by J. F. Penn
In those last days, Vishal had gone every day to the Towers of Silence, tall circular structures used to expose the dead according to the Zoroastrian religion. The bodies of the dead were left for scavenging birds to consume the flesh and pick the bones until nothing was left. In this way, the unclean body, considered by some to be possessed by the Corpse Demon, could not pollute the sacred earth.
Asha turned to the wall of glass, looking north towards where the Towers of Silence lay not far from here. She narrowed her eyes. Could a piece be there?
She pressed the intercom button on her desk.
"I need a car out front," she said. "And get me the driver who used to take my father in his last months."
After a moment, the receptionist buzzed back.
"The driver will be downstairs in ten minutes," she said.
Her father's preferred driver was an older man and he snapped to attention as Asha walked towards the sedan car. He didn't meet her eyes but stood looking forward, his back ramrod straight. He wore a dark suit with a white shirt and blue tie with the Kapoor ship logo on it. His shoes were perfectly shined. It was as if he had been waiting for the call to drive even though his master had passed on. Her father had always fostered this kind of dedication in people and Asha smiled at the man.
"I need you to take me to where you used to take my father in those last days."
"Yes ma'am." He nodded. "And I'm so sorry for your loss. Your father was a great man."
His dark eyes were full of sorrow and Asha made a mental note to ensure the man was looked after. Her father would have wanted that.
They drove slowly through the streets of Mumbai and Asha stared out at the crowds through the dark tinted window, a centimeter of glass shielding her from the pollution of the roads, muting the noise of horns. Driving in Mumbai was barely worth it, but she relished the time to think on the short trip.
"Mr Kapoor had special permission to visit from the Parsi community," the driver said, after a few minutes. "Only people of faith can enter the holy grounds."
"But you know someone there, don't you?" Asha said, her voice sweet as honey, her smile open and honest. "I just need to know what my father was thinking in those last days." She let the tears well up and one perfect drop slid down her cheek. She brushed it away. "I miss him so much."
The driver looked stricken at her frailty and Asha turned her head so he couldn't see through her artifice. "Of course. I can try, ma'am."
They soon pulled up next to a locked gate with signs on it prohibiting access to the Towers of Silence. A dense tangle of trees and flowers could be seen behind, barely contained by the walls, and behind it, they could just see the top of the tower.
"Please wait here," the driver said. "I'll ring my contact."
"Here," Asha said, handing the driver a wad of rupees. "This may help."
The driver got out of the car and made a call. A few minutes later, a thin man came to the gate and unlocked it. The two men spoke together in hushed tones and money changed hands before the driver beckoned. Asha pulled a headscarf on, covering her face in modesty, and stepped out of the car.
"This man will take you to the tower," the driver said. "He knew your father in those last days."
The thin man led Asha through the garden. The sound of Mumbai retreated as the dense foliage created a fecund barrier to the encroaching city. They emerged from the verdant green at the side of the tower and walked up two flights of stairs to a small platform overlooking the inner chambers.
"Your father would sit here for hours," the thin man said. "I would share my chai with him sometimes if the wind blew up and he began to shiver. But he wouldn't move until his prayers were done." The man shook his head. "Funny really, because he wasn't even Parsi. He didn't really understand our faith, but he certainly understood death. I'll leave you for a time."
From where she stood, Asha couldn't see what lay at the base of the tower. She waited until the man's footsteps faded before she stepped forward to look down.
There were three concentric walls: the bodies of men lay in the outer ring, women in the second, and children in the middle. There were several corpses in various stages of decomposition lying in the pit. A man, little more than a skeleton with tufts of flesh like growths upon his bones. Two tiny bodies of children curled around each other. Asha wondered how they had died and whether they found comfort together in death.
There was an ossuary pit at the center of the tower for the collection of bones once they had been bleached by the sun and scoured by the wind and rain. Lime was added to help the disintegration and the matter filtered through multiple levels of coal and sand until eventually nothing was left.
It was simple and stark and Asha understood why they did this, for what is human life but the world incarnate, made flesh for a time. Then we must all return to dust, our bodies subsiding back into nature. It wasn't shocking. There was no real sense of anything human left here.
The cry of a vulture broke the air and a huge bird flapped down to peck at what remained of the man's corpse. Asha had read that the vultures here were under threat. Their numbers were dropping and there were not enough of the carrion birds to devour the bodies from the Parsi community. Even the ancient rituals of death were under threat in the march to modernity that transformed India day by day.
She gazed down at the bodies and tried to find a way into her father's mind. What had he thought about when he sat here? Had he considered the sculpture? Had he even thought of it at all? She had to believe that he had, and if so, what impact would this place have on where he might have hidden it?
A ray of sun burst through the clouds above and lighted on the innermost ring where the bodies of the children lay. The shadows shifted and Asha suddenly saw the outline of a trapdoor.
There was something underneath.
She ran down the stairs, lifting her sari out of the way so she didn't trip in her haste. Her headscarf fell onto her shoulders, but she was beyond caring about modesty.
