The Sphinx

CHAPTER 3

It was after three days of difficult journeying that the falls finally came into view. They had been audible for hours during the approach. There was no mistaking the sound of over two million gallons of water tumbling over the edge of the Parana Plateau of South America, cascading down 270 feet onto the rocks below… a natural thunder that abated only once every forty years during a dry season in the middle of a drought upriver.

The vision matched the awesome sound. It was as if an ocean met an abyss, as the Iquaca River in southern Brazil tumbled over a wall of 275 individual falls, stretching two and a half miles wide, most separated only by a few craggy rocks with some trees struggling to grow in the watery mist.

Downstream, on the west bank of the river, the small party stood in silent awe for minutes, simply watching the power of nature. Finally, one of the figures, the tallest of the group, shifted his gaze from the falls to the narrow gorge beneath them, where the water was carried away.

“Garganta del Diablo!” the native guide, Bauru, yelled in the tall man’s ear, struggling to be heard as he pointed at the gorge. “That is what you seek, Professor.”

“The Devil’s Throat,” the tall black man translated. Professor Niama Mualama was over six feet six inches in height. He was slender but not skinny, with broad shoulders and muscles packed on his frame like whipcord. His face was broad and friendly when he smiled, which was just about all the time. The only indication of his age were the thin tines around his eyes and a touch of lightness in his closely cropped black hair. He was old enough to have a one-year-old granddaughter back home in Nairobi, from his only daughter. His wife had died three years before from cancer, and since the funeral and the mourning period afterward, he had spent all his time pursuing his life’s obsession.

Mualama was an anthropologist affiliated with the University of Dar es Salaam on the east coast of Tanzania. The fact that the university had barely a thousand students and Mualama had been one of only two professors in the anthropology department had done nothing to dint his enthusiasm. He had gone to graduate school in the United States and England and had returned home to help run the department. Recent changes in the government had caused severe cutbacks to what the ruling powers considered unessential programs at the university, and Mualama’s department had been one of the first to fall under the ax two years ago.

No longer able to teach, he had devoted all his time to his studies and research, traveling extensively around the world, searching for answers to a mystery he had stumbled over as a young man. Mualama had spent two decades following clues scattered about the world. The last clue had led him to this location, and recent events regarding the alien presence on Earth had given a particular urgency to his mission.

He turned back to the thundering water. “The first European to see the falls… a Spaniard, Alvar Nunex de Vaca in 1541… called them Salto de Santa Maria, the Falls of Saint Mary.”

Bauru shrugged. He had never heard that. They had always been the Iquaca Falls, from the local tongue, in which Iquaca meant “great water.” Bauru was of Indian-Spanish descent. He was a short, stocky man with dark skin. His most distinguishing feature was his bald head.

His hair had begun falling out several years before, and he’d decided to complete the process on his own. He shaved it every day, even when he was in the wilderness.

“Let’s go.” Mualama shouldered his pack and headed toward the gorge, where the surging water passed between rock cliffs on its journey to the Orinoco River, the third-largest river in South America, and a long journey to the distant Atlantic Ocean.

Bauru led and the two porters he had hired followed, scrambling across rocks, then into the thick jungle as they swung around the most immediate cliffs.

It was an arduous three-hour journey that covered less than a mile before they came back out on the edge of the gorge, the water fifty feet below them. The sound of the falls was only slightly diminished.

“That is what I wanted to see,” Mualama said.

The rock he was pointing at was twenty feet long by fifteen wide, with a perfectly flat top. It sat about eight feet out from the edge of the gorge in the river. Mualama eyed the water. It was fast moving and full of stirred-up silt, making the water reddish brown in color.

Mualama slipped his pack off and pulled out a leather-bound notebook.

“What do you have?” Bauru asked. He thought the African most strange. They had linked up three days before at Santos, on the Atlantic Coast, just south of Sao Paulo. Even though Mualama had told Bauru he’d never been in South America before, the dark man had more than carried his load on the journey and seemed undaunted by the thick jungle.

Mualama pulled a piece of paper out of the notebook. “A copy of a telegraph sent almost a century ago.” He gave it to Bauru to read.

“Who sent this?” Bauru handed it back.

“Lieutenant Colonel Percy Fawcett, a British officer and explorer.” Mualama was looking about.

“Did he find what he was looking for?”

