5
INTERVIEW WITH THE SHAMAN
“It’s still in there.” Dr. Jack Adler repeated his mantra over and over as he trudged up the spine of the Silgami Ridge. “I know it’s still in there.”
“You spoke, Professor Adler?” his hiking companion asked in accented English.
“Just talking to myself.” Jack glanced over at Dieter Hoffman, Professor of Ethnography at Hamburg University and the expedition’s resident Siberian folklorist, trying to gauge whether the older man might be ready for a rest break. With his wrinkled cheeks and snow-white beard, the lean, ascetic German looked to be well into his sixties, yet so far he’d hardly broken a sweat. If anything, Hoffman’s eagerness for the climb only seemed to increase the closer they approached the summit, and their goal.
Jack sighed and went back to metering out shallow breaths, his unwelcome doubts beating in time to each one of them.
Hell, it’s got to be in there. But —
But can I prove it?
Jack got that sinking feeling again. His one chance of confirming the Jackson-Ryan hypothesis rested with the Superconducting Quantum Interference Device he’d lugged halfway round the world with him. And the SQUID was malfunctioning. He should be back at base camp right now, nursing his sick machine, instead of trekking through the taiga en route to some improbable meeting.
An impossible meeting, if you took everyone else’s word for it — impossible to arrange, that is. The man he was going to see had not consented to speak with a Western scientist — indeed, any scientist — in twenty years or more. Still and all, the chance to speak with the last living eyewitness to the Tunguska catastrophe! So Jack had dutifully put in the request. He’d been more surprised than anyone when it was granted.
And now here he was, against all odds, puffing and wheezing his way to an interview with —
“What’s this old guy supposed to be again, Professor Hoffman? Some kind of witch doctor?”
That stopped Hoffman in mid-stride. He turned and looked down his long, thin nose at Jack — no mean trick, seeing as Jack had three inches on him, easy.
Finally he said, “I believe the term you are groping for is ‘shaman.’”
“Same difference, right?”
“Ah, well, if I may be frank, ‘witch doctors’ exist only in the overheated imaginations of your Hollywood screenwriters. A shaman, on the other hand, is a holy man, a practitioner of mankind’s oldest religious tradition. He is a bridge between the Middle World of men and the Upper and Lower Worlds of the spirits. In short, he is the tribe’s authority on, and emissary to, the wider cosmos.”
“Sort of a primitive cosmologist, huh?”
“‘Primitive’ is hardly a scientific designation,” Hoffman said, a hint of frost in his voice.
Jack sighed. Seemed he couldn’t say word one without rubbing Hoffman the wrong way. And he needed the prickly little Prussian: no one else on the expedition was fluent in the Evenki language.
“In fact,” Hoffman was still talking, “Shamanism has as good a claim to modernity as, say, Christianity. It is still practiced throughout the world, in your own Wild West no less than here in Siberia. Though here, of course, is where the term itself originated.”
“How’s that?”
“Shaman is in fact an Evenki word, transmitted to Western scholarship via the early Russian anthropologists. Its root meaning is ‘the one who knows.’”
“Knows what?” Jack asked.
Hoffman’s lips quirked. “That, my dear Professor, is what we are here to find out.”
It took three rings before Jonathan Knox opened an eye on the unfamiliar dark of the Reston Hyatt hotel room. Triangulating in on the noise, and on the ghostly glow of the incoming-call display, he managed to snag his Treo handheld from its charger cradle on the third try. He thumbed the unit into cellphone mode.
“Hello?”
“Good evening, Jonathan.”
Evening? According to the handheld, it was a hair past three a.m.
“Mycroft? I thought you’d be calling closer to, uh —” Closer to what? Six-thirty? Seven? Mycroft would’ve long since turned in by any civilized callback hour. Still, Knox supposed he should consider himself lucky the old night owl had bent the rules even this much, agreeing to lift Weathertop’s ironclad late-night communications curfew, just this once. An honor of sorts.
Knox didn’t feel honored, just groggy. He shook his head to clear it, flicked on the nightstand lamp, and tried again. “Is it done?”
“Already in your inbox, assuming you’ve got your email set to auto-fetch.”
“Let me check.” Knox switched the display to Snappermail and scrolled down the message list looking for Mycroft’s return address. “Okay, looks like it’s here. What now?”
“If you’ll transfer the attachment to your memory card, I can talk you through installation and testing.”
It took ten more minutes, and two false starts, before Mycroft finally pronounced himself satisfied.
“Thanks, Mycroft,” Knox said. “Nice piece of work. Any problems getting it coded up?”
