Dateline: Atlantis Read Free Page A

Sell it now on the black market and we’ll be richer than a computer baron. No one would ever know.
    â€œLook at the floor,” Gabriel hisses.
    Beneath Amaryllis’ feet are square limestone blocks. Gabriel points at a crack that has split a stone in half. In the gap, something shines for his flashlight. She creeps on her hands and knees to the gap and views a glistening, iridescent material.
    â€œMica,” Gabriel says, still whispering. This glassy mineral means more to him than twenty jade jaguars. The journalists trade confused glances, but the Mexican man offers no explanation. Now, Amaryllis wants to know everything. What is this world? Who could have built it? And more than anything else, how can she get this story? It is sure to win her the prizes and acclaim she’s been working for all her adult life.
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    Their dinner is well deserved after the day’s spectacular find. They sup on tamales and green salsa, a posole soup and some Twinkies that Garret fishes out of his voluminous camera bag. All the while, Gabriel’s voice rises and falls with the cadence of a master hypnotist.
    At Teotihuacán, near Mexico City, remains of a fantastic Toltec City were discovered, Gabriel says. The area was so old that it completely returned to forest by the time the Spanish invaded. Over centuries, humans ripped back the jungle carpet to find a meticulously designed city with pyramids, canals, and observatories. Some claim the structures comprised a precise map of our own solar system, with a mound even representing Pluto—which hadn’t been “discovered” until the 1920s by Percival Lowell.
    â€œThe mica?” Garret asks, licking Twinkie frosting from his stubby fingers.
    â€œThere are two main pyramids: the Pyramid of the Moon and the Pyramid of the Sun,” Gabriel says, handing his opened dessert to Garret. “When the Pyramid of the Sun was excavated by a so-called archaeologist—just a pathetic hack, really—they discovered that a layer of the pyramid was constructed of mica sheets.”
    The mica proved too valuable to leave in a pile of rotting stones, and the adventurers removed it for a quick sale. But questions remained. Mica is not native to central Mexico. What sort of transportation available to the Toltecs would allow them to cart sheets of highly fragile, nearly transparent mineral from South America, the closest source for this rare substance? What purpose could the mica provide? They stare at Gabriel, awaiting an answer.
    â€œMica is an extremely efficient semi-conductor,” Gabriel says.
    Semi-conductor. Amaryllis has no idea what a semi-conductor does, but she knows it has to do with electricity. And the Maya, they say, had not even invented the wheel. Yet, toys were found in Central America. Little toy carts with working wheels, attributed to the Olmecs, the mysterious predecessors of the Maya and the Toltecs. No one has any idea what these ancient people really were capable of doing . Maybe we have it all wrong. Maybe societies don’t always march toward progress. Maybe there are periods of regression . Maybe the Maya of the conquistadors’ time merely forgot what their ancestors had achieved. Look what happened to Europe in the Middle Ages.
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    This morning the sea has changed. Yesterday, it was cobalt blue with small, creamy white eddies swirling in the distance. Today, the little milk-colored tempests have stopped. Once stirred up by recent storms, sand has returned to the ocean floor, leaving the sea sparkling and limpid. Amaryllis doesn’t know why, but she has a sudden urge to be out there where the sea and land have an uncertain boundary. She wants to see where the edges lie.
    She slips into a bathing suit. She’s not uninhibited enough to jump in au naturale , not with Garret along. And certainly not with Gabriel able to pop up, unseen at any time. She frets over her Victorian mindset, until she dips her toe into the