City of the Beasts (23 page)

They followed Walimai through new tunnels, the light of his torch growing weaker and weaker. They passed through other grottos, but none as spectacular as the first, and they saw other strange creatures: birds, with red plumage and four wings, that growled like dogs; and white cats, with blind eyes, which were on the verge of attacking but backed off when Nadia soothed them in the language of felines. They passed through a flooded cave where they had to walk through water up to their necks with Borobá perched on Nadia's head. They saw golden winged fish that swam between their legs and suddenly took flight, disappearing into the darkness of the tunnels.

In another cave, which emitted a thick purple fog the color of certain twilights, indescribable flowers were growing out of living rock. Walimai brushed one of them with his spear and fleshy tentacles flashed from among its petals, reaching out for its prey. At a bend in one of the passages, in the orange, wavering light of the torch, they saw a niche in the wall that contained something that seemed to be a small child encased in resin, like an insect trapped in a piece of amber. Alex imagined that the infant had been in his sealed tomb since the dawn of humankind, and that he would lie intact in that place for thousands of years. How had he got there? How had he died?

Finally the group reached the last passage of that enormous labyrinth. They peered into open space, blinded for a few instants by a blast of white light. Then they saw that they were on a kind of balcony, a rock projecting over the hollow interior of the mountain, like the crater of a volcano. The labyrinth they had followed through the depths of the
tepui
joined the outside world with the fabulous universe inside. They realized they had climbed a long way through the tunnels. Overhead rose the vertical faces of the mountain, covered with vegetation and disappearing among the clouds. They could not see the sky, only a ceiling as thick and white as cotton, where the sunlight filtering through created a strange optical phenomenon: six transparent moons floating in a milky sky. They were the moons Alex had seen in his vision. Wheeling in the air were birds he had never seen before, some as translucid and filmy as jellyfish, others as solid as black condors, some like the dragon they had seen in the grotto.

Far below was a large circular valley, which from where they stood looked like a blue-green garden blanketed in haze. Waterfalls, trickles of water, and small streams slipped down the sides of the verdant walls to feed the lakes of the valley, so symmetrical and perfect that they did not seem natural. And in the center, gleaming like a crown, rose the proud city of El Dorado. Nadia and Alex choked back cries of amazement as they were blinded by the unbelievable splendor of the city of gold, the dwelling of the gods.

Walimai gave them time to recover from their surprise and then pointed to the steps carved into the mountainside, curving down from the overhang where they stood to the valley floor. As they descended, they realized that the flora was as extraordinary as the fauna they had seen; the plants, flowers, and shrubs were unique. The lower they went, the hotter and more humid it became; the vegetation was thicker and more exuberant, the trees taller and leafier, the flowers more perfumed, the fruit more succulent. Although it was very beautiful, the overall impression was not peaceful, but was, in fact, vaguely threatening, like a mysterious landscape on Venus. Nature throbbed, panted, grew before their eyes, as if waiting to ambush them. They saw yellow flies as transparent as topaz, blue beetles sporting horns, large snails so colorful that from a distance they looked like flowers, exotic striped lizards, rodents with sharp, curved fangs, and hairless squirrels leaping among the branches like naked gnomes.

As they neared the valley, closer and closer to El Dorado, it became obvious that this was not a city, nor was it gold. It was a group of natural geometric formations, like the crystals they had seen in the grottos. The golden color came from mica, a mineral with little value, and pyrite, called—with good reason—"fool's gold." Alex smiled quietly, thinking that if the conquistadors and countless other adventurers had succeeded in conquering the incredible obstacles on the road to El Dorado, they would have gone home poorer than they'd come.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The Beasts

MINUTES LATER, ALEX and Nadia saw the Beast. It was about thirty yards away, heading in the direction of the city. It looked like a gigantic man-ape, more than ten feet tall, upright, with powerful arms that dragged on the ground and a melancholy face on a head too small for its body. It was covered with thick, wiry hair and had three long, curved, knife-sharp claws on each hand. It moved with incredible slowness, almost as if it were not moving at all. Nadia recognized it immediately as the Beast, since she had seen it before. Paralyzed with terror and surprise, they froze in place, studying the creature. It reminded them of some familiar animal, but they couldn't think what.

"I know, it looks like a sloth," Nadia whispered finally.

And then Alex remembered that in the San Francisco zoo he had seen an animal something like an ape or a bear that lived in trees and moved at the same sluggish pace as the Beast—which is how it got a name that means laziness, "sloth." It had no defenses. It lacked the speed to attack, escape, or protect itself, but it had very few predators; its hairy hide and bitter flesh were not appetizing to even the hungriest carnivore.

"And the smell? The Beast I saw had a terrible stink," said Nadia, still speaking in a whisper.

"Well, this one doesn't. At least we're not smelling it from here," Alex commented. "Maybe it has a scent gland, like a skunk, and it sprays the smell when it wants to defend itself or stop prey in its tracks."

Their whispering reached the ears of the Beast, which turned very slowly to see where the sound was coming from. Alex and Nadia stepped back, but Walimai, with his wife-spirit just behind him, moved forward slowly, as if imitating the astonishing lethargy of the creature. The shaman was a small man; he came no higher than the hipbone of the Beast, which loomed like a tower over the ancient. He and his wife fell to their knees before this extraordinary being, and then, as clear as a bell, the youngsters heard a deep and cavernous voice speaking in the language of the People of the Mist.

"It talks like a human!" Alex muttered, convinced he was dreaming.

"Padre Valdomero was right, Jaguar."

"That means it has human intelligence. Do you think you can communicate with it?"

"If Walimai can, I probably can, too, but I'm too afraid to go closer," Nadia whispered.

