White Jade

Chapter Forty-Four

"Selena, come look at this." Nick called her over.

The three of them stood in front of the mummified figure.

"What's holding him up?" Ronnie held his torch close. The skin was old and brown and pulled tight over the bones of the skull. The eyes were black hollows in the face.

"Must be propped up, under the robe."

"It's one of the priests, like in the paintings. That's a piece of white jade in his hand." She stepped closer. "It's a carved figure of the emperor."

Carter remembered his dream of a robed figure in darkness, holding something white out toward him. The hair stirred on the back of his neck..

"What do you think they were doing in here?" He held his torch up. The flame reflected off the glass containers on the tables.

"Caldrons, fire, glass — it's a laboratory. I think they were trying to make an elixir of immortality," said Selena.

"It's beginning to look like it. You have any luck with the writing on the walls?"

"It's the linguistic discovery of a lifetime. The writing is a narrative and each panel has something written underneath about the painting above."

"Sort of an illustrated book." Ronnie said.

"Yes. This priest with the jade was part of a cult of eternal life. You saw that mural at the end, where everyone is standing around and raising their hands to heaven? The writing says the body was prepared for eternal existence. Immortality to these people meant you came back after death, and you had to have a body to do it. No body, no immortality."

Nick sat on a stone bench, trying to take stress off his back. "Belief in eternal life has been around since the cavemen. Lots of cultures put personal things like food and dishes in the grave for the dead person to use after death."

"The Minoans did that," said Selena. "Archeologists have found personal objects in Minoan tombs. They might have picked up on the idea from the Egyptians."

Carter tugged on his ear. "If the Minoans were leaving things in the tombs, they must have thought the body needed those things after death."

"But the Minoans didn't preserve bodies." Selena brushed a wisp of hair away. "They buried the dead in collective tombs and kept using the tombs over and over, pushing everything into a corner until it got full. These murals present something radically different. First you die, the body's preserved, then you come back in the same body and live forever. That's a huge divergence from what we know about Minoan and early Vedic civilization. The Indians cremated their dead. They still do."

"What's the elixir for?" Ronnie asked.

"I think they wanted to create a real formula for staying alive forever."

"Why here in Tibet?"

"The story on the walls says the priests started from here, went to Crete and then returned. It doesn't say when or why or how they could have known about the Minoans. The part about the emperor is clear enough. Huang was brought to this spot, to receive the elixir. That would have been in 210 B.C.E."

"I wonder what they did with him? We haven't seen anything that looks like a tomb." His back was stiffening up. Time to get back to work.

Ronnie looked at the mummy. The priest grinned back. "What's next, Nick?"

"Selena gets videos of everything. You and I look for anything that might interest Yang. Selena, if you record all of the writing we can translate it later. Once you've got your pictures we'll get out and blow the entrance. I don't want Yang down here poking around."

"You want to blow up that statue?"

"We don't have a choice. We got in easily enough. Whoever Yang sends will have the same information we have. We'll just seal the top. In the future someone can re-open it, if that's the right thing."

She shook her head. "I never thought I'd be part of destroying the archeological find of the century. I'd better finish getting my pictures."

Carter reached out to take the piece of white jade from the mummy's hand. It didn't move. He tugged on it and the arm came up as the jade came free. As he turned to give it to Selena the floor shook under their feet.

Something was happening deep under the stones. The room started to shake. Bits of mortar and trails of dust fell from the ceiling. A glass bowl slipped from one of the tables and shattered.

Taking the jade figure of the emperor had triggered some ancient mechanism. They ran out of the room, down the steps and into the great outer chamber. A thick silver fluid gushed into the channels cut along the sides of the steps and flowed down into the openings by the white slab on the platform.

"That looks like mercury," Selena called above the rumble of moving stone.

It was mercury, a hell of a lot of it. They stood at the foot of the steps and watched a rectangular white block slowly rise in the center of the platform. After a minute the flow of mercury in the channels slowed to a trickle. The rumbling vibration died away.

They walked over to the block. It was chest high and illustrated with elaborate scenes of life in ancient China. Selena ran her hands over the carvings.

"This entire container is made of white jade. I think it's a crypt, or a sarcophagus."

Carter stood next to her. "What do you think is inside?"

"Not what, who. I think the First Emperor of China"

"Still alive, you think?"

"Smartass. You want to take a look?" She trained her video camera on the sarcophagus.

"Give me a hand, Ronnie." The lid was sealed with a sticky resin. They used their knives to dig it out.

They fumbled for a handhold and moved the lid away from one corner. Inside Nick saw a foot wearing an elaborate brocaded slipper. A foul smell seeped from the crypt.

"Phew." Ronnie turned his head away.

"No place for the stink to go after they sealed him up"

"Slide the lid further over, Nick."

"It can't weigh more than a couple of hundred pounds. Let's set it down."

They lifted the lid off and rested it against the crypt. Nick looked in. The First Emperor of China lay on his back, on a golden pillow, wrapped in robes of golden silk embroidered with thousands of pearls. He wore a tall headdress of jade. On his chest lay a heavy disk of white jade, hung on a thick gold chain and inset with a large golden dragon. A small box of white jade was placed at his feet. But it wasn't the box that caught Carter's eye. It was the emperor's face.

He looked as if he had died yesterday.

"Jesus," Ronnie leaned over the coffin. "My doctor doesn't look that good and he's a lot younger. He looks like he's sleeping."

The emperor's face was pear shaped and sallow. Thick black mustaches drooped down on either side of his mouth. His lips were full and his cheeks rounded. There was a hint of cruelty in his features.

"How did they do this?" Nick said. "It makes the Egyptians look like amateurs."

"It must be the formula." Selena laid a hand against the Emperor's neck. Soft. Cold as death. "The formula wasn't for living forever. It was for preserving the body. That fits with what I read on the walls."

Nick reached down and lifted the box from the emperor's feet. Inside was a stoppered bottle of glass, filled with a light green liquid. He held it up. Flecks of golden light danced within the fluid.

"Anyone want to take a shot at living forever?"