FicWad

Chapter 3
EXPEDITION TO THE FAR EAST

March 22nd
Tibet, 19:06 p.m.
The caravan of yaks, loaded with archeological findings and provisions, weaved its way into the depths of the massif, leading the procession was a group of local men, heaps of scientific material mounted on their curved backs, while the foreign expedition team lagged behind the column of pack animals and porters.
“Come on boys, slack off at this point and be assured mine bullet will make of the crags your resting place.” Someone cried out, some unorthodox psychology, someone wherever he went had carried with him a worn-out copy of the Arthashastra; a man who at intervals put forward malapropos remarks drenched in solecism, of improbable grammatical constructions filled with anomaly; Maximilian the Haidan, the mystic, self-proclaimed occultist, lieutenant commander within the org. The Alaska indigenous, descendent of the Hydah tribe. Maximilian the bronze-skinned man sporting a bleached curtains haircut, a holstered Luger Parabellum 1908 and hunting knife, plain tunic and pair of hessian boots, with wax-ester-rich-toothed-whale oil polished; which the Haidan understandably preferred over the standard train oil, since the latter was seldom found, peculiar to human consumption notably when hydrogenated, that’s downright a no-good boots polisher! And because of the smattering of authority he was endued with over rest of the team, the Haidan often came into conflict with the others, needless to say he was detested by most of them.
“Ah, it’s Maximilian! the incongruous incredulous,” Shteel let loose the ire, “what is your problem buddy? Enlighten us!” Shteel Lance, this specific one, this distinguished member of the expedition, his pushy, brazen stance, was at times seen as disruptive to the overall consistency of the expedition, by the same people recruiting him.
“The likes of your kind are my problem! I am your lieutenant colonel so you better learn how to talk to me as one.” A hot-tempered Maximilian thundered, forcefully ran into Shteel in a fierce confrontation, disrupting the caravan’s progress.
“You pathetic schmucks enough with this charade.” She eventually saw to intervene. Therese La Margrave had intervened with her elysian graces and unimpeachable judgment. La Margrave, that Machiavellian figure who prided herself with the unmitigated commitment of the entire organization. She who occupied the paramount rank of Commodore within the org; the shoulder board and sleeve insignia on her floral white leather trench coat of a seal pelt’s collar, her fave, had the distinguished executive curl and lace; the fringes of her venetian blond hair crown braided, bulged from beneath the peaked cap she conventionally wore, decorated with a spread Slavic dragon, paying homage to her Caucasian heritage, they all made an integral part of her dress code, all except for her earring, earring with a turquoise stone. Therese La Margrave was the one to have the last word in setting forth the course of events as she felt right, above no one’s reach. For the time being, her mere presence was galvanizing, and with the grating voice she had their attention was hers, and so they hearkened; her imperative disposition took effect, in the Haidan’s mindset invoking rather a sense of salvation, dispersing away the shades of rebellion against his unrelenting demeanor, saving him the denigration of the situation. “What is wrong with you? Is this what I have fought so long for against the debauched politicians in the gutters of the Diet? Is this what I have raised the millions for? To sit by in distress as the best of my men tear each other apart like baiting dogs! You made the squalid porters look more refined than you are sons of the Occident. Shteel, shame on you, next time know your place.” Straightforward she signaled to the procession to carry on.
“My place!” the disillusioned man groused in denial, “I know where that is, before I agreed to this expedition of false impressions my place was meant to be on the ridges of Begguya or Lhotse Shar, lost somewhere in the Andes or the Grand Atlas! With all due respect prior to being the squadron leader within your military order, I am a mountaineer. I bear the pain of the rocks slitting my hands better than taking orders, and love the odor of the rocks more than motor oil, this is my troublesome nature, deplorable but irreversible. I chose to share your experiences and take part in this march on Tibet, not for the sake of a pseudoscientific or military ambition! but simply to quench my primitive thirst for adventure. You definitely realize how much I am of use to you, not the other way around, otherwise you wouldn’t have offered me a spot within your ranks in the first place! I know the ins and outs of these terrains like the soles of my feet. Probably I, just like anyone of you pledge natal allegiance to the Regnum, but I grew up in the East, and I interacted with those squalid people long enough to admit, in no way they are a match to our conviction on civility, but truly they are far humane than us, creation of the West, as we are from the farm swine; we worship the ego enthroned on cheap forms of matter, while they, they adulate something more interesting, somewhat further into the heights of universal human brotherhood. The roof of the world is my motherland, and I shall lead you to Shambhala. Just like that.”