"Excuse me," she called. The thin man emerged from a stone arch holding a cup of chai.
"Are you OK, ma'am?"
"There's a trapdoor in the middle of the tower," Asha said. "I need to know what's down there."
"The sacred area of the ritual precinct can only be entered by the nusessalars, the pallbearers," he said. "They look after the bodies and that's their way to the circles of the dead."
"I need to see it." There was a hard edge to Asha's voice. She no longer played the submissive woman. She was Asha Kapoor, one of the richest and most powerful women in India.
The man hesitated. "I'm sorry, but I can't let you in there."
"You let my father in."
The man sighed and nodded slowly.
"But he was dying, and you are not."
"We're all dying," Asha said softly. "The question is when and how much pain we suffer … and whether our families go with us."
The man paled at the clear threat in her voice.
"Come."
He led her through the stone arch and down some stairs. The smell of rotting flesh and the almost sweet stench of decomposition filled the air, but the corridors were swept clean. The bodies were outside, up above, and strangely these underground passages were for the living. Asha had no sense of dread here, only anticipation at what she might find.
Their footsteps echoed in the narrow passageway as they walked towards the center of the tower and the man stopped in a circular antechamber.
"I can go no further," he said. "My faith forbids it. But if you must, then step that way." He pointed at one of the archways from the narrow room.
Asha walked onwards alone.
The passageway opened up into a round chamber where a spiral staircase wound its way up to the trapdoor in the ceiling. There were two stone slabs, evidently for washing bodies before they were taken above. There were niches in the walls where bodies could be laid in waiting but all were empty now.
It was still and quiet and Asha felt at
peace. She didn't flinch before death, and this was death's waiting room. She believed the physical body was nothing but a vessel and that the true self would be reincarnated. She wondered what her father would come back as, or if he had escaped the cycle of Samsara. She intended to earn such great karma with her deeds that she would escape the cycle this time around. But for such a sacrifice that would gain the attention of the gods, she needed the complete statue. She walked around the stone chamber, wondering what her father had thought when he was down here.
Then, something caught her eye.
There was a carving on the wall, a tiny ship etched into the stone. She walked closer and bent down. The stone had been recently replaced, the mortar around it crumbled and the edges more polished than adjacent stones. The ship was a crude rendition of the Kapoor company logo, a nod to Vishal's first billion from the ship-breaking industry. Strange to see it in this place. It had to mean something.
Asha pulled a nail file from her bag and used it to chip away at the mortar around the stone. It fell away quickly and she levered the rock from its place. Behind it was a box. As she moved to let the light fall upon it, she gasped aloud, her inhalation echoing around the room.
How could this be?
She reached in with trembling fingers and pulled the box out.
It was made from cedar wood and decorated with dots and swirls from the paintbrush of a child. She hugged it close as she remembered painting it alongside Mahesh when they were young. Vishal had said that it would honor their mother if they painted it with love. He had kept her ashes in it and Asha had thought it safe in the family vault, so why was it here?
The box was heavy – heavier than it should be if it only contained ash, but she resisted opening it. She didn't want to see the physical remains of the mother who had loved her. But her father had clearly come here in his last days, desperate to hide something precious in a place guarded by death.
Asha opened the box.
It was filled with grey dust, like sand from a forgotten beach. There was nothing here of her mother and Asha steeled herself. She poked the ashes with the nail file, swirling it around until she heard a chink of metal against metal.
She levered the file and a corner of bronze emerged from the dust. She pulled it from the box, uncaring now of the grains that clung to her fingertips. It was one half of the base of the Shiva Nataraja statue.
A triumphant glow flushed over her body. The Aghori would be pleased and he would bless her. The day of sacrifice ticked closer, but she still had time to find the other two pieces.
Asha closed the lid, hiding the sculpture again, and laid the box gently in her bag. She replaced the stone and smoothed the mortar back into place, then she ran her fingers over the carving of the ship. Perhaps it was a clue to where her father had hidden the next piece?
Chapter 9
The energy between Morgan and Jake crackled before she stepped away.
"Another time," she whispered. She answered the phone. "What is it, Martin?"
She put the phone on speaker and his tinny voice filled the room.
"I've looked back through the ARKANE database at Marietti's official history. It's patchy and I'm still trying to get more details from the Vatican Secret Archives. He was working closely with them back in the 1980s. But when he was in India he worked with a man called Vishal Kapoor, who became one of India's richest billionaires. There are, as yet unconfirmed, reports that he died yesterday. It's not public knowledge yet because of the potential effect on his company's share price, but we'll confirm it later today."
"He couldn't have ordered the raid, then," Morgan said.
"But the timing is too coincidental," Jake added.
"I'll keep digging," Martin said. "But in the meantime, there's something you should look at right away. Vishal Kapoor was one of the team who donated the statue of Shiva Nataraja to the CERN laboratory in Switzerland. He went with the statue to deliver it and his company was heavily involved in the nuclear program in India." The sound of tapping came from the phone. "I've booked you both on a flight to Geneva. By the time you get there, I should know more about the background between Vishal and Marietti."
