The Black Seas of Infinity (31 page)

I stoop and peer inside the resulting niche.
A square slab of metal bears a giant hoop, the top of the ring
bound like an oversized hinge. I grab the circle and pull. A husky
rasp, and the brick wall starts to slide sideways. Retracting into
the wall with a stilted shuffle, it scrapes to a halt almost as
soon as it starts. A slender crack lets in the cool air from
beyond.

Pulling to the left with the metal loop, the
gateway slides farther, the widening crevice exposing a yawning
chasm beyond. I let go of the ring and try to slip through. As I
wrest through, my foot crunches on something. Squeezing out the
other side, I turn and squat down to examine the ground. A low
stone embankment runs along the floor between wall and gate, a
narrow depression navigating the center. It looks like a crude rail
system. A faint draft buffets my back, and I spin around, raising
the torch as I rise.

The chamber I’ve entered is huge. Stalactites
stretch from floor to ceiling, rising up out of the rocky ground in
molting layers. The pillars ascend out of grimy pools, their
erratic arrangement and fluctuating size carving the dark corners
into complicated mazes of tunnels. A narrow path of smooth bedrock
winds in and out of the labyrinth of molten stone. This looks way
more undomesticated, the slender trail extending in rugged
passageways off to either side. I choose right at random and begin
walking.

The cave narrows into a baroque tunnel
sporting curved walls. The moist limestone sides bear traces of old
murals, the faded symbols probably painted in berry juices. They
use what looks like an ancient form of pictograph, and although I’m
no expert, the designs no longer look distinctly Mayan.

The passage opens into another large chamber.
Stalagmites stretch once again from floor to ceiling. The ceiling
is much higher, with the cave-like features crowded along the
edges. There are a few columns in the center, former stalactites
that have been carved with geometric patterns. The sinuous pillars
are marked with various triangles and circles, the tight variety of
patterns denoting some kind of vocabulary I’ve never seen before.
There are several pockets etched into the center of the
stalactites. I walk up to the closest pillar, containing three
pockets separated by one-foot intervals. They seem to be harboring
something. I reach inside the uppermost one and pull out a small
box about three inches square. It’s matte black, devoid of any
markings, and made of some material that isn’t stone. It isn’t any
metal I recognize either. I run my hand over the top. It’s
perfectly smooth. The sides are expertly cut at sharp angles. I
look in the other box-like openings of the central column, but
whatever they might have contained is long gone.

Each little aperture has a thin layer of
dust, including the one I took the small black box from, but there
is no dust on the box. I wander over to another stalactite. It has
one central hole, a little larger than the previous spaces, and
holds a curiously carved image of some strange, bug-eyed creature.
I pick it up and turn it in my hand. It’s human-like, but with a
strange, animalistic face resembling a snake or gargoyle. The body
appears to be that of a skinny dwarf with three fingers. I put it
back in its crevice. Whatever it is, I feel the urge to leave it
undisturbed. Looking past the pillar, I see a passage leading out
of this surreal chamber. It’s similar to the last one, rough and
cave-like, but with a flattened underbelly. Faded murals cover the
walls. I stoop forward in an effort to decipher the story depicted
therein.

The paintings seem to illustrate the natives
interacting with strange beings. Entities that in all their
primeval simplicity still look remarkably like the aliens we pulled
out of wreckages back at Fort Bragg. A lot of this can be chalked
up to various debunking theories, but the proof is starting to look
pretty incontrovertible. Which begs the question, If there was at
one time an ancient extraterrestrial presence, why did they
leave?

I follow the tunnel as it curves around into
yet another chamber. This one is small and round and looks like it
was hollowed out of the rock. There are no bricks, no mortar. It’s
exceptionally circular, with only a level floor of polished stone
interrupting the sphere.

In the middle of the room is a black,
stump-like table. It’s perfectly cylindrical and about three feet
high, the top a smooth plane that shines like glass. I walk over
and notice a small depression in the center. I’ll bet the box I’m
carrying goes in there!

Holding it above the depression, I rotate the
box slowly in my hand until the dimensions match up. The shape
corresponds too neatly for mere coincidence. Gently I lower it
in.

