by Chris Angus
Taklamakan Desert
Dr. Marcia Kessler emerged from the burial chamber slapping clouds of white dust from her baggy pants and proceeded to bend over in a coughing fit. As soon as she was able, she lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply, her sloping shoulders shuddering with pleasure.
Corkie Miller, one of her young graduate assistants, came over. There was a hint of fear in his eyes. “How am I supposed to record this . . . outcome . . . Dr. Kessler?”
She sighed. “Just put it down as an unusual deterioration of the specimen, Corkie.”
“Well that’s the truth.”
But the apprehension in his eyes remained. “You don’t think it could be anything contagious? You know, something we should be worried about?”
“We’ve all been in that hole for weeks, Corkie, breathing the dust, touching the specimen. If there’s any danger, it’s a little late to worry about it. Let’s just do our jobs. The answers are down there, I promise you.”
“It’s what else might be down there that’s worrying me.” He started to turn away, then added, “Evelyn and I are going into town to get supplies.”
Kessler nodded absently. It was an off day at the dig with only the three of them on site. Her gaze wandered to the little colony of worker’s huts nestled at the base of the hill beside the Tarim River. The decrepit, conically-shaped yurts were insulated with overlapping layers of nearly white felt. From a distance they looked almost like igloos, implausibly situated on these brown and barren hillsides. But nomadic herders had lived in this fashion, here at the edge of central Asia’s great desert, the Taklamakan, for thousands of years.
In fact, the residents of this particular colony were not local herders but Tibetans, little more than wage-slaves, really, now under the total control and domination of the Chinese. She felt once again the pang of guilt as she stared at the terrible poverty displayed below. These poor people made her work possible and, despite their suffering, remained adamantly cheerful.
A car pulled up in a cloud of swirling dust and Kessler groaned. It was the tiny, tin-can-like Yugo that belonged to Zhangmao Huang, the low-level official who oversaw the dig. Huang knew nothing at all about archaeology. Fortunately, he was under orders to accommodate her with more or less whatever she required. Her finds here were significant, and the possibility had been raised of making the Taklamakan location a World Heritage Site. That would be a significant coup for the image-obsessed officials in Beijing and might even lead to increased tourism revenue.
“Dr. Kessler, so good to see you,” Huang said, approaching and bowing stiffly. He had a narrow face and sharp features, his pale skin offset by thin black hair combed carefully across a receding forehead. Heavily hooded eyes made him look older than his thirty years. He dressed in meticulous Western style and stood stiffly in an immaculate pin-striped, gray suit. No doubt he fit right in amongst the functionaries in Beijing, Kessler thought, but it was a ridiculous outfit here in the desert.
She nodded, forcing herself to smile. “Thanks for coming by, Huang.”
“It is not every day, Doctor, that we learn of such an important new discovery.” He stared across the bleak, high-desert landscape. “What wonderful mysteries my ancestors left beneath the earth for you to uncover. We Chinese are very proud of our heritage.”
Kessler opened her mouth and then shut it. The Tarim mummies buried here dated from 2000 B.C. They were extremely well-preserved, the result of the dry climate and high salt content of the soil, which saved them from deterioration. But they were most decidedly not Chinese in origin. Huang knew this, but chose to ignore it. Since he ignored anything that didn’t fit his narrow world-view, she had learned not to rise to the bait, though it was a struggle sometimes.
In fact, the features of the naturally preserved bodies were Caucasian. Cherchen Man, discovered in the mid-1980s, dated to the eleventh century B.C. He had ginger-colored hair and a gray beard, and wore an elegantly tailored woolen tunic the color of red wine with striped leggings in yellow, red, and blue, which made him look like something out of Dr. Seuss. Kessler’s DNA studies had proven conclusively that the Tarim people were of European origin.
Huang glanced at the hovels below and made a face. “One wonders how they can live like that,” he sniffed.
