CHAPTER XIII

The Mystery of the Green Sphere

THERE was one man in Mictolan who had not been fooled by my involuntary rôle as a priest of Kukulcan. Old Nohul Voh chuckled over it when I next saw him.

“I know not what words you spoke, Itzimin Chac,” he declared, “but that it was not the ritual of Kukulcan, I knew well. Neither did my lord carry out the ceremonies of the setting sun as provided by my religion. Mayhap no man or woman of Mictolan knows how it should be done. Of a surety, Kinchi Haman does not know all. It is many Katuns since a true priest of the Itzaes held sway at the temple of Mictolan, and still longer since one of the Tutul Xius prayed at the altar of Kukulcan. But I, Nohul Voh, have looked upon the ceremony of the setting sun in the holy city of the Plumed Serpents, in the temples of Chichen Itza, and I know the secret ritual as well as did Kachiquel Xius himself. But also I know my lord is not the son of Kukulcan and that the symbol of the Titul Xius upon his breast was placed there by my own hands. So between us two it will remain a secret, and it matters not, for it was foretold in the Book of the Future.”

To relate all my conversations with the old sorcerer, to tell in detail all my moves, all my experiences, all my adventures and to describe all of my discoveries during the weeks that followed my triumph over Kinchi Haman, would be monotonous. Moreover, many were of little importance and finally, to tell the truth, I cannot for the life of me feel sure of the chronological order of the innumerable incidents nor the reasons and causes that led up to them.

The old priest seemed to have been completely squelched. I saw little of him and he was most servile and conciliatory when we met. But there was a fly in my ointment nevertheless. Once having taken the part, there was no way of getting out of it, and each night and each morning I was obliged to ascend to the temple and go through the ceremonies before the image of my supposed ancestor. Naturally, the ceremonies I inaugurated were most revolutionary, but as I found I was compelled to do something that savored of religion, I decided to do my best to carry out--as far as my limited knowledge permitted--the ritual of the Christian Church.

Perhaps, in fact undoubtedly, any priest or minister of any sect would have been most properly scandalized had he seen and heard me. I fear even good, jolly Padre José would have frowned upon me, for the services I conducted were a most hopeless hodge-podge of the Roman Catholic, the Episcopalian, the Congregational and half a dozen other denominations. From each I selected the most impressive and spectacular features I could remember, and if the good features of each did not bear fruit and win converts to the Christian faith, it was not the fault of my devotions, for I was very much in earnest, very serious and had no thought of sacrilege nor of burlesquing any church. And that the new form of religion appealed to the people was obvious, for the temple of Kukulcan became the favorite, and the attendance at the other temples fell off appreciably. But though this might previously have caused Kinchi Haman to writhe in anger, and to plan most horrible reprisals upon me, I now had little fear of him. In due time, and when Nohul Voh had approved of it, I had, quite as if by accident, managed to let the old rascal catch a glimpse of my chest, and by the manner in which he started and his eyes widened, I knew he had recognized the clan mark of the Tutul Xius, and that no longer did any doubt of my identity exist in his crafty old brain.

Much of my time I spent with the old sorcerer. He aroused not only my wonder and my curiosity, but my scientific interests as well, for I very soon discovered that Nohul Voh was a scientist in his way, a sage versed in lore unknown to the rest of the world and possessing secrets of nature that no other man had ever unlocked. If, as he claimed, he was actually centuries old, it is not surprising that he should have acquired vast knowledge, but, strangest of all, was the fact that his knowledge had been developed along entirely untouched and undreamed of lines. I must, however, qualify that statement somewhat. Rather, I should say, along lines that had been lost and forgotten in the dim past, for he assured me that, in the days of his youth, all the wise men or sorcerers of the Mayas had been familiar with principles and forces which he, the last of his clan of the sorcerers’ cult, had perfected and developed. All, according to him, had been able to read the past and the future. And, so he told me, it was largely their reading of the future that had led to the fall of the Mayan Empire and the vanishing of their civilization. Being told that they were destined to be wiped out, that their empire would fall, they had become hopeless, bowed to destiny, and made no effort to struggle against fate.

“But how?” I asked him, “could they struggle against fate or the future if the future was to be? If they had struggled, if they had continued, then the reading of the future would have proved false.”

He shook his head. No, he argued. In the first place the Book of the Future gave no time. It might have been ten or one thousand years they had to exist. And, in the second place, man, he said, speaking as he always did in parables--man struggled daily to live, to go on, though he knew ultimately he must die.

“Still, if your Book of the Future be true, then must it provide that the Kitche Maya were fated to give up the struggle,” I argued.

“That is as it may be,” he declared. “Even I do not know all there is to know of these matters.”

