Atlantis

CHAPTER 21

As they plunged into the forbidding darkness of the tunnel beneath the eagle’s left wing tip, they could see the walls had been smoothed and polished like the previous passageways. For the first few metres beyond the hall of the ancestors, Costas led the way, but soon it widened and Jack and Katya were able to swim alongside. After about ten metres the floor became a shallow stairway, the worn steps progressing upwards at a steady gradient as far as their lights could penetrate.

“The gods are with us this time,” Costas said. “Another few minutes at this depth and we’d have been here permanently.”

As they ascended the slope, they conserved energy by using their buoyancy compensators for lift. The walls were carved with a continuous frieze of life-sized bulls, their sinuous forms startlingly reminiscent of Minoan bull paintings on Crete. They seemed to glower and stomp on either side as they processed upwards.

Just as Jack’s breathing rate was beginning to stabilize his computer gave an audible warning that he was about to go on reserve. He sensed a momentary tightening in his regulator as the emergency supply kicked in and then it flowed freely again.

“As we ascend and the pressure reduces you’ll get more volume from the reserve supply,” Costas assured him. “If you run out we can always buddy-breathe.”

“Great.” Jack grimaced through his visor before concentrating on maintaining his buoyancy just above neutral.

For the next few minutes the only sound was the exhalation of bubbles as they gradually rose up the passageway. After about a hundred metres Costas signalled them to halt.

“We’re now seventy metres below sea level,” he announced. “My computer says we need a five-minute decompression stop. Even though we’ve mainly been on helium and oxygen, we’ve still absorbed a lot of nitrogen. We need to off-gas.”

Despite the stabbing pain in his side, Jack made a conscious effort not to hyperventilate. He sank exhausted to the stairs and reached for the disc.

“Time for some map reading,” he said.

The other two dropped down beside him as he rotated the disc until the symbol was aligned in the direction of the passageway.

“If our decipherment is correct we’re here, along the left shoulder of the eagle,” Costas pointed out. “We can’t have much further to go along this route. We’re getting close to the cliff face.”

“When this passageway ends we make a right turn,” Katya said. “Then all the way along the wing of the eagle until the final turning to the left, and then to the eastern tip.”

“If we’re heading to the caldera we need to rise about a hundred metres and go four hundred metres south, on a gradient of thirty degrees. At some point we’ll break sea level but still be underground.”

“What happens if the passage goes down?” Katya enquired.

“We get boiled alive,” Costas said bluntly. “The core is a seething mass of molten lava and scorching gas. Even going up we may find our way barred by lava that’s flowed out since the flood.”

Their timers simultaneously sounded a five-minute alarm to show the stop was over. Jack returned the disc to his pocket and stiffly pushed off from the stairway.

“We have no choice,” he said. “Let’s pray that Ben and Andy are still holding out. We’re their only lifeline.”

As they passed above the sixty-metre mark their regulators began to replace helium with nitrogen as the main inert gas. Soon their breathing mixture would differ from atmospheric air only in the enriched oxygen that was injected during the final few metres to scrub their bloodstreams of any excess nitrogen.

Costas led the way as the stairway began to constrict into a narrow tunnel. After a final step it veered right, apparently following a natural fissure, before regaining its original course and promptly depositing them at the entrance to another cavern.

“Here’s our intersection, bang on target.”

Their headlamps revealed a chamber about ten metres long by five metres wide, with doorways on all four sides. The decompression stop had briefly revitalized Jack and he swam forward for a closer look. In the centre was an oblong table flanked by pedestals set about two metres from each corner. The table was hewn from the rock and had a raised rim like the upturned lid of a sarcophagus. The pedestals were free-standing basins like the fonts of medieval churches.

“There are no runnels for blood and it would have been impossible to bring a large animal this far into the mountain,” he said. “Sacrifices tended to be public affairs and whatever went on here could only have been attended by a select few.”

“An ablution table, for ritual purification?” Costas suggested.

Katya finned over to the doorway opposite their point of entry. She peered into the corridor beyond and briefly switched off her headlamp.

“I can see light,” she said. “It’s barely discernible, but there are four separate pools evenly spaced.”

Jack and Costas swam over. They too could see faint smudges of hazy green.

“We’re only fifty metres below sea level and a few metres inside the cliff face.” Costas flicked his light back on as he spoke. “It’s early morning outside, so there should be some vestigial light at this depth.”

