Time and sand rolled on, and their ears grew accustomed to the clickings and hummings of the chariot and soon forgot them. Around and beyond, the desert flowed out unbroken and featureless. The sand was soft, and the wheels of the overburdened chariot sank into the deep drifts, struggling to turn themselves free. Even if J.B. wanted to speed up, the Barrens wouldn’t have allowed him.
A rust red sun rose, splashing the sky with variegated scraps of color. By the time it was a finger’s width above the horizon, Ryan figured they had traveled about twenty miles. The desert gradually ebbed, funneling into a broad roadbed made of crushed, grit-encrusted gravel. J.B. steered the chariot down its middle and shifted to a higher speed. The drone and mechanical clickings rose in pitch, and a cloud of dust floated behind the wag.
The road widened, and within five miles tall palm trees began to line it on either side. J.B. guided the chariot toward one on the right, reaching out to slap the bark as they passed by.
“What’d you do that for?” Mildred asked.
J.B. shrugged. “Wanted to see if it was real or not. It sure felt like it.”
The road twisted between two heaped hillocks of sand. Vegetation sprouted from them, scraggly leaves moving slightly in the breeze. When the road straightened again, in the midst of the desolation beyond them lay a city.
J.B. decreased the chariot’s speed until it crawled to a droning halt. Swallowing hard, he husked out, “Dark night.”
He engaged the brake, and everyone climbed out, staring from beneath shading hands. The city was about a quarter of a mile away, and it was alive with movement. The high outer walls loomed, white and massive, above the sands. The road wound past a collection of squat, low-roofed buildings and through an open gate. The stone archway above it bore bas-relief profile carvings of archers in racing chariots. Four gigantic statues of seated men wearing elaborate headdresses flanked the gate.
Beyond it, people moved to and fro through an open plaza large enough to contain a small army. Around its edges fluttered the brightly colored canopies of merchants. Straight ahead, a very wide avenue ran past the plaza, guarded on either side by four great sculpted figures, representations of animals half-reclining on tall, rectangular pedestals. At the end of the avenue appeared to be a large building of some sort, backed up against the far wall. It was too distant to distinguish details.
A chain of rocky hills rose behind the city, curving across the horizon like the fossilized vertebrae of some prehistoric monster. Green pastureland rolled to the south and they could make out several flocks of either cattle or sheep or both.
Above the west wall a vast, pyramidal structure shouldered the blue sky. It was composed of countless fitted blocks of stone, the top flat and irregular, like a row of broken teeth. The early-morning light played along the white facade of the monstrous monolith. Ryan tried to estimate its size by using the city walls as a reference point. He could only hazard a feeble guess—a forty-story building rising angularly from a thirteen-acre base was the best he could come up with.
He realized the pyramid was of such staggering proportions as to make its true distance from the city difficult to gauge. He also realized he was so stupefied by what his eye was seeing that he was in a mild state of shock. Danielson’s words of Aten and the pyramid hadn’t prepared his mind to grasp it all.
Doc was the first to find his tongue. “By the Three Kennedys, this isn’t Deathlands. This isn’t even our time!”
Not removing his gaze from the city, J.B. shook his head doggedly. “My readings were true. We’re exactly where I said we were.”
“How can this be?” Krysty’s voice was hushed with awe. “I saw pix of places like this in books. There hasn’t been a city like that in thousands of years…and never in America.”
Mildred suddenly uttered a screechy little laugh and slapped her forehead, startling them so much she broke the mesmeric spell the vision of the city had woven. They turned toward her questioningly.