“Humane! For His sake what is humane?” Rossuan exclaimed, Captain Lauren Rossuan in khaki trousers and shirt, exclaimed she when he had hit a raw nerve in her psyche, “you know my Shteel, and I know very well the idea of humanity and all their seraphic talk of compassion, equality and sick altruism is a reflection of their own human flaw. Mother Nature recognizes no human values; nature tries hard to rid itself of its unworthy elements and only rewards the strongest, proud and stout of soul. The doctrine of a human brotherhood is the creation of the scum of humankind, a moral bulwark designated by the weaklings of our human race, so to keep themselves at bay from the oppression of the physically and mentally superior of our species, the seeds of egalitarian slavery had been sown by the inferior, to repress the strong and strengthen the mentally-docile, physically-feeble and morally-perverted, fertilizing the ripe grounds they found in the emasculate quality of our modernized existence. Do you Shteel, really think the men of medieval times would have tolerated the belief in a universal human fraternity as you say? They spat on it, they saw in its roots a dogma of heresy; a dogma that sadly was made the corner stone of our times, times when the noble ethics of honor, fidelity, virility, merit and kinship, is derided as a production of backward society, a puritan doctrine that trussed up human progress in strait-laced chains; all of this while in chorus, they celebrate the cult of human rights as the greatest achievement our civilization had attained, why? Why is this two-facedness? In their own words, they say how morality suppresses all human instinct, something to keep people ignorant of the facts of nature, but still they bow down to the anti-nature creed of pacifism and egalitarianism. They say that ordinary morality is for ordinary people, yet they preach of a universal human fraternity. But I ask, was the wolf ever equal to the dog? The wolf will never deem the tamed dog its equal, but the alpha wolf will fiercely defend his pack to the death, his blood kin in times of need; is that not martyrdom? Is that not traditional morality in its bestial form? Why do they urge us to revolt against the ethical tenants of our ancestors, but exhort us to unquestionably adhere to the false cult of a one happy human family? Is it not the greatest myth the ones from above pulled on our humankind?”
“Excellent! You never fail to surprise us sweet Lauren.” Said he, first surgeon Sir Carl Hannigan, La Margrave’s henchman and renowned oriental anthropologist, chief deviser of this expedition. “There’s some truth to your words, let me quote Aristotle when he said that: tolerance and apathy are the last virtues of a dying nation. But that doesn’t spare you the slagging, your philosophical insight in itself is spurious, erroneous and intrinsically flawed.” He concluded.
“And what exactly are you implying by the ones from above Captain? The Elders God forbid?” Up to that point he’d been immersed in his silence, mandatory silence, keeping a record of whatever fell under his correctional radar, and spoke strictly out of necessity; a man without a name, whom they only knew by the official title of Regnal Commissioner, a political instructor; part of a network of political officers escorting the expeditionary forces, entrusted with the ideological re-education of military personnel suspected of their unfaithfulness to the alien authority, these Regnal Commissioners’ reports ultimately found their way to the roundtable of the Universal Council, so to take proper action against the accused.
“Far from it! Isn’t it Captain?” La Margrave retorted, “and you surgeon, say something!” trying to spare her expedition needless complications.
“I know these men,” Hanningan blundered out, collected his dissipating nerve he carried on, “I know Lauren, like a daughter to me, for it was my responsibility to build up this crew, professionals in their respective domains; Lauren one of a handful eligible for enlistment, believe me if she had anything to say, she would tell you in the face, as it is, no shenanigans!”
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but my question was addressed to Captain Lauren Rossuan, no?” shot he back, turning a deaf ear to Hannigan’s reasoning, showcasing a willingness to countermand any further interference from the Commodore’s part.
“My answer is no, I did not imply anything of the sort.” Lauren spoke for herself, “that’s not my thing, to make absurd statements, it’s just I’m too unbashful to do that. To clarify matters, I meant every word I said, your masters has manipulated this world for too long, the alien race is cancer on this earth.”
“I see! It appears your services are needed no more.” The Regnal Commissioner grimly replied.
“Neither yours.” Said the Haidan, straightforward drew his weapon, and point-blank, with unbending resolution shot the political instructor to the back of the neck, falling dead on spot, by the time he was to file his report. The caravan was brought to a halt once more.
