Alison nodded. “Okay. Thanks, Lee. Keep us posted.”
“Will do.”
“Oh, and Lee,” Alison stopped him before he hung up.
“Yeah?”
“Great work!”
He chuckled. “Thanks, Ali. We’ll see.”
She hung up and handed the phone back to Clay.
“So strong and weak?” said Borger.
“Yeah. But Lee said the accuracy is barely above fifty percent. I’m not sure how much better off we are.”
“It’s better than nothing.”
She nodded in agreement and continued staring at the screen.
“Maybe there’s some meaning in the triangle itself. Maybe it points to something.” Borger reached over Alison’s shoulder and zoomed out. “Then again, maybe not. Looks like three directions that just point away from the cliff.”
Clay stood behind Alison, transfixed on the screen. “If we assume IMIS is wrong about the shapes, then we have nothing. So let’s assume it’s right. Which gives us what?”
“A triangle, three symbols, three possible points of direction, and two words; strong and weak.”
“And,” Alison thought out loud, “if the shapes have single word definitions, then we’re not looking for a sentence. We’re looking for some kind of relationship between all three.”
“Maybe there’s a mathematical significance to the number three.”
“Prime number?”
“There are a lot of prime numbers. Why not two or five?”
Clay kept staring at the third shape on the screen. The circle with inward pointing arrows. Strong and weak. Strong and weak. And a circle. Circle with something traveling inward. Traveling inward. Traveling inward. Coming inward in all directions. But what? And from where?
Caesare thought about it tactically. “You said those were boulders, right?”
“Right.”
“Big boulders?”
“Yes.”
“That means if you were standing next to them and looking horizontally, you probably couldn’t tell what they were.”
“That’s right,” Borger said.
“So you could only see the shapes if you were at the top of the cliff, looking down. From high ground.”
“That is true!”
“Or from the air,” reminded Alison.
Suddenly Clay turned. “That’s it!”
“What?”
“From the air! You can see these from the air, or the sky.” He turned to Borger. “Or from space!”
“Right. But then what does the triangle mean?”
Clay’s eyes lit up. He began searching for something then spotted a piece of paper sticking out of Borger’s pack. He grabbed the paper and unfolded it, laying it on the table. “I need a pen.”
“Here.” Borger dug deeper into his bag and pulled one out.
Clay grabbed the pen and brushed the wrinkled paper out straight. He then scribbled the three symbols in the same formation: one to the left and the others to the right, with one above the other. He leaned on the table and looked at the others. “What if there is no triangle?” He paused. “What if it’s not even three?!”
“I’m not following.”
“Think about it. What are we missing?”
They looked at his paper. Alison saw it first. “The cliff. We’re missing the cliff.”
“Exactly.” Clay reached down and scrawled the cliff to the right of the three symbols. “It’s not a triangle,” he said, connecting them all with straight lines. “It’s a square!”
Borger nodded. “It’s four points, not three.”
“And four meanings.” Clay wrote the words ‘strong’ and ‘weak’ under two of the symbols. The other two, the circle and the cliff, remained blank. “Two out of four. Strong and weak!”
Borger shook his head. “Okay. So what do the other two mean?”
“Four meanings, Will. Only viewable from space!” He waited. Finally, he laughed and slapped Borger on the back. “Remember your astrophysics, Will!”
It took three seconds before the light went on. “The Four Forces!”
Alison looked back and forth between them. “What? What?!”
Borger jumped back in front of his computer. “The Four Forces of Nature! In astrophysics, four primary forces control everything. A strong force, a weak force, gravity… and electromagnetism.” He pointed to the third shape. It was the circle with four arrows pointing inward. “Gravity!”
“Which means the last one is electromagnetism,” added Caesare.
“So what does that mean?” asked Alison. “The cliff is electromagnetism?”
“I’ll tell you what it means,” Clay said, leveling his gaze at Caesare. “It means that cliff face is not a wall. It’s a door!”
70
DeeAnn awoke to the sound of something breaking. She checked Dulce, who was still out, and looked around frantically. The noise was coming from the rear of the cabin. Both Caesare and Clay were tearing a large cupboard apart.
Caesare cut the power to several power plugs and proceeded to kick holes along the bottom of an interior wall. He checked to make sure there was no charge before reaching in and yanking out the electrical wiring. When it got to the end, he gripped the wire tight and gave a giant pull, snapping the other end off inside the wall.
Behind him, Clay removed part of Alves’ specially modified interior power system. He disconnected a set of thick cables from one of the cabin’s many twelve-volt batteries. Clay then lifted it out from the bottom of the storage area.
Caesare stepped past him, his eyes fixated on the long-necked sink faucet. He instantly wrapped his big hand around the top and jerked, snapping it off at the base.
Alison and Borger stood quietly, waiting at the door.
“What’s going on?” DeeAnn asked.
“We’re going back out,” Caesare answered, brushing past her. “Take care of Dulce. We’ll be right back.”
She blinked, watching them file out of the door, one by one, into the pouring rain. “Be careful!”
Together, they hiked back uphill to the cliff. Its entire face was now covered in a sheen of water, cascading down from the heavy rainfall. They approached the area in the rock where the two subtle grooves, almost ten feet apart, traveled together straight up.
Clay dropped the battery and held out the metal faucet pipe from Caesare. In one hand, Caesare gripped the pipe and one end of the wire together. With straining muscles, he then wrapped the thick wire around the pipe one pass at a time. In a few minutes, he had coiled most of the wire around the pipe. He grabbed the dangling ends, shaping them into hooks. With that, Caesare reached down and picked up the large battery, hooking the wire ends to the positive and negative battery terminals.
Alison brushed several soaked strands of hair from her eyes. “What’s that?”
Clay winked. “An electromagnet.” He looked at Caesare who nodded, then held the coiled rod up and pressed it against the rock.
Nothing happened.
Clay moved the rod to another place against the rock. Still nothing. Section by section, he moved the magnet across the cliff face and touched it to the hard surface.
Clay and Caesare suddenly looked at each other when they heard a heavy “clunk.” A moment later, the rock began to shake and loose pieces fell away from the vertical grooves above. With a low, deep rumble, the face began to push outward from between the grooves.
It continued sliding forward until a large black entrance appeared. All four stood together in the rain… speechless.
Alison shook her head. “This is definitely not Mayan.”
Clay dropped the magnet and glanced over his shoulder. He carefully approached the dark entrance. When he was close enough, he took a single step inside and looked around.