Cryptozoica

by Mark Ellis

“You’re not the first to say so,” Belleau shot back haughtily. “But you will most definitely be the last.”

  “Drop the threats, Aubrey,” Honoré said.

  He cast her a glance full of wounded innocence. “Threats? By no means…that was a promise.”

  The treeless summit towering over them was a monolith of dark, buttressed rock, slashed through with deep, shadowed crevices. The terrain gradually sloped upward toward it. The waterfall looked like a translucent veil over the face of a cliff. A thin mist lay over the high ridges.

  The seven people walked under the permanent cloud that clung to the base of the escarpment. Under it spread the rain forest, damp and steamy. The sunlight became suffused, as if they were at the bottom of a silt-clouded pond. The world seemed to turn a bilious gray-green around them.

  The heat of the day increased and the air grew thicker, more difficult to breath. The path became less visible and they came across great mushrooms and huge spongy masses of fungi that grew six feet across.

  The sour smell of mold and mildew clogged everyone’s nostrils. Mouzi rubbed her nose with the back of a hand and muttered, “Place smells like my Gran’s basement.”

  The trail worsened, becoming very hard to see in the mist. A little stream ran near it, between high banks of dark soil. A bird twittered somewhere overhead and a heavy something made a crackling noise in the underbrush to their right.

  After half an hour, it began to drizzle and within seconds everyone was soaked to the skin, but there was no relief from the heat. Their sweat mixed with the water and made for a slimy, slick coating on their skin, but they marched on until the rain ended a few minutes later.

  Kavanaugh called for a halt when he saw Bai Suzhen stagger and nearly fall. Belleau gave him a hard, challenging stare but he didn’t object. He moved on down the trail, to scout out what lay ahead, ordering Oakshott to stay behind.

  Kavanaugh watched Bai stand uncertainly for a moment, then sit down on the path. Crowe and Mouzi seated themselves on either side of her. Honoré walked along the edge of the stream and sat down on the bank and unlaced her boots.

  Kavanaugh sat down beside her with his back to a broad-rooted tree, out of sight of Oakshott. The air felt a little cooler beside the placidly flowing water. The top of the tree soared into invisibility, lost in the steamy fog. He asked her quietly, “How are you doing, Dr. Roxton?”

  “I’m fine, except for my feet.” Stripping off her socks, she plunged her toes into the purling water and sighed in relief. “What about Bai?”

  “What about her?”

  “She acts…strange. Out of it.”

  Kavanaugh glanced over at Bai Suzhen, peering through the fog. She sat between Crowe and Mouzi, hugging her knees and staring off into the mist, as if she were looking into another time or another reality.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Maybe it’s a reaction to that stuff you treated her with. The Prima Materia.”

  Honoré nodded. “I wouldn’t be surprised, particularly if its chemical composition is anything like Aubrey described.”

  “How so?”

  “It’s possible that the material increased Bai’s own production of catalase and dismutase enzymes…jump-starting the healing process.”

  “Do you really think it could be a genuine miracle cure?”

  “Isn’t that what you and Flitcroft believed?”

  “I just went along with the results of Howard’s scientific tests. Still, I should have died when the Deinonychus gutted me. Anywhere else, the injuries would have been fatal.”

  Honoré opened her mouth to reply then shook her head. “I don’t know anything any more. I’m a scientist, I should have known better than to listen to Aubrey. But here I am, in the middle of nowhere, looking for the equivalent of the fountain of youth. I must be insane.”

  “I should’ve known better about a few things, too.”

  “Such as?”

  “About letting Aubrey and Oakshott get the drop on us. At some point soon, we’re going to jump them. They’re going to get hurt, maybe very badly.”

  Honoré drew in a sharp breath. “I don’t think that’s necessary.”

  Kavanaugh said in a harsh whisper, “I don’t want it to be, but that decision is totally up to them. I need to know which way you’re going to jump.”

  She looked at him for a long, sober moment. “You know the answer to that, Jack. You can count on me.”

  “Thank you. That’s all I needed to know.”