“Fawcett, his son Jack, and a cameraman named Raleigh Rimell sent that telegraph on the twentieth of April, 1925, just before setting out on an expedition. They made one radio contact on the twenty-ninth of May, reporting their position, not far from here, then were never heard from or seen again.”

Bauru wasn’t surprised. Many had disappeared into the jungle, particularly in this area of Brazil, the Mato Grosso, a vast, virtually impenetrable land of jungle, escarpments, and tortuous rivers.

“What is this city they were looking for?” Bauru asked. There were many tales about the Mato Grosso. ranging from lost cities to terrible monsters to strange tribes of white-skinned people.

“Fawcett said he believed that people from Atlantis had come here just before the island was destroyed. That they built a mighty city in the jungle that deteriorated over the years. He claims that he found an old Portuguese map in Rio de Janeiro that showed a stone city enclosed by a wall deep in the Mato Grosso.”

“You are searching for this city?”

“No.”

“You are searching for the remains of Fawcett’s party?” Bauru knew that would be an impossible task… the jungle would have consumed the three men and left no trace, especially after seventy-five years.

“No.”

Bauru was a patient man. “Then what are we looking for?”

“What Fawcett was really looking for.” Mualama was scanning the rocky crags below them.

Bauru was intrigued. “Not a lost city?”

“Oh, I think Fawcett believed there was a lost Atlantean city out there somewhere in the jungle, and certainly the events of the past month with the alien Airlia confirm there was an Atlantis,” Mualama said. “But on that particular expedition, he was searching for something else.” Mualama pointed below. “We must go down there.”

Bauru eyed the route down with trepidation. He pulled his pack off and extracted a 120-foot nylon climbing rope. He tied one end around the thick trunk of a tree, then tossed the free end over the edge. Mualama already had a harness around his waist and a snaplink attached to the front. The African popped the rope through the gate, wrapped a loop around the metal, then prepared to back over the edge of the gorge, his left hand on the fixed end coiling from his waist to the tree.

“How will we get back up?” Bauru asked.

“I will fasten the other end to the rock below,” Mualama said. “Then we can climb back up using chumars.”

“Chumars?”

Mualama held up two small pieces of machinery. “They clip on the rope, then allow it through in only one direction. You rest your weight on one, slide the other up, then rest your weight on the other. It is slow, but you will get back up.”

Mualama put the chumars back in his pack and edged over the side of the gorge. He rappelled down, his feet finding precarious purchase on the jagged rock wall, Twenty feet above the surface of the river, he paused. Mualama bent his knees, bringing his body in close to the wall, then sprung outward as he released tension on the rope. The nylon slid through the snaplink as he descended, and he landed directly on top of the rock. He knelt and hammered a piton into the top of the rock before he unhooked from the rope. He tied off the free end of the rope to the piton and looked up at Bauru and gave a thumbs-up.

Only then did he turn his attention to the stone below him. At the height of the rainy season the top would be submerged, and thousands of seasons had scoured the surface smooth. Centered on the downstream side, just before the edge, was a small mark. Seeing it, Mualama allowed himself to feel the excitement of making a true discovery, of another step in his long and strange path about to be completed. He had feared this entire trip would turn up nothing, as previous trips to other places in the past had, but the mark was where it was supposed to be, and that meant… Mualama stopped himself from thinking too far ahead.

Bauru slid down the rope and arrived, leather gloves keeping his hands from burning on the nylon. The two porters followed, as Mualama examined the carving. “What is it?” Bauru asked. He had never seen such strange markings.

“It is Arabic script for the number one thousand and one,” Mualama translated. The water had worn smooth the edges of the carving.

“Arabic?” Bauru touched the rock. “This has been here for a long time. What Arab would have been here that many years ago? You said Fawcett was an Englishman.”

“The mark was carved there in 1867, long before Fawcett set out on his journey. But it was an Englishman who carved the numbers. An Englishman who spoke and wrote fluent Arabic. Sir Richard Francis Button.”

“I have not heard of this man.” Bauru said.

“He was a famous explorer and linguist. Burton was assigned as British consul to Brazil in 1864. He was based on the coast in Santos. In 1867 he left Santos and traveled alone for almost the entire year. It is known he navigated the San Francisco River north of here for over fifteen hundred miles in a canoe. He barely survived, arriving at the coast suffering from both pneumonia and hepatitis.”

