The Himalayan Codex

by Bill Schutt

  Ice composite architecture is rooted in reality. For our own civilization, it might actually begin to play an important role in the not-too-distant future. Composites with the strength of concrete and flexibility of steel can be made from materials as simple as pulped garbage or “cotton” spun from recycled plastic.

  The ice composite boats mentioned by Jerry as he examined Morlock structures really did reach the experimental stage near the end of World War II. Composite hulls and bunker walls tested well. Cotton balls in ice have proved to be a surprisingly good strengthening material, distributing the force evenly and preventing shattering of the ice even against artillery. An ice composite boat more than thirty feet long, after successful testing under Churchill, was left abandoned at war’s end, on a drydock near London—where it took almost a year to melt. (A smaller version, using old newspapers in ice, was famously tested on the American documentary series MythBusters.)

  The world’s first, actual large-scale ice-composite is an underground dam, built in the aftermath of Japan’s “3/11 triple disaster” (earthquake, tsunami, nuclear meltdown). Currently one mile in circumference, the dam of ice-and-dirt prevents new groundwater from entering the Fukushima meltdown site and carrying even more radioactive debris into the ocean. The Fukushima ice composite dam is impermeable, non-brittle—and it can be kept in place for centuries to come (if civilization endures). Even in the aftermath of new earthquakes, the dam is easily repaired—in a manner analogous to a living organism healing an injured bone—just as we have indicated for the Cerae and Morlock structures.

  There was, in reality, a lost Roman Ninth Legion. The timing of the disappearance varies but it is most commonly believed to have happened about a.d. 120 (and possibly as late as a.d. 160), either in Britain or after a long march eastward through Persia (present-day Iran). The Jordan Valley and India are occasionally mentioned in missing Ninth sightings. Whether they actually wandered into some unknown slaughter, or were simply disbanded and not recorded, remains unknown. We do know, from trade goods found in the cities of Vesuvius and through DNA tracing the descent of remote Chinese villagers back to Rome, that the Romans did reach as far as China and the eastern Himalayas, in Pliny’s time. (See, for example, Nick Squires on Chinese DNA, in the Telegraph, November 23, 2010, and National Geographic Society on the study of Chinese mummies with European features and red hair.)

  A twentieth-century Chinese army like the one MacCready, Yanni, and Jerry found in “the Trophy Room” really is (like the Roman Ghost Legion) widely reported to have vanished into legend. In the realm of great mysteries, the disappearance of nearly three thousand Chinese soldiers outside of Nanking during the morning of December 10, 1939, remains unsolved. At 4 a.m., Colonel Li Fu Sein (after an inspection of men and equipment) slept for three hours in a truck and awoke to find concealed cooking fires still burning, and camouflaged artillery still loaded and aimed. With the exception of about a half-dozen men at a remote overlook, Sein’s entire battalion, including its field officers, had vanished without any signs of combat. During the decades that followed, not even an impostor came forward (as in the manner of Little Bighorn “survivors”) claiming to have been a survivor or deserter from China’s own “missing Ninth.” Farmers westward, upriver, attested that no soldiers at all, and certainly not three thousand of them, ever came through the area, as it could not have gone unnoticed during a mass desertion. To the east of their position, the Japanese never recorded a battle against Chinese defenders or (as was their tradition) the execution of men who surrendered. The most probable explanation: farmers west of the location simply kept quiet about a mass desertion upriver into the mountains, and the lookouts who remained at their post, and who never heard anything about desertion plans, were at their posts for precisely that reason.

  Whatever really did happen, the Japanese occupiers of Nanking would have publicized a desertion of this magnitude for its propaganda value. They did not. They were evidently as mystified by the event as everyone else. For the sake of storytelling, we have tapped this mystery on the shoulder and blamed the Morlocks.

  This was not the last mass disappearance in China. Almost exactly nine years later, on December 12, 1948, the New York Times reported that General Sun Yuan-lians’s Fifteenth Army had vanished southwest of Suchow. While they were thought to have surrendered to the communists, or deserted, areal reconnaissance revealed that they appeared simply to have vanished.

  Only rumors survive.

