CHAPTER THIRTEEN
December 19, 2012 AD – 12:59 PM,
Mayan Archeological Dig, Yucatan
18:59 GMT
• • • • •
“Hang on.”
Marissé stopped abruptly, and Jacinto almost ran into her from behind. Before she started off into the pitch black darkness in front of her, she checked her watch one more time.
She first checked it when she and Jacinto returned to camp to get the equipment. They’d started into the pyramid about an hour after the aurora light show ended and everyone went home. They were back at the camp a half hour after they entered the pyramid and found the secret passage. Then they were back in the pyramid in under twenty minutes with arms full of equipment. She and her favorite Cuban grad student only marked off the body of the Mayan warrior in front of the hidden entrance. They would do the others later. Once they had it marked off, they photographed the body and the scene in detail, but quickly.
Then they laid out the specialized body bag that would wrap around and protect the almost five-hundred-year-old Warrior Priest. After so many centuries, his body was much lighter due to the loss of fluid weight. They both gingerly moved the hero onto the pure white cloth of his first formal funerary covering. Then they lifted the padded, anti-static, and germ-proof material over the partially mummified warrior. Both Marissé and Jacinto crossed their chests as they zipped the bag over the seated Mayan Priest. Peace and glory would now come to the chosen savior of the God in the Clear Rock. Five centuries after the heroic action of this one man; which were added to the hardworking sacrifice of millions of people over ten millennia; who came together to build this holy-purpose facility and to protect the God that commanded them to build it; after all of that, this one servant of the God of the Maya would finally be laid to rest in peace.
Then Marissé and Jacinto photographed and scaled the section of the carved relief wall that the holy soldier had leaned himself against. It was Jacinto that found the notch-plate in the topmost section of the oblong tunnel plug. They carefully used a rubberized crow bar to wiggle out the hatch covering the hidden corridor. After she had made sure the air inside the tunnel was not foul, she took the air circulator hose and pointed it into the hole. The air did not readily go into the tunnel. This meant that the hole did not open up into a vented room, which was unlikely anyway this deep underground.
But she had to check.
She was a scientist, and that’s what they did. They checked things.
Marissé checked her watch, again. She and Jacinto were now headfirst and prone crawling through the hidden tunnel into the side of the subterranean chamber. Marissé had talked herself into this action by concluding that the deceased and scratched crawler outside the tunnel, must have come out from the tunnel. And since the tunnel did not seem to have any venting holes into another chamber or to the outside, then her conclusion, although tentative, was that the crawler had gone into the hole first and then crawled back out.
‘Hence the reason,’ she thought to herself, ‘I’m now on my hands and knees crawling into a coffin-sized hole toward who knows what.’
Then she heard Jacinto behind her.
“Hey boss, who am I?”
Marissé stopped and looked back over her shoulder as best she could in the cramped square tube of stone. Jacinto had turned off his headlamp and had his flashlight shining up in his face. He looked around as he crawled a little bit forward and put on a metro New York accent.
“Come out to the Coast… We’ll get together… We’ll have a few laughs.” Then he stopped and looked at her. It was the same ole Jacinto, now. “Whaddya think?”
Marissé wasted no time.
“It’s a terrible impression of Bruce Willis in Die Hard, the original movie” Then she turned and started crawling again. “You should quit this whole PhD thing and go into celebrity impersonation. You’ve got a future… just a lousy one.”
Jacinto took it in stride. “You know I would be upset at your harsh Broadway review, but you’ve got such a cute butt.”
Marissé crawled a little faster to increase the distance between her butt and the face of her assistant. She almost didn’t see the end of the tunnel. She quickly stopped moving and held her momentum back as she reached the end of the stone passageway. Jacinto stopped crawling right behind her just as she pulled out her spotlight pen. She peered into the room with the light like a baby looks around the room when first waking up in the morning. Every look and glance was intentional and all-absorbing. Marissé could see the small chamber was closed on all sides. The only way into the room was the tunnel she and Jacinto were in. The small room was also clear of debris or any sign of instability and cave-in activity. After she made the perimeter and ceiling inspections, she turned the light toward the only object in the cramped room.
