“It’s up here on the pillar.” He removed the lead apron from his pack and draped it over his front, dangling from his neck. Even with it on, he didn’t want to remain there any longer than he had to.
He climbed the next step. The reading reached the top of the scale.
He looked at the pillar to see if he could spot the xenobium. Halfway up the pillar, the bricks were supplanted by a stack of twelve thin circular stone disks that partially supported the thick vertical wooden beams. The top disk was pierced at irregular intervals by slots that were the same diameter as the beams. The dry desert air had preserved the yard-long segments of lumber.
There was a finger-width gap between each of the beams. He held the lantern up to one of the gaps, and the iridescent sheen of the multi-hued xenobium reflected the light. From the limited view he had, it looked to be an oblong specimen the size of a plum.
The gaps were too small to fit his hand through, and even if he could have, the xenobium specimen was too large to extract.
The Nazca must have created a way to retrieve it. But how?
Then he noticed that wooden handles extended from the disks. He looked closer and saw that drawings of the Nazca zodiac symbols were etched around the rim of each of the disks.
That had to be it. If the disks were rotated to a particular alignment, the wooden beams would slip off their main supports and fall into disk’s slots like the tumblers in a lock. Tyler supposed he shouldn’t have been surprised about such a sophisticated design from a people who had created the wealth of lines on the Nazca plateau, but it was an amazing revelation all the same.
“Can you get it?” Jess said.
“Let me give it a try.”
Tyler grabbed hold the handle attached to the topmost disk and pulled to his right until the spider figure was aligned with the hummingbird figure in the disk below.
Just as he suspected, a wooden beam slid down a few inches into the topmost disk.
What he wasn’t expecting was the cascade of bricks that fell from the roof. He hugged the pillar and they barely missed him as they crashed to the floor.
When the dust cleared, Jess said, “What the hell happened?”
“I got a little overconfident.”
“Surprise, surprise.”
“At least we know what happened in that other room. They had a similar pillar setup in there and some tomb raiders found out the hard way that the Nazca didn’t want anyone but the gods messing with their stuff. It’d take a week to dig through there and see what they were after.”
Jess gazed at the pillar. “You mean, if those disks are turned in the correct pattern, the wooden beams fall far enough to let you get at the xenobium, but if you don’t align them perfectly—”
“We get buried under a few hundred tons of bricks. Some of the wooden beams seem to act as keystones. Drop a couple of the wrong ones down into the slots, and it would start a chain reaction.”
“You say the symbols from the Nazca lines are on the disks?”
“Some of them, but I don’t have any idea how they should line up to get the xenobium out. I could try to pry the beams apart, but I’m afraid I’d bring down the entire roof.”
Jess looked thoughtful then broke out her smart phone, to which she’d transferred the cave photos they’d emailed from Easter Island. After scanning it for a few minutes, she said, “Are all twelve symbols on every disk?”
Tyler walked around the pillar, counting each of the drawings etched into the stone.
“All of them are here,” he said. “Why?”
“Because I think I know why the Nazca symbols were connected by lines. The map shows each of the drawings connected from the Mandala through each other all the way to Cahuachi. What if the lines were drawn to show the gods how to unlock the xenobium?”
“It’s a combination lock.” Tyler gaped in awe of the Nazca people’s ingenuity. “The stone disks are the dials. But what’s the zero position?”
“The Nazca apparently liked lines. See if you can find one above the top disk.”
Tyler did another circumnavigation on the top riser and sure enough, there it was. He’d missed it before because it was just a single notch. It lined up with a notch below the bottom disk.
“Found it. Okay. Tell me the order.”
“One problem. I don’t know whether the Nazca would order them from top to bottom or bottom up.”
“What’s your best guess?” Tyler asked. “We’ve got a fifty-fifty shot.”
“As long as my theory about the combination is correct,” Jess said. “All right. They drew the lines leading from the Mandala to here through the constellation symbols. They were leading the gods to the xenobium. That means the disk symbols should go in the same order.”
“So you think the top disk would be the last symbol the line on the Nazca plain goes through?”
“Or it could be top down because the gods would start in the heavens.”
“But then the xenobium would be underneath the disks. I think your first instinct was right. We’ll start with the bottom and work our way to the top.”
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Jess asked. “After that preview of the collapse, we may not get a second chance.”
“If Colchev gets here and figures out what we did, he could walk away with the xenobium before we get back with any kind of force. And if I fail, at least he won’t get his hands on it.”
“Don’t even say that.”
“Believe me, if this starts to buckle, I’m going to run like hell. Stand over by the exit in case this doesn’t work.”
Jess hesitated, then reluctantly moved to the passageway opening.
“Now what’s the first symbol?” Tyler asked.
“The spider.”
Tyler found the tarantula and rotated the bottom disk until the etching was matched up with the line.
“Next?”
“The condor,” Jess said. “Don’t mix it up with the hummingbird.”
“Bigger wingspan on the condor, I assume.” He rotated the second stone disk until the condor was above the spider.
They continued on in the same way for the next nine symbols. None of the wooden beams had moved, but Tyler wasn’t expecting them to until he reached the last disk.
“What’s the last symbol?” Tyler asked. His back ached from pulling on the heavy disks.
“The astronaut.”
“Okay,” Tyler said. “Get ready to run if this doesn’t work.”
“If you start to feel it buckling, get out of there.”
“I will.” Tyler put his hands on the disk’s handle and paused to look at Jess. “I’ve often thought about running into you again. I’m glad I did.” He smiled. “It’s been fun.”
Before she could reply, he pulled the handle. The disk ground against the other stones as it rotated. Tyler put every bit of remaining strength he had into the final heave.
The astronaut etching lined up with the notch and something snapped inside the column. Two of the wooden beams fell all the way into their slots on the pillar. Tyler prepared to jump, but all the other beams remained in place.
The xenobium gleamed from its honored resting place nestled on a cradle of obsidian glass, within reach of human hands for the first time in over a thousand years.
“It worked!” Jess yelled.
Tyler exhaled sharply. “And I’m not dead!”
“That too.”
He used the crowbar to nudge the xenobium out of its holder, and the ovoid relic fell out, thumping onto the top riser before rolling off and coming to rest on the floor of the chamber. Tyler clambered down, took the lead-lined apron out of his pack, and carefully wrapped it around the specimen.
“Is it safe to hold?” Jess asked.
Tyler ran the radiation meter over it. “Not for long. I’ll be getting an x-ray-equivalent dose every two minutes while I’m carrying it.”