Authors: Matthew Reilly
It was similar to the sound a chime makes when it is
sfruck. A kind of high-pitched hum.
Mmmmmmm.
The rapas heard it too. Indeed, the one which had only moments
before been readying itself to attack now just stood there in front
of us, staring in a kind of dumbstruck wonderment at the idol which
now lay half-submerged in the brown puddle beside me.
It was then that the strangest thing of all happened.
The pack of rapas around us slowly began to move back wards. The
rapas were stepping away from the idol.
'Alberto,' Renco whispered. 'Move very slowly, do you hear. Very
slowly. Pick up the idol and go to the door. I'll have someone let
you back inside.'
I obeyed his command to the letter.
With the woman and child beside me, I scooped up the
wet idol in my hands, and with our backs pressed firmly against the
wall of the citadel, we slowly made our way around its circular
outer wall until we were at the doorway.
For their part, the rapas just followed us at a careful distance,
entranced by the melodious song of the wet idol.
But at no stage did they attack.
And then all at once the large stone slab that acted as a
door to the citadel was rolled aside and we all slid in through it,
and as I came in last of all and the great doorstone was rolled
back into place behind me, I fell to the floor, breathless and
soaking and shaking, and totally and utterly amazed that I was
still alive.
Renco came hurrying down from the roof to meet us.
'Lena!' said he, recognising the woman. 'And Mani!' he cried,
taking the boy up in his arms.
I just lay exhausted on the floor to the side of all this
happiness.
I am ashamed to say it now, but in that moment I actually felt a
pang of jealousy toward my friend Renco. No doubt this
astonishingly beautiful woman was his wife as one would expect of
so dashing a character as Renco.
'Uncle Renco!' the boy exclaimed as Renco held him high.
Uncle?
My eyes snapped up.
'Brother Alberto,' said Renco, coming over. 'I don't l,now what it
was you were planning to do out there, but my people have a saying.
“It is not so much the gift as the intention behind it that
matters”. Thank you. Thank you for rescuing my sister and her
son.'
'Your sister?' said I, staring at the woman as she removed her
waterlogged cloak and revealed a minuscule tunic-like
undergarment that was itself soaked through to the skin.
What I saw made me swallow.
She was far more beautiful than I had at first perceived— if indeed
such a thing were possible. She was perhaps twenty years of age,
with soft brown eyes, smooth olive skin and flowing dark hair. She
had long slender legs and smoothly muscled shoulders, and through
her saturated
undergarment I could see her ample bosom and—much to
my embarrassment—her erect nipples.
She was radiant.
Renco wrapped her in a dry blanket and she smiled at me and I truly
felt weak at the knees.
'Brother Alberto Santiago,' said Renco formally. 'May I present to
you my sister, Lena, first princess of the Incan empire.'
Lena stepped forward and took my hand in hers. 'It is a pleasure to
make your acquaintance,' said she with a smile.
'And thank you for your most brave act.'
'Oh, it was.., nothing,' said I, blushing.
'And thank you also for rescuing my errant brother from his prison
cell,' said she.
Seeing my surprise, she added, 'Oh, rest assured, my hero, word of
your noble deed has spread throughout the empire.'
I bowed my head modestly. I liked the way she called me 'my
hero'.
Just then something occurred to me and I turned to Renco. 'Say, how
did you know the idol would have that effect on the rapas?'
Renco gave me a crooked smile.
'As a matter of fact, I didn't know it would do that.'
'What!' I cried.
Renco laughed. 'Alberto, I am not the one who jumped off a
perfectly safe roof to rescue a woman and child I didn't even
know!'
He put an arm around my shoulders. 'It has been said that the
Spirit of the People has the ability to soothe savage beasts. This
I have never seen, but I have heard that when it is immersed in
water, the idol will calm even the most enraged animal. When I was
awoken by your shouts and I saw the three of you surrounded by the
rapas, I surmised
that this was as good a time as any to test that theory.'
I shook my head in wonderment.
'Renco,' said Lena, stepping forward, 'I hate to disturb your
revelry, but I have come with a message.'
'What?'
'The Spaniards have taken Roya. But they cannot deci pher the
totems. So whenever they reach one, they have Chanca trackers scour
the surrounding area until they pick up your trail. After the
gold-eaters sacked Paxu and Tupra, I was sent here to tell you of
their progress since I am one of the few who know the code to the
totems. I have since learned that they have burned Roya to the
ground. They have picked up your scent, Renco. And they are on
their way here.'
'How long?' said Renco.
Lena's face darkened.
'They move fast, brother. Very fast. At their current rate of
travel, I estimate that they will be here by daybreak.'
