Indiana Jones and the Dance of the Giants Read online

  Indiana Jones

  and the

  Dance of the Giants

  Rob MacGregor

  Discover the ADVENTURES of INDIANA JONES

  In 1981 a new hero like no other burst upon the scene. Over the next ten years and three films, we grew to know and love the legend that is Indiana Jones: bold adventurer, swashbuckling explorer, he lives forever in our imaginations, unraveling the mysteries of the past in a time when the world was at war and dreams could still come true. Now, in an all-new series of novels officially licensed from Lucasfilm, we will learn what shaped Indiana Jones into the hero he is today!

  DONT MISS

  INDY'S EXCITING ADVENTURES IN

  INDIANA JONES AND

  THE PERIL AT DELPHI

  INDIANA JONES AND

  THE DANCE OF THE GIANTS

  INDIANA JONES AND

  THE SEVEN VEILS

  BURIED ALIVE!

  Deirdre's fingers traced Indy's brow, cheekbones, jaw. "Indy, I've wanted this to happen. I wasn't sure you did, not until last night at the pub."

  He ran his hands lightly along her sides, his thumbs grazing lightly over the swell of her breasts. "Your heart's pounding," he whispered.

  He pulled her to him, felt her thighs pressed against his. They moved against each other, and suddenly, the world exploded; the earth shuddered. It moved; it really did.

  For an instant, the rumble and vibration under their feet seemed natural, a part of them, self-created by the sudden fury and hunger of their passion. Then a concussion hurtled them to the ground and a sound like a thousand claps of thunder pounded his eardrums. Dust filled the cave. He heard Deirdre coughing.

  "What happened?" she gasped.

  An earthquake, a cave-in, an explosion. "I don't know."

  Indy helped her to her feet. They'd taken three or four steps when another blast rocked the cave. They dropped to the floor, and covered their heads as dirt rained over them.

  Deirdre coughed. "I can hardly breathe. What's going on?"

  Slowly, he lifted his head; he smelled the answer. "Gunpowder. Someone dynamited the entrance."

  Bantam Books by Rob MacGregor

  Ask your bookseller for the books you have missed

  INDIANA JONES AND THE PERIL AT DELPHI

  INDIANA JONES AND THE DANCE OF THE GIANTS

  INDIANA JONES AND THE SEVEN VEILS

  INDIANA JONES AND THE GENESIS DELUGE

  INDIANA JONES AND THE UNICORN'S LEGACY

  (August 1992)

  INDIANA JONES AND THE INTERIOR WORLD

  (Fall 1992)

  INDIANA JONES AND THE DANCE OF THE GIANTS

  A Bantam Falcon Book / June 1991

  FALCON and the portrayal of a boxed "f" are trademarks of Bantam Books, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc.

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © 1991 by Lucas film, Ltd.

  Cover art copyright © 1991 by Drew Struzan

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  For information address: Bantam Books.

  * * *

  If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as "unsold and destroyed" to the publisher and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this "stripped book."

  * * *

  ISBN 0-553-29035-5

  Published simultaneously in the United States and Canada

  * * *

  Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words "Bantam Books" and the portraijal of a rooster, is Registered in U. S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam Books, 666 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10103.

  * * *

  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  RAD 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3

  An S522 eBook conversion

  If thou be fain to grace the burial-place of these men with a work that shall endure forever, send for the Dance of the Giants...

  —Geoffrey of Monmouth,

  Histories of the Kings of Britain

  Behind Merlin in a misty past one may glimpse the hierarchy of the druids, and behind that lie shamanist cults of the Upper Palaeolithic, extending twenty and thirty millennia into the darkness. Nor is that the beginning, though in truth it seems there is neither beginning nor end, but a Mystery.

  —Nikolai Tolstoy,

  The Quest for Merlin

  1

  Surprise Package

  Summer 1925

  Everywhere he looked, he saw figures draped in billowy black robes, their heads covered with cowls. They chanted, a monotonous, rhythmic drone, over and over. It was endless, maddening.

  He peered through the gray haze, trying to get his bearings. It was either dawn or dusk; he wasn't sure and it disturbed him that he didn't know. He could see that he was inside some sort of temple. It was circular and roofless with immense stone pillars arching toward the leaden sky.

  He didn't belong here; he was out of place. His head protruded above everyone else's, and he was the only person who wasn't wearing a robe. He looked down at himself and saw that he wasn't wearing anything. Then he realized that he was standing on a flat rock and that was why he was taller than everyone else.

  What was he doing here? How had he gotten here?

  They were looking at him now. Every head was turned toward him. The droning grew louder; it pounded against him. Why were they moving toward him? Why wouldn't his feet move? Why did his body feel like lead?

  One man stood in front of all the others. He pointed at him. "Jones, we know you're coming. Know you're coming."

  That was it—the chant.

  Now they were rushing at him, a sea of black, their robes flapping at their ankles. He looked around frantically for an escape route. His arms pumped at his sides, his feet blurred beneath him, but he didn't seem to be getting anywhere. They must have drugged him; but who were they?

