Chapter 6: Stairway to Heaven

"Why did they build this?" Theo asked her dad.

They were climbing a stairway to Heaven. This was the steepest, longest and scariest set of stairs Theo had ever been on! The stairs went up, up, up, toward the blue sky. They also went down, down, down if Theo cared to look--which she didn't. It was a long way down to the jungle, and it seemed like you were looking straight down the face of a cliff.

"Because they could," said Frank, who was climbing just behind her.

It's not like he could catch her if she fell. This staircase was beyond steep! Each stone stair was about a foot high but only about nine inches deep, so it went up at an angle of nearly 60 degrees. You didn't walk up these steps as much as crawl up them on all fours. They took each step one at a time, and once they started moving it was easier than it looked. It was like climbing a cliff, but at least you didn't have to hunt for a handhold or footing; you knew they would happen at regular intervals.

Theo was 13 now. She had been a lot of places with her dad, and each year the destinations got a little more challenging. That's not to say her dad chose the places they went -- She usually did, and she always jumped first. -- but he could veto her ideas and suggest alternatives. In the process, he taught her what worked and what didn't, what was safe and what wasn't.

"No, seriously," said Theo. "Why did they? You said they had no metal tools or wagons and had to cut and carry every stone by hand. Why would they waste so much energy building this stupid pyramid?"

Theo had wanted to go to the real pyramids in Eqypt, but her dad talked her out of it. The problem with those pyramids, he explained, is they are totally exposed. There would be lots of tourists and hawkers at the base and not many places to hide. The main issue, as usual, was not getting to a place but getting away from it. If people were watching you then you couldn't jump and you might end up trapped in that location for a long time. In the worst case, you might be assaulted, arrested or injured before you could get away. Public attention was bad. Exposure was bad. Anonymity and relative isolation were good.

"It's not a stupid pyramid," said Dad. "It's a very smart pyramid. You have to use a lot of math to get the stones just right and make the whole whole thing line up with the sun on the equinox."

They were climbing a Mayan pyramid in Central America. Compared to the pyramids of Egypt, this one wasn't nearly as high, but it was much steeper. This pyramid was square at the base like the Egyptian ones, but it was built in layers like a wedding cake. Running straight up the face of it was a continuous stone staircase, the one they were on now. It projected out from the face of the pyramid, so that from their current position, hugging the middle of the steps, they could only see the stairs, not the pyramid itself.

"But why?" said Theo. "Why does it matter how it lines up? Why build the stupid thing at all?"

"You want the long answer?"

"Whatever," said Theo, with the practiced ennui of a 13-year-old.

Normally Dad would sit down on a rock or log when he began his lectures, but there was no sitting or stopping here! Dad began: "What happened in Mayan society was the same as the rise of early civilizations everywhere: Agricultural technology began to produce more food than people needed to survive. Powerful leaders -- thugs really -- were able to extract this surplus in the form of taxes. Everyone had to give a certain amount of grain to the king. But now the king had all this excess wealth he didn't know what to do with. How would he use it?"

Theo shrugged. "Build temples?"

"Exactly. Whenever any human accumulates more resources than he needs -- even today -- he almost always embarks on some kind of big, meaningless, self-indulgent building project. It uses up the resources and keeps everyone busy. It's like people today wanting to own bigger and bigger houses whenever they have the money, even if the house itself doesn't make sense."

"I though they were honoring the gods?"

"Well, yeah, but if the king is also the head of the church, he can define the gods any way he wants. Religion doesn't dictate the temple; the temple dictates the religion. A clever leader is going to tell the people that the gods support whatever it is he wants to do. He can even claim he's a god himself, and the people will accept it because they are basically sheep. They want to be led and will believe whatever they're told."

"No me!" said Theo. "If you asked me to haul stupid rocks for some stupid pyramid, I'd run away."

"But where would you run? For that matter, where would you jump? The whole world was like this at the time. How could you leave the only society you knew? If you grew up in a family of stonemasons, then that's what you did, too. But of course you're a girl, so you wouldn't be hauling stones. You'd be a baby factory for the next generation of stonemasons.