The bright LED shone like a beam on the pedestal in the middle of the low-ceiling chamber. Then the light dropped straight down. Marissé looked closely below the ledge of the tunnel on the floor. She had learned the hard way that you better not step anywhere in a pyramid that you have not first examined closely. But the stone floor below her looked solid and unbroken. So she reached forward with her hand and pushed on it.
Nothing moved.
There was no secret trap or deadman’s switch which would prevent entrance to the chamber.
Of course, this was exactly what she expected, but you never know until you look and feel. She slid forward into the chamber, and Jacinto followed right behind her. They were still on all fours because the room was too low to stand, and it was slightly too low to stoop over comfortably. A faint whisper breeze also came in from a small diameter ventilation tube that Jacinto dragged in behind him. But the circulation did not reach into the room very far. The two archeologists looked at each other for just a second as they both breathed in the fresh air from the small duct. On an unspoken mark, they crawled over to the pedestal together.
Marissé slipped off the small backpack she wore and pulled out a Sten-Lamp. She unfolded the legs on the lithium-ion battery and extended the pole with the LED head. She switched it on then placed it near the pedestal and pointed the flood light at the side and top.
Jacinto mirrored her on his side. Then they both pulled out small brushes and leaned in to look closely at the carved stone box with their headlamps. The pedestal was covered with the same strange three-dimensional relief carvings and the same unknown glyphs. Marissé was starting to recognize the glyphs. But she still had no idea what they meant. These glyphs appeared nowhere else in all of the Mayan writing known to man, which wasn’t a whole lot of writing to begin with. That’s why the unknown glyphs didn’t worry her all that much; not right now. Although the fundamentals of the Mayan language had been deciphered, the full, diverse writing that existed during the actual reign of the Mayans was just starting to be understood. The current level of knowledge came from only a handful of documents that survived the Spanish Christian purge of the Mayan Kingdom and was actually not much more than a beginner level. As more examples of ancient Mayan writing were discovered, new glyphs were expected.
“Hey Boss?”
‘That, on the other hand, was unexpected,’ Marissé thought to herself as she looked up from the spot she had been inspecting.
Jacinto had his head below the edge of the carved top on the other side of the pedestal. When he stuck his head up, he actually looked excited. Unlike how he looked when Marissé had informed him that they were about to climb into the hole and crawl into the mountain. He wasn’t excited at all, then. But now, Jacinto had a grin that went from ear to ear.
“You’re not gonna believe this. Did you bring that piece of rock from between the legs of our creepy crawler outside?”
Marissé slid around the pedestal to him. Then she reached into the pocket on her shorts and retrieved the curved stone. Jacinto pointed to a spot near the top edge of the carved pedestal. As both of their headlamps and hand lights converged on the stone top, the hole in the carv
ing glared out at them. Marissé reached out with the rock and held it in front of the hole.
‘It obviously goes right here,’ she thought to herself.
She could see how the curves matched perfectly, but she couldn’t get it into the place where it went. She pulled it back and slid forward to look closely at the rock carving. Then she leaned down and looked under the broken section. Suddenly, she popped her head up then snapped it toward Jacinto.
“There’s a seam under here. This is a top… The piece broke off before they finished putting it on. That’s why it won’t fit in now.”
She quickly crawled back over to the other side and grabbed the top of the pedestal. “Lets see if we can budge this thing.”
“Don’t you wanna take pictures first?”
She knew that she should. But first she wanted to see if they needed more equipment.
“Nah… Let’s just see if we can move it. We can document everything in a minute.”
Then she stood up and bent at the waist over the edge of the pedestal top. Jacinto carefully bent over the top opposite her. They had practiced picking things up together many times. It only made sense that an archeology field team would be able to move large, heavy items with only their bodies and leverage, which was what they used now.
On the count of three, they grunted and lifted up on the stone cover. It moved up and slid to the side just enough to catch the edge and not slip back down. They both suddenly thought there had to be something under this top. Otherwise, why would they have put it here. As they rested for a moment and leaned their weight against the pedestal, Marissé had a follow-up thought.
“This thing is too big to move it in here. They had to build this room around this box.”
