Evil Star

PROFESSOR CHAMBERS

They met the Inca prince the next morning – the four of them sitting cross-legged once again in front of his throne. Richard, Matt and Pedro were to leave before midday.

“I have spoken to Professor Chambers,” Huascar said. “And she has agreed to see you. I’m afraid it means another long journey for you, all the way back to the western coast. The professor lives in Nazca. Atoc has asked me if he can go with you.”

“I translate for Pedro,” Atoc said. “But also my destiny now is with you. I must finish what my brother began.”

The Inca prince gazed at them for a moment and Matt wondered if there wasn’t a tinge of sadness in his eyes. “We will meet again one day at Vilcabamba,” he went on. “What is important now is that you are safe. Salamanda may have the police and much of the government on his side, but my people are everywhere and now that we have found you, we will watch over you. Is there anything you wish to ask?”

Richard and Matt exchanged a glance. They had so many questions in their heads. How could a thousand-year-old image so resemble Pedro? One of them was going to be hurt, perhaps killed, at the gate. But which one? And – for Matt, the most burning question of all – if the Old Ones were going to break through the gate as the Inca had prophesied, was there any point even trying to stop them?

But neither of them spoke. Somehow Matt knew that there were no easy answers. He felt as if he had fallen into a fast-flowing river. If he struggled or tried to get out, he would waste his strength and drown. All he could do was swim with the current and see where it took him.

Huascar stood up and raised his hands, palms forward. “I wish you a safe journey and success,” he said. “May the spirit of Viracocha go with you.”

The audience was over. Richard, Atoc, Matt and Pedro stood up, bowed and began to leave.

But it wasn’t quite over yet.

“Senor Cole,” the prince called. “I would like, if I may, to have one last word with you? But in private…”

Richard stopped. “Don’t worry,” he whispered to Matt. “If he wants me to stay behind in Vilcabamba, the answer’s no.”

He waited while Matt, Pedro and Atoc left. The Inca stepped down from his throne. The amauta was also there. Richard hadn’t seen him enter the throne room.

“What are you thinking?” Huascar asked.

“One day I’ll write about all this,” Richard said. “Maybe you’ll try to stop me, but I will anyway. What difference will it make? Nobody will believe me. When I look back, I may not believe it myself.”

“Let me ask you this question. Why do you believe the boy was chosen?”

“Matt?” Richard shrugged. “He’s one of the Five…”

“And Pedro, too. But why you?”

“Was I chosen?” Richard couldn’t help smiling. “The way I see it, Matt just happened to stumble into my office in Greater Malling. If I hadn’t been there that day, I wouldn’t even have met him and it would be someone else standing here now. Kate or Julia. They both worked at the newspaper. Maybe it would have been one of them.”

“No, Senor Cole. You are wrong. You also have a part to play in this adventure, and that part was written for you long before you were born.”

“Are you saying I have no choice?”

“We all have choices. But our decisions are already known.”

The Inca held out a hand and the old Indian, the amauta, produced a small, leather bag with two drawstrings so that it could be worn across the shoulder or around the neck. “I have a gift for you, Senor Cole,” the Inca said. “Do not thank me because one day, I assure you, you will curse me for giving it to you. But nonetheless it is yours. It was made for you.”

The amauta opened the bag and handed Richard a golden object, about fifteen centimetres high. Richard found himself holding a statue of a god. At least, that was what it looked like at first. It was an Inca figure with staring eyes and a grim-looking face, its arms folded across its chest. It was standing on top of a triangle that tapered down to a sharp point. The whole thing was made of gold, studded with semi-precious stones: jade and lapis lazuli. Richard had no idea how old it was but guessed it must be worth thousands of pounds.

Then he realized how he was holding it. Quite instinctively, he had let it rest in the palm of his hand with the point jutting out. It wasn’t just a statue. It was some sort of knife.

“We call this a tumi,” the Inca explained. “It is a sacrificial knife. The edges of the blade are not sharp but the point is. You must look after it and keep it safe.”

“It’s beautiful,” Richard said. He remembered the Inca’s warning. “Why wouldn’t I want to have something like this? And what do you mean

… it was made for me?”

