Indiana Jones and the The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull Page 23

  He risked a glance back to Marion and Mac. The pair were nowhere in sight. He prayed they were simply on the far side of the obelisk, that they hadn’t lost their balance and fallen.

  Then what the mind thought, the body made happen.

  Indy lost his footing. He scrabbled for the wall, seeking some handhold, but there was none. He fell—but managed to get his legs under him just before he hit. It was only a ten-foot drop, but still he struck the floor hard. He was no longer as spry as he’d once been. He felt the impact all the way into his teeth.

  Mutt and Oxley came running up to him. Oxley cradled the skull in its burlap sack against his chest. The pair had made it safely down—but where were the others?

  Worried, Indy circled the obelisk, looking for Mac and Marion, Mutt and Oxley close behind. A yell and the shadowy drop of a body drew them around faster. They found Mac sitting on his backside, wearing a pained expression.

  “Marion?” Indy asked.

  Mac pointed up.

  She was hanging from her fingertips from one of the steps, fifteen feet up.

  Indy hurried to a spot under her. “Let go, Marion!”

  “No!”

  “I’ll catch you!”

  “I’m fine right where I am!”

  Indy saw that the stairs were continuing to retract. She would not have a fingerhold for long.

  “Babe, you’ve got to trust me sometime!” Indy called up.

  She glared down at him. “Now? Now we’re having this talk about trust?”

  He held out his arms. “Just have a little faith!”

  She turned away and laid her cheek against the stone. “Indy . . .”

  “Marion, I won’t let you down . . . not this time.”

  And in his heart, Indy knew this was one promise he meant to keep.

  She closed her eyes—then in an act of blind trust, she let go.

  Indy got under her and caught her cleanly in his arms. He might be exhausted, bruised, bitten, and bone-sore, but he would never drop her.

  Never again.

  Marion twisted in his arms and smiled at him. “This is familiar.”

  “Catching you?” He nodded and gently placed her on her feet, thinking back to a tomb in Egypt. “But last time, there were snakes. Lots and lots of snakes.”

  She grinned back at him.

  She hadn’t been talking about the Egyptian tomb.

  He returned her smile. He knew it, too.

  Mutt called from around the side of the obelisk. “There’s a hallway or something over here!”

  Indy turned and helped Mac to his feet. His friend had a limp, but he waved Indy forward. “I’ll be fine.” Mac stared up at the obelisk. The steps had fully retracted into the wall. “No going back that way.”

  Indy nodded. They would have to find another way out of the pyramid.

  Together they circled the obelisk and found Mutt standing at the mouth of a cavernous hallway. As they neared, Indy noted that the tunnel extended far into the distance, possibly miles.

  “Must head under the city,” Mutt said as they set off down it.

  The tunnel was gloomy but not pitch-black. Natural sunlight filtered into the passageway from above, shining through strategically placed fissures and shafts, reflecting off polished surfaces of crystalline rock.

  The sound of running water drowned out their footsteps. Along one side of the tunnel, an open aqueduct flowed heavily, streaming with water under some pressure. No doubt it was fed, Indy thought, from the large reservoir he had spotted as they’d entered the valley.

  As they continued, shadowy shapes appeared and revealed themselves to be giant bronze waterwheels set along the aqueduct. Dozens of them. The flowing water’s current spun them.

  “Turbines,” Indy said with amazement.

  He crossed to a humming copper conduit connected to one wheel. He lifted a palm close to it. The hairs on the back of his hand stood on end. He also caught a whiff of ozone.

  “Electrical current,” he commented. “This whole place is like a massive power-generating plant.”

  “Generating power for what?” Mutt asked.

  Indy shrugged, but it was a good question.

  As they continued, other passageways crisscrossed and branched outward into a veritable maze. It would take years to examine it all.

  As he walked along, Indy’s eyes widened, trying to take everything in. His mind spun as fast as the turbines, pondering who had built this place, why it had been engineered, to what purpose. A thousand and one questions burned through his mind as electric as the current running through the copper conduits.

