The Grave Robbers of Genghis Khan (21 page)

P
hilippa had liftoff almost immediately once she gave herself up to the soothing sound of Jimmy blowing on the
yirdaki.
She floated out of her body and across the carpet to where Nimrod sat cross-legged and keeping them all airborne, and whispered in his ear. Then she slipped silently over the silky edge of the carpet and allowed her spirit to sink down toward the herd of camels which, thankfully, she was unable to smell now, not having a nose.

Meanwhile, John floated over his own body and seemed almost to rest on the sound coming from the
yirdaki
. He could not hear it that well, but he could feel it and the ancient vibrations that were contained in Jimmy’s breath. As soon as he had his bearings he swooped, wraithlike, beside Nimrod, whispered in his uncle’s ear, and then sank toward the ground.

Neither twin was without fear. A large herd of camels is an intimidating sight, especially when it is cranky with thirst, and the twins were wise to be wary. And while there was no chance of John or Philippa incurring any physical injury, they were both mindful of what their uncle had said about getting lost among the several thousand animals. But more than that, they were acutely conscious of the real danger that the world was in and the fearful consequences to the planet’s climate that might result from their failure to find what they were looking for.

Sixth-sensing something unusual in their loud and malodorous midst, the herd of camels belched and brayed and shifted around nervously, moving one way and then the other as if they expected to be attacked by a herd of wild dingoes. Others bit, shoved, kicked, or simply spat at their neighbors as they tried to hold the ground nearer the billabong. It was like a New York subway station at rush hour.

Just above the hump of a tall female dromedary, Philippa paused for a moment before taking possession of the beast and braced herself for the shock of being in a camel’s shape instead of a humanoid one. That was the thing about animal possession: The first few seconds were always a tremendous affront to anyone who was used to having hands and legs, not to mention being clean and free of parasites.

John hesitated about which camel to pick before selecting to possess one that at least bore a resemblance to the picture of Dunbelchin he had seen in Mr. Bilharzia’s home back in Kandahar: a camel a bit whiter-looking than some of the
others and therefore perhaps more likely to be one of Dunbelchin’s descendants with hidden knowledge of the whereabouts of the burial place of Genghis Khan.

These two camels growled irritably and trotted a few dozen yards in opposite directions as they felt themselves taken over by John and Philippa.

For a moment, John took control of the camel’s conscious mind and found himself suddenly obsessed with thoughts of water, plum bush, quandong, curly-pod wattle, native apricot, and bean tree, which, as any fool knows, are the principal elements in the Australian feral camel’s diet. He winced with pain and bellowed loudly as he felt another camel bite his hindquarters and, looking quickly around, he found himself face-to-face with a much larger bull camel that was already frothing angrily at the mouth and spitting at him in a most unpleasant way.

To avoid a fight, John gave yet more ground and tried to find himself a spot that might allow the camel carrying his spirit to remain quiet and unmolested while he raked through the deepest drawers in the animal’s subconscious. Seeing a large gum tree, he galloped over and parked himself in the small amount of shade that was available and, hoping to settle the animal even further, he began to eat the leaves — not of the gum tree, which are toxic to ruminants like a camel — but of a wattle bush. Much to John’s surprise he found himself enjoying the flowers of the wattle most of all; he’d never before eaten a flower, but this one was delicious and it was all he could do to tear himself away and leave
the camel in control of its own conscious mind and its appetite while he went walkabout inside the beast’s memory.

It was, thought Philippa, a lot less complicated being a camel than being a djinn with all that responsibility of power and wishes and saving the world. Two toes per foot was so much simpler than having five. Everything was. A lot of a camel’s life was just foraging for food and roaming around looking for the next water hole. And there was, of course, no shame but only comfort in having the hump, knowing it was there with enough stores of fat to trap the heat-minimizing insulation that made life in such hot climates at all possible. She gave herself up to it, just as she had done before, for Philippa had a few vivid memories of being a camel herself. Not long after discovering that she and John were djinn, they had visited Cairo with Nimrod and Mr. Rakshasas, and, at a little perfume shop near Giza, they had been introduced to a Mr. Huamai who, as well as being a great perfumer, was also the proprietor of a business renting camels to tourists who wished to see the pyramids from the relative comfort of a saddle instead of on foot. Mr. Huamai’s wonderful perfume had been a useful antidote to the strong smell that adhered to the twins following their first experience of being an animal and a strong-smelling animal at that. But she particularly remembered how her initial disgust of being a camel had been quickly replaced by a feeling of enjoyment, and, for a while, a camel had seemed like the most natural thing to be in the world, even with a large, sweaty tourist complaining on her back.

