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Tomb Raider: The Sadhana by Heidi Ahlmen (siirma6surfeu.fi)
Chapter One
It was the first of January 2000. First day of the much-talked-about new millennium. The medium-sized, old TV-screens in Cairo aiport still flashed images of kissing couples of Times Square, New York, even though the year had changed twelve hours earlier. I was sitting in the far corner of the international terminal, buried deep in my thoughts in on of those ugly and uncomfortable plastic chairs all airports seem to house. The hall was empty except for me and an older Arab with two cages filled with chattering chickens, obviously waiting in the wrong terminal for a domestic flight.
My plane had departed hours before without me. My two suitcases lied on the floor, waiting for the dust to settle onto them. And I just sat, trying to clean up the mess storming in my head.
I didn't give a toss about the millennium.
Hours and hours before, I had been resqued from a pyramid inhabited by an ancient Egyptian devil. I had witnessed spirits being conjured, gods coming to life and going back to the underworld. Many survivors of major disasters have said that thinking back, the whole accident feels like a movie they've watched, or a book they've read - like nothing like it had never happened to them. I had seen and done things that defy all laws of time and space - I think I could state that not many people can swallow down and understand that in a day.
Swallowing down and understanding was what I was trying in the airport. I just sat, too much had happened to me and I felt as I was to shatter to small pieces of Greek amphoras if I returned home on that afternoon flight. I was up for another destination.
Another way. I was dead to the world. Why couldn't I stay dead for some time more? I had no family, noone to look after - a blink must've lit in my eyes when I realized that, for the first time, all options were open to me. I had money to support a cricket team, a story incredible enough to ensue me a vacancy in an asylum for the rest of my life, and unlimited amount of time, and thirty years of mixed memories to organize.
I needed someplace far. Someplace safe. Someplace important to me.
Having a transient moment of absolute relief, I stood up, stretching my legs a bit. left my bags in the waiting area, and walked up to the boards where all the departuring flights were signalled digitally.
00:20 Bangkok 00:20 Berlin 00:25 London 00:35 Kathmandu
I walked up to the ticket office counter and purchased a single one-way ticket to Kathmandu.
Exhausted from staying up and other things, I literally rambled to the Boeing 737 destined in Kathmandu, Nepal. I found my seat in the first class. I was the only passenger so far - not a strange thing when you start wondering what kinds of people fly from Cairo to Kathmandu. Camel dealers planning to do some exchanging for camels? Hardly.
Outside it was dark. Cairo is near enough the Equator to ensue the lack of twilight. It gets dark in a pang. Morning comes in a split second as the sun rises from, seemingly, behind the Great Pyramid. I tossed by handbag under my seat and started worrying about clothes. It was going to be about five degrees celsius in Kathmandu, and I only had summer clothes with me. I was wearing an extremely wrinkled linnen dress with sandals. I did had with me a pair of jeans. Those would have to do until I got some warmer clothes purchased from the city. If you can call Kathmandu a city.
It's a world of its own, really. On my first trip there, if you can call it one, didn't give me much opportunities to get to know it thoroughly. I had been transported from Darchen Medical Center, a rotten hellhole in the Himalayas, to Kathmandu hospital to wait for a private flight back to England. Some trip that was. Some say the best way to deal with painful memories is to laugh at them or rip irony or sarcams out of them, but I feel no need for that. My fight for survival in Tibet was one of the best times of my life - minus the possibility of dying out there. I would do it again if it would solve as many of my current problems as it did all those years ago. This attitude, eventually lead to the conflict between me and my family.
The plane door were closed and it started rolling towards the actual runway. I clicked on my belt and closed my eyes. Don't get me wrong - I do not have a fear of flying even though I have suffered at least three crashes of aircrafts. Let's just say I'm always perfectly aware of my surroundings every split second I'm flying somewhere. I have a flying certificate, but sometimes it makes things worse. You're sitting aboard a commercial flight, you hit turbulence. You get nervous. There's nothing you can do about it but to me awake and nervous. When you're flying yourself, you choose the weather - unless you're escaping or chasing someone - and the area you will be flying above.