“Why did he do this?” Bauru thought most foreigners quite strange. He would never travel that far in the Mato Grosso alone. It was akin to committing suicide. He was amazed that the man had made it to the coast, especially given the limited equipment he must have had over a hundred years earlier.

“To hide something.” Mualama pointed down. “It must be underneath. I think Burton traveled here during the dry season of the drought of 1867, when the water was much lower. In one of his papers I found in England he described a chamber under a flat rock like an altar, in the throat of the Devil.” Mualama looked around. “We are in the Devil’s Throat. This is a flat rock in the right place. And this mark is his.”

“How do you know that?” Bauru asked.

“Burton translated the story of the Thousand and One Nights from the Arabic. To mark his way, he used riddles that only someone who knew about him would recognize. I have no doubt we are in the right place. I must go underneath and find the chamber.”

“Is this what Fawcett was looking for?”

“I believe so.”

“But Fawcett never returned,” Bauru noted.

“He might never have made it here,” Mualama said. “The journey is easier now.” Bauru looked at the water askance. “There is much danger in the rivers here. You cannot see more than six inches in that muck. There are… ”

“I have to,” Mualama cut him off. “Like Fawcett, I have been on Burton’s trail for twenty years, and this is the next step.” Mualama pulled off his shoes and socks.

“Why did Fawcett lie about what he was looking for?” Bauru asked, trying to forestall the professor’s going into the water.

“Because it is a very dangerous path he was trying to follow, and because there are those who guard it most jealously.” Mualama pulled his shirt over his head, revealing his lean torso, a black metal medallion hanging around his neck that featured an eye superimposed on the apex of a pyramid, and a back covered in scar tissue.

Bauru and the porters were shocked by what they saw. “What happened to your back?”

“I was caught in a fire.” Mualama said. He had only his shorts on. “I am going over the side.”

“Here.” Bauru pulled a shorter section of rope out of his pack and handed one end to Mualama. “Tie this around your waist.”

Mualama quickly looped the rope around himself and tied it off. After a sharp exchange in their native dialect, Bauru and the two porters held the other end. Mualama slid over the side of the rock into the fast-flowing, warm water. He took a deep breath, then dove down, running hands along the rock, searching.

He went down about five feet, searching carefully, but there was nothing. He burst to the surface, gasping for air. He dove once more, hands searching along the rock face. He pulled himself lower, eight feet down, and felt an indentation in the rock. Reaching his hand into the opening, he grabbed hold of the inside and pulled himself down. The air in his lungs pressed him up against the top of whatever he was in.

The way ahead was still clear, but Mualama had no more oxygen. He pushed back out and surfaced, sputtering for air.

“Have you found anything?” Bauru asked.

Mualama could only nod as his lungs worked to replenish the lost oxygen. He noted that the porters were looking about nervously, fearful of something. Bauru sat down on the edge of the rock. “It is dangerous to stay in the water too long.”

Mualama was finally able to speak. “Why?”

“Snakes. Piranha. They usually are not in water that flows this quickly, but one never knows. Sometimes they congregate in tide pools along such a river and hunt meat in packs. It is not good to take chances.”

Mualama had come too far to be scared off by a threat that might not be present. “I am going under. There is a chamber. If I do not surface, or pull on the rope three times, by the end of one minute, pull me back out.”

Bauru nodded.

Mualama filled his lungs and dove once more. He slid along the rock and into the opening. He could tell with his hands that it was a tunnel about four feet in diameter, going into the rock itself. He pushed along, searching blindly. Suddenly his hand was free of water. He popped his head up and breathed stale air in total darkness. He tugged on the rope around his waist hard, three times. Then he searched with his hands. A rock ledge was in front of him. It went back as far as he could reach. He needed light.

The African professor retraced his route through the tunnel and back to the surface. He surfaced and opened (…)

Bauru and the two porters were no longer holding the other end of the rope. The three were standing, heads tilted back, looking at the top of the gorge. Mualama followed their gaze. A tall man in dark clothes, along with dozen Guirani Indian tribesmen armed with crossbows, lined the top. The man’s face was hidden in the shadow of a large bush hat.

The man waved his hand and the Guirani raised their weapons. Bauru reacted, dashing toward Mualama and diving into the water. The porters cried out, raising their hands in supplication, in turn to be hit with several bolts each. They dropped lifeless on the stone altar.