“Why sire!” cried their guide, one of the locals, who beforehand had warned them not to profane the sanctity of the mount, seat of the hoary monastery, the Mecca of Tibet; ignoring his impassioned pleas the Haidan walked away. “The path we tread on is consecrated, why desecrate it with the scent of death?” full of rue, the guide bemoaned what had been done.
“Have you lost it you rascal? Be prepared for trial!” at the Haidan’s unexpressive face, La Margrave unrepentantly cried out in outbursts of unrestrained anger, “this kind of rabid behavior will not be tolerated under my command.” Making herself clear, she rived the rank marks off his shoulders, divesting him of his distinctions and firearm, dissembling his Luger pistol, “consider it your furlough.” She did as she said, while he stood there stiff-necked, motionless, but his head, his head a maelstrom of racing dismal thoughts; and before none else took his shot at rebellion, all then faded into thin air the instant a fit of bedlam had erupted amidst the porters, upon seeing the unseen, pointing to the heights of the mountain, the porters all of a sudden turned into pilgrims prostrating themselves in submission, dropping off their loads seriatim, shrugging off orders not to engage in the deed, reiterating the deed, they laid face-down stretching out legs with their arms forming a triangle, their foreheads rested onto the backs of their hands; not until Sir Hannigan fired off his own gun into the air, the shot heard round the massif would bring them back into swift order, the order of fear. The fear on which he fed, first surgeon Hannigan part of the confined cadre of commanders within the org; there was a sole word to define his breed, stoic. He filled the bill.
“Onwards!” La Margrave roared, and the men kicked their heels for her order, “there dwells your holy grail. March on!” Leading the procession she salivated at the sight of the majestic citadel, the Tibetan dzong perching on crest of the mount. “Someone rids us of this reeking cadaver, vultures will find use of him.” Was her command, to which the dead straightforth was flung off the bluff.
“What after all! what am I to say!” All that a broken Lauren told the Haidan.
“Well done, very well done.” Said Hannigan after her. “Just when I started to like him! But you know what, you’ve put end to speculation, that in times of trial, the Haidan, Maximilian the Haidan would convince everyone of his true mold. I give you that!”
Soon the flames of zeal possessed them all, sent them clambering the crags in a frenzy after the unknown. When that which they had toiled the days and slogged strain of the nights for, appeared to finally come into being.
“Waste no time!” Shteel bellowed, striding the distance separating them from the solemn entrance, “it’s timing that determines everything…whoever has mastery over that dimension, has access to success of mass potency, I’m telling you. The only way.”
“Of course, time, time’s the jurist,” tailing behind, Sir Hannigan paused contemplating wisps of memory ingrained in his childhood, he carried on, “accordingly men are judged, judged either to the one thing worse than death: posthumous oblivion, or the sole thing surpassing the worth of life itself: posterity, that immortal legacy ablaze as far as mankind lives on, survives on this earth and beyond; judged not by the weight of our malevolence or benevolence, but judged by the criterion of what we’ve accomplished to last forever, for the Golden Rule is relative. Bear that in mind, the mind which bore the aura of the Indus man, of Naram-Sin, Zarathustra, Hypatia, Mithras, Arminius, that of Ozymandias. To posterity or oblivion!”
“Let’s just hope, that in the end, our greatest achievement isn’t nothing but an other Cadmean victory.” Said Lauren. “Where further do we take it on the lam?”
“God knows, Lauren! God knows.’ returned La Margrave with a choked tongue, she then stepped ahead before the firmly wrapped entrance of the dzong where she loudly promulgated, “your magnificence here we have come, ambassadors of peace and seekers of truth! I hope you’ve been told of our repeatedly postponed but sincerely foresought visit! With the permission of his reverend Reting Rinpoche regent general of Tibet and in conformity with the Occident-Orient Treaty for the Advancement of Cultural and Scientific Exchange binding the Tibetan people and the Greater Occidento-Zentrum State, your attention is invited to open these gates and receive my team under the proper conditions, that would best serve the seamless undertaking of our research without reserve.” Sighing said and there waited she, to no response from beyond the commanding walls of the rigid dzong, and so the expedition fell into silence. “Something tells me we are being denied entry!” she groaned, signs of her nerve-racking anxiety exuding.
It was in the midst of their vitiating confusion that somehow a little door within the bigger portal seemed to go unbolted and quietly unravel, out of which an equally little man stepped outside, donned in the traditional clergy dress, he walked through the huddle which in their inquisitive herd behavior, swung left and right to take a dekko at the awe-inspiring creature, hence allow him passage; stern and forbidding, in one of his hand held he a parchment, which speechless he handed over to whomever it might have concerned. The guide took charge, saluted the unyielding figure in a manner unique to those of the highest echelon, and only then was he given the parchment, upon which the aloof messenger retreated into the most eldritch of courts.