“They live like that because the Chinese have destroyed their culture,” Kessler snapped, but she bit her lip, angry she’d allowed her temper to get the better of her. “There are a couple of things to show you,” she added quickly. “First, we’ve found a series of footprints—two people, actually—walking side by side down a sloping cliff on the other side of the mountain. One of the Tibetan workers found it and realized its significance.”
Huang’s eyes lit up. “Like the ones that were found south of Lhasa?”
“Similar, yes. I’d say they date from the same period, about twenty thousand years ago, at the height of the Ice Age. One more nail in the coffin of the theory that glaciers covered the entire high plateau as we once thought.”
“Hard to imagine mere footprints surviving all those millennia without wearing down.” Huang shook his head in wonder.
“We speculate a hot spring existed here that attracted the Ice Age people. The water was rich in dissolved minerals and gasses. As carbon dioxide bubbled out of the mix, it caused minerals like calcite to precipitate out, forming a soft mineral mud. When the mud dried, it turned into a hard, durable limestone called travertine.” She saw Huang’s heavily lidded eyes starting to glaze over. “Basically, the hot spring made plaster casts of the movements of the people who lived on the mountain side.”
“And the other discovery?” he asked.
She felt her adrenaline begin to rise, in spite of herself. “The other discovery is quite a bit more . . . intriguing. Come inside.”
She turned abruptly and led the way down a sloping corridor of red-earth walls, beneath a roof of supporting timbers. The walls had openings at regular intervals where bodies had been interred. There was a low hum from a small generator that powered a handful of harsh light bulbs strung along the ceiling. Technically, they should not be down here when no one else was on site, especially after the recent and unusually heavy rains. It was a safety issue. The place was a honeycomb of caves and wormholes caused by water filtering through the ancient mixture of sand and salt deposits. But Huang had waved a hand when told of this in the past.
Kessler turned down another corridor and stopped at the end. In front of her, reclining on a carved platform of salt, lay the body of an adult male. Remarkably well-preserved when first encountered, it had ivory, parchment-like skin, fair hair, full lips, and a long nose. Those features had begun to deteriorate almost as soon as the body had been uncovered, however. This was the outcome that so worried Corkie and, Kessler had to admit, stymied her as well. The chemistry of the salt fields selected for burial by the ancients normally preserved human flesh like a salted ham. She had no explanation for what was going on with this figure.
Huang moved in closer, brushing against her in the tight confines. He stared at the mummy intently. Despite the deterioration, it exhibited a face that was very human. Even a facial expression could be determined given a little archaeological license.
“He looks like he’s in pain,” Huang said.
“That was the first thing I thought, too,” said Kessler. “We don’t know for sure who he was, but I think he may have been a priest of some sort. He’s definitely not royalty and probably not high status. There were no accompanying objects of any kind—no jewelry, inscriptions, bits of clothing. Nothing. The body is preserved differently from the others we’ve found . . .”
“How so?”
“The way the other bodies were naturally preserved by the dry climate and the salt content of the soil is similar to the way Egyptian mummies were protected through a process of packing the bodies with natron, a mineral of hydrous sodium carbonate. But this is . . . something else.”
Kessler considered Huang with little enthusiasm. She knew
how he saw her—unattractive, a lean, fiftyish, dry-skinned female with a voice like raw sandpaper. She was not unlike the bodies she uncovered for a living, she thought.
“What else?” he asked.
“I’ve never actually seen this process before, though I’ve heard of one or two examples. I think this man has been self-mummified.”
He stared at her incredulously. “Surely you are joking, Doctor.”
She didn’t answer him right away. Instead, she hitched up her pants and produced a small brush from her pocket. Gently, she began to brush the dirt away from one side of the jaw, squinting closely at the figure. It was going to be difficult to explain. She found it hard to believe herself that anyone could do such a thing.