“Well, hopefully that means something valuable is inside,” snapped Jacinto. “Come on, let’s get it open.”
Marissé smiled as she got into position, again. This time they grunted after the count, and the heavy top slid about a foot-and-a-half to the side with the grating sound of stone on stone. When they both relaxed for the rest interval, they looked over and saw a deep opening in the smooth pedestal underneath the sliding cover. The lights from their headlamps threw a dark set of shadows into the rectangular hole’s interior. Then they both got the same idea at the same time. They leaned forward and pointed their headlamps into the hole.
The bluish white light from the low energy bulbs shone over the dark carved mahogany of the box, like pale sunlight from a pair of miniature stars. It was the first light to touch the box in almost five centuries.
Marissé slid over in front of the opening. She put her hands on the edge of the stone top then pushed her weight into it with her legs, and the top slid another six inches to the side. Then she leaned over the table and gingerly reached inside the hole with her flashlight. She quickly looked around the edges with the LED light and her headlamp. After she was satisfied with the inspection, she put the penlight into her mouth and reached into the hole, placing her hands on the sides of the mysterious wooden box. She gently curled her fingers under the edge of the intricate carving without touching the stone sides of the hole’s interior. Slowly she began to lift the box and then she stopped and listened.
Then she repeated this process. Up several millimeters. Stop. Listen. Repeat.
After a few minutes, the box was clear of the surface of the pedestal.
Jacinto took his flashlight, and like the coordinated efforts of a bomb-squad, he examined the underside of the box and the bottom of the hole while Marissé held it steady. When he finished, he shook his head from side to side.
“Looks clean… no booby traps.” Then he smiled at her. “I wonder who thought up that name? Booby Trap? That’s funny when you think about it.”
Marissé carefully moved the box to the top of the smooth pedestal that had been created specifically to hold it. She pulled the flashlight out of her mouth and began to look closely at the box as she answered him.
“Probably some booby who didn’t have boobies.”
Then she leaned in and looked closely at one of the corners of the box.
“This is one solid piece of wood. There’s no joinery in the corners.”
She sat up for a second as she thought about something. Then she turned off her flashlight and stuck it back in its belt case. She grabbed the corners of the wooden case and lifted the cover straight up and off. She quickly looked at the top and bottom of the mahogany cover with her headlamp.
Jacinto didn’t move.
Marissé carefully set the wooden cover on the pedestal top beside the lower half. Inside the bottom of the mahogany box, was a beautiful and intricately patterned cloth of exceedingly delicate thread. Marissé reached into the other pocket on her shorts and pulled out a fresh pair of cotton gloves. She and Jacinto had both used another clean pair when they handled and moved the Warrior Priest’s body outside the twenty-five meter long tunnel into this eight-sided chamber. She carefully lifted the cloth as Jacinto moved the Sten-Lamps over to shine on the box interior. Underneath the beautiful and mysterious cloth, was a clear crystal-looking sheet—
‘No, make that a plate or a tablet,’ thought Marissé, as she opened both edges of the multicolored cloth to reveal the entire artifact.
In the lights from the multiple LED flood heads, the tablet-shaped crystal plate reflected thousands of tiny prisms of light. Marissé leaned in to look closely, but her headlamp reflected off the shiny crystal surface and back into her eyes, momentarily blinding her. She quickly reached up and switched her headlamp off. When she looked back at the box, she could see what made the prisms of light bounce off of the shiny surface of the artifact. Marissé saw what looked like tiny engraved glyphs and writing of some sort in the intense glow of the artificial floodlights. Suddenly, her eyes got wide as she quickly glanced over the entire surface of the unbelievable plate of whatever the hell it was.
She retrieved her flashlight again then looked through the clear plate to the bottom of the case. There was nothing else in the box, which she could see had been carved out of a single piece of mahogany and was meant to hold just one thing, this artifact. She looked at the hole in the pedestal and realized the rock interior was custom carved to hold just one thing also, the box with the artifact inside of it.