Also, he confirmed my suspicion that the Mayas had been decimated by using the radioactive clay for etching their sculptures. Nearly all of those who handled the stuff, or the monuments, became afflicted with a terrible malady. They withered away, their teeth fell out, their bones dissolved and they died in agony. Some few survived for years; some, still fewer, recovered, mutilated and deformed but physically sound. Such, he declared, was Kinchi Haman. And, he added, all those who recovered possessed most warped, cruel, vindictive and ruthless natures. This, too had led to the downfall of the Mayas. Men, who had been humane, wise, benign rulers, seemed to go mad. They oppressed the people, ordered wholesale human sacrifices, made war upon one another. Fathers fought sons and brothers fought brothers. “But that,” he sighed, “was foretold in the Book of Kukulcan, as was the City of Mictolan.”

And, as I have said, the presence of the clay in the valley nearly resulted in the extermination of the people here. But though the radioactive mineral had brought death and destruction to the race, it had also brought great blessings in the end. They had learned that, combined with certain other substances, it was not only harmless, it was even beneficial. In the form in which it occurred in the rocks, it illuminated the caverns and the interiors of the temples, and even cast a soft half-light over the entire valley. And he, Nohul Voh, he declared, had learned to harness it, to make use of its power.

* * * * *

I WAS amazed, yet I had half-suspected this. I could not account for his sphere of gleaming light that illuminated his chambers except by the theory of radium. Yet it seemed incredible that these people, who had not even discovered the principle of the wheel, who knew nothing of iron, who had not even availed themselves of water power, and who possessed no machinery, no mechanical devices, could have mastered that powerful, elusive, terrible element--radium. Very painstakingly Nohul Voh tried to explain it to me. The harmless ore that occurred in the rocks and which, as nearly as I could determine, was a form of a uranium mineral, when placed near a rare green rock, would cause the latter to remain poised in air. He pointed to the mysterious green sphere as an example. “But,” he continued, “no power could move the green mineral either closer to or farther from the material.”

But he had discovered that, by placing rods of various metals near the green mineral the latter would move towards them and upon touching them would move to the next. Moreover--and this was so astounding I could scarcely believe his words--the green stone revolved at the same time, and made one complete revolution between sunrise and sunset and another between sunset and sunrise! To him, who studied the stars and the heavens and computed the eclipses and was responsible for the keeping of the calendars, this instantly presented possibilities. He had made a sphere of the green rock, had arranged it above a polished surface on which astronomical computations and figures could be engraved, and had arranged rods at definite distances about the circumference. He had thus divided the day and night into fractions, and--by some remarkable coincidence--he had provided _twelve_ of these rods so that the sphere, rotating at twice the speed of the earth touched the twelve rods in succession during each revolution or in other words made twenty-four contacts during the complete period from sunrise to sunrise.

But he had gone even farther. He had made calculations and measurements, had checked up accurately on his observations, and by patient experimenting and testing had converted his apparatus into a miniature solar system from which, at any time, he could determine the solstices, the eclipses, the positions of the planets and the constellations. All this was astonishing, almost incredible, but he demonstrated it before my eyes. Moreover, he knew that the earth was round! Reasoning backward from his model he had become convinced that the earth was a sphere, that the other celestial bodies were also spheres, and he was keen on learning from me what lay on the other surfaces of our earth.

But the most astounding, the most amazing feature of it was, that his device was, to all intents and purposes, perpetual motion. I tried to explain this to him, to make him understand the wonder of it, but he seemed to think it a matter of course. “Do not the sun, the moon, the stars move on forever? It is the law of the gods. Why then should not the green ball move on forever, ruled by the laws of the gods?”

I confess I could not find an adequate or satisfactory answer to this. Why not, to be sure?

Nevertheless, to me, who had always regarded perpetual motion, or to put it better, motion without loss of energy, as an impossible visionary thing, his endlessly rotating sphere was marvelous, fascinating. I examined it, studied it from every angle, but could make neither head nor tail of it. All I knew was that it was so. Why did it remain there, a definite distance above the radioactive mineral in the stone column? What was the invisible force that permitted the sphere to revolve and rotate freely and yet held it as firmly in position as though fixed by iron bars? And why, by what law of nature was the rotation of the sphere timed to precisely twice the speed of the earth?

It was inexplicable. But whatever the answer, here, in this force was a power that, properly applied, put to useful purposes, would revolutionize the mechanical world. But unless the principle could be learned, unless it could be understood and harnessed it was no more than an interesting toy. For hours, night after night, I lay awake, cudgelling my brains, formulating theories, striving to recall all I had ever learned of physics, electricity, chemistry and the other sciences; hoping somehow, by some means, to hit upon a principle or an hypothesis that would fit the conditions. And no sooner had I worked out some theory than I found it inadequate or faulty.