"Babies, yuck! I like playing with them, but I wouldn't want to have one."

"But how could you choose otherwise? Family is a powerful force. You can try to run away from it, but it always calls you back. Your family sets up the whole game board of what you think is important. If you were a woman in this culture or any other primitive one, you would be bearing and raising children, because that was the role your family set up for you."

Theo and her father were most of the way up the stairway now, but a fog was rolling in. This was getting really weird! They could still see the top of the stairs -- or at least where the stairs ended in sky -- but the jungle below was fading into the mist. Since they couldn't see the pyramid they were climbing, this truly seemed like a stairway suspended in space. Nothing above and below, nothing left and right, just stairs.

The feeling of this place was strange, surreal and bizarre -- but totally normal for trips with her dad. They both had a fondness for places that stretched credulity: places that seemed to defy gravity, that appeared dangerous but weren't, that looked at first impossible but that made more sense as you got to know them.

Their whole trip, of course, stretched credulity. Just a couple of hours earlier they had been at the Seaside Inn, the motel in California that was their usual base during their time together. It was little more than a pit-stop really: a place to sleep, shower and change clothes. They hardly stepped out for two weeks.... Oh, they "stepped out", for sure, but they rarely opened the door.

When she jumped from the bathroom of the motel to the jungle near the base of the pyramid, the place was just as her father had described it. The site was only partially restored, and the jungle still overwhelmed most of it. There were no people she could see, but there were dirt roads and beaten paths throughout the complex indicating people had recently been there. There were two major pyramids that had been cleared of vegetation, but the rest of the temple complex was still buried in trees and vines. After her dad arrived, they spent about an hour exploring the ruins at the base of the pyramids, until they decided the only place left to go was up.

Now they were finally reaching the top of the stairway of the highest pyramid. This must be Heaven! Theo pulled herself over the last steep step, then collapsed on the flat stone platform at the top. Her dad followed.

"We made it!" he said, out of breath. "You see, that wasn't as scary as it looked."

Theo creeped back to the stairs and looked down.

"Oh, yes it is!" she said. "Are we supposed to go down the same way we came up?"

"If you want to," said Dad.

"It's so steep, but it would be cheating if we didn't."

"It's your choice," said Dad.

The sky overhead was unbroken blue with a blinding sun, but below them was a sea of fog. The only things breaking through the mist were a few treetops and the other steep pyramid about a quarter mile away.

Theo stood up. "Let's look around."

There wasn't a lot to see. Occupying most of the platform was a stone temple with a peaked roof and an open doorway in the front. Theo stepped cautiously through the door and looked inside. After her eyes adjusted, she saw there wasn't much to it: a small empty room, then another open doorway out the other side. That was all!

"There's nothing here," said Theo. "I was expecting some kind of altar or something."

"The whole thing was mostly for show," said Dad, trailing behind her. "The common man was never allowed up here, so he could imagine anything he wanted inside the temple. It was supposed to be a transport system to a higher realm. Only the priests knew there was nothing to it."

"What about the human sacrifices?"

"The Mayans weren't as big on human sacrifices as the Aztecs, who killed thousands at a time."

"But they did have sacrifices here, right?"

"Yes," said her father, hoping to leave it at that.

"Where?" asked Theo.

He father declined to answer. He pretended to study the other pyramid poking through the clouds.

"Where?" asked Theo again. "Where did they have the human sacrifices?"

Then she waited for the answer.

Her father looked a little dazed, like he was suffering from too much sun. He turned to her but he wasn't looking at her. He was staring beyond her, into space. He brought his hand to his forehead and closed his eyes. For a moment, he looked like he might faint or fall over, but he was a safe distance from the edge, so it was okay. He opened his eyes again, and looked around. It took him a few seconds to regain his focus.

"Over here," he said, motioning to the top of the stairs they had just climbed. "There was a big stone altar... here." He pointed with his hand to trace the rectangular outline of where the altar once stood, although there was no sign of it now. It was just about the place where they were lying when they first got to the top.