“You speak the language, why don’t you tell us what’s that?” a distrustful Lauren inquired.
Their guide and interpreter, who paid not the slightest attention to her demand, unfolding the message his eyes rolled over the indecipherable lines, before he resolved to talk, “it says, the objectives of this expedition is of considerable interest to them, the holy dzong is a cradle of enlightenment before a place of worship. In their eyes you scientists are messengers to the gods on earth, so you are the most welcome to carry out your investigation as you please. Nevertheless, deem it not as an insult but an affirmation, that first you are invited to put your signatures on here, a pledge that what you are to see or hearken inside bowls of the monastery, is to be kept in the heart. If you were not to agree to these terms, your best bet is to head back whence you’ve set out before the ink on this vellum dries.” He confided.
“Head back whence we’ve come? I would rather make them lick the dust on which these men stand!” quetched she, then spoke not, but with a nod of compliance La Margrave reluctantly settled the matter, she did it.
With all due signatures in place, the guide yelled out words in the foreign tongue, and it wasn’t long before the cedar portal squalled open.
“Oh walls spread your legs before the will of thy men!” exclaimed the Haidan who stood enraptured at the sight, not anymore had he the desperate tone to his mouth; his cry ignited the brackish air around them, proceeding to the forefront, as though it didn’t matter to him any longer, his code of conduct; raising his arms in anticipation he recited from the heart, otherworldly verses:
“We are the poets! We are the children of wood and stream, of mist and mountain, of sun and wind! We are the Greeks! and to us the rites of Eleusis should open the doors of Heaven, and we shall enter in and see God face to face…
Under the stars will I go forth, my brothers, and drink of that lustral dew: I will return, my brothers, when I have seen God face to face and read within those eternal eyes the secret that shall make you free.
Then will I choose you and test you and instruct you in the Mysteries of Eleusis, oh ye brave hearts, and cool eyes, and trembling lips I will put a live coal upon your lips, and flowers upon your eyes, and a sword in your hearts, and ye also shall see God face to face.
Thus shall we give back its youth to the world, for like tongues of triple flame we shall look upon the Great Deep-Hail unto the Lords of the Groves of Eleusis!”
Then, on the spot was he quite, as if enchanted, benumbed, watching over with trembling patience, what is to come out at last.
Before all else could be seen, all that crossed threshold of the temple was, incense, the unmistakable odor of smoldering juniper leaves and seed cones caressed the men’s senses, as they swallowed lungfuls of the aromatic substance taking over the scent of death they had brought along, while in its dissipation and fusion into elements of the air, it thusly reflected the temporal nature of corporeal matter, the transmutation of the human being, the dissolution of the flesh into elements of the earth, air and fire. Thereafter, only when the incense permeated their whole being, were the men able to see, what she had brought them the distance to meet, as the shadow of a monk heaved into sight under veil of the velvet smoke, then a second, a third, so a fourth.
Instantly the Tibetans threw themselves at feet of the temple in a religious trance, the expedition’s guide whose head was sent to the ground, his hundred and eight strands of braided hair grazed the earth in a demonstration of obedience to this higher authority, the chief monk, to whom the parchment was handed back.
The chief monk, a thickset neck connected his head to his incredibly tall stature, preened himself in a robe of Arabesque-bedecked silk and the distinctive Gelug yellow hat, stationary in carriage as an eidolon entity of a profligate configuration, in sheer contrast to the ascetic presence of his fellow oblates; stood there scrutinizing the agreement he was given.
“Good, good, this is the hour!” he blurted out in accented exhilaration to the amazement of Therese La Margrave and her companions, tentatively listened they to what the man had to say. “Forgive us for the formalities, you never know what to expect with strangers! we don’t usually receive westerners within these most venerable walls, but that is not to deny it initially was our request that you come to us. Yours, children of the chosen nation, upon whom glory of the Elders was bestowed, was the only expedition we sought to allow into our holy dzong, so to be of aid to our effort, in understanding what no eye outside this hermit monastery has ever seen, nor hand touched! We have kept the discovery that boggled our minds a secret for almost a decade, before deciding upon you… alright, enough with my tedious palaver, and please be my guests.” With his order to proceed, the caravan of dreams set in motion, the expeditionary headship went in first, Therese La Margrave, Sir Carl Hannigan to her left, Shteel Lance, Lauren Rossuan and a disturbed Maximilian trailed them, to whom crossing threshold of this sacrosanct milieu was Crossing the Rubicon, a rite of passage, odd sensations overpowered him.