“None at all, other than timeframe. Why the rush, if I might ask?”
“I’ve got a meeting first thing in the morning. Could turn adversarial. Will turn adversarial, if the past is prologue. I couldn’t see going in totally naked.”
“The best defense, eh, Jonathan? Well, I’ll be here and standing by, should you need me.”
“I appreciate that, Mycroft. But I’m really hoping I won’t.”
The view from the top of Silgami Ridge was almost worth the climb. From up here, Jack could see the whole of the Cauldron, as the early explorers had christened the valley of the Impact. What must this vast basin have looked like when Leonid Kulik first glimpsed it in 1927, before scrub pine and larch could scab over the scars on the land, obscuring the treefall pattern that radiated out to the horizon. Even now there was an eerie foreboding about the place.
Which made it all the harder to understand why anyone, holy man or not, would have chosen to live here. To live within sight of the disaster that had nearly claimed his life.
Yet that was what the man he’d come to see had done. Jack abandoned the vista, turned to look at the small encampment set back against the scraggly treeline. Just a cluster of huts dominated by a central choum.
That choum was an outsized, all-weather edition of Jack’s own birchbark tepee back at base camp. With one curious extra. As Jack walked up to the dwelling, Hoffman was staring at the strange structure jutting out of its roof: a thin vertical pole with a rectangular frame lashed to it. The whole ensemble had the look of some Neolithic TV antenna, if you discounted the animal hide stretched across its frame.
“Think he gets MTV on that?” Jack nodded at the contraption.
Hoffman shot him a disapproving glance before looking up again. “This is really quite unique,” he said, “I have seen such charms, but only in old photographs, never before in real life.”
“What’s it for?”
“The deerskin is a sacrifice to appease the storm god Ogdy, in order that he not send his thunderwings against this house.”
“Thunderwings?”
Hoffman shrugged. “Mythical birds. They are said to be the size of a grouse, but with bodies made of iron. In Evenki legend, they are the effectuators of the storm god’s wrath, sent forth to rain destruction on the Middle World.”
“As in the Tunguska Event?” Jack couldn’t quite hide his smile.
“This must all seem foolish to a man of science such as yourself, Professor Adler. But you would do well not to show it now. We are about to enter the home of someone who believes in it unreservedly.”
With that, Hoffman faced the choum and uttered a stream of liquid vowels interspersed with harsh consonants, presumably a greeting in the Evenki language.
It had no visible effect. A minute went by, two, then Hoffman tried again. This time, rustling movement could be heard within. One corner of the tent flap lifted. Jack caught an impression of a small, dark, oval face, high cheekbones, dark eyes peering out at them.
“That can’t be our guy,” Jack said. The rawhide-clad man — no, woman — now emerging on hands and knees from the choum’s interior couldn’t be a day over forty. Any eyewitness to the Tunguska Event would have to be well over a hundred by now.
“No, no, of course not. Let me see.” Hoffman spoke again in Evenki, and this time received a lengthy response.
“Her name is Akulina,” he translated, “an apprentice to the shaman, and his eldest great-granddaughter. She rejoices at the coming of Eagle.”
Eagle?
At Akulina’s urging, Jack crouched and followed her into the choum, with Hoffman bringing up the rear.
It was refreshingly cool inside after the midday heat. Cool and dark. What little sunlight managed to sift in through overlapping layers of birchbark was all but absorbed by the heavy deerskin hangings lining the walls. Only a single bright shaft slanted down from the smokehole to strike the floor and scatter dim illumination throughout the interior.
As Jack’s eyes adjusted to the half-light, he could see they were not alone. On a small rectangular rug in the center of the choum he could make out a kneeling figure, hunched over, head down,
“He awaits us on his dehtur.” Hoffman’s whisper came from behind Jack. “A good sign, a very good sign.”
“His what?”
“A dehtur is a prayer rug — a consecrated mat of worked reindeer hide. Within its confines are joined the three Worlds of the Evenki cosmos. Its presence here signifies that our host means to speak of sacred mysteries. As does his ceremonial dress — look!”
The shaman wore a robe of fringed rawhide, metallic talismans dangling from its many tassels. As Jack watched, he lifted his head and inspected his visitors through the eyeholes of a leather mask shaped to resemble the head of a bear.
With his apprentice’s help, the shaman slowly got to his feet and removed the bear’s head. The face that emerged from beneath it was almost as brown and leathery as the mask itself. A strong, square face bearing the ravages of time and pain and age.
But what caught Jack’s attention were the eyes. Dark, almost black, they fairly shone with secret wisdom. What had those eyes witnessed on that long-ago morning?