“This tumi has another name,” Huascar said. He wasn’t answering Richard’s questions but then, it occurred to the journalist, he never did. “It has always been known as the invisible blade. You can see it, but it cannot be found. When you carry it with you, nobody will notice it is there.”

“How about in airports?” Richard was thinking of the metal detectors. They’d go crazy if he tried to walk through with this.

“You can take it wherever you wish. No policeman or security person will ever find it on you. It is part of you now. And one day, you will find it has a use.”

“Well… thanks.” Richard reached out and took the leather bag. He dropped the knife in and closed it. He was surprised at how light it all was. “Thank you for helping us. And thank you for finding Matt.”

“Good luck, Senor Cole. Look after Pedro and Matteo. They have need of you.”

Richard turned and walked out of the throne room. The prince of the Incas and his amauta watched him until he had gone.

The helicopter took them to Cuzco, where a five-seater Cessna plane was waiting to carry them on the longer leg of the journey to Nazca. Matt was amazed how smoothly everything had gone. There were no passports needed, no travel documents. They simply landed at Cuzco Airport, walked across the tarmac and took off again. Not one official so much as glanced in their direction. It seemed that the Incas still had plenty of influence in Peru – and that while Matt was with them he would be safe.

The flight took three hours. Pedro seemed more comfortable in the plane than he had been in the helicopter. He had barely spoken since the golden disc had been shown to him in Vilcabamba and Matt wondered what was going on in his head. In the seat next to him, Richard was also unusually quiet. He hadn’t told Matt what the Inca prince had said to him and Matt had decided not to ask. But obviously it hadn’t been good news.

Atoc had flown the helicopter, but on the plane he was just a passenger, sitting on his own at the back, deep in thought. The pilot of the Cessna was behind the controls, almost completely invisible in a leather jacket, flying helmet and goggles.

He had said nothing as they came on board and nothing during the flight but suddenly he called out, shouting to make himself heard above the noise of the engine. Atoc leant across the aisle.

“Look out of windows,” he said. “We pass over Nazca Lines.”

The plane dipped, dropping ever lower as if about to land. Matt felt his stomach lurch. They were well below the level of the clouds, flying over a flat, empty desert and he wondered what he was meant to see. The Nazca Lines? There didn’t seem to be anything here.

And then he caught his breath.

There was a line, drawn in the ground, running dead straight for as far as his eye could see. It must have been carved in the earth and it couldn’t have been done by chance. It was too precise. Next to it he saw a shape, a huge rectangle, narrower at one end than the other, at least a mile long. A runway? No. Like the line, it had simply been drawn in the ground.

“Over there…” Richard said, leaning across him.

There were more lines, running in every direction, crossing over one another, all as straight as arrows. Matt had never seen anything like it. The whole desert was nothing less than a fantastic doodling pad on a gigantic scale. He couldn’t imagine how it had been done or when. Nor did he understand how the lines had survived when surely the wind should have blown them away.

The pilot called out to them again and the plane tilted and banked. Now Matt saw pictures, even more incredible than the lines. The first showed a hummingbird. It wasn’t drawn naturalistically, but even so it was unmistakable, with a long, pointed beak, wings and a tail. Matt tried to work out its size. It was hard to say, but if he could see it so clearly this high up, it must be at least a hundred metres long.

One by one, a fantastic menagerie of creatures appeared on the surface of the desert as the plane passed directly overhead. There was a monkey with a spiralling tail, a whale, a condor and a huge spider with a bloated body and eight legs reaching out. Matt recognized the spider. It was identical to the one he had seen on the page Salamanda had photocopied from the monk’s diary.

The drawings were simple, almost childlike. But no child could possibly have produced them on this scale. Each creature must surely have been the work of dozens of men. And there was something very precise about the way each one had been executed. The legs of the spider, for example, were mirror images of each other, as were the wings of the bird. Every line was straight. Every circle was perfectly formed. It was obvious even at first glance that the entire tapestry had been produced with mathematical precision.

A single road ran through the centre of the desert, actually dissecting some of the lines. The Pan-American Highway. It was completely straight too, but next to the drawings it was cold and lifeless – a piece of modern vandalism cutting through a work of ancient art.