She turned back to the bottom half of the dark mahogany case as she slowly reached in and grabbed the glass plate by the outside edges of what appeared to be the sides. The area that appeared to be the top was slightly bowed upward. The other three sides were perfectly straight. The tablet-shaped artifact was almost two feet wide. The width to height ratio was about the same as a large widescreen computer monitor. The long, straight side looked like it should be the bottom if you leaned it against something or hung it on a wall. This odd shape made Marissé curious, as she lifted it out and held it up to the LED lights. Then she peered closely at the mysterious plate of glass and wondered out loud.
“What the hell is this thing?”
Jacinto had been trying to pick his jaw up off the floor this whole time. He finally succeeded in speaking.
“Wow…”
That ended his tirade.
Marissé barely noticed him but kept talking to herself.
“The writing looks engraved. But how is that possible?” She shifted the heavy artifact in her hands and held another section in front of the LED Sten-Lamps as she looked closely at the engravings. Around the perimeter of the flat surface were blocks of different types of incredibly tiny carved glyphs, but the type of writing appeared to be the same in each different block. She moved the bottom of the artifact up into the light. The engravings at the bottom center looked utterly foreign to her. They looked like icons or runes.
‘Maybe it was just artistic doodles,’ she thought, as she finally looked at the large center of the thick plate of glass. In the very middle, was an engraved drawing of the Sun. It was unmistakable what the image was intended to be. The almost perfect circular image had stylized sol
ar rays all around the edge, as the Sun was universally drawn by all primitive civilizations and children. The entire plate looked like a picture of the Sun with captions all around. But the Sun had a few strange rays that stuck out on one side of the Sun image. These stylized arms reached out much farther than any of the other rays coming off the iconic Sun image.
They looked remarkably like a massive solar explosion or some type of ultra solar flare.
Marissé quickly passed up the Sun image and returned to the top center block of glyphs.
“This is definitely Mayan writing up here. But it has those same damn mystery glyphs, which are all over this place.”
Jacinto slid in closer to see what she was talking about, but he just stared at the artifact. Marissé didn’t notice him and kept talking out loud to herself.
“That block to the right of the Mayan glyphs is strange though. It almost looks Olmec…” She stopped talking and leaned in closer to this section now. “Whoa… It has those same shaped glyphs as these unknown Mayan ones.”
This got Jacinto’s attention. He decided to join the one-sided conversation. “Maybe it’s an interim Mayan Olmec mix. Look at the block to the right of that one, Boss. That is classic Olmec writing.”
Marissé immediately saw that her assistant was correct. “Nice catch, Hassi. Okay, you’re off the hook for the sword-tip thing—” She suddenly stopped talking again in mid-sentence and tilted her head slightly. Then just as abruptly, she started up again. “Look, the Olmec block has the same strange glyphs.” She quickly glanced at the other two blocks. “And they’re in the same place in each block set.”
She lowered the panel back onto the box, but set it catty-corner and kept it in the light, while she rested her arms.
Jacinto leaned over and stuck his face into the glassy engraved surface. When he spoke, he turned his head to look at Marissé and tried not to breathe on it. “Whatever it is, it doesn’t look like typical Royal Dynasty records. Those text blocks look more like the style of the Dresden Codex. It looks like a story or something.”
Marissé tilted her head and frowned at him. “A story or something? Nice commitment there, Hassi. Is that how you’re gonna defend your dissertation?”
Jacinto moved away from the artifact and frowned back at her.
“I don’t even know what I’m gonna do for my dissertation… Do you have any suggestions?” Then he gave her his famous grin.
Marissé missed it because something caught her mind. She started scanning the different blocks around the perimeter.
“I think the blocks say the same thing in different languages.”
Jacinto quickly dropped the smirk and jumped back next to her.
“You’re talking about a Mayan Rosetta Stone. That’s not possible.” He started scanning the blocks himself. “It wouldn’t work anyway. We don’t know how to completely translate any of these languages. Right Boss?”
Marissé looked up from the artifact on the wooden case. Then she raised her eyebrows and frowned at Jacinto, again. “Hassi, what have I told you about using expressions like a Mayan Rosetta Stone?” Then she crossed her arms.
He hated it when she did that. Jacinto instinctively backed up a few inches and waited. He knew it was coming.
