Not yet, anyway.
55
The next morning Ross woke early and while the others slept he stole into the forbidden caves. He wasn't sure what he hoped to achieve, only that he had to explore the caves one last time before he left. As he entered, he wondered how old they were. He guessed that radioactive dating would place them at, or near, the dawn of creation.
In the half-light he saw two white figures in the pool, picking shards of crystal rock from the water and gnawing at them with small but impressively sharp teeth. Their translucent flesh seemed to pulse in the gloom. Immediately they saw him, they stopped and opened their mouths in song. Their voices filled the cave, building in a crescendo, then stopped abruptly. They didn't move, just watched him. So he mimicked their singing, note for note.
They opened their mouths again. This time they sang a higher, more complex sequence of notes.
Again Ross copied it.
One of the nymphs came closer. It had red flowers in its frondlike hair. Its mouth widened and a chattering sound came from it, like laughter. Close up the creature was disconcerting. Its large eyes reminded him of a Disney cartoon, but when he looked into them he couldn't see any emotion – any connection. Its mouth, full of sharp animal teeth, confirmed that it was no human. And yet, when he copied its sounds, it responded. He wondered if Orlando Falcon, the brilliant linguist and communicator, had done something similar all those centuries ago. Had he formed a bond with these creatures, especially after the conquistadors had been killed? Were they his only companions while he was stranded in this strange, dangerous paradise? Had he come to see them as a simpler, more innocent version of humanity, harking back to a time before we were corrupted?
Ross tried an experiment. He created his own sound – but as soon as he uttered the first note he knew it wasn't original. He was unconsciously reproducing the alien scales from Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind. But when he stopped, the nymph copied him. Perfectly.
He tried another tune: the James Bond theme. Again the nymph reproduced it immaculately. Now more of them were emerging from the gloom, all keen to watch the parlour game.
He waited and his new friend, the nymph with red flowers in its hair, made another series of sounds. Unlike Ross's movie scores, the nymph's notes sounded random with no discernible tune or melody, the difference between prose and poetry. Nevertheless, he repeated the sequence and the nymphs resumed their laughter-like chattering.
He had begun to hum the Pink Panther theme, when a scream stopped him. The short, piercing sound made his skin crawl. The nymphs fell silent and turned as one to the back of the cave. Ross followed their gaze. In the gloom, among the mass of tubular stems, he saw one of the pods open to reveal a nymph with a huge, distended belly. Between its spread legs, curled in a foetal ball, was another nymph, greyer in colour but not much smaller than the mother – if that was what it was. The 'child' moved, and three of the watching nymphs lifted it from the pod and carried it to one of the pools, where they ground up shards of crystal between their teeth and fed it to the newborn, mouth-to-mouth. As it swallowed their offerings, it brightened to the radiant white of the others.
Four other nymphs walked to the pod and lifted the mother. Its colour was also changing, darkening, like that of a dead fish losing its freshness. The musky, mustard-seed smell he had detected yesterday was stronger now. The creature seemed barely alive but the other nymphs made no attempt to revive it in the pool, as they had with the newborn. Instead, they lifted it on to their shoulders and carried it towards the entrance to the tunnel of blood, where they stopped.
Six other nymphs rushed from the cave and returned with fruit and plants. There was a lull as they formed a procession behind the quartet bearing the dying mother. As if on some invisible cue, they began to sing, a fractured, haunting melody, as they entered the tunnel and climbed the path beside the rushing stream.
Ross looked around the cave. The other nymphs were occupied with the newborn. He hesitated, heart pounding, feeling the crystal in his bag, knowing he should be grateful for what he had and walk away. He couldn't, though. Not yet. He followed the procession into the tunnel of blood.
56
Ross hung back, keeping a discreet distance from the nymphs. The meandering path was wet and uneven but his Timberlands held their grip on the crystal-encrusted steps. As he climbed he became aware of two things: the tunnel was long, and it appeared to get brighter the further he went.
He estimated he had been walking for about fifteen minutes when the nymphs stopped singing. The light was now so bright it seemed to bleach everything. Unable to see without squinting, he pressed himself into a recess in the wall and put on his sunglasses. Now he could marvel at the gilded crystal rock that surrounded him. It was more dramatic even than the amazing formations in the vast Lechugia caves of New Mexico.
Peering out of the recess he saw that the tunnel ahead curved and widened to form a chamber with a small waterfall. The ground there was flat but beyond it the path rose to another level, leading to the light above. On this higher level, by the top of the waterfall, the tunnel widened again to form another small chamber to the right of the main path, its walls pockmarked with a warren of small holes and tunnels. Each was pitch black, beyond the reach of the light, but as he stared at the holes he thought he saw dark shapes writhing within them. Two spots of red flickered, then disappeared into the shadows, reminding him of the crocodile-infested river. A shudder rippled through him.
The nymphs had congregated at the base of the waterfall. Three, laden with the fruit and plants, approached the path to the higher level. As they climbed, the others again burst into song. This time it was more a chant, an incantation: two notes repeated again and again.
As the sound reverberated round the walls, the three nymphs reached the upper level and walked to the right, into the centre of the chamber. They placed the fruit and plants on the ground in front of the holes. Then, as soon as they'd returned to the others, the chanting stopped. Within seconds the upper chamber exploded into a writhing orgy of violence. Long dark shapes shot out of the holes and tunnels and attacked the food. They didn't linger, just tore at the fruit and plants and retreated to their lairs. Then they launched another attack, repeating the frenzied process until there was nothing left. It was over so fast that it was hard to make out what had happened.
When the food was gone and the creatures had retired to their holes, Ross could still see them shuffling restlessly, red eyes staring. The nymphs started their chant again and the creatures froze. This time four nymphs carried the dying one to the same spot where the fruit had been left. It whimpered but didn't struggle when the others laid it down and retreated to the lower level. Again, when the chanting stopped, the creatures twisted out of the walls like missiles, their long worm-like bodies never leaving the holes entirely. This time the feeding frenzy took longer and Ross watched in horror as the dark, armour-plated beasts drilled through their prey, extracting circular chunks of flesh from the nymph, then retreating to their holes and propelling themselves forward again. In seconds the screaming nymph had been shredded. In a little more than a minute it had been consumed.
When it was over the nymphs made their way back down the tunnel, reverting to the same fractured melody they had sung on the way up. Ross pressed himself deeper into the recess to watch them pass. It seemed that even in this miraculous paradise nature had to maintain a balance, however cruel. For every birth there had to be a death. One in, one out.
As soon as the singing receded, he ventured out to where they had been standing and looked up to the next level. Ahead, he could see the tunnel leading to the source of light. To its right was the dark chamber, its walls pocked with tunnels and holes. A jutting shape, which didn't fit with the crystalline rocks, caught his eye. It took him some seconds to see that it was a sword. Its blade was encrusted with crystals but the handle and hilt were clearly recognizable. He looked round and saw, encased within the rocks, a breastplate punched with holes and half of a helmet. All lay only a few yards from the dark holes and in that instant he knew they had belonged to the
