The Nemesis Origin

XIX

Ethan had ridden some fairly untrustworthy vehicles in his time, but the rickety and unstable motorcycle on which he now squatted pretty much ranked as the worst.

It had taken them two hours to trek around the outside of the lake’s western edge before they had encountered a small village and a local farmer who was willing to take them in his truck to Angkor Wat. A further bumpy hour later, and with Lucy in no better mood, they had arrived close to the massive temples. Ethan had seen images of the complex a thousand times before but even so he was overwhelmed by the sheer size of the ancient city complex. The presence of so much architecture seemed to soften Lucy’s mood a little, although they had no time to stay and investigate the ruins.

The journey further north, upon the ancient motorcycles that Ethan had managed to hire from a local vendor in Angkor Wat, had taken a further three hours after a rest for lunch and now the sun was descending to the west and the battered old engines clattered beneath them as they reached the slopes of Mount Kulen. The road was little more than a rutted clearing of dust and stones and the motorcycle’s suspension had frozen rigid many long decades before. Ethan led the way with Lucy grimly hanging on behind on a second motorcycle and apparently following the blue cloud of haze puffing from the exhaust of Ethan’s machine.

It took another hour of riding over the rough road, cracked and pot-holed from monsoon rains, to reach what the locals called the River of A Thousand Lingas. A popular tourist destination that was silent at this time of the afternoon, its waterfalls crashed nearby and Ethan could see nearby a massive 16th-century reclining gold Buddha carved out of solid rock at Preah Ang Thom.

They rode on along the ever-narrowing tracks, volcanic rocks and muddy courses, carefully crossing decrepit wooden bridges and carving a path through jungle streams that whispered and sparkled in the sunlight beaming down through the canopy above.

At a clearing along the edge of what appeared to be a series of damp, clogged bogs, Ethan and Lucy were forced to abandon the motorcycles. The tracks petered out into a narrow pass alternately rocky or filled with deep, slick mud from where the seasonal rains had thundered down the mountainsides. High reeds concealed large tracts of shallow water that led up to the edge of the mountain, itself enshrouded in jungle and broken cloud. The heat was intense, dense like a blanket against their skin and the humidity high enough that sweat did not evaporate. Despite stocking up with water Ethan recognised the dangers of dehydration in this harsh environment as he made his way between ever thickening banks of foliage with Lucy labouring a short distance behind.

Above them, the once blue sky had become overcast with sullen clouds and across the hillsides Ethan could hear the dull rumble of thunder as though giants were marching in pursuit of them as they entered the jungles.

‘We’re running out of daylight,’ Ethan observed as he looked at his watch and hesitated on the hillside. ‘Another couple of hours and we’ll have to make camp.’

‘We’ll make camp at Mahendraparvata,’ Lucy replied. ‘The previous expedition cleared the area, remember? I don’t fancy camping out in the middle of the jungle, especially if it’s going to rain. I’ve spent enough time getting wet on this little expedition so far.’

Lucy stomped past Ethan and plunged into the foliage. For a moment Ethan was reminded of his time with Nicola Lopez in Idaho, where they had plunged through forests that were cold rather than hot, in pursuit of something not quite human. He shook the thought from his mind as he turned and followed Lucy, keeping a sharp lookout for snakes, spiders and other unsavoury creepy-crawlies that made the jungle their home.

During his time with the Marines, Ethan had spent some months training in the jungles of the Philippines and had developed a healthy respect for the sheer volume of wildlife that called the tropical forests home. Virtually everything that lived here could harm humans in one way or another, from snakes large enough to eat a grown man to scorpions with venom nasty enough to result in the loss of limbs, and spiders the size of dinner plates with fangs an inch long. Once he had actually seen a millipede as long as his arm scuttling through the undergrowth of the jungle, and the sight had sent a shiver down his spine as he had imagined one of those awful creatures plunging into his sleeping bag.

Lucy forged on, either unaware or unafraid of the jungle’s insectoid offerings as she marched in search of the legendary city. Ethan maintained pace with her as they hacked, slashed and clambered their way through the dense undergrowth, Lucy holding a GPS locator in one hand to keep them on track amid the dense jungle. It was her concentration on the locator that made her almost walk into the huge stone statue that suddenly confronted them.

Ethan looked up in awe at the sight of an immense, larger than life-size elephant that seemed to loom out of the forest before them. Lucy checked their position and nodded in satisfaction.

