the Source (2008) (22 page)

After he'd crossed the causeway, Ross checked that the others were following him, then turned on his torch, took one last breath, grasped Sister Chantal's hand and led her, with Zeb, through the dripping caves. Even with the sunglasses his eyes watered. A drop from the acidic ceiling touched his right hand and he felt it burn before he rubbed it off with the opposite sleeve. This was the burning rain described in the Voynich. That, and the toxic smell of brimstone, or sulphur - a substance associated with the Devil - had made Orlando Falcon fear he had entered the portals of Hell.

Right now, Ross sympathized with him.

Holding his breath, he glanced round the system of toxic subterranean caves and passageways. From the heat under his feet, and the river of fire behind them, he guessed there was magma beneath. He felt as he had in the caves of Cueva de Villa Luz in southern Mexico, as though he had gone back billions of years to when the young Earth was a toxic incubator for the most primitive forms of life. Even here there was life: he could see small extremophiles feeding off the sulphurous walls.

Following the gilt seams, he dragged Sister Chantal and Zeb through the labyrinth for so many seconds that he feared they would not find their way out before they had to breathe.

Then the pyrites stopped. All he could see ahead of him was solid wall. A dead end.

Sister Chantal's face was pale, her eyes bloodshot. She looked on the verge of death. Was this where they would die?

Then she smiled.

She took his torch and Zeb's, and, with her own, switched them off. In the sudden darkness, needing to breathe, he felt close to panic. Then a hand gripped his elbow, turning him. In the darkness, uncorrupted by torchbeams, he discerned a faint vertical line of light down the right-hand side of the apparently solid wall. He moved closer and saw that two separate walls ran parallel to each other, a thin gap between them forming a passageway. He moved into it and walked towards the light.

Outside, he gulped fresh air. When his eyes grew accustomed to the glare he saw he was in a place unlike any he had seen before. Where the air in the caves had been poisonous, it was now sweet, fresh and perfumed. If the toxic caves were Hell, this was Heaven on Earth. He turned to Sister Chantal, but before he could say anything, she nodded.

'Yes,' she said, with an ecstatic smile. 'This is the garden.'

Ross stood at one end of a deep elliptical basin, more than a thousand yards long and many hundreds wide, completely enclosed by a funnel of rock so deep that the sun's rays barely reached its verdant floor. He seemed to be inside a huge eye, the pupil a perfectly circular lake in the centre. At the far end, where the ground was higher, he could see another cave. A stream flowed from it to feed the limpid lake. The clear water had a green glow, as though fireflies were swimming in it.

Around the lake grasses were growing, with trees and exotic plants unlike anything in the jungle they had just walked through - unlike anything he had ever seen in nature.

'Look, Ross.' Zeb held open her photocopied pages of the Voynich with the illustrations, then waved at the trees, flowers and plants around them. 'They're just like in the book, and the descriptions of this place are spot-on.' She pointed to the far cave. 'That must lead to the forbidden caves Falcon wrote about, where the nymphs lived.'

And where the conquistadors died, thought Ross. To his left, at the base of the cliff, he saw a pile of perfectly spherical rocks, and more half-formed spheres emerging from the cliff. They reminded him of the Moeraki boulders on New Zealand's South Island. But it was the plants and the glowing water that captivated him.

And the air.

It had a subtle fragrance and taste, a delicious blend of floral, vanilla and citrus notes that was sweet yet not cloying.

The others were equally enraptured. Sister Chantal bent down beside the lake, cupped her hands in the water and drank, her face radiating joy. If she had been a cat she would have purred. Ross noticed that the water in her cupped palms contained microscopic glowing particles, similar to those he had spied in her leather pouch when they had first met.

Suddenly an eerie sound filled the air, like a choir singing. There were no discernible words or phrases, just a series of almost mechanically perfect notes. Beautiful yet soulless, it came from the cave at the end of the garden and made the hairs stand up on the back of his neck. The sound stopped as abruptly as it had started.

'What was that?' he said.

Sister Chantal laid a hand on his arm. 'Wait, Ross,' she said. 'The caves at the far end of the garden, no one must go into them without me.'

Hackett rubbed his eyes. 'Why not?' he said.

'Because I'm the Keeper,' she said.

'The what?' said Mendoza.

'Just do as she says,' Ross told them.

'What is this place?' said Hackett.

Sister Chantal placed a finger over her lips. 'No more questions. It'll be dark soon.' She knelt by the lake, filled her cupped hands with the phosphorescent water and proffered it to them. 'Drink from the stream and the lake. Eat fruit from the trees. Get some sleep. You may see small creatures in the garden but they're harmless. Just don't go into the caves. Tomorrow everything will become clearer.' She smiled at Ross. 'Much clearer.'