“Unto where my friend? It’s time you are dismissed, we sure appreciate your help.” Shteel told the timid guide in their pursuit, so he complied, handsomely paid he cracked a smile, and before the reinforced doors met each other again, he dissolved into nullity.
The expeditionary team who barely kept track of the fast-paced priestly character up and down the intricate alleys of the temple, observed in awe as the monks they passed-by stuck out their tongues at them in a bizarro spectacle.
“Oh boy that’s lewd!” a disconcerted Lauren said as she returned the gesture. “Chastity makes great libidos, I see!”
“Don’t take them wrong,” Hannigan shook his head in mindless abjuration, “it’s the Mature Bull, Tri Darma! without him, we wouldn’t be this fortunate to experience such peculiar greeting. The ninth century king who had a black tongue, was said to be a tyrant, ruthless in his oppression of Buddhists, so a tradition had arisen among the Tibetan Buddhists, who, out of fear that the cruel king would be reincarnated as one of them, stuck out their tongues for centuries to come, as a form of greeting, assuring one another they have no black tongues, that they are not the incarnation of Langdarma.”
“Careful with the research material!” Shteel, somewhere else, burst out at the porters, as they unloaded the yaks under cover of that night.
“Let me say that we are humbled to have the prestige of setting foot on the ground of your temple!” catching up with the unfolding situation La Margrave told the chief monk, on their way to the monel-stupa-domed halls of the dzong, whose inner cleft walls fired up the team’s train of thoughts.
“My pleasure.” He passively replied.
“Forgive my curiosity, but the damage on the walls seems recent, what happened?”
“Tremors, not so recent,” he told her, “it’s been over a decade when a violent tremor struck the region, we are fortunate our ancestors rose these walls with the elbow grease, on unshakeable underpinnings. Otherwise our dear dzong would have turned into rubble! For most of the villagers’ homes had crumbled, so we had to house them here for sometime, our contribution to the relief effort; though it came on the expense of our savings, with the required sum to overhaul the monastery spent in the
process; still we cherish no regret, catering to the villagers in a desperate situation was our duty.”
“You set an example worthy of imitation!” Hannigan averred, “besides, we’re also impressed of the way you speak our mother tongue! where did it come from if I may ask?”
“It goes down to my deceased son,” from a repository of monotonous thoughts and unfulfilled sacrilegious schemes the monk dredged up, “a restive man, he decided monastic life was not his thing, he instead focused on the intellectual facet of the Gelug-pa school of Tibetan Buddhism, which took him into a teaching career in the West, teaching an ersatz version of our creed, the Dgelugspa tradition.”
“Probably it’d been his true passion!”
“Oh no.” The monk went into a huff, then grumpily said, “there he found himself drawn to something else, much, much more fun, a depressing Bohemian lifestyle, quit his job and cut ties with his family, we later heard of his suicide.”
“Our condolences!”
“For what!” groused he, “It was his lot, and the spring of his memory long has dried up, now but a tale to be told.”
“There’s one more thing,” said La Margrave, “I am confident you have in-depth or partial knowledge of the tantamount importance our subject of research is to the Elders, are you sure this expedition was your proposal? Do you recognize the hazardous nature of the underlying conflict of interest?”
“You will have my answer by the time of your departure!” he grouched parrying the question, walking them through the halls, escorted by his aide; their passage came to an end, at a rugged wall on which a door in iron cut. “What lies behind this door has survived the ravages of time. What is behind predates our people and our faith!” Corrosion had eaten the locks that the monk unbolted, the door pulled open; the porters were laid off.
“My God!” Hannigan exclaimed, what existed behind the door was a cavern system of great proportions, a subterranean cavity that has weathered deep through the berg’s backbone.
“This is the sancta sanctorum on which our holy dzong was founded stone by stone!” recounted the venerable man, “below at the far edge of these stairs, resides the light, the treasure of treasures. Follow me, one step at a time.” With their research kit packed onto their backs, bewitched and out-of-touch with their former realities, the team pursued the chief monk under the mesmerizing light of paraffin lamps, the chthonic chasm swallowed them up, whole, scaling down the thousand stair cutting athwart the hollow earth, leading to the cave’s invisible bottom; like the magic from Aladdin, a hanging sheet of shimmering stalactite, knives sculpted out of sinter and dolomite framed its teal ceiling.