“This is as bad as that drunken mind-game you tried to play with me the other night, the Corona Light night, and that ten-thousand-year-old pyramid theory of yours. Remember?” She was mostly playing with him, but she didn’t let him answer. “You’re gonna lose my grant for me if you start talking about things like a Mayan Rosetta Stone… Comprendé mi amigo?”
Now, she waited for him to answer. He didn’t make her wait long.
“Sorry Boss.” Then he smiled earnestly.
She let up and smiled back. Then she looked at the artifact, again.
“What I said was, I think the writing says the same thing. Look.” She pointed at the block to the right of the Olmec block. “This block looks older than Olmec. And the strange looking glyphs, which are almost the same in the first three blocks, are in the same places.” Then she started to point at the next blocks in order. “In fact, it looks like all the blocks have these strange glyphs in the same places—”
Jacinto interrupted.
“You might be onto something, Boss.” He was focused on the left side of the plate glass mystery. “This block doesn’t look Mayan or Olmec, or even Meso-American for that matter. This looks like cuneiform, almost Sumerian?”
His inflection at the end gave away his uncertainty.
Marissé picked up the artifact in her gloved hands, again, and held the left side up to her face. She could see Jacinto through the glass as she looked at the new engravings.
“No. It’s not Sumerian.”
Jacinto got a wide-eyed look. He might have just failed another pop quiz. Marissé shifted the artifact around and began to scan the left side.
“But you’re right, the cuneiform does look related to Sumerian. It could be older.”
Jacinto relaxed and smiled a little. Not an A+ but not an F, either. ‘So far, so good,’ he thought to himself. He got his nerve up and took another swing. “Well, the obvious question is why any type of Old World pre-Egyptian writing would be engraved on a Mayan artifact? One that we just uncovered in a New World pyramid. And by the way, Boss, that’s not me talking crazy, this time. It’s you.”
Marissé put the artifact back down. It was getting heavy.
“Even a bigger question than why is how did they do this? This engraving is tiny. Neither the Olmec nor the Mayans had the tools to engrave a block of glass this big. And where’d they get the crystal from? They weren’t supposed to have the capability to make anything like this, either.”
“None of the Meso-American civilizations had that level of technology.” Jacinto was staring at the artifact. “So that throws out both how and why? What’s left… who and what? I got nothing on either count. How ‘bout you, Boss? Any ideas on what this is or who made it?”
Marissé was not listening to him, again. She was staring off into space. Then she slowly got an idea. When Jacinto saw her, he just shut up and watched the magic. She looked down at the artifact glowing softly in the battery operated light. Then she started talking to herself, again.
“If this truly is pre-Sumerian, and these blocks are all translations of the same text—”
She stopped and counted the blocks in her head but looked up before she finished them all.
“There’s easily over ten blocks here. That’s the magic number, I think. With a sample size this large, we might be able to—”
Marissé stopped in mid-sentence and looked over at her confused assistant.
“Quiz time… Do you know what quantum computer cryptography is my young and sweaty intern?”
She was right. They were both sweaty, now. The ventilation was not actually keeping up with the combination of an almost hermetically sealed room combined with their infrared body heat and their moisture laden breath. The temperature and humidity was going to continue to rise the longer they stayed in here. But Jacinto would have been sweating, anyway. He didn’t have a clue what the question on this latest pop-quiz meant.
“I thought that wasn’t supposed to be on the exam?” He tried to be funny. It didn’t work.
Marissé shook her head and smiled.
“Don’t worry. I don’t know what it is, either. But I do know we might be able to use it to translate our little Mayan Rosetta Stone.”
Jacinto started to object to her confiscation of his taboo name. She stopped his frown.
“Named by you, of course.”
Then she picked the artifact up with her gloved hands. She gently placed it back inside the custom carved mahogany case that took forty-seven years to manufacture by hand. But she would never know that. After she placed the carved wooden top back over the box, she picked it up and regally placed it in Jacinto’s gloved hands. He looked from the box to his boss and then smiled. Marissé smiled li
ke a Queen who was about to Knight her favorite son.
“You may have the honor of carrying this out and to the surface,” she said as she ceremoniously bowed her head at him from a kneeling position in front of the pedestal.
