For days the river took us where it willed, through violent rapids and rocks, until it drove us towards a waterfall. Two rafts were smashed, drowning all on board. Those craft remaining to us were propelled headlong through the waterfall, then along a narrow waterway, inhabited by dragon-like creatures. More of our number were taken.
We left the rafts to cut our way through the jungle. By now the conquerors had become the conquered. Infested with beasts and disease, the forest was so dense that time lost any meaning. Day and night became one. As we marched, snakes bit the soldiers' feet and legs, then disappeared into the thick undergrowth, while unseen beasts lurked in the viridian depths. I soon despaired of finding any city of gold. Death was the only thing we would discover there.
Lost, our numbers depleted, I showed the captain my chronicle in which I had recorded key landmarks, compass bearings and the position of the stars. It will lead us home, I told him. But the captain could not return without gold. 'Nothing too controversial so far,' Zeb mused. 'Carry on.' We struck deeper into the infernal jungle. Weary and in despair, we endured many obstacles before entering a vast cave, a cathedral of rock, seamed with gold. We followed the gold downward to a towering chamber, as hot as any oven, lit by a single opening in the high ceiling. The gold led us lower to a river of fire bridged by a causeway of black rock. We traversed the causeway and entered more caves. The air was poisonous, heavy with brimstone, and the walls dripped burning rain. We covered our mouths, shielded our eyes and went on, but terror gripped me because I feared I was about to enter Hell. Finally I saw light. Then a sweet, eerie sound filled my ears. I rushed to the light and was almost blinded by the beauty of what I saw. This was not Hell, but Heaven on Earth, the Garden of God…
Zeb paused the mouse. 'Still okay?'
'I think so. The seam of gold could have been either true gold or pyrites. The subterranean lava stream and sulphur caves dripping with sulphuric acid are possible geological features and often found together.'
'Okay. A light leads them outside into a garden filled with strange plants unlike any in the outside world, and walled on all sides by steep cliffs. What about the plants?'
Despite his scepticism Ross was responding now to her enthusiasm. 'If the enclosed garden is ringed by lava it could possibly have evolved its unique ecosystem, entirely independent of the jungle outside. A teenager recently discovered a complete prehistoric ecosystem in Israel, sealed off for millions of years. The Ayalon Cave is pitch black, two and a half kilometres long, has its own lake and lies deep under layers of impermeable chalk. Its ecosystem is powered not by the sun but by creatures that oxidize sulphur as an energy source. At least eight new species, which date back millions of years, have been found there.'
'There you go. This ain't so hard, is it?' She scrolled down the text. 'How about the perfectly circular lake in the middle of the garden fed by a stream of glowing water from the forbidden caves at the far end of the garden?'
'A circular lake's not uncommon: there's a perfectly round lake in the middle of the Congo rainforest. The glowing water could be phosphorescence.' Reaching over Zeb's shoulder, he pointed out a picture on Lauren's desk. 'What about these round-bellied naked women who live in the forbidden caves and sing in pure voices?'
'Scholars have always called them the nymphs but in the Voynich they're the Eves.'
'Okay, what are they doing there? And the other creatures featured in the Voynich?'
'You said the garden could have its own unique ecosystem where plants and animals evolved independent of the outside world. The nymphs and other creatures may be like the pigmy humans found on the isolated Indonesian island, or those new species in the Israeli cave.'
'I suppose it's possible.'
Zeb shrugged. 'That's all a hypothesis needs to be.'
He tapped the screen. 'Okay, but this is the part where I start to have problems.' He read aloud: ' 'When the injured soldiers fed from the plants and drank from the lake, their wounds and broken bones healed miraculously. Even those close to death revived and recovered full health.' '
Zeb ran her fingers through her red curls. She wanted to believe in the garden. She loved the idea of its being the core of Gaia's nurturing goodness, Mother Earth's heart, within which anything was possible. But she knew that simply wishing something didn't make it so. She needed a reason to believe. 'Okay, we're still playing hypothesis. What could explain a unique, isolated garden, with its own ecosystem in which the water and plants have miraculous healing properties?'
Ross shrugged. 'Orlando Falcon thought it was a divine place – the Garden of God.'
'But he was a priest. You're a scientist. How do you explain it?'
He looked up at the framed print on the wall above Lauren's desk: a centuries-old map of the world. Large swathes of the ancient chart were marked 'Terra Incognita', unknown land, and its oceans featured drawings of sea monsters with the warning 'Beware! Here Be Dragons.' As Ross studied it, a strange expression appeared on his face, as though he had seen, or thought of, something he couldn't quite believe.
Zeb caught the excitement in his eyes. 'What is it, Ross?' she said. 'Tell me.'
20
Ross didn't answer immediately. He kept staring at the ancient map above Lauren's desk, contrasting it with Xplore's precise geological map of the globe, which showed not only the surface of the entire planet but also what lay beneath. The insight that excited him came from the last time he had used Xplore's map to present his ill-fated ancient-oil theory to Underwood and Kovacs on the day he'd resigned.
He grabbed the mouse from Zeb and returned to the description in Lauren's translation of the lava stream and poisonous caves dripping with burning rain. It reminded him of the toxic conditions prevalent when the world was young, sparking a connection in his mind that was so outlandish it couldn't possibly be valid. Could it? Despite his scepticism, his heart beat faster. It was the one hypothesis that might explain everything. He scrolled forward to the end of the story where the soldiers die while searching for something mysterious, hidden deep within the forbidden caves at the far end of the garden, convinced it's treasure. The scholar priest tries to stop them but all are killed and the stream runs red with their blood.
Ross grabbed Orlando Falcon's book of directions and flipped to the last pages, with the translation of the final section of the Voynich. As he scanned the text he kept seeing, again and again, the words 'el origen', the source. Everything pointed to his hypothesis – however outlandish it seemed.
'What?' Zeb demanded again. Her eyes were huge behind her thick glasses. 'What is it?'
He tried to organize his jumbled thoughts. 'Fact: there was a moment on Earth before which the planet was barren and after which it wasn't. And once you consider the significance of this improbable, miraculous but undeniable moment in its history, anything is possible.'
'You're talking about the time when life began on Earth?'
'Not just when the miraculous spark of life happened, but how it happened and, crucially, where.'
Zeb nodded slowly. 'Okay, so we're talking about when and where life began on Earth. Go on.'
'If, as a growing body of evidence suggests, the seeds of life came from asteroid-borne amino acids hitting the planet four billion years ago and if the place where the seminal asteroid hit the Earth's crust has been preserved – in the same way that three-point-eight-billion-year-old Issua supracrustal rock in west Greenland and four-billion-year-old crust of Acasta Gneisses in north-western Canada have been preserved – then Orlando Falcon's Eden-like Garden of God could be the epicentre of life, the original point of impact from which all life began, somehow frozen in space and time. In the final section, Falcon even mentions something he calls el origen, the source.' He paused, but Zeb said nothing. Her face had paled. 'What's more,' he continued, 'if the garden, or its source, does exist and if it's the point at which all life began, then it might still contain the original primordial soup, the life-giving concentrate, the precursor of DNA – which might explain its strange flora and fauna and its miraculous healing properties.'
There was a beat before Zeb spoke. When she did it was barely a whisper. 'So, like the nun said, something in the garden might cure Lauren?'
'Yes,' he said slowly, as hope seeped through him. If – and it was an enormous if – this bizarre garden was what his hypothesis supposed it might be, not only could he save Lauren but he would uncover one of the holy grails of geology, perhaps the holy grail of all science: the origin of life.
