Trifariam, The Lost Codex (2012) (32 page)

“Follow them closely and never intervene without speaking to me first. Is that clear?”

“Okay,” replied Alpha 2, hanging up the phone.

Alpha 1 was keeping track of the trio’s movements through his great binoculars. “They’re heading for the plane,” he said as he started the car. “Let’s go.”

T
he wind finally put in an appearance nine hours into the flight, tossing the aircraft about as it approached the Cuban coast and putting an end to the comfortable nap Richard had been enjoying. Turbulence was frequent on intercontinental flights, but that wind had shaken the airplane with such disproportionate force that it seemed to have inflicted serious damage. After a deep yawn, he looked around. Although disoriented at first, he quickly realized Mary’s presence and wasted no time asking her where James was.

The woman was holding the fragment that they had stolen from the museum in Cairo while she tried unsuccessfully to analyze one of the inscriptions carved on its base. The morphology and syntax was very similar to that of runic script, forming a message which seemed indecipherable. In fact, even if they did manage to understand it, it was still obviously incomplete because it was missing the symbols on the next fragment. Richard had been trying for hours but it was impossible. He didn’t understand a thing.

The piece was triangular, golden in color and one of its corners was a right angle. It was considerably hard to the touch.

The aircraft turned sharply in the air and changed direction without prior warning. They both looked at each other surprised; it seemed as if the airplane was no longer heading for Mexico, but for South America instead.

“Something is going on. The airplane has changed its flight path,” said Mary as she looked out one of the windows. It had been a while since they had left the turbulence behind and the sky was clear. There was no good reason to change direction.

Richard stood up and walked to the pilot’s cabin. He knocked on the door and a familiar face opened it. It was James.

“What’s up? Why did the pilot change the flight plan?”

“Don’t worry, Richard,” he replied, placing a hand on his shoulder to calm him down. “I explicitly asked the pilot to do so. The idea of traveling to Peru has been floating around my head for several months now, to go and see the famous Nazca and Palpa Lines for myself. The trip would actually be pointless unless you could look at them in all their glory from the air. It would be like trying to look at a giant photograph while holding it an inch from your eyes. I’ve gathered tourist information on the area a few times, but I’ve always been put off by the idea of flying over the plateau in one of those old light aircrafts.”

Richard looked at his friend with a serious expression. James’ idea was truly brilliant. It wasn’t every day you got the chance to see the fascinating Nazca lines from a private jet. However, Albert had been kind enough to lend them his plane and using it for such a purpose probably wouldn’t have made him too happy.

After telling Mary about the new route, the trio gathered on one side of the aircraft where they could see the landscape from the window. A landscape that was dry, arid and lifeless thanks to a lack of cloud coverage to prevent the sun from relentlessly scorching the Peruvian earth.

These lines that scientists call hieroglyphs were created by the Nazca people, who started to inhabit this region of Peru in the year 200 BC. In recent years, hundreds of drawings covering all kinds of designs have been unearthed. They range from the most simple of geometric shapes to intricate representations of animals, all of them etched into the desert surface and spanning an area of hundreds of square miles. The figures can be as long as over eight hundred feet and, in the majority of cases, are usually made up of lines less than a foot deep.

“Do you know how they made those figures?” Judging by the intonation of the question, Mary already knew the answer.

Before Richard had time to suggest a plausible theory, James began to speak. He was passionate about this subject. “I’ve read all kinds of absurd ideas. They were originally thought to be markings from where extra-terrestrial spacecraft had landed. This idea was ruled out pretty quickly, and it was instead suggested that the ancient inhabitants might have been aware of modern methods of transport such as the hot air balloon, overseeing construction from the highest land.” James paused, saw the looks of expectation on his friends’ faces and continued speaking. “Think about how unbelievable it is that they were able to create such perfect figures in such a way that they can only be seen clearly and completely from the sky. Others believe that they ingested hallucinogenic substances which allowed them to separate their bodies and minds. It is currently thought that those responsible worked with a small model and went about expanding it with painstaking measurements on the ground. In fact, you can see how the curves are all similar. The basic idea was to design an initial curve and then create the others using the first as a base.

Richard smiled. “They were created over two thousand years ago, so how come they can still be seen?”

“The cold currents from the south Pacific arrive here creating a narrow band of desert. Trapped between the ocean and the Andes, the mists come inland but don’t produce rain, thus creating one of the most arid places on Earth, on par with the Sahara Desert. Even though really strong gusts of wind blow across the plateau, they lose most of their power when they reach the ground, which prevents the lines from being erased.”

The loudspeaker of the aircraft had been activated. The pilot advised his passengers that they were over the Nazca Desert, between the towns of Nazca and Palpa. “The fuel is running low, so I’ll only be able to fly round once,” he announced before signing off.

Hundreds of gigantic figures appeared scrawled on the ground as if some eccentric artist had tried to convey his most extravagant thoughts, the earth itself his huge canvas. The trio surveyed the beautiful scene from different windows in the plane, letting out small sighs as they gazed in admiration.

Close up, these lines are simple furrows in the ground. However, although they may at first seem like a conglomerate of trails when they are observed from the sky, if the whole picture is studied rather than the individual tracks, then the reward is an image which is hard to forget.

“Look! It’s a spider!” exclaimed Richard, pointing to a magnificent figure created with undeniable perfection.

In spite of it not being the ideal time to see them, given that the sun wasn’t low enough and the relief wasn’t accentuated, with a little squinting they could make out the numerous figures below. They included geometric shapes, labyrinths and curves, as well as various representations of animals, plants and people.

In the distance, Mary made out several figures resembling birds that were over eight hundred and twenty feet long, among which were the outlines of giant hummingbirds, condors, pelicans, parrots, herons and cranes.

