Asura

by R P L Johnson

  If Marinucci was worried about AMS then they must be bound for farther up the mountain. But how high?

  The inside of the shelter was one big open space, about twenty feet in diameter. The clear plastic skylight panels at the cardinal points let in plenty of light that glinted off the polished surfaces of two stainless steel tables laden with electronic equipment. One table was dominated by three large flat panel monitors in front of a keyboard and a graphic designer’s CAD tablet. The other held a brushed aluminium carrying case. The front panel of the case had been unlatched to reveal a rack of communications equipment fitted inside.

  ‘Pretty high tech,’ Rose whistled. ‘Exactly which organisation are you from Mister King?’

  ‘The makeup of the mission is a little disparate, I’ll grant you,’ King replied cryptically. ‘Our location dictates that the use of Pakistani military personnel is not possible. To put it bluntly, our goal is in a disputed area and the Indian authorities have made it quite clear that they would view any military incursion as an act of war. We have had to gather somewhat of a menagerie in order to build a team with the requisite skills. Mister Marinucci here is something of a hired gun. Our medical personnel have been poached from a UN mission in Islamabad. The rest of the team you will meet later but suffice to say that gathering you people together has been quite a task in its own right.’

  ‘You didn’t answer my question?’

  ‘Didn’t I? Suffice to say that I am a humble employee of her Majesty’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office.’

  A diplomat, Rose thought, or a spook?

  ‘And what exactly in this goal?’

  King sat down in front of the computer terminal. With practiced strokes on the CAD tablet he pulled up a series of satellite images.

  ‘Two days ago, a Fairchild F27 Friendship took off from Tajikistan with thirty-six passengers on board, bound for Gilgit. It never arrived. It’s filed flight path took it around the western edge of the Himalayas.’ King traced a sweeping curve on the screen. ‘But the last transmission that was picked up came from the ELT, the emergency location transmitter, and put the plane somewhere here, between Ganaio, and Nanga Parbat itself.’ King jabbed at the screen with a long finger.

  ‘That’s where we’re going, Gentlemen. About twenty miles east of here, and over a mile straight up.’

  Rose looked at the screen. There were no visible trails led alone roads or settlements: nothing except for the sharp peaks and steep-edged arêtes of a high and desolate mountain range.

  He tracked west from the Colonel’s finger until he found the two parallel rock spurs that gave away their current location. They were at about ten thousand feet, still lower than Nanga Parbat Base camp, but certainly one of the highest points in the range that was accessible by jeep. Jhel and Tarashing, the other jeep-accessible villages, and popular starting points for the tourist trekkers, were both a good way east of their current location. Wherever it was they were going, it was way off the usual climbing routes.

  ‘Any idea why they were so far off course?’ Tej asked.

  ‘There was a pretty bad storm that night,’ King replied, ‘—and some of our people reported an unusual amount of electrical activity. They may have either tried to fly around the worst of the weather and been caught out, or possibly the electrical disturbance fouled up their instruments. We don’t know. But we do have a good idea of where they are.’

  King zoomed in towards one of the many valleys with a few deft swipes of his stylus.

  ‘We’re about fifty kilometres from the line of control between Indian and Pakistani-administered Kashmir,’ he continued. ‘We keep a pretty close eye on this area. These photos were taken thirty six hours ago.’

  Rose looked at the photos. They didn’t seem to show anything more than a piebald pattern of white and grey. Except in the corner of one photo where a line ran dead straight across a patch of white before disappearing into shadow.

  ‘What’s this?’ Rose asked, pointing to the line.

  ‘You’ve got good eyes, Captain. I suppose you would have to, given your line of work. Natural selection, eh? That, we believe, is the furrow made by the plane’s impact. The plane itself was in the shadow of Nanga Parbat when the satellite passed overhead, but we can see some debris here… and here.’

  ‘Could anyone have survived?’ Tej asked.

  ‘To be honest, we don’t know. The fact that there is a furrow at all indicates that the plane stayed together until impact, and came in at a shallow angle. I think it will depend on how well it stayed together afterwards and how much shelter it could have provided. The nights on the glacier get pretty damn cold.’

