Torchwood: Exodus Code Read online

  The Priestess frowned at the girl. ‘Did you touch him?’

  ‘No!’ she said, looking at the ground, scuffing her bare toes into the dirt, ashamed that the Priestess would even think her capable of such dishonour. The girl knew that she was not worthy of looking upon a deity, and so all she had done was to gather up the belongings that had fallen from the sky and scattered across the plateau, avoiding the smouldering flying machine as she did. The giant bird frightened her, the noises of the wood snapping and crackling in the flames like an angry night lion.

  ‘Good,’ the Priestess replied, tousling the girl’s curly black hair and accepting the belongings that she had wrapped in her striped poncho. Behind the Priestess, the heavy curtain of reeds covering the entrance to the sacred cairn rustled.

  The Priestess dropped to her knees. The girl fled.

  Two hands wrapped in wide strips of red gauze reached out from behind the screen, palms up. The Priestess hooked the poncho over the gauze, making sure the fabric did not touch any skin. The poncho disappeared inside.

  ‘The time of the prophecies is at hand,’ said the High Priestess in the ancient tongue of her ancestors. ‘I will prepare myself to enter.’

  ‘I am ready,’ said a low, sultry female voice.

  The Priestess was the Cuari’s amautas, the keeper of their historical narrative, the protector of the tales of their ancestors, tales told and retold from the times aeons before El Diablo Pizarro – from the time when the stars had fallen into the mountain and the world was born.

  The old matriarch had spoken to traders at the lowland villages, and to the archaeologists who were now digging at a temple ruin on the other side of the mountain. She knew from them that the gods were using men to wage battles in the world beyond their village. But as always the Cuari had been spared the encroaching violence because they had an ancient prophecy to fulfil and the mountain to protect them.

  Back inside her hut, the Priestess undressed, letting her skirts fall in a bundle near the door. She stood in an iron tub and bathed, scrubbing her skin until every sharp angle and soft sagging spot was rubbed raw. She let the warm moist air in the hut dry her mottled skin before she unfolded a clean grey tunic and pulled it over her head. At her door, she slipped her feet into leather sandals and stepped outside. A small grouping of villagers, who had gathered in front of her hut when they heard the girl’s yelling, backed away quickly to let the Priestess pass.

  At the entrance to the temple, she stopped and knelt, making sure her knee did not touch the ground.

  ‘May the gods protect you, Gaia.’

  Then she pulled aside the heavy screen and stepped inside the temple of the Star Guide.

  The Priestess carefully dropped the curtain behind her, aware of every crackle and rustle as she did so. She remained in a small outer chamber whose walls were draped in red and black embroidered fabrics, waiting until Gaia adjusted to her presence and summoned her forward. When she did, the Priestess lifted the final curtain of heavy draping on another arched entry and stepped through into the main chamber of the temple.

  In this chamber the sunlight was muted, its beams filtering through the slits in the stone and diffusing across lush red fabric that dressed the walls and draped the ceiling. The ground was carpeted in alpaca skins, softened and dyed to match the colour of the walls. The colour red tasted like sweet paprika to Gaia and, in her solitude, when she willed it, the colour brought her contentment and a deep sensual pleasure.

  A fire was burning in a centre pit, its basin-shaped lid filled with water, a myriad of holes funnelling the smoke up through the opening in the stepped roof. Under the netting, almost every brick was covered with brilliantly coloured glyphs, describing the story of the Cuari and the history of the mountain.

  A thick cushioned mat piled with embroidered blankets stood against the far corner while a second mat of yellow reeds had been unrolled next to the fire, a single row of decorated clay pots set at its head. The air in the hut was dense, humid, but cool and scented with eucalyptus and balsam, the only oils for which Gaia’s senses had developed a tolerance.