Huang waited patiently. That was the thing about the Chinese, Kessler thought irritably. They really were inscrutable and could outwait any Westerner with ease. She uncovered the full slope of the chin, noting with consternation how particles of the chalk-like bone seemed to melt away, literally turning to dust before her eyes. It sent a shiver down her spine, and she realized she was as disconcerted as Corkie had been.
“The Buddhists were said to have begun the practice around 800 A.D.,” she began.
“I thought the bodies here were much older.”
“They are, some dating to at least 2000 B.C., which certainly suggests the process goes back a lot further than was thought.”
“Exactly what is this process you are talking about, Doctor?”
“The priests would slowly starve themselves on a strict diet which caused mummification of body tissues from the inside-out, so to speak.”
Huang’s inscrutability was shaken for the first time. He stared at her with a look of revulsion. At least that was what it looked like to Kessler. Who could tell what lay beneath those toad-like lids? Whatever the expression meant, she contemplated it with a satisfied smirk.
“Certainly what you say would not be possible,” he said.
“Oh, it’s possible all right. Basically, the body was starved of substance so that eventually nothing remained to decay. The diet was designed to rid the body of all fat, wither away the flesh and rot the internal organs. They began with the elimination of all cereal crops such as barley and rice, followed by the consumption of only fruit, berries, and plant roots. As the mummy wannabe lost weight, he descended to a small, underground room where he surrounded himself with candles, effectively drying himself out.”
Huang listened in rapt fascination.
“The subject breathed through a bamboo pipe, chanted sutras and awaited death. When it came, his emaciated body was entombed for at least three years until the drying process was complete. In one documented case, a seventy-year-old monk confined himself to an underground vault and consumed tea made from the toxic sap of the urushi tree, used to make lacquer. Near the end, he drank only water from a hot spring containing high levels of arsenic. The sap, a purgative, induced vomiting and urination, desiccating the priest’s body. The arsenic acted as a preservative, killing bacteria that would normally cause decay. When exhumed, the body had been literally mummified from the inside out and appeared as though it had been lacquered onto a skeleton.”
Now Huang looked like he was going to be sick. From his squatting position he put a hand on his forehead and closed his eyes. Almost at once, he lost his balance, falling sideways heavily. In an attempt to break his fall, one arm struck a weak spot on the floor and passed straight through the cave wall.
Kessler’s eyes went wide as she felt the entire section of floor tremble. She tried to back away, but it was too late. With a soft, sloughing sound, like sand being washed out of a river bank, the entire floor gave way and they felt themselves falling, virtually swimming in diffusing salt deposits.
She caught a glimpse of Huang’s frightened face as he slid past her into the darkness. The entire collapse took only a few seconds, but they rode the washout down at least fifty feet before they stopped. Kessler’s lower body was encased in salty sand. She struggled to pull herself free, then called for Huang.
She could see almost nothing. Only a sliver of light hung far above them. She felt around in growing circles until she located something hard and round. Huang’s head. Quickly, she uncovered it and issued a sigh of relief when he coughed.
It took several minutes to dig him out, the panic in his thin voice evident. When he was finally free, they collapsed side by side in the darkness, peering up at the tiny window of light far above. Then the lights flickered suddenly and went out. They were plunged into a darkness so complete they might have been struck blind.
Immediately, Kessler sensed Huang’s growing panic.
“Help!” he cried in his thin voice. “Someone help us!”
Marcia waved a hand in his direction, brushing his face. “Save your energy,” she said. “There’s no one to hear you. The others went into town. We’re alone.”
“My God. How long until they come back?”
“Could be most of the day, but I don’t think we can wait for them.” She dug in her pocket and brought out the small flashlight she always carried in order to examine the small, shadowy corners that exist in every dig. Its sudden brilliance seemed to fill their surroundings. She looked at Huang and saw the evident relief on his face. She shone the light all around. For the first time they could see the precariousness of their position.
