The Ancient Mysteries Reader, page 31
“Come back!” It was worse than useless to shout, for Chuck couldn’t see his face behind the bubble. He could only see the great faces before him, and the emeralds above. His own eyes were blinded by hunger, by a greed greater than need.
Panting, Barwell caught up with the running man, whirled him around.
“Keep back,” he mouthed. “Don’t get any closer—they’ll crush you like they crushed the ship—”
“You lie!” Chuck turned, his weapon suddenly poised. “Maybe that was a mirage, too. But the jewels are real. I know your idea, you … ! Get rid of me, take the emeralds for yourself, repair the ship and take off. Only I’m way ahead of you, because that’s my idea, too!”
“No—” gasped Barwell, realizing at the same moment that some poet had once said, “Say Yes to life!” and simultaneously aware that now there would be no time for further affirmation.
Because the weapon blazed, and then Barwell was falling; falling into the stream-of-consciousness and beyond, into the bubbling blackness of the stream-of-unconsciousness where there were no stone heads or emerald eyes. Where there was, no longer, any Barwell…
So it remained for Chuck to stand over the body of his partner at the base of the great stone head; to stand and grin in triumph as the smoke curled up as if before the altar of a god.
And like a giant god, the stone accepted its sacrifice. Incredulous, Chuck watched the incredible—saw the rock split open, saw the mountainous maw loom large as the head dipped and gulped.
Then the sand was smooth again. Barwell’s body was gone.
Realization came brutally, belatedly. Chuck turned to run, knowing the heads were alive. And as he ran a vision came to him of these cyclopean creatures burrowing through the sand, bathing beneath the surface of the plain—rising at will to survey the silence of their dread domain. He could see a great stone paw emerge to fumble with the ship; knew now what the serrations in its sides meant. They were simply the marks of gigantic teeth. Teeth in a mouth that tasted, rejected; a hand had tossed the ship aside like a crumpled toy floating on the lake of sand.
For one moment Chuck thought as Barwell thought, and then the thought was transfigured by reality. A gigantic paw did emerge from the sand before him as he ran. It scooped Chuck up and tossed him down into the grinding stone mouth.
There was the sound stone makes when it gulps, and then silence.
The four heads turned to stare once more—stare at nothingness. They would gaze silently for a long, long time through ageless emerald eyes, for what is eternity to a stone.
Sooner or later, in another thousand years—or a million, what did it matter?—another ship would come.
VIII
MONSTERS
***
Creature of the Snows
By William Sambrot
The Convenient Monster
By Leslie Charteris
15
There are a great many tales of strange creatures from the mists of antiquity still surviving in lonely areas of the world. The most famous of these is surely the Yeti, or Abominable Snowman, who is said to live in the mist-shrouded peaks of the Himalayas. The creature has been called the “missing link” in evolution, a towering, shaggy figure, half man and half beast. According to the Sherpa natives, the creature has been part of their tradition for centuries and is described as being about eight feet tall, with a body covered with long, brown hair. He has a thin, pointed head and a hairless face reminiscent of a man’s. The Yeti’s fame, however, is of comparatively recent date, for it is only during the last half century that his existence has been widely known outside the region of the Himalayas. The report of his presence which so amazed the world was made by Colonel Howard Bury, an English military commander and skilled mountaineer, who led an expedition to scale Mount Everest in 1921. Although the assault failed, Bury made a remarkable discovery on the descent. “We distinguished a number of tracks in the snow,” he recorded in his journal, “but one mark, like that of a human foot, was most puzzling. The coolies assured us that it was the track of a wild, hairy man, and these men were occasionally to be found in the wildest and most inaccessible mountains.” This simple statement set both the public and the scientific world in a ferment. Inquiries were instituted, expeditions planned, and many claims by local Sherpas of having seen the Yeti were investigated. The Nepalese Government also added considerable fuel to the controversy by reporting that two of these “Snowmen” had actually been captured in the past. The first had been an infant, it was claimed, which was found by Sherpas who disappeared with their prize before any inquiry could be made; the other was an adult male who refused to take any nourishment after being seized, and eventually starved to death. Instead of preserving the carcass, the simple Sherpas dumped it in the