Matthew Reilly - Temple

Race said, cutting Krauss off before he could justify his earlier error—an error that had resulted in the deaths of three good soldiers. ‘They attacked it twice in the manuscript.’

‘Does it say how they came to be inside the temple?’

‘Yes. It says that they were put inside the building by a great thinker who wanted to make the temple a test of human greed.’ Race looked up at Nash pointedly. ‘Guess we failed that one.’

“Solon’s temple.. ’ Gaby Lopez breathed.

‘Did it say anything about how we can fight them?’ Nash asked.

‘It did say something about that, two things actually.

One, monkey urine. Apparently all cats hate it. Douse yourself in it and the rapas will steer well clear of you.’

‘And the second thing?’ Lauren said.

‘Well, it was very strange,’ Race said. ‘At one point in the story, just when the cats were about to attack Santiago, the Incan prince threw the idol down into a puddle of water.

Once the idol came into contact with the water, it emitted a strange kind of humming noise that seemed to stop the cats from attacking.’

Nash frowned at that.

‘It was very peculiar,’ Race said. ‘Santiago described it as sounding like a chime being struck, and it seemed to operate on the same principle as a dog whistle—some kind of high-frequency vibration that seemed to affect the cats but not the humans.

‘The really strange thing,’ Race added, ‘was that the Incans seemed to know about this. On a couple of occasions in the manuscript it’s said that the Incans believed that their idol, when immersed in water, could soothe even the most savage beast.’

Nash glanced at Lauren.

‘Could be resonance,’ she said. ‘Contact with the concentrated oxygen molecules in water would cause the thyrium to resonate, the same way other nuclear substances react with oxygen in the air.’

‘But this would be on a much larger scale—.’ Nash said.

‘Which is probably why the monk also heard the humming sound,’ Lauren said. ‘Human beings can’t hear the resonant hum caused by the contact of sa3 plutonium with oxygen— the frequency is too low. But since thyrium is a whole order of magnitude denser than plutonium, it’s possible that when it comes into contact with water, the resonance is so great it can be heard by humans.’

‘And if the monk heard it, then it must have been twice as bad for the cats,’ Krauss added pointedly.

Everyone turned to face Krauss.

‘Remember, cats have a hearing capability approximately ten times that of human beings. They hear things that we physically cannot, and they communicate on a frequency that is beyond our auditory range.’

‘They communicate?’ Lauren said flatly.

‘Yes,’ Krauss said. “It has long been accepted that the great cats communicate via grunts and guttural vibrations that are well beyond the aural perception of humans. The point, however, is this: whatever that monk heard was probably only one-tenth of what the cats heard.

That humming sound must have driven them crazy, hence the pause it gave them.’

‘The manuscript went even further than that,’ Race said.

‘It didn’t just make them pause. The cats seemed to follow the idol after it had been dropped in the water. It was as if they were drawn to it or something, hypnotised even.’

Nash said, ‘Did the manuscript say anything about how the idol came to be inside the temple?’

‘No,’ Race said. ‘Not yet, at least. Who knows, maybe Renco and Santiago wet the idol and used it to lead the cats back inside the temple. Whatever they did, somehow they managed to lure the cats back inside the temple and at the same time put the idol inside it.’

Race paused. ‘It’s not entirely inappropriate, really. By placing the idol inside the temple, they merely made it another part of Solon’s test of human greed.’

‘These cats,’ Nash said. ‘The manuscript says they’re nocturnal, right?’

‘It says that they like any kind of darkness—nighttime or otherwise. I guess that would make them nocturnal and then some.’

“But it says that they came down to the village each night to hunt for food?’

“Yes.’

Nash’s eyes narrowed. ‘Can we assume, then, that they leave the crater to forage for food every night?’

‘Judging from the manuscript, that would appear to be a safe assumption.’

‘Good,’ Nash said, turning.

‘Why?’

“Because,’ he said, ‘when those cats come out tonight, we’re going to go inside the temple and get that idol.’

The day grew darker by the minute.

Black storm clouds rolled in overhead, and with the cool air of the late afternoon, a thick grey fog settled over the village.

A light rain fell

Race sat next to Lauren as she packed some equipment to take over to the citadel in anticipation of their nighttime activities.

“So how has married life been to you?’ he asked as casually as he could.

Lauren smiled wryly to herself. ‘Depends which one you’re talking about.’

‘There’s more than one?’

‘My first marriage didn’t exactly work out. Turned out he didn’t share my career ambitions. We got divorced about five years ago.’

‘Oh.’

‘But I’ve recently remarried,’ Lauren said. ‘And it’s been great. Real nice guy. Just like you, in fact. Lot of potential, too.’

‘How long?”

‘About eighteen months now.’

‘That’s great,’ Race said politely. In truth, he was thinking about the incident he had witnessed earlier—Lauren and

Troy Copeland kissing passionately in the back of the Huey.

He recalled how Copeland hadn’t been wearing a wedding ring. Was Lauren having an affair with him? Or maybe Copeland just didn’t wear his ring…

‘Did you ever get married, Will?’ Lauren asked, yanking him from his thoughts.

‘No,’ Race said softly. ‘No, I didn’t.’

‘SAT-SN report is coming through,’ Van Lewen said from a computer terminal on the wall of the ATV.

He, Cochrane, Reichart, Nash and Race were now standing with the two German BKA agents—Schroeder and the blonde woman, Renee Becker—inside the eight-wheeled all-terrain vehicle. It was parked close to the river, not far from the western logbridge and the muddy path that led up to the fissure, in anticipation of their nighttime assault on the temple.

Lauren had already left the ATV for the citadel, with Johann Krauss in tow behind her.

Just then, Buzz Cochrane returned to the ATV with a handful of sloppy light-brown mush. The smell of it in the confined space of the vehicle was putrid.

‘There ain’t a single monkey out there that I could catch to get its piss,’

Cochrane said. ‘Guess they get out of here before nightfall.’ He held up the brown mush in his hand. ‘I was able to get this, though. Monkey shit. I figured it’d be just as good.’

Race winced at the smell of it.

Cochrane saw him. ‘What? Don’t want to smear yourself in shit, Professor?’ He looked over at Renee and smiled.

“Guess we’re lucky it ain’t the professor who’s going in there, then, ain’t we?’

Cochrane began to apply the monkey excrement to the exterior of his fatigues. Reichart and Van Lewen did the same.

They also applied it to the rims of the narrow slitlike windows of the ATV.

While Race had been reading the manuscript earlier, Nash had got the other civilians to set up a base of operations inside the citadel. While they had been doing that, the four remaining Green Berets had been hard at work trying to fix the surviving Huey.

Unfortunately, they’d only managed to repair the chopper’s ignition ports. Repairing its damaged tail rotor had been more difficult than Cochrane had at first anticipated. Complications had arisen and it still wouldn’t turn over and the Huey couldn’t fly without it.