  Off to the side, Indy saw Mutt pick something off a shelf. It was a ruby-encrusted piece of silver shaped into a sunburst, and the kid held it up to one of the cracks of light, turning it this way and that. Indy understood the kid’s curiosity. It was a magnificent piece of artistry. Its value to history—

  But Marion also noted Mutt’s attention. She slapped his wrist. “Put that down, young man! You should know better than that.”

  Mutt looked up innocently. “I was going to put it back,” he said, and he did just that. Afterward, he stared over to Indy. “I’m not a grave robber.”

  Indy frowned at the kid, remembering the gold conquistador’s dagger. He motioned to Marion: Not in front of your mother, kid.

  Mutt hid a grin, and they continued walking.

  Marion moved up next to Indy. “Do you know where you’re going?”

  Indy pointed to the copper conduit running along the ceiling from the bronze waterwheels. “Power’s going somewhere . . .”

  Trailing behind the others, Mac limped along. He passed the jewel-encrusted sunburst left on the shelf. While no one was looking, he stealthily scooped it up and dropped it into his pocket.

  “Now, this is more like it.”

  FIFTY-TWO

  “HEY, THERE’S A ROOM up ahead!” Mutt yelled.

  He rushed forward, but Jones and his mother shouted at the same time:

  “Hold your horses, kid!”

  “You stay with us, young man!”

  Mutt obeyed, but it took all his will. The hallway they’d been following ended at the chamber ahead. He vibrated with curiosity. What was hidden inside the pyramid? With the complicated unlocking mechanism and booby traps, it had to be something valuable.

  As they approached, a burnt odor became apparent and grew more potent with each step. It wasn’t the pleasant scent of a wood fire, but more like the time Mutt had singed his leather jacket with a cigarette butt.

  Mutt glanced to the others. His mother crinkled her nose. They smelled it, too. Reaching the end of the hallway, Jones waved for them to hang back as he stepped forward and took the lead. He continued cautiously, motioning them to follow slowly.

  Mutt followed in his steps, but he kept behind Jones. Just in case. No reason to be careless.

  The chamber was shaped in a half circle. On the far side rose a giant set of red-metal doors that looked like they’d been carved out of a single block of iron ore. As Mutt took another step, it became clear where the burnt smell was coming from.

  Across the open expanse of floor, row after row of desiccated corpses filled the room, radiating out from the doors in concentric half circles. They stood upright in various poses of horror and agony. Worst of all, all the heads had been burned down to the bone, revealing blackened, grinning skulls.

  Like so many spent candles.

  Mutt swallowed, sickened, trying not to throw up.

  On the other hand, Jones seemed undaunted. He moved closer, plainly curious. Mutt had no choice but to follow, wanting to stick close to the old man.

  Jones crossed to one of the figures. The corpse wore bronze armor that looked Roman, but the body inside was no more than a dry husk. And like all the others, his head had been charred down to the bone.

  Mutt kept close to Jones, while the rest of their party cautiously edged into the room. Jones leaned closer to the Roman warrior’s skull. The worst charring s
eemed to concentrate around the eyes. Even the bone around the hollow sockets had been burned away, giving the corpse a wide-eyed, surprised look.

  Shuddering, Mutt finally had to look away.

  He spotted Mac moving among the standing bodies, pausing to study gold rings and jeweled bracelets. Mutt suspected a few would go missing. Farther back, his mother was staying well away from the corpses. She drifted along the outer walls, where hundreds of niches were crammed with myriad bits of antiquity: goblets and swords, helmets and headdresses, carved tablets and stone tools.

  Mutt turned in a slow circle.

  The rows of bodies wore all manner of clothes—from different eras and different countries—like revelers at some macabre costume party. Mutt spotted the horned helms of Vikings, the beaten armor of ancient soldiers, the polished sheen of knights. Among them were men in robes, loincloths, and fancier dress, even a pair of Japanese samurai in full regalia.

  But all of them had one thing in common.