“Come here!” shouted James as he looked through one of the windows on the other side of the airplane.

The image of a gigantic monkey with a coiled tail was etched at the foot of the shadow projected onto the plain by the aircraft. Curiously, its hands had been drawn with different numbers of digits, and it was possibly one of the most stunning images on the plateau.

“Even today, it’s still not known exactly what their purpose was,” said Mary, continuing the previous conversation. “A close relationship has recently been discovered between the different images and the constellation Orion, given that its stars are reflected in some of the figures. It is believed that the ancient inhabitants used the ground to mark out the position of the stars at the precise moment in which water filled the thirsty valleys. Given that the constellation of Orion moves through the year, they had to create new figures on the ground which represented that apparent shift of the stars.”

“In other words, they dug a calendar into the ground and they knew what time of year it was from the way in which Orion was pointing.”

“Exactly! However, other hypotheses attribute the carvings to old rituals. It is a very arid and dry area in which water is very scarce. The periods of drought must have been extremely harsh in this region. It is thought that people walked along the routes making offerings of agricultural produce and livestock to their gods. Their only aim was to invoke water.”

“Do you know how much importance ancient cultures gave to astronomy?” asked James.

“I was just thinking that,” said Richard. “Nazca and Egyptian cultures seemed to be very knowledgeable about the constellation of Orion. There must be common link between all those cultures which made them focus on that one constellation.”

“Not only that,” said Mary. “I think they may even have had similar gods. Look at that figure!”

The aircraft was flying skillfully over the area but at great height, which made it difficult to look at the smaller-sized figures. Despite this, the men immediately knew which figure the woman was referring to; a sinister-looking snake with aggressive features stood out in the direction in which she was pointing.

“The Egyptians used a serpent to represent the evil god of the Underworld. His name is Apep, the ‘Destroyer’. According to them, he lived in the Underworld, and, every night, he would try to destroy the god Ra, or the Sun. You might have already heard of him by his Greek name, Apophis.”

“What did you say?” asked James, pale-faced.

“I said that the serpent - ”

“No! What’s the name of the deity?!”

“… Apophis.”

A cold silence washed over the whole aircraft.

James sat down as he rubbed his scalp with his fingertips. His friends kept asking him what the matter was. Eventually, he looked up and faced them with an anguished expression. “I think I know what’s going to happen on Earth.”

J
ames burst into the flight deck. The captain had communicated with air traffic control at the Mexican airport just a few minutes before, informing them of his intention to touch down as soon as possible. The air stewardess looked at James’ terrified face with concern. Mary and Richard followed him into the cabin, firing a load of questions that James hardly answered.

“Have you got any means of contacting somebody on the ground?”

The question took the pilot by surprise. He slowly removed the headphones from his head and looked thoughtful for a few seconds. Finally, he shook his head.

“The airplane doesn’t have any communication system?” James asked again, both incredulous and upset at the same time.

“Yes, but on the last flight with Mr. Williams, a lightning bolt destroyed the telephone system. Nowadays very few airlines allow telephone conversations with the ground and they usually make passengers switch off their cellphones when the plane is taking off, in order to ensure they don’t interfere with the aircraft’s navigation system. This means they avoid having to spend large sums of money on equipping the planes with these systems. That day, the lightning bolt destroyed the aircraft’s
OnAir
antenna, which is where the user would connect their handset and it would provide satellite connection to the cellphone networks on the ground.”

“And it hasn’t been fixed?”

“They’ve sent us a new one, but it doesn’t work properly because it only allows data to be exchanged via the internet and not - ”

“So… does the plane have internet access?”

“Yes,” stated the pilot without understanding his intentions. “But you said - ”

“Never mind about that. Could we get connected to the internet?”

It seemed like the captain was going to refuse his request, since the only place they could connect securely to the internet was in Mr. Williams’ office, through his personal computer. Albert had always been a very unsociable person when it came to his privacy and possessions. He had strictly prohibited any member of crew who traveled with them from entering the office. It was like a sacred temple which nobody could enter unless they were invited to do so. However, the words of the old man had been very clear: “Do everything they ask, that’s an order.”

After carefully mulling it over, he nodded at the air stewardess who, without missing a beat, stood up and went to the old man’s office.

She stopped when she reached the door. It was as if she wasn’t sure about what she was about to do, nor the repercussions that might follow. She took a deep breath, turned the key, courageously gripped the doorknob and opened it. Albert’s personal computer was situated on the middle of the only desk in the room, next to a forty-two-inch plasma screen with webcam.

Anybody who knew the least bit about Albert’s character would immediately know that that office could not have belonged to anybody else. He must have been a real art fanatic.

The parquet floor covered with beautiful Persian carpets made them forget that they were inside an airplane. The walls were decorated with genuine canvases which would be the envy of any museum of contemporary art. Suddenly classical music began to play; perhaps it had programed to start right at the very moment that somebody came in through the door. It was the famous Masonic composition “Adagio for wind instruments - K411”, by Mozart.

Richard immediately noticed the fantastic coincidence of how Albert had chosen that piece to go along with his stepping inside the room. Ever since it had been first written, that composition was designed to accompany the solemn entrance procession of lodge members at their meetings. The parallel with current circumstances was even more curious.

While the three of them were looking around the room puzzled, the air stewardess had turned on the old man’s computer and after she had checked that it was working correctly, she left the room and closed the door, still unsure about what she was doing.

“What’s going on, James?” asked Mary, confused.

“You’re about to find out. It’s best that a real expert in the subject explains it to you.”

The professor firstly checked that the computer had internet connection and was even more shocked to learn that Albert had installed a program to communicate with each other easily. The person he was looking for must have been working in his office around that time, so with a little luck he would be connected to the internet.