Quarter an hour later.
“Do you see that?” groaned Shteel as their descent was near its conclusion, when the cavern’s floor materialized out of the gloom.
“At last!” mouthed the monk, “there it is the cave’s guardian.” The few steps left ahead he and his abnormally inaudible escort stumped with calculated pace, and there were they, numbered yards stood between them and their holy grail, in the middle of the cavernous court was a humanoid object, of a man’s height and five men’s width, cloaked in a piece of fine cloth, there in the arms of aeonic loneliness it had awaited; men came and go, men rose and fell, but those who had arrived, there were to remain, for they saw beyond the clay.
“May I?” breathless with a radiant desire to remove the cloak off the mythical one, Therese La Margrave asked for the priest’s permission, which she had, and with an eager snap it was taken off.
“Why!” Lauren snarled at the revelation, a triad of horned malachite-stone sculptures together bound in delicate tracery, resting on a pedestal of iron made. “Is this is what so boggled your minds?”
“Watch your mouth my child!” angrily muttered the monk, “our icons, ours symbols, are not, a laughing matter.”
“My apologies!” in a conciliatory tone responded she, “I heavily respect your customs and traditions, it would be my last intention to offend you.”
“He’s right!” cried La Margrave, “we are not art dealers, the reason of our presence in these foreign lands was foremost not to evaluate the aesthetic aspect of this or the material worth of that, but solely to undertake empirical observation in hope of decrypting the inner workings of the subject matter.” Covering tracks to her worries she retreated to Hannigan’s side, giving a crack to his knuckles, “what do you think after all? dragged into a pointless escapade?” she quietly asked him.
“Patience!” he said, “my gut instincts never wrong, judging by their design except for the aurochs-inspired horns, there’s striking resemblance to the Dogū figurines of prehistoric Jōmon period, whose first appearance was placed in eastern Japan…there’s definitely something in-between! This is almost a life-size replica of the Japanese effigies or vice versa.” Sir Hannigan inferred, his hand crept through the sculpture’s grotesque body he then perceived what none else could with their short-sighted senses. “lines incised on the stone, words had been inscribed. Trowel give me a trowel!” he conjectured, hurriedly reached to his research kit, the sweat on his forehead he wiped off, got a trowel and a swab, likewise with an ironsmith’s fervor he etched through the dead inscriptions, breathing life into them as they unlocked and verged into readable words.
“Tell me priest!” La Margrave confronted the man, “you said the existence of the statues was unbeknownst to you, how comes?”
“The site on which they reside was vaulted in clay as long as our people have settled the mount, the cave has been a place of pilgrimage, a catacomb if you like! But none dared to touch nor scratch the dome of clay, lest the bullwhip would cleave their backs,” fleshed he out, “it was not until the tremor shook the cave’s pillars that the vault split apart, so you can imagine what chance had exposed!”
“Take a look at this!” Shteel called on them.
“It’s Sanskrit, the Nasadiya Sukta!” wondered the monk upon Hannigan’s finding, the inscription decrypted.
“Exactly!” replied Hannigan, “the Hindu hymn of creation, the 10th Mandala, the Rig Veda! These nonetheless, these verses, they don’t adhere to the trishbuts metric form, the Vedic form.”
The verses that were written in plain prosaic style, read:
ko addhā veda ka iha pra vocat kuta ājātā kuta iyaṁ visrṣṭiḥ, arvāg devā asya visarjanenāthā ko veda yata ābab, iyaṁ visrṣṭir yata ābabhūva yadi vā dadhe yadi vā na, yo asyādhyakṣaḥ parame vyoman so aṅga veda yadi vā na veda
“And what does it all mean?” Shteel again.
“But, after all, who knows, and who can say
Whence it all came, and how creation happened?
The gods themselves came later than creation,
so who knows truly whence it has arisen?
Whence all creation had its origin,
He, whether fashioned it or whether He did not,
He, who surveys it all from the highest heaven,
He knows - or maybe yet He knows not.” Therese offered her interpretation, to their surprise. “What?” taken aback she exclaimed, “it’s common knowledge.”
“Once I’m done, I’d treat you to a glass of mead!” Hannigan threw back with a tinge of flirt.
“Out of the question! down to business.” Unmoved, dry-eyed, she replied.