The walls of the chamber disappear, and I’m
bathed in a bright light. My vision flips through a series of
instant refinements, adjusting so quickly I’m not blinded, but the
brilliance drowns out everything else. Automatically I slowly turn
to my left. It feels like I’m responding to some dim instinct. I
wander toward a nebulous blur. A waist-high barrier starts to
materialize out of the white haze. The edges sharpen. The black,
glossy protrusion resembles a lumpy counter extending about a foot
from a coarse wall, the surface undulating and black, but smoothly
finished like volcanic rock. The counter extends in a smooth flow
with no visible seams. It looks like it was carved out of one
immense rock. The surface is pockmarked by depressions of varying
sizes. They’re all deeply recessed, with some of them glowing
dimly. I can hear a faint piping sound, as if from a distant flute.
Crouching down, I peer into one of the luminous holes. The black
walls are carved with strange-looking hieroglyphs. It looks way too
deep. The protruding counter is at most a foot deep, and the hole
appears to descend much lower.

Several smaller holes surround the glowing
aperture, the bottoms concealed by their impossible depth. I can’t
begin to imagine the purpose served by this strange assembly. It
all seems to point toward something highly advanced. I would guess
this chamber has been sitting down here for a very long time.

I step back and circle around the enclosure.
Sticking close to the wall, I notice the counter-like protrusion
encircles the room, dotted at regular intervals by the holes of
varying sizes. The glow doesn’t appear to come from an overhead
light; it just filters down from some source I can’t see. I wonder
what the implications of all this are. Obviously the Mayans had
some sort of contact with whoever built this, but how extensive was
it? Did the visitors have anything to do with this civilization, or
were they merely onlookers? The carvings and illustrations seem to
indicate the strangers were highly regarded. There is such an
extensive chronology leading up to this civilization, and nothing
else is nearly as advanced, that it points toward external
intervention.

A low beeping sound catches my attention.
Peering around, I trace it back to the stump-like protrusion in the
middle of the room.

A disturbing thought flashes through my
head... What if I unwittingly activated some sort of signal? What
if it is making contact with whoever built this room? And even more
unsettling, what if whoever built this room also built the body I
currently inhabit? How happy are they going to be with some
primitive walking around in their suit? A quick, worried glance
around the glowing chamber, and I decide it’s time to leave.
Immediately. I lost my torch when the room lit up, but I’ll bet I
can make it back outside. I’ll just retrace my steps.

Quite a bit of stumbling around in the dark,
and I make it back to the initial chamber. At least I think that’s
where I am. It’s pitch black, but my internal guidance system has
functioned brilliantly so far. I can sense the volume of the room
I’ve entered, and something tells me I have to move up. Crouching
into a squat, I vault upward.

My head smashes into a stone roof, breaks
through, and almost instantly collides with another barrier of
rock, immediately followed by a plunge. I crash into the floor, the
rough landing echoing in a deep thunder across the room. Let’s try
that again.

Bounding up, I scrape the edge of the first
rupture, quickly spreading out my arms as I bounce off the ceiling.
My fall is jarred to a stop as my arms catch the sides of the hole.
Pulling my torso through, I wriggle up into the familiar
tunnel.

A good half-hour of crawling like a snake on
my belly, and I’ve made it back into the anteroom. I stand up and
step out into the daylight. The fog has burned down into a languid
mist, carpeting the grass in a filmy haze. The encircling huts look
old and forsaken in the rich yellow light of afternoon.

I think I need some sort of flashlight before
I try something like that again. Not that I’m even sure how to
handle all of this. More ruins like that and I might face some very
unhappy individuals. I wonder if this is an aberration, or just the
tip of an iceberg? It also brings up the question of what these
beings were to the natives. Gods? Benefactors? Tyrants? I really
want to explore this more, but I’m hesitant to bring something that
might try to remove me from this body. I stumble back through the
ruins, now strangely arid and clear of fog in the fading light. The
skeletal forms of buildings have taken on a new aura of menace, the
battered remains now entombing some long buried secret. The
deepening shadows of the central buildings add to the overtone.
Nothing is free. No one likes someone digging in their past, and
some secrets might be worth killing for. I feel the familiar weight
lifted from my shoulders as I withdraw. I slide down the tangled
flank and venture back into the forest.