“The corridor corresponds with one of the parallel lines jutting out from the wing of the eagle,” Jack said. “I’ll bet they’re accommodation quarters, with windows and balconies overlooking the pyramids. Just like the Minoan complex on the cliffs of Thera, a magnificent location which served the monastic ideal yet also dominated the population on the coast below.”

“We could get out through one of those windows,” Katya suggested.

“Not a chance,” Costas said. “They look like ventilation shafts, probably less than a metre wide. And we don’t have time to explore. Our map’s held true so far and I vote we follow it.”

Just then a vibration coursed through them, a blurring of the water that made Jack suddenly fear he was about to black out. It was followed by further vibrations and then a series of dull hammering noises, each one preceding a muffled sound like breaking glass a long distance off. There was no way of telling the direction the sound was coming from.

“The submarine!” Katya exclaimed.

“It’s too distinct, too contained,” Costas said. “Any explosion in the Kazbek and we wouldn’t be here talking about it.”

“I’ve heard that sound before.” Jack was looking at Costas, his anger palpable even through the visor. “I think it’s the vibration of shells tearing through a hull. There’s a gun battle raging on the surface above us.”

“Whatever it is, we need to find a way out now,” Costas urged. “Come on.”

They finned towards the entrance that marked the right-hand turn indicated by the symbol. After passing the basins, Costas paused to check his compass bearing.

“Due south,” he announced. “All we do now is follow this route as far as it goes and then turn left.”

Katya was approaching the entranceway a few metres ahead of the other two. She suddenly halted.

“Look up,” she said excitedly.

Above the entranceway was a huge lintel carved out of the rock. The front was deeply scored with symbols, some occupying the full half-metre height of the slab. They were separated into two groups of four, each group surrounded by an incised boundary like a hieroglyphic cartouche.

There was no mistaking what they were.

“The sheaf of corn. The paddle. The half-moon. And those Mohican heads,” Katya said.

“It’s the final proof,” Jack murmured. “The Phaistos disc, the golden disc from the wreck. Both of them came from this place. We’re looking at the sacred script of Atlantis.”

“What does it mean?” Costas asked.

Katya was already consulting her palm computer. She and Dillen had programmed in a concordance which matched each of the Atlantis symbols with its syllabic equivalent in Linear A, providing a best-fit translation from the Minoan vocabulary so far deciphered.

“Ti-ka-ti-re, ka-ka-me-re.” Katya slowly enunciated the sounds, her Russian inflection giving a slight burr to the final syllables of each word.

She scrolled through alphabetically, Jack and Costas watching the flickering words as they appeared on the LCD display.

“They’re both in the Minoan lexicon,” she announced. “Ti-ka-ti means route or direction. Ka-ka-me means dead or death. The suffix re means to or of. So it translates as ‘the route of death,’ ‘the way of death.’ ”

They peered up at the inscription above their heads, the symbols standing out as crisp as if they had been carved only days before.

“That doesn’t sound too promising,” Costas said glumly.

Jack winced and the other two looked at him with renewed anxiety. He summoned up his remaining energy and powered ahead into the passageway.

“This should be the last leg. Follow me.”

Costas lingered for a moment to tie the final spool of tape to his backpack. All he could see of the other two was the turbulence in their wake; the passageway sloped up at a shallow angle. As he finned after them the reassuring glimmer of their headlamps appeared further up the tunnel.

“Keep your ascent rate below five seconds per metre,” he instructed. “Our time in that chamber counts as another decompression stop, and with this gradient we shouldn’t need to halt again before reaching the surface.”

The floor was rough as if deliberately left unfinished to provide a better grip. On either side were parallel grooves like the ruts in ancient cartways. Suddenly they were at the entrance to another chamber, the walls falling away into pitch darkness yet the ramp continuing upwards.

It was a cavernous space that dwarfed even the hall of the ancestors. All around them were undulating folds of rock that seemed to ripple as they panned their headlamps back and forth. The sides plummeted into a yawning chasm, the sheer drop broken only by gnarled contusions of lava that punctuated the walls like knots in old oak. Everywhere they looked were twisted rivers of lava, testament to the colossal forces that blasted through the chamber from the molten core of the earth.

