the open north plaza stretched to the mouth of the cave, leading to most of the thirty-eight rooms in the rear.

  Pictured here, too, were the Anasazi—the ancient ones, the ancient enemy, the ancestral Puebloans. A loinclothed young man stood on wooden pegs driven through the dividing wall, halfway hanging over the cliff’s edge. Below him, on the valley floor, were sharpened stakes pointing skyward. Two masked men in robes were prodding the young man off the wall with poles while others stood by. The meaning was clear—this depicted a ceremonial human sacrifice.

  The image flickered and sputtered in the torchlight as it faded.

  “Do that again,” Des gasped to Itar.

  “Uno momento,” Itar said.

  He filled the occlusal surface of another tooth. Bright light flashed and another picture unfolded.

  Heaped corpses were burning—the bodies of women and children. Bedraggled bronzed men were dragging meager belongings past the fires on travois, surrounded by parched and burnt land. Des saw incredible suffering in their faces. As the image faded, a star shone briefly yet brightly in the dark sky. Des concluded the star indicated the direction traveled by these forlorn and bereaved people. It was the North Star; the natives were moving south.

  Des was almost unable to speak, “Are these images... pictures real? Did this happen?”

  “They are from before,” Anastasia replied.

  “Yes, yes, I know. But, how? You would need equipment to record these images…how did they get into the skull?”

  “We follow… Oh, Des, is it important?”

  Des was completely bewildered. “Yes, it’s important! There’re billions of prisms inside the skull. Itar first demonstrated inclusion, then deformation. The light was scattered to form an image. That picture somehow needed to be burned into the crystal.”

  “I don’t understand,” Anastasia said, shrugging helplessly.

  Des was frustrated. “Who…saw…this?”

  “The one who leads,” Anastasia answered, pointing at her temple. “They come from inside.”

  Des thought she meant that mental imagery projected from a leader was displayed through the crystal skull, so what he’d seen was apparently this leader’s inner thoughts. Some kind of telepathy?

  “Who leads now?” Des demanded.

  Anastasia locked eyes with Itar, who snorted, then opened the crystal jaw.

  Again, bright light flashed. Des saw the image of a helmeted Spaniard dressed in armor, his face contorted in a grimace as bronze men, their hair slicked back with blood, held human hearts skyward. Mutilated bodies lay at their feet in ankle-deep curdled blood. Des knew the Aztec high priests were offering the oblation to their gods.

  “Cortéz,” Itar said coldly, motioning to the Spaniard.

  “Incredible!” Des whispered.

  The image faded and white light flared as another image replaced it.

  Spaniards mounted on horseback were battling natives along a precipice. The Indians were being herded towards a ledge; many were falling off.

  After this image faded, Itar said, “Show over.” He sprinkled magnesium on the cranium. When it ignited, the skull turned glassine.

  Des’ mind whirred from the horror of what he’d seen, even while wondering how the pictures had been synthesized.

  “Good show?” Itar aske
d.

  “Awesome,” Des managed.

  “Come with me,” Itar said, handing Des a torch.

  The wall furthest from the room’s entrance was covered with a mosaic of brightly colored sand paintings, the pictographs similar to Navajo artwork Des had seen. Pulverized rock and dried plant matter had been covered with a clear glaze. The simple, colorful, two-meter circle depicted standing people facing outward. Within a concentric circle, other people faced inward. Both circles were green; the people on the outer circle alternated white and brown, and those in the inner circle were brown and green. A red line connected the inner and outer circles and extended beyond them both. In the center was a sun, spindle-star-shaped and bright white.

  Circles of life and death, Des thought.

  The next painting was more intricate. Two three-meter interlocking circles were unmistakably Earth with its continents shaded in blue. Once again, a thin red line bisected the painting and continued beyond it.

  “Itar, what is this?” Des asked.

  Tracing the red line, Itar said, “Sipapu.”

  Des recognized the ancient Pueblo word. The cave dwellers always dug a small hole in each kiva floor to represent the bond between man and Earth and named it sipapu. Through it, they believed, man’s spirit had emerged onto the surface of Earth.

  The red line on this painting was broken twice—once over Mexico, and again over southern Africa. Des assumed it indicated some kind of connection between the two continents. He wanted to ask Itar about it, but the language barrier stood in his way.

  He tried to imagine this painting as a globe. The line wouldn’t have passed through the center of the sphere—inside, the line would extend only halfway toward the middle. If the forefathers of these people had fallen here from the Valley of Mexico where the Aztec civilization had been centered, then this painting suggested there had been another portal in Africa.

  He traced his finger along a route parallel to but above the red line. “Ellesmere Island,” he muttered crossing Africa to stop in oceanic pink. The continent was missing where a second portal should’ve been. The artist who created this painting was probably unaware that the Europeans had discovered the landmass.

  “Sipapu,” he repeated quietly, then tapped the painting. “Australia.”

  It had happened before: a crevasse had opened on the surface that had led to…

  The immensity was almost beyond Des’ imagination—he was far below the Earth’s crust, past the asthenosphere, and probably deep within the mantle. If that were so, scientific knowledge of inner Earth was seriously faulty. For the first time, he wondered if he would ever be able to retrace his steps homeward.

  Near the corner, there was a pictograph of a single white figure surrounded by scattered brown and green men that appeared to be dead. Des thought that meant the white man had killed them. One green man was kneeling and the white figure seemed to be holding a spear.

  “Allay, allay ep-sey—” Itar’s voice droned, interrupted only by his struggle for breath. He pinched Des’ skin, then his own.

  Des thought Itar was saying something profound, but he certainly didn’t understand it. He searched the pictograph carefully for clues—it wasn’t a spear the white man held; it was a cup with a long shaft planted on the ground. Maybe there was something in the cup to heal, not to kill.

