Anthony Horowitz - Evil Star

The flight took three hours. Pedro seemed more comfortable in the plane than he had been in the helicopter. He had barely spoken since the golden disc had been shown to him in Vilcabamba and Matt wondered what was going on in his head. In the seat next to him, Richard was also unusually quiet. He hadn’t told Matt what the Inca prince had said to him and Matt had decided not to ask. But obviously it hadn’t been good news.

Atoc had flown the helicopter, but on the plane he was just a passenger, sitting on his own at the back, deep in thought. The pilot of the Cessna was behind the controls, almost completely invisible in a leather jacket, flying helmet and goggles.

He had said nothing as they came on board and nothing during the flight but suddenly he called out, shouting to make himself heard above the noise of the engine. Atoc leant across the aisle.

“Look out of windows,” he said. “We pass over Nazca Lines.”

The plane dipped, dropping ever lower as if about to land. Matt felt his stomach lurch. They were well below the level of the clouds, flying over a flat, empty desert and he wondered what he was meant to see. The Nazca Lines? There didn’t seem to be anything here.

And then he caught his breath.

There was a line, drawn in the ground, running dead straight for as far as his eye could see. It must have been carved in the earth and it couldn’t have been done by chance. It was too precise. Next to it he saw a shape, a huge rectangle, narrower at one end than the other, at least a mile long. A runway? No. Like the line, it had simply been drawn in the ground.

“Over there…” Richard said, leaning across him.

There were more lines, running in every direction, crossing over one another, all as straight as arrows. Matt had never seen anything like it. The whole desert was nothing less than a fantastic doodling pad on a gigantic scale. He couldn’t imagine how it had been done or when. Nor did he understand how the lines had survived when surely the wind should have blown them away.

The pilot called out to them again and the plane tilted and banked. Now Matt saw pictures, even more incredible than the lines. The first showed a hummingbird. It wasn’t drawn naturalistically, but even so it was unmistakable, with a long, pointed beak, wings and a tail. Matt tried to work out its size. It was hard to say, but if he could see it so clearly this high up, it must be at least a hundred metres long.

One by one, a fantastic menagerie of creatures appeared on the surface of the desert as the plane passed directly overhead. There was a monkey with a spiralling tail, a whale, a condor and a huge spider with a bloated body and eight legs reaching out. Matt recognized the spider. It was identical to the one he had seen on the page Salamanda had photocopied from the monk’s diary.

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 ran through the centre of the desert, actually dissecting some of the lines. The Pan-American Highway. It was completely straight too, but next to the drawings it was 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 it wasn’t a man but a woman, about fifty years old with a square, rather plain face and long, almost colourless hair. She wore no make-up and it would have done little good if she had. Long exposure 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 of them 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 juddered, 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 the gate exists and if it’s about to be opened, you’d better take a good look here. Five hundred square kilometres of some of the emptiest, driest desert in the world, and that’s where your gate is to be found.”

Professor Joanna 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, where llamas wandered freely across the lawn and dozens of birds filled the air with colour 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, and Pedro with Atoc beside him, were sitting in the dining room, eating a late lunch of cold meat and fried yuca chips – which were like potato only sweeter. The room had a bare tiled floor and a fan, and led directly onto the veranda. The professor was at the head of the table. Now that Matt could examine her more closely, he saw 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,” Professor Chambers said. “You’re welcome to my house.”

“Nice place,” Richard muttered.

“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 puffed 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!” The professor 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. 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 didn’t know how much she knew.

“I’m green with envy!” Professor Chambers exclaimed. “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 have pure Inca blood – apart from you three.” Then she nodded at Matt and Pedro. “They must think very highly of you. I can assure you, it’s a great honour.”

“They are Gatekeepers,” Atoc muttered. He seemed offended by the way Professor 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 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 history of his. I was never sure whether to believe it or not, but now that these children have turned up, I suppose I better had! Now what about this page of yours? The one from the diary?”