Читать книгу The Gates of Atlantis - I. R. Tagarian - Страница 4

The next morning, as Aime was getting ready to take her usual place at the excavation site, with her brush and shovel, as doctor Medin, the director of the archaeological complex, arrived at the site. “Which one of you guys speak good English?” he asked while looking over the volunteers from 5 different countries. In reality, everyone in Malta spoke excellent English, this meant that the question was regarding something more than just getting by using the everyday language. No one here was from England. They all stood up and were eagerly looking forward towards an offer which would bring some change. Alyssa was from Morocco, Stella from Italy, Roman from Czechia and Ivan from Albany. In addition to some local students. Before anyone was able to react, Aime took a step forward. “What would you like, Sir?” she asked with a pretty elegant Oxford accent. She knew that thanks to going to different international schools, her language ability was seen as really proficient. Even so good that an Estonian high school teacher recommended her to study in a British university. The round, dusky face of the director of the complex, lit up. “Excellent! This is just what we need!” The short, burly man gazed at Aime’s tall, blonde body from top to bottom and she did not even understand what it was that they just really needed. “The Hypogeum needs an assistant. That ol’ Mehmet decided to split his stupid head yesterday while diving off a cliff. And Anna has gone to the mainland to visit relatives, should be back by tomorrow. The others were on their summer holidays. We open right away; the tourists are coming, and Marco can’t handle it alone because…” Aime knew. Marco, the ticket salesman at the Hypogeum and also the best expert regarding the history of this place, aside from doctor Medin himself, was working from a wheelchair.

“Marco will tell you in more detail, what you have to say down there,” Medin said. “I can come with you for the first tour and talk myself, I haven’t been down there in a while.” Medin’s voice turned soft as he was talking about meeting an old lover. “But I can’t spend my whole day dragging tourists around, I have my own job to do!” the career driven top official in him returned.

Hypogeum. A day at the Hypogeum and the first tour guided by the legendary doctor Medin himself and the opportunity to ask Marco about everything she wanted to know about this place. It was almost a dream come true. Hypogeum was, in fact, the reason why Aime applied for her first volunteer excavations to be in Malta. This mysterious structure, right here next to the Hal Tarxien surface temple complex, where only ten tourists could go in an hour, which meant the queue was booked months ahead and many people scheduled their trips to Malta-based on these queues was in its ancient multi-level nature probably even more mysterious than the Egyptian Great Pyramid of Giza.

The oldest underground temple. If its original function even was even a temple. Being at least 5000 years old, it was created by the same mythical civilisation who had put up these gigantic stone structures here in Malta – nothing alike were ever discovered anywhere in the Mediterranean area. There were thin railroad like paths that undercut into the rocks, which go through the island in different directions. Most of them starting from nowhere and ending up in the sea or yet again nowhere. The purpose these lines has not been determined, which is why the mainstream archaeologists do not even like to discuss them. However, one of these rail lines goes straight by the door of the most important archaeology museum on the island.

“Welcome to the Oracle room,” doctor Medin said to the first ten people group out of the six, who got to go to the Hypogeum that day. These lucky people did not even know how lucky they were because they obviously had no clue that this is no ordinary guide. The group actually had a second abnormality – it had eleven members, against the antiquity protection regulations set by UNESCO, as Aime was taking the tour with the group and was keenly listening. First of all, she had not yet been able to participate in any official sightseeing tours here, and secondly, there will probably never be another opportunity to do this with a person whose life goal is to research this structure.

“Oohhh!” Aime’s whole body flinched. It appeared that everyone else in the group also felt something because they were bewilderedly looking at each other. “In this room, the purpose of which is not known to us, but which is called the Oracle room because of its acoustic attributes, an indescribably powerful sound effect occurs, when a baritone timbered man makes this sound on a specific height. Oohhh!” Aime now felt as if some particular tremble went through the whole three-story cave structure and created an inexplicable feeling. Aime herself felt like her heartbeats had reacted to the sounds vibrating in the room, somehow connected with them. “This room creates resonance on a specific audio frequency level. Right now, my voice resonated at a frequency of 114 Hz. But if I used an instrument of some sort to create a sound of 110 Hz, then…” doctor Medin took a small apparatus from his pocket and pressed its button. It sounded like a couple shaman drum beats, but Aime froze. The room around her started shaking, and it felt like something was visibly wafting in the air. As if the virtually inaudible sound somehow became a hundred times more powerful and reached not only every pouch of this room, hewn off a brownstone cliff with odd stairs and salients but every cell in Aime’s body. She felt like the picture was flashing before her eyes, but luckily the sound had only lasted for a second and her vision had returned. “…we can activate an activity pattern in a person’s prefrontal cortex, which temporarily shuts off their speech centre and shifts the control from the left cerebral hemisphere, which is connected with reason and logic, to the right cerebral hemisphere, connected with emotional processes, creativity and social behaviour,” doctor Medin’s voice continued.

Aime was like struck by lightning. She knew from childhood that her hearing was more sensitive. For example, a plane’s take-off created excruciating pain in her auditory meatus, even though, thanks to travelling with her mother, Aime flew frequently and actually really liked travelling. She thought of her sensitivity as one of her many peculiarities and did not discuss it often, instead tried to adjust. The sound heard in this temple, however, made her feel as if something in her brain had really been switched on or off. The group moved forward from the Oracle room, led by doctor Medin.