Hackett squeezed his wrist. 'How does that feel?'
'Like I said, okay. Now leave me alone.'
'It shouldn't feel okay. What I just did should have made you scream.' He paused a beat. 'If your wrist was still broken.'
Ross sat up and looked at his hand. The swelling and bruising had gone. So had the stiffness and pain. 'Perhaps it wasn't broken.'
'It was a classic break and it's healed months before it should have done. It's not just you. I've had dodgy eyesight since childhood. Now it's perfect. Cured overnight. Twenty-twenty vision. And I haven't used these since I got here.' He took his ventilator and antihistamine pills out of his pocket. Then he took two deep breaths. 'Listen to that. Clear as a bell. With all these flowers my allergies should be having a field day, but my chest and sinuses have never been so clear.'
Hackett pointed to Mendoza, who was sitting by the lake, legs crossed, eyes closed, hands clasped as if in prayer. 'Osvaldo's having some kind of spiritual experience. Keeps crossing himself and muttering thanks. Since Iquitos the guy's been holding his head in pain and chewing painkillers like they're sweets. Not your bog-standard aspirin either, but prescription-strength codeine, which is an opiate, the same family as morphine. Kept telling me he was okay whenever I quizzed him, but he's obviously been in a lot of pain. This morning I woke up and found him crying. Imagine that – a man like him crying! When I asked him what was wrong he said there was nothing wrong with him. He was fine. Really fine. Keeps calling it a miracle.'
Hackett swept his hand round the garden. 'It must be something in the water we drank or the fruit we ate. God, I wish Juarez had made it here. This place is incredible.' He reached for his backpack. 'This is pretty amazing too.' He took out the pewter goblet he had picked up yesterday and handed it to Ross. 'Look inside.'
'I can see a watch.'
'It's mine. I left it in there last night. Look at it.' Ross peered at the face. The second hand was moving – slowly and erratically, but it was moving. 'Now take it out,' said Hackett. Ross did so and the second hand stopped. He dropped the watch back in and it started again. 'Isn't that weird?'
Ross took off his Tag Heuer and placed it in the goblet. Its second hand also came back to life sluggishly. He studied the goblet. 'Old pewter like this has a high tin and lead content. My guess is the tin's high magnetic permeability and the lead's radioactivity-shielding properties give some protection against whatever forces stopped it.'
Ross replaced his watch and flexed his bad wrist. No trace of the excruciating pain he had felt yesterday after he'd pulled Mendoza from the mound of bat droppings. He remembered the passage in the Voynich: the conquistadors had arrived with broken bones and been cured. A shiver ran through him.
Zeb walked over to them. She was barefoot, in jeans and a red T-shirt with Gaia has feelings too emblazoned across her small breasts. Her red hair was dishevelled and her face creased with sleep, but otherwise she looked fresh and rested. 'There's something wrong with my eyes,' she said, squinting behind her thick lenses.
'No, there isn't,' said Hackett, smiling. He took off her glasses. 'You just don't need these now.'
She blinked and her eyes opened wide. 'That's incredible!'
'Isn't it?' agreed Hackett, laughing. 'Bloody incredible.'
Ross left them to marvel and washed his face in the lake. He studied the particles in the water but they were too small to tell him anything. Then he peered down, trying to detect the crystals he had spotted last night. In the daylight, however, they were invisible. He got to his feet and walked round the garden. He saw a small lizard scamper on its hind legs towards a copse. It was vaguely familiar and then he remembered a drawing in the Voynich of what he had supposed was a dragon. How deceptive scale could be.
In the early morning the garden seemed even more magical than it had bathed in yesterday's late-afternoon light. There was a cool dampness in the air and a thin mist hung over the lake, partially shrouding the far cave and the stream flowing from it. He guessed that the sun's rays would burn off the mist when they eventually reached into the garden. He watched Zeb and Hackett go to Mendoza and sit down beside him, sharing their wonder and amazement.
Ross didn't join them. He needed answers. He walked round the garden, studying the cliff walls. The rock wasn't soft like the limestone prevalent in these parts. It was harder and impermeable, almost certainly volcanic. He guessed that it formed a bowl within which the garden sat, surrounded by magma, a ring of fire, sealing it off from the outside world. But it hadn't always been sealed. If his theory was correct there had been a time, billions of years ago, when this place had leaked its life force into a then barren planet, seeding all that was to follow. Then the ring of fire had closed, the bowl of volcanic rock had cooled and hardened, locking everything within. The last leak had been sealed off a thousand years ago, when the spring in the lost city had dried up.
As he wandered round the perimeter, large oval sunflowers and huge bulbous artichoke-like blooms reminded him of South Africa's proteus flower. He saw dog-like creatures in the undergrowth and odd insects, all recognizable from the Voynich. He imagined Orlando Falcon lying in his cell, mentally retracing the steps he himself was now taking, drawing their likenesses in his manuscript. What struck Ross most, though, was not how different everything was from the outside world but how similar. Even though the plants and creatures in this basin had evolved independently of anything outside, it appeared that evolution had arrived at similar solutions: petals, seeds, leaves, eyes, legs. He hadn't yet seen anything completely alien. Especially when he considered the creatures and plants he had discovered on his journey through the Amazon.
He looked back to the mound of stones where Sister Chantal had slept but she wasn't there. A moment later he spotted her standing by the stream at the far end of the lake, near the entrance to the forbidden caves. Sister Chantal looked different. She wore sandals and a white blouse over a white skirt, and she had undone her hair so it fell below her shoulders. The early-morning light lent her an ethereal air and she seemed younger, stronger. Her wrinkles hadn't disappeared and her hair was still streaked with grey, but the contusion on her head and the surface wounds from the jaguar attack had gone. Also, the weariness had left her eyes and her translucent skin glowed. A small bag was slung over her left shoulder. As he approached, she took his hand. 'Your wrist's better.'
He clenched his fist. 'It's fine. That's what I want to ask you about. And about Lauren.'
'Come,' she said. 'Let me explain a few things.' She pointed to the stream and the lake. 'As you've discovered, the water and any produce from the plants in the garden will not only rebalance and refresh the body, but heal any ailments.'
He thought of Lauren's broken neck. 'Heal anything?'
'Most things, it would appear.' She touched her face and smiled sadly. 'The one thing it can't do is make us younger. It can slow, even halt, the ageing process, but not reverse it.'
'Can it cure Lauren?'
'Of course. That's why I brought you here.' She spoke with such confidence that Ross had to blink back tears.
'So what do I do? Take her a bottle of the lake water or some fruit?'
She shook her head. 'I tried that once but when the water or plants are taken from the garden they lose their power. No living thing here can survive outside. The fruit rots and the water goes stagnant. I don't know why. It's as though everything has become so dependent on this place that it must die immediately it leaves. But creatures like us, who have evolved to survive outside its orbit, are revitalized here. However, we can only gain the benefits by drinking the water or eating the produce in the garden.'
'So I have to bring Lauren here?'
She smiled. 'No. There's another way.' She pointed behind her to the dark opening whence the stream came. 'Come, I'll show you.'
She took his hand and led him into the forbidden caves.
52
As Ross followed Sister Chantal along the stream to the forbidden caves trepidation must have shown on his face.