Eventually, however, I evolved an explanation that, I feel sure, was very nearly correct. This was that the principle involved was an atomic or rather electronic flow between the radium ore and the green stone! In a way, perhaps, akin to the flow of electrons between the filament and the plate of a radio tube. That the sphere of green was held in place by this stream of invisible electrons that formed a solid band of waves--something like magnetic waves--and that the green material being polarized was forced to rotate. Each time it touched a rod, a current or wave of electrons rushed back to the active mineral in the column and allowed the sphere to move forward towards the next rod. It was in fact on the principle of an electric motor, the radioactive material representing the electricity, the sphere the rotating armature, the upright rods the brushes. What a power this would be to put at the disposal of civilized man! No power needed to generate the primary force. No appreciable loss of the basic energy. No frictional loss of power or wear and tear. In my imagination I could picture the world’s industries increased thousands of times, completely revolutionized by such a source of inexhaustible power.

* * * * *

I COULD visualize motor cars, ships, aircraft, trains speeding over land and sea and through the air without carrying fuel, with never a need of replenishing their power. I could see factories, mills, machinery of every kind operating without smoke, without waste. Grime, dust, ashes, coal and oil would be things of the past. It would be the greatest boon to mankind in the history of the world. And yet, unless I were vastly mistaken, it was an impossibility, a mere dream. Nohul Voh had told me that the green rock was extremely rare, that his sphere and a few small fragments were all of the mineral that existed as far as he knew, that these pieces had been handed down from father to son of his family for countless ages, and that their original source was unknown. Legend had it, however, that they were bits of a most sacred image that, in the very dawn of their history, had been worshipped by the first of the Kitche Mayas. Always, he declared, it had been credited with magical powers. Always, each sorcerer of his clan had prized it, guarded it; but only he had discovered its amazing properties. And probably, I thought, nowhere else but in this valley of Mictolan was there the peculiar radioactive mineral that was needed to produce the results.

But even if it were visionary, it was fascinating to speculate upon its possibilities, and, with my mind filled with it, constantly dwelling upon it, I began to wonder if the Bridge of Light was not also a variation of the same force. I questioned Nohul Voh, but he could give me little information.

Always, from the very beginning, he repeated, the Bridge of Light had been there--had not the Mayas crossed it when they had first entered the valley? And that it had some connection with the flames from the temple summit he felt sure, for always these rose, like banners against the sky, when the bridge spanned the chasm and vanished as the bridge vanished. Also, he felt sure, the high-priest knew the secret of the bridge--might even control it--but no one other than the Kinchi Haman himself was permitted within the innermost sacred precincts of the temple where dwelt the “Monster of Sacrifices,” and so no one had ever learned the secret of the marvelous bridge. Even the sorcerer’s ability to read the past and future, even his almost miraculous uncanny powers, had not enabled him to learn this secret of the high-priest.

“And what?” I asked him, “is this Monster of Sacrifices? Is he beast or man? I have vowed to destroy the thing and I would know more of it.”

“That, my son, Itzimin, I cannot say,” replied the old sorcerer. “Even when our fathers’ fathers’ fathers came unto Mictolan, a temple stood above the place and, so our legends say and so I heard from the priests who came hither and entered the temple, the monster dwelt therein and was tended by an ancient priest of another race more ancient than the Kitche Maya. It was his people who had made the great statue at the door of the Cave of the Bats; the mummies of his kings were those within that cave; his people had erected the temple, but he alone of all his race remained. To the high priest of Kinich Ahau he revealed all he knew--to him he delegated the care of the sacred Monster--and to him, no doubt, he imparted the secret of the Bridge of Light. That, my son, is all I know. Even my knowledge, my powers, cannot pierce the walls and unmask the secrets hidden in the inner temple of the Kinich Ahau, God of Light and Life. To attempt to do so would be sacrilege, would bring down the wrath of the gods.”

I smiled inwardly at the old fellow’s psychology as related to his religion. “And yet,” I reminded him, “you have no love for Kinchi Haman, you would humiliate him, destroy him. You deceive him by making him believe me a son of Kukulcan. Is that not also sacrilege?”

Nohul Voh shook his great white mane. “Nay, my son, the Kinchi Haman is but a man like ourselves. Outside his office he is an ordinary mortal--a most vindictive, cruel, undesirable mortal--and it is as a mortal I hate and despise him. But within the sacred precincts of his temple I would not raise my hand to do him harm.”

“And,” I persisted, “if Kinchi Haman should die--as die he must--or should be destroyed, who, O, Nohul Voh, would take his place?”

The sorcerer showed surprise at my question. “Why, you, my son!” he exclaimed. “Though the Kinich Ahau, Lord of Day, rules above all other gods in the heavens, yet Mictolan is a city of Kukulcan and herein the Plumed Ahau may not--rightly--become priest of Kukulcan--even though Kinchi Haman in his conceit and power did so contrary to law--yet the priest-head of the Tutul Zius may become high priest of Kinich Ahau. Aye, should Kinchi Haman pass on, you Itzimin Chac, would be supreme in all things in Mictolan.”