They stood quietly a long while, because words issued from the creature's mouth one at a time, in the same deliberate way it moved.

"It's asking who we are," Nadia translated.

"I got that. I understand almost everything," Alex murmured, stepping a little closer. Walimai gestured him to stop.

The dialogue between the shaman and the Beast advanced at the same imperceptible pace; no one moved as the light in the white sky began to change to an orange glow. That, Alex and Nadia assumed, meant that outside the crater the sun was descending toward the horizon. Finally Walimai got to his feet and came back to where they were standing.

"There will be a council of the gods," he announced.

"Council? Are there more of these creatures? How many are there?" Alex asked, but Walimai could not clarify this because he did not know how to count.

The witch man led them around the edge of the valley lying in the heart of the
tepui
to a small natural cavern in the rock, where they made themselves as comfortable as possible, then he went to look for food. He returned with some very aromatic fruit that neither of them had ever seen before, but they were so hungry that they devoured it without a question. Suddenly it was night and they were sunk in fathomless darkness. The city of fool's gold, which during the day had been blindingly brilliant, had disappeared into the shadows. Walimai made no effort to light his second torch; he was undoubtedly keeping that for their return through the labyrinth, and there was no other source of light. Alex concluded that though human in their language, and maybe in some other habits, the creatures were more primitive than cavemen, for they hadn't as yet discovered fire. Compared to the Beasts, the Indians were quite sophisticated. Why did the People of the Mist think of the creatures as gods, if they themselves had evolved farther?

There was no relief from the heat and humidity; it came from the mountain itself, reminding them that they might be in the crater of a dormant volcano. The idea of being on a thin layer of dirt and rock formed over molten flames of lava was not very reassuring, but Alex reasoned that if the volcano had been inactive for thousands of years, as proved by the luxuriant growth inside it, it would indeed be unusually bad luck if it erupted the one night he was there. The next hours dragged painfully by. The two young people found it difficult to sleep in that unfamiliar place. They remembered the murdered soldier's horrible wounds all too well. The Beast must have used those enormous claws to gut him. Why hadn't the man run away, or fired his weapon? The creature was so unbelievably slow that his victim should have had more than enough time. The explanation could only be the paralyzing stench it sprayed. There was no way to protect yourself if the creatures decided to use their scent glands. It didn't help to hold your nose, the odor penetrated every pore of the body, overpowering brain and will; it was a poison as deadly as curare.

"Are they human or animal?" Alex asked, but again Walimai couldn't answer; to him there was no difference.

"Where do they come from?"

"They have been here always, they are gods."

Alex imagined the interior of the
tepui
as an ecological archive where species that had vanished from the rest of the earth still survived. He told Nadia that these must be the ancestors of the sloths they knew.

"They don't seem like humans, Eagle. We haven't seen any sign of dwellings, or tools, or weapons; nothing that suggests an organized society," he added.

"But they speak like people, Jaguar, " the girl said.

"They must have an unbelievably slow metabolism, and live hundreds of years. If they have memory, then in such a long life they would be able to learn many things, even to speak, right?" Alex ventured.

"They speak the language of the People of the Mist. Who invented it? Did the Indians teach the Beasts? Or did the Beasts teach the Indians?"

"Whichever it was, I am guessing that the Indians and these
sloths
have had a symbiotic relationship for centuries," Alex replied.

"What?" she asked, for she had never heard that word.

"That means they need each other to survive."

"Why?"

"I don't know, but I'm going to find out. I read once that the gods need humans as much as humans need their gods," said Alex.

"I know that the Beasts' council will be very long and very boring. We'd better try to get a little rest now, that way we'll be fresh in the morning," Nadia suggested, settling down to go to sleep. She had to make Borobá move away a little because it was too hot to have him right next to her. The monkey was like an extension of her being: they were both so accustomed to the contact between their bodies that a separation, however brief, felt like a premonition of death.

With the dawn, life stirred in the city of gold and the valley of the gods was illuminated with every tone of red and orange and pink. The Beasts, nevertheless, lingered many hours before they brushed the sleep from their eyes and one by one emerged from their dens among the rock and crystal formations. Alex and Nadia counted eleven creatures, three males and eight females, some taller than others, but all adults. They did not see any examples of the young of that unique species, and wondered how often they reproduced. Walimai said it was very rare for one to be born; it had never happened in his lifetime. He added that he had never seen one die, either, although he knew a grotto in the labyrinth that held their skeletons. Alex concluded that this information fit with his theory about their living for centuries, and he imagined that these prehistoric mammals had only one or two offspring in their lifetimes, so that witnessing a birth would be a rare event indeed.

When he observed the creatures at closer range, he realized that given their limitations in mobility, they would not be good hunters, and so must be vegetarians. Their tremendous claws were not for killing but for climbing. That explained how they were able to go up and down the vertical trail the three of them had climbed at the waterfall. The sloths used the same niches, bumps, and cracks in the rock the Indians did. How many of them were there outside the
tepui?
Only one, or several? He wished he could bring back proof of what he was seeing.

Many hours later, the council began. The Beasts gathered in a semicircle in the center of the city of gold, and Walimai, Alex, and Nadia stood opposite them. They looked tiny among these giants. They had the strange impression that the bodies of the creatures were vibrating, and that their outlines were fuzzy; later they realized that in those centuries-old hides nested entire colonies of insects of various sorts, some flitting around them like fruit flies. In the steamy air, that motion gave the illusion that the Beasts were enveloped in individual clouds. The young visitors were not far from the creatures, close enough to see them in detail, but also far enough to escape should they have to—although they both knew that if any of those eleven giants decided to spray their scent, there was no power in the world that could save them. Walimai's attitude was solemn and reverent, but he did not appear to be frightened.