Jack led the way out of the sacrificial chamber and through the portal, his headlamp trained on the tunnel ahead. After about ten metres the passageway narrowed and curved off to the right. He paused to let the other two draw up on either side of him, the space just wide enough to accommodate them line abreast.
They were alone in the deathly stillness of a place no human had entered since the dawn of civilization. Jack experienced a familiar surge of excitement, the burst of adrenaline briefly alleviating the debilitating effects of his wound and urging him on into the unknown.
The passageway began to snake along in alternating curves, each bend seeming to exaggerate the distance from the entrance. The experience was strangely disorientating, as if the ancient architects of this world had known the unsettling effect the absence of straight lines had on the human sense of direction.
They paused while Costas paid out the final length of tape and attached a fresh spool to his back. In the narrow confines, their lamps cast a brilliant light on the walls around them, the surface lustrous as if it had been kept polished over the millennia.
Jack finned a few metres ahead and noticed an aberration in the wall.
“I’ve got markings.”
The other two quickly swam up to join him.
“Man-made,” Costas asserted. “Chiselled into the rock. They’re just like the cartouches around those precursor hieroglyphics Hiebermeyer found on that ancient stone in the temple where Solon visited the high priest.”
Hundreds of nearly identical markings were aligned in twenty horizontal registers that extended beyond the next curve in the passageway. Each marking comprised a symbol surrounded by an oval border, the cartouche Costas had referred to. The symbols within the cartouches were rectilinear, each with a vertical stem and containing varying numbers and arrangements of horizontal bars branching off to either side.
“They look like runes,” Costas said.
“Impossible,” Katya retorted. “Runes derive from the Etruscan and Latin alphabets, from contact with the Mediterranean during the classical period. Six thousand years too late for us.”
The other two withdrew to allow her more space. She scanned one of the registers close up, then pushed away for a wider view.
“I don’t believe this is an alphabet at all,” she said. “In an alphabet there’s a direct correspondence between graphemes and phonemes, between the symbol and the unit of sound. Most alphabets have twenty to thirty symbols and few languages have more than forty significant sounds. There are too many permutations here, in the number and location of the horizontal bars. Conversely there aren’t enough for these to be logograms, where the symbol represents a word, as in Chinese.”
“Syllabic?” Costas suggested.
Katya shook her head. “The symbols on the Phaistos discs are syllabic phonograms. There’s no way the Atlanteans would have developed two syllabic systems to be used in a sacred context.”
“Prepare to be amazed.” Costas’ voice was loud and clear on the intercom even though he had disappeared round the next curve in the passageway. The other two swam towards him, their lights converging as they followed his gaze.
The symbols ended abruptly at a vertical line incised from floor to ceiling. Beyond it was a magnificent bull, its outline carved in bas-relief. It was life-sized, its enormous head with curved horns facing them, its massive body resting on a platform, its legs splayed. The eyes had been deeply carved to show the iris and were preternaturally wide, as if the beast had been caught in a moment of primordial fear.
“Of course,” Katya suddenly exclaimed. “They’re numerical!”
Jack immediately understood. “This is the sacrificial ritual in the entrance chamber,” he enthused. “The symbols must be a tally, a record of each sacrifice.”
“They’re even arranged boustrophe-don.” Katya glanced at Costas. “As you know from modern Greek, bous means ox and strophos turning. ‘As the ox turns when ploughing a field,’ in alternate directions. Like snakes and ladders.” She pointed to the way the line framing each cartouche looped round to the one below.
Costas swivelled round to address Jack, his eyes gleaming with excitement.
“When would sacrifices have taken place?”
“Events associated with the harvest and the seasons. Summer and winter solstices, the coming of spring, thanksgiving for crops.”
“The lunar cycle?” Costas prompted.
“Very possibly,” Jack replied. “The interval between full moons was probably the first exact measurement of time ever made. The difference between the lunar and solar year really mattered to people dependent on knowing where they were in the crop cycle. The synodic cycle, the lunar cycle, falls short of the solar year by eleven days, so an additional month is intercalated every three or four years. Celestial observations to measure the difference were probably carried out at the Minoan peak sancturies. I’ll bet there’s an observatory here as well.”
