The Himalayan Codex

by Bill Schutt

  R. J. MacCready knew exactly where Scarface was carrying him, long before the entrance to the subterranean world came into view. He saw few other Morlocks during the trek, but those that they did pass appeared to turn away.

  Within the earth, and even before they approached the newest of the “trophy room’s” ice columns, Mac felt an all-too-familiar churning in his guts. He caught a glimpse of Jerry’s parka and closed his eyes tightly, forcing himself to think about something else—anything else. A way out of here or at least a way to put a dent in this guy’s day.

  MacCready’s ride ended with a fling along the ground and he skidded into a violent shoulder slam against an object he already understood too well.

  Refusing to look at the freshly constructed stalagmite, Mac sensed the approach of his tormentor. Defiant, he stared up at the beast, right in the eye. Although Mac always detested the habit many people had of anthropomorphizing, at that moment he would have sworn on a first edition of Darwin’s Origin that Scarface was gloating.

  “Yeah, fuck you, too!” Mac snarled, calculating that this would probably be his very last second of conscious existence.

  The creature reacted with something approximating a laugh, removing from Mac’s mind any doubt that his sentence in Scarface’s court was about to be carried out. During another of his rare hopes against hope, he wished that Jerry and everyone else he had lost would somehow be there to embrace him, even if only during a near-death hallucination.

  Yanked off the ground by one foot, Mac drew a bead on the creature’s genitals and lashed out with his free leg. Scarface sidestepped the attempt and slammed Mac’s body into the pillar of ice—just hard enough to hurt, but not with enough force to break bones or to kill. Not this time, Mac told himself, before he was flung again along the ground.

  Shaking his head, the zoologist struggled to his knees, using the nearest column for support. He was unable to avoid the sight of a modern Chinese soldier in an ice pillar—recognizable only by his uniform. One of Li Ming’s buddies, he thought.

  There was also no doubt in his mind that Scarface was drawing a malicious joy from this new exercise.

  With a speed that, despite everything he had already witnessed, caught Mac by surprise, his tormentor rushed forward and hoisted him into the air, this time by both arms. Again he kicked at the giant, who spun him around and brought his face within mere inches of a gaping mouth. The close-up threat display of Morlock teeth was enhanced by a skull-vibrating roar, accompanied by the hot stench of decayed meat.

  “Jesus Christ,” Mac roared back, fighting off dizziness. “A little Listerine wouldn’t kill you!”

  The creature ignored him, flipping his body around again like a rag doll before forcing his head finally to face, at close range, the ice column containing his friend. Mac looked past the familiar figure, doing everything he could to not see what they’d done to Jerry.

  It did not help.

  Beyond the ice-suspended body, his eyes focused on an open space in the cylinder—clearly meant for him. What took Mac to the very precipice of madness was not his own soon-to-be permanent niche, but what lay just behind it. The beast lifted him higher, to see it more clearly—a second unfilled cavity, meant for Yanni.

  Now, held immobile and with a Morlock hand tightening around his neck, R. J. MacCready began to give in, for the first time ever, to a sense of utter hopelessness. Emphasizing the point, he heard the arrival of a second Morlock, accompanied by an even more skull-vibrating roar. Scarface reacted by dropping Mac to the ground and kicking him backward with a leg sweep.

  As he came to rest beside the Chinese soldier’s column, Mac looked up and beheld a suddenly tamed killer. He was reminded of a guilty teen kicking a risqué magazine under his bed. But instead of a shocked parent, the surprise visitor was Alpha, who rushed forward to confront Scarface.

  Making certain that the Big Guy knew exactly what had been happening in the Trophy Room, Mac pointed at the space prepared for Yanni, struggled to sit upright, then gave up.

  Even from his prone position, the zoologist could see that the changes in Scarface’s stance and demeanor were as immediate as they were dramatic. Head bowed, the Morlock took a step backward, letting his arms drop to his sides.