Jacinto’s smile dropped immediately.
He was pretty sure this was not an honor. He remembered the knees and feet of the dead guy outside the hole they came in; the twenty-five-meter hole through solid rock. Getting this priceless wooden artifact out of here would be a long and painful task. He started to whine.
“Awwww Boss, I know I flunked the pop-quiz, but come on. Aren’t you even gonna help me?”
Marissé smiled and slightly shook her head. “No mi amigo. Not this time. This you must do yourself.”
“But Boss… why?” He sounded hurt.
She smiled a broad and genuine smile.
“Because if you’re right and this turns out to be a Mayan Rosetta Stone, then you just earned your PhD… As soon as you finish your dissertation on that beautiful box and its magnificent contents… That’s why you must do this yourself.”
Jacinto hadn’t thought this one through, obviously. Because, now that she put it that way, the job seemed much more manageable. Suddenly, Jacinto’s face morphed into a glowing smile. Then he started bouncing his head up and down and looking around.
“Oh Yeah… Doctor Jacinto… Hey, howya doing, Doctor Jacinto.” He stuck his hand out to an imaginary colleague, and then another. “Hey, howya doing, Doctor Jacinto.”
Marissé turned to get out of this ancient stone oven. She looked back as she crawled toward the exit hole. Jacinto had put down the box and was now having a conversation with a group of imaginary colleagues. He introduced himself several times as more imaginary people walked up and joined his group while they listened to him tell how he found the amazing Mayan Rosetta Stone. Which, he suddenly informed them, they were thinking of renaming the Mayan Jacinto Stone.
Marissé chuckled to herself. ‘He really is funny… Sometimes, anyway.’ She stopped crawling and yelled back to him.
“Hey, Doctor Jacinto. When you’re finished with your mini cocktail press-conference, meet me up top with the box. Si, Señor?”
Jacinto waved to her out of the corner of his imaginary fifteen minutes of fame, and she started crawling toward the tunnel, again. Then Jacinto remembered something and excused himself from his crowd of invisible admirers.
“Hey, where are you going?”
Marissé stopped in front of the tunnel to the outer chamber, “I’ve got to go make a satellite telephone call. That way, I can see if you really deserve all of this attention.” Then she gestured to Jacinto’s invisible throng of party followers.
He shook his head and smiled even larger.
“Yeah. You’ll have to tell me more about how we actually become so famous. You know, that crypto-quanta-mack-daddy stuff you were babbling about earlier.”
Marissé laughed out loud. “I don’t know what it means. But I do know the guy who invented it. That’s the call I’m about to make. Adios amigo. I’m off to the land of fresh air.” Then she waved her fingers at him.
Jacinto went right back to his cocktail party entertaining.
She chuckled again as she shimmied into the hole on all fours. As she adjusted her headlamp and started toward the dim lights coming from the tiny hole in the distance, she started to daydream herself.
It’s a formal dinner at some grand Archeology forum somewhere in the not-too-distant future. A respected colleague is standing behind a podium in the middle of the wide table on stage in front of a large crowd of her peers. He’s about to about to introduce the keynote speaker for the evening. Marissé is sitting next to the man who is speaking, right beside the podium.
She is the honored guest at this meeting.
As she listens to the man read off a few of her recent and glorious accomplishments, she tries not to blush. Then he gets to the actual introduction. Marissé prepares to stand up and move to the microphone. She listens as the speaker proudly and very formally introduces her.
“I’d like to introduce Doctor Marissé Sanchez, the most famous Archaeologist in the World…”
That’s what she’s waiting to hear.
She gracefully pushes back her chair and steps over to the podium. Then she graciously thanks her esteemed colleague.
Then she gets to shine in the spotlight.
Jacinto may want to impress his colleagues at the faculty dinner parties, but not her. Her stage was going to be the whole world.
That’s what Marissé was thinking about as she crawled toward the fresh air.
That’s why she was grinning from ear to ear.
That, and the fact she knew just who was going to help her get that dream.
The problem was going to be reaching him.
Things had changed a lot since they last spoke.
A lot of things had changed since then.
She wasn’t sure if she was excited, or nervous.