  On underground realms of the Far East: Even without expansion by Morlocks and their ancestors, Asia already boasts cave systems so large that St. Patrick’s Cathedral could easily be accommodated in a small corner. China’s Miao cavern, which can be reached only by navigating an underground river, is the largest “supercave” currently known. It contains a stalagmite large enough to engulf the Statue of Liberty from toe to torch tip, and the main cavern is long enough to contain a jumbo jet’s entire runway. In Tibet, enormous Buddhist temples have been built inside natural caverns. The cave systems of the eastern Himalayas remain mostly unexplored. The bioluminescent life in the lost world of the Cerae/Morlocks is based on organisms that actually exist—some encountered in caves, others being extrapolations of prey-and-predator relationships studied by colleagues who have visited the ocean’s “deep scattering layer” of life and the hydrothermal oases still being explored at the continental spreading centers. Among the strangest observations: organisms that give off a literally blinding, bioluminescent flash to stun predators, or prey, or both.

  On unknown microscopic life and strange microbial symbiotic linkages: Recent assessments using new collecting and culturing methods have revealed that 99 percent of all microbial species (not counting viruses) are yet to be discovered. A good place to begin venturing into and learning about this realm is Laura Beil’s introduction to microbial “Dark Matter” in the September 7, 2016, issue of Science News: “Out of the Dark: Scientists Discover Bacteria that Defy Rules of Biochemistry.” Beil’s article is one of the clearest expositions on a field exploding with amazing new discoveries, and we cannot wait until she writes a book.

  The fictional Nora Nesbitt’s speculation about pheromones and microbes, and what she believed might have taken control of Severus, as reported by Pliny, is based on a strange but true microbial relationship. The cat-rat paradox occurs precisely as Nesbitt described it, in her conversation with Patricia Wynters. Kathleen McAuliffe’s profile of parasitologist Jaroslav Flegr—“How Your Cat Is Making You Crazy”—in the March 2012 issue of the Atlantic (as well as publications by Flegr himself) would be an excellent place to begin exploring this subject.

  The guinea worm parasite (minus the enhancements brought about by a microbe under control of the Cerae) follows its usual life cycle exactly as described by Nesbitt. As an example of how we do not know the measure of some national leaders until after they are out of office, former American president Jimmy Carter, along with his many truly charitable efforts, has brought the world closer than ever to eradicating the dreaded disease dracunculiasis.

  The lost worlds of the Himalayas, much as we have described them, really do exist in legends older than Imperial Rome. One lost tropical valley, located east of our fictional mist valley and believed in the West to have existed in legend only, actually was discovered early in the twenty-first century.

  We owe much to these long-standing oral and written traditions about mystical hidden valleys in the eastern Himalayas and Tibet, and in particular the Shambala legend. The mythical kingdom is mentioned in ancient Buddhist and Hindu texts with origins going back to at least 200 b.c. Predating Pliny’s Rome, the legends spoke of magical substances and secret healing practices.

  The tales first emerged into popular Western culture in the form of a novel about a man who crash-landed in an airplane, on the fringe of the hidden realm. This was Talbot Mundy’s Om: The Secret of the Ahbor Valley, published in 1925. Eight years later, in his retread of Mundy’s story (The Lost Horizon), James Hilton
renamed the hidden world Shangri-la. This place-name never existed, until Hilton. Shambala (sometimes spelled Shambhala) is the proper name, of legend.

  As further examples of how we have tried to keep our story consistent with Eastern traditions about the lost world: In China and as far north as Russia, legends actually do describe jewel-like cities hidden in the mountains—cities in which the people vary from enlightened to very warlike and even enlightened in the bodies of large monkeys. Their central hidden realm is shrouded in white mists and there are cave systems that, as tradition describes them, have spread out widely under the world. Apocalyptic prophecies are linked to the innermost realm—according to which, during a universal outburst of evil when humanity is governed by the furies of greed and war and as the leaders of all the doomed nations peer into the abyss, something spreads out of Shambala to save humanity from itself.

