Louis Shalako
Jake
had long prepared for this moment. He’d learned all about the Cro-Magnon. He’d
learned all about the laws on trespass and unauthorized entry. He’d learned how
to pick a lock, beat a motion detector and how not to set off alarms. He’d
learned all kinds of new things, including memorizing the phone number of his
attorney, and how long he might expect to sit before making bail…
Jake
was taking all kinds of personal risks.
The
whole thing was just plain nuts, and yet it was like he just couldn’t help himself.
That
included his entry into some rather secure premises and the exit, which must be
soon.
He
knew it wasn’t very smart, and yet he laughed every time he contemplated it.
It
was one of the few museums in the world, where the security guards didn’t do
routine rounds with a punch-clock.
He
was deep in the bowels of the earth after months of research, training,
meditation and yogic exercises.
“Who
are you?”
“I
am a man, just like you.”
“Where
do you come from?”
“I
come from across the sea, and from another time and place.”
“Who
are you? Why do you come here?”
“That
is a very good question—”
Why
was he here?
Jake
pondered the question.
On
the face of it, it looked quite mad. It would be seen as nothing more than a
stunt, and so he had no choice but to do it on his own.
He
had to do it secretly, quietly…and illegally, which his new friend would simply
not be able to comprehend.
Jake
wanted to sit naked in the innermost galleries, the sanctum, deep in the caves
of Lascaux, high on LSD, originally derived from the mold ergot on wheat. He
thought the ancients would have had it or something like it. Or mescal, or
peyote, or psilocybin, any of the known psycho-active drugs that might have
been available to the ancients. The ancients would have known what alcohol was,
all they had to do was stumble across wild grapes fermenting on the vine and
they would have had an experience they weren’t likely to forget anytime soon.
Banana beer was made by old women spitting into the mash to get it started; and
cannabis would have been burned in a campfire, accidentally or otherwise.
The
great moral questions would not have arisen until later in history.
He
wanted to make psychic contact with the past. In his younger days, not even
particularly under the influence, but things had happened.
Jake
had experienced one or two little things that at least had some trappings of
psychic phenomena.
Any
idiot could take drugs. Plenty of others, scientists, researchers, writers of
all kinds had remarked on some kind of spirituality within the caves, upon
looking at the images. They all said they felt a kind of connection.
He’d
felt it too. Jake had to come here, come into the place more than once, to get
the lay of the place. Otherwise, he’d never have been able to find his way
around in the blackness and the silence.
The
awful silence was like nothing he had ever known, it was almost beyond
explanation—what that silence did to you.
To
get permission to attempt anything like this would have resulted in ridicule,
notoriety and a lot of unwelcome official attention. He had no credentials and
no credibility. He was not an archaeologist or an anthropologist, Jake wasn’t
even an artist.
Jake
was just some guy with an idea that he wanted to try, and that was the hell of
it in an increasingly intolerant world.
What
might be seen as a religious practice on a southwestern U.S. native reservation
would have been perceived more as a desecration to authorities and scholars
alike. It would be seen as a crime, which he didn’t think it was. Burning
sweet-grass, or smoking anything, was to put a thin layer of smoke on the
adjacent walls. That was true enough. Their perspective was not wrong, exactly,
it was merely intolerant, perhaps short-sighted. His perspective was perhaps a
more selfish one, but he also saw it as an opportunity. This would only be true
if he succeeded. To put it into words was one thing, to explain that, using the
simplest of thoughts, would be extremely difficult. His friend was not
unintelligent, but the cultural divide was vast and they had no common
language.
He
also wanted to shield Malik in some ways. Jake was convinced that he wasn’t
here to do harm—that was not his intention.
One
moment he was serenity itself, and the next moment frankly terrified of what he
had done.
The
disorientation was severe, as shadows danced, water trickled or dripped
somewhere off in the distant darkness, and his skin crawled at the thought of
wild animals coming in here, creeping up on him silently as he communed or
tried to commune, with those long since dead.
The
fat lamp sputtered its greasy smoke beside him, sending a lurid glare over the
paintings of bison, antelope, and other sizable big game animals. Jake
shivered, pulling the buffalo-skin cloak close in around him, his head buzzing
with the dope. He had changed in the dark woods, out on the hillside. He’d be
damned lucky to find his backpack—and his pants again. He longed for his
sweater and better yet, his thick socks. The crude leather sandals were nothing
but a liability, he knew that as soon as he got thirty metres away from the
bag.
He’d
consumed about a gram and bit more of magic mushrooms, and the pulse of his
blood in his inner ears was pleasant but slightly distracting. He had plenty of
water, a little food, carefully selected so as not to upset his stomach. He’s
learned a little bit about hallucinogenic drugs. He’d tested the stuff on
himself where it was safe, at home and basically in front of the TV set. The
phone was right there and he’d left a note for paramedics, outlining everything
he had done, everything he had ingested in the name of science, or
spirituality, or discovery—or something. He’d bought a reasonable amount,
started off with small bits of mushroom and worked his way up to the sort of
trip where the world became much more plastic, much more brightly-coloured and
so much more mystical.
