Evil Star

NIGHT IN THE DESERT

They drove out as the sun began to set. Professor Chambers was behind the wheel. Richard was next to her with Matt, Pedro and Atoc in the back of the soft-top jeep. They were planning to go off-road, but it was uncomfortable enough already. The vehicle had rock-hard suspension, which meant they felt every bump and crack in the road. Although the windows were closed, dust came in underneath the roof flaps and it was often hard to breathe. The engine was deafening and made the seats vibrate. It was like travelling in an oversized 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 plane-loads of tourists buzzing over our heads every ten minutes.”

“Won’t there be guards?” Richard asked.

“There are meant to be. But there’s never enough of them and the 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.”

Matt glanced at Pedro who was looking out of the window, even though there was very little to see. “OK?” 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 was 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 stones 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 last part,” she said. “There are 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.

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 undiscovered 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 decipher. Only from above would the pictures become visible. He had seen them clearly from the plane. Now he was among them they had disappeared.

“Look here!” Professor Chambers called out.

She turned on the torch and pointed it down. The beam of light picked out tyre 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 tyre tracks for a short distance, then swung the torch around. Two cars had come. This was where they had stopped. There were dozens of footprints. Several people must have got 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 perfectly 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 further into the desert. After about two hundred metres, they came to an area where some sort of digging had obviously taken place. The earth was loose. And in the light of the torch, the colour was quite different.

“This is it!” Richard said.

“Yes.” Professor Chambers handed him the torch. “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 torch for the others.

But the earth, already disturbed once, came away easily. In just a few minutes, they had dug a trench half a metre 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 only let out 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 the ground with a loud clang. “There is something…” he said.

Richard and Matt stopped and went over to where he was working. He had struck some sort of brickwork.

“Be careful!” Professor Chambers called. 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 four of them began to scoop away the earth, using the side edges of their spades. Professor Chambers came back over with the torch. Something flat and square had been revealed. She swung the light over it and saw a brick platform, decorated with a design in the centre. 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 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 metres 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 torch 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 Primus stove and Professor Chambers filled five mugs with hot, sweet tea made with mint leaves that she had picked from 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 bloody 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 everything 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 from the moment that I first saw them, and at the time I thought it was because they were so beautiful… 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 Nazcan 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 that 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.

“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 nor 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 the fifth of April and time to start planting the grain or whatever. Easy enough! But later on, I started to think about it more. 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 upwards. His eyes were searching 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 complicated.

“As I was saying, I wondered if all the stars could align with 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 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 join-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 only in exactly the same position 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. Suppose 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. It would explain why they had to be drawn in the first place.”

“And you think the lines will align with the stars two nights from now?” Richard asked.

“I was never able to test my theory before now because I never had an observation platform. Don’t forget that this desert covers five hundred square kilometres! I had to know exactly where to stand to see the stars in their right position.”

“And now you do.”

“Yes…”

Suddenly, Pedro sprang to his feet.

“Pedro?” The professor looked at him. “Que te pasa?”

Matt stood up too. “I heard something just a moment ago,” he said.

The Primus stove was still burning, the little gas jet throwing a blue glow across the ground. The jeep stood where it had been parked. The night had grown cool and now there was a faint touch of breeze in the air. Matt looked up at the sky, at the millions of glistening stars. For a moment, he thought he saw two tiny green lights. He shook his head. There was no such thing as a green star.

“You’re imagining things,” Richard said. “There’s nothing out here.”

Unwillingly, Pedro and Matt sat down again. They couldn’t leave until they had covered their tracks and they weren’t ready to begin work again yet.

“The platform marks the exact position where you have to stand to see the alignment of the stars,” the professor continued. “That’s what it said in the verse you showed me. Before the place of Qolqa, there will the light be seen…”

“The light that is the end of all light.” Matt finished the poem.

Professor Chambers nodded gravely. “There you have it again. This is the place. And we also know the time. Two days from now. Inti Raymi.” “That’s when the gate opens.”

“Except we don’t know where the gate is,” Richard cut in. “There are no stone circles in the desert.”

“What makes you think it has to be a stone circle?”

Suddenly Atoc cried out and pointed. And there they were again – two green lights, burning in the air high above them, but already moving downwards. Matt stared into the darkness. There was something large and bulky behind the lights. He could make out wings.

There was a ghastly shriek. Matt dived onto his stomach as an enormous bird plummeted towards him, steel-like claws reaching out for his face. He felt a searing pain in his shoulder, heard the cloth of his shirt tear as the claws ripped through. Then it wheeled away and the desert was silent once again but for the beating of its wings in the night air.

Matt rolled over and got dizzily to his feet.

“Que era?” Pedro demanded.

“It was a condor,” Professor Chambers said. “But it’s impossible. There are no condors in this part of Peru.”

Once again, Matt remembered what the amauta had said in the lost city.

“ The birds fly where they should not fly.”

Condors. In the Nazca Desert. At night.

“It’s coming back!” Richard shouted.

There was a second scream and a thudding in the air. All of them fell back as the monstrous bird rushed into them again, its green eyes blazing. The bird was black and grey with a thick white collar of feathers around its neck, the rest of its plumage hanging off its body like a ragged cloak. Its beak curved from its head like a dagger, and its claws were outstretched with points that were as sharp as a knife. For a moment it was low down between them and they felt the air beat against their faces. There was a smell of rotting meat. Then it swooped upwards, disappearing into the darkness.