She walked away from them to a raised area with a neat mound of small stones. Ross watched her kneel beside it to pray. He wanted to ask her more questions, but he knew better than to intrude now. Like the others, he knelt and drank from the lake. The water had a distinctive sodium taste that reminded him of a French mineral water he had never liked: Badoit. He ate strange fruit from the trees, which tasted better. Their flavours were familiar but hard to place - like packaged mixed-fruit juices. In one fruit, the size of an apple, he thought he could taste pomegranate, passion fruit and cherry.

As dusk closed the eye of the garden, he realized he was exhausted. He didn't bother with the hammock or the mosquito net, just rolled out his sleeping-bag on the soft grass and lay down. The others did the same, as if they understood that they were safe.

Before he closed his eyes he looked once more into the dark, still lake and saw countless stars reflected in it. Then he noticed that the night sky at the top of the funnel was cloudy. The bright spots in the water were shards of crystal lying at the bottom, their luminosity revealed by the darkness of the night. Their beauty filled his mind with more questions. Then, mercifully, he slept.

Sister Chantal slept better than she could remember. Curled up beside the mound of stones, away from the others, she dreamt that she was free.

Released from her vow.

Recompensed for her sacrifice.

Reunited with the one she had lost.

She woke once during the night, when everyone was asleep, and wandered to the lake. As she drank she indulged her vanity for the first time since she had made her vow and inspected her reflection in the water. What she saw saddened her. Where once the face had been young, beautiful and full of hope, it was now old and spent.

Would he still care how she looked? The thought made her smile, and joy surfaced through the sadness. Her wait had been so long, but the hardest part was over. Soon she could surrender her burden and rejoin him.

She sighed. 'Soon,' she whispered, as she returned to her sleeping-bag. 'Soon.'

Chapter
51.

The next morning Osvaldo Mendoza woke first. He staggered to his feet and went to a corner of the garden, concealed by bushes. Before he had opened his fly, he realized that the constant pain in his head had gone. When he stopped peeing he noticed something even more remarkable. Something that made him stand rock-still for more than a minute, stunned. He fell to his knees and prayed.

Ross woke during a dream he couldn't remember, except that it had involved Lauren and made him happy for the first time in weeks. He didn't want to wake, but Hackett was shaking him.

'Wake up, Ross.'

He blinked. 'Why? What's going on?'

'You've got to see this place. It's amazing.'

Ross rolled over. Why, when he was having the best sleep in ages, had Hackett chosen this moment to get overexcited? 'I know it's amazing. I'm here. I can see it.'

'But, Ross, I can see it, too.'

'Nigel, what the hell are you talking about?'

'Give me your hand.' Hackett grabbed at his broken wrist but instinctively Ross snatched it away. 'Give me your hand,' Hackett insisted. 'Trust me.' He began unwrapping the expertly applied bandage. 'How does it feel?'

'Okay.'

Hackett squeezed his wrist. 'How does that feel?'

'Like I said, okay. Now leave me alone.'

'It shouldn't feel okay. What I just did should have made you scream.' He paused a beat. 'If your wrist was still broken.'

Ross sat up and looked at his hand. The swelling and bruising had gone. So had the stiffness and pain. 'Perhaps it wasn't broken.'

'It was a classic break and it's healed months before it should have done. It's not just you. I've had dodgy eyesight since childhood. Now it's perfect. Cured overnight. Twenty-twenty vision. And I haven't used these since I got here.' He took his ventilator and antihistamine pills out of his pocket. Then he took two deep breaths. 'Listen to that. Clear as a bell. With all these flowers my allergies should be having a field day, but my chest and sinuses have never been so clear.'

Hackett pointed to Mendoza, who was sitting by the lake, legs crossed, eyes closed, hands clasped as if in prayer. 'Osvaldo's having some kind of spiritual experience. Keeps crossing himself and muttering thanks. Since Iquitos the guy's been holding his head in pain and chewing painkillers like they're sweets. Not your bog-standard aspirin either, but prescription-strength codeine, which is an opiate, the same family as morphine. Kept telling me he was okay whenever I quizzed him, but he's obviously been in a lot of pain. This morning I woke up and found him crying. Imagine that - a man like him crying! When I asked him what was wrong he said there was nothing wrong with him. He was fine. Really fine. Keeps calling it a miracle.'

Hackett swept his hand round the garden. 'It must be something in the water we drank or the fruit we ate. God, I wish Juarez had made it here. This place is incredible.' He reached for his backpack. 'This is pretty amazing too.' He took out the pewter goblet he had picked up yesterday and handed it to Ross. 'Look inside.'

'I can see a watch.'

'It's mine. I left it in there last night. Look at it.' Ross peered at the face. The second hand was moving - slowly and erratically, but it was moving. 'Now take it out,' said Hackett. Ross did so and the second hand stopped. He dropped the watch back in and it started again. 'Isn't that weird?'

Ross took off his Tag Heuer and placed it in the goblet. Its second hand also came back to life sluggishly. He studied the goblet. 'Old pewter like this has a high tin and lead content. My guess is the tin's high magnetic permeability and the lead's radioactivity-shielding properties give some protection against whatever forces stopped it.'

