Clive Cussler - Polar Shift

A paved boulevard about fifty feet wide led into the heart of the city. They had strolled along the thoroughfare like a couple of tourists bedazzled by the bright lights of Broadway. The buildings were much smaller than Manhattan's skyscrapers-three stories at the most-yet they were architectural wonders, considering their probable age.

The promenade was lined with pedestals. The statues they once supported lay in unrecognizable heaps of rubble, as if they had been pushed off their perches by vandals.

Schroeder rested his sore ankle, then he and Karla explored a couple of buildings, but they were as empty as if they had been swept clean with a big broom.

"How old do you think this place is?" Schroeder said as they plunged deeper into the city.

"Each time I try to date it, I become tangled in contradictions. The fact that the murals show humans and mammoths coexisting places them in the Pleistocene period. That was a time span that ran from 1.8 million to ten thousand years ago. Even if we go with the most recent date of ten thousand years, the high level of civilization here is astonishing. We've always assumed that mankind didn't evolve from its primitive state until much later. The Egyptians' civilization is only around five thousand years old."

"Who do you think built this wonderful city?" '

"Ancient Siberians. This island was connected to an arctic continental shelf that extended out from the mainland. I didn't see any pictures of boats, indicating that this was pretty much a landlocked society. From the looks of it, this was a rich city."

"Since it was such a flourishing society, why did it end?"

"Maybe it didn't end. Maybe it simply moved somewhere and became the basis of another society. There is evidence that Europeans as well as Asians populated North America."

As Schroeder mulled the implications of Karla's analysis, excited voices could be heard shouting from behind them in the direction of the city gate. He squinted back along the boulevard. Pinpoints of light were moving in the area around the plaza. The ivory hunters had also blundered into the city.

"We're sitting ducks out here in the open," Schroeder said. "We can lose them easily if we get off this lovely avenue."

He slipped into an alley that connected with a narrow side street. The buildings were smaller than on the main boulevard; none was taller than one story. They appeared to serve more of a residential function than the grander, more ceremonial structures lining the main drag.

As a former soldier, Schroeder had accurately sized up the defensive situation. The city was a huge maze of hundreds of streets. Even with the omnipresent halo of light that shimmered over the city, as long as they kept alert and on the move through the labyrinth their pursuers would never catch them. At the same time, Schroeder was aware that they could only run for so long. Eventually, they would run out of food and water. Or luck.

His goal was to get to the far side of the city. He had hopes, supported by the relatively good quality of the air, that there might be another way out. The people who built this subterranean metropolis seemed to have done so with logic and reason. Thus it would be logical and reasonable that they had more than one way to get in and out. They were more than halfway across the city when Karla cried out in alarm.

She dug her fingers into Schroeder's arm. He slipped the automatic rifle off his shoulder. "What is it?" He glanced around at the silent facades as if he expected to see the leering faces of the ivory hunters in the windows.

"Something ran down that alley."

Schroeder followed her pointing finger with his eyes. Although the buildings produced their own light, they were built close together, and the narrow spaces between them were in deep shadow.

"Something or someone? "

"I-I don't know." She laughed. "Maybe I've been underground too long."

Schroeder had always trusted his senses above his analytical skills. "Wait here," he said. He approached the alleyway with his finger tight on the trigger. He edged up to the alley, stuck his head around the corner and flicked the flashlight on. After a few seconds, he turned and came back. "Nothing," he said.

"Sorry. It must have been my imagination."

"Come," he said, and, to Karla's surprise, he headed toward the alley.

"Where are you going?"

"If there is something out there, it's better that we sneak up on it rather than the other way around."

Karla hesitated. Her first impulse had been to flee in the other direction. But Schroeder seemed to know what he was doing. She hurried to catch up.

The alley led to another street similarly lined with buildings. The street was deserted. There were only the squat little structures with their windows staring like vacant eyes in the strange half-light. Schroeder checked his internal compass, and again started in a direction he hoped would take them to the far side of the city.

After they had walked for a few blocks, Schroeder stopped suddenly and raised his rifle. He lowered the weapon after a second and rubbed his eyes. "This strange light has me crazy. Now it's my turn to start seeing things. I saw something run from one side of the street to the other."

"No. I saw it too," Karla said. "It was large. I don't think it was human."

Schroeder started off again. "That's good. We haven't had much luck with humans lately."

Karla's nostrils picked up a familiar musky odor. The shed housing the baby mammoth had the same smell. Schroeder's nostrils had picked up the scent as well.

"Smells like a barnyard," he said.

The fragrance of mud, animals and manure became stronger as they made their way through an alley to another street. The street ended in a plaza similar to the public square they had encountered at the entrance to the city. The plaza was rectangular, about two hundred feet to a side. Like the earlier square it was dominated by a step pyramid about fifty feet high. But what caught Karla's eye was the immediate area around the pyramid.

Unlike the first plaza, whose pavement was made of the same glowing stone as the rest of the city, this space looked as if it were covered by a thick dark growth of weeds or grass. Karla's first impression was that she was looking at an untended garden similar to something she might see in a public park. That didn't make sense given the lack of sunlight. Drawn by her natural curiosity, she started toward the pyramid.

The vegetation began to move.

Schroeder's aging vision had trouble seeing details in the half-light, but the movement caught his eye. The training ingrained long ago came into play. He'd been taught that the best insurance when faced with a potential threat was a lead curtain. He stepped in front of Karla, and he brought his rifle to his hip. His finger tightened on the trigger as he prepared to saturate the square with a lethal spray.

"No!" Karla shouted.

She put her hand in front of his chest.

The plaza undulated, and from the moving mass came a sound of snorts and squeaks and heavy bodies starting to stir. The image of vegetation disintegrated, to be replaced by large furry clumps the size of large pigs.

Schroeder stared at the strange creatures milling around the square. They had stubby trunks and upturned tusks, and their hides were covered with fur. The significance of what he was seeing finally dawned on him.

"Baby elephants!"

"No," Karla said, amazingly calm in spite of her unbounded excitement. "They're dwarf mammoths."

"That can't be. Mammoths are extinct."

"I know, but look closely." She pointed the flashlight at the animals. A few of them glanced at the light, showing shiny round eyes of an amber hue. "Elephants don't have fur like that."

"This is impossible," Schroeder said as if he were having a hard time convincing himself.