  Honoré smiled shyly at Kavanaugh. “You make me so curious… I don’t really understand you. The self-indulgent drunk becomes the self-sacrificing warrior.”

  Feeling suddenly uncomfortable, hand reflexively going to the scar on his face, Kavanaugh said, “I’m nothing special, Honoré. I’m not much good to anyone. I’ve pretty much failed at everything worthwhile I’ve ever tried. Nobody in the world–– except for maybe Gus and Mouzi—would miss me too much if I died out here.”

  “I think you’re wrong. You keep going in spite of all the things that could have destroyed you. I can relate to that.”

  “Why?”

  “You do a lot of self-medication with alcohol, I noticed. But you haven’t shown any signs of dependence out here.”

  “Maybe that’s the difference between a drunkard and an alcoholic. I just like to get drunk, I don’t need to.”

  With startling frankness she said, “I’m a recovering alcoholic, so I always feel the need.”

  His memory flew back to the meeting at the Phoenix of Beauty. “You were the only one who wasn’t drinking.”

  She smiled wanly. “Don’t think I wasn’t desperate for a drink. My life has been a struggle to control my impulses. For example, I’ve had this mad impulse for the last couple of minutes to fuck you.”

  His eyebrows rose. “A mad impulse? Aren’t those the worst kind?”

  “They are, indeed. So this will have to suffice.” Honoré leaned forward and kissed him hard on the lips.

  Kavanaugh thought about Oakshott, about Bai watching them, and then he was only aware of the warmth and promise of Honoré’s lips. Her hand cupped the side of his face, fingers tracing the scar. His own hand came up, pressing lightly against her left breast. She leaned into him and he felt her heartbeat, her nipple stiff against his palm.

  Then she drew back, pulling her hand away, her breath on his cheek a rueful whisper. “I haven’t wanted a man in a long time. I was married once, but I spoiled it due to my poor impulse control.”

  “So this is just another poorly controlled impulse?”

  “Perhaps…so next time, my impulse will be a bit more premeditated…and in more conducive surroundings.”

  Kavanaugh chuckled. “That’s the best reason I’ve heard to get out of here alive.”

  Belleau returned, seeming to materialize out of the fog. He gestured grandly. “To horse, to horse! We’re almost there.”

  Reluctantly, groaning and biting back curses, everyone got to their feet. Honoré struggled back into her boots. Kavanaugh saw Bai Suzhen staring at him. Although her face held no particular expression, she quickly averted her eyes when their gazes met.

  Feeling foolish, and angry because he did, Kavanaugh fell into step behind the small Englishman.

  They went on, following the trail. It crossed the stream on a rough log bridge, then crawled up a long slope, dipping down over the crest of the hill. The seven people stood on the brow of the ridge, looking down at a shallow valley backed by rocky outcroppings that melded into a vine-grown cliff-face.

  The diluted sunlight made strange geometric shapes of ruined walls and crumbling structures. They saw how the rubble of collapsed roofs and statues whose features were eroded by centuries of rain formed a ghostly maze. An enormous stone column, nearly twenty feet tall and ten feet in diameter thrust up from the ground. The surface was almost completely overgrown with creepers.

  Aubrey Belleau shivered, hugging himself in gleeful anticipation. “Here we are,” he chanted. “Here we are.
”

  “Here we are where?” demanded Kavanaugh.

  “Look closely at the pillar, Jack,” Honoré said softly.

  He squinted, peering through the mist. He was barely able to make out a series of carvings in the form of glyphs that Belleau had called Enochian.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  As they walked down the hillside they saw that the entire valley was one vast ruin, a tumbled labyrinth of overgrown walls, fallen roofs and sculpture that blended in with the encroaching jungle.

  Enormous trees had grown up between cut blocks of stone and pushed them over to make room for their spreading trunks and root system. Between them grass, weeds and saplings had forced their way toward the light. That alone was sufficient evidence for Kavanaugh that the structures had been built so long ago that even a whisper of their existence could only be measured in millennia.

  “It’s like a temple complex,” Honoré said, squinting through the mist. “Similar in layout to Angkor Thom.”