The plane took off. I accepted an offer of tea, and dug out my laptop. Then I injected the teleport cord to my satellite phone and checked my email. It's an expensive but a very nice thing to have a satellite phone. Unlike cellphones, they cause no harm to aeroplane electronics, and you don't need to be in a network area to be able to make a call.
No email. I was dead to the world. It made me slightly touchy - my aunt whom I love like a mother didn't know whether I was dead or alive - and my father must've thought I was among the deceased. But the feeling of need for time for myself won over. I belonged to me. If I wanted to vanish I would. If pushed against the wall about my selfishness, I wouldn't deny my guilt.
Then I made a decision. I would send a ostcard to Jean from Kathmandu. I wouldhave loved to take a picture of his face when he read it. He'd probably dig out that funny little magnifying glass with a small lamp of his he uses to read hieroglyphics, and try to figure out if the handwriting was genuine. I realized I had to take a picture of myself and attach it to the letter or card. He wouldn't believe me otherwise. It was fairly safe to let him informmy family. I knew my father would hardly come looking for me. My aunt Gillian - she would cry for an hour, then go back to her garden. I indulged myself fully into imagining different people's faces when they discovered the truth about me - that I was safe, unless you counted some burn marks in the legs that would positively leave a scar and some other minor injuries. When I came to von Croy, I stopped. It made me feel sad somehow. An unexplainable feeling.
I got up from my seat and headed towards the toilet with my handbag as the first peaks of the Himalayas appeared in the small plane windows at dawn. The dark-green, fruitful plains of India first turned into dead, brown plateau below the mountains - and fater that, the mountains just rushed out of nowhere. First there is low hills and then a huge, snow-tipped mountain. One of the miracles of the world. Unlike Altai farther north, Himalaya is a relatively young mountain range. It's the sharpness of the peaks and the steepness of them that tells it. Old ranges usually have existed long enough to become low from erosion.
I closed the toilet door behind me, and pulled loose strands of hair from the hairbrush I had bought with me. I have long hair, so single hairs that come off make such twists in a hairbrush that they would make molecular biologists interested. I brushed my hair and worried.
I had made a hasty decision. I had a good purpose to retreat to Tibet for awhile - but I had no visa, no warm enough clothes, and no money exchanged. Money wasn't going to be a problem - kathmandu houses several international banks. I knew people at the embassy so I could get a visa fast without any awkward explanations - news don't travel very fast in Nepal so my death would hardly have come out as big news yet. When that would happen, I'd be far gone. I changed to jeans and a T-shirt. My bomber jacket was waiting in a plastic bag in my suitcase. I always carry it with me - it's unpleasant the least when I return back to England without a sufficiently thick coat to keep me warm during the bike ride from Heathrow to Surrey.
I braided my hair just a bit so it would stay as one big strand in my neck. I can't wear a ponytail - it splits and spreads itself like a cloud on my face when walking in windy terrain such as Kathmandu.
What was I going to Tibet for? I had a quite clear answer to that. First I would replenish my gear in kathmandu, get a visa, and then find the first two of the three persons I was seeking. After finding them I would then hire a driver and start looking for the third.
I wanted to find the three persons that saved my neck on my first venture into this holy land of Tibet and pay my debt.
I returned to my seat. The plane was taking a turn and the mountain seemed to be rushing towards the plane windows. Absolute beauty.
After finding a hotel - a nice, cozy place kept up by a Dutch pair completely in love with each other and Nepal, I stocked my backpack with water-desinfection tablets, band-aid and two warm sweaters along with some traditional clothes. I had made some calls and fixed myself a visa for three months. I wasn't going to stay that long, but a precaution is a precaution.
Kathmandu is a religious city, filled with small temples, smiling monks, and stupas, meaning small religious monuments in the form of towers found everywhere in Asia including Cambodia and China. But there is slum. People live in Chiquita banana boxes stolen from hotels, underneath upside-down- turned rickshaws, covering themselves with pieces of plastic bags and rags. It's a sad thing to see. And they are sick. Thank God I had all my vaccinations in order. Some cough blood, other stare at you with reddish, suffering eyes, making you feel like the worst, most evil creature in the world for not saving them. I've heard that tuberculosis is a common ailment in India and some parts of Tibet. I shiver at the thought of getting sick in a remote area.
