The Source - Michael Cordy [73]
'I don't see any gold,' said Mendoza.
Hackett pointed to the end of the boulevard, flanked by two rough-hewn pillars. 'From what I saw on the ridge, the public and civic areas will be over there. That's where we should search.'
'Screw the gold,' said Zeb. 'I want to know where we're going to spend the night.'
'Me too,' said Juarez.
'The public areas and the main plaza should be more open,' said Hackett, 'less claustrophobic.'
'You mean less creepy,' said Zeb.
Hackett was right. The boulevard led to a large plaza. Its vast paving stones were cracked and uneven where plants and trees had grown through them. To the right a large diamond-shaped area – twenty feet wide – was bordered with heavy stones. The earth within it, covered with vegetation and dark blooms, had sunk many feet below the surrounding stones, giving the impression of a vast pit of flowers.
To the left they saw a stepped pyramid, extravagantly overrun with plants. Each of the three steps was the height of a modern house with a steep staircase carved into the front face, leading to a portal in the top tier. The structure was about sixty feet high and reminded Ross of the Aztec and Mayan pyramids he had seen on the Discovery channel. He couldn't help but be impressed by its scale. Just assembling the massive rocks to form the steps would be an amazing feat with today's technology, let alone at the time it had been built.
'Did you know there are more pyramids in Peru than there are in Egypt?' said Hackett. 'And that stepped ziggurats like this are also found in the Middle East and the Mediterranean?'
'How old is it?'
Hackett was cutting away vines. 'I'd say at least a thousand years old.'
'How the hell did they build it?'
Hackett wiped the sweat from his brow. 'With the one resource they had in abundance. Manpower. Ancient civilizations had no unions, but they did have pulleys, levers and armies of men. Durham Cathedral in northern England and the amazing temple Angkor Wat in Cambodia are both almost a thousand years old. The Colosseum in Rome's almost two thousand, while Stonehenge and the Great Pyramid at Giza are more than four thousand.'
'Check this out, Ross,' shouted Zeb, from across the plaza. She stood at the edge, pointing at a ring of stones that surrounded a stone bowl. In its centre a pillar about four feet high had been carved into the shape of an exotic flower.
Ross went over to her. The pillar was sunk deep into the ground, and the splayed stone petals formed multiple spouts. 'Looks like there was once a natural spring they directed into a communal fountain.'
But Zeb wasn't listening. Instead her eyes were fixed on the side of the ziggurat. 'Ross,' she whispered, pointing a shaking finger. 'Over there. You see it?'
He blinked. The vines obscured most of the stone but he could see something carved into it. An image he recognized. 'Yes,' he said, mouth dry. 'I see it.'
He rushed over to the ziggurat and, with his good hand, began to hack away the vines, exposing a carving at least six feet high. Zeb reached into her pack, pulled out her notes and flipped through the photocopied pages of the Voynich. She stopped at one and held it up.
'Look, Ross! This is page ninety-three of the Voynich.'
Ross stood back from the ziggurat and took it from her. The carving had been done with more skill than the drawing but otherwise it was identical. He rushed to the next block of stone and cut back the vine, revealing another carving of a strange plant, then another. He reached for Zeb's photocopies. Each of the strange plants carved into the stone was the same as one of those illustrated in the Voynich.
'I thought Father Orlando and