  His head snapped around. They were almost on top of him. Move. Move. Fast. Air exploded from his lungs. A grinning face leered at him. The sky tilted. The pillars were toppling toward him. And suddenly he was awake, his arms twitching, his feet jerking, a scream poised at the edge of his tongue.

  He sucked in his breath and looked around. But he could still hear the incessant chanting. He blinked his eyes, orienting himself. The train. Of course. The cars rumbled over the rails, the sound of the chanting, and someone was pounding on the door of his compartment. He sat forward, and ran his hands across his perspiration-soaked brow.

  "Who is it?"

  The pounding stopped. The door opened and a slender, gray-haired Englishman wearing a conductor's uniform peered in at him. "Mr. Jones? Sorry if I disturbed you."

  Indy rubbed his face. "That's all right. What is it?"

  The conductor held up a package. "It was waiting for you at the last stop."

  "You sure it's for me?" Indy took the flat, rectangular box. It was wrapped in white paper, with an envelope taped to it that said Indy Jones. "Probably only one of us aboard." He thanked the conductor, who smiled thinly, nodded, and retreated.

  He turned the package over in his hand. It looked like a candy box. It rattled when he shook it. He held it to his nose; it smelled faintly of chocolate. Who would send chocolates? he wondered as he slipped a card out of the envelope. The message was typewritten: Have an enjoyable trip, and good luck on
your new job. Henry Jones, Sr.

  He blinked and reread it. Now how the hell did his father know he would be on this train? And since when did he wire him boxes of candy? They hadn't even spoken for more than two years, not since Indy had informed him of his switch in studies from linguistics to archaeology, a move his father had described as foolhardy and perfidious.

  Then his frown vanished, and a smile curled on his lips. It was Shannon; it had to be. Jack Shannon knew all about his relationship with his father. The package was a goddamn joke, at least to someone with Shannon's jaded sense of humor. He shook his head, and set the card down on the box.

  He stared out the window at the unbroken grayness of the countryside, and thought about his last night in Paris. A cloud of blue haze had hung in the air of the nightclub as the black woman on stage swayed and sang, her voice deep and sonorous, a perfect accompaniment to the soulful sounds of the cornet being played in the shadows behind her. As the last notes of the song had slowly faded away to the applause of the crowd, the tall, gangly cornet player with the goatee and unruly hair had walked off the stage. He shook hands, nodded, and smiled as he wove his way through the tables. Finally, he lowered himself into a chair at a table near the corner farthest from the stage.

  "You're sounding real good, Jack. You and Louise," Indy said.

  "Thanks. It's really come together in the last six months."

  "I'll miss it."

  Shannon studied his face. "I don't blame you for leaving. It's getting too hectic. The scene's changed." He leaned forward and lit a cigarette from the burning candle on the table. "Sometimes, I look around and there's hardly a Parisian in the Jungle anymore. All tourists. Every night a new crowd. The regulars never show up until the last set, anymore. If they show up at all."

  Indy put on his fedora. "You know you're welcome to come and visit anytime you like."

  "I may take you up on that. I'd like to see London again."

  Indy shook off his daydream, and focused on his surroundings. The rural countryside had given way to sooty brick factories and spewing smokestacks; he would be at Victoria Station in another half an hour. After leaving Paris earlier in the week, he'd spent a couple of days in Brittany, where he'd examined some of the megalithic ruins in the region. Then this morning he'd taken a ferry across the channel and boarded the train.

  He ripped the paper from the package. French chocolates from Paris. "Nice going, Shannon."

  He was about to remove the cover and sample a chocolate when the train suddenly braked for another station and a book slid off the seat. He leaned over and picked it up. The cover had flopped open to an epigraph on the first page of the eighteenth-century tome, which read: Felix qui potuit rerum cognoseere causas.

  "Fortunate is he who can know the inner meaning of things," he said.

  He closed the cover. The book was called Choir Gaur, The Grand Orrery of the Ancient Druids, Commonly Called Stonehenge. He laughed to himself. He didn't have to look any further for the meaning of his dream. He'd been reading the book before he'd fallen asleep. Why black robes, though? he wondered. He was sure druids wore white. But who said dreams made sense?

  The train started up again. He tapped his fingers on the package, then lifted the cover, and reached inside for a chocolate. It took a moment before he comprehended what he was seeing and feeling. Something black and hairy was crawling up his fingers, and it wasn't made of chocolate. He uttered a short cry, shook his hand, and gaped at the box. There were a few chocolates, but the rest of the compartments were filled with walnut-size spiders.

  His knees jerked, kicking the box into the air. Chocolates and spiders spewed over him. He brushed them off and leaped to his feet. He stomped on spiders and squashed chocolates, sweeping his arms and legs and body clean of the crawling creatures, and trying not to think about how close he had come to taking a bite out of one of them.