snow. In the intervening years the legend has grown enormously and been investigated by distinguished scientists such as Professor A. G. Pronin of Leningrad University and Himalayan experts like Sir John Hunt, the conqueror of Everest, all of whom have found evidence to support the existence of the creatures. (Professor Pronin actually claimed to have seen the Yeti twice in the Pamir Mountains.) Although skepticism has been just as strong, photographs of huge footprints in the snow (taken by the English explorer Eric Shipton and, quite separately, by a party led by the American Tom Slick), and strands of found reddish hair which have defied normal human and animal classification, have only served to sustain and deepen the mystery. Of all the theories that abound about the origins of the Abominable Snowman, perhaps the most remarkable has been advanced by Professor Boris Porshnev of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. Both the human race and the Yeti, he claims, have descended from common ancestors. But while humans developed and became dominant in the world, these erstwhile “cousins” have slipped back toward an animal existence. In his view, the “split” occurred in the Neanderthal stage, which may have lasted from 400,000 to 50,000 years ago. He also contends that the Yeti do not actually live in the snow, but merely cross the mountains on their way from one remote valley to another. Writers of fiction have naturally been able to make much of the legend of the Snowman—some treating it as an elaborate joke or hoax, others utilizing the facts in an attempt to throw new light on another baffling legend. Such has been the approach of the distinguished American short-story writer, essayist and novelist William Sambrot (1927- ), who in “Creature of the Snows” created one of the most thought-provoking short stories ever to appear in The Saturday Evening Post. Written in 1960, it makes its first appearance here in volume form.
CREATURE OF THE SNOWS
William Sambrot
Ed McKale straightened up under his load of cameras and equipment, squinting against the blasting wind, peering, staring, sweeping the jagged, unending expanse of snow and wind-scoured rock. Looking, searching, as he’d been doing now for two months, cameras at the ready.
Nothing. Nothing but the towering Himalayas, thrusting miles high on all sides, stretching in awesome grandeur from horizon to horizon, each pinnacle tipped with immense banners of snow plumes, streaming out in the wind, vivid against the darkly blue sky. The vista was one of surpassing beauty; viewing it, Ed automatically thought of light settings, focal length, color filters—then just as automatically rejected the thought. He was here, on top of the world, to photograph something infinitely more newsworthy—if only he could find it.
The expedition paused, strung out along a ridge of blue snow, with shadows falling away to the right and left into terrifying abysses, and Ed sucked for air. Twenty thousand feet is really quite high, although many of the peaks beyond rose nearly ten thousand feet above him.
Up ahead, the Sherpa porters—each a marvelous shot, gap-toothed, ebullient grins, seamed faces, leathery brown—bowed under stupendous loads for this altitude, leaning on their coolie crutches, waiting for Doctor Schenk to make up his mind. Schenk, the expedition leader, was arguing with the guides again, his breath spurting little puffs of vapor, waving his arms, pointing—down.
Obviously Schenk was calling it quits. He was within his rights, Ed knew; two months was all Schenk had contracted for. Two months of probing snow and ice; scrambling over crevasses, up rotten rock cliffs, wind-ravaged, bleak, stretching endlessly toward Tibet and the never-never lands beyond. Two months of searching for footprints where none should be. Searching for odors, for droppings, anything to disclose the presence of creatures other than themselves. Without success.
Two months of nothing. Big, fat nothing.
The expedition was a bust. The goofiest assignment of this or any other century, as Ed felt it would be from the moment he’d sat across a desk from the big boss in the picture-magazine’s New York office, two months ago, looking at the blurred photograph, while the boss filled him in on the weird details :
The photograph, his boss had told him gravely, had been taken in the Himalayan mountains, at an altitude of twenty-one thousand feet, by a man soaring overhead in a motorless glider.
“A glider,” Ed had said noncommittally, staring at the fuzzy enlarged snapshot of a great expanse of snow and rocky ledges, full of harsh light and shadows, a sort of roughly bowl-shaped plateau apparently, and in the middle of it a group of indistinct figures, tiny, lost against the immensity of great ice pinnacles. Ed looked closer. Were the figures people? If so—what had happened to their clothes?
