The Destroyer - 53 - The Destroyer 053 - Time Trial by Warren Murphy & Richard Sapir

Author:Warren Murphy & Richard Sapir [Murphy, Warren & Sapir, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Pulp Action
ISBN: 0-7408-0576-2
Publisher: PINNACLE BOOKS
Published: 2010-03-19T14:52:26+00:00

Chapter Seven

They were led to a huge low build­ing near the great wall sep­arat­ing the city from the farm­land out­side on the out­skirts of the end­less jun­gle. Like the tem­ple, the wall was con­struct­ed of stones ce­ment­ed by mor­tar and rub­ble and coat­ed with bright white stuc­co. Or­ange tiles cov­ered the vast roof, and a lush gar­den of trop­ical flow­ers out­lined the fan­ci­ful walk­ways lead­ing in­to the build­ing’s canopied en­trances.

In the stone foy­er was a stat­ue like the one in the tem­ple, de­pict­ing the fig­ure of a man topped by a blank sphere in place of a head. The priest led them silent­ly past the bronze-​col­ored guards dressed in white loin­cloths, their heads and spears fes­tooned with or­na­men­tal quet­zal feath­ers, up an el­egant curv­ing stair­case of stone. They walked through a long hall­way whose walls were bright­ly paint­ed with scenes of men play­ing ball. Fi­nal­ly they en­tered a large airy room filled with price­less pot­tery en­crust­ed with gems. Its high ceil­ing was dec­orat­ed with paint­ed mold­ings and round­ed arch­ways lead­ing to ad­ja­cent rooms.

In the cen­ter of the main room where they stood were three stat­ues. Two small­er plas­ter fig­ures, around six feet tall, flanked a larg­er cen­tral stat­ue. The cen­tral fig­ure was, again, the ev­er-​present man whose head was a blank sphere.

“I rec­og­nize the two small­er ones,” Lizzie said. “The one on the left is Ah Kin, the Mayan God of Light, and that’s Ah Chac, the Rain God, on the right. But I still can’t fig­ure out the one in the mid­dle. That stat­ue seems to be ev­ery­where, and yet I’ve nev­er seen one un­earthed.”

“I guess he’s some kind of lo­cal big deal,” Re­mo said dis­tract­ed­ly. He couldn’t care less about some bub­ble-​head­ed stat­ue. He walked over to Chi­un, who was look­ing serene­ly out one of the room’s big win­dows.

Out­side, past the city’s walls, were small thatched-​roof hous­es made of poles and stuc­co. Wom­en crouched in the dirt court­yards around the rough dwellings, weav­ing on hip looms and car­ry­ing loaves of bread to big stone ovens. Be­yond them were the farms, the earth ter­raced and stepped to pre­serve the soil from ero­sion. Tall corn waved gen­tly in the breeze, and red dots of toma­toes and pep­pers bright­ened the peace­ful land­scape in front of the jun­gle.

“This is a good time,” Chi­un said.

“How can you say that?” Re­mo snapped. “We’re trapped some­time in pre­his­to­ry. There isn’t even a phone here.”

The old Ori­en­tal shrugged. “A man is trapped on­ly by the lim­ita­tions of his mind,” he said.

“Great. I’ll re­mem­ber that while I’m in­vent­ing the wheel.”

“Don’t be fool­ish, Re­mo. This is a civ­ilized place. Look at it. There is agri­cul­ture here, and art, and peace. There are no guns or cars or ra­dios grow­ing out of the necks of knife-​wield­ing dolts.”

“I can’t be­lieve it,” Re­mo said. “You don’t care. You re­al­ly don’t care whether we get home or not, do you?”

“Be pa­tient, my son. I do care. But I do not wor­ry need­less­ly.”

“Need­less­ly? We get thrown back in time by some fluke–“

Chi­un held up a re­strain­ing fin­ger.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.