“But I am no priest, I am not of the Tutul Zius clan, I am not even of the Kitche Maya,” I reminded him.

“That matters not,” he assured me. “Does not our history say that Kukulcan himself was of another race? Was not the first of the Tutul Zius house a warrior and not a priest? Is not my son the bearer of the Book of Kukulcan? And has not my son proved that he is inspired by the gods and gives a new ritual that is pleasing to the great Plumed Serpent?”

I laughed. “Still, O, Nohul Voh, I would be but a sorry priest of Kinich Ahau if Kinchi Haman died and left me not the secrets of the inner temple.”

“To him who has much knowledge more will be given,” declared the sorcerer with conviction. “Fear not, when the time comes the gods will impart to you the necessary wisdom.”

* * * * *

HOWEVER, I had no intention of remaining in Mictolan even if I were fated to become its ruler, its high priest, the supreme head of the city and its people. At the first opportunity presenting itself, the moment the Bridge of Light spanned the chasm, I would flee with Itza and leave Mictolan forever, even if we were not married--that formality could be attended to when--if ever--we reached civilization. And, after our departure, the people could settle their religious and temporal affairs to suit themselves, though I hoped that the prince Azcopil would be restored to his throne.

That I had not already married Itza was not my fault or hers. I had discovered that only the high-priest could perform the ceremony, and Kinchi Haman refused to do so. She, he declared, had broken her vows as a Virgin of the Sun. She was to his mind, and in the eyes of the gods, an outcast, as far as religion was concerned, and as a priest of Kinchi Ahau he could not marry an excommunicant. To do so would be to insult his god. I threatened, argued, commanded, but though he trembled with fear, though he acknowledged my power, though he cowered and cringed, he was adamant.

Perhaps the old villain was sincere in his stand; possibly in his innermost soul he really believed he was true to his faith. I am willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. But I felt that it was only a pose, that he was taking this means of revenging himself upon me, and I would willingly have killed him on the spot, if doing so would have helped matters any. But I knew--as he did also--that killing him would merely make matters worse. I would be his successor. I could not marry Itza to myself, for in the eyes of the law and of the people’s faith, she was a Virgin of the Sun and could not wed a priest of the Sun, and unless I married her before I stepped into Kinchi Haman’s shoes, she could never, legally, be my wife. She could, of course, become my concubine at any time, for as the priest of Kukulcan, I was entitled to acquire any and as many unmarried women as I desired without question or interference. But I had no desire or intention of availing myself of this opportunity, although Itza, accustomed all her life to the religion and the social laws of her people, was quite willing to sacrifice herself on the altar of our love. Hence the hideous old priest felt that, in this one matter, he could defy me in safety. But had I known what he was planning and plotting in his crafty, cruel brain; had I realized what was in store for us, and had I been more familiar with the laws and the religion, I would have put an end to him then and there, even though my act prevented my beloved Itza from ever being more than my mistress.

But even Nohul Voh could not read the thoughts of the priest--or if he could foresee the future in this instance, he refused to divulge it to me. So, telling Itza and Azcopil of my plans, I waited and watched for the reappearance of the Bridge of Light.

Repeatedly, too, I made my way to the chasm and spent hours examining the spot where the amazing bridge had spanned the abyss, hoping thereby to obtain some clue or inkling of the phenomenon, perhaps even to solve its secret. At risk of my life, I lay upon the very brink of the precipice, and leaning far over, examined the surface of the rock. But I could see no device, no apparatus that hinted at the origin or the operation of the miraculous thing. There was, however, a cavity or rather a group of small cavities a few feet below the verge of the cliff, and by listening intently, I could detect a peculiar hissing sound like escaping steam from within the holes. Also, I discovered that a draught or stream of air issued from them, for when I lowered a bit of rag attached to a cord, it was blown outward as though an immense fan was operating within the apertures in the rock.

That these holes and this jet of air had some connection with the bridge I felt sure, but rack my brains and puzzle my mind as I might, I could not see what the connection was or how a stream of light--even if it issued from the holes--could provide a firm span over which human beings could walk in safety.

Indeed, it seemed so utterly preposterous, so contrary to all laws of physics and of common sense, that at times I almost believed it was a figment of my imagination, that I had dreamed of it and actually had entered the valley by some other route. Yet Itza, the prince, Nohul Voh and everyone else knew of the Bridge of Light; with the exception of the sorcerer all regarded it as quite to be expected, as a supernatural manifestation, and no one, not even Nohul Voh, seemed to think it so very remarkable. In fact he and the others looked upon things that were everyday matters to me as far greater marvels than the Bridge of Light. Indeed, my own amazement, my own wonder that such an inexplicable thing as that span of light could exist was far less than their astonishment at such a simple matter as the wheel.

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