  Gaia stood at the other side of the chamber, naked, staring at the Priestess, a look of such agony on her face it brought tears to the old woman’s eyes. Gaia’s skin was the colour of cinnamon, her eyes shining like black polished stones, her hair cascading over her shoulders like soft velvet. She was tall and slender, her breasts and her hips already full and round, and every few seconds she bobbed up on her toes, inhaling and exhaling in sharp short breaths, the intensity of the Priestess’s presence an assault on Gaia’s senses no matter how well the old woman had scrubbed.

  When the pain eased and Gaia had managed the cacophony of sounds in her head, she waived the Priestess further into the chamber, where she stopped and dipped her hands into a pot warming on the fire. She cleansed her hands one more time, a ritual the Priestess had been carrying out every day for over seventeen seasons, since Gaia had moved from her wet nurse to the temple. After a few more minutes, Gaia would be able to tolerate the Priestess standing almost at her side.

  ‘You will need to climb the mountain,’ the Priestess whispered, her quiet voice filling Gaia’s mouth with the taste of lemons. ‘In sunlight.’

  ‘I know,’ said Gaia. She had never ventured outside in daylight – her body had no capacity to filter the light and the noises of the village. Some day, she had prayed. And some day had come.

  ‘I’m prepared,’ she whispered. ‘I have been for ever.’

  The Priestess nodded, glancing at a garment draped across a mahogany trunk that resembled chainmail in its design and its weave, the kind of protective garment the Conquistadors may have worn beneath their suits of armour. With the help of three Cuari weavers, Gaia had fashioned her suit from the softest cotton, layering the outside with black suede from animal pelts, the stitching glimmering with silver threads.

  The priestess picked up the garment and helped Gaia dress, carefully slipping the suit over her head, lifting the young woman’s sleek hair over her cowl, fastening the delicate silver claps on the breastplate, lacing the supple leather skins to her feet and legs. When the Priestess finished dressing Gaia, she stepped back.

  ‘You are your night self,’ said the Priestess.

  And she was. Gaia looked like a sleek black puma.

  Isela

  6

  Southern Coast of Peru, minibus from Lima, present day

  JUAN CORTEZ WAS a man of diverse talents, but only a few passions. Unfortunately, he had fallen victim to one of his passions for the last time. Cards, cockfights, football games, weather patterns, anything where he could wager what little money his talents as a driver earned him, which wasn’t much. That was why for the past three months he had been driving the route from Lima to the Hacienda del Castenado four times a day.

  Juan owed money to his bookie and that meant he owed money to Asiro Castenado. He had no choice as to how his debts were to be paid off. Juan was a quick study and he had learned the routine necessary for these special runs, and so far he had not encountered any glitches. He was glad of the work, especially since his wife was expecting their third child. And this trip would be his last one. He’d been promised his debts would be paid, his freedom bought.

  Juan glanced in his mirror, checking out the passengers behind him. This group was smaller than most of these usual private charters, especially one with the day’s mark on board. The two youngest passengers were asleep, their bodies draped across each other – a man and woman in their mid-twenties, probably university students, their backpacks stuffed into the overhead bins.

  A handsome middle-aged man who looked like an ex-rugby player sat alone at the rear of the bus with headphones on and his computer open on his lap. Of all the passengers, he looked the least like a tourist in his tan summer suit and blue shirt open at the collar. But his manner was relaxed, and Juan was sure he would not be a threat when the time came.

  Juan guessed this was a man who’d been on this
trip before because he was paying no heed to the spectacular sea views as the minibus climbed up the mountain to the mesa. Perhaps, Juan figured, the man was a tour planner, checking out arrangements for a future group.

  Too bad the tour wasn’t going to end the way his travel books predicted.

  A man and woman in their early thirties were each reading guides to the Inca trails that Juan’s brother-in-law had sold them at the terminal before they boarded the bus. They seemed like an odd match. The man, who looked like he’d never left the beaten path a day in his life, was dressed from head to toe in hiking gear from an upscale outdoor catalogue; everything matched and fitted perfectly. The woman had long dark hair, a face of freckles and the palest white skin Juan had ever seen. She’d been sleeping on and off since they boarded. They had different accents, although one was as thick as the other’s. Juan thought the man might have been from Louisiana. He’d been to the casino once in New Orleans. The woman, he thought she might be Irish or Scottish. He wasn’t sure. Those accents sounded the same to him.

