The Himalayan Codex

by Bill Schutt

  The officer had gone silent, his attention seemingly focused on a cockroach that was making its way down one of the hut’s wooden support beams.

  “But why are you here, Captain? What do you and your men want with me?”

  Mung stared at him, severely. “It seems we were sold a rather inaccurate bill of goods.”

  “How so?”

  “Your colleagues exaggerated your role in the discovery of the Yeren.”

  “Out of fear, I am certain,” Wang said, trying not to appear too defensive.

  Mung paused for a moment, then gave a slight nod. “A logical suggestion.”

  “And so what will become of me now?”

  “Now, Wang Tse-lin, to survive you must play the game. And no matter how little you do know about the biology and habits of the Yeren, you must quickly become an invaluable expert on the topic.”

  “But, Captain, why are you so concerned with these creatures? Why all the soldiers? Why the helicopters?”

  “It seems physicians in Peking have concluded that the stories passed down through the centuries about the Yeren are true.”

  “Which is why your men ate my specimen?” Wang responded, his anger surfacing for only a moment.

  “Precisely,” the officer said. “In this case, to increase their strength.”

  The scientist looked perplexed. “But why ‘in this case’?”

  “Because the flesh of the Yeren is also said to have unsurpassed curative powers.”

  “Surely you don’t—”

  Mung held up his hand. “I do believe it. I believe that the flesh of the Yeren can cure the sick. That it can cure my children and others like them.”

  “But if this is true, then why aren’t you combing the Shennongjia valley for more Yeren?”

  “The reason, Wang Tse-lin, is that the forest ogres—like the one I mistakenly presumed you had tracked and killed—are far too rare. The Shennongjia population is small and scattered, and soon it may be extinguished.”

  “Then with all respect, Captain, I’m confused as to why you allowed your men to consume such a rare find.”

  The officer rose and moved slowly toward the door, unable to hide his fatigue. “Because you have changed everything,” he said. “None of us ever believed in legends told by the khans about the Yeren—or that any Yeren could actually exist—until you made belief possible. I allowed my men to eat your specimen because, where we are going, there should be many more of them—each one composed of life-giving flesh, and in possession of secrets that can cure every affliction.”

  Chapter 11

  Things We Lock Away

  When we think we have been hurt by someone in the past, we build up defenses to protect ourselves from being hurt in the future. So the fearful past causes a fearful future and past and future become one.

  —Alfred Hitchcock

  South Tibet

  July 12, 1946

  After leaving the cavern and its strange museum of the dead, Alpha carried Yanni down a snowy incline. She craned her neck, hoping to see Mac and Jerry, tucked under the hairy arms of their own escorts. But there was no one following them and soon the cave opening was obscured by mist.

  Yanni’s sense of unease increased further when, instead of being returned to the igloo with her friends, Alpha had set off in a wholly new direction. Stopping several minutes later at the edge of a corral-like structure, they were met by two female Morlocks.

  Even as Alpha gently set her down outside the “fence,” she could hear the mammoths, somewhere beyond the veil of perpetually suspended snowflakes. The enclosure (as much as she could see of it through the mist) was a series of chest-high, semi-rectangular granite columns, connected by thick cords of something resembling woven silk. The material was drawn piano-wire tight, and the carved granite had become weatherworn long ago. The calls of the creatures within the enclosure grew louder with their approach—clearly elephantine, but unique and more complex. Though still wondering about Mac and Jerry—back in the “Trophy Room from Hell”—Yanni prepared her mind for the approach of yet another first-contact situation.

  Her initial view of them was shadowy—the shifting of ghosts in the mist. But as the phantoms stepped forward and out of the snowy cloud, they resolved themselves into a dozen white-furred mammoths. None of them stood higher at the shoulder than a Shetland pony, but one, slightly taller than the rest, lumbered cautiously toward the edge of the corral.

  Yanni’s initial impression was confusion. This can’t be them, she thought, as the largest animal approached. They’ve only got one—

  As if to allay her concern, the creature slowly extended its trunk toward her, and, as it did so, the appendage began to split from tip to base.