  “They’re burned,” Mutt mumbled to himself, needing to break the oppressive silence, wanting some answer to the horror here. “All of ’em. What happened?”

  “Good question.” Jones straightened and continued to move among the bodies. He waved an arm to the niches, then to the corpses. “There are artifacts here from every era of human history. Macedonian . . . Sumerian . . .”

  As Jones went on, Mutt remembered the grave of the conquistadores. He pictured the chest of gold coins buried with them. Coins from different ages, different cultures. Mutt searched around the room. The conquistadores had been down here, too.

  “And hit the mother lode,” he mumbled.

  Jones didn’t hear him. He kept pointing out the various cultures. “Etruscan . . . Babylonian . . .”

  Mac gazed with shining eyes at the archaeological treasures of the room. “There’s not a museum on earth that wouldn’t sell its soul for a day in here.”

  Jones continued, his voice full of awe and respect. “Stone Age . . . prehistoric . . .”

  Mac’s expression grew hungrier. “A dozen museums, a hundred.”

  Jones finally stopped. A dawning realization lit his face. He turned and faced Mutt and the others.

  “They must have been collectors . . . perhaps archaeologists themselves!” Jones turned to the massive doors. “But who are they? Where did they come from?”

  During all of this exchange, only one person seemed disinterested in the collection. Oxley stood at the entrance to the room, trembling from head to foot, a desperate look on his face.

  Mutt finally noticed his distress. “Ox, man. What’s wrong?”

  As if released from a spell, Oxley started into the room. He carried the burlap-wrapped skull in front of him in his outstretched arms. The sack fell away and dropped to the ground. Oxley strode right over it.

  The crystal skull exposed, the professor marched straight toward the doors. With each step, the skull grew brighter, the air around it seemed to shiver, and a strange thing began to happen.

  Small bits of reddish sand began to fly into the air and cling to the skull. It shed from the floor, from the walls.

  “Iron ore,” Jones said.

  Oxley kept going. As he got closer to the giant doors, more and more shavings and particles of ore covered the crystal. Step by step, the covering thickened and built upon the skull’s surface, layer by layer, like a dissection run in reverse—muscles, fat, skin. It was as if the vanished flesh were re-forming on the skull. By the time Oxley reached the doors, the rough semblance of a bust had formed.

  Mutt recognized the countenance from the painting in the tunnel.

  It was one of the visitors.

  Oxley stepped to the doors and lifted the skull.

  They waited, holding their breath.

  Nothing happened.

  Mutt finally exhaled and voiced the question in all of their minds. “How do we open them?”

  FIFTY-THREE

  INDY PACED IN front of the iron doors as the others waited. Upon the doors’ surface, there were no distinguishing marks, no inscriptions, no decoration. They were as unreadable as the stone face on the cliff.

  But there had to be a way to open them.

  As a group, they had tried pushing and shoving. Mac had even found an old sword and tried to pry a way open. Nothing worked. The iron doors were too massive. As with the obelisk, they had to find another method to unlock the way forward.

  Indy turned his back on the doors and studied the layout of the room. First, the bodies. The Ugha tribesmen must have positioned the corpses there, though Indy was fairly certain they’d died somewhere else. The corpses were posted as a warning to intruders against opening the doors.

  Casting his gaze farther, Indy noted the niches in the far wall. None of them was higher than four feet, a comfortable height for the tiny Ugha tribesmen.

  But wait . . .

  Indy remembered something he had spotted earlier. He swung back around. He’d been so busy studying the doors that he’d almost missed it. Off to the right side of the massive doors was a single niche. He crossed to it and measured its height against the reach of his own arms. It was empty, but the niche had to be nine feet off the ground.

  Much too high for the short tribesmen.

  But not for someone else.

  “They were tall,” Indy mumbled. He remembered the tunnel paintings. The visitors had towered over the Ugha.

  Rubbing his chin, Indy pictured the Chauchilla Cemetery. The secret entry to the burial chamber of the conquistadores had been guarded over by a skull in a wall niche. Even the crystal skull had been hidden in a hollow space behind Orellana’s body.