  Rose remembered how cold it could get in the high Himalayas. He had spent more than his fair share of nights above the snow line, breathing air that had only half the amount of oxygen found at sea level. One too many nights as it had turned out.

  The cold at high altitude was unlike anything most people would ever experience or even imagine. The rarefied air just could not contain the same amount of heat as the denser atmosphere down below, and every breath felt like being stabbed in the lungs with icicles. What heat the body produced itself was sucked away almost immediately as the thin atmosphere provided almost no insulation. Sleeping at that height was not really sleep at all, just a few dark hours of semi-consciousness filled with dreams of drowning.

  The plane’s insulated fuselage would provide better shelter than a tent, or snow-hole, if it was still intact. If it had broken up, as it almost certainly had, and without any training or equipment, it would be a miracle if any survivors of the crash had made it through the first night.

  ‘Sir, you realise that this probably ceased to be a rescue mission after the first night. Chances are there’s no-one still alive up there.’

  ‘I know, Captain. And I know that I will be putting more lives at risk by going up there. But the Pakistani government have made a formal request for aid, and we’re going to give it. This is a sensitive issue at home as well as in Islamabad: Rupert Garrett was aboard that plane.’

  Rose recognised the name, but it took a couple of seconds to remember where he had heard it before.

  ‘Rupert Garret, the M.P.?’ he said eventually.

  ‘You’ve been away from home too long, Captain. Garrett is the Shadow Foreign Secretary and a member of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee. The possibility of terrorism has not been ruled out.’

  ‘What was he doing aboard the flight?’

  ‘The old buzzard’s angling for a peace prize. He was on a fact finding mission to Kashmir. The media have set on the story like a pack of wild dogs. Something must be done, Captain, and it must be seen to be done. Come on; let’s introduce you to the rest of the team.’

  ◆◆◆

  The spark was still there.

  The tiny fleck of fire that had brought so much hope to the cold mountain was still there. The Sleeper concentrated on it, and it alone, as if he could draw it closer by the sheer force of His will. He bent what energies his half-dead form could muster to that task, and with every passing heartbeat He felt Himself growing stronger. The speck, the hope: it was everything.

  He was still weak: not yet strong enough even to rouse Himself from His mighty slumber. He dreamed a dream of waking and forced that part of him into being. A dream fashioned from meat and claws and desire, an emissary, a flesh-slave to do His work. He felt that tiny shard of Himself scream with the beautiful agony of birth. He revelled in its freedom—the same freedom that he would soon taste for himself.

  At the back of His mind, somewhere beneath the thin layer of consciousness that had formed like a sheen on the oily, black waters of His sleep, he felt them. His brothers were restless. He wondered if they yet understood the cause of their unease, if they had felt the fire as He had.

  Never mind. They would feel it soon enough and they would roar with the promise it brought. To leave this cold dark place and bathe in the energy far above the cloying fog around this planet.
/>   To return to the stars.

  CHAPTER 4

  Night fell quickly in the mountains. The razor-sharp peaks and arêtes surrounding the crash site sliced off the sunlight as efficiently as turning off a switch.

  With the darkness came the wind. The rapidly cooling air slid heavily down the mountains’ flanks, whipping up an icy storm. Within minutes the temperature dropped from just a few degrees below freezing to minus thirty.

  McCarthy hugged her knees to her chest and pulled her thin blanket even tighter around her shoulders. Even so her teeth chattered so hard she thought they would shatter. She had never felt so cold. This was their third night on the mountain and it was turning out to be the worst yet. The wind howled outside and its bitterly cold tendrils slid through the makeshift patches over the plane’s many battle scars. Strong gusts buffeted the fuselage making it rock on its icy foundation. With each shudder McCarthy felt sure that they were going to start a fatal roll down the shallow slope of the glacier.