  “Yes,” agreed Bai Suzhen. “But on a smaller scale.”

  Time and the merciless hands of the elements had etched deep scars and grooves in low sandstone walls surrounding the grounds. The architecture of the few standing buildings was ornate, the facades swarming with sculptures and carvings depicting dancers, many-armed gods and multi-headed demons.

  Some sections of the wall were so eroded they had crumbled altogether. They enclosed roofless arches and crumbling buildings containing nothing but empty shadows. Only silence and perpetual twilight filled the lanes and shattered buildings.

  Belleau paused, frowning. He ran a finger over a glyph inscribed in a free-standing stele, a square stone column covered on all four sides with carvings that formed swirling geometric abstractions. “My great-great-grandfather copied down these symbols.”

  Belleau looked all around, like a foxhound casting for a scent. “It should be close,” he muttered. “It must be.”

  A broad avenue made of paving stones opened into a vast courtyard filled with the wreck and ruin of many buildings. Great blocks of basalt and granite lay sunken deep into the ground. But the inner arches still stood, and fragments of fretted galleries stretched to nowhere. Broken statues lay in the grass, their features mutilated by time and the jungle. The carved eye sockets were filled with moss.

  “I don’t recognize this architectural style,” Honoré said. “Or rather, the style is reminiscent of several cultures, but none predominate. That structure over there resembles the Gate of the Sun at Tiahuanaco in Bolivia.”

  Belleau chuckled briefly. “You might want to consider that the architecture here served as the inspiration for the styles adopted by other cultures. You’ve heard the theories that the many similarities between the cultures of Pre-Columbian Central American and the ancient East stemmed from a mysterious ‘third-party’ civilization.”

  Honoré didn’t respond, but she looked closer at the few structures still standing.

  Kavanaugh felt a sense of oppression and awe at the work that had been done here, yet sadness as well because of the way it had all fallen into ruin.

  A sudden shifting of shadow, of a darker shade than the mist on the far side of he ruins made his shoulders stiffen. He wasn’t sure if glimpsed an actual movement or only a trick of the light. A chill finger seemed to stroke the base of his spine and he repressed a shudder. What kind of creatures watched their progress, he did not want to guess.

  If you return, you will die

  “Time to come clean with us, Aubrey,” Honoré demanded. “What do you know about this place?”

  “Like I told you before,” Belleau said, consulting the journal again, “the School of Night has protected the secrets of Big Tamtung for nearly two centuries. In 1840, our society saw to the building of the first observation post here, a duck blind as it were, to study the flora and fauna. Once every twenty-five years a volunteer was dispatched here with enough food and provisions to last him a year, while he observed and charted any changes in the island’s ecosystem or biology.

  “The School did this once every generation until the outbreak of World War II. Although the war in Pacific didn’t quite reach to this part of the world, it came uncomfortably close. The School feared discovery of the Tamtungs during all the post-war activity and so the observation post wasn’t occupied again until the thirty-some years ago.

  “After that particular volunteer’s term was up, he never arrived at the rendezvous point to be retuned to England. He was a young doctor from an influential political family and the School kept an extraordinarily low profile during the investigation into his whereabouts. They feared exposure and scandal.

  “The whole mission to maintain Big Tamtung under a protectorate was scrubbed, discontinued. Most of the other scholars placed very little priority on it, particularly with the rise of other scientific disciplines.”

  “And then,” Honoré said, “you became a scholar of the School.”

  She made a statement, she did not ask a question.

  Belleau nodded. “Just so. I was inducted when I turned twenty-one. However, I wasn’t able to revive the School’s interest in Big Tamtung at that point. It required the publicity about Cryptozoica Enterprises to do that, many years later. In the interim, I was allowed to perform the first modern biochemical analysis on the sample of Prima Materia.”

  Bai Suzhen carefully probed her shoulder. “And what did you learn?”