  Sitting directly in front of the couple was the morning’s mark, the one at the centre of today’s events, a middle-aged Brazilian male, trim and fit, the CEO of an international liquor distribution company and a man with close ties to power of all kinds. He was travelling with his third wife, also Brazilian, athletic, bronzed and beautifully enhanced, and she, Juan knew, was fronting the morning’s enterprise.

  She caught Juan’s gaze; he averted his eyes.

  The last passenger Juan considered was the one sitting directly behind him, a good-looking man, hard to peg his age, military grooming, dressed in desert combat fatigues, the insignia of a United Nations security force stitched on his shirt. Gazing out of the window, he was lost in his thoughts. He’d spoken to Juan in Spanish when he’d boarded the minibus at the last minute, squeezing through the closing doors as Juan was pulling away, making it impossible for Juan to insist he wait for the next one, which he should have.

  A soldier in the mix was not something Juan was comfortable factoring in to the carefully crafted plan. The soldier’s grey eyes had a lot going on behind them, Juan decided. He’d have to watch him closely when the time came.

  Two hours south of Lima, the van turned off the Pan-American highway and onto the narrower canyon road that began the climb to the Hacienda del Castenado. The dramatic change in the landscape perked up the sleeping passengers and the odd couple. The man in the back closed his laptop, popping out his external drive and slipping it into his pocket.

  Juan had only ever seen la Madre Montâna once from a plane, and when he had he’d thought it looked like an upside down bowler hat that the gods had carved out of the ground – the coastal road circumnavigating the narrow brim of the mountain. Driving to the hacienda, cut into the rock halfway up the mountain, was like driving in a trench. There was no space for error on either side, which meant that once the minibus reached this part of the journey there was no going back, no getting on or off until Juan came out the other side onto the terraced landscape of the Gran Tablazo de Ica and the hacienda.

  Once the van reached the canyon road, the surface evened out, widening a little to accommodate the rows of terraced olive and grape vines on one side and to provide a safe distance from the sea crashing beneath them on the other. On this first leg of the climb, every Pacific wave sprayed water over the van. The students laughed as if they were on a ride at Disneyland. The soldier had closed his eyes, the businessman was reading and the Brazilian couple was arguing. Let the poor sucker win this one, thought Juan, watching the Brazilians in his mirror. It’ll be his last.

  Juan shifted his gears, compensating for the surface changes of the now unpaved road and the gradual incline as the minibus climbed even higher above sea level. With these first few miles of the coastal road, he needed all his concentration. He’d shift his attentions to the real job at hand once he and his passengers were safely at the top.

  7

  AIMING HER BINOCULARS out across the landing strip, Isela tracked a plane coming in low through the mountains. It was still a speck, shifting in and out between the snow-capped peaks. She turned her attention to the canyon road, watching for the minibus that would soon be visible on the horizon. Then, shifting herself out of the sun, she turned her binoculars to one of the guests at the hotel who had been reading in the shade of an umbrella at the café since early morning.

  According to one of the hotel’s sous chefs, the man had simply appeared the night before when the town was locked up tight against a raging Pacific storm. The weird thing was, the man hadn’t banged on any doors, hadn’t shouted for anyone to open up, had made no anxious cries for shelter. He’d simply pulled up his coat collar and huddled against the front gates of the hacienda, the lashing rain and buffeting winds pelting him for hours.

  According to her mother, this man was charismatic and charming and cursed – she could smell it on him. That morning at breakfast, after her father had excused himself to his study, her mother had insisted that the stranger smelled of death. Isela rolled her eyes as she remembered her mother’s admonition to stay away from him.

  ‘This stranger has the soul of El Cóndor, the ancient one fallen from the heavens, unable to return,’ said her mother in the tone of voice she reserved for North American tourists and Isela. Her mother lifted a pewter goblet to her full red lips. ‘El Cóndor carries darkness inside him. His burdens are pressing on his soul. You must stay away or the darkness will suffocate you.’

