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…”