  The other survivors looked as bad as she felt. In the light of the single torch that hung from the ceiling they looked more like piles of old clothes than people. It was too cold to sleep and they had all fallen into a pattern of dozing in the relative warmth of the day. The hours of darkness were just one long ordeal of adjusting clothing and blankets, of flexing numb limbs and rubbing noses to stave off frostbite. To fall asleep in such conditions meant never to wake up.

  Apart from the wind, the only sound was of Khamas speaking softly to his daughter in a language that McCarthy couldn’t quite place. Although she spoke a smattering of Urdu and Punjabi, the rolling vowels of Khamas’s monologue were subtly different. It was a beautiful language and she let the unfamiliar sounds wash over her like a lullaby. She sat uncomprehending but soothed like a babe in its mothers arms. Others were not so appreciative.

  ‘For Christ’s sake can’t you cut out that infernal babbling!’ Garrett swore.

  ‘Why don’t you just shut up, Garrett?’ Carver replied. ‘You’ve done nothing but bitch for three days.’

  ‘Please, my friends,’ Khamas interjected. ‘Mister Garrett has a point, however bluntly put. It was impolite of me to use a language that can not be understood by all.’

  ‘Don’t worry about Garrett,’ McCarthy said. ‘You just carry on. It sounded beautiful.’

  ‘I was merely recounting an old story. It sounds best when told in the tongue for which it was written.’

  ‘What language was that?’

  ‘It is an ancient form of Shina. It used to be spoken in this part of the world, but it has fallen out of use. It is very old.’

  ‘If it’s so bloody old, how come you still speak it?’ Garrett asked.

  ‘It is a necessary skill in my line of work. I am a student of history, and a teacher of what I learn. My speciality is the Harappan civilisation of the Indus Valley, particularly the links between Harappa and the Oxus civilisation of Tajikistan.’

  ‘Sounds fascinating,’ Garrett mumbled sarcastically as he adjusted his blankets.

  McCarthy ignored him. ‘So were you telling a story about the Harappans?’ she asked.

  ‘No. There is very little writing from that period: only a few symbols on official seals and pottery. I was telling the story of the nagas, the servants of the Hindu god, Varuna. It is said that the nagas were a divine race of serpent-people who lived in the rivers and streams that fed the Indus. Their king was a mighty seven-headed serpent called Mucalinda. One day the Buddha was meditating under a bohdi tree when a fierce storm arose, much like tonight. To protect Lord Buddha from the elements, Mucalinda surrounded him in his coils, rising up above him and spreading the hood between his seven heads to form an umbrella.’

  As he spoke Khamas held his blanket over his daughter’s head and made a fierce face as if imitating the serpent king. Hadeeqa laughed; the bright, tinkling sound even brought a smile from Garrett.

  ‘When the storm broke,’ Khamas continued, ‘—the king of the nagas returned to his human form and the Lord Buddha thanked him and blessed him and entrusted the nagas with guarding the sacred sutras, the Buddhist holy texts, until mankind was ready to receive them.’

  ‘I thought you said that the nagas were the servants of a Hindu god?’ McCarthy asked. ‘How come they are entrusted with guarding Buddhist scriptures?’

  Khamas smiled. ‘Around here the old legends flow like the glaciers, splitting and reforming over the centuries until each valley contains a different part of the original truth. Stories of the serpent-people about in Hinduism and Tibetan Buddhism. The nagas appear in cultures as far away as China and Indonesia. The god they served, Varuna, is mentioned in the earliest Hindu holy books, but also appears in Persian Zoroastrianism. Farther west he is called Mitravaruna and is associated with the Roman deity Mithras. Indeed Varuna was the leader of the Asuras, a race of divine beings that challenged the power of the gods, and the Asuras also appeared in Persia as Ahura and in Scandinavian mythology as the Aesir. Some scholars take the similarities between the ancient stories to indicate a common ancestry to the Bronze Age cultures of Iran and the Indian sub-continent. Others would have you believe that they point to a long lost proto-religion that was held by the pre-Vedic civilisations. The one true religion that was observed in the cradle of human civilisation.’