The pilot turned in his seat, pulling off his helmet and goggles. And that was when Matt saw that it wasn’t a man but a woman, about fifty years old with a square, rather plain face and long, almost colourless hair. She wore no make-up and it would have done little good if she had. Long exposure to sun and desert winds had wrinkled her skin beyond hope. But she had lively, bright blue eyes. She was smiling.

“So what do you think?” she called out.

Nobody spoke. They were all of them too surprised.

“I’m Joanna Chambers,” the woman said. “I heard you wanted to see me so I thought I’d come and collect you myself.” The plane juddered, caught in an air pocket, and briefly she returned to the controls. Then she turned round again. “They told me you’ve come to Peru looking for a gate,” she went on. “Well if there really is such a thing… if the gate exists and if it’s about to be opened, you’d better take a good look here. Five hundred square kilometres of some of the emptiest, driest desert in the world, and that’s where your gate is to be found.”

Professor Joanna Chambers lived about a mile from the small, pretty airport that mainly served tourists wanting to visit the Nazca Lines. She had one of the most beautiful houses Matt had ever seen: a low, white building with a green tiled roof and a broad veranda shaded by a colonnade. It had been built in a garden the size of a park, where llamas wandered freely across the lawn and dozens of birds filled the air with colour and song. A low, white wall surrounded it, but there was no gate, no guards. Everything about the place suggested that visitors were always welcome.

Richard, Matt, and Pedro with Atoc beside him, were sitting in the dining room, eating a late lunch of cold meat and fried yuca chips – which were like potato only sweeter. The room had a bare tiled floor and a fan, and led directly onto the veranda. The professor was at the head of the table. Now that Matt could examine her more closely, he saw she was a large, rather masculine woman, though not as unattractive as he had first thought. She looked like the sort of woman who should have been teaching gym at an expensive girls’ school. She had changed into white trousers and a baggy white shirt tucked in at the waist. She had a bottle of iced beer in one hand, a thin cigar in the other. The smell of its smoke hung around them.

“I’m very pleased to meet you,” Professor Chambers said. “You’re welcome to my house.”

“Nice place,” Richard muttered.

“I was fortunate to be able to buy it. I’ve made a certain amount of money out of writing books. About Peru – and in particular the Nazca Lines.”

“What are the Nazca Lines?” Matt asked.

Chambers puffed on her cigar and the tip glowed an angry red. “I find it astonishing that you haven’t heard of them,” she remarked. “They just happen to be one of the great wonders of the ancient world. I’m afraid it’s all part of this dumbing down. English schoolchildren! They don’t seem to teach you anything these days.”

“I haven’t heard of them either,” Richard said.

“Bizarre!” The professor swallowed smoke the wrong way and burst into a fit of coughing. She took another swig of beer and sat back in her chair. “Well, I’m not going to give you a history lesson. Not yet, anyway. First I want to know about you. I got a telephone call from a very special friend. Apparently you’ve been to Vilcabamba?”

Nobody said anything. They didn’t know how much she knew.

“I’m green with envy!” Professor Chambers exclaimed. “I know that the Incas survived. They consider me their friend and I’ve spoken with them frequently. But I’ve never been to their lost city. As far as I know, nobody has – unless they have pure Inca blood – apart from you three.” Then she nodded at Matt and Pedro. “They must think very highly of you. I can assure you, it’s a great honour.”

“They are Gatekeepers,” Atoc muttered. He seemed offended by the way Professor Chambers had spoken.

“Gatekeepers! Yes, of course! Two of the Five! The Old Ones…”

“You know about that too?” Richard asked.

“I know a great deal about a great many things, Mr Cole.” She reached forward and took a grape from a bowl, then flicked it out of the window. A large tropical bird swooped down and caught it. “And yes, I had heard stories about the Mad Monk of Cordoba and this alternative history of his. I was never sure whether to believe it or not, but now that these children have turned up, I suppose I better had! Now what about this page of yours? The one from the diary?”

Matt had it in his pocket. He took it out and gave it to her. She read it briefly once, then again. “Well, some of this is fairly straightforward,” she said. “The place of Qolqa. Inti Raymi, that’s only two days from now. Doesn’t leave us a lot of time. I’m not sure about this white bird, though. It could be a condor, I suppose…”

“What about a swan?” Matt said.