I once fell ill with malaria during a hunt in Cambodia where I overestimated my condition and strenght, and nearly died. I've been near death many times, but I've somehow slithered away without help every time. In Cambodia that time I wouldn't have been capable of saving myself. I was hunting for the Angkorean Iris with a partner, a partner who saved me by contacting my father. My father contacted an American army officer working in the peacekeeping operation in the area who arranged me a private emergency flight to Bangkok.
I did get the Iris, though. Even when I thought I didn't.
I secretly enjoyed the fact that this time I didn't have an artifact to hunt after.
I left the market square, dodging monks, donkey-sellers and children on a crowded street. What next? I didn't suppose they made phone books of Kathmandu, so I figured that the best way to find certain people was to walk around and ask people. I don't speak Tibetan, but I was sure I could find someone who at least understood some English.
I was wrong. Hours passed - no English-speakers. One spoke fluent French - but I can't understand a word of it so a good chance to gain some information was wasted. I didn't really mind spending time in the city - it has such a strange atmosphere that obviously opens best to Buddhists. No tourists, noone's gathering around you, trying to sell junk like they do in Egypt, no McDonald's restaurants.
After pacing the streets for four hours I returned to my hotel. The receptionist greeted me with a teethless smile - she was an older woman wearing a thick, rug-style poncho over her shoulders. She gave me my key - I was glad to notice she remembered me so I didn't have to mention my name. I went up to my room and slumped on the bed.
My room was dark. Decorated with light red - not pink, just sort of a dim red - it had a small bathroom, where small insects had taken over the shower since the previous guest had left. There was a big, round window, where one corner was broken. I fingered the fracture, and decided to scotch- tape it later. The bed was small, nearly too short for me, and covered in three thick, woolly blankets. Good - I didn't have to use my sleeping bag. I quickly pulled away the mattresses to do a quick check-up for lice - an ever-present nuisance in Asia, occasionally even in the finest hotels. No bugs. I still decided to use one of the blankets as a sheet. You never know what can creep underneath you in the dead of the night.
The floor was dusty but clean enough, so I took off my sweaty boots, placed them in the bathroom sink and walked back to the bedroom in my tennis socks. After stuffing the clothes I had bought from the market in my suitcase, I slid it under the bed. It made a loud thunk as it hit something in the back end, next to the wall. I pulled it back and stuck my head under the bed to see what was blocking it.
It was a small, aluminium case, the lid open. I pulled it from under the bed, and sat down on the dusty floor to inspect it. A small, greu mouse had chosen it to be its last resting place, but besides him, the case was almost. I put the lid on it to see what the lid was like. As the box, it was made of aluminium, a traditionally valuable substance in the Asian mountains, and decorated lavishly. In the middle of the lid was a raised figure the shape of a Shrivi, a protective goddess of Tibetan Buddhism. Underneath it, a carved word: Sadhana. I was puzzled. Sadhana as a word was usually attributed with a goddess of wisdom called Tara, that manifests itself in twenty-one different forms, and Shrivi definitely had nothing to do with it. I had no idea of the word's translation, whatsoever. I inspected the box further. A map functioned as a background to the text and the raised figure. A map of a part of West Tibet. The box made absolutely no sense. It must've been some kind of tourist junk. Pleased of the fact that I had solved the riddle, I carefully put the lid back on, and slowly pushed the case back under the bed. My suitcase followed it after a few seconds. I forgot all about the box and sat on my bed, trying to decide my approach on the subject of finding the people I was looking for. My first goal was to find John and Angela Gilliam, two anthropologists who had worked at a dig near Darchen at the time I found my way to the remote village of Tokakeriby after the infamous plane crash that changed my life. They had worked for the university of Taipei, and helped a great deal in returning me home. I had only learnt their names from my parents - I finally wanted to learn the wholy story about what had happened to me that year. My parents, in their own words, had wanted to spare me from too much worries by not sharing the deatales of my route after my return. But somehow it had always felt important to know the true lenght of my journey from the crash site to the village. The true form of my purgatory. The true prize of freedom.