  “Abba?” Itar asked.

  Des shrugged.

  While studying other sand paintings with more pastoral settings, Des waved his torch along the bottom of the wall. There, he saw a host of men bound to each other by rope. Hideous creatures—some of which walked on two legs, some on four—were whipping the bound men.

  “Des,” Anastasia said softly, “I need to speak with Itar alone. Please wait outside.” She motioned towards the museum.

  Des studied the broken bow on green velvet. It had the splintered shaft of an arrow overlying it; the arrowhead was stone.

  He moved over to a display of darts and long, reed blowguns. He’d seen film footage of Africans shooting poisoned darts through similar weapons to bring down large game. He picked up one of the feathered darts.

  “Na, na, na, na, na, na!” The old curator swooped down on him.

  “Sorry.” He placed the dart carefully back into the display.

  Near the right corner of the main room, Des attempted to peer through a thick, opaque window with glass so old, it flowed in downward ripples. He stepped back and looked around the edge of the wall and saw a heavy iron door sealed with three large padlocks. The door led to an anteroom, but the only way to see into it was through the window. Des tried looking again. He couldn’t see anything except by moving his head from side to side and concentrating on the objects inside. They looked like casks or kegs piled on top of each other in the center of the room—there were maybe twenty in all.

  He studied the pictographs below the window and the Spanish words on the locked door before peering through the window a third time. The Spanish word for “dangerous” was stamped above smaller script, and Des thought he could see as many as three X’s on one of the kegs. He chortled to himself. It was grog. Five-hundred-year-old rum locked up in a museum, a world away from where it had been fermented.

  ¡Peligroso!

  Dangerous rum, indeed.

  Itar studied Anastasia’s face in the torchlight. He had watched her blossom from a gangly teenager into a beautiful young woman. Now, she was troubled; she turned away her face when he addressed her.

  “You must listen to me!” he insisted.

  “I know what you’re going to say.”

  Itar snorted. “We cannot continue to prepare—”

  “Yes, we can!”

  “The council has not approved—”

  “Approval isn’t necessary,” she said defiantly.

  “Stop interrupting! When my parents gave birth to an albino baby nearly two hundred years ago, the council thought I was the chosen one. They were wrong.”

  “I know,” she answered.

  “Des is not the one, either. The legends do not lie.” He watched her face in the sputtering light.

  “The legends,” she said, “are twisted.”

  “No, they are explicit.” As Anastasia trembled, he continued. “A savior will fall from the heavens. He will be fair-haired, light-skinned, and strong. He will have the gift we have lost; when he arrives, deliverance will be near. Des is a handsome, strong man, but—”

  “He is the one,” she replied firmly.

  “And how do you explain his dark hair?” Itar asked. “You are grasping at straws. I am old. For me, there will be no other chance. You are twenty-four with a long life ahead. You will wait for another.”

  “No,” Anastasia said, her chin lifted in defiance. “Give Des a chance.”

  Itar snorted. “Teach me more of his language.”

  He listened intently as Anastasia pronounced once each English word and phrase she knew, translated, then went on to the next. Itar kept nodding as she talked, comparing each word with the languages he already knew. He began to place the words into quickly formulated sentence structures. Each word was safely tucked away in the vast libraries of his mind. He stopped her only once.

  “Green tree, not tree green?”

  She nodded.

  “How odd, please continue.”

  When she finished, Itar warned, “Do not get too close to this stranger.”

  “I fear it is too late,” she replied.

  Chapter 15

  LATITUDE 82° 10’ NORTH

  LONGITUDE 73° 42’ WEST

  LAPTITUDE 68%

  Month 2, Day 24; 0330 UTC, 9:30 AM LTD

  Des felt a change in Anastasia’s attitude towards him after their visit to the museum. She had taken him to the hospital to have the reed bandage on his nose removed. And though she had continued with the English lessons, it was
less and less frequently. She seemed distant; she didn’t smile at him anymore. She spent more time with others and less with him. The effervescence of their friendship had vanished.

  He thought it was time for him to leave. It wasn’t just Anastasia, he longed to return home. Maybe he could use the crevasse he’d found in the forest. At the very least, he should try to forget Anastasia. But that was easier thought than done. In this strange world, she had become everything to him, and now he felt like he’d lost his only connection. If she’d grown tired of him, he’d be doing her a favor by leaving—maybe that’s exactly what she hoped he’d do.

  He looked around at his meager possessions: a pack, some clothes she had gotten for him, the rocks he’d collected. All he had to do was put his stuff in his pack, throw it over his shoulder and walk out. He stuffed in his clothing, putting the rocks into pockets, and Des slung the pack over his shoulder.

  Des walked outside into the morning mist, determined to continue on without her. He plodded aimlessly down a path. After a few minutes, he focused on his surroundings.

  That’s when he realized that the birds weren’t singing.

  And he heard cries of a different kind from far below. Human voices…human cries…human screaming!

  Des ran towards the sounds, clawing through dense jungle until he reached a vantage point. He brushed the leaves from his face.

  In the open-air shops of the bazaar far below him, forty meters separated two groups, each comprised of fifty women who waved war clubs and screamed at the opposition. A woman wildly bolted from one group to run at the other, swinging her club. She felled an opponent with a sickening thud, then returned to her team, whooping. The warriors surged closer to each other.

  Between the two small armies, unarmed and apparently facing an impending death, stood Des’ beloved Anastasia.

  Des tore through his pack and grabbed his soundsticks. He hoisted one into a tree, ran one hundred meters and secured the other. He fished out the mike and the compact sound system, turned the audio to maximum and switched on the microphone. There was a second of blaring feedback before it was ready.