“Has he come?” Marika asked, voicing what Jake feared. She didn’t need a name. They all knew to whom she was referring.
“Let’s go,” Jake said.
25
WORLD ENOUGH AND TIME
Bach’uuk led them to the tunnel beyond the crystal heart. It opened into a twisted set of narrow stairs that headed down into the lower levels of the pyramid. They went single file. Jake realized they had to be beneath the pyramid by now, or maybe the pyramid was actually larger than it appeared from above. Maybe what was on the surface was just the tip of a much larger structure.
Around and around they went.
Finally the stairs ended at another room, flat roofed but circular in shape. Giant stalactites of crystals hung from the high roof like the fangs of some colossal fossilized beast. They glowed and illuminated the space ahead.
Jake followed Bach’uuk into the chamber as he headed toward yet another tunnel on the far side of the room. It looked like more stairs—heading down again.
How far down does this place go? Jake wondered, but his full attention remained on the room. His feet slowed. Marika and Pindor kept close to him.
On the floor rested a giant device. It was a circular wheel, made out of pure gold. It lay flat on the floor and stretched ten yards across. Its inner edge was notched like a gear. A second wheel was fitted inside the first one.
As Jake watched, the larger gear revolved a few degrees with a loud snap, turning the smaller gear inside. Then it stopped, as if marking time. And maybe it was. Jake walked around its outer edge. Though there were no marks on it, Jake recognized the shape.
Marika realized the same as she followed behind Jake. “It’s like our tribe’s calendar wheel.”
Jake nodded. The Maya had developed a detailed calendar using wheels fitted together like gears. Again he wondered which came first. Had the Maya built this? Or had some ancient Maya stood where they were now and returned home with the knowledge? Jake continued around the edge. According to Marika, the pyramid had been here long before any of the tribes had arrived, even before the Neanderthals had made their home here in the valley. Jake began to suspect he was looking at the possible source of all ancient science, knowledge found here and taken back home.
Bach’uuk, who’d seen all this before, waited at the entrance to the far tunnel.
Jake began to head over when he finally noted the curved walls of the room. Row after row of ancient script covered the walls from floor to ceiling, so crisply inscribed, it could’ve been cut with a laser. Jake scanned the ancient writing.
What language was it? Who wrote it? Jake ran his fingers along the letters. It had to be the builders of the pyramid. Possibly the same ones who drew the Lost Tribes of Earth to this wild land.
He continued along the wall and crossed toward Bach’uuk, whose brows grew heavier with impatience. They had to keep going. But as Jake continued around the room, a drawing appeared ahead. It had been carved in a blank space on the wall. It showed three circles with shapes sticking out, creating a shadowed bas-relief.
Jake moved away to view it full on—then stopped in midstep. He gawked at the first circle, unable to speak. He edged closer. Though the detail wasn’t great, the shapes looked like a crude map of Earth. He drew a finger along the forms carved within the first circle, whispering the names of the continents.
“Africa, South America, Australia…”
The next circle showed those same continents moving closer together, fitting together like a jigsaw puzzle. The bulge in South America fit into the curve of Africa. And so on.
The last circle showed all the continents fused into one whole.
Jake gasped and moved away again to take in the whole view. He began to understand what he was seeing. Back during the time of the dinosaurs, the world was just a single large supercontinent. But a great cataclysm and the forces of flowing magma eventually broke apart the single large landmass and formed today’s seven smaller continents.
Jake swallowed and mumbled the scientific name for that supercontinent drawn in the last circle. “Pangaea.”
Pindor stood at his shoulder. He looked oddly at Jake. “I didn’t know you spoke Greek.”
Jake frowned at him. “What?”
“Pangaea. It’s Greek. I studied it in school.”
Jake felt a creeping sense of realization. Pindor was right. The word Pangaea was actually formed by two words in Greek. He pictured it in his head.
Pan = all
Gaea (Gaia) = world
So Pangaea translated as “All-World.”
Jake frowned. All-World was also the name for the universal language used by everyone here. It couldn’t be a coincidence, could it? He glanced at Pindor and the map. Then he turned in a slow circle as an icy realization struck him. His friends weren’t speaking All-World, they were speaking Pangaean.
A shudder passed through Jake as he faced the map again. Pangaea was a prehistoric world full of dinosaurs and primitive plant life. Like here. He raised his arm and placed his palm on the supercontinent.
Could this be where I am?
If he was right, he was staring at the shape of this world. All along, he’d been asking the wrong question since he and Kady had landed here. The question wasn’t where they were, but when. Jake was still on Earth—but two hundred million years into the past.
“This is Pangaea,” he said aloud.
Marika seemed mystified by his stunned response to the drawing. “Jake, what’s wrong?”
He shook his head. He didn’t have the time to explain, and he wasn’t sure they would believe him anyway. At least not yet.
Pindor pointed his sword toward Bach’uuk. “We should be going.”
Jake allowed himself to be guided away. He moved on legs numb with shock. A loud snapping click drew his gaze over to the clockwork mechanism on the floor. It turned another notch. The smaller inner wheel rotated. Jake glanced back to the wall, to the map of Pangaea.
It’s all about time.
Jake knew that was central to the mystery here. As he began to turn away, a rolling bit of gold on the floor caught his eye. The turning of the inner ring had bumped something that lay within it. It looked like a fat gold coin. It rolled to a stop inside the ring and bobbled a bit.
Jake stepped toward the pair of gears. Is that…?
“We have to go,” Pindor insisted. He shifted his sword between his hands, clearly worried about his people, his town.
But Jake leaned out over the outer ring and squinted at what lay within the smaller ring. It wasn’t a coin. Jake recognized the shape. He crossed over the outer ring, careful of the toothed gears, and gently stepped into the inner ring. He bent and picked it up.