“Right!” he groaned and took to his material, extracting a sample from the hardstone, the sample was subjected to radiometric dating. Racking his brains Sir Hannigan then expounded, “this is beyond me, I have to admit! A Vedic hymn inscribed on a horned sculpture, is it a depiction of the sacred calf in human form? Is this the bull Nandi gatekeeper of Shiva? Or is she the cow Audumbla from the udders of whom the giant Ymir, father of us all suckled? Is he Gavaevodata, the primeval ox fifth creation of Ahuramazda, and progenitor of all beasts? But these statues perhaps predates the Vedic epoch itself, the Nordic cosmogony and Zoroastrian cosmology all together, hence, could it be the primordial bovine of a Proto-Indo-European religion? The origin of them all? Or simply far from it, what I behold is a sculpture almost identical to Mesolithic Japanese figurines, the farthest from the Indo-European impact, a coincidence? Above all, why is this rooted in the underground of a monastery at the heartland of the Tibetan plateau, home of the most isolated people? Somewhere the threads inextricably interconnect, but where? Three civilizations distant in time and space, all met in one focal point, but how?” The man hell-bent on penetrating the seal of secrecy, exposed whole of the sculpture to radio scanning.
“No use! it’s a stalemate, an enigma without a rotor machine.” Maximilian the Haidan, there at the corner, talked at last.
Time elapsed by, as Hannigan examined the scan, then on spur of a fleeting moment cried he out, “I hate to say this, but, I told you so!” the veins on his arms pumped up, “there’s something in-between, four millimeter of hollow space inside, the malachite is but a shell, something there dwells!”
“Take your time my son! Haste is no good.” Told him the chief monk.
“I would take a saw!” he fired back, laid his hand on the power abrasive saw, turned on the machine, “It’s the only way!” he declared, behind a leer of treachery.
“What if nothing was found there? What if the treasure of treasures was mauled in vain?” sullenly asked the priest.
“My head be mauled in return.”
“Be it then. Be warned though, here words of honor are not taken lightly.”
“Surgeon, get us through the needle’s eye!” now that his acquiescence guaranteed, La Margrave addressed Hannigan to proceed, who in detailed instructions delivered Lauren and Shteel the order to commence, in unison they handled the machines, and without a jot of indecision struck the statues, the saws forcefully sunk through the malachite stone, Lauren to the left, Shteel treated its right, all the while the rotating blades undeterred chopped up the sculpture, and all the while the monk observed the mechanical surgery with a bitter taste in his mouth, casting looks suspicion-ridden, the atmosphere inseminated with mistrust and apprehension unbridled a qualm of dread that seized him, he had the unerring premonition of being manipulated by those westerners.
“Lauren, complications?” Hannigan stressed out, her struggle as the incision further progressed was noticeable.
“What does it matter to you?” answered she vaguely, “what have I done to you?” she deplored, she asked, there was something wrong with her, she moaned in low-pitched snigger.
“God! she’s drooling!” exclaimed he, before Lauren aggressively hit the ground, the saw violently beveled her thigh, in blind animal panic Hannigan propelled himself toward her, tightly held her convulsive body between his arms, her profile had the pallid complexion, teeth clenching, nose bleeding, they lost her to a semi-comatose state. “Epileptic seizure.” Shteel said morosely, doing his best to suture her lesion shut.
“Her medical record had no trace of epilepsy.”
“Whatever was that, make sure she’ll be dependable on in the next twelve hours, utmost.” Therese La Margrave made her point crystal clear.
“This is wrong, this is all wrong!” spoke the monk morosely, “all the work of daemons, the statues possessed, we should not have done harm to them, enough with this heinous crime.”
Hannigan, unaffected by the priest’s imploration, injected Lauren with high phenytoin dosage; left Shteel and La Margrave tending to her wound, she who dealt with the situation in a state of enforced apathy. Instantaneously, Sir Hannigan carried on the interposed, imperfect surgery of the stone.
“You have no right, no…” in terror he growled, disquieted at the abrupt shift of events, in his futile attempt to thwart Hannigan’s plan, before he himself was assaulted from behind, the Haidan, with an electric wire savagely garroted the chief monk, “you sick fiends…” bewailed he with arrant virulence of speech, the voices rose, breathing mawkish fire and slaughter, and the voices were no longer distinct nor relevant, stifled by the shriek a slow treacherous death.