Philippa had really taken to the idea of being a camel, and Nimrod said he was pleased because camels were of great historical importance to the Marid, which was the tribe of djinn to which she belonged. And she wondered if there was more to that apparently innocent experience than, at the time, she had supposed. Was there some extra purpose behind the Marid affinity with camels that even Nimrod had not realized? Was that visit to Mr. Huamai an important preparation for what was happening now? Perhaps. But only time would tell. And there was little enough of that now. She was wasting precious minutes, surely. Except to say that this little moment of reverie had brought her closer to her own deep subconscious, which seemed to overlap the camel’s, and swiftly, she set about plunging herself into the Well of ancestor memory that seemed more like the camel’s than her own.

Meanwhile, John felt very strange. Indeed, it was the strangest feeling John had ever had. The memories he was experiencing — of his life as a calf, of his camel mother, of her untimely death at the hands of an Australian farmer (she’d been shot as part of a camel cull) — these felt like his own memories; of course, John knew they weren’t his memories, not really, but they were no less painful for all of that.

Whatever kind of mammal you are, losing your mother is the worst thing that can ever happen to you.

These strong emotions now gave way to something more broadly ungulate in character, which is to say that he now encountered feelings and things and ideas that were about camels in general rather than one camel in particular. Among camels as a species there were habits, customs, even myths,
and artifacts, which meant that there was a lot more to being a camel: more than just life as an even-toed ungulate, bearing a distinctive fatty deposit known as a hump on your back. John could now see that to be a camel was to be a thing of beauty, as the Arab word for camel,
(pronounced ğml, which means “beauty”), surely recognized.

Perceiving that he now stood within the animal’s subconscious and at the very edge of the Well of ancestor memory, John gave himself up to it and found that he was now remembering things long forgotten: of building roads in the Australian outback; of serving with the British Army in Egypt, and before that on India’s North-West Frontier; of being part of a Persian baggage train; of fighting as part of a Roman army force in the eastern Roman Empire; of the Egyptian Ptolemies; and even the time of Philip of Macedon.

He had gone too far back. Surely, he thought, the Romans were from a time long before the Mongols. It was the Mongol Empire he was looking for, not the Roman Empire and certainly not the Ptolemies. And thinking that Persia was at least geographically closer to Mongolia, he returned to those memories and, carrying them into the future like a camel laden with a merchant’s silks and spices, he tried to find his way through a cornucopia of history to those of his ungulate ancestors that had lived in the early thirteenth century.

Suddenly, John encountered a vivid memory whose details he recognized: ancient Kandahar. There was no mistaking the plain on which it stood, the ancient citadel, that distant mountain range, and there was a man, who strikingly
resembled Mr. Bilharzia, buying him from a thief, except that he wasn’t a him anymore, but a her — a female camel. Then John felt the saddle he/she was wearing and the beautiful bridle with which he/she was adorned. Yes. There could be no mistaking that bridle. Surely, he/she, whatever he was, had found Dunbelchin at last.

But the pain of this discovery was intense, for was there not a great grief here? The grief of the loss of a child. This was an easy memory to track down and find. It was like a piece of jagged bone sticking out of a broken leg….

Only when he was quite certain that he knew exactly where the burial place of Genghis Khan was to be found did John withdraw from the eight-hundred-year-old memories of Dunbelchin, and make his way up through the Well of ancestor memory and back into the conscious mind of the Australian feral camel.

But once there, possessed of the wild camel’s own sight, sound, and smell, John was in for an unpleasant surprise.

