The Lost Libraries Archive (The Erik Midgard Case Files Volume 2)

Chapter 8

VIII

"If it's a shoe, it's probably mine," said Bernard Baal, as we all crowded onto the teleporter pads.

            "Of course it's going to be yours," said Chernobog. "No one else was stupid enough to go wading in the river without checking for caimans first."

            "Let's just hope it is that and nothing else," said Ra, as Anubis and his team stepped onto the teleporter pads as well. We all jostled around to make room and I ended up between Mirabi and Catherine Sobek.

            "It can't be anything serious," said Anubis. "We've monitored very carefully for this from the start. The project members have never taken back anything more than they needed and all the equipment's been accounted for."

            "Apart from copies of the Phai-whatsit disc and music recorders?" said Mirabi.

            "No. I brought all of them back," said Baldr. "I was most careful."

            "I didn't leave anything in Alexandria," said Ra. "And I haven't been looking for translations in Tutal Xiu."

            "Same here. I only brought back data. Nothing physical," said Zeus.

            "Well, we'll find out," I said. I tapped my wristcom, which I'd wormlinked to the controls and we teleported down to Earth.

_          _          _          _          _

As soon as we arrived, I blinked in the glaring sunlight. Then my Helmcom automatically lowered my visor opacity and I could see clearly again. I'd expected to arrive back in the jungle, but instead we were standing in the middle of a wide, flat brown plain. The rainforest ran around the edges of it, almost a mile away on three sides. On the forth side was an old 20th century tarmaced road and farming fields beyond it.  A collection of inflata-tents stood in the middle of the plain ahead of us. They were the only breaks in the brown flatness.

            "Tutal Xiu fell before the Spanish came, Detective," said Domingo Xibalba, as he noticed me looking around. "My people were forced to abandon the city after an earthquake. Then another one finished it off. All that's left is buried here. Hades calls it the site of the city, but it's really its graveyard."

            "I'm sorry," I said. I had been expecting ruins, but I'd thought they would at least be standing ruins. I'd imagined crumbling temples and pyramids covered in wines and surrounded by the living jungle. The flat, empty desert was a shock.

            "The Mayans did survive though," said Megan Uzume. "Through all the centuries to the present. You're the proof of that, Mr Xibalba."