Chapter 15
To say that Alicia 'went white' with shock is inappropriate, considering her colour, but she was certainly shaken and she sounded faint.
"I suppose with human sacrifice so common it was inevitable that one of us would end up with first hand experience," she said, "but all the same I didn't expect it to be me."
"Where do you think you were?" asked Frank.
Alicia hesitated. "The country was known as Atl-Andes," she said. Now that isn't saying anything about where it was, or when either. All I can say is that they called it Atl-Andes."
"Atlantis?" asked Steve.
"I prefer not to face that question for the moment."
"It was the Bronze Age," remarked Gill, "no doubt about that."
"I'm well aware that it was three or four thousand years before the usually accepted date for the development of bronze but I prefer not to face that problem for the moment either," said Alicia.
"That high priest sounded a complete fascist," observed Gill.
"He was. In the real sense of the word. I don't think there's much doubt about it. All his talk about 'strength' and 'power' meant his own power, and lots of human sacrifice to support it, especially anyone who opposed him."
"You mean he chose those who opposed him?" asked Alan.
"Anyone who stood in his way was likely to be first in line for the altar, yes. It wasn't so much sacrifice as ritual murder of his opposition."
"How did he get away with it?" asked Steve.
"I'm not sure. Atl-Andes was fairly religious and peaceful. I don't think the sacrifice of human beings was known before that generation, that high priest, even. I don't think people even killed or ate animals either, but he thought that was a sign of weakness." Alicia paused and looked out of the window.
"It's drying up a bit outside so let's get a short session at the dig and talk about this whole thing later. I'm worried about Professor Harrington coming."
"Before we go and I forget," said Gill, "did I remember correctly the priest saying the amulet was a protection against the rings?"
"He did say that, though I'm not sure what he meant."
"The rings must have had powers," said Alan, "and the amulet was some sort of protection against them. You're sure you don't know what powers the rings were supposed to have had?"
"I don't know anything about the rings," said Alicia. "I don't know anything about the powers - real or imaginary."
"You'd better try the ring and see if we find out," said Steve, half joking.
"Not now," said Alicia. "In the first place, I haven't sorted out what Alicia believes from what Chimú believed. Secondly, you promised a work session and I'm holding you all to it."
Steve roused himself and went out of the cabin to root out the volunteer gang. The rain had stopped and the weather was what the makers of cheap cameras seem to call 'cloudy-bright', with a watery sun trying to break through. It was still damp underfoot but everything was drying.
As he crossed the field to start the second generator, Steve was thinking about the full story of the ring from its making to its losing and its finding. He couldn't believe that it ever had 'powers': such things belonged to tales of fantasy and adventure. A story like that owed more to dungeons and dragons: to elves, dwarves, wizards or even hobbits, than to reality or archaeology. That the high priest who had had the ring made was interested in power himself, Steve didn't doubt, but he thought that the ring was probably only a symbol.
'Mind you,' he thought while he was checking and starting the generator, 'five, probably six, people with past lives connected with the ring together at one time and in one place is a bit of coincidence. If it's not a coincidence, that is an awful lot of power.'
The story was, of course, very incomplete. The six rings had started their journey from Atl-Andes (and that might have been Atlantis - the jury was 'out' on the subject') before the meteor, or whatever it was, and had been taken to North Africa or Southern Spain. Since then there had been about seven to ten thousand years of people and lives. Steve thought Manjy's story was probably set in Southern Spain and she had said the ring had landed not too far away.
'That would be in keeping with Frank's tale starting in the Northern foothills of the Pyrenees,' Steve thought idly, wishing he knew more about the movements of people in prehistoric Europe. He had no idea how the ring crossed Spain, but it had two or three thousand years to do it. The journey from Northern France to Southern England was a short one and could be easily explained, and Gill accounted for part of the ring's northward journey. There were so many unanswered questions that he gave up trying to think it thing out logically as the diggers assembled.
The paid labourers were missing because there was no way to get in touch with them at short notice, but the rest of the team were willing workers and got on with excavating the site. Frank took all of the sand out of the tunnel as far as the third house while Manjy and one of the volunteers sifted it. Numbering and removal of roofing stones of the third house began as a preliminary to excavating it, removal of sand from the second house continued and more of the connecting passage was uncovered.
When Steve had almost finished getting the evening meal ready, Gill strolled back to the Portacabin to help him. She walked in, carefully closed the door that he had left open and went almost secretively to the window.
"Coast is clear," she said, more to herself than to Steve. "They're all still working on the dig."
He watched in silence while she switched the computer on and it booted up. She keyed the programme directory and selected one of the data disks. Steve watched her without comment as from the main menu she moved to the record of items found. She turned up the record of the talisman. It read "Neck ornament, amulet or talisman. Appears to be metal with accidental or deliberate coating which has aided preservation - see also 001073 and 001075 found at same location."