I
t was dark and it was raining very heavily. Water bounced off John’s furry head and ran down his hill-shaped body; his two-toed feet were already several inches deep in an ever-widening puddle. A flash of white light as bright as a rolling artillery bombardment illuminated the black sky and a twisting fork of electricity split a gum tree in two; this was quickly followed by a clap of thunder as loud as Krakatoa — or so it seemed to John — and the next thing he knew the whole herd of camels, himself included, was fleeing the burning tree in terror. John ran, too, because when he tried to stop, other camels ran into him and since there were almost ten thousand of them, he knew that not to run was to risk being trampled to death. After a few hundred yards, the stampede ended but this was immediately followed by another loud thunderclap that set them all running again. This happened at least a dozen times in an hour before finally the storm passed overhead where, to John’s acute discomfort, there was now no sign of Nimrod and the flying
carpet. Unlike the rest of the camels that were now gulping up as much water as they could — gallons of it — John was the only camel staring up at the already brightening sky. He brayed loudly in the hope that he would attract some attention, but there were only a few straggler clouds heading southeast in pursuit of the rest of the storm.

“This is not good,” he told himself. “This is not good at all.”

He considered his choices. Either he could remain inside the camel for a while longer, which seemed like the sensible option. Or he could leave the camel’s body, float above the herd a bit to see if he could spot the others, but that meant he would have to risk getting lost. The right thing to do, he knew, was to remain in the camel’s body and wait for Nimrod to come back and find him. Probably, they had been forced to seek shelter from the storm.

And yet he also had to consider the possibility that they might have been hit by lightning, like the gum tree. Which wouldn’t have been good. And John began to patrol the area just in case Nimrod and the others were lying stunned on the ground, or more accurately, in a pool of water, for the ground was now entirely waterlogged. None of his surroundings seemed at all familiar. The billabong was gone. Now everything was one huge water hole.

Half an hour passed in this way, before finally, John spied a small object approaching on the horizon and, realizing with a loud belch of relief that it was them, he flew out of the camel and headed quickly their way.

A minute or two later, John was back in his own body,
which was very cold and wet, but otherwise he was quite unharmed. Sitting up, he spat several times over the side of the damp carpet, to try to rid himself of the horrible taste of the wattle flowers. Groanin handed him a packet of mints, and a small bottle of eau de cologne. But of Philippa, there was still no sign. Her body lay motionless, exactly where she had left it, beside his own, awaiting the return of her own life’s spirit. Moby, the duck she had befriended, was waiting for her, too. He was the only one on the carpet who looked not to have minded the heavy rain. Not a bit.

“When the storm broke,” explained Nimrod, “the camels ran every which way. We had no idea of which ones to follow. So we flew a bit higher, above the rain clouds, and waited for it to pass.”

“What do we do now?” John looked anxiously at his sister.

“Keep looking for her,” said Nimrod. “There’s nothing else we can do for now. I expect she’ll turn up, before long. But look here, how did you get on? Were you successful? Did you find what we’re looking for? The location of the secret tomb of Genghis Khan?”

“Yes,” said John. “I found it.”

“Excellent. Well done, my boy. Where is it?”

John told him the geographical details as best he was able. “But I’ll certainly recognize the place when we see it.”

“As soon as Phil shows up,” said Nimrod, “we’ll head to Mongolia. To see what clues we find inside the tomb. You’ll like Mongolia. I always did.”

But after another hour, Philippa still hadn’t returned and Nimrod was worried.

“If she was down there,” he said, pointing at the herd of camels, “surely she would have seen us by now.” He winced as he thought of something.

“What?” asked Groanin.

“Nothing,” said Nimrod.

“What?” repeated Groanin, only more loudly this time. “Spit it out, man.”

Nimrod glanced at his niece’s silent body.

“Well, it’s just that if she left the body of any camel she’d previously taken possession of when the air was full of lightning, the electricity in the air might have stunned her spirit. Left her disorientated and floating around with no sense of where and what she is. In those circumstances, she might never find her way back to her body.”

“What can we do?” asked John.