  Shambala is the hidden realm that Westerners have been seeking since at least the time of Vatican expeditions sent during the tenth century, based on the belief that it was a surviving remnant of Eden. Evidently there were no expedition survivors. About 1534, Jesuits returned to Rome with further tales of Shambala. The Vatican library preserves hand-drawn maps of hidden worlds, encircled by mountains and strange waters, and showing encounter points with Buddhist monks, living in temples at altitudes of seventeen thousand feet. The monks had described mythical women, “extraordinarily angelic yet as wild as snow leopards,” according to the twenty-first-century explorer Ian Baker.

  It is Baker whose expedition discovered the strange, tropical oasis of “Pemaku,” nestled deep within an east Himalayan labyrinth of valleys, with snowcapped mountains and glaciers towering overhead. Following the path of the nineteenth-century explorer John Whitehead, Baker did find a cave, river, and waterfall system consistent with one of the valleys described by Jesuits centuries earlier. The world Baker found descended below five thousand feet and was carpeted with strange, isolated plant life (members of his expedition are, at this writing, still identifying specimens with medicinal potential). More than a century earlier, his predecessor Whitehead had given up, writing that the search for the magical waters and plants of a lost Himalayan paradise “can be characterized as one of the great romances of geography and one of the most obsessive wild goose chases of modern times.” Whitehead noted that not even guides could get him past the unknown (cryptic and feral) guardians: “They kill Tibetans on principle.”

  In 1924, the Russians sent an expedition into Tibet and the eastern Himalayas, searching for Shambala. They failed. Later, the Nazis sent expeditions (expecting to find a cave leading deep into the Earth, where dwelled the perfect, white-haired Aryan race). The German expeditions were launched in 1930, 1934, and 1938. Most of the Germans were believed to have frozen to death. (For the purposes of our fable, look in the Morlock trophy room.)

  Ian Baker noted in 2016, while lecturing at the Explorers Club in Manhattan, that there are legends of other hidden realms west of his “Pemaku” site. Ancient texts speak of “the secret gate . . . The people who know the key have hidden it from outsiders and especially from the Chinese. . . . [T]he way in is guarded by a long-haired, extraordinary animal.” Texts also describe tall and terraced waterfalls, and tunnels behind life-giving waters, going deep into a mountain.

  According to Baker, mentions in sacred books of hidden gorges carpeted with strange plants that impart longevity and memories of past lives are part of an amazingly symbolic language—next of kin to Western civilization’s oldest fables. “The big mistake is to take the texts too literally.”

  And thus, bold traveler, you will read bamboo annals describing something in a remote valley “harder than a tiger, to tame. And at the heart, at the final stage of deification [and realization], the colors in the guarded place are orange and red, like a fiery tiger.” Logic and reason fail you, the annals warn. “And an ancient figure in red fire riding with a pregnant tigress. And an image of redness beyond anything you have been ready for.”

  Although we have a red grotto consistent with the texts, Baker believed, as not actually existing in physical form, a world beyond the tropical, unpopulated Himalayan oasis he discovered. “The Shambala story may even be based on this oasis,” he said. The innermost secret realm in a more distant fog valley may, he suggested, “in the symbolic language of the region, really refer to a hidden realm that is inside of you, rather than being literally a physical place.”

  Paraphrasing Mircea Eliade on this subject (from Myths, Dreams and Mysteries: The Encounter Between Contemporary Faiths and Archaic Realities, Harper, 1975), Baker concluded, “At the commencement and at the end of the religious history of humanity, we find again the same nostalgia for Paradise. The myths by which this ideology is constituted are among the most beautiful and profound in existence. They are the myths of Paradise and the fall of immortality of primordial man . . . and the discovery of the spirit.”

  Or, as we have depicted it, the gates to Paradise can also swing open into Hell.

  There really do exist many written warnings against seeking out and then entering the center of the most secret of the lost worlds. According to one ancient text, “Without proper vision, if unready, you bring unpredictable disaster. Disaster for all.”