“Father!” stammered the escort, who sprinkled his legs at the cruel death of the monk, the death that neither he himself escaped, Shteel, drew out the dagger, slayed the petrified man who resisted not, straight off. The expeditionary team turned death squad, those were no scientists, those were executioners; the priest was set up, framed since the beginning.
“That was a scurvy trick to play!” La Margrave inveighed, her voice tinged with choleric fluster twined with her own sensibility, “your dishonesty, after all, spelt your death knell. I have warned you, too bad you won’t wave us goodbye at our departure, nothing left to be told.” Standing on the ravaged corpse she grumbled, concurrently she made an urgent call, then assuredly pronounced, “enforcement on their way.”
“The best defense is a good offense, that’s the vanilla rule!” without interrupting his grind, Hannigan declared, concerning murder of the chief monk; almost done there, slicing the sculpture’s malachite shell, single-handedly, the man full well savvied the machinery he got himself plugged into, he’d gone through that before, in his humble beginnings as a warrant officer.
“This is yours! you have proven yourself an indispensable member of our brigade. Forgive my ill judgment.” La Margrave told the Haidan, returned him his Luger, ostensively his reward for the assassination of the priest. “You’re gonna need it, the army of frantic monks up there we’ll be alarmed at any moment!”
“I will not disappoint, Commodore!” said the Haidan.
“Impressive!” walking past him she then thought to herself, at the sight of the final result, Hannigan’s work was accomplished.
“We made it?” said an exhausted Hannigan, though it was a zestful exhaustion, the bread of diligence. Retreated he to the side of his Commodore, hovering at her elbow, his arms folded against his chest.
“You made it, surgeon!” Therese La Margrave advanced towards the blossomed sculpture, “the most significant discovery since the Antikythera mechanism I’d say!”
“This, this is no human creation! This is wrought by hands divine!” Shteel exclaimed, out of his senses, gravitated to the lapis lazuli charms of the exhumed statues, something of a cutting edge black art, that, beyond the perceptions of their consciousness, had encapsulated them into an illusive state of Maya, a dreamlike vision, a mirror of delusions, of daemonic wisdom, as if all at once inundated their meek human minds to the point of insanity; the seconds protracted into hours, the hours into days and the days into years.
The eye of providence had been unearthed out of its concealment. And so the providence intervened, so to release them from the baleful hold of sorcery.
“My head, what has been done to me?” griped La Margrave as she sharply recovered from the pit of illusions, “as if suddenly whole of the ocean flowed into my skull, damn you what have you brought upon us!”
“It’s a mixture of carbon dioxide and oxygen!” gnarled Hannigan under the tongue, “the hallucinatory gas was stored within the malachite carcass, ripping the sculpture apart we’ve released the agent which Lauren was victim to, the higher concentrations at which she was exposed to the gas cast into the crucible of her own psychological repression, explains the severe effect it had on her. Whoever created the sculpture have done so to ward off the misuse of unworthy men. Still I wonder why haven’t they opted for a rather lethal substance?”
“Leave it to the lab report!” returned La Margrave “for now, your hypothesis means zilch to me! Just tell us what is this made of? Is it what the Elders really want?”
“Well, unless a thorough examination has been undertaken, it’s hard to say for sure.” Replied he, with a surgical mask covering his mouth and nose Hannigan cautiously approached the sculpture, “at any rate, believe me, with this discovery our names shall mark the pages of history books! This technology in its sophistication surpasses any human device, yet, it has been stowed inside a sculpture that by far preexisted invention of the wheel and axle!”
The technology he praised and glorified, the object that occupied the stone shell was a form of hi-tech organism, three of them, made of translucent alloy, their chests opened up hollowed from the inside, each had resided inside one of the three malachite statues.
“These are closer to cyborgs, but they’re not, in all probability these are combat exoskeletons, staggering, mind-blowing!” Sir Hannigan suggested, further inspecting the horned organism, “what sinewy metal is this? As lax as an animal’s hide but as hard as chromium, definitely made of a synthetic element, that is possibly a rhenium amalgamation with some other composite from the outer space, an ataxite class meteorite.”
“Rhevireon, I give it the name Rhevireon.” She proclaimed. “Manage a report of our encounter, ought to be finished by the time we take it homeward. With us we carry that which would divulge the decline of my kind.” By this time the shriek of enforcement heavy armament outside the gates had reached the cavern’s ears, Maximilian the Haidan remained stolid, by the side of an unconscious Lauren.
“We’re done here.” Shteel Lance avowed.