***
The plane banked over Lake Geneva towards the airport near the border of Switzerland and France. The lake sparkled in the sun and Morgan leaned closer to the window, resting her head on the glass to get a better look. The water below was calm and deep blue and she longed to dive into the depths. It had been too long since she'd had time to lie back and relax in the waves. Growing up with her father in Israel, they had often gone swimming in the Mediterranean. His favorite place on the coast was Caesarea beach where they could swim next to an ancient Roman aqueduct, built by King Herod in the first century. There were never any lifeguards there and she could clamber on the ancient rocks, poking into crevices to see what she could find. Not something that would be allowed here in Switzerland, of course. No clambering on monuments here, ancient or otherwise.
"Do you ski?" Jake asked, breaking her thoughts as he leaned over to look out the window. "It's not too far to Chamonix from here."
"Not very well." Morgan grinned. "But I could probably beat you at surfing a sand dune."
Jake laughed. "I might have to take you up on that sometime." He pulled out his smart phone, opening the notes on the CERN laboratory that Martin had sent through. "So this place is basically trying to explain the universe?"
"They study the nature of matter," Morgan said. "Most people have only heard of the Large Hadron Collider, the huge twenty-seven kilometer ring built underground beneath the border between France and Switzerland. They accelerate particles and then slam them together and see what happens." She tilted her head. "Well, that's the basic explanation anyway."
Jake grinned. "Sounds like a fun place."
"There are a ton of conspiracy theories, of course," Morgan continued. "Some think that the Collider is some kind of alien portal, like a stargate. Or that the particle accelerator could destroy the world with antimatter."
Jake raised an eyebrow, his corkscrew scar crinkling. "You and I have seen enough to know that there is often some truth behind the conspiracy theories."
Morgan nodded. "But I think it's more likely that people just don't understand the physics – I certainly don't. But CERN has been at the cutting edge of scientific discovery since 1954. This is where Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web back in 1989. Get a load of scientists together and see what they come up with. It's a great idea."
"Maybe we need to do something like that for the supernatural world?" Jake mused. "Imagine how much fun we'd have."
The plane descended for landing and Morgan and Jake soon emerged into the arrivals hall. A young Indian man stood holding a sign with their names on it, his eyes scanning the crowd. They walked over and he greeted them.
"Welcome to Geneva," he said, with a faint Indian accent. "I'll be taking you on your tour today. I'm Amit, a research scientist on secondment here, so I can answer all your questions. This way."
He led them to a black sedan and they got in.
"It's not far," he said. "I'll take you to the visitor center first."
They soon pulled up in front of a huge golfball-shaped structure, the high dome evoking the circular shape of the Large Hadron Collider. Morgan wondered what secrets they kept here, deep under the earth, away from the prying eyes of interested tourists.
"I understand that you want to see the statue of Shiva?" Amit said, as they climbed out of the car and stretched their legs. "I can take you there straightaway. As a Hindu, I'm proud that my country donated the statue to the lab."
They followed Amit down a winding path beyond the visitor center towards more lab buildings, all labelled to help tell them apart. It was a huge campus and Morgan looked around in interest as they walked, wondering what really went on here. Perhaps like ARKANE it had a public-facing side, publishing the findings that were understandable to people in some way. But she was sure that they found thin
gs here that were unexplainable, indistinguishable from magic as Arthur C. Clarke said of any sufficiently advanced technology. Once she would have laughed at the idea of conspiracy, but she had seen things with ARKANE that made anything possible.
"What does the statue represent to you as a Hindu and a scientist?" Jake asked.
Amit paused, his face serious.
"Lord Shiva danced the universe into existence. He sustains it and eventually, he will destroy it. Whether you see this as a metaphor or an ancient truth, it's a powerful symbol for what we study here: the very building blocks of the universe. I believe that even if we find the answer to every scientific question, beyond that will still be God, the great unknowable. The American cosmologist Carl Sagan spoke of the parallel between Shiva Nataraja and subatomic physics. He understood the Hindu idea of cycles of time, an infinite number of deaths and rebirths. To understand this is to realize our own insignificant place in the universe." Amit paused and then pointed onwards. "This way."
They rounded a corner between buildings 39 and 40, a short distance from the main building, and suddenly there it was. A two-meter-high copper statue of Shiva Nataraja. Morgan walked closer, drawn to the smooth skin of the god as his almond-shaped eyes stared implacably down at her.
"It was made using an ancient technique of bronze casting," Amit explained. "The original sculpture was made from wax, each perfect detail carved according to the exact image of Shiva, for each statue must be perfect in homage to God. A clay cast was made and then the wax melted from inside before metal was poured into the space left behind. The clay was chipped away, leaving the bronze statue, which was then filed and polished to create the final piece. This is an art that we continue to use in India for many sacred statues."
Jake bent down to read the plaque at the base.
"It's meant to symbolize the marriage of technology and mythology," he said. "Presented by representatives of the Indian Department of Atomic Energy back in 2004."