Nightfall closes in. I wonder if I made the
right choice. The saying goes curiosity killed the cat, but maybe I
panicked.

The twilight is virtually black, the treetops
overhead shutting out even the stars. I may as well take a break
until dawn. I’ll waste my time stumbling around in the dark. Come
to think of it, I’m wasting time period. I have no idea what to do
next. I don’t think I should abandon this place. It’s an amazing
discovery, but I’m a little too trepidatious to dive back in
blindly. I’d feel much better with an expeditionary team and modern
equipment, but that’s impossible. At the very least, I need to
acquire some flashlights.

Hours pass. I was never the type to simply
meditate, or lose myself in reminiscence of old memories. I’m not
tired, my muscles don’t ache, my thought process seems as sharp as
ever, yet I’m ensnared within this blinding darkness. I could
probably make it through a field in the starlight, but not under
this thick canopy of leaves.

Time crawls, and I drift between memories, my
thoughts interrupted by the occasional rustling of small animals in
the underbrush.

I think it’s near morning, a dull blueness is
creeping in. I stand up and look around. My vision is probably
magnifying the ambient light to an incredible degree, but I still
can’t see enough to effectively move about. A whistling sound
starts, faint and distant at first, and steadily increases.
Something brushes against my leg, and I glance down. A strip of
bark sails by. A few more wispy scraps of forest debris waft by,
followed closely by larger branches. A vortex whips around me,
rapidly increasing in intensity. A husky thunder rumbles above, and
I look upward. Suddenly a bright glow blankets me, and in the blink
of an eye I find myself in a room.

It’s a small space, the floor beneath my feet
perfectly flat, the rising sides uniting in a perfect curve with
the convex ceiling. The whole chamber is of a black, semi-shiny
material similar to the box in the pyramid. Nothing adorns the
walls. A dim glow emanates overhead.

I peer around in complete astonishment, when
a voice abruptly cuts in. It’s peculiarly strange, both the
intonation and dialect, yet somehow I understand every word. It
asks me if I’m something I don’t understand. Then it inquires if
I’m from somewhere I also don’t understand. A moment of silence
follows, and then it demands to know what I’m doing here.

I don’t know how to respond. I have no vocal
cords. I can probably use some form of telepathy to communicate,
but I’m not sure how that works. The lights dim, and a figure
materializes before me. It looks like one of the alien bodies we
recovered at my job, but not one of the inhabitants of the crashed
ship. The creature is short, and wearing some sort of seamless
white suit that covers it from the head down. A round white ring
encircles the base of a head that looks like an upright football,
with creamy gray skin that resembles textured leather. The mouth is
wide and filled with sharp yellow teeth, the eyes beady and
cat-like. The nose is a stubby protrusion, adorned by two breathing
holes. It moves forward and a ripple flows through the image. It’s
probably just a projection!

A voice floods my head.

“Yes, I’m a projected image.”

Holy shit!

“What do you want?”

“You operated a remote beacon. It’s very old,
and we were the only ship in this sector. Clearly this was a blind
move on your part. You seem to be some savage inhabiting machinery
far beyond your capacity.”

“What does this mean for me?”

The screen and the image of the alien
disappear. A minute later the overhead light dims. I sit down on
the floor and wait. It’s an old habit. I could just as easily
remain standing. What the fuck have I gotten myself into? I knew
immediately after I did it that dropping that box in the hole was a
mistake! Hindsight is twenty-twenty. The more pertinent matter is
how I’m going to extricate myself from this mess. This creature
seemed none too happy to see me.

It’s hard to tell time without a watch, but
after what seems like hours, the room lights up again. An image of
an alien—for all I know the same one—rematerializes. A screen
materializes as well. A stormy atmosphere, tumultuous black clouds
under-lit by a pale greenish glow, fills the screen. I get the
strange feeling it’s an approaching destination, and it doesn’t
look very hospitable.