“A glider,” his boss reiterated firmly. The glider pilot, the boss said, was maneuvering in an updraft, attempting to do the incredible—soar over Mount Everest in a homemade glider. The wide-winged glider had been unable to achieve the flight over Everest, but, flitting silently about seeking updrafts, it cleared a jagged pinnacle and there, less than a thousand feet ?below, the pilot saw movement where none should have been. And dropping lower, startled, he’d seen, the boss said dryly, “creatures—creatures that looked exactly like a group of naked men and women and kids, playing in the snow, at an altitude of twenty thousand five hundred feet.” He’d had the presence of mind to take a few hasty snapshots before the group disappeared. Only one of the pictures had developed.
Looking at the snapshot with professional scorn, Ed had said, “These things are indistinct. I think he’s selling you a bill of goods.”
“No,” the boss said, “we checked on the guy. He really did make the glider flight. We’ve had experts go over that blowup. The picture’s genuine. Those are naked biped, erect-walking creatures.” He flipped the picture irritably. “I can’t publish this thing; I want close-ups, action shots, the sort of thing our subscribers have come to expect of us.”
He’d lighted a cigar slowly. “Bring me back some pictures I can publish, Ed, and you can write your own ticket.”
“You’re asking me to climb Mount Everest,” Ed said, carefully keeping the sarcasm out of his voice. “To search for this plateau here,” he tapped the shoddy photograph, “and take pix of—what are they, biped, erect-walking creatures, you say?”
The boss cleared his throat. “Not Mount Everest, Ed. It’s Gauri Sankar, one of the peaks near Mount Everest. Roughly, it’s only about twenty-three thousand feet or so high.”
“That’s pretty rough,” Ed said.
The boss looked pained. “Actually it’s not Gauri Sankar either. Just one of the lesser peaks of the Gauri Sankar massif. Well under twenty-three thousand. Certainly nothing to bother a hot-shot expara-trooper like you, Ed.”
Ed winced, and the boss continued, “This guy—this glider pilot— wasn’t able to pin-point the spot, but he did come up with a pretty fair map of the terrain—for a pretty fair price. We’ve checked it out with the American Alpine Club; it conforms well with their own charts of the general area. Several expeditions have been in the vicinity, but not this exact spot, they tell me. It’s not a piece of cake by any means, but it’s far from being another Annapurna, or K-Two, for accessibility.”
He sucked at his cigar thoughtfully. “The Alpine Club says we’ve got only about two months of good weather before the inevitable monsoons hit that area—so time, as they say, is of the essence, Ed. But two months for this kind of thing ought to be plenty. Everything will be first class; we’re even including these new gas guns that shoot hypodermic needles, or something similar. We’ll fly the essentials into Katmandu and air-drop everything possible along the route up to your base at”—he squinted at a map—“Namche Bazar. A Sherpa village which is twelve thousand feet high.”
He smiled amiably at Ed. “That’s a couple of weeks’ march up from the nearest railroad, and ought to get you acclimatized nicely. Plenty of experienced porters at Namche, all Sherpas. We’ve lined up a couple of expert mountain climbers with Himalayan background. And expedition leader will be Doctor Schenk—top man in his field.”
“What is his field?” Ed asked gloomily.
“Zoology. Whatever these things are in this picture, they’re animal, which is his field. Everyone will be sworn to secrecy; you’ll be the only one permitted to use a camera, Ed. This could be the biggest thing you’ll ever cover, if these things are what I think they are.”
“What do you think they are?”
“An unknown species of man—or sub-man,” his boss said, and prudently Ed remained silent. Two months would tell the tale.
But two months didn’t tell. Oh, there were plenty of wild rumors by the Nepalese all along the upper route. Hushed stories of the two-legged creature that walked like a man. A monster the Sherpas called Yeti. Legends. Strange encounters; drums sounding from snow-swept heights; wild snatches of song drifting down from peaks that were inaccessible to ordinary men. And one concrete fact: a ban, laid on by the Buddhist monks, against the taking of any life in the high Himalayas. What life? Ed wondered.