Ross replaced his watch and flexed his bad wrist. No trace of the excruciating pain he had felt yesterday after he'd pulled Mendoza from the mound of bat droppings. He remembered the passage in the Voynich: the conquistadors had arrived with broken bones and been cured. A shiver ran through him.

Zeb walked over to them. She was barefoot, in jeans and a red T-shirt with Gaia has feelings too emblazoned across her small breasts. Her red hair was dishevelled and her face creased with sleep, but otherwise she looked fresh and rested. 'There's something wrong with my eyes,' she said, squinting behind her thick lenses.

'No, there isn't,' said Hackett, smiling. He took off her glasses. 'You just don't need these now.'

She blinked and her eyes opened wide. 'That's incredible!'

'Isn't it?' agreed Hackett, laughing. 'Bloody incredible.'

Ross left them to marvel and washed his face in the lake. He studied the particles in the water but they were too small to tell him anything. Then he peered down, trying to detect the crystals he had spotted last night. In the daylight, however, they were invisible. He got to his feet and walked round the garden. He saw a small lizard scamper on its hind legs towards a copse. It was vaguely familiar and then he remembered a drawing in the Voynich of what he had supposed was a dragon. How deceptive scale could be.

In the early morning the garden seemed even more magical than it had bathed in yesterday's late-afternoon light. There was a cool dampness in the air and a thin mist hung over the lake, partially shrouding the far cave and the stream flowing from it. He guessed that the sun's rays would burn off the mist when they eventually reached into the garden. He watched Zeb and Hackett go to Mendoza and sit down beside him, sharing their wonder and amazement.

Ross didn't join them. He needed answers. He walked round the garden, studying the cliff walls. The rock wasn't soft like the limestone prevalent in these parts. It was harder and impermeable, almost certainly volcanic. He guessed that it formed a bowl within which the garden sat, surrounded by magma, a ring of fire, sealing it off from the outside world. But it hadn't always been sealed. If his theory was correct there had been a time, billions of years ago, when this place had leaked its life force into a then barren planet, seeding all that was to follow. Then the ring of fire had closed, the bowl of volcanic rock had cooled and hardened, locking everything within. The last leak had been sealed off a thousand years ago, when the spring in the lost city had dried up.

As he wandered round the perimeter, large oval sunflowers and huge bulbous artichoke-like blooms reminded him of South Africa's proteus flower. He saw dog-like creatures in the undergrowth and odd insects, all recognizable from the Voynich. He imagined Orlando Falcon lying in his cell, mentally retracing the steps he himself was now taking, drawing their likenesses in his manuscript. What struck Ross most, though, was not how different everything was from the outside world but how similar. Even though the plants and creatures in this basin had evolved independently of anything outside, it appeared that evolution had arrived at similar solutions: petals, seeds, leaves, eyes, legs. He hadn't yet seen anything completely alien. Especially when he considered the creatures and plants he had discovered on his journey through the Amazon.

He looked back to the mound of stones where Sister Chantal had slept but she wasn't there. A moment later he spotted her standing by the stream at the far end of the lake, near the entrance to the forbidden caves.

Sister Chantal looked different. She wore sandals and a white blouse over a white skirt, and she had undone her hair so it fell below her shoulders. The early-morning light lent her an ethereal air and she seemed younger, stronger. Her wrinkles hadn't disappeared and her hair was still streaked with grey, but the contusion on her head and the surface wounds from the jaguar attack had gone. Also, the weariness had left her eyes and her translucent skin glowed. A small bag was slung over her left shoulder. As he approached, she took his hand. 'Your wrist's better.'

He clenched his fist. 'It's fine. That's what I want to ask you about. And about Lauren.'

'Come,' she said. 'Let me explain a few things.' She pointed to the stream and the lake. 'As you've discovered, the water and any produce from the plants in the garden will not only rebalance and refresh the body, but heal any ailments.'

He thought of Lauren's broken neck. 'Heal anything?'

'Most things, it would appear.' She touched her face and smiled sadly. 'The one thing it can't do is make us younger. It can slow, even halt, the ageing process, but not reverse it.'

'Can it cure Lauren?'

'Of course. That's why I brought you here.' She spoke with such confidence that Ross had to blink back tears.

'So what do I do? Take her a bottle of the lake water or some fruit?'

She shook her head. 'I tried that once but when the water or plants are taken from the garden they lose their power. No living thing here can survive outside. The fruit rots and the water goes stagnant. I don't know why. It's as though everything has become so dependent on this place that it must die immediately it leaves. But creatures like us, who have evolved to survive outside its orbit, are revitalized here. However, we can only gain the benefits by drinking the water or eating the produce in the garden.'

'So I have to bring Lauren here?'

She smiled. 'No. There's another way.' She pointed behind her to the dark opening whence the stream came. 'Come, I'll show you.'

She took his hand and led him into the forbidden caves.