“I’d go looking for her myself,” said Nimrod, “but I daren’t land this thing anywhere near those camels. Not with them being so nervous. Also it’s important that I stay aloft, where she can see us, just in case she does show up.”

“Then I’ll go myself,” said John, pulling on his duffle coat.

“Can you go?” asked Nimrod. “Look at you. You’re freezing, John.”

John felt within himself and shook his head. “Yes, you’re right,” he said. “My body’s much too cold for my djinn power to work.”

“I’m feeling rather cold and wet, as well,” admitted Nimrod. “It’s all I can do to keep this thing in the air.” He shook his head. “Besides. Even if your powers had returned, I couldn’t let you go. Not now that you know the location of
the tomb, John. I can’t risk you both getting lost. What’s at stake here is far too important for you to go and look for her. Do you understand?”

John nodded grimly. “Yes, sir,” he said.

There was a long silence.

“This is important, right?” said Charlie. “For the future of the world and our weather and all that?”

“I can’t overstate just how important this is,” Nimrod said gravely. “If we don’t put a swift end to all these volcanic eruptions, the world is facing catastrophe.” He paused. “And I suspect my nephew and niece are the only ones who can put a stop to all of this.”

John shrugged and, thinking his uncle was talking about his most recent adventure inside the body of a camel, he shrugged and said, “It was nothing.”

Charlie thought for a moment.

“Then I’ll do it,” he said brightly. “I’ll go and look for your niece.”

“You?” said Nimrod. “How?”

“You djinns aren’t the only ones who can get out of your heads,” said Charlie. “We have been doing it, too, since way back when. Believe me, I know what I’m doing. I’ve tracked more spirits than I care to remember.” He pointed at the ground that lay beneath the flying carpet. “Down there is a whole labyrinth of invisible songlines and pathways. But I reckon I can find her all right.”

“He’s right,” said Jimmy. “If anyone can track your niece in the spirit world, mate, it’s Charlie here.”

“You can track spirits?” Nimrod sounded surprised. “How?”

“Charlie can track anything,” said Jimmy. “In this world or the next.”

“Then, please,” said Nimrod. “I’d be very grateful if you would go and look for my niece, Charlie.”

“Me, too,” admitted Groanin. “I say, me, too.”

“Is there anything I can do to help?” asked Nimrod.

Charlie shook his head.

“Reckon all I need is a bit of a tune on Jimmy’s
yirdaki
, to put me in the proper mood, like,” he said. “That and a mask to stick on my mug, to disguise my true identity from the spirits. Just in case they get a bit annoyed with something I do and come looking for me afterward.”

“We always wear a mask when we visit the spirit world,” explained Jimmy. “They can get a bit narked when you turn up unannounced, like.” He picked up the
yirdaki
and gave it a couple of experimental blows, like a man tuning up for a concert.

“What kind of mask?” asked Nimrod.

“I dunno,” said Charlie. “Black is best. But it doesn’t have to be too fancy like the ones we sell the tourists. Those masks are just for making money. So the more elaborate they are, the better. Nah, plain black is good enough, I reckon.”

A smallish figure wearing a red duffle coat walked toward him. It was Professor Sturloson.

“Will this do?” he said, and handed Charlie his own black face mask.

Charlie’s jaw dropped several inches and his eyes widened as he stared hard at the professor for a long moment. And he wasn’t the only one staring. Anyone would have found it hard not to stare at the face framed by the hood of the red duffle coat. For the face was not one horribly burnt and blackened by a superhot pyroclastic flow; it was that of a child with rosy cheeks and a cute little dimple in its chin, a child not much younger than John or Philippa.

“Blimey,” said Groanin, and looked away.

“
Blóðugur helvíti
,” said Axel.

Remembering his manners at last, Charlie looked sheepishly at the mask he now held in his hands. “Er, yes,” he said. “That’ll do nicely, mate. No worries. Cheers.”

“It’s all right,” said the professor. “I don’t mind any of you looking. Not now, my friends. But perhaps I do owe you all an explanation. Especially you, Axel. Yes, especially you, my old friend.”