Stories, legends—but nothing else.
Two months of it. Starting from the tropical flatlands, up through the lush, exotic rain forest, where sun struggled through immense trees festooned with orchids. Two months, moving up into the arid foothills, where foliage abruptly ceased and the rocks and wind took over. Up and ever up, to where the first heavy snow pack lay. And higher still, following the trail laid out by the glider pilot—and what impelled a man, Ed wondered, to soar over Mount Everest in a homemade glider?
Two months, during which Ed had come to dislike Doctor Schenk intensely. Tall, saturnine, smelling strongly of formaldehyde, Schenk classified everything into terms of vertebrate, invertebrate.
So now, standing on this wind-scoured ridge with the shadows falling into the abysses on either side, Ed peered through ice-encrusted goggles, watching Schenk arguing with the guides. He motioned to the ledge above, and obediently the Sherpas moved toward it. Obviously that would be the final camping spot. The two months were over by several days; Schenk was within his rights to call it quits. It was only Ed’s assurances that the plateau they were seeking lay just ahead that had kept Schenk from bowing out exactly on the appointed time; that and the burning desire to secure his niche in zoology forever with a new specimen: biped, erect-walking—what?
But the plateau just ahead, and the one after that, and all the rest beyond had proved just as empty as those behind.
A bust. Whatever the unknown creatures were the glider pilot had photographed, they would remain just that—unknown.
And yet, as Ed slogged slowly up toward where the porters were setting up the bright blue-and-yellow nylon tents, he was nagged by a feeling that that odd-shaped pinnacle ahead looked awfully much like the one in the blurred photograph. With his unfailing memory for pictures, Ed remembered the tall, jagged cone that had cast a black shadow across a snowy plateau, pointing directly toward the little group that was in the center of the picture.
But Schenk wasn’t having any more plateaus. He shook his head vehemently, white-daubed lips a grim line on his sun-blistered face. “Last camp, Ed,” he said firmly. “We agreed this would be the final plateau. I’m already a week behind schedule. If the monsoons hit us, we could be in serious trouble below. We have to get started back. I know exactly how you feel, but—I’m afraid this is it.”
Later that night, while the wind moved ceaselessly, sucking at the tent, they burrowed in sleeping bags, talking.
“There must be some basis of fact in those stories,” Ed said to Doctor Schenk. “I’ve given them a lot of thought. Has it occurred to you that every one of the sightings, the few face-to-face meetings of the natives and these—these unknowns, has generally been just around dawn, and usually when the native was alone?”
Schenk smiled dubiously. “Whatever this creature may be—and I’m convinced that it’s either a species of large bear, or one of the great anthropoids—it certainly must keep off the well-traveled routes. There are very few passes through these peaks, of course, and it would be quite simple for them to avoid these locales.”
“But we’re not on any known trail,” Ed said thoughtfully. “I believe our methods have been all wrong—stringing out a bunch of men, looking for trails in the snow. All we’ve done is announce our presence to anything with ears for miles around. That glider pilot made no sound; he came on them without warning.”
Ed looked intently at Schenk. “I’d like to try that peak up ahead— and the plateau beyond.” When Schenk uttered a protesting cry, Ed said, “Wait; this time I’ll go alone—with just one Sherpa guide. We could leave several hours before daybreak. No equipment, other than oxygen, food for one meal—and my cameras, of course. Maintain a strict silence. We could be back before noon. Will you wait long enough for this one last try?” Schenk hesitated. “Only a few hours more,” Ed urged.
Schenk stared at him, then he nodded slowly. “Agreed. But aren’t you forgetting the most important item of all?” When Ed looked blank, Schenk smiled. “The gas gun. If you should run across one, we’ll need more proof than just your word for it.”
There was very little wind, no moon, but cold, the cold approaching that of outer space, as Ed and one Sherpa porter started away from the sleeping camp, up the shattered floor of an ice river that swept down from the jagged peak ahead.