"It was painted blue," said Dad. "The pilgrim was brought up the steps, then he lay down on the altar. Four priests held him down, then a fifth stuck a knife into his stomach, just below the rib cage, and ripped out the pilgrim's heart. The heart had to be fresh, you understand, preferably still beating. And everyone in the city had to watch."

"Gross!" said Theo.

"Yeah," he said. "Rather distasteful. But it's not our place to pass judgment on other people's culture."

"I suppose it was mostly young virgins they sacrificed," said Theo, who was sophisticated enough to know what a virgin was and that she was one of them.

"No," said Dad. "It was mostly young men. They were more highly prized by the culture. If you expected to appease the gods, you had to give them your most valuable possessions."

"Did they volunteer?"

"Look at those stairs we just climbed. There's no way you could force someone to climb them. Those who were sacrificed thought they were taking a journey to heaven. Of course, you still needed the four priests to hold the guy down at the end, because it's hard for even a believer to stay still for that.

"I couldn't stand it," said Theo.

"Having your heart ripped out?"

"No, I mean I couldn't stand even being there watching. I'd want to stop it. It's cruel!

"How would you stop it?"

Theo thought about it for a minute. "Maybe I could jump into that little room in the temple, then I could come out and tell the people down below that it's all a hoax."

"Then the priests might grab you and sacrifice you instead. It doesn't hurt to give the gods a virgin every now and then. Remember, if someone grabs you and physically holds onto you, you can't jump away. After you made your announcement, you might not be able to escape."

"Well, maybe I'd jump when none of the priests are up here, then I'd go back inside the temple and jump away before any of them climbed the steps. They would think I'm a god, and even the priests would be afraid."

"And are you?"

"Am I what?"

"Are you a god?"

"No, I'm just Theo."

"But you'd be setting yourself up as a god, which is a vulnerable position to be in. Once you identify yourself as a god, then people start worshiping you, and they almost always miss the point. They expect you to fix their problems for them. Instead of helping themselves, they might start making sacrifices to the goddess Theodosia."

"Can't I just tell them they're aren't any gods?"

"I wish it were so easy. Usually, it's just best to let people do what they are doing, making their sacrifices or whatever, and not interfere. Every time you intervene, you place yourself at risk, and you may not be helping the people as you hope you will."

"So are you saying we shouldn't try to help?"

"No, I didn't mean that. I just mean that it's... complicated."

Sensing an opportunity to show off, Theo walked to the top of the steps, where the ancient altar had been, and raised her hands to the sky.

"Listen to me! I am your god!" she shouted, with as much theatrical flair as she could muster. Her words echoed in the void.

"And we are your people!" said someone down below.

Theo looked down to see two figures coming up the stairs, a man and a woman, obviously tourists. Theo's dad laughed. A brief wave of embarrassment came over Theo, but she brushed it aside.

"How dare you intrude on my domain! I am Theodosia, goddess of war! I shall smite you!"

"Oh, please don't," said the man. "We're having enough trouble with these stairs to begin with."

"Well, then," said Theo. "Would you like to come up here and be sacrificed?"

"Are you going to rip our hearts out?" asked the man.

"Of course," said Theo, "but it's all for a good cause."

"Sounds good, but let us get up there first."

"You may come," said Theo.

The man and woman dragged themselves over the final step and collapsed as Theo and her father had done. After they caught their breath, they introduced themselves as Canadians, amature archeologists from Vancouver. They talked for a while about the pyramid they were on and the temple complex around them. The Canadians had done a lot of research and were very knowledgeable.

Then the woman said: "We were surprised to find you here. We didn't see your car down below."

Normally, Theo would defer to her father on a question like this, but this time she answered it herself.

She said: "We're gods. We can come and go as we please."

The Canadians both laughed, and that settled it. Her father only smiled.

Theo was joking, of course, but as soon as it came out of her mouth, it felt right. It was easier than having to make up some lie about their car being parked around the corner, which is what her father would have done.

"We're gods, and we can come and go as we please."

It would be years before she fully understood what this meant.

Next Chapter