‘We’re getting close,’ she said. ‘Mount Kulen and Phnom Kulen isn’t far away now.’

Ethan glanced about at the jungle and suddenly he began to pick out stone structures hidden amid the dense foliage, isolated pagodas, monasteries and secluded shrines.

‘Mahendraparvata means the Mountain of Indra, King of the Gods,’ Lucy informed him as they climbed. ‘They worshipped this place as where the most superior of all divine beings resided.’

‘I thought that was supposed to be Buddha?’ Ethan asked, more than aware of his ignorance in such things.

‘Most of these temples were dedicated to Shiva, the supreme protector of the empire. Others were erected to worship Vishnu, an icon of universal order and harmony. Shiva had three eyes that represented the sun, the moon and fire, carried a trident in his hand and was borne upon an ox that carried him.’

‘Sounds like a mixture of Satan, Neptune and the Hydra,’ Ethan observed.

‘All the world’s religions have a common origin in much older civilizations,’ Lucy acknowledged. ‘Want to know who first fed thousands of people with nothing more than what he held in his hands? It was Buddha, thousands of years before Christianity was conceived. Vishnu was part of a triune religion with Shiva and Krishna, just like the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Krishna was born on December 25th of a virgin in a stable, an evil king tried to kill him when he was an infant, he preached to the people and predicted he would die to attone for their sins, was killed and resurrected, and all of it long before Christianity.’

‘Don’t shout that in the street in the Bible Belt,’ Ethan advised.

‘It’s the legends that pass down,’ Lucy replied, apparently not hearing Ethan’s last or not caring, ‘their names and locations changed to fit new times and new beliefs. Vishnu also carried a chakra, club and a ball representing the earth, and rode a garuda that was half a man and half an eagle, hardly Christian lore. The Khmers worshipped some pretty weird gods, but what if their representations of those gods was merely their way of explaining something for which they had no Earthly example or point of reference?’

Ethan could think of no sensible answer as he continued to follow Lucy up the hillside through the deep jungle. As they climbed they began to pass isolated vine-covered towers, massive moss-covered statues of elephants and lions, and sprawling carvings of lingas lying at the bottom of the streams. Ethan’s unpracticed eye could detect ornate inscriptions on porticoes and stelae variously standing or lying amid the undergrowth, but Lucy forged on past them with barely a second glance.

He realized belatedly that she was following a nearby small stream that flowed down the mountain into the distant Siem Reap River, and from there along canals to the massive barays and smaller ponds built to store water for the colossal city at Angkor Wat. Mount Kule, he guessed, was home to the quarries that provided the stone that built the immense complex and other temple cities, and the source of the water upon which the city’s population had depended.

‘The city was the birthplace of the Khmer Empire,’ Lucy said as she climbed. ‘It doesn’t get much more important than that. If there’s a place where our mysterious logo might carry a message of importance to us, this will be it.’

Ethan gazed at gigantic stone lions at Srah Damrei and a massive moss-covered elephant at Damrei Krap. There were the brick temples of O’Thma, Prasat Neak Ta and Prasat Chrei, surrounded by long grass and grown over with shrubs. The sun was sinking low towards the mountain tops when Lucy finally broke out of the forest into an open clearing. Ethan stumbled out the forest behind her and looked up, and he instantly froze as his jaw dropped and he surveyed the astonishing sight before him.

The lone tangerine-colored temple tower of Prasat O’Paong emerged from the jungle as though in defiance of nature itself, tufts of long grass sprouting between its stones. Carvings of Shiva, Vishnu and a row of rishis, or wise men, adorned immense lichen-covered stones at its base, half concealed by the vines and creepers snaking down the temple’s walls.

‘This is it,’ Lucy said as she produced her map and studied it closely. ‘The temple itself is a little further along the plateau.’

Ethan followed Lucy past the elaborate construction and back into deep jungle. ‘I thought you said this place had been excavated?’

‘I did, but was only discovered recently and its extent is unknown. It could cover literally hundreds of square acres and we haven’t even begun to examine what it contains.’

Lucy followed her map intensely until she arrived at what looked like the foot of a giant pyramid. Ethan looked up to see a gigantic three-tiered temple, the entire construction smothered in twisted vines as though green water had poured in torrents down its slopes and been frozen in time.