“A swan? What makes you think of that?”

“I heard Salamanda talking about a swan,” he explained. He could have mentioned his dream but decided not to. “He said it’s to be in position. At midnight.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

Professor Chambers had irritated Matt and she saw it. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s just that it seems so unlikely. There’s a condor and a hummingbird in the Nazca Desert. You saw them this morning. But there’s no swan. As far as I know, there are no swans in Peru.”

“That’s what he said,” Matt insisted.

“What about the rest of the poem?” Richard asked.

“Well, the whole page refers to the Nazca Lines. There’s no doubt about that. The place of Qolqa, for example…” She stopped herself. “There’s no point talking about the Nazca Lines until you know what they are, so I’m going to give you a history lesson after all. It would take me a week to describe them to you, and even then I would only scratch the surface. But we don’t have a week. And anyway, young people these days have no concentration. So let me try and put it as simply as I can.”

Professor Chambers got up and helped herself to another beer, flicking the cap off with a penknife. Matt was almost surprised that she didn’t use her teeth.

“There are many mysteries in the world,” she began. “Even now, in the twenty-first century. Stonehenge. The Pyramids. Uluru, in Australia. There are all sorts of places and things – some of them man-made, some of them natural – that science can’t explain. But if you ask me, the Nazca Lines are the biggest mystery of the lot.

“Let’s start with the Nazca Desert. It’s huge. It’s hot. And it’s empty. About two thousand years ago, the ancient Indians of Nazca decided to trudge out here and draw a series of extraordinary pictures in the ground. They did this by removing the darker stones from the surface of the desert and exposing the lighter soil underneath. There’s almost no rain in Nazca and very little wind. That’s how the lines have survived.

“Are you with me so far?” She glanced at Atoc, who was translating rapidly for Pedro. He nodded.

“Good. Well, some of these pictures are very beautiful. You saw them from the plane. There are animals – a whale, a condor, a monkey, a hummingbird and a huge spider. And there are triangles, spirals and star shapes, as well as hundreds of perfectly straight lines, some of them stretching for up to twenty-five miles.”

She took a quick swig of beer.

“Now, this is where the mystery begins. The Nazca Lines can only be seen from the air! In fact, they were only discovered in 1927 when one of the first aeroplanes in Peru flew over them. I wish I’d been on board, that’s all I can say! Anyway, obviously the Nazcan people didn’t have planes. So the question is – why go to all the trouble of making the lines and the pictures if they’d never be able to see them?

“There have been all sorts of theories,” Professor Chambers went on. “One writer believed that the lines were some sort of airport for spaceships from another planet. It’s true that one of the pictures does show a man with a round head and some people believe it to be an astronaut. A lot of people think they were drawn for the benefit of the ancient gods. They would be up in the sky, so they’d be able to see them. My own feeling has always been that they are in some way connected to the stars… perhaps they were used to forecast stars. Or perhaps…” She paused. “I’ve often wondered if they weren’t put there to warn us about something.”

Her cigar glowed red. Smoke crept up the side of her face. She seemed to be deep in thought. But then, abruptly, she sat down again.

“Many theories. But the point is – nobody knows for sure.”

“Is the place of Qolqa in the desert?” Matt said.

“Yes, it is.” Professor Chambers nodded. “Once again, you should have seen it from the plane. Qolqa is a word in Quechua, the ancient language of Peru. It means ‘granary’. And it’s the name given to the great rectangle we flew over this morning.”

“Before the place of Qolqa…” Matt read out the second line of the poem. “That means the gate must be in front of the rectangle!”

“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 earth 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 thousand times and I’ve never seen a platform.” Professor Chambers tapped ash into a saucer on the table. “Mind you, it could be buried,” she muttered. “I suppose that’s always a possibility.”

“Are you sure there’s no swan?” Richard asked.

The professor slammed down her cigar, extinguishing it. “Mr Cole!” she exclaimed. “The day I began studying the Nazca Lines, you were still in nappies. 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, which is to say, 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 everything away. And yet here we have one of the last, great mysteries. A whole desert filled with drawings that nobody understands. It’s my sole ambition 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. 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 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. That’s when the gate is going to open.”