  Finally, he examined his seat and sat down again, but as he did felt one creeping inside his pants leg, and another on the inside of his collar. He nearly jumped out of his clothes. He shook his leg until the spider fell to the floor, and crushed it under his shoe. Then, carefully, he reached up to his collar and brushed at his neck.

  He laughed nervously as a chocolate dropped to the floor. Relieved, he sat down, but immediately felt a tingling on his calf, and pulled up his pants leg. Dozens of tiny, newly hatched spiders wisped over his leg. "Aw... aw..." His teeth chattered; he shuddered.

  He brushed them off, swatting them with a rolled-up newspaper. Then, he inspected his leg to make sure none was left.

  He picked up the box and examined it. It hadn't been a matter of spiders invading the chocolate box. Someone had planted them.

  "Shannon?" he said aloud. Would he go to all the trouble for a practical joke that he wouldn't even see carried out? Maybe, but this was no joke.

  He looked at the card again. Maybe it was his father? No, couldn't be. He wouldn't. Besides, it was addressed to Indy Jones, and his father never called him that. But Shannon knew that. If this was his idea of playing a joke, why wouldn't he have addressed it to Henry Jones, Jr., as his father's letters had always read when they were college roommates back in Chicago?

  He heard a tap on the door. "Yes?"

  The conductor opened it. "I need to check your ticket, please."

  Indy reached cautiously into his coat pocket, and handed his ticket to the conductor. "Mind if I switch compartments for the rest of the trip? This one has spiders."

  "Spiders?" The conductor's eyes shifted about the compartment; his shoulders twitched. Indy understood perfectly. He pointed at a spider crawling along the window frame.

  The conductor handed Indy his ticket, and backed out of the compartment. "Right this way, sir."

  Indy quickly gathered up his books, and the conductor carried his luggage. At the last moment, he grabbed the empty box and wrapper, hoping they held some clue to the source of the so-called gift. When he was settled in his new seat, he asked the conductor how he might find out where the package he'd received had come from.

  "That's easy. Just look at the number in the corner of the wrapper."

  Indy flattened it out. "Twelve."

  "That's it. They always put a number on the packages so the telegraph office can notify the sender that the package was delivered, if they request the service."

  "So where's twelve?"

  The conductor smiled. "That's easy. It was sent from London."

  2

  Class Act

  Indy glanced over his shoulder as he passed through the gate of the university and caught sight of a tall, dark-haired man moving behind him. The man had been following him for the last three mornings. He looked back again, but the man had vanished into a crowd of students. Maybe it was just someone who was walking the same route.

  Even though six weeks had passed since his first day of classes, he hadn't been able to put the incident with the spiders behind him. He wanted to think it was all a mistake, that the candy box hadn't been intended for him. But he knew it had. He just didn't know why. He'd been expecting something to happen, some indication of what the box had meant, but there'd been nothing.

  Despite his efforts, he'd had no luck tracing the source of the package. Shannon had sworn that he knew nothing about it, and Indy believed him. Whoever had sent it had been careful not to leave a trail.

  But he was too busy to spend much time dwelling on it. He arrived on campus each day by eight, read over his notes in his office, and taught a two-hour class at nine; and another at one. Although his classes were over at three, his work had just begun. He went back to his office or to the library, where he took out his class syllabus, opened his books, and began preparations for the next class.

  He yawned as he entered Petrie Hall. Much of the material he was teaching was new to him, so he was a student as well as a teacher. At best, he was a week ahead of his students, and some days even less. Most of the time he was thankful for the syllabus, which provided him with a general out
line of topics to be discussed for the week. But other times, he felt restricted by it. Already he could see ways of improving the class, if he taught it again, but there was no guarantee of that. He wouldn't know for another couple of weeks, when the summer session ended, whether he would be teaching here this fall.

  Landing the job so soon after being awarded his Ph.D had been a surprise. In fact, he would have been content to remain in Paris, and look for a position at one of the city's universities while he continued his part-time job in the archaeology lab at the Sorbonne. But Marcus Brody, an old family friend and a curator of a New York museum, had given him the lead for the job. The native Londoner had wired him that one of his contacts at the University of London had informed him about an opening for a summer teaching job in archaeology that could become full time in the fall.

  He hadn't thought he had much of a chance, but he'd applied, mainly to show Brody he appreciated the help. While the position was for an introductory course, its emphasis was on Britain's megalithic monuments, a topic which he'd examined only superficially in his studies. A week later he was asked to come to London for an interview, and a few days later he received a letter informing him that he'd been hired. Although the interview had gone well, he was convinced that Brody had more influence in professional circles than he'd imagined.

  As he entered the classroom, he walked over to the black board, and wrote two words in large letters: FIELD WALKING, then moved to the podium and laid down his notebook. The walls of the room were lined with wooden cases containing neatly arranged displays of pottery shards, bone fragments, and a few skulls. A table next to the podium was stacked with reference books and field manuals, and behind it was the blackboard and a wall cluttered with photographs from digs, which documented discoveries or detailed technical procedures.