  ‘How do you know this?’ prodded Isela, well aware that this conversation was shifting into territory that forced her mother to remember her roots, to have to say out loud that she was also Cuari, like her mother and her mother before her, a line stretching back to the Sun King, one of the chosen tribe of women meant to protect the mountain. With three marriages, and a considerable amount of make-up, Isela’s mother had managed to conceal that part of her identity. Until recently when the first tremors began and the mountain got angry.

  ‘I am not stupid, Isela,’ said her mother. ‘I know how you think you can goad me so easily, but mind my words. One day, you’ll understand. Yes, I am a Cuari, and so, my love, are you. So beware.’

  Her mother lifted her goblet and moved to the tall arched window that looked out over the family’s private gardens. Gazing up at the mountain’s plateau, she shivered. Turning to face her daughter, she said, ‘I’d hoped the burden of the mountain would never be yours to endure, but I’m afraid it may be your destiny after all.’

  Directly beneath them a fountain bubbled, its water drawn from an underground spring that was part of an ancient aquifer that kept life in this high desert. Dotted around the hacienda were similar fountains, each one considered sacred, and, according to the stories reprinted in every brochure and website for the hotel, had been flowing continuously since the area was first populated in ancient times.

  Next to the Inca trails that began a few kilometres from the hotel and the nearby Nazca lines, the baths were a tourist draw. The water from the sacred valley was believed to have properties that made men swoon and women shiver; that made love sweeter and bodies more alluring.

  Now, crouching alone behind the tower wall, her binoculars resting on the crumbling surface, Isela finally spotted a cloud of dust on the far horizon.

  At last. The mark.

  The first bus of the day from Lima was coming off the highway and climbing up onto the canyon pass, and this one was bringing her ticket out of this stifling town.

  Picking up her automatic rifle, Isela checked the cartridge, sighting it into the shadows above the café.

  The cóndor was staring up at the tower. Isela ducked out of sight.

  ¡Que huevón!

  Gaia

  8

  Southern Coast of Peru, 1930

  GAIA’S SENSITIVITY TO the world outside the temple had been further proof to the Cuari that she was indeed their guide, their star scout, the sacred spirit described in the ancient prophesies as the one to c
ome before, the one who would prepare the way for the deity when he returned to begin the end of times. For the High Priestess, such affirmation had never been necessary. For she had known that Gaia was a spirit guide since the night of her birth, which she had witnessed: Gaia’s first howl, her mother’s last breath. Gaia had burst from her mother’s womb, limbs and tail first, encased in a thick membrane.

  The Priestess, an old woman even at Gaia’s birth, had become her guardian and her teacher. From early in her childhood, Gaia could hear when the crops should be harvested, could taste the wind before it blew, and feel the rains from the sea before the clouds scudded the storms inland. Gaia felt pain when she was not hurt, heard singing when it was silent, and at night she travelled beyond the mountain to the stars.

  Gaia had learned divination from the rocks and the birds and even as a child she had demonstrated her quick wit and her eidetic memory. The old Priestess had taught her to read the ancient scrolls when she was barely able to walk to fetch them. Gaia could hold the Cuari’s stories in her head, glyph for glyph as she read them, remembering the names of every child born in the village since the conquest.

  How many nights had the old woman bathed her in oils to quiet her spirit when it raced across the heavens, her body convulsing against the ground, her being so sensitive to the material world that her screams could wake the gods.

  Perhaps they finally had.

  For her part, Gaia knew her place in the Cuari was a special one, but she also knew that her place in the cosmos would be even more acclaimed. Gaia and the old Priestess had been watching the signs from the mountain since the winds had sheared off its crown during the cold season.

  If this man who had fallen from the heavens was the being prophesied since ancient times, then the oracle had told the truth and Gaia must prepare to fulfil her purpose. Gaia could barely control her excitement as she finished dressing, sticking wax plugs into her ears, her excitement filling her head with music.