Serpent (NUMA Files 1)

"Large lung capacity from the thin mountain air. I'm basically a flatlander."

"You'll do fine, even for a flatlander. Ready?"

"I'd prefer to wait until I grow gills, but since that's not possible, vamanos!" He squeezed her hand in signal. Gamay sank beneath the surface, quickly found the continuation of the tunnel, and practically yanked the professor through the passageway. The journey took less than half the time of her earlier trip, but the professor was huffing and puffing when they surfaced, and she was glad the distance wasn't any greater.

She flicked the lighter. The professor's head bobbed a few feet away. He was sucking in big gulps of air. Somehow he had managed to keep the baseball cap on his head.

"Steps are over here," Gamay said, towing him behind her. She helped him to the top of the well.

Looking around, Chi said, "My guess is that the inhabitants of the city used this well as an emergency supply when the cenote and the river dried up after the rainy season." Chi got down on his knees and peered into the well. "When the water was high they could simply dip into it with their vessels. When the level dropped completely out of their reach they carved the steps. Like that coffee commercial. Good to the last drop."

He stood and traced the track in the floor. "The marks of many feet," he said in wonder.

Gamay was as interested in ancient civilizations as Chi, but the lighter flame was growing smaller and dimmer. When she pointed this out to the professor he picked up several pieces of charred bark from the floor and wove them into a serviceable torch that cast off smoky flames.

"Castor oil plant," he explained. Back on his dry land element, he took the lead. "Well, Dorothy, shall we follow the yellow brick road?" he said with an airy wave of the torch.

Glancing back to make sure Gamay was behind him, Chi ducked through the opening in the wall and into a rough tunnel. Chi's head comfortably cleared the low soot-encrusted ceiling, but Gamay had to bend over as she ascended the crooked and steeply pitched passageway. After only a few minutes the tunnel ended abruptly at the bottom of a narrow shaft. Gamay could stand again.

A crude ladder led up the shaft. Chi tested the rungs, pronounced the ladder rickety but safe, and climbed to the top of the shaft, where he knelt at the rim and held the torch as a beacon for Gamay.

The ladder miraculously held, and Gamay joined him at the opening of another passageway. This one led to a cavern about twice the size of the cave with the well in it. And like that chamber, there was only one way out. The tunnel was about a yard wide and slightly more than that tall. They navigated the twists and turns of the gradually ascending passageway on their hands and knees. The enclosed space would have been hot and stifling even without the smoke and heat from the torch, and at times Gamay found it hard to breathe. It was difficult to tell length and direction, but she guessed that the tunnel ran for about sixty feet, doubling back on itself at one point.

She had been crawling with her head down, glancing upward from time to time to make sure she didn't get too close to Chi although that was unlikely. He scuttled through the tunnels like a mole rat. The torchlight vanished unexpectedly, and she bumped into the professor's legs. She stood to see what the holdup was.

"Wait," Chi said, and put his arm back for emphasis.

He seemed frozen in place. In the torch's light Gamay quickly saw why The tunnel had ended at a ledge overlooking a yawning chasm. Three logs had been laid across the abyss. The early engineers who built the span had reinforced it with cross supports and thoughtfully attached a pole for a railing on one side.

"I'll go first," Chi said. Gingerly he put his weight on a log, and when it held he pressed forward. A quick few steps, and he was across.

"It's . not exactly the Golden Gate," he said apologetically, "but it seems to be fine."

The word seems hung in the air and overshadowed the rest of the reassuring sentence. Gamay balefully eyed the crude span. She really didn't have any choice. Reassuring herself that she only weighed thirty-five pounds more than the professor, she tripped across the bridge like a highwire walker. It was steadier than she anticipated, and the rough logs didn't roll. Still she was glad when she reached Chi's outstretched hand and put her foot back on solid rock.

"Well done," he said, guiding her to another shaft leading upward. Gamay almost panicked when she didn't see a ladder, but Chi pointed out the steps worn into the wet and slippery rock. They were barely big enough for her toes and-fingers, and she had to use every bit of rock-climbing muscle and skill. The infrastructure around here was made for slightly built Mayans, not tall Anglos, she grumbled to herself.

At the top of the shaft was another low tunnel. Gamay's throat felt like the Sahara desert on a hot day. Her climbing, swimming, and crawling exertions were catching up with her. Her eyes stung from cinders, and her knees were raw from crawling. At one point she and the professor had to squeeze through broken rock. Gamay might have stopped for good had it not been for an exultant shout from the professor.

"Dr. Gamay, we're out!"

Seconds later they stood in a chamber so large the light from the torch wasn't bright enough to illuminate the high ceiling. She rubbed the soot from her eyes. Were those columns? She borrowed the torch only to laugh softly when the light fell not on columns but on huge stalactites. The cavern was irregularly circular. Passages branched off from the chamber. One opening was semicircular in shape and twice as tall as a man. In contrast to the rough opening they had just come through, the portals were smooth and even, the surface of the floor unexpectedly flat.

"You could drive a car through this!" Gamay exclaimed.

"There are legends of underground highways that ran between villages. I always thought they were simply exaggerations, that some of the locals had seen natural tunnels and mistaken them for artificial ones. But this . . ."

They were brought to a halt where a section of fallen roof blocked the way, and turned back to the main chamber, stopping first to explore a side passage. They entered a miniature plaza whose rectangular tiled floor was surrounded by real columns, not stalactites. The vaulted ceiling was smoothed and plastered, as was the wall, which was adorned with murals of red figures in profile.

"Incredible," Gamay said. "Is this some sort of underground temple?"

Chi walked along the walls squinting at the figures whose paint seemed as fresh as if it had been applied the day before.

"The figures are Mayan, but, then again, they are not," the professor whispered.

Pictured was a procession of profiled figures carr

ying goods on shoulders and heads. Vases, baskets of bread, gold containers, odd shapes that could have been ingots.