Evil Star

overhead. There was a monkey with a spiraling tail, a whale, a condor, and a huge spider with a bloated body and eight legs reaching out. Matt recognized the spider. It was identi-cal to the one he had seen on the page copied from Salamanda's diary.

    Horowitz, Anthony - [Gatekeepers 02] - Evil Star The drawings were simple, almost childlike. But no child could possibly have produced them on this scale. Each creature must surely have been the work of dozens of men. And there was something very precise about the way each one had been executed.
    The legs of the spider, for example, were mirror images of each other, as were the wings of the bird. Every line was straight. Every circle was perfectly formed. It was obvious even at first glance that the entire tapestry had been produced with mathematical precision.
    A single road — the Pan-American Highway — ran through the center of the desert, actually dissecting some of the lines. It was completely straight, too, but next to the drawings it appeared cold and lifeless. A piece of modern vandalism, cutting through a work of ancient art.
    The pilot turned in his seat, pulling off his helmet and goggles. And that was when Matt saw that he wasn't a man but a woman, about fifty years old, with a square, rather plain face and long, almost colorless hair. She wore no makeup and it would have done little good if she had. Long expo-sure to sun and desert winds had wrinkled her skin beyond hope. But she had lively, bright blue eyes.
    She was smiling.
    "So what do you think?" she called out.
    Nobody spoke. They were all too surprised.
    "I'm Joanna Chambers," the woman said. "I heard you wanted to see me so I thought I'd come and collect you myself." The plane shuddered, caught in an air pocket, and briefly she returned to the controls. Then she turned round again. "They told me you've come to Peru looking for a gate," she went on. "Well, if there really is such a thing — if it exists and it's about to be opened — you'd better take a good look. Five hundred square kilometers of some of the Horowitz, Anthony - [Gatekeepers 02] - Evil Star emptiest, driest desert in the world. That's where your gate is to be found."

    ************************************
    Professor Chambers lived about a mile from the small, pretty airport that mainly served tourists wanting to visit the Nazca Lines. She had one of the most beautiful houses Matt had ever seen; a low, white building with a green-tiled roof and a broad veranda shaded by a colonnade. It had been built in a garden the size of a park, with llamas wan-dering freely across the lawn and dozens of birds filling the air with color and song. A low, white wall surrounded it but there was no gate, no guards. Everything about the place suggested that visitors were always welcome.
    Richard, Matt, Pedro, and Atoc were sitting in the din-ing room, eating a late lunch of cold meat and fried yucca chips — which were like potato, only sweeter. The room had a bare tiled floor and a fan turning slowly above. It led directly onto the veranda. The professor was at the head of the table. Now that Matt could examine her more closely, he saw that she was a large, rather masculine woman, though not as unattractive as he had first thought. She looked like the sort of woman who should have been teaching gym at an expensive girls' school. She had changed into white trousers and a baggy white shirt tucked in at the waist. She had a bottle of iced beer in one hand, a thin cigar in the other. The smell of its smoke hung around them.
    "I'm very pleased to meet you," Chambers said. “You're welcome to my house."

"Nice place," Richard muttered.

    Horowitz, Anthony - [Gatekeepers 02] - Evil Star
    "I was fortunate to be able to buy it. I've made a certain amount of money out of writing books. About Peru — and in particular the Nazca Lines."
    "What are the Nazca Lines?" Matt asked.
    Chambers sucked on her cigar and the tip glowed an angry red. "I find it astonishing that you haven't heard of them," she remarked.
    "They just happen to be one of the great wonders of the ancient world. I'm afraid it's all part of this dumbing-down. English schoolchildren! They don't seem to teach you anything these days."
    "I haven't heard of them, either," Richard said.
    "Bizarre!" Chambers swallowed smoke the wrong way and burst into a fit of coughing. She took another swig of beer and sat back in her chair. "Well, I'm not going to give you a history lesson. Not yet, anyway.