Richard snatched up the Primus stove as if it were a weapon, although he knew that the tiny flame would do no good. “Get into the jeep!” he shouted. “We have to move…”

“Watch out!” Matt warned.

A second bird had dived down, aiming for Richard. The journalist dropped to one knee and its claws missed his head by centimetres. Its huge wings beat at the air, making the flame dance. Like the other bird, it stank of death and decay.

“The jeep!” Richard shouted.

A third condor swooped out of the sky. Then a fourth and a fifth. Suddenly the entire sky seemed to be filled with shrieking, savage creatures. Atoc shouted. One of the condors had landed on his shoulder. Matt stared in horror as it twisted round and began to attack Atoc’s neck, ripping skin and flesh with its beak. Atoc tried to beat it off but it refused to let go. Blood was pouring from his neck and down his shirt. Matt ran forward. He had picked up a spade and with all his strength he swung it, slamming the metal end into the bird, barely centimetres away from Atoc’s head. He felt the jolt as the spade came into contact with flesh and bone. The bird was smashed to the ground, its own neck broken, but still it wouldn’t die. It thrashed around, its wings beating uselessly. Its beak was sticky with Atoc’s blood.

“Matteo!”

It was Pedro who had yelled. Another bird had landed on his back, its claws acting like grappling irons. It was pecking at his head, over and over again, its beak disappearing into his hair. To Matt it seemed as if the boy and the bird had become one. All he could see was Pedro’s arms flailing about, with two gigantic wings spreading from his back.

Richard saved him. With one hand, he ripped the bird off Pedro’s shoulders, then shoved the Primus stove into it with his other. The blue flame touched the feathers and the bird seemed to explode as the fire took it instantly. It screamed again and again. Then it collapsed to the ground, kicked its legs feebly and lay still.

The stove had gone out.

“Are you all right?” Richard shouted.

Pedro touched the back of his head. When his hand came away, there was blood on his fingers.

“We have to get to the jeep…”

Professor Chambers was already there. So far she hadn’t been touched. She fumbled the keys out of her pocket then threw herself into the driving seat. Even as she reached out to close the door, another condor swooped down, aiming for her hand. She slammed the door in its face, pushed the keys into the ignition and turned the engine on.

Richard, Pedro and Matt all had spades. Together they made for the jeep, swinging at the air, keeping close as a group. Matt was supporting Atoc, who seemed dazed, his hand clamped to the wound on his neck. Blood was trickling between his fingers. There was a roar from the engine and the jeep charged towards them and stopped. Matt helped Atoc into the front seat. He saw Richard lash out with his spade. There was a screech and a body thumped into the ground.

Somehow, the three of them managed to get into the back.

“This is impossible!” Professor Chambers cried.

“Just get us out of here!” Richard yelled back. “We can talk about it later.”

The professor slammed her foot onto the accelerator and the jeep’s wheels spun. For a horrible moment, Matt thought they were stuck. But then the tyres found a grip and they were propelled forward, heading towards the highway.

But it wasn’t over yet.

Even as Matt slumped gratefully back, something hammered into the roof of the jeep and the next thing he knew, there was a ripping sound and the head of a condor burst through. At the same time, two more condors swung into the sides, holding on with their claws and tearing through the soft material with their beaks. The jeep zigzagged. Matt and Pedro were thrown left and right. It seemed that Professor Chambers had lost control. But she had seen what was happening and was deliberately wrenching the wheel, trying to throw the birds off.

Richard punched upwards. His fist caught one of the condors in the stomach and at once it was gone, whipped away into the night. Matt felt a sharp pain and cried out. Another condor had managed to get halfway in. It was pecking at his face and had drawn blood on his cheek. A couple of centimetres higher to the left and it would have taken out his eye.

“Can you go any faster?” Richard demanded.

“Not on this surface! I’m going as fast as I can!” the professor shouted.

“We’re not going to make it!” Richard looked up. The roof had been torn through in several places. There were still condors attached to the jeep. He could see them through the gaps. He heard another hideous, unearthly screech and yet another condor burst through. It was inside the jeep – a stinking, flapping ball of bone, feather and claw. It lunged at Matt.

Suddenly there was an explosion, so loud that it was deafening. Pedro jerked back in shock. Matt felt his ears ringing.

It was Atoc. He had one hand clasped over the wound on his neck but in the other he was holding a gun. He had never even mentioned that he had it. Now, when it was almost too late, he had used it, firing at point blank range into the bird’s body. The bullet tore through it. The condor’s beak snapped open, impossibly wide. The light in its eyes went out. Atoc fired five more times, aiming at different points of the roof. The other condors fell away.

And then they hit the highway. Matt felt the tyres bump onto the asphalt and a moment later they had picked up speed. He looked back. A few condors were still circling but they were already far behind.

“I… sorry,” Atoc said. “I leave gun in jeep.”

“Are you OK?” Richard asked.

Atoc nodded. “Not hurt too bad.”

“I have bandages at the house,” Professor Chambers said.

The jeep tore down the Pan-American Highway leaving a cloud of dust in its wake. The last condors watched it disappear, then wheeled back into the darkness from which they’d come.