Just
when he needed to focus, to concentrate, he was all fucked up, essentially, and
he giggled. There was a strange sensation of falling, stretching, being pulled
or sucked somewhere else. His body was at rest and in motion at the same time.
The only thing missing was the stars. The stars were really something in his
first hesitant gropings towards a greater awareness.
His
new friend, he was sure, would understand. The people of the here and now
probably wouldn’t.
What
a miracle it was to get something—anything.
The
man was probably the village shaman, if they even had villages. His voice was
very strong, to be discernible over what had to be twenty or thirty or forty thousand
years.
“How
can you do this?”
“The
same way that you can. I have eaten the magic, and I have burned and inhaled
the magic. I have drank in the magic, bathed myself in it, and purified myself,
and rubbed it onto my skin.”
“Verily—”
“Your
paintings are truly wonderful. We enjoy them very much.”
“These
are our gifts to honour and remember those who dwell beyond the wall of sleep.”
Jake
could almost see that face, dark and probably hairier than him, although his
beard had gotten to be a considerable thing in its own right over the last
twenty years. His own heavily- greying, mousy brown hair fell all the way to
the shoulders, thin on top and frizzy on the ends.
“What
is it like on the other side?”
Jake
had the impression the guy wasn’t even in the cave. Malik was somewhere much
brighter, some kind of canyon. There was the wind whipping by and the squawk of
birds or gulls or something in the background. Malik had wet, red paint on his
hands and he was working on something.
In
what was really weird and unexpected, love was written all over Malik.
It
made a kind of sense, the original motivation for magic, for speaking to the
gods was first and foremost altruistic—not that it didn’t also convey a kind of
power to the individual.
“It’s
wonderful. It’s everything that people believe it is.”
What
else could he say?
The
guy was never going to believe that Jake was just some guy in the future. There
was a scuttling in the darkness and he froze for a second. The sound stopped or
went away.
“Is
there freedom from want?”
“Yes.”
“Is
there…freedom from fear.”
“Yes,
and hunger and disease, and pain and war. Everything is better.” Might as well
give the poor bastards some hope.
At
least for most of us…
He
hoped that those thoughts didn’t leak through, for some of it would be
kind of hard to take coming from the gods or whatever.
Something
scuffed against a smooth rock and his body twitched in shock. It was off to the
left and he couldn’t help but stare that way. The sound came again. While he
was hyper-aware already, his natural objectivity told him it couldn’t be
anything much bigger than a rat, possibly, and it was likely even smaller than
that. It was a cricket, scraping along under a dead leaf or something.
It
was his imagination, the atavistic fears inside that were betraying him. It was
the dope talking, even as a sick tingle rolled up and down his spine.
It
was extremely difficult to be totally objective. He’d smoked some pot, ate the
mushrooms and had a bottle of brandy along for the ride. He’d just sipped at
the booze, although one could drink up a storm on certain drugs. You felt right
as rain, then one little stagger and you over-compensated, falling flat on your
face as often as not. Sooner or later, he still had to get out of there. He had
to walk to the car, and then drive it out of there. Beer might have been better
as he was developing a powerful thirst. It would be just his luck to get popped
for drunk driving on the road home. He drank some water, and sipped some
brandy. Each small sip sent fresh waves of scintillating, coruscating lights
and colours swirling around in the peripheral vision. The water was really
good, and he felt new appreciation for this most underrated of liquids.
His
lips and his cheeks were numb. He was very aware of his eyes in their sockets
and the smell of dirt, wet stone and decay. The paint on his face and chest was
dry now, making the skin feel tight and dry, like half-healed wounds.
He
stared as the noises came again. In spite of his best efforts to slow it down,
his heart raced, and it was getting uncomfortable.
His
heart stopped dead in its tracks as there came the glimmer of light. Sand and
gravel crunched, a faint golden light glimmered on rocks on one side and the
other. Illuminating the top of the passage to his left, the light brought a
stark new kind of terror.
Someone
was there.
The
first thing he saw was a rough stone bowl, wick burning bright, and then a long
brown arm coming down and then around the last corner.
Jake
picked up his own lamp and stood quickly.
“What
the—”
A
pair of dark brown eyes stared at him. A tall, powerfully built figure
straightened up in the opening. He held the lamp high, and his mouth opened to
speak.
“Who—”
Jake
stared at a Cro-Magnon. It had to be. He knew enough to know it wasn’t a
Neanderthal.
It
was Malik. It had to be—but it couldn’t be.
Not
really.
It
just couldn’t be.
Malik
had bright red paint on his hands, also his feet, gobs and spatters all over
his deerskin breeches and a kind of jerkin.
“Ah.
My friend. There you are—we’ve been looking all over.” Malik’s eye traveled
over Jake’s water bottle, the lamp, the bowl, the leather bag of snacks.
Oh,
my God.
“All
set for your first lesson, I see.”
Jake’s
lower jaw almost hit the floor of the cave. His knees were knocking together.
This
was wrong—all wrong.
END