Still without comment Steve watched her delete the entry and flip to 001075. The record was "Small piece of rusted iron, possibly a spear or arrowhead - see also 001073 and 001074 found at same location." Gill tapped a couple of keys to "amend entry" and deleted the words "- see also 001074 found at same location." She struck another key to renumber the remaining entries after the record deleted, so that the correction was no longer visible, and exited from the programme. She switched off the machine and crossed to the cabinet where the finds were.
Gill didn't explain herself and Steve still said nothing, as she opened one of the drawers and took out the amulet.
"Look," she said as she pocketed the amulet, "I don't know why I'm doing this, so don't bother asking, but I'd rather this amulet was misplaced for a day or two and went back into circulation later. I'm going to put it in my room."
She looked hastily and furtively out of the window to make sure they were still alone and then hurried across to her room. This was certainly a puzzling development, apparently in Gill's psychic deviousness, but also in the behaviour she had shown up to this point.
She was gone only a moment before she was back. "I promise I'll return it twenty-four hours after the professor arrives." she said rather breathlessly. "In the meantime, don't tell anyone it's on my wardrobe shelf."
"What is?" asked Steve and busied himself with supper, thinking how much Gill had changed and grown in confidence in the last few days, since remembering her past life as a priestess. Gill helped him with the meal, thinking in passing that she was growing more trusting of her own psychic abilities by the day. Among other things, those psychic tendencies suggested she could depend on Steve.
"I'm going to try and calculate the date on our present calendar when those cycles would have zeroed," said Frank to Alicia after supper was cleared away.
"Well I think I'll get on with my diary of the digging in case my professor comes tomorrow. I don't want to be caught unawares."
"You do that thing. Where's Manjy?"
"Writing home, I think. At least she received some post this morning."
&n
bsp; "You going to mention the ring in your reports?"
"I shall leave everything except the finding of the ring out of my archaeological report, but I think we ought to each write our stories down somewhere before we forget them."
"Yeah, that could turn out a smart move." he agreed, and got up to go to his room. Alicia wondered briefly where Gill and Steve were before settling down to write up her report.
In her room Manjy was reading a letter rather than writing. To her surprise her grandmother had sided with her. According to her father she had suggested finding a prospective husband who would take account of her career.
This would have been nothing out of the ordinary in a European family, but it was unusually perceptive for an Asian woman who spoke almost no English. At any rate, her grandmother had persuaded her father more effectively than Manjy herself could have done and a compromise looked possible. She picked up her pen to write.
In what was left of the fading light, Gill walked companionably on the beach with Steve.
"What do you make of it all?" she asked, feeling more relaxed than she had for a long time.
"While I was a guest of her majesty I read a book from the prison library by a German bloke called Otto Muck. He invented the snorkel that allowed U-Boats to breathe under water during the war. Clever scientist was Otto Muck, with a lot of inventions to his name. Well, he had the idea that a whole set of seemingly unrelated events and problems could be related and explained if there was a major land mass which sank beneath the Atlantic in a volcanic disaster triggered by an enormous meteor about ten thousand years ago.
First problem was that the warm waters of the Gulf Stream couldn't have run in their present course during the ice age or the glaciers wouldn't have come as far south in western Europe as they did in eastern America. But the glaciers were an even distance south in both."
"Oh, so that's what your question to Frank was about. I did wonder." said Gill. "Let's sit down here for a while," she added, testing the grass of a sand dune to see it was dry.
"Where does the meteor come in?"
"Somewhere in the Atlantic, at its deepest part on a fault line just off Charleston, South Carolina," he answered, putting an arm round her shoulders. "For complicated reasons of physics which he argues convincingly, he claims that a roughly oval shaped collection of craters running into the sea there are the debris of a huge meteor or small asteroid breaking up. The main impact would have been out to sea - just on the line of weakness. The resulting eruption would have been large enough to allow molten rock out in huge quantities, perhaps large enough quantities to allow a considerable island to sink. Right about where the Azores are. He reckons that they were once high mountains - and one of them was probably the original Mount Atlas."
"That would more or less tie in with Plato's story of the destruction of Atlantis," admitted Gill.
"It would tie in with the Mayan obsession with the cyclic nature of time as well. The eruption probably took place when several cycles zeroed and Otto Muck gives an exact date, though I can't remember what it is," said Steve.
"It might also explain the name of the ocean," remarked Gill thoughtfully, adding, "Nobody seems to have done that satisfactorily. 'Atl' is the Aztec and Mayan word for water. The mountain range in South America is the 'Andes'. Alicia said the country she came from was called Atl-Andes. That's awfully like 'Atlantic' and has the same root as 'Atlas'. Atlantic is a name around in ancient times and, in classical mythology, Atlas was the giant who held the sky on his shoulders."