The walls above them actually slanted inward toward the opening far above at the very edge of the light’s range. They sat on top of a mountain of granulized salt, some of which continued to slide away in front of them into what looked to be an abyss. Directly across the opening was an indentation that appeared to be some sort of cave. It was hard to tell for sure in the limited beam of her light.
“What do you mean, not wait for them?” asked Huang. “What else can we do?”
“We don’t know what happened to the corridor above,” she said. “The light going out suggests there may have been another collapse. A cave-in might have sealed the entry. It could be days before they manage to get help and dig us out. Maybe there’s enough air down here to last—maybe not.”
She stared at Huang’s twisted, frightened face. Not the most pleasant prospect, she thought grimly, to be trapped and perhaps die down here in the sole company of this bureaucratic nitwit.
She stood and immediately stepped back as more of the mixture of granulized salt and sand sifted over the edge. She again played the light over the indentation opposite.
“What are you doing?” asked Huang.
“We’ve got to look for another way out. There are weak spots and tunnels all through this landscape. Many reach to the surface. I think we can jump across this opening. It’s not too wide.”
“Are you crazy?” Huang leaned forward and stared into the seemingly bottomless hole. “We have to wait for help to come.”
“Look, I can’t force you to come, but I’m not going to stay here. And when I go, I take the light with me. Do you really want to stay here in the dark?”
For a moment, she thought he might try to take the light away from her. She turned it off suddenly, plunging them into blackness. “This is what it’s going to be like, Huang, when the batteries run down. A few hours at the most. Do you want to be down here in the dark for days hoping someone comes for us?”
He took a heavy breath. “No,” he replied grudgingly.
“Good.” She played the light at their feet. “See that small ledge where the sand has fallen away? Help me clear it off. We’ll use it to jump from.”
The cleared ledge certainly looked like a feasible point from which to make the five-foot leap.
“I’ll go first,” Marcia said, reluctantly handing him the light. “Shine it on the landing zone so I can see what to grab onto and for God’s sake don’t move the light until I’ve safely got my balance over there.”
She backed down their tiny launch ramp and stared at the rocky platform in front of the cave. It angled upward sharply and there were precious few object
s to grab onto. All of a sudden it didn’t look as easy as she had first determined.
“Here I go.” She took three quick short steps and launched herself just as there was another sudden subsidence of salt from above. The sound was familiar and frightening and caused Huang to immediately shift the beam of light upwards so Marcia was now leaping into pitch blackness.
She screamed at him in mid-air, causing him to jerk the light back, producing a sickening strobe-like effect on her intended landing spot. She hit hard, hands scrabbling over the bare rock trying to find some bit of purchase. She felt herself slipping toward the edge. Her feet pushed against the rock and ever so slowly, she arrested her backward movement. Her right hand found a knob of rock to grab onto and a moment later she was safe, her breath coming in great heaves.
She glared at the little Chinese who stared sheepishly at his feet. “I don’t ever want to do that again,” she said. “Throw me the light so I can hold it while you jump. And for God’s sake, be sure to throw it far enough into the cave that there’s no chance of it slipping into the chasm.”
But in the next instant, things began to happen quickly. More salt started to slump down from above. Huang looked up, as the salt he stood on also began to give way. Panic-stricken, he threw the light at Kessler and simultaneously leapt for the cave as the ground beneath him disappeared.
In the last strobe-like vestiges of light, as the flashlight twirled in the air and landed behind her, Marcia managed to grab his hand. Upon hitting the stone floor, the light flickered out, leaving them alone in the dark with nothing but the sound of softly churning salt. She held onto Huang’s hand with all her might, while his feet clawed uselessly at the rock wall.
“Find . . . something to hang onto,” Marcia rasped. “I can’t hold you.”
For what seemed an eternity, Huang grunted and swore beneath her in the dark. Marcia’s arm felt as though it was being pulled from its socket. Then, miraculously, the pressure disappeared, as Huang pulled himself up and over the edge, collapsing with an audible cry of relief.