Dorion raised his hands inquisitively. “We do?”
“They played it here, in the presence of the Great Goddess.” Jade looked back at the tunnel opening from which they had emerged. “The Goddess of the Underworld.”
“It’s a ball court and a temple,” Professor realized aloud. “They would come down here, probably for special celebrations, and only after appeasing the goddess by winning the ball game would a person be permitted to enter the tunnel and make the journey to the room with the spheres. Or maybe the winners were sacrificed by the priests, who would then enter the tunnel.”
“They sacrificed the winners?” asked Dorion, incredulous. “Hardly an incentive to play your best game.”
“Being offered to the gods was the highest honor. At least that’s what the priests told everyone. It’s the same kind of logic that gets people to blow themselves up with suicide bombs; be a martyr, virgins waiting in the afterlife—”
Jade quickly cut him off. “There’s some evidence of that happening in the late Maya Classical Period and perhaps in Aztec society as well, but probably only on rare occasions. The game had different meanings in different cultures, and sometimes different meanings for different groups within a culture. It was recreation for the average citizen, could be used as a proxy for war, and as we see here, may have had religious significance.”
Dorion pointed at the black orb. “And that is the ball?”
Jade nodded. “Solid rubber. It probably weighs about ten pounds, so you can imagine that players got pretty bruised. Some of the wall art shows players wearing elaborate costumes which may have also been protective equipment, and in the murals at Tepantitla, the players are shown hitting the ball with sticks.”
“It’s a sphere.”
Jade saw what he was driving at. “You think there’s a connection between the planet spheres and the ball game?”
Dorion spread his hands in a gesture of uncertainty. “You are the expert. What do you think?”
“Sometimes a ball is just a ball,” muttered Professor.
“A sphere is not just a ball. Its shape is determined by gravity. The planets are spherical because particles of matter — including dark matter — will coalesce into spherical shapes. That is why planets and stars are round. I think it’s remarkable that the ancients understood this.”
“Or maybe the ancients just realized that spheres happen to bounce a lot better that cubes.”
“Even that is not something to be discounted lightly. The reason the sphere bounces better is because of the way energy is distributed throughout.”
“Guys,” Jade said sharply. “It’s a great debate, but let’s have it somewhere else, okay?”
She hopped down from the dais and onto the floor of the courtyard. Dorion however reached out for the ball.
“I don’t think you should—” Before Professor could finish uttering the warning, and a heartbeat before Dorion’s hand could touch the ball, something clicked underfoot. The center of the pedestal upon which the ball rested abruptly fell away and the ball dropped down the center like water down a drain.
Jade heard Professor’s shout and whirled just in time to see the ball shoot from a hole in the side of the wall beneath the dais. She didn’t need the gift of prophecy to know that something very bad was about to happen.
NINE
The ball arced out over the courtyard floor and hit, bouncing with a loud thwock. Jade thought that might trigger whatever nasty surprise the ball court had in store, but aside from the ball continuing on its journey, nothing happened.
In a rush of intuition, Jade saw the reason for this, and just as clearly saw that the danger was far from past. The point of the game was to keep the ball from reaching the goal, which given the sloping floor, had to be the trough at the center. If a player could do that, they would stay safe. If they failed….
Jade knew from bitter experience that ancient architects had delighted themselves with devising wonderful methods of dealing with unwelcome visitors; there was no telling what sort of death trap they had created here. The ball court was like an enormous pinball game, and if she made the wrong move, it would be game over.
In a split-second, she weighed her choices. She was just a couple steps away from the dais. She could make it back up to that place of relative safety before the ball reached the center… but it would reach the center, and under the circumstances, that seemed like a very bad thing. The only other option was to try and play.
The ball was about ten feet away, already descending for a second bounce. She dove forward, throwing her clasped hands out, trying to get them in between the ball and the floor in a classic volleyball bump.
Her timing was perfect, but that was about the only thing she got right. The solid ball hit like a blow from a hammer, slamming her arms into the floor even as the rest of her body hit the rough surface and, carried forward by her momentum, slid toward the center of the courtyard. The friction tore at her, burning hot through the fabric of her clothes, scraping bare skin raw, though she barely felt any of it. The pain of contact with the ball had left her arms completely numb.
The glancing impact was enough to divert the ball’s course, if only slightly. Jade caught a glimpse of its next bounce. She had managed to knock it onto the section of floor that sloped down from the side of the courtyard. It bounced again, though just barely, and continued rolling along across the slope at a slight curve as gravity began drawing it once again toward the final destination.
Jade struggled to get up. Her arms were nearly useless, so she had to roll to a sitting position to get her feet under her. There was no way she would be able to intercept the ball a second time, but she knew she had to try.
Something moved in front of her; Professor, charging headlong toward the center of the court in a desperate effort to do what she could not. Before he could reach it, the ball hit one of the stelae and rebounded back up the slope, away from his direction of travel. He skidded to a stop even as Jade managed to get back to her feet.
A measure of sensation was returning to her hands, all of it bad. She felt like she’d been smacked with a baseball bat; nothing was broken, but the throb of pain was almost paralyzing. She realized now why the ball game was played without hands or even feet; the ball was so heavy, so dense, that trying to hit or kick the ball might easily break the small bones in the extremities.
“You okay?” Professor shouted as he spun around trying to track the ball’s new trajectory.
“Fine!” she lied. “Don’t let it reach the center.”
The ball deflected off another stela — the decorative columns suddenly seemed to be everywhere — and shot straight toward the center as if from a cannon. Professor made a grab for the ball but was half-a-second too slow. Jade threw herself flat across its path trying to catch it with her body.
The ball struck her hip — another stinging impact — and then bounced into the air. She rolled over just in time to see it begin its downward arc and watched helplessly as it struck just above the trough, bounced across to the other side, and then rolled down the slope and in.
The trough was not very deep — the top of the ball protruded out of it — but as soon as the ball struck the bottom, there was a distinctive thump from within. A rhythmic tremor, almost like an engine idling, began to vibrate up through the stone floor.
“Not good,” Jade muttered.
There was a rasping noise and a small puff of dust as something sprang out of the nearest stela.