people like me. Priests in feathered regalia, soldiers, farmers, and merchants. Wood smoke hung in the air from hundreds of buts no different from my house. The sound of, infants crying. Drumbeats. All gone. It makes you think, doesn't it?' Chi's gaze was fixated as if the visions in his mind had come alive. 'Well,' he said, pulling himself back into the present. 'I'll show you why I dragged you into the wilderness. Stay right behind me. There are holes all over the site that drop down to old dome-shaped cisterns. Some of them I've marked. I might have a hard time pulling you out. If you keep to the paths you'll be fine.'
Warily eyeing the waist-high grass to either side of the rough trail, Gamay loped after the professor as he made his way across the field. They came to the foot of a mound covered with thick tendrils of vegetation. It was about thirty feet high and sixty feet at the base.
'This is the center of the plaza. Probably a temple to a minor god or king. The summit collapsed, which is what has saved the site from being discovered. The ruins are all below tree line and don't stick up out of the forest. You really can't see this place unless you're standing right on top of it.'
'It's lucky you were hunting in the vicinity' Gamay ventured.
'It would be more dramatic if I stumbled out of the woods onto these ruins in pursuit of a partridge, but I cheated. I have a friend who works for NASA. A spy satellite mapping the rain forest saw a vague rectangular spot. I thought it looked interesting and took a closer look. That was nearly two years ago. I've been back a dozen times. On each visit I clear away more paths, and vegetation from the monuments and buildings. There are other ruins in the surrounding woods. I think it might turn out to be an important site. Now if you'll come this way'
Like a guide conducting a museum tour, Chi led Gamay along the path to a cylindrical structure that had been hidden behind a heavily grown mound. 'I've devoted my last two visits solely to clearing away this building.' They walked around the edifice, which was built of finely fitted brownish-gray stone blocks.
Gamay peered up at the rounded roof that had partially collapsed in on itself.
'Unusual architecture,' she said. Another temple?'
Talking as he worked, Dr. Chi cut away the snaking vines that were boldly trying to reclaim the building. 'No, this is actually a Mayan celestial observatory and time clock. Those ledges and window openings are. laid out so that the sun and stars would shine in according to the equinoxes and solstices. At the very top was an observatory chamber where astronomers could calculate the angles of stars. But here. This is what I wanted to show you.'
He brushed away new vegetation from a frieze about a yard in width that ran around the lower part of the wall, then stepped back and invited Gamay to take a look. The frieze was carved at Mayan eye level, and Gamay had to bend low: It was a nautical scene. She ran her long fingers over a carving of a boat. The vessel had an open deck and a high stern and bow. The stem was elongated into what looked like a pointed battering ram. Billowing from the thick mast was a large square sail. There was no boom, the rope braids holding the top of the sail fastened to a permanent yard, lines sweeping fore and aft to the overhanging stem, a double steering oar. Seabirds flew overhead, and fish leaped from the water near the bow.
The craft bristled with so many spears it resembled the back of a porcupine. The weapons were in the hands, of men wearing what looked like football helmets. Other men rowed with long oars that were angled back along the side of the ship. There were twenty-five rowers, which meant there would have been a total of fifty, counting those on the side not visible. What appeared to be a row of shields hung off the rail. She used the human figures to estimate the approximate size of the craft at more than. one hundred feet.
Moving along the frieze she saw more warships and what appeared to be merchant vessels with fewer soldiers, the decks crowded with rectangular shapes that could have been boxes for goods. Men she assumed were ship's crew stood in the yardarm hauling on lines to trim the sail. In contrast to the helmeted men, they wore odd, pointed headgear. The motifs were varied, but this was clearly a flotilla of merchants being escorted by armed protectors.
Chi watched her walk around the building, an amused gleam in his dark eyes, and she realized he never intended to show her carvings of marine life. He wanted her to see the ship scene. She stopped at one ship and shook her head. On the bow of the boat was a carving of an animal.
'Dr. Chi, doesn't this look like a horse to you?'
'You asked me to show you sea life.'
'Have you dated this?'
He stepped forward and ran his finger along the inscribed border.
'These carved faces are actually numbers. This one represents zero. According to the hieroglyphics that are carved here, these ships were pictured about a hundred and fifty years B.C.'
'If that date is even remotely correct, how could this ship be carved with a horse's head? Horses didn't arrive until the fifteen hundreds when the Spanish brought them in.'
'Yes, it is certainly a puzzle, isn't it?'
Gamy was looking at a diamond shape in the sky over the ships. Hanging from it was the figure of a man.
'What on earth is this?' she said.
'I'm not sure. I thought it was some kind of sky god when I first saw it, but it's none I recognize. This is a great deal to absorb all at once. Are you hungry? We can come back and look at this again.'
'Yes, fine,' Gamy said, as if coming out of a daze. She had trouble pulling herself away from the carvings, but thoughts were buzzing around in her head like a swarm of bees.
A few steps away was a round drumshaped stone about a yard high and a couple of yards across. While Gamay went behind the monument and changed from her jeans to more comfortable shorts she'd brought in her pack, Chi prepared lunch on the stone's flat top. The professor took a small woven mat and cloth napkins from the rucksack and spread them out over the carved figure of a Mayan warrior in full feathered dress.
'Hope you don't mind eating on a bloodstained sacrificial altar:' Chi said with a poker fare.
Gamay was catching on to the professor's morbid humor. 'If the sharp stub I just sat on is any indication, this was once a sundial.'
'Of course,' he said innocently. Actually, the sacrificial altar is over there near that temple.' He dug' into the rucksack. 'Spam and tortilla roll-ups.'
Handing Gamay her neatly wrapped sandwich, Chi said, 'Tell me, what do you know about the Maya?'
She unwrapped the clear plastic and nibbled a bite of tortilla before answering. 'I know that they were violent and beautiful at the same time.' She swept her hand in the air. 'That they were incredible builders. That their civilization collapsed but nobody is certain why'
'It is less of a mystery than some suppose. The Mayan culture went through many changes in the hundreds of years of its existence. Wars, revolutions, crop failures, all contributed. But the invasion of the conquistadors and the genocide that followed put an end to their civilization. While those who followed Columbus were killing our people, others were murdering our culture. Diego de Landa was a monk who came in with the conquistadors and was made bishop of Yucatan. He burned all the Mayan books he could find. `Lies of the devil' he called them. Can you imagine a similar catastrophe in Europe and the damage it would have done? Even Hitler's storm troopers were not so thorough. Only three books escaped destruction that we know of.'
'So sad. Wouldn't it be wonderful if more were found one. day?' Gamay surveyed the plain from their perch. 'What is this place?'
'I thought at first that it was a center of pure science, where research was conducted away from the bloody rituals of the priests. But the more I uncovered, the more I became convinced that it was actually part of a greater plan. An architectural machine, if you will.'
'I don't think I understand.'
'I'm not sure I do, either.' He produced a bent cigarette from his shirt and lit up, saying, 'One is allowed small vices with age.' He took a puff. 'Let me start with the micro. The frieze and the observatory.'
And the macro?'
'The siting I was talking about. I have found similar structures at other sites. Together with other buildings they remind me of a rather large printed electrical circuit'
Gamay couldn't help smiling. Are you saying that the Maya could add computer science to their other accomplishments?' .
'Yes, in a crude way. We're not looking at an IBM machine with endless gigabytes. More like a code machine perhaps. If we knew how to use it we could decipher the secrets in these stones. Their placement is no accident. The precision is quite remarkable, as a matter of fact.'
