Evil Star

First I want to know about you. I got a telephone call from a very special friend. Apparently, you've been to Vilcabamba?"
    Nobody said anything. They hadn't realized how much she knew.
    "I'm green with envy!" Chambers exploded. "I know that the Incas survived. They consider me their friend and I've spoken with them frequently. But I've never been to their lost city. As far as I know, nobody has — unless they've had pure Inca blood . . . apart from you." She nodded at Matt and Pedro. "They must think very highly of you. I can assure you, it's a great honor."
    "They are gatekeepers," Atoc muttered. He seemed offended by the way Chambers had spoken.
    "Gatekeepers! Yes, of course! Two of the five! The Old Ones ..."
    “You know about that, too?" Richard asked.
    "I know a great deal about a great many things, Mr. Cole." She Horowitz, Anthony - [Gatekeepers 02] - Evil Star reached forward and took a grape from a bowl, then flicked it out of the window. A large tropical bird swooped down and caught it.
    "And yes, I had heard stories about the Mad Monk of Cordoba and this alternative his-tory of his. I was never sure whether to believe it or not. But now that these children have turned up, I suppose I'd better! Now what about this page of yours? The one from the diary?"
    Matt still had it in his pocket. He took it out and gave it to her. She read it briefly, once, then again. "Well, some of this is fairly straightforward," she said. "The place of Qolqa. Inti Raymi. . . that's only two days from now. Doesn't leave us a lot of time. I'm not sure about this white bird, though. It could be a condor, I suppose. . . ."
    "What about a swan?" Matt said.
    "A swan? What makes you think of that?"
    "I heard Salamanda talking about a swan," he explained. He could have mentioned his dream but decided not to. "He said to be in position. At midnight."
    "Are you sure?"
    “Yes."
    Professor Chambers had irritated Matt and she saw it. "I'm sorry,"
    she said. "It's just that it seems so unlikely. There's a condor and a hummingbird in the Nazca desert. You saw them today. But there's no swan. As far as I know, there are no swans in Peru."
    "That's what he said," Matt insisted,
    "What about the rest of the poem?" Richard asked.
    "Well, the whole page refers to the Nazca Lines. There’s no doubt about that. The place of Qolqa, for example.” She stopped herself.
    "There's no point talking about the Nazca Lines until you know what Horowitz, Anthony - [Gatekeepers 02] - Evil Star they are, so I'm going to have to give you a history lesson after all. It would actually take me a week to describe them to you and even then I would only scratch the surface. But we don't have a week.
    And anyway, young people these days have no concentra-tion. So let me try and put it as simply as I can."
    Professor Chambers got up and helped herself to another beer, flicking the cap off with a penknife. Matt was almost surprised that she hadn't used her teeth.
    "There are all sorts of mysteries in the world," she began. "Even now, in the twenty-first century. Stonehenge. The Pyramids. Ulure in Australia. There are all sorts of places and things — some of them man-made, some of them natural — that science can't explain. But if you ask me, the Nazca Lines are the biggest mystery of the lot.
    "Let's start with the Nazca desert. It's huge. It's hot. And it's empty.
    And about two thousand years ago, the ancient Indians of Nazca decided to trudge out here and draw a series of extraordinary pictures in the ground. They did this by removing the darker stones from the surface of the desert and exposing the lighter soil underneath. There's almost no rain in Nazca and very little wind.
    That's how the lines have survived.
    "Are you with me so far?"
    She glanced at Atoc, who was rapidly translating for Pedro. He nodded.
    "Good. Well, some of these pictures are very beautiful. You saw them from the plane. There are animals — a whale, a condor, a monkey, a hummingbird, and a huge spider. And there are all sorts of triangles, spirals, and star shapes as well as hundreds of perfectly straight lines, some of them stretching for up to twenty-five miles."

    Horowitz, Anthony - [Gatekeepers 02] - Evil Star She took a quick swig of beer.
    "Now, this is where the mystery begins. The Nazca Lines can only be seen from the air. In fact, they were only discov-ered in 1927
    when one of the first airplanes in Peru flew over them. I wish I'd been on board — that's all I can say!