And why was their probing stare directed now at Jack himself, as though seeking something deep within his soul?
Abruptly, the man broke into a toothless grin. He raised an arm and spoke several quavering, breathless syllables for Hoffman’s whispered translation.
“Eagle, be welcome among us. I am called Jenkoul.”
“What’s all this ‘Eagle’ business?” Jack finally asked Hoffman. Because it hadn’t stopped with that first mention. No, all through Jenkoul’s preliminaries — blessing of the visitors, blessing of the occasion, blessing of the raggedy prayer rug, for godsakes — seemed like every third word out of the old guy’s mouth was something to do with eagles, each time accompanied by a significant glance in Jack’s direction. “— You sure you’re getting that translation right?”
Hoffman made a face like Jack had just told him his baby was ugly. “Yes, of course,” he said stiffly. “It is basic vocabulary, after all,” — big emphasis on the basic — “entirely unambiguous.”
“And he’s definitely talking about me.”
Hoffman chuckled unexpectedly. “Consider it a token of esteem, my dear Professor. Perhaps he takes you for a fellow shaman.”
“He’s not alone. There’s any number of my so-called colleagues who’d agree with him.”
“Shh,” Hoffman said, and pointed. Clutching Akulina’s arm for support, Jenkoul had risen from his prayer rug and was easing himself down onto a hummock of hide and fur piled opposite the choum’s entrance. From there, half reclining, the old shaman regarded his guests brightly and invited them to seat themselves. Following Jenkoul’s lead, Jack settled back too.
With the opening ceremonies out of the way, it was finally time for the main event.
“The sun of high summer rises early over the valley of the Stony Tunguska, but on that fateful morning I arose with it, for I had far to ride.”
Jack leaned forward, watching Jenkoul’s face, listening to his soft, breathy intonations alternating with the Teutonic precision of Hoffman’s English translation. This was what he’d come for: the old man’s firsthand account of the Event itself.
“I had journeyed into the heartlands many times before, Eagle, and always before my heart had rejoiced at their beauty. But on this day my heart was filled with dread. Were it not for my father’s wish that I lead the southern herd to fresh pasture, I would never have ventured there. Not on that day. I was in mortal fear of the curse, you see.”
Jack nodded, still waiting for Jenkoul to get to the good stuff. As far as cosmology was concerned, that did not include curses. Hoffman, on the other hand, seemed to be lapping this part up. He said something in Evenki that could have been a request for more detail. Leastways, Jenkoul gave them some.
“The curse of Ogdy, revealed at the solstice ceremonial. Revealed to Pilya, shaman of our clan, as he walked the spirit road for the last time.” Jenkoul shook his head. “Pilya. There are none like him today. Even in those days there were few who could peer beneath the skin of the world and behold its beating heart, as he could. And fewer still willing to give their lives to know the true way of things.
“He died, you see.” Jenkoul sighed as if it had all happened yesterday, rather than nearly a century ago. “He gave warning of the storm god’s coming and he died. The vision killed him, the horror of it stopping his heart.” He sighed again and stared into the distance, at things only he could see.
Hoffman took advantage of the pause to lean over and whisper, “Not the vision. It was almost certainly the mushrooms that killed him.”
“What mushrooms?” Jack whispered back.
“Amanita Muscaria, fly agaric — the Hindus call it Soma. The flesh is hallucinogenic, used by many cultures throughout the world to bring about a trance state. It is, however, also poisonous — not fatal in small amounts, but a large enough dosage could induce cardiac arrest.”
Hoffman broke off then. Jenkoul was resuming his tale. “So you see, Eagle, I had reason to fear the heartlands. Still, what son would deny his father? So, early that morning I mounted my reindeer Onikan and set forth —”
“Hold on,” Jack said. “He’s seriously saying ‘reindeer’? As in Rudolph?”
It took Hoffman a moment to get the reference. “Ah, your Santa Claus myth. Yes, Professor, reindeer as in Rudolph — the Evenkis ride them.”
“Little low to the ground for that, aren’t they?”
Hoffman ignored him and went back to translating. “The going was slow until we reached the Silgami ridge. There the rocky soil offered better purchase for Onikan’s hooves. And with no underbrush to impede us — for only mushrooms and mosses grow well in the half-light that filters down through the treetops — it now seemed I would reach the southern herd at Churgim Creek by noon. For the first time that morning, I began to hope that I might complete my journey safe from harm, after all.
