The Mythical City

Chapter 6.1

Already four days had passed since the fortuitous discovery of carved stone. The contingent, including members who were in the base camp, had moved to the site: McPherson was exultant because the random finding had saved them the usual weeks of search until hitting a promising site, and thus a considerable amount of money.

They had also asked radio manpower reinforcements in order to clear w**d from the places of interest within a radius of 1,000 yards around the stone. A score of additional workers would arrive in the following days in response to that request. Four groups of laborers led each one by an expert archaeologist roamed the jungle to locate probable sites.

Teresa was leading one of those groups made up three pawns, to which Marcelo had been attached. They were making their way in a direction in which the jungle was especially dense with trees of different sizes linked by a real curtain of vines; myriads of birds raised flight on their way, angered by their annoying intrusion while numerous parrots chattered disturbed; small monkeys watched them curious from the high branches, throwing some harmless projectiles, and some predator hid among the foliage.

Teresa was in the state near ecstasy usually produced to her by the contact with wild nature, with its chorus of murmurs, his palette of bold colors and their varied scents. The girl touched once the bark of a tree, then the texture of a rock, to complete the visual and auditory stimuli with the sensory experience. Marcelo watched her from behind and apprehended the true character of his girlfriend: essentially a free being, in peace with the natural world. This almost idyllic perception of the woman he loved put him in a good mood while he went to good stride after drying the sweat squirting from the forehead and scaring away countless insects seeking to settle on his face and hands, only exposed parts of his body. They had had s*x the night before and felt slightly its effects. Suddenly, Teresa paused to contemplate an impenetrable mass of vegetation on her right. Marcelo approached her:

“What, have you seen something?”asked her.

The young woman did not answer him, he observed her face and saw her staring, and tried to visually penetrate the forest with her. After a few moments she turned herself and looked at him.

“There is something odd in this mass of plants” “she replied, and then addressing Raul, one of the laborers commanded “please clear the branches in this part.”

“Have you had one of your visions? You had the same look that time in Yucatan.”

“Yes, I have a feeling that there is something worth seeing in that direction.”

Three workers began clearing weeds in the direction indicated by Teresa, away of the course that they had been following until then, and kept doing so during several minutes. Suddenly one of the machetes collided against a hard object by emitting an unpleasant screech.

“Miss, there is a kind of wall beneath these plants” warned Raul.

The heart of Teresa gave a leap; a vertical wall could not be the work of nature.

Gradually the machetes were waging the rocks of its vegetative cover. They could now clearly distinguish large blocks of stone surfaces grossly flattened, with obvious signs of having been worked with primitive tools. The joints between the blocks, with notches and straight angles allowing to assemble them together without mortar were soon exposed.

“Is a typical Inca construction” said Teresa “they knew the secret of building in height without mortar through an almost perfect fit of the stones they used.”

“We would never have found this place without your intuition” replied Marcelo “It´s really is a powerful tool for archaeological searches. You have chosen your profession well.”

She smiled thoughtfully considering the observation of her boyfriend; she had never established that relationship, but she found it wise.

Teresa communicated with McPherson telling him about the novelty; she thus learned that the group commanded by Jimenez and that included Lupita had also made a find, five hundred yards away from the base camp but in the opposite direction. This meant that the alleged ruins covered a fairly wide area, fact that increased the archaeologist’s expectations.

McPherson sent three workers to collaborate with the group led by Teresa, which accelerated the tasks. At seven in the evening the general construction layout that had been found was evident: a stone square house, of about eighteen feet on each side, about the maximum measure that would meet the possibilities of covering the house with a roof made with elements available in the area. Three of the walls were partially ruined and were not signs of the ceiling, surely  of vegetable nature and that presumably would have long ago be scavenged. The dwelling door place was well preserved, and was no more than four and a half feet high.

“Short people indeed, to go through it I must bend” said Marcelo, almost six feet three inches tall.