'Found anything?' Frank Nash said suddenly from behind Race.
Race looked up from the manuscript to find Nash, Lau- ren, Gaby and
Krauss standing in the doorway to the ATV, looking at him
expectantly. It was late in the afternoon, and owing to the storm
clouds overhead, the sky behind them
had already begun to darken considerably.
Race looked at his watch.
4:55 pm.
Damn.
He hadn't realised 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
257
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.. 0' 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 Lncans 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, sa3 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 noc turnal,
right?'
'It says that they like any kind of darkness—night-time or
otherwise. I guess that would make them nocturnal and then
some.'
“But it says that they came down to the village each night
to hunt for food?'
“Yes.'
Nash's eyes narrowed. 'Can we assume, then, that they leave the
crater to forage for food every night?'
'Judging from the manuscript, that would appear to be a safe
assumption.'
'Good,' Nash said, turning.
'Why?'
“Because,' he said, 'when those cats come out tonight, we're going
to go inside the temple and get that idol.'
The day grew darker by the minute.
Black storm clouds rolled in overhead, and with the cool air of the
late afternoon, a thick grey fog settled over the village.
A light rain fell
Race sat next to Lauren as she packed some equipment to take over
to the citadel in anticipation of their nighttime activities.
“So how has married life been to you?' he asked as casually as he
could.
Lauren smiled wryly to herself. 'Depends which one ybu're talking
about.'
'There's more than one?'
'My first marriage didn't exactly work out. Turned out he didn't
share my career ambitions. We got divorced about
five years ago.'
'Oh.'
'But I've recently remarried,' Lauren said. 'And it's been great.
Real nice guy. Just like you, in fact. Lot of potential,
too.'
'How long?”
'About eighteen months now.'
'That's great,' Race said politely. In truth, he was thinking about
the incident he had witnessed earlier—Lauren and
Troy Copeland kissing passionately in the back of the Huey.
He recalled how Copeland hadn't been wearing a wedding ring. Was
Lauren having an affair with him? Or maybe Copeland just didn't
wear his ring…
'Did you ever get married, Will?' Lauren asked, yanking him from
his thoughts.
'No,' Race said softly. 'No, I didn't.'
'SAT-SN report is coming through,“ Van Lewen said from a computer
terminal on the wall of the ATV.
He, Cochrane, Reichart, Nash and Race were now stand ing with the
two German BKA agents—Schroeder and the blonde woman, Ren6e
Becker—inside the eight-wheeled all-terrain vehicle. It was parked
close to the river, not far from the western log-bridge and the
muddy path that led up to the fissure, in anticipation of their
night-time assault on the temple.
Lauren had already left the ATV for the citadel, with Johann Krauss
in tow behind her.
Just then, Buzz Cochrane returned to the ATV with a handful of
sloppy light-brown mush. The smell of it in the confined space of
the vehicle was putrid.
'There ain't a single monkey out there that I could catch to get
its piss,' Cochrane said. 'Guess they get out of here before
nightfall.' He held up the brown mush in his hand. 'I was able to
get this, though. Monkey shit. I figured it'd be just as
good.'
Race winced at the smell of it.
Cochrane saw him. 'What? Don't want to smear yourself in shit,
Professor?' He looked over at Ren6e and smiled.
“Guess we're lucky it ain't the professor who's going in there,
then, ain't we?'
Cochrane began to apply the monkey excrement to the exterior of his
fatigues. Reichart and Van Lewen did the same.
They also applied it to the rims of the narrow slit-like win dows
of the ATV.
While Race had been reading the manuscript earlier,
Nash had got the other civilians to set up a base of operations
inside the citadel. While they had been doing that, the four
remaining Green Berets had been hard at work trying to fix the
surviving Huey. Unfortunately, they'd only managed to repair the
chopper's ignition ports. Repairing its damaged tail rotor had been
more difficult than Cochrane had at first anticipated.
Complications had arisen and it still wouldn't turn over and the
Huey couldn't fly without it.
Then, with the onset of dusk, Nash decided that the retrieval of
the idol had to take priority. The Rangers had been taken away from
the chopper and brought over to the ATV, where Race had briefed
them on the wet idol incident in the manuscript.
As Race did exactly that, Nash ordered Gaby, Copeland, Doogie and
the young German private, Molke, to remain in the citadel.
He had said that it was a necessary part of his plan for seizing
the idol to have most of the team stationed inside the citadel when
the cats arrived in the village-while he and a few of the Green
Berets remained in the ATV, closer to the riverside path that led
up to the temple.