  “Subservient, my ass,” Mac muttered, sensing even without Yanni’s abilities that Alpha could not trust this particular beast. “Watch out for that one,” he called to Alpha, saddened that he might just as well be warning him in Yiddish. Then he collapsed in exhaustion.

  Alpha snatched up the human rag doll, tucked him under an arm, and carried Mac out of the subterranean maze.

  Yanni had been nervously pacing the interior of the igloo when, at last, Alpha approached through the fog. She let out a small cry as she saw that he was carrying Mac—bloodied and seemingly in shock but very much alive.

  Pushing aside the ice door, Alpha, with Yanni’s assistance, eased Mac down onto the floor. The giant communicated something that approximated a sigh, then exited without any further attempts at communication. She watched him through the ice wall until he disappeared into the mist.

  Yanni brought Mac some water and squatted down to help him drink.

  “I’m all right,” he said, noting the look of concern she wore.

  “Oh, yeah,” Yanni replied gently. “You look great.”

  “Really,” he said, stopping when she put a finger to his lips.

  Mac looked past her.

  What did you see out there? Yanni thought, but could not bring herself to ask. MacCready’s entire body seemed to shudder for a moment, then he closed his eyes, very tightly.

  Whatever it was, she told herself, it sure as hell wasn’t in Pliny’s codex.

  Metropolitan Museum of Natural History

  The weak never become top dogs. This is an unbreakable rule. Be they Roman, or Ceran, or Easterner, any people capable of building a civilization will be highly intelligent, vigilant, and (when necessary, from their point of view) thoroughly ruthless. Thus, their survival will always be more important than our survival. And in the end, we must remember above all else, that when we encounter any foreign civilization for the first time, their people will know that these same unbreakable laws define our way of thinking about them.

  —Pliny the Elder (as translated by Patricia Wynters, MMNH)

  So began a concluding chapter of Pliny’s hidden codex. Patricia Wynters knew that the collision of three civilizations had led the historian to believe that whenever Rome or one of its descendant cultures met another so alien as the Cerae, “the very few things that can be predicted for certain, render the outcome certainly unpredictable.”

  “Sheesh, this guy rambles on like nobody’s business,” Patricia told Charles R. Knight. “It’s all pretty obvious nowadays but I guess two thousand years ago, this might have been an example of hitting the nail square on the head.”

  “A few things never change, I guess,” Knight replied.

  “But most things do,” she added, her friend sensing more than a hint of sadness in her voice.

  The Kremlin

  July 17, 1946

  “I have called this meeting,” Joseph Stalin began, “because the young man in charge of decoding transmissions from our people in New York has something important to tell us.”

  A young electronics prodigy named Anatoly handed out transcripts to the other two men who had been called into the office.

  “Our problem is named MacCready,” Anatoly said. “The same MacCready sent to the wilds of Brazil in ’44 by this Major Hendry. The theremin device transmitted at least two references confirming this fact. There was no mention of what he did there, but we feel he was somehow involved in the destruction of a missile base—but not before a high-altitude rocket launched from there dropped bacteria bombs on our troops in the Ukraine.”

  “And what is his job now—this MacCready?” Stalin asked.

  “Officially, he is a zoologist,” Anatoly continued.

  “And is he—a zoologist?
”

  Anatoly’s boss, a bespectacled man, stepped forward and cleared his throat. Although he would have looked at home stacking canned goods in a market, Lavrentiy Beria was more feared in his country than Stalin himself. Only three years earlier, he had been introduced to President Roosevelt by the Soviet leader as “our Himmler.” It was a designation that had much to do with the fact that Beria not only oversaw Stalin’s dreaded secret police, but was also in charge of the gulag labor camps.

  “Recently, this American was planning a return to Brazil—to look for prehistoric horses. At first, I believed it to be just a stupid cover story—but there is a solid paper trail.”

  “Go on,” Stalin said, gesturing to the transcript.

  Beria continued. “The man—MacCready—wherever he goes, is a human lightning rod for trouble.”