  —trunk.

  Then, as the appendage’s right-hand section gripped a horizontally arranged cord with its digitlike tip, the left-hand section reached out and came to a pause inches above Yanni’s shoulder. The entire movement was as graceful as any dance move Yanni had ever seen.

  Her second impression, during the first moments of the encounter, was that their limbs were clearly built for agile locomotion. You’d never know it, though, Yanni observed, from what appeared to be an almost deliberately lumbering gait. The Morlocks may have superior numbers on their side, but the mammoths are clearly hiding something.

  “Yasss, tang-gerr,” one of the female Morlocks said, in its bastardized version of Latin. The words were accompanied by a hand signal, and Yanni was immediately reminded of the trainers at the Central Park Menagerie.

  The mammoth, a male with beautiful brown eyes, reacted to the command by resting the tip of one trunk gently on Yanni’s shoulder. Its tusks were noticeably stubbier than those of the other individuals, and one eyelid appeared to be healing, from some sort of tussle.

  “You don’t look like a bruiser,” she said, her voice calm as she stroked one of the muscular and lightly furred trunks.

  “Conversssa-can-tah-bo,” the Morlock commanded, using yet another hand signal. Yanni was able, just barely, to decipher something specific from the directive.

  Was she trying to say, Conversa? Yanni wondered. If so, a word that meant “conversation” among the miners of Brazil and cantar in the Brazilian dialect of Portuguese was the Latin-derived word for “sing.”

  The mammoth’s response left no room for doubt as it began to vocalize in a strange bitonal language. Four others of his kind followed his lead.

  Presently Yanni realized she might have an easier time understanding Morlock-Latin than the language of the mammoths. Still, the miniature pachyderms were effortlessly conveying emotions in their tones, in much the same manner that a talented violinist conveyed moods without words. And likewise, they were doing it to equal or greater effect.

  No one who hears this will ever forget the sound, Yanni thought.

  The low notes and the high notes swooped down and spiraled up in a lament that vibrated through her ribs as if they were tuning forks. Yanni did not fully comprehend that the heritage of more than two thousand years was being recalled and sung out to the mists, much of it, she suspected, below the range of her own hearing. She felt the emotions within the tones but could not quite decipher the cries of loves lost, of freedoms lost, and all the loneliness of slavery.

  Yanni could not know that the composer, who paused to rest a pair of trunks gently on her shoulders, was reaching across broken foundation stones from the great tower Pliny had seen protruding above the sea of mist. The tower was now a roughly circular ruin, converted into a corral. Its actual dimensions were difficult to determine, the far reaches of the enclosure remaining obscured by the ever-present flakes and the fog.

  She tried to communicate back to the mammoths, in tones of her own, but she felt wholly inadequate. As the twelve slaves stared back at her, there was no escaping a clear sense that minds the equal at least of men and Morlocks lived behind those gentle eyes. The mammoths responded encouragingly to her effort, and the Morlocks seemed as curious as she was abo
ut the encounter.

  The song continued, a dirge that belonged to the white mammoths, and to the white mammoths alone—the incomprehensible song-story of generations long ago lost yet preserved in memory. Yanni was beginning—and only just beginning—to perceive the depth of detail, but the mammoths looked up suddenly and the lamentation died in the mist.

  She started to raise a hand toward an outstretched trunk and was about to say something when a growl from the other “elephant keeper” sent the creature back several steps. The mammoth let out a low-frequency hiss as it withdrew.

  “No need to translate, kiddo,” Yanni spoke quietly to the retreating mammoth. Its companions spread their ears wider and looked past her, with a new and sudden concern.

  The Morlocks heard it, too, then Yanni.

  A helicopter was approaching.

  “Mac,” Yanni said to herself. “Where the hell are you?”

  In the Igloo

  “She’ll be okay, buddy.”

