The Library of the Mayas.
Two massive domes — constructed entirely from gold plates — towered before me. They stood in the middle of the river and rose almost to the ceiling. The sheer amount of gold astounded me. But the knowledge it contained, well, that was enough to make me speechless all over again.
I walked to the edge of the river. Water splashed against my boots. Mist assailed my eyes. But I didn't step back. Hell, I couldn't step back.
My boots and socks were still wet from Rattling House. So, I didn't take them off. Instead, I just lowered myself into the river. It was chest-deep. The swift current crashed against me.
I couldn't feel the water or sense its temperature. I didn't hear it either. And I couldn't smell the dust or taste the staleness of the air. It was as if all my senses, sans vision, had malfunctioned at the exact same moment.
The gold domes grew larger as I waded across the river. They completely dominated my view until I could see nothing else.
I stopped in front of the larger dome and ran my hand over the plates. They were malformed so as to fit together. Tiny etch marks had been engraved onto each plate. I couldn't decipher them, but they were definitely Maya hieroglyphics.
The current gained a little speed. I thrust out my hands and steadied myself against the gold plates.
"Amazing." Dr. Wu's head burst out of the river a few feet away from me. "I've never seen so much gold. It goes all the way to the bottom."
"And each plate is a separate book," I replied. "This is going to rewrite Maya history. It's going to change the world."
Emily waded out to join us. She produced a small camera and aimed it at the larger dome. But the current intensified and she had trouble maintaining her balance.
"Want me to do that?" I asked.
She nodded and handed me the camera. Quickly, I started to take pictures of the individual plates as well as of the domes themselves. But after a few minutes, reality seeped into my consciousness. "We can't stay here."
A frown creased Emily's visage.
"We don't have any equipment. And even if we did, it could take days, maybe weeks, to dismantle these domes. We won't last that long, not with Votan looking for us."
"We can stop him."
"With what? We've got a handful of guns between us. He's got a helicopter full of armed goons." I shook my head. "We have to find an exit."
She eyed me closely. "But what about the library?"
"I don't know about you." A change, sudden and permanent, came over me. And at that exact moment, I knew I couldn't retire from treasure hunting. Maybe I was risking an untimely death. But that was better than living a life I wasn't meant to live. "But I don't need it anymore. I got what I came here for."
With a frown, she turned away from me. Her fingers gently brushed against one of the plates. "That's interesting. There are hardly any gaps."
I examined the larger dome. Then I waded over to join Dr. Wu at the smaller one. "This one has a few gaps," I said slowly. "I see rock under here."
"Step aside."
I whirled around at the sound of Beverly's voice. She stood several feet away, up to her shoulders in river water. She clutched the handheld mass spectrometer in her hands. "You're going to analyze it?" I frowned. "But that'll take hours."
"More like minutes."
"Will it be accurate?"
"Accurate enough."
I glanced backward. The passage we'd used to access the library was quiet and still. But I knew it wouldn't last that way forever. Eventually, Votan would get past Hunahpu's traps. It was only a matter of time.
Beverly harvested a couple of samples from the two domes. A few minutes passed while she used the spectrometer to analyze them. "Okay, the gold appears to be layered over a blend of rock and metal. I'm getting initial readings for iron-60, lead-205, samarium-146, and curium-247. In other words, the same materials I found in the red rain, the pyramid blocks, and the wall. Only the concentrations here are much stronger."
"Is that all?" I asked.
"Not exactly. I'm picking up a faint, but rather large concentration of uranium. I think we've found our radiation source." She cast a wary eye at the two domes. "Or rather, sources."
I took a few steps back as I realized the truth. "They're meteorites," I said softly. "The impact scattered the lower limestone layer, sending chunks of it toward the surface. Over time the river carved out this cave system."
"Hang on a second." Beverly's gaze tightened. "The stuff under those domes isn't ordinary uranium."
"What do you mean?"
"It contains an unusually large amount of uranium-235." She exhaled loudly. "In other words, it's the same stuff used to make nuclear weapons."
Chapter 106
Graham's eyes bugged out of his head. "They're fissile?"
Beverly hoisted herself out of the water. "I'm afraid so."
I waded to the ledge. While I waited for Dr. Wu to climb out of the river, I noticed deep marks etched into the limestone, maybe a foot beneath the surface. I realized the river had carved them over a long period of time. That meant the water level had risen recently. Was it because of the rain? Or was it something else?
"I know it's a big deal." Emily squeezed her shirt, wringing water out of the fabric. "But doesn't uranium exist all over the world?"
"Not this type of uranium and not in these quantities," Beverly replied. "Believe me, I know. I had to study this subject pretty intensively during my military days. All natural uranium contains the same isotopic ratio. A little over ninety-nine percent is uranium-238. Uranium-235 is a little less than one-percent. And a very small fraction, less than a hundredth of a percent, consists of uranium-234."
"Come on," Tum said. "It can't all be the same."
"Actually, it is, at least in nature. Most cosmochemists think it's because our solar system's natural uranium ore was formed at the same time. It's been decaying at a uniform rate since then." She paused. "Uranium-235 is fissile. Millions of years ago, natural ore contained enough of it to sustain a fission chain reaction. But that's no longer the case."
"Why not?"
"Because uranium-235 decays much faster than uranium-238. So, it's gradually become a smaller part of natural ore. That's why nuclear weapons programs require uranium enrichment." She studied her spectrometer. "The uranium deposits appear to be heavily concentrated, representing about thirty-five percent of the material I sampled from under the two domes. My initial readings suggest a little more than twenty-four percent of the two deposits consists of uranium-235."
"Damn." Graham shook his head. "How'd it get that way?"
"If my extrasolar meteor theory is correct, then the uranium originated from outside the solar system. So, it could've been formed much later than Earth's natural ore. Also, the large presence of curium-247 could be a factor. Over time, curium-247 decays to uranium-235."
I climbed out of the river and turned around to study the two domes. "They must be putting out tons of radiation. We're hundreds of feet underground. Plus, gold acts as a radiation shield. And yet there was still enough radiation to affect Rigoberta and Pacho in just two weeks."
The others edged away from the domes.
"It might not have killed them though." Graham glanced at Dr. Wu. "Didn't you say Rigoberta overexerted herself?"
The doc nodded. "I'm nearly certain she was sick prior to coming here."
"There you go." Graham turned to face the rest of us. "Plus, it didn't kill the Xibalbans. They lived here long enough to build a small city."
"Yeah, but it could've introduced mutations into their population," I replied. "That would explain their unusual bones. That's probably how that strange cat — the nagual — came into existence too. Its ancestors started out as normal jaguars and evolved into something else."