  Belleau smiled wistfully. “I only validated what my great-great-grandfather had long suspected. Prima Materia is the same legendary substance known throughout many cultures under a variety of different names—the Fifth Element, the Quintessence of Life, the Pool of Nectar, Soma Ras and Vasuki’s Milk of Immortality. It is related to myths of Enoch, Thoth and even Ramses the Great and their supply of so-called elixir vitae. You’d be surprised by how so many legends of this miraculous life-giving substance are associated with serpents, but more on that later.

  “According to Aristotle and alchemical lore, Prima Materia is the primitive formless base of all organic matter, from which every substance is created. It is considered to be pure matter, the same as primordial ooze, which contained all the biochemical ingredients considered essential for the development of life on the planet.”

  “I meant what is it actually made of?” Bai asked impatiently.

  “The chemical composition is little difficult to describe,” replied Belleau. “But suffice it to say the Prima Materia exists as a multi-cellular organism unto itself, in a primal protoplasmic form. As you probably know, stem cells are found in all multi-cellular organisms. They have the ability to renew themselves through mitotic cell division and can differentiate into a very diverse range of specialized cell types, such as the abiotic synthesis of biomolecules. So what does that suggest to you?”

  Crowe regarded the little man with an eyebrow angled at a steep, skeptical incline. “That it’s a naturally-occurring, renewable source of stem cells?”

  Belleau touched his nose. “On the money, Captain Crowe. Think about it—this substance can graft onto DNA and repair genetic defects, melding seamlessly with the pre-existing sequence, completely rewriting the code if necessary. No more birth defects, no more congenital autoimmune diseases, no more crippling spinal injuries.”

  Kavanaugh exchanged a sour look with Honoré and realized she was thinking the same thing as he—no more birth defects, spinal injuries and no more giant egos trapped in the bodies of dwarves.

  “We can corner the market on an entirely new system of biochemistry,” Belleau went on, his cheeks flushed, “that could conceivably grant a form of immortality through the synthesis of telomeres.”

  “What’s that?” Kavanaugh asked.

  “Sections of DNA that cap chromosomes,” Belleau explained. “They keep them intact except during cell division. There are some types of enzymes that work as a telomere repair system, even when a cell divides.”

  “So?” Bai demanded.

  “So,” replied Belleau, �
��cells that don’t lose telomeres are virtually immortal, capable of dividing and self-replicating indefinitely and remaining intact.”

  “And a pool of that stuff is supposed to be around here?” Mouzi inquired dubiously.

  “Yes, it is,” answered Belleau. “It’s my theory that the ‘pool of that stuff’ is why Big Tamtung became the most unique ecosystem in not just all of the world but in all of history.”

  They walked down a long broad lane lined by monolithic columns carved with images of serpent-bodied warriors, princesses, devils and heroes. Every place the eye rested held serpent imagery. The stones of the floor bore colored tiles that formed the immense mosaic of a seven-headed cobra.

  In a ghostly whisper, Bai Suzhen said, “The Naga queens and kings left their souls here.’

  Belleau said quietly, “You are more correct that you know, Madame.”

  At the end of the hall, Belleau came to a halt to study the journal pages again. Honoré said, “I don’t understand what you meant about Big Tamtung being a unique ecosystem. It most definitely is, but I thought you believed quantum evolution explained the Cretaceous survivors here.”

  A little distractedly, Belleau declared, “Small populations like this one, isolated and limited from the gene flow, would maintain certain genetic combinations in stable adaptive peaks. I theorize that the Prima Materia has affected everything of an organic nature on this island, from plants to water to the animals.”

  “Explain.”

  “Over the centuries, over the eons, the basic autocatalytic substance of the Prima Materia seeped into everything here, from the soil in which the plants grew to the ground water. The herbivores consumed the plants, the carnivores consumed the herbivores and they all drank the same water, a natural cycle by which they all ingested the same simple molecular replicator. That replicator maintained just about everything here in its most pristine state.”

  Belleau began walking again, touching walls as if trying to orient himself. “It’s possible that the animals here are very old…perhaps the replicator slowed the aging process to a relative crawl, so even when offspring are born, it could take centuries before they reach maturity. That would keep the population well within manageable limits, in balance with the ecosystem.”