"Restore point at ten minutes ago! And print it out!" Liam exclaimed, fascinated and delighted that Darwin the cynic was with him when it happened again. He pushed against Darwin, who was busy recalling a recent satellite map of the area and printed it out.
When the paper slid through the slit in the printer, both men grasped it and waited impatiently for the machine to completely spit out the paper.
"There it is, old boy!" Liam screamed with excitement. His concerns were proven valid and he panted from the fascination he felt for the strange phenomenon. Darwin simply stood frozen, scrutinizing the coordinates to ascertain that it was indeed their location where, ten minutes before, there was minimal cloud cover and steady temperature.
"What did I tell ya?" Liam kept on and on, like a child who just convinced his father that there are monsters in the closet.
"This is insane. How is this possible?" his colleague muttered, still frowning, unable to peel his eyes from the image. "Liam, these are our coordinates. This is the platform and here is the temperature, ten minutes ago!" Darwin still moved his index finger along the longitude and latitude lines to make sense of it, yet sense eluded him. Now he envied Liam for his belief in the more mysterious things of life — then at least he could wrap his open-minded head around what just happened. But for him it was utterly frightening to consider.
"It is as if there is some intelligence behind it," he marveled, as he looked out from the large rectangular window. "Call me crazy, but I can feel it. Whatever is going on out there right now is driven by some deliberate force, something otherworldly that possesses purpose. Something that thinks like we do, only…" he gasped a little, "it has the stupendous power of a… a…" he stopped speaking, unable to find the words.
"god?" Liam finished his sentence in a calm revelation as he joined his colleague at the window to admire the storm, his one-word contribution sending shivers through Darwin's skin.
Chapter 22
Carefully, Nina decrypted the grid cipher by using the dots and corners as reference to the letters randomly written inside the nine squares. One by one she added letter after letter until she had a line of gibberish with spaces between. It did not make sense — in English. However, in the local dogmas of deities this particular collection of letters represented a mantra recited by followers of Mañjuśrī. Its giant face enthralled Sam, but Calisto avoided its countenance now, for the sake of composure. She was nauseous and her head throbbed like a bass drum, forcing her to sit in the dirt while Dr. Gould was arranging the spaced words and the men huddled around her to watch. Finally she had it done. They all frowned.
"Oṃ a ra pa ca na dhīḥ."
"Seriously?" Gary asked, trying to pronounce the grotesque alien phrase he was convinced was incorrect.
"I think so," she said almost imperceptibly, slightly uncertain herself.
"Well, we won't know until we actually read it out loud, so let's get to it," Sam suggested. He could see the group growing tired and leaking morale in copious amounts.
"How the hell are we supposed to know how to pronounce that last word?" Gary said with a miserable scowl on his face.
"Just say it until it has the right sound, damn it," Calisto chimed in from the discomfort of the gravel and thorns.
Nina and Sam tried the mantra. Starting slowly, they read each word not to confuse the consonants that followed consecutively.
Nothing.
"Pfft," Purdue puffed from the rock he was seated on. "It's not working. Now what?"
He felt utterly miserable for having come so far, enduring such peril and reaching the fabled shrine only to be locked out by a grinning god with weather cracks and a bad case of obesity.
"Try again. We must be saying it too slow," Sam urged and Nina nodded in agreement.
Again they began chanting the words over and over until they became familiar with the sequence and before long they started feeling the rhythm of the mantra. It was quite simple once they got used to the sound of it and eventually Purdue joined them. Calisto also said her bit from where she was struggling to keep her equilibrium in check. Gary just watched. He was not the eloquent type and enjoyed being a Canuck so much that he did not care to try and take in the culture.
Blots of dark sand appeared all around their feet as the giant raindrops commenced their pelting. Above them the swiftly floating clouds had now calmed and hovered in their place to accommodate the coming downpour. Instinctively the group sought shelter under the trees surrounding the shrine, but they kept at the mantra until the four of them found their unison, even throwing in a tempo as they grew comfortable with the words. The thunder growled so loud that the mountain shook under them and sent them cowering in fear of a rock fall. But the party soon realized that the thunder did not come from the heavens above them, but emanated deep from the bowels of the mighty peak that towered so high that optical illusion provided a terrifying impression of it falling forward over them.
"Oh my God, we're going to die," Sam shouted at Nina and grabbed her arm firmly against him. Calisto lowered her head to avoid any injury she might sustain from whatever the earth had planned for them. Purdue hid behind a tree trunk nearby, waiting it out.
In front of them the gargantuan face began to move, not as a face should, but instead rearranging its features by shifting the marble blocks that it consisted of into some portal or doorway. Moving simultaneously by the hand of some ancient engineering genius, the giant slabs of white stone parted. Purdue and his group stood in dumbstruck awe and no small amount of fear, beholding the wondrous transformation without a thought for the Spear they had come to find.
"I told you its face changed," Calisto shouted with newfound vigor, as she moved forward to where Nina and Sam stood to fully regard the majestic event. Nina was mute, not in awe, but in concern for not knowing if she would have to face a cramped dark space again. Behind the open doorway it was black as coal. There could be nothing but a constrictive chute to usher her inside and who knew what was waiting there? What if she got stuck in a confined doorway and found herself unable to breathe properly? All these intimidating notions swam through her mind, but only the thought of the money and academically kicking Matlock in the balls drove her to cultivate some emergency courage. Sam had his high-definition camera out and recorded every shift in the slabs as it happened.
Purdue smiled. He felt regal and invincible now, having attained the goal of finding the shrine that was so carefully hidden in surreptitious clues. The showering rain did not perturb any of them and Gary stole closer to the others when he finally relaxed from his agitation. By the time the structure had completed its metamorphosis it looked nothing like a face, save for the glaring multicolored eyes, which remained intact with the forehead. It had formed a stunning entranceway adorned around the edges with a plethora of decorations, etched on the opposite sides of each slab, now turned to face outward.
Sam captured the detail with his extended lens and asked Nina to find his video camera in his bag. It also had an infrared/ thermal interface for filming in the dark. Purdue stepped forward where the entrance beckoned, stunned slightly by the awful stench of rotten plant matter, old air and guano released for the first time in decades. The others followed him into the rocky corridor that led into the darkness. Tapping Calisto on the arm, Sam pointed to a pile of old tarnished copper bowls and goblets, an old bent gong and a stack of folded rotten cloths, which might have been the attire of priests a very long time ago. It was all left there in an old forgotten corner of excavated rock that functioned as a small room a good century ago, by the looks of it. From inside the chamber the light coming from outside hardly illuminated more than three meters past the threshold, lending them no visibility whatsoever.