Costas pointed to a curious set of symbols directly above the bull.
“That’s why I ask,” he said.
What had at first seemed an abstract embellishment suddenly took on new meaning. Immediately above the animal’s spine was a roundel about two palm widths across. On either side a succession of mirror images fanned out symmetrically, first a half-roundel, then a quarter-roundel and finally a single curved line.
“Behold the lunar cycle,” Costas proclaimed. “New moon, quarter moon, half moon, full moon, then the same in reverse.”
“The gold disc,” Jack said softly. “It was a lunar symbol. The obverse represents the full moon, the elliptical profile depicts the moon as it passes through its monthly cycle.”
He did not need to take out the disc for them to know he was right, that the lentoid shape exactly matched the concave depression of the roundel carved in the rock above them.
Costas swam a few metres to the left of the bull, the mass of wall carvings laid out in front of him like some exotic eastern carpet.
“The maximum number of bars on the right-hand side of each stem is six, and often the slashes continue up the left side as well. The fact that there are sometimes seven on that side almost killed my theory.”
“Which is?” Jack asked.
They could hear Costas draw a deep breath from his regulator. “Each cartouche represents a year, each horizontal bar a month. You go up the right side first, then up the left. January’s lower right, December’s upper left.”
Jack was swimming along the wall above Costas where most of the cartouches contained the maximum number of lines.
“Of course,” he exclaimed. “Those with the extra line contain thirteen altogether. They must represent years with the extra month in the lunar calendar. Look at the sequence here. The leap month occurs alternately every three and four cartouches, exactly what you’d need to keep the lunar year in step with the solar cycle.”
“How do you account for the missing months?” Katya had sunk to the floor and was examining the lower cartouches. Some contained only the vertical line, and others only one or two bars at seemingly random points on either side.
“Most sacrifices are propitiatory, right? They’re carried out in the hope of a return, some sign of favour from the gods. Where better than an active volcano? Magma outflows, seismic tremors, even rainbows caused by gas and steam.”
“So a sacrifice was always carried out at the beginning of the lunar month.” Katya had immediately followed Costas’ drift. “If a sign was observed before the next new moon then a line was carved. If not, then no marking.”
“Exactly,” Costas said. “The central part in front of Jack has many symbols, pretty well every month for twenty-five or thirty years. Then there are long periods with few symbols. My guess is we’d see a comparable pattern of volatility for this type of volcano, with several decades of activity alternating with similar periods of near dormancy. We’re not talking spectacular eruptions but more like a cauldron bubbling over before slowly filling up again.”
“To judge by the marking, the last sacrifice was in May or June, precisely the time of year for the flood indicated by the pollen analyses from Trabzon,” said Katya. “For several years before there are no markings at all. In their last ever sacrifice it looks like they got lucky.”
“They needed it,” Costas said wryly.
They stared at the final symbol, a hastily gouged marking that contrasted starkly with the careful incisions of previous years. They could scarcely imagine the terror of the people as they faced unimaginable catastrophe, desperately seeking some sign of hope before abandoning a homeland where they had prospered since history began.
Jack finned back to the opposite wall so he could take in most of the symbols at a glance.
“There are about fifteen hundred cartouches altogether,” he calculated. “Working back from a flood date of 5545 BC, that takes us to the eighth millennium BC. It’s incredible. Fifteen hundred years of continuous use, uninterrupted by war or natural disaster, a time when there were enough animals for a bull sacrifice every month. Atlantis did not spring up overnight.”
“Remember we’re only looking at a record of events since the passageway was enlarged,” Costas cautioned. “This was originally a volcanic fissure accessible from outside. I’ll bet this place was visited long before the first sacrifice.”
“We need to move,” Jack said. “We don’t know what lies ahead.”