  “Yeah, whatever you say, Jerry,” Mac replied, squeezing the head of an inchworm blade up through the skin of his leg like a pimple. He watched his friend pulling evenly and gently along the remaining two-inch length of the creature’s body.

  Despite the reassurance, and through the pain, Mac’s thoughts were with Yanni and her sudden departure from the cave with Alpha. Meanwhile, Mac’s own escort had apparently all but killed him during a particularly rough ride back to the igloo and through the field of bitey grass mimics. One of the creatures had latched on and was stubbornly resisting eviction from its new home—Mac’s calf.

  “Are you making a career out of this, or what?” Mac asked his friend, impatiently.

  “Mostly or what—especially if I break this critter off inside of you.”

  Once again, Mac’s mind wandered, and for at least the third time Jerry seemed to read his thoughts. “She’ll be okay, buddy.”

  Mac nodded, less than entirely convinced.

  “You know Yanni,” Jerry continued, “and the effect she has on animals.”

  “Yeah, that’d be fine,” Mac said, squeezing harder against the creature under his skin, “if the Morlocks were animals.”

  “Nah, come on. She’s probably got Mr. Alpha wrapped around her little finger by now.”

  “Do ya . . . ow! . . . think?” Mac said, as the creature in his leg came out another fraction of an inch, bit at him, was drawn out a little farther, bit again. “Shit!”

  “Sorry!” Jerry said. “And just in case you haven’t noticed, Yanni is already working on them. I mean, compared to the way they treat us, they’re treating her like royalty.”

  Mac gritted his teeth. “I suppose . . . they have been giving her the kid-glove treatment. Not like that hammering you took back there in ‘Lost and Found.’”

  “What are you talking about?” Jerry replied, calmly. “You’re the one they smothered half to death—and that was before you picked up your little passenger on the return trip.”

  Mac vaguely remembered being hauled back to their igloo jail like a sack of potatoes, and he remembered pain. Evidently, the Morlock had also been somewhat less than efficient in clearing a path through the inchworm grass and one of the miniature predators had managed to gain purchase. Its mouthparts, having pierced skin and muscle, felt like a thorn dipped in electric fire.

  Somehow this all made sense, except for Jerry’s comment about being suffocated—Mac had no recollection of that at all.

  “I think Alpha’s taken a real shine to her,” said Jerry, still trying to sound cheery—a tone that was definitely starting to piss Mac off.

  “Yeah, well, just keep that shit to yourself, okay. Now about that smothering they laid on me, I’m wondering why— Ouch!”

  The head of the little monster, which had dug deep into the muscle of his thigh, was now almost out through the skin surface, and with its battle nearly lost, it felt like the thing was spitting more venom. Mac already had an advanced education in pain, but this creature was helping him to write a whole new thesis.

  “So, why wouldn’t Alpha be smitten?” Jerry said, in a further attempt to distract his stricken friend. “He sorta reminds me of those Brooklyn musicians you’re always complaining about—only with more hair and no guitars.”

  “Stop trying to make me laugh!” Mac replied. Jerry was one of the only people he knew who could pry something funny out of even the gravest situation, who could laugh and be afraid at the same time.

  “And stop trying to change the subject!” Mac added. “Tell me what happened—back there.”

  Jerry feigned an offended look. “Okay, Mr. Sensitive. Now just hold on. This bugger’s almost out.”

  Mac felt another surge of venom and his subconscious seemed suddenly more in control than his conscious mind, seeking out a lighter place—a place he hadn’t thought about in—

  “Well, it’s about time, Yanni,” Mac said, absently. He had been pressing a handkerchief to his wounded leg but started dabbing clumsily at the air several inches above his knee. “Whoops,” he said, flashing a lopsided grin. “Missed.”

  “Say, you’re looking a little pale there, Mac.” Jerry’s voice seemed to be coming from far away.

  Mac felt as if he were being lowered into a prone position, strangely relieved to be drifting off, as a heretofore-unknown chemical compound did its work. Semiconsciousness allowed worry to slip away and into the distractions of random and sometimes absurd details, bubbling up from the subconscious—Long Island . . . Fresh bagels! . . . the smell of Mom’s perfume . . . Tamara . . .