  ‘Serpent kings and ancient civilisations,’ Garrett snorted. ‘It sounds more like a child’s bedtime story than a religion.’

  ‘Are you a religious man, Mister Garrett?’ Khamas asked.

  ‘I certainly am. Church of England and proud of it.’

  ‘So you are a Christian then? Did you know that but for the decision of one man, you could be worshipping Varuna instead of Jesus Christ?’

  ‘Rubbish!’

  ‘Far from it. In the year 312A.D. the Roman Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity. The following year he issued the Edict of Milan which officially put an end to the Roman Empire’s vicious persecution of Christians. Before his conversion Constantine worshipped the pagan sun god Mithras, the Roman analogue of Varuna. Temples to Mithras called mithraeums can be found all over Europe. Statues of Mithras have been uncovered as far north as Hadrian’s Wall in Scotland. The mithraeums were often converted caves, or sometimes buildings designed to appear cave-like. After his death Mithras is said to have been buried in a great cavern and was then resurrected. The parallels with Christian teachings are self-evident. Mithraism and early Christianity were as alike as brothers. Had Constantine not been converted it could have been Christianity, not Mithraism, that was consigned to the history books and course of European history could have been much altered. Two millennia later you could have been celebrating the winter solstice in a spelaeum rather than spending your Christmas in a church.’

  Garrett’s reply was cut short by a strong gust of wind that shook the cabin from end to end. There was a muffled thud and a bitterly cold stream of air surged in from the rear of the cabin.

  ‘The wall must have given way,’ McCarthy said.

  Pulling her blanket over her head like a shawl, McCarthy edged down the side of Morcellet’s pallet and pulled aside the screen that separated the front of the cabin from the jagged opening at the sheared-off tail. They had plugged the opening with a wall of luggage and cemented it together with hard-packed snow. Ten feet tall and roughly circular the wall was a post-modern igloo of suitcases, rucksacks and ice. Rigid plastic rectangles stuck out like Lego bricks in a child’s unfinished construction project.

  There was a hole near the top of the wall where it butted up to the torn metal of the fuselage. McCarthy looked for the dislodged case but it was nowhere to be seen. There was only about six feet of cylindrical space between the luggage wall and the hanging screen and although it was almost pitch black, McCarthy was sure that the missing case was not there.

  ‘Shit!’ she said to herself. And then to the others: ‘It’s fallen outside. We need to find something to plug the hole.’

  Light spilled in as Millicent Ca
rver joined McCarthy behind the screen. She scanned the wall with a pencil-thin flashlight.

  ‘We don’t have anything big enough,’ she said. ‘We could try to remove another of the seats, but it will take time.’

  The wind howled in through the hole stinging McCarthy’s face with ice crystals.

  ‘Well we can’t leave it like that all night,’ McCarthy said. ‘We have to seal it up somehow. Lend me your torch for a second, will you?’

  McCarthy braved the icy blast through the opening and shone the little torch out into the darkness.

  ‘I think I can see it,’ she said. ‘It’s only a few feet away. We could go outside and—‘

  She jumped back with a start. ‘My god! There’s someone out there!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Out in the storm: I saw someone!’

  ‘What did they look like? Were they part of a rescue team?’

  ‘I didn’t get a good look at them. I just saw someone moving about.’

  She shouted out into the storm. ‘Hello! Is there anybody out there?’

  The world beyond the wall looked like the black void of space: darkness flecked by wheeling stars as flurries of snow sparkled in the torch’s beam. Then she saw it again. There was a flash of movement and a shift in the pattern of shadows. For a second she thought she saw a face, pale and ghostly with empty, black eye sockets, and then it was gone.

  ‘There’s definitely something out there,’ she said.

  ‘Something?’ Carver asked. ‘I thought you said someone.’

  ‘I’m not sure. I saw something, but... Maybe it’s a scavenger... a snow leopard.’

  ‘We’re too high. There’s nothing up here but us. You’re just seeing things.’

  Carver snatched the torch back and pushed past her back into the cabin. ‘I’ll fix the breach from the outside.’

  McCarthy followed her through the cabin.