“None of my business what you look like,” said Axel. “Seems to me that if a man wants to wear a mask, it’s his own affair.”

“Don’t you want to know why?” asked the professor.

Axel shrugged. “Not if you don’t want to tell me.”

“I told you all I’d resisted having a face transplant,” said the professor. “When, in fact, the truth is I did have one. However, there was a mix-up at the Edvard Munch Memorial Hospital in Oslo, and the surgeon had taken off my face — or what remained of it — before he found out that the donor face came from an eleven-year-old girl. By then, it was too late to stop the operation and he was obliged to go ahead and
give me this face you see now. Since then, I’ve been stuck with it. It must seem ridiculous to you, I know; but the fact is I wear the mask because, well, I was worried that no one would take me seriously with the face of an eleven-year-old girl; and in a field like volcanology, it’s always important that people take you very seriously. After all, who’s going to evacuate a whole city that’s threatened with a lava flow on the say-so of someone with a face like this?”

John nodded. “I get it,” he said. “When you’re wearing a black mask, people can’t help but take you and your scientific field very seriously indeed.” He shrugged. “I mean, if Batman looked like some kid in elementary school, well, it just wouldn’t work, would it?”

“Makes perfect sense to me,” admitted Groanin. “I say, that makes perfect sense to me, Professor.”

The professor nodded and smiled an angelic smile. “I still wish that eventually I might be able to grow a beard or something.” He shrugged. “But, so far nothing.”

“I can see you don’t know many eleven-year-old girls, Professor,” said John.

“Why not get another face?” said Axel. “If that one bothers you. I know the Edvard Munch hospital. It’s a good hospital. But people die there all the time.”

“Aye, that’s hospitals for you,” murmured Groanin.

“What I mean is,” said Axel, “there must be new faces available all the time.”

“I thought about it,” said the professor. “But I sort of think that now that I have a face, a proper, unscarred, recognizably human face, that there are probably many more
deserving people than me who need one. This might be a little girl’s face. The wrong face. But it’s still a face. So I decided just to leave things as they are.”

For a moment, everyone was silent.

Then Charlie said, “Talking of young girls, I’d better get cracking if I’m going to find Philippa.” He nodded to Jimmy and put on the professor’s mask.

“Yes, you must,” agreed Nimrod. “When a spirit is missing from a body, there’s no time to lose.” He looked at John. “You remember what happened to Faustina.”

“Yes,” said John. “She ended up being displayed in the catacombs at a place called Malpensa, in Italy. They were passing her off as their own mummified corpse: the Sleeping Beauty, they called her.”

Jimmy began to play the
yirdaki.
Charlie stood up and, starting to clap and stamp in time with Jimmy, he danced.

“If I fall over, don’t worry yourselves none,” said Charlie. “That’ll be me achieving separation of mind and body. When that happens, just leave me be for a while. Even if I sound like I’m in trouble.”

It was a slow and very repetitive dance and, to an untutored eye like John’s, it resembled someone directing traffic.

Possessed of a no-less-untutored eye than John’s, Groanin thought the way Charlie moved his hands looked a bit like a conjurer he’d once seen at the Manchester’s Theatre Royal. It was all a bit too camp for his taste.

It was a good hour before Charlie finally collapsed, writhing and jerking onto the carpet, and Jimmy said that
his spirit was now free to leave his body and go walkabout for a while.

“That’s why we came out here, anyway,” he explained, laying aside the
yirdaki
and catching his normal breath again. “To keep in practice. You see, when it comes to the spirit world, if you don’t use it, you lose it.”

Suddenly, Charlie stopped moving.

“Is he all right?” John asked anxiously. “I mean, there’s some weird stuff coming out of his mouth.” John put his ear to the mouth of the mask the aborigine was wearing. “And I can’t hear him breathing.”

Jimmy gave his friend a cursory glance. “No worries,” he said. “That’s just a bit of froth. You see, John, you fellows make it look easy. But for us it’s hard, sweaty work separating mind and body.”

John nodded.

“Relax, sonny,” said Jimmy. “If anyone can find your sister, Charlie can.”