“Then, without warning, a shadow reared up before us. Onikan jerked to a halt, nearly pitching me over his antlers. At first I could not make out its true form; it seemed only a patch of deeper darkness against the forest gloom. Then it moved and revealed itself: a giant Siberian gray bear, twice my height and not ten strides away.
“Onikan stood trembling, eyes rolling, ready to bolt. I reached out a hand to soothe him, knowing that if the reindeer tried to run, the bear would be on us in an instant. It was only when my mount began to calm that I could spare a moment to regard the enormous beast before me, and ponder what to do.
“I was then only in my fifteenth summer, Eagle, but already I had learned much of the old ways, the wisdom of our people. And I knew that this lord of the forest must be paid the respect which was his due, the due of all his kind.”
This last remark sparked a brief exchange between Jenkoul and his interpreter, all of it Greek, or rather Evenki, to Jack. When Hoffman spoke next, it was as a professor of ethnography, not a translator.
“Our friend here has touched upon an interesting point. The Siberian peoples, you see, hold very different attitudes toward the various predators that share their world. One, in particular, they have singled out for demonization, the one they regard as that worst, most malevolent of animals, the one they call the ‘beast of evil heart’ — the hated and reviled wolf.”
“Hey,” Jack said, “I happen to like wolves.”
“Perhaps you would feel less sentimental, Professor, if forced to compete with them for pride of place at the top of the food chain.” Hoffman held up a hand to forestall further protest. “In any case, I do not condone the opinion, I merely report it. And that only by way of contrast to the folklore surrounding the bear. Evenkis view the bear, you see, as almost a benign creature, one that seldom attacks without provocation and never kills without cause. Indeed, from his manlike mannerisms, upright stance, and manifest intelligence there stems a belief that the bear possesses something akin to a human soul. So strong is this imputed affinity that Evenkis have been known to address bears using terms otherwise reserved for kinfolk. Which is, in fact, what our friend Jenkoul had begun saying a moment ago.”
Hoffman then turned for a brief exchange with the shaman, following which the story recommenced. “I faced the bear, speaking slowly and in deferential tones. ‘Grandfather,’ I said, ‘let there be peace between us. Do not bar my way.’
“The Siberian gray shifted his stance, but made no other reply. I saw then I might have no choice but to kill him. I unsheathed my firearm and took aim at an eye. Hit him there and he might die before he could reach me. My finger was tightening on the trigger when something in the bear’s manner gave me pause. He stood there, head to one side, as if waiting for ... for recognition, perhaps?
“The rifle trembled in my hands, as I realized what, or who, confronted me on that shadowed hillside. This was no ordinary bear at all. It was — ‘Bynaku?’ Sure enough, the ears pricked up at the sound of his true name. This was none other than an avatar of Lord Bynaku, Ruler of the Lower World.
“The spirit-bear drew himself up to his full height. He sniffed the air and took a step forward, waving his huge paws. I heard him speak then, growling “Mot! Mot!” — the words we Evenkis use to goad a reindeer into a gallop. The Lord of the Lower World was warning me back the way I had come. But why?
“My Churgim Creek encampment beckoned, its choum offering relief from the noonday heat, but …. But only the foolhardy ignore the counsel of a god.
“I bowed low, then steered Onikan around on the narrow path with the pressure of my knees. I twisted in my saddle for a last look back, but the Siberian gray was nowhere to be seen. In the place where the spirit-bear had stood, a single beam of early morning sunlight fell upon the mossy forest floor.
“What danger could threaten in this sacred place? Ogdy’s curse? The heavens gave no sign of the storm god’s displeasure. And yet I was suddenly filled with nameless foreboding.
“I could not desecrate the earthly abode of Bynaku with a shout. Instead, I bent forward and pressed my lips to Onikan’s ear. ‘Mot! Mot!’ I whispered.
“And we began to run.”
The story went on from there, of course. On to a flash of bright blue light, to peals of thunder, blasts of heat, miles of forest laid waste, etc., etc. Far as Jack was concerned, it was all pretty much same old, same old. Nothing that hadn’t been reported a hundred times before, and by observers in a better position to actually see the Event. By his own admission, Jenkoul had been racing away from the Epicenter at the moment of the impact, after all.
Jenkoul must have read the disappointment on Jack’s face. He pursed his lips. “In days long past, there were many who could have told you such things as I have spoken of, such things and more. They have all since departed on their journeys up the River of the Dead.” The old man shook his head. “Still, they left behind record of what was known to them, that others might know it too.”
Jenkoul levered himself up to a sitting position then, the better to fix Jack with another of his penetrating stares. “— But what I would tell you now, Eagle, is known to me alone.”