“Come!” Bauru grabbed Mualama’s shoulder as a bolt skittered off the edge of the rock less than six inches from his face. “Lead me to the chamber.”

Mualama dove, Bauru’s hand now on his ankle. He pulled through the tunnel, lungs bursting… he had not gotten a good breath when he had surfaced, and the going was slow… pulling Bauru through.

Mualama was starved for air. He reached ahead, hoping to touch the surface, but felt only more water. He pulled harder through tunnel. His hand broke the surface and he grabbed the ledge, pulling himself into the air. Bauru sputtered up next to him.

They hung on the edge, gasping for several moments.

“Who was that with the Guirani?” Bauru finally man-aged to ask.

“The Mission.” Mualama spit the last word out.

“Who?”

Mualama pulled himself onto the stone ledge and rolled onto his side, still breathing hard. “They’ve followed me before. The burns on my back… they almost caught me in England last year. They destroyed the place where I was studying some ancient texts, and I barely managed to escape.”

Bauru joined him. “Who is this Mission? I have heard stories of such a place, but no one seems to know exactly where it is. Why do they chase you?”

Mualama felt the darkness all around. Even here the sound of the waterfalls sounded like a nonending series of drums rumbling. He reached out, searching the stone ledge. “Burton left something in this place. He could get in here during the dry season that year. Every forty years or so during a drought the river dries up and the falls are silent. Burton came here during one of those occasions.”

“Why is this Mission trying to kill us?” Bauru was still focused on the immediate danger.

“They work for the aliens.” Mualama’s fingers brushed against something. Slick cloth. Wrapped around something. He picked it up. It was about twelve inches long by eight wide by two deep and covered with a soft pliant cloth. He slipped it into the waistband of his shirt as Bauru suddenly turned on a small penlight.

Above the rock, one of the Guirani scampered down the rope to the rock. He had a length of cord over his shoulder that he tied to both of the bodies. He fastened the free end to the piton, then rolled both bodies into the river, the blood swirling into the silt-laden water, the corpses banging against the rock. Then he unfastened the nylon rope from the piton and climbed, hand over hand, hack to the top of the gorge. He pulled the rope up.

The small party stood still for a few minutes, watching. Then the water around the two bodies exploded in churning red froth.

“What do we do now?” Bauru asked. He shined the light around. They were inside a chamber about four feet from the ledge, three high by six wide. The rock walls had been polished smooth when water had carved it out ages before.

“We must get out of here,” Mualama said.

“They might be waiting for us.”

“We cannot stay here much longer,” Mualama said. “The air is growing stale.” Bauru considered the situation. “If we stay underwater and swim with the current, we might be able to get far enough down the gorge so that they will not see us.

“All right.” Mualama was anxious to be moving, to get outside in the light where he could see what treasure he had uncovered.

Bauru turned the light off and slid over the edge into the water. Mualama prepared to follow, when the guide screamed and splashed about.

“What is wrong?” Mualama yelled.

Bauru screamed again, and literally jumped out of the water onto the ledge. Mualama could hear him cursing, flopping about.

“Get it off me!” Bauru yelled.

“What is it?”

“Get it off me!” There was a ripping sound, then something splashing into the water. “Oh, God.” Bauru’s voice was low now as he slumped back. The light came on, and Mualama saw a long, jagged tear down the other man’s chest. There was another on his leg. Blood pulsed out of the wounds.

“What happened?”

“Piranha.” Bauru grimaced as his fingers probed the wound on his chest. The skin was torn for almost ten inches, the edges of the wound rough. Blood oozed out over Bauru’s fingers.

Mualama tried to help him, but they had nothing to stop the bleeding with. “We have to get out of here,” Mualama insisted.

“How?

“We wait for the fish to leave?” Mualama suggested.

Bauru looked up at Mualama, his face resigned.

“They have tasted me. They have the blood scent. They will not leave. I have seen such fish block a river crossing for four days after taking down the lead horse in a column. They stripped it down to a skeleton, then waited for more.”

Mualama took a deep breath to steady his nerves, but all that served to do was remind how stale the air in their small prison was. He tried to help the other man stop the bleeding, but the wounds were too wide and long. A pool of blood was forming on the rock beneath Bauru.

Mualama looked over at the dark surface of the (…)

“There is no other way out than through the tunnel.” Mualama said.