“You can't expect to enter comfortably in Inca dwellings, when you barely fit in a hotel bed” Teresa answered too quickly; when she realized the pawns had heard it she blushed; with a gesture she chased away the shame of her mind. There was no room in her for any other feeling than excitement for the finding.

Leaves moved imperceptibly from the foliage surrounding the camp, the brightness of the reflection of the little light that filtered among the shade of trees revealed binocular lenses. The man in camouflage jacket, lying motionless on the ground covered with leaves slightly moved his arms to be able to focus on another part of the vivac. Although there wasn´t considerable distance to the tents circle centre, he watched with the binoculars not to miss a detail. Once satisfied by the results of his inspection he began to crawl backwards without almost disturbing the bushes surrounding him; his feline movements betrayed someone with great training in travel in the jungle with maximum stealth. After going back that way about sixty feet, he judged that he could merge partially and run through the forest, always without making noises that would betray his presence. He finally came up to where the rest of his men were waiting for him. One of them reached the cutting-edge satellite communications equipment.

“Alo! Yes, we have already located them... yes; at the coordinates that we received... they have moved their camp beside the stream. So far they have found at least two houses in ruins... well, we will continue to monitor them... no, they do not suspect anything.”

A week after the first finding they had already detected twenty three houses, built with the same type of stone and technique and all in a similar state of abandonment. An inspection to both the territory and the available maps made them boast that the rocks had been transported from some mountain ranges whose closest foothills were located about five miles away, which of itself represented a remarkable logistic effort, given the impenetrable forest the stones had to travel through.

The houses were distributed within a radius of about three hundred yards around a natural spring, from which flowed a stream of crystal clear water.

“They found here everything what they were looking for” explained didactically McPherson to its collaborators “a source of water that even today, centuries later, can be safely drunk. They had access to a jungle that would provide them hunting game. They also had land in abundance for their crops, after clearing it of its jungle cover. Last but not least they were surrounded by a dense forest that hid them from potential enemies” he made a pause and added in a reflective tone “we must not forget that it was basically people expelled or self-exiled of the Inca Empire, and perhaps persecuted after their escape.”

At that point they heard the characteristic sound of the helicopter that had been hired to visit them with a frequency of once per week. It brought packaged and fresh food for the teams, spare parts for their equipment and new members that were added to the expedition. The helicopter was their only physical contact with the outside world, it brought back people who already had served they purpose, broken pieces of different pieces of equipment to be repaired, and written and filmed reports on the progress of the search, essential for keeping sponsors informed and willing to open their wallets and provide fresh funds. Precisely this was a task where McPherson outperformed.

To her chagrin, Teresa felt once more admiration for the teacher, his synthesis power and his capacity to explain the meaning of unclear data. These virtues were added to his professional honesty.

“My mistake” she reflected “was confusing this purely intellectual linkage with affection.”

Marcelo´s mind ran along similar paths. On the one hand it wasn´t easy for him harboring negative feelings like jealousy by the professor, on the other he couldn´t very well understood what a spirited young as Teresa had once seen in him. He tried to remove from his head all spurious thoughts, since in that place both closed and remote were all interdependent on basic issues that had to do with survival. In addition, he thought that the Potter who had kneaded his mind and soul had forgotten including many virtues in the clay, but had at least not included vicious feelings such as envy and jealousy. He thanked for being relatively free of such negativism, which affected so many of his friends.

One day a ruin that was notoriously different from the others was discovered. It was a great space without interior divisions, with a single door, whose sides were partially collapsed. After a functional analysis and taking into account some plant debris that were still in the ground, Jimenez predicted that it was a barn.

“According to what Professor Gamarra told me” he said alluding to one of the Peruvian archaeologists who had joined recently the expedition “this is a very common Inca construction in settlements located in the hills and mountains, and that apparently the Incas have brought this layout from their lands to this so different environment. This would reinforce the presumption that part of the land surrounding the site would have been cleared at the time and used on crops. Once the inhabitants abandoned them, forest advanced on agricultural lands once again taking his revenge.