“The core of the volcano must only be a couple of hundred metres south,” Costas said. “Magma and gas punched through the compacted ash of the cone to leave gaping holes and then solidify. The result is this giant honeycomb effect, an expanded hollow core intermeshed with a lattice of basalt formations.”

They peered through the crystal-clear water and the ramp revealed itself as a giant causeway, an immense spine of rock that spanned the space as far as they could see. To the left their headlamps played over another massive dyke, followed by another one an equal distance beyond, both projecting at right angles from the central spine and merging with the wall of the chamber.

It was Costas who pointed out the obvious, the reason why the geometry seemed so strangely familiar.

“The central spine is the upper wing on the symbol. The dykes are two of the projections to the left. We’re on the home stretch.”

“It must have seemed awesome to the first people who reached this chamber,” Jack said. “My guess is the other side of the core also has basalt intrusions radiating outwards where the magma followed fissures to the surface. If the pattern’s symmetrical it’s easy to see how it acquired magical qualities. It was the image of their sacred eagle god.”

Katya was transfixed by the spectacular cascades of rock around them. The causeway was like the final bridge to a subterranean stronghold, an ultimate test of nerve that would leave anyone brave enough to venture across it exposed above a moat of fire.

She could just make out entrances in the wall at the end of the two branching ramps. Directly ahead she could see the distant shimmer of a rock wall a hundred metres away, its dimensions concealed in the darkness. She shuddered as she remembered the grim epithet over the entrance into the chamber.

Costas began to swim determinedly along the causeway. “Jack’s only got a few minutes of air left. Time to find the surface.”

Jack and Katya swam on either side of Costas above the ruts which continued from the passageway. Just after they passed the junction with the first causeway to the left, another feature came into view, a depression midway along the central spine that had been invisible from the entrance.

As they neared the feature a remarkable scene unfolded before their eyes. The indentation extended the full five-metre width of the causeway and an equivalent distance across. It was about two metres deep and reached by steps on either side. Overlooking the canyon to the right was a bull’s horn sculpture with the characteristic vertical sides and sweeping interior curve. An identical carving rose up just to the left of centre, and perched between was a massive slab. The horns had been carved out of the rock, their tips almost reaching the level of the causeway, whereas the slab was a lustrous white marble similar to the stone they had seen worked into fantastic animal shapes beside the processional way outside.

As they sank down for a closer look they could see the slab was tilted out a metre over the void.

“Of course,” Jack cried. “That inscription. Not ‘the way of death’ but ‘the way of the dead.’ Ever since we first saw Atlantis I’ve been wondering where the cemeteries were. Now we know. That last room was a mortuary, a preparation chamber. And this is where they disposed of their dead.”

Even Costas was momentarily diverted from the urgency of their escape and swam over to peer down the chasm. He flicked on his high-intensity halogen beam for a few seconds, aware that only a brief burst could deplete his battery reserve.

“They chose the right spot,” he concurred. “The lava down there’s jagged, the quick-drying type, and fills the ravine as a solidified torrent. Seven thousand years ago that could well have been an active duct. Molten lava simmers away at 1,100 degrees Celsius, hot enough to melt a car, so you’ve got a ready-made crematorium.”

Katya was inspecting the steps leading down to the platform.

“This must be where they brought the bodies before placing them on the slab for their final journey,” she surmised. “The ruts on the ramp are two metres apart, just right for a bier. They must have been worn down by the feet of pallbearers over countless thousands of funerary processions.”

Jack was staring into the depths of the chasm, all his imagination marshalled to conjure up an image of the ritual last performed at this spot millennia before. He had excavated many ancient burial sites, the dead often telling a better story than the detritus of the living, and he had expected their greatest discovery to be a rich necropolis. Now he knew the only mortal remains of the people of Atlantis were encoded within themselves, in the genes of those intrepid seafarers who had escaped the flood and spread the seeds of civilization.

“So this is the underworld of the ancients,” he said, his breath short. “And the Styx was no placid backwater but a burning river of fire.”

“Old Charon the boatman would have taken a raincheck on this one,” Costas said. “It looks like the gates of hell to me. Let’s get out of here before we wake up the god of this place and he reactivates the furnace.”

As they finned up the final section of the ramp, Jack was gasping. His ragged breathing was audible and Katya turned towards him in alarm. Costas had stayed close by and now pulled his friend to a halt.

“Time to buddy-breathe,” he said.