Bauru laughed, a manic edge to it. “I know that. The only choice to be made is to die here slowly or to go in the water and die quickly.” He leaned back, hissing in pain. “What did you find?” he asked, nodding toward the packet stuck in Mualama’s belt.

“I don’t know.”

“Is it important?”

“I believe so.”

“Worth our lives?”

“Yes.”

“Even though you don’t know what it is?” Bauru was surprised and interested in spite of his pain and the situation.

“1 have been tracking down…” Mualama paused. He’d never explained what he was doing to anyone, even his wife. “I have been searching for the truth.”

“The truth?”

“About the aliens. About our… the human race’s past. I think this”… Mualama tapped the packet wrapped in oilskins… “is the next clue in a long line leading me to the ultimate truth.”

“Ah.” Bauru nodded. “That they destroyed the people of the great city of Tiahuanaco in ancient times.”

Mualama nodded. “The Mission has been around for a long time. It was behind the Black Death that killed many of your countrymen in Vilhena just recently.”

There was silence for several minutes. Mualama kept pressure on the wounds as best he could, but the rips were too long and wide.

“I am going to die here,” Bauru finally said.

“I will go and get help,” Mualama said.

“You will die before you make twenty feet. And help where? We are over a hundred miles from the nearest help. Even if I get out of here, I am still a dead man.”

Mualama didn’t answer, because he knew what Bauru was saying was true. “What religion are you?” Bauru asked unexpectedly.

“I was born Muslim.”

Bauru laughed softly. “I am Catholic… will it make any difference if you pray for me?”

“I think we all look to the same God with different names.” Mualama said. Bauru looked down at his wound. “I am a dead man already. I will help you escape.”

“How?”

When Bauru explained his plan, Mualama did not argue.

He knew that to protest would insult the other man’s brave offer. And he knew it was the only chance he had to get out of the cave and away, alive with the packet.

“Are you ready?” Bauru asked.

Mualama nodded.

Bauru closed his eyes, and his lips moved in prayer. Mualama murmured his own prayer to Allah for his companion.

Bauru scooted over to the edge and looked down at the dark water. “I am ready.”

Mualama clasped the other man on the shoulder. “I thank you.”

“Use my gift well,” Bauru said. Then he dove into the water and disappeared from sight.

Mualama slowly began counting to ten.

Bauru made it into the tunnel before the first piranha struck. They were of the Serrasalmus piraya species, the largest of the deadly fish, the biggest in the pack almost twenty inches long. They had a stocky body, with a large head, sporting a domed forehead, and were also among the most aggressive of the family of piranha. Their lower jaws opened wide, revealing rows of sharp, serrated teeth. They slammed into Bauru’s body, teeth clamping down, ripping flesh free. Still Bauru pulled and kicked, getting to the end of the tunnel, pushing free into the river, his body covered with predators. He continued kicking, a trail of blood bringing those that weren’t already feasting in for the kill. Even though they traveled in a loose pack, there was no love lost among the fish, some even fighting each other to get at the meat. As Bauru splashed downstream, the pack followed him.

On the ridge above, those waiting saw the bloody struggle, and their eyes followed until the body stopped flailing and the feeding frenzy drifted downstream.

Mualama reached ten and dove into the water. He made it through the tunnel unscathed. Holding his breath, he angled left, heading for the far shore. His muscles were tight; at any moment he expected to feel teeth tearing into his flesh.

He bumped into a rock, then another, tumbled about in the current, pulled himself around a boulder, sheltering him from view from the far side, and surfaced.

Sucking in a lungful of oxygen, Mualama carefully peered around the boulder. He saw those on top of the gorge looking farther downstream at Bauru’s fate. Mualama pulled himself out of the water and onto a rocky ledge, still keeping the boulder between him and the others. He waited until, after another hour, they finally turned and disappeared into the jungle, satisfied they had accomplished their task.

Mualama climbed on top of the boulder. He could jump from there to the rock face on this side of the gorge. He knew he had a hard climb, and then an even harder forced march to civilization, but there was no doubt in his mind he would make it. All he had to do was look over his shoulder and see the remains of Bauru, stripped to the bone, washed up between two rocks downstream and on the other side.

And he had the package tucked into his pants. He had to make it to the next step in the riddled path that Richard Francis Burton had left behind as his secret legacy.