  Could that be the answer?

  Indy crossed to Oxley. He leaned down to stare into the professor’s eyes. His friend’s face shone with worry and fear. Indy reached out and gently placed his hands on either side of the skull. Iron ore shavings crawled around his fingers like living tissue. He spoke softly to Oxley.

  “I’ll give it back,” Indy promised. “But there’s something I’d like to try, Ox.”

  The professor trembled from head to toe, but he slowly let go. “Henry Jones Junior.”

  “That’s right, Ox.” Indy stepped back to the wall and nodded to Mutt. “Kid, give me a boost.”

  Mutt trotted over and folded his fingers into a stirrup. He eyed the skull, then the niche. “Chauchilla?” he asked.

  Indy’s eyebrows rose in surprise, and he could not dismiss the spark of pride that flared in his chest. “Right on the button, kid.”

  Indy stepped into Mutt’s grip and hoisted himself up. Once high enough, he shoved the skull into the niche, face-first, the same direction Oxley had been holding it. It fit perfectly, like a mold.

  Then just a moment before dropping down, Indy noted a flash of ruby light. It seemed to trace down the skull. The words retinal scan popped into his head. Immediately the skull began to glow—at first dimly, then brighter and brighter, shining through the coating of iron ore particles.

  Mutt and Indy backed away.

  “What’s it doing—” Mutt started.

  The answer came as the iron shavings exploded off the skull, while at the same time a heaving groan moaned from the doors.

  “Reverse magnetism!” Indy exclaimed, wiping iron shavings from his shoulders. He waved everyone out of the way as the doors began to part.

  Through the crack, a blinding light pierced the room.

  “Get back!” Indy shouted.

  With a great rumbling, the doors continued to open. More and more light washed in as the thin line of brilliance widened. Indy shielded his eyes against the glare, but he could make out no details of what lay beyond the threshold.

  He headed closer, into the light, like a moth to a flame.

  “Indy!” Marion called to him.

  “I know! Be careful!”

  “No! Wait for me!” Bathed in the blinding radiance, he felt a hand slip into his own. Marion.

  The others joined them.

/>   The doors ground fully open and pounded to a stop.

  Indy saw what waited for them. “Mutt, we’d better go fetch that skull first.”

  A moment later Indy returned the skull to Oxley. He sensed that the professor, the skull’s chosen caretaker, needed to take it these last steps.

  Now ready, they all crossed the threshold together.

  The chamber beyond the iron doors was perfectly circular, built of stone blocks. The walls were filled with niches and recesses that housed objects of reverence: carved totems, fertility icons, stone urns and vases, strings of polished beads, bronze figurines, bone drums. All items of worship.

  And there was no doubt for whom these tokens of reverence were meant.

  On an upper level that circled the entire worship space stood thirteen immense thrones, each intricately carved and twined with serpent icons. Bodies sat on the thrones, upright and straight-backed, each easily seven feet tall. Their desiccated flesh had dried to leather over bone. Any clothes had long since rotted to dust. There were no crowns, but the skulls, elongated and prominent, were imposing enough.

  Oxley stepped forward, speaking gently to the skull in his palms. “No more forever waiting soon now.”

  Indy noted that one of the thirteen was not like the others.

  It was missing its head.

  Mutt noted the direction of Indy’s gaze. “Let me guess. It’s his.”

  Oxley slowly walked toward the headless corpse.

  They had reached their goal—then a sharp voice cracked out like a gunshot.

  “STOP RIGHT THERE!”

  FIFTY-FOUR

  SPALKO TOOK GREAT SATISFACTION from the crushed look on Dr. Jones’s face.

  She stepped across the threshold, accompanied by her lieutenant and two other soldiers. They kept their Kalashnikov rifles leveled at those in the room. She rested her hand on her rapier’s hilt.

  She smiled grimly at her adversary. “I must thank you, Dr. Jones, for discovering the path here and unlocking Akator’s secrets, but I believe we’ll let more experienced minds proceed from here.”