The finding confirmed the nature of long-term permanence of the builders of the found houses, strengthening the researcher’s belief of being in a good track.

Three days later, McPherson ordered to stop the works for a meeting with all the members of the venture in the central square of the town that had already been cleared by the works.

“I think that at this point we can already anticipate some conclusions that, although preliminary, I do not think that will be denied by the future” this phrase was able to attract the attention of all members, common achievement of the American in his lectures.

“There is no doubt that we are in the site of an Inca town from the period that interests us, and in all probability is related to exiles, whether they were Tarco Huaman and his followers or others. We have found remains of pottery and textiles, which we will be analyzed now by the Peruvian Professor Gamarra and his colleagues to see what history they tell us.”

“Sorry for the question of a layman, but I thought that the Incas did not have writing systems. What are you planning to translate?” ventured Marcelo in a friendly tone.

“Your question is valid “said McPherson, always looking to leave good standing to its partners to encourage their participation “indeed the Incas did not write on substrates such as paper, leather, or other, as did other civilizations. But they have left messages in the quipus, which are real strings of textile materials knotted ropes. But I leave the word to our dear Professor Gamarra.

“We have found several samples of quipus in the ruins, like this” said Gamarra displaying a plastic bag with one of the mentioned groups of ropes hanging from a thicker rope which served them as physical support “May I ask you to circulate this sample among you?” he handed the bag to the closest person” but please do so with care, since it is a true miracle that has arrived at our days given that the organic materials rot easily in this humid and warm environment.”

“The number of knots “ continued “ its type, the distance between them and the colors of the strings that were used, using mnemonic rules which we have been able to discover at least in part, to convey messages and preserve knowledge and news to their offspring. Before, it was believed that they were only numeric messages, but we now know that they were used also for coding textual messages in this way. Some of these quipus have been preserved in this hostile environment although the original colors that were dyed with have disappeared. On the other hand, we have also found remains of pottery with geometric designs, which are also carriers of messages. We plan decoding this in the coming days.”

That said Gamarra gave the word back to McPherson.

“ And although I can say that what we have found is a historic discovery of great importance, it is likely that it is not the great Paititi, our primary objective” a murmur of disappointment towered above the Group of assembled people; expectations of being part of a milestone of archaeology vanished, at least temporarily.

“The total number of ruins found, some thirty, and the alleged ones that we can estimate in about the same number, give us a stable population of this settlement of four to five hundred people, far from the size that is attributed to Paititi, which was always estimated to be about ten times more.”

The rest of the exhibition of the professor was technical, and it was followed with interest by attendees. At the end of the same added.

“But I beg you not to be discouraged. The expedition will continue! As everyone remembers, we have located a second site in the region of the Peruvian yungas, and there we will go when we have extracted from this site all the information that the weather and climate have allowed to keep.”

“I was already expecting this conclusion” Teresa told Lupita and Marcelo once the meeting was over “these ruins could not be the source of something as persistent as the Paititi legend.”

The helicopter landed two hours late. Marcelo said goodbye to Teresa with a hug and a kiss. He had come to an end the license in his job in Buenos Aires and he should return to home; the night before they had had strenuous s*x and promises and very heartfelt confidences had been made. The young man went up to the vehicle without looking backwards to avoid losing courage; with him were four others. After a few minutes the powerful blades of the machine began to turn, forcing everyone to move away from the gust of wind originated.

The man with camouflage jacket got to finally make his satellite call, after an hour of attempts.

“Our contact has communicated with me. He says that McPherson has ruled out this site, but has promised to continue looking in the mountains... no, he did not disclose the place... yes, we will keep monitoring... don´t worry, we will not proceed until you give the order... do you planning to join us? We will then look for a site so you can land.”