  Mom’s grave.

  “Stop.”

  He drove his thoughts away from his mother and from loss—wondering for a moment what force of natural selection had led to the evolution of grief and regret.

  “Stop!”

  Instead, Mac latched on to the now barely felt but nonetheless paralyzing sting. He wondered why an animal that could so quickly swarm over and strip its prey down to the bone, before consuming those very bones, needed a toxic bite as well. Thus far he had only seen the inchworm grass consuming small game—the “squirrel” Alpha had used for demonstration purposes.

  Perhaps something special for larger prey, he guessed, like us.

  The blade pulled out another fraction of an inch and Mac struggled to focus his thoughts on helping Jerry to remove the grass mimic.

  “Jeez, this sucks!” Mac called out, against a sharp, acidic sting, followed by relief at the final withdrawal of his tormentor.

  “She’ll be okay, buddy,” Jerry said, holding the creature as it snapped and contorted into fantastic S-shapes—trying unsuccessfully to latch on to a new prey item.

  “Huh?” Mac asked. “What’d you say?”

  “She’ll be okay, buddy.”

  “Pally, you are startin’ to sound like a broken record,” Mac said, feeling the venom-induced fog beginning to lift rapidly.

  Jerry put an end to the creature’s relocation attempt by crushing its head between his thumb and forefinger. Then, as Mac watched, his friend took a sniff of the dead animal.

  “Smells like antifreeze,” Mac told Jerry, while another part of his brain recognized, Something’s wrong.

  MacCready realized that what he had just experienced was like watching his friend down a tumbler of Jack Daniel’s, but with Mac being the one who tasted and felt the effects of the whiskey.

  She’ll be okay, came a voice in his head, startling him.

  Mac stared down at his own thumb and index finger. They were covered with the blood of the grass mimic.

  Fully conscious now, he glanced frantically in every direction. The igloo had gone completely silent and he was alone.

  “Jerry? Jerry!”

  Mac lurched up and tottered over to the ice wall. Recollection and realization were slow to emerge. When they did, he knelt down hard—mentally groping for retreat into a private world of denial.

  He failed.

  Instead, Mac relived over and over again the awful crack of Jerry’s n
eck breaking.

  He’s still in the trophy room.

  Outside the ice prison, a great shadow passed overhead, making a mechanical commotion.

  R. J. MacCready did not perceive it, over the sound of his own weeping.

  Chapter 12

  Dracunculus Rising

  One death is a tragedy; one million is a statistic.

  —Joseph Stalin

  Extinction is the rule. Survival is the exception.

  —Carl Sagan

  Somewhere above the south Tibetan Labyrinth

  July 12, 1946

  “Should we be doing this, sir?” the Chinese helicopter pilot called back to the officer standing behind him in the cockpit.

  The pilot, whose name was Po Han, was gradually easing the “Dogship” toward a sea of mist that seemed to rise threateningly, filling more and more of his visual field.

  “You have your orders,” snapped the officer, a lieutenant named Lee Song.

  “But, Captain Mung told us—”

  “These orders did not come from Captain Mung.”

  “Of course, sir,” Po Han said, wondering only briefly who was giving the orders now. What he did know was that he had already developed a strong dislike for this particular helicopter. And then, as if those in charge had not already pressed far enough into the limits of crazy, he was being asked to push the craft—an American prototype known as a Harp—beyond what any sane person would consider to be safe limits.

  Safety, though, appeared to be the last thing on the lieutenant’s mind. The original orders had been simple: drop off additional equipment and fuel at a previously established supply site near the labyrinth’s edge. The plan fell apart, however, once they discovered that someone had ransacked the initial cache of fuel and spare helicopter parts. But instead of returning to the village where they’d established their primary base camp, the officer on board had taken a sudden interest in tracking down the perpetrators—especially after their guides insisted that the thefts were the work of the Yeren.