After fumbling briefly behind his backpack he produced a vulcanized hose which he pushed into an outlet on Jack’s manifold. He opened the valve a few turns and there was a hiss as the two systems equalized.

“Thanks.” Jack’s breathing was suddenly easier.

“We’ve got a problem,” Costas announced.

Jack had been concentrating on his breathing but now looked up at the rock face looming in front of them.

“A lava plug,” he said bleakly.

About five metres ahead the ledge terminated at the north-eastern extremity of the chamber. They could just make out an entrance, as wide as the walkway and capped by a lintel. But these features were obscured by a giant clot of solidified lava, an ugly eruption that had oozed into the chasm and left only a small aperture near the top.

Costas turned to Jack. “We’re only eight metres below sea level, within the ten-metre safety margin for oxygen toxicity, so while we’re working this one out we may as well cleanse our systems.”

He switched his and Katya’s computers to manual override and cranked open the oxygen valves on their manifolds. Then he and Jack swam in tandem to the hole and peered into the space beyond.

“The lava tube must have broken through the basalt into the passageway some time after the flood,” Costas said. “The aperture is the result of a gas blowout. If we’re lucky there’ll be a cavity all the way through.”

Jack pulled himself into the jagged slit so his head and shoulders disappeared. Beyond the constriction he could see the cavity opening out like a ventilation duct, the walls mottled with igneous contusions where the gas had exploded through the cooling lava with the force of a jet afterburner.

“There’s no way we’ll get through with our equipment on,” he said. “After the blowout the lava must have expanded as it solidified, narrowing the first few metres to a tunnel barely wide enough for Katya, let alone me or you.”

They knew what they had to do. Jack began to unbuckle his cylinder harness.

“It makes sense for me to go first. You and Katya both still have your reserve. And I’m the one who can free-dive to forty metres.”

“Not with a bullet hole in your side.”

“Let me blast some oxygen into the tunnel,” Jack replied. “I can see undulations in the ceiling that might trap pockets of gas and provide a safety stop.”

Costas paused, instinctively reluctant to expel any of their dwindling supply, but he saw the sense in Jack’s words. He detached a regulator second stage from his backpack and passed it over. With his long reach Jack extended the hose as far as he could into the fissure and pressed the purge valve. There was a thunderous roar as the oxygen erupted into the space and cascaded like white water along the upper surface of the rock.

Costas watched intently as the readout on his contents gauge dropped below fifty bar and the reserve warning began to flash.

“Enough!” he said.

Jack released the purge and placed the regulator just inside the lip of the aperture. As he eased off his backpack and wedged it in a fold in the lava, Costas detached the tape from his back and tied it to Jack’s upper arm.

“Standard rope signals,” he instructed. “One pull means OK. Two pulls means you want another blast of oxygen. Continuous pulls means you’re through and it’s safe for us to follow.”

Jack nodded as he checked to make sure the reel was clear. He would be cut off from the intercom as he would need to retract his visor to access air pockets in the tunnel. He released the safety lock on his helmet and looked across at Costas, who had just confirmed on his computer that they had satisfied decompression requirements.

“Ready.”

“Transfer to regulator.”

As Costas disengaged the umbilical, Jack shut his eyes tight and flipped back his helmet, at the same time shoving the regulator second stage in his mouth and extracting the face mask kept in a side pocket for emergency use. He pressed it to his face and blew through his nose to clear the water, remaining still for a few moments to let his breathing rate subside as the shock of the cold wore off.

After unclipping a hand-held torch, Jack drew himself up to the aperture, Costas following close behind to ensure the hose was not stretched taut. As Jack grasped the lintel he felt an indentation where the lava had folded over the rock surface. His fingers traced the form of a symbol cut deep into the basalt.

He turned towards Katya and gesticulated excitedly. She gave an exaggerated nod before returning her gaze to him, clearly more concerned by his chances of making it through the tunnel.

Jack turned back and relaxed completely, his body suspended from the lintel and his eyes closed. Using the technique of a free diver he breathed slowly and deeply to saturate his body with oxygen. After about a minute he gave the OK signal to Costas and placed his hand over the regulator. He took five quick breaths, then spat it out and launched himself forward in a frenzy of bubbles.

Costas reached out to grasp the tape which was their precious lifeline. As it began to slip through his fingers he spoke quietly under his breath.

“Good luck, my friend. We need it.”