4:55 pm.
Damn.
He hadn't realized he'd been reading so long.
Night would fall soon. And with it would come the rapas.
'So? Have you found anything yet?' Nash asked.
'Er…' Race began. He'd become so engrossed in the manuscript that he'd almost forgotten why he was reading it—to find out anything he could about defeating the rapas and getting them back inside the temple.
“Well… ?' Nash said.
'It says that they only come out at night, or at times of unusual darkness.'
Krauss said, 'Which explains why they were active in the crater earlier. It was so dark in there, even during the day, that they were—'
'It also looks like the rapas know that this town is a good food source,' Race said, cutting Krauss off before he could justify his earlier error—an error that had resulted in the deaths of three good soldiers. 'They attacked it twice in the manuscript.'
'Does it say how they came to be inside the temple?'
'Yes. It says that they were put inside the building by a great thinker who wanted to make the temple a test of human greed.' Race looked up at Nash pointedly. 'Guess we failed that one.'
“Solon's temple...' Gaby Lopez breathed.
'Did it say anything about how we can fight them?' Nash asked.
'It did say something about that, two things actually.
One, monkey urine. Apparently all cats hate it. Douse yourself in it and the rapas will steer well clear of you.'
'And the second thing?' Lauren said.
'Well, it was very strange,' Race said. 'At one point in the story, just when the cats were about to attack Santiago, the Incan prince threw the idol down into a puddle of water.
Once the idol came into contact with the water, it emitted a strange kind of humming noise that seemed to stop the cats from attacking.'
Nash frowned at that.
'It was very peculiar,' Race said. 'Santiago described it as sounding like a chime being struck, and it seemed to operate on the same principle as a dog whistle—some kind of gh-frequency vibration that seemed to affect the cats but not the humans.
'The really strange thing,' Race added, 'was that the Incans seemed to know about this. On a couple of occasions in the manuscript it's said that the Incans believed that their idol, when immersed in water, could soothe even the most savage beast.'
Nash glanced at Lauren.
'Could be resonance,' she said. 'Contact with the concentrated oxygen molecules in water would cause the thyrium to resonate, the same way other nuclear substances react with oxygen in the air.'
'But this would be on a much larger scale—' Nash said.
'Which is probably why the monk also heard the humming sound,' Lauren said. 'Human beings can't hear the resonant hum caused by the contact of, say, plutonium with oxygen— the frequency is too low. But since thyrium is a whole order of magnitude denser than plutonium, it's possible that when it comes into contact with water, the resonance is so great it can be heard by humans.'
'And if the monk heard it, then it must have been twice as bad for the cats,' Krauss added pointedly.
Everyone turned to face Krauss.
'Remember, cats have a hearing capability approximately ten times that of human beings. They hear things that we physically cannot, and they communicate on a frequency that is beyond our auditory range.'
'They communicate?' Lauren said flatly.
'Yes,' Krauss said. “It has long been accepted that the great cats communicate via grunts and guttural vibrations that are well beyond the aural perception of humans. The point, however, is this: whatever that monk heard was probably only one-tenth of what the cats heard. That hum ming sound must have driven them crazy, hence the pause it gave them.'
'The manuscript went even further than that,' Race said.
'It didn't just make them pause. The cats seemed to follow the idol after it had been dropped in the water. It was as if they were drawn to it or something, hypnotised even.'
Nash said, 'Did the manuscript say anything about how the idol came to be inside the temple?'
'No,' Race said. 'Not yet, at least. Who knows, maybe Renco and Santiago wet the idol and used it to lead the cats back inside the temple. Whatever they did, somehow they managed to lure the cats back inside the temple and at the same time put the idol inside it.' Race paused. 'It's not entirely inappropriate, really. By placing the idol inside the temple, they merely made it another part of Solon's test of human greed.'
'These cats,' Nash said. 'The manuscript says they're nocturnal, right?'
'It says that they like any kind of darkness—night-time or otherwise. I guess that would make them nocturnal and then some.'