  Anatoly nodded in agreement. “The incident two years ago killed thousands in the Ukraine—and, in the end, the Nazis trapped there were able to break out of the encirclement our brave comrades had fought to create.”

  “I know all about this disgraceful incident,” Stalin bellowed. “One in which our ‘brave comrades’ failed to carry out their orders!”

  “Of course you’re right, sir,” Anatoly said, with a submissive bow.

  Stalin continued, his voice noticeably slurred by alcohol: “And did anyone take the time to examine these dead heroes? To determine just what killed them?”

  There was an uncomfortable silence until Lavrentiy Beria cleared his throat yet again. “No, Comrade Stalin, but those responsible for this oversight have already been . . . reassigned.”

  Anatoly followed up. “I believe that this American was sent into Brazil to find something and to stop the attack.”

  “Well, then obviously he failed, too,” Stalin said, with disgust.

  “Unless of course, he did not fail,” Beria said, pausing for effect.

  “Go on,” Stalin said, with impatience.

  “Unless the American wanted the attack on the Mother Country to succeed. Who can forget their General Patton, who said—”

  Stalin held up a hand. “I know exactly what that presumptuous asshole said: ‘After Hitler is dead, if FDR wants Moscow, I can give it to him.’”

  Once again, the room went uncomfortably silent.

  Stalin seemed to wave off the thought, then poured himself another glass of “water.” “And we all know what happened to Patton,” he muttered to himself, before turning to Anatoly. “Do you think MacCready could have been ordered to let this attack occur—maybe even to help it happen?”

  “Difficult to tell, sir,” Anatoly lied. The man was clearly trying not to let his response sound like a contradiction to Beria’s suggestion. “According to the information we were able to gather, through Comrade Theremin’s ‘gift,’ MacCready is, as the Americans say, a loose cannon.”

  “But they do find him to be a valuable asset, yes?” said Beria, before finally turning to the fourth man in the room. “So, Nikita, you were assigned to read everything this MacCready has published. Have you any predictions? What do you think is on his mind?”

  An inordinate interest in horses and bats, Nikita Khrushchev thought, and decided to keep even this observation to himself, because it was clearly far safer to play the bumbling, uncivilized half-wit only recently recovered from an extended (and nonexistent) bout of pneumonia. Khrushchev never suspected that the facade would ultimately leave him the last man standing in the Kremlin, as history hurried him along toward a game of nuclear poker with an American president. Presently, his only concern was to avoid taking his place beside those who had spoken the wrong words (or any words at all)—and who now lay buried under Beria’s rose garden.

  Khrushchev stammered.

  “Out with it!” said Stalin.

  “I . . . I don’t believe I can predict anything,” he said quickly. “I don’t know.”

  Beria shook his head in an exaggerated manner. “I don’t believe you know anything, either. Or that you ever will.” He glanced over at young Anatoly, who laughed obediently.

  Beria continued. “As we now know perfectly well, the Americans uncovered an ancient Roman expedition log indicating the existence of certain biological monstrosities, out there in the wild. And—”

  Stalin interrupted. “And now this same MacCready is on this ancient trail like a bloodhound.”

  “A brilliant deduction,” Beria said, seemingly making a second career out of constantly redefining the word obsequious. “And if what we’ve overheard during the translation of this ‘Omega Codex’ is true—” He turned to Anatoly.

  “I believe it is,” said Anatoly.

  “Then you will assemble a team immediately,” Stalin decided. “Priority one—find this MacCready and bring me whatever it is he is searching for. It must be important for the American military to have risked sending him in there.”

  “And priority two?”

  Stalin smiled an undertaker’s smile. “Bring me this loose cannon—or silence him for good.”

  What about the Chinese? Nikita Khrushchev asked himself. What will they think of this incursion into their territory? Of course, he left the questions unasked, though he was clearly pleased that young Anatoly had apparently arrived at the very same questions.

  “I’m afraid, sir, we must risk stirring up Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists,” said Anatoly. “But I—” He looked at Beria and went silent.

  “Finish your thought,” Stalin commanded. “You have no enemies here.”

