Another load of Atahualpa's ransom arrives in Caxamalca. In the treasury called the Serpent House, where Spanish priests have defaced wall paintings, precious metal gleams in multiple chambers and the new consignment lies in an anteroom:
"Pizarro's officers had hastily unwrapped the bundles, to assure themselves about the contents, and left everything where they tossed it. Tomorrow they would weigh the mass and put it with the rest. Cords and wrappings rustled under Castelar's boots, Tanaquil's sandals." (p. 652)
I quote this passage because I think that it must be very close to an accurate description of the interior of the Serpent House, so called because of a snake carved above its entrance.
The friar, Tanaquil, blesses the beautiful pagan ornaments by holding and turning them in front of a reliquary containing two crystals that look like lenses. They are lenses.
In 1987, a man on a timecycle kidnaps the lady Wanda Tamberly, as he calls her. In 1533, a man on a timecycle renders Don Luis unconscious by pointing a tube at him. Time travel is afoot.
1 comment:
It's nice that the Time Patrol keeps a record of the "lost" works of art. Uptime, where time travel is open, think of the riches available!
I've had daydreams occasionally of going back to Alexandria in Hellenistic times, and ordering a complete set of the 'classics' -- the Library there would do you copies for a fee.
Then packing them carefully, putting them in bronze boxes sealed with led, and stacking them in some Egyptian tomb I know won't be discovered and opened until the 20th century.
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