‘This is Prasat Rong Chen,’ Lucy said as he pocketed her map and looked at the temple before them. ‘We have to climb to the summit as the engraving is up there. There is a pedestal that once held the linga where the Brahman priest performed the rite that made Jayavarman II absolute monarch.’

Ethan peered up to where the tip of the temple towered above the canopy. ‘Ladies first,’ he grinned.

Lucy reached up and began climbing, moving from vine to vine as she scaled the side of the pyramid with Ethan close behind. In the intense heat and deep humidity even climbing the moderately-sloped sides of the pyramid required immense effort and they were both sweating heavily when they reached the top. Ethan clambered alongside Lucy onto a narrow plateau covered in thick moss and grass sprouting from between cracks in the stonework. Ahead, in the centre of the plateau, was a stone pedestal that looked not dissimilar to the one they had seen atop the Yonaguni Monument, thousands of miles away in the South China Sea.

Lucy hurried across to the pedestal, which was also entombed in mosses and lichen. She began hunting around the edges of it, peeling off small bits of moss until she found what she was looking for. Ethan watched as she uncovered an engraved image of the sun with its radiating beams of light, once again pointing down toward the earth.

Lucy pulled a compass from her satchel and set it atop the pedestal before she stepped back and used her cell phone to take a picture.

Lucy flipped a finger across the screen of her cell phone and selected the picture she had just taken. Then, she used one of the phone’s apps to place the image alongside the one taken at Yonaguni Island. She turned the phone in her hand and held it out to Ethan.

‘They’re both engraved with lines pointing in the same direction.’

Ethan observed the images carefully and shook his head. ‘Not quite. The engraving at Yonaguni is facing slightly more to the south.’

Lucy nodded, her face enraptured with excitement as she waved the phone up and down. ‘That’s my point, don’t you get it? If Mahandrapavarta’s icon is to the south and is pointing slightly north, and the icon at Yonaguni is vice-versa…?’

Ethan pictured a mental image of the separate locations of where they were standing now in Cambodia and the site of the monument at Yonaguni. Placed on a map of the Earth, he quickly caught on to what Lucy was getting out.

‘They might be referencing a single location.’

‘Not might be,’ Lucy emphasized. ‘Look at the longest line on each image of the sun beams.’

She held the phone out to him once more and Ethan observed that in both cases the longest line from each image of the sun was in a slightly different location.

‘They’re markers,’ Ethan acknowledged. ‘They’re not pointing to each other, they’re both pointing to something else.’

Lucy whirled and set her phone down on the pedestal as she pulled from her satchel a map of the world and unfolded it alongside the images. Using a compass, she measured the angle at which the longest line of the engraving on the pedestal was pointed, and then plotted a line from the position of the Cambodian temple on the map toward the east across the Pacific. Then, she drew a second line, this time from the location of the Yonaguni temple toward the East.

Lucy stood up and looked down at the lines she had drawn on the map. Ethan moved to stand alongside her and his eyes travelled across the lines to where they intersected at a spot on the opposite side of the Pacific Ocean.

‘Peru,’ he said. ‘How on earth would a civilization so old know anything about locations on the far side of the Pacific Ocean?’

‘Exactly,’ Lucy replied. ‘More to the point, how would they know about this particular location?’

‘What’s special about it?’ Ethan asked.

‘It’s a place called Nazca,’ Lucy replied. ‘It’s the site of the famous Nazca lines, enormous hieroglyphs in the desert that are only visible from the air. The civilization that created them is immensely ancient and had no access to aircraft. They could not see their own work in the desert, so why did they create it?’

Ethan shook his head. ‘I have no idea.’ He looked up at the darkening sky above. ‘We need to get out of here while we still can.’

‘You’re damned right,’ Lucy said as she packed her materials away into her satchel. ‘We’ve got a flight to catch if we’re going to figure out what’s over there.’

‘It’s going to be tough to get to Peru from here and not be observed or tracked.’

‘We’re not going to Peru.’

Ethan shot her confused look as she began descending the side of the pyramid, but he obediently followed her down toward the darkening jungle below. They reached the forest floor and Ethan jumped down alongside Lucy and was about to ask what she meant when he heard the click of multiple rifles, the distinctive sound of AK-47s as from the jungle around them emerged a group of men.

‘That’s far enough,’ one of them said as he aimed at Ethan.