"Atl-Andes," Steve ruminated, exploring the sound of the words as he rolled them around, "The 'Mountains in the Water'."
"High mountains on a low lying island must have looked like that from a distance," mused Gill. "Perhaps Atlas was a very high mountain. It might have looked to the first people as if it was holding up the sky."
She leaned her head on Steve's shoulder and looked out to sea. "This is a pretty low lying group of islands, isn't it?" she remarked. When Steve didn't say anything she continued. "I almost didn't come you know. I wasn't sure I could face up to it but I simply steeled myself and got on with it." Steve kissed her.
"Well I'm glad you did. But, as I've said before, I don't know why you ever thought he was worth killing yourself over."
"I'm over it all now. If you come back to my room to-night I'll show you how completely I'm over it."
"Is that a serious invitation?"
"Of course it is."
"Then I'm going to take you up on it."
Gill snuggled even closer to him and he slipped his hand under her sweater to stroke her breast through the cotton of her T-shirt as he kissed her again.
Gill and Steve wandered into the cabin later, interrupting Alicia, who had almost finished anyway. Steve was putting on the kettle when the door opened and Frank came in, looking triumphant.
"You look like the cat that got the cream," observed Gill.
"I kind of feel that way too," he answered "The real trouble was in changing from their calendar to ours, so as to come up with a date we can recognise."
"Whose calendar?" Alicia wanted to know as she packed her papers away and turned off the computer. "Oh yes, the Mayans. But what date?"
"The date when all cycles zeroed and, according to your story, the new age was supposed to begin, you were sacrificed and the rock crashed from the sky."
"The last bit, about the rock, was in Manjy's story not mine," said Alicia, "but I follow what you're getting at. So what was the date?"
"In our calendar, 5th June 8498 BC."
"That's precise," said Gill.
"The Mayans were very precise people with an obsession for detail - at least where dates were concerned. My calculator's still red hot with turning their date into one we can recognise."
"Still, I'm impressed."
"I don't remember exactly, but that sounds like the date Otto Muck gives for the destruction of Atlantis," said Steve, and everybody looked at him. "As I said, I'm not certain about the date, but he mentions a time. 13.00 hours."
Frank held up a piece of paper on which he had written '5th June 8498 BC at 13.00 hours."
At first nobody spoke, then Gill said, "I'm even more impressed."
"You know," mused Alicia, "that's just about the date Plato gives for the destruction of Atlantis too, though he's much more vague, of course." She stood up. "Oh well, time for bed I think. I want things to go right when the professor comes."
"OK, I'll just tidy up before I put the generator to bed," said Steve, and started to clear the mugs away. Gill came over to him.
"I'll just tidy up before you put me to bed," she whispered, "the invitation still stands."
"Don't worry, I'm putting the generator to bed, not sleeping with it," he said. "I'll be with you less than two minutes after the electric lights go out."
Quite what he expected when he went to Gill's room Steve wasn't sure. She might have tucked herself up or changed into something more seductive, taken a sleeping pill out of habit or even changed her mind, but he was just a little surprised at what he did find.
Gill was sitting on her bunk. She had taken a leather thong off the carved wooden pendant he had occasionally seen her wearing and was threading the amulet onto it.
"The light from the gas lamp isn't very good," she said, "but I'll be finished in a minute."
"What on earth are you doing? No. I can see what you're doing. What I really meant to ask is 'why'?"
"I'm not sure," replied Gill, tying the cord and putting it over her head, "but I'm absolutely convinced I'm going to need to wear it in the next few days. I suppose you think I'm being silly."
"Don't be so defensive. In the first place you may be a bit psychic - that feeling could turn out to be something important and, even it doesn't, if it makes you feel easier to have that thing ready to wear, well okay. Mind you, I shouldn't let Alicia see you with it."
"That is extremely good advice, but not really needed. I thought she might have remembere
d and realised that both the amulet and the computer record had gone. She just forgot about it or something, I looked at her papers."
Gill took off the amulet, stood up and put it away in the locker she referred as a wardrobe.
"I don't know whether 'amulet' is the right word." said Steve. "I thought an amulet was a general good luck charm. This may have been specially made in connection with the ring, in which case it ought to be ... called a ... talisman ..."
With Gill's arms around his neck Steve found it hard to concentrate on other things. She had let down her hair down and it smelled faintly of flowers, so he gave up on the amulet or talisman or whatever it was and concentrated on Gill.
She was more striking in her looks, with violet-blue eyes, long lashes and mouth a shade wide, than actually beautiful, but the combination of the low lamplight, his love and her nakedness made her seem very lovely to him. She clung to him and responded to pleasure she once thought she had lost for ever.
When she later fell asleep in Steve's arms it was the first time in two years she hadn't needed a sleeping pill.