  “With pleasure,” Anatoly lied, then continued: “I can explain it best by telling you what I believe this ancient Roman found, and what is going to happen in Tibet—very soon.”

  Initially, Pliny had realized with a jolt that the decision of the Cerae not to mark him with their stink doomed him to the Scythian fate. He came to this realization during the instant in which he saw the Ceran called Teacher pouring a pot of drill-tipped worms over Severus’s head, arms, and chest. Up to that very moment, he believed the creature had turned against her pet and actually thought of Severus’s fate as “some justice.” And yet, moved by a stubborn ember of compassion for the centurion, he turned away, bracing himself for screams that never came.

  When he looked again, the worms were falling away from Severus’s body. The swarm of ticks had remained near the rim of the pit for a long time, then scattered and disappeared. Proculus’s moments of dread came and went in the very same way.

  Finally, when Pliny’s turn came, he glared at Severus. Clenching and unclenching his bound hands into fists, the naturalist watched stoically as the Ceran ladled worms from Severus’s pit into Proculus’s pit, and finally into his own. Pliny set his jaw—determined to accept his fate like a Roman.

  But the bites for which I had braced myself were never delivered, Pliny recorded in his codex.

  It seemed, to me, that no sooner had they touched, tasted, or smelled my skin, my hair, and my sweat, they were repulsed by me, and fled my body.

  I understood then, beyond doubting, that we had indeed been used for a process of training the weapon. The same worms and ticks that did not attack me were collected from my pit and poured upon a Scythian captive who had been brought forth and lowered into the ground. His flesh did not repel them—could not repel them.

  And it seemed to me that the unfortunate man was dead in the amount of time I would take to draw a deep breath, hold it reflectively, and exhale.

  Chapter 17

  Dilemma

  The real problem of humanity is the following: We have Paleolithic emotions . . . and god-like technology. And it is terrifically dangerous, and it is now approaching a point of crisis overall.

  —E. O. Wilson

  Metropolitan Museum of Natural History

  Fifth Floor

  “So, do you think Pliny knew the implications of this?” Dr. Nora Nesbitt asked.

  “Of course he knew,” Patricia said, gesturing toward the codex. “He’s telling us right there the step-by-step procedure for
imprinting a biological weapon to attack an ethno-specific group.”

  Charles Knight held the newly assembled fragments of codex in one hand, a magnifying lens in the other. “A race-specific weapon,” he said, noticing that his hands were shaking. “Two thousand years ago.”

  “How can this be?” Patricia asked. “It would be the biological equivalent of uranium-235.”

  “He must have been mad to write this down,” Nesbitt said, as much to herself as the others.

  “Ah, but he never published it,” Patricia emphasized.

  “Thankfully,” Knight replied. He placed the codex fragment and magnifier down on a lab bench, then buried his trembling hands in his pockets—hoping to shift the conversation away from what had quickly become an uncomfortable topic.

  Nesbitt, however, was not about to let the subject rest, even for a minute. “Where, exactly, did they find Pliny’s book?”

  “Someone concealed it under a wine cellar,” Knight said, allowing a degree of impatience to creep into his voice.

  “In one of Pompeii’s sister cities,” Patricia chipped in. “Not quite sure which one.”

  “And that’s how it was preserved?”

  Knight peered at Nesbitt over his glasses. “You know, I’m beginning to feel a bit like one of those contestants on Twenty Questions.”

  “Come on, Charles,” Patricia said, in her best singsong voice. “You know you want to tell us.”

  Knight shot his friend an exasperated look, sighed, then continued. “According to Major Dropsy, the fact that the codex was sealed in an airtight, screw-top cylinder of noncorrosive metal probably had something to do with its preservation.”

  Patricia gave a wry smile. “See, now that wasn’t so hard.”

  Nesbitt ignored the banter. “So Pliny’s codex got buried by Mount Vesuvius, on the very same day that he died?”

  “Pliny, Pompeii, and thirty thousand people,” Knight said.