The Source - Michael Cordy [86]
'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