  On racially tagged bioweapons: Fortunately, at our present point in history, the development of such weapons is restricted by the fact that viruses (the most likely tools) tend to mutate too rapidly to be practical for this kind of weaponization. However, talk of such weapons (mostly in a “defensive” context) had been in the air by the time our first novel, Hell’s Gate, originally planned as a stand-alone cautionary tale, was purchased with a request for a sequel. Though we have described this danger in terms of a modern-day fable, as with most fables, it carries a real warning. In this case, the warning points toward a reality hiding somewhere not very far ahead, like a monster under the bridge we are approaching. If there is time enough to start thinking about what might be hiding under humanity’s bridge to the genetic frontier, and to take action before we actually get close enough to be in danger, then it is logical to do so. Many aspects of our scientific fable are, in fact, science eventuality. It’s time to start the conversation.

  Acknowledgments

  The authors would like to thank Gillian MacKenzie for continuing to be the best literary agent that anyone could ever hope for. Thanks also to Kirsten Wolff and Allison Devereux at the Gillian MacKenzie Agency for their hard work.

  A very special thanks to our talented editor Lyssa Keusch and to her colleagues at William Morrow.

  We are grateful to Patricia J. Wynne for the amazing figures of Tibetan wildlife that grace our novel.

  Much gratitude to James Cameron and James Rollins for their support.

  A special shout-out to Robert Ruotolo for generously giving his time and bringing us up to speed on all things helicopter-related. We thank our friends in the USN and USMC, and we carry with us always, alive in our memories, those who did not make it back to shore.

  From Bill Schutt

  I am deeply indebted to my friends and colleagues in the research community and at the American Museum of Natural History for their advice, support, and friendship. They include Ricky Adams, Frank Bonaccorso, Catherine Doyle-Capitman, Kristi Collom, Betsy Dumont, Neil Duncan, John Hermanson, Mary Knight, Gary Kwiecinski, Ross MacPhee, Shahroukh Mistry, Scott Pedersen, Nancy Simmons (it’s good to know the Queen), Ian Tattersall, Elizabeth Taylor, Rob Voss, Sean Werle, and Eileen Westwig.

  A very special thanks goes out to my wonderful friend and coconspirator Leslie Nesbitt Sittlow. Leslie and my “brother” Darrin Lunde spent many hours reading through early versions of Codex and they were always there to provide friendship, laughs, and sound editorial advice.

  At LIU Post, thanks and gratitude to Ted Brummel, Gina Famulare, Kathy Mendola, Katherine Hill-Miller, Jeff Kane, Jen Snekser, and Steve Tettlebach. Thanks also to my teaching assistants, LIU graduate students Elsie Jasmin, Chelsea Miller, and Kay
la Mladinich, for making my life so much easier.

  Sincere thanks goes out to Bob Adamo (RIP), Frank Bacolas, John Bodnar, Alice Cooper, Aza Derman, John Glusman, Art Goldberg, Chris Grant (Yoga Farm, Lansing), Kathy Kennedy, Lisa Kombrink, Suzanne Finnamore Luckenbach, Aja Marcato, Elaine Markson, Carrie and Dan McKenna, Maceo Mitchell, Farouk Muradali; Gerard, Oda, and Dominique Ramsawak, Jerry Ruotolo, Laura Schlecker, Edwin J. Spicka, Lynn Swisher, and Katherine Turman.

  Special thanks also go out to Dorothy Wachter and Carol Trezza—for being wonderful “second moms” to me back in the day, and for encouraging my dreams of becoming a writer.

  Finally, my eternal thanks and love go out to my family for their patience, love, encouragement, and unwavering support, especially Janet Schutt, Billy Schutt, Eileen Schutt, Chuck Schutt, Bob and Dee Schutt, Rob, Shannon, and Kelly Schutt, Dawn Montalto, Donna Carpenter, Don and Sue Pedersen, Jason, Geoff, and Chris Langos, my grandparents (Angelo and Millie DiDonato), Erin Nicosia (American Cheese), and of course, my late parents, Bill and Marie Schutt.

  Selected Bibliography

  Baker, Ian. The Heart of the World (Penguin, 2006) and “The Secret River: Plants, Alchemy, and Immortality in Tibet’s Hidden Land of Pemaku,” National Geographic Adventure, 2010. (See also, regarding Russian and Chinese legends of Shambala: http://studybuddhism.com/web/en/archives/advanced/kalachakra/shambhala/russian_japanese_shambhala.html.)