The bull carving assumed a sinuous, elongated shape as it curved round the final bend in the wall. As they passed the tail, the passageway straightened and continued without deviation as far as their lights could penetrate. On either side niches were carved into the rock, each one a shallow bowl inside a recessed overhang like a miniature wayside shrine.
“For torches or candles, probably of tallow, animal fat,” Jack observed.
“Good to know those bull carcasses were put to some use,” Costas said.
They forged ahead. After about fifteen metres the passageway ended abruptly at three entranceways, two set obliquely on either side of the centre one. The passages beyond seemed to recede indentically into the pitch darkness of the volcano’s core.
“Another test,” Costas said bleakly.
“Not the central passageway,” Jack said. “It’s too obvious.”
Katya was peering through the right-hand entrance and the other two gravitated towards her. They crowded together at the sill and nodded wordlessly to each other. Katya pulled herself forward and took the lead. The passageway was only wide enough for two of them side by side and barely high enough to hover upright.
It continued unswervingly for twenty metres, the smooth walls giving nothing away. The gap between Katya and the other two increased as Costas stopped to add another reel to the tape that trailed behind him while Jack waited for him. He put his gloved hand to the rent on his side.
He grimaced. “The water, it’s warmer. I can feel it.”
Neither Costas nor Katya had any sense of the outside temperature in their E-suits, and until now they had seen no reason to monitor the thermometers on their consoles.
“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” Costas said. “There must be a volcanic vent that’s boiling it up. We need to get out of here.”
They suddenly realized Katya was not responding. As Jack anxiously swam forward, the reason became apparent. His earphones crackled with a crescendo of static that would have drowned out any reception.
“Localized electromagnetic field.” Costas’ voice became clearer as he swam alongside. “Some kind of lodestone in the rock, a concentrated mineral extrusion like the fool’s gold in the entrance chamber.”
A curve to the right showed where Katya had disappeared from view. They finned rapidly, their attention fully focused on the darkness ahead. As they rounded the bend the walls changed from a lustrous polish to the rough-hewn appearance of a quarry face. The view ahead blurred and wavered like a mirage.
“It’s scalding,” Jack gasped. “I can’t go any further.”
They had passed beyond the man-made walls and were now surrounded by the jagged contours of a volcanic fissure. Katya suddenly appeared through the murk like a phantasm in a desert storm and in that split second they sensed some dark force beyond, some denizen of the deep hurtling towards them with inexorable intent.
“Go!” Katya screamed. “Back to the passageway!”
Jack reached out towards her but was thrown back by an enormous surge he was powerless to resist. All they could do was try desperately to avoid the serrated edges of the lava as they tumbled through the water at terrifying speed. Before they knew it they were back within the smooth walls of the passageway. An immense tremor left them shocked and dazed almost ten metres in from the fissure.
Katya was hyperventilating and fighting to control her breathing. Jack swam over to her and checked her equipment. For a moment, a fleeting moment, he remembered his own fear, but he firmly parcelled it away in his mind, determined that it had burned its last and was now extinguished.
“I think that was the wrong way,” she panted.
Costas righted himself and swam back a few metres to splice the tape which had been severed by the force that had nearly annihilated them. They had re-entered the zone of magnetic disturbance and his voice crackled over the intercom.
“A phreatic explosion. Happens when water hits molten lava. Cooks off like gunpowder.” He paused to catch his breath, his sentences punctuated by deep pulls on his regulator. “And this fissure’s like a gun barrel. If it hadn’t blown through a vent somewhere behind us we’d be the latest addition to the sacrificial tally.”
They quickly returned to the three entranceways. They avoided the central one, continuing to trust Jack’s instinct. As they approached the left-hand entranceway, Jack sank to the floor, suddenly overcome by a wave of nausea as his body struggled to cope with the change from searing heat to the frigid waters of the passageway.
“I’m all right,” he gasped. “Just give me a moment.”
Costas looked at him with concern and then followed Katya to the sill of the doorway. She had still not recovered from the shock and her voice was tense.
“Your turn to lead,” she said. “I want to stay beside Jack.”