Shadows Out of Time

When the little plane bumped its last bump into Khemia-alDen’s tiny airstrip, Haliburton was waiting. Officially they took care of logistics for US troops. In reality they did everything from assassinating local war lords, to delivering cocaine to generals, to flying the chunky local silver jewelry out. They were good at the business of war. If an old man, his hot blonde wife and a vet needed to visit a cave on the outskirts of enemy territory, then that was today’s normal. Tomorrow’s normal might be kill the old man, rape his wife and give the vet’s papers to the highest bidder in the village. Or fight their way past the Taliban and save the old man. There were three HUMVs, we rode in the middle one. The Soviets had built the airstrip back in the day. There was still a sign in Russian and Pashto. It was a short, dusty bumpy drive. They had supplies for us — food, sleeping bags, a generator. They carried us halfway up the small white hill where a tiny cave opened. They left stuff at the mouth of the cave. With some help from Angela I hustled the stuff inside. I set up the generator and the lights, started creating a little camp. Dr. Mortlake and Angela went into the two chambers. The first chamber had thirty-seven yogins. Ten were women. The first five were very weathered, older than the later statues. They had brow ridges and sloping foreheads. Dr. Mortlake explained that in archaic Indian art it was the convention to depict the followers of Shiva as horrific and beastly. I pointed out that the peacock god didn’t look much like Shiva.

The second (and lower) chamber, which I had not visited, was smaller. Its walls were covered in script of various languages. Some of the inscriptions were painted, some incised. A few were very rough scratches, others carved with great skill. Mortlake had me run lights to the “Cave of Scriptures” and got Angela to carry his sleeping bag down there. He told us to amuse ourselves.

Haliburton had provided us with a DVD player and we got through Finding Nemo before we found more primitive ways to amuse ourselves. I was a bit shy in front of the thirty-seven holy men and women, but Angela pointed out that stoned people were usually pretty accepting. After our sweaty play we fell asleep.

Dr. Mortlake prodded me awake with his titanium cane. From our state of undress, he would’ve been an idiot not to know what we were doing. I didn’t wonder about his not caring, but why didn’t we care anymore? Maybe as his quest grew shorter we were preparing for the parting of the ways. His eyes were bright. “Eureka! I have found it. Come!” He led me into the Cave of Scriptures. He moved as fast as a man of seventy. I saw he had filled up notebooks, two dictionaries lay open. One was Sanskrit/English one was Aklo/Latin. Dr. Mortlake adopted a professorial tone. “In Sanskrit there are countless references to a nectar called Amitra or Deathless. The A, which equals not (much as the Greek Alpha is negative as in A-theist) plus Mitra, which means Death. This “‘deathless’ nectar is said to be a by-product of yoga — dripping from the brain into the soulbody complex.”

I nodded. Like I knew or cared.

“You see, I don’t think it’s a myth. I think there was a Deathless Elixir, a secretion not of the mystically prepared human mind, but of an extraterrestrial beast,” he finished.

“You think the Peacock God.”

“Excellent Mr. Livingstone.”

“I came across references to ‘Peacock Milk’ in a very unorthodox Buddhist scripture called the Black Sutra. The god was called Yithra. Or perhaps Yidra. Well I don’t know about ‘God’—the text claims that the asura was captured from a broken sphere of metal. The being wept a clear fluid that the ‘hairy ones’ collected and use to trap evil souls into an eternity of maya. U Pao knew the Yithra’s cult was somewhere in these mountains. He suspected the asura was long dead. He says that in addition to drinking the elixir, a brief spell was needed at a certain time.”

“When did you discover this?”

“I found it out in the ’80s. Then I read a small write-up in Stars and Stripes: ‘Avoiding the Taliban With A Strange Peacock’—the exciting story of Michael Livingstone, your exciting tale of hiding in a small cave with a monstrous idol. Then I inherited my younger brother Frank’s money. Money opens all doors, Mr. Livingstone. I found you, and with the help of these inscriptions I found this.”

Dr. Mortlake walked to the cave wall and tapped it seven times while saying some gibberish: “Zodicare ob zodiramu.” A small section of wall opened. There was a stone nest full of crystal eggs. Actually, they were small bottles shaped like eggs with crystal stoppers. At first, I thought them all empty.

“The story of Aladdin,” said Dr. Mortlake. “There are three eggs left. Three, Mr. Livingstone. Me, Angela and you. We are the deathless. I have millions of dollars and now we have the world enough and time.”

He took the three crystal eggs from the pile of empties.