And, with that, the old man had launched into the most harrowing tale of all. Yet, despite the gruesomeness of the events and the pain Jenkoul was plainly experiencing on reliving them Jack could hardly keep from grinning ear to ear. For here it was: a gold mine of corroboration for his hypothesis. He was right, after all. Had to be. No other explanation could fit the facts.
The facts — was he getting them all? He quick checked his digital recorder, then sighed in relief. The indicator lights showed it still recording, still capturing this amazing story for posterity.
Finally Jenkoul was done. Jack waited to see if he had anything more to offer, but, no, he had leaned back into the pile of furs again and closed his eyes, resting from his exertions.
Or not. Jenkoul’s eyes opened again to narrow slits. “Eagle,” he said, “It is fitting that you should know your own part in this. As I have told you my fate, so I will tell you yours. You have only to ask.”
Jack hesitated, unsure what to make of this. Before he could decide, Hoffman intruded on the silence with a response. Presumably in the affirmative, since Jenkoul began to speak again.
“It was at the solstice festival five summers ago. For one last time I tasted the sacred mushrooms and walked in spirit the crooked path to the Lower World. There, I was met by One who had guided my footsteps all unseen since days of my youth, yet who only now revealed himself to me once again: Lord Bynaku.”
Right, the old guy’s familiar, or whatever — the spirit bear who’d supposedly saved him from the impact.
“We talked through all the space of a fleeting summer night,” Jenkoul went on, “And in that time beyond time, Bynaku showed me many mysteries. But the last was greatest of all. For he showed me how, in the final days of the Middle World, he, Bynaku, would send forth Eagle, lord of the winds, wisest of creatures, to find the lair of Ogdy’s all-devouring Wolf.
“I am old,” Jenkoul said. “My spirit readies itself for its final journey on the River of the Dead. But before I die, I longed to look upon Bynaku’s Eagle. Eagle, who will confront Ogdy’s Wolf, not with might, but with wisdom.”
Jenkoul struggled to sit up and look Jack once more in the eye. “And now, Eagle,” he whispered, “You have come.”
Jack was still trying to think how to respond when he felt Hoffman’s tap on his shoulder. “Professor Adler? It grows late. We must rejoin the group.”
Jack glanced at his watch: after five already. Where had the time gone? But Hoffman was right: factor in the hour or so it would take them to get down to the rendezvous point, and they’d just make it before the Land Rover left for base camp.
Leavetaking was quick and painless. Until the last, that is, when the old shaman laid a palsied hand on Jack’s arm and said, “Go forth, Eagle, find the Wolf. Stop Ogdy’s evil before it can devour the world of men.”
“I — I’ll try.” What else could he say? The look in the old man’s eyes was so desperate.
Outside Akulina was preparing the evening meal over a bed of coals. Jack waved her a good-bye and waited for Hoffman to join him.
“Ready to go?” Jack said, then: “— Anything wrong?”
Hoffman’s face held a curious mix of emotions, chagrin dominant.
“I am afraid you have wasted your time, and mine, Professor Adler.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Well, that last part was complete and utter rubbish! And casts doubt on all the rest.” Hoffman’s face showed red against his white beard. “Prophesying the end of the Middle World, as if shamanism were a chiliastic religion, like Christianity. There is nothing, nothing whatsoever in the Evenki oral tradition to hint of such a Manichean battle between powers of light and darkness, nor of Eagle and Wolf as those powers’ surrogates. From the point of view of ethnology, I fear all this material is worthless.”
“Worthless? What about the vigil in the Great Swamp, the encounter with —”
“Oh, please, Professor Adler, do not pretend you lend any credence to that account. Why, the whole thing was obviously nothing more than a mushroom-induced hallucination.”
“Actually, that account may have furnished a key to the Tunguska mystery itself.”
“Clearly delusional,” Hoffman said. The way he was looking at Jack made it unclear whom he was referring to.
“No, really, I’m serious.”
“Of course you are. Next, you will claim that you are in fact this Eagle savior-figure sent from Bynaku to confront Ogdy’s Wolf.”
“I’ll admit, I don’t get that stuff about the Eagle. What’s it supposed to mean? That I’m an American, maybe? Eagle’s the symbol of America, after all. But, still, I can’t be the first American the guy’s ever seen.”
“And yet you are so typical an American,” Hoffman said around a sneer. “You Americans! You trouble to master no language but your own. Not even to learn the meaning of your own name.”
Jack said nothing, just looked at the German ethnographer.
“Your name — Adler,” Hoffman said.
“What about it?”
“It is the German word for Eagle.”