At nine in the evening I was hungry enough to change clothes and go looking for a place to eat in in the now dark, but still buzzing streets. I took no chances - I chose the most expensive I could find - hoping that the extra price would improve the hygiene. I ordered a buff curry - water buffalo meat seems to be the best substitute for beef in Nepal. I noticed that the waiter seemed to speak quite a lot of English. I wondered if the restaurant owner spoke an equal amount - restaurant owners are a good start when looking for information about local inhabitants, especially foreign. Foreigners tend to dine in the more expensive places when it comes to remote areas, so restaurant owners meet a lot of important people in the scale of smale towns and villages. Kathmandu is quite big, but it was a lead good as any. After all, I didn't even know if the Gilliams were in the country. Upon paying for my meal I asked the waiter if I could thank the owner personally about the food, but the waiter just smiled, and introduced himself as the owner, pleasantly suprised, I asked him about the Gilliams.
"Yes, I have seen them here," he replied instantly.
"John and Angela Gilliam? Canadians?" I asked, almost uncharacteristically excited.
"Yes, yes! They eat here. Sunday," he replied, waving his hands in a gesture I couldn't understand.
"Every Sunday?" I asked, not believing my luck.
"Yes, yes. Every Sunday. Ten clock." He was obviously meaning ten p.m. It was half-past nine.
"Are they coming today?"
"Ashedelek?" He didn't seem to understand.
"Today? Will they come today? The Gilliams - today?" I tried to simplify. He understood.
"Yes, yes. Today. They reservation," he explained matter-of-factly.
"They have a reservation? Thank you," I tipped the poor man and waited. I realized I had forgotten to ask what the Gilliams looked like. On the other hand, I'd probably recognize them anyway. There couldn't be so many Canadian couples living in Kathmandu, could there?
It made a lot of sense that the Gilliams would come to the restaurant as late as ten p.m. I remembered the time I had to work in excavations during my university studies. After working long hours under the burning sun the last thing you need is a group of drunken, fat Peruvians mooning over you in a crummy local bar. It's better to eat or drink after the sunset - most locals go to bed after the sun has set to get up when it rises. Before sunset the noise is bars and restaurants, especially in Central America, is overwhelming.
So I sat and waited. Five minutes past ten in the evening the door opened. A whizz of wind came in from the door - it had started to breeze outside. It felt so lovely to sit inside, in the candle-lit restaurant. I've been out there enough many times to learn to apprecaite the chance to enjoy Tibet behind a window.
From the opened door entered an elderly caucasian couple. My heart leapt uncontrollably as I became certain that these were the Gilliams. but my heart soon slumped back as I realized I had a problem. I had caused them a lot of trouble back them. Would they remember them - would they want to remember? What if I had messed their excavation schedule completely? But surely they would like to see me - they helped save me. They were the only people in the area who could have arranged a transportation for me back to civilization, as the monks who found me obviously had no cars or planes. Did the monks find me or did I find them? Another thing I didn't know. How could I approach the Gilliams? I would have to introduce myself. Should I wait that they had eaten?
I decided I had waited long enough, so I just waited until they had settled down to a peaceful corner table. The restaurant owner passed me after he had given the Gilliams menus. He smiled at me. I left my things in my table, and got up. I walked up to the Gilliams and cleared my throat to get them to move their attention from the hors d'oeuvres - pieces of bread - to me.
"John and Angela Gilliam?" I asked.
"Yes?" The man replied. The woman was just looking at me.
"My name is Lara Croft. Perhaps you do not remember me," I began, but stopped as I saw the expression on the couple's face change to extreme surprise.
"Lara Croft? Little Lara Croft? Dvesagniprashamani's Lara?" the man was almost staring at me.
"Excuse me?" I asked. I naturally recognized my name, but the man had called me something I had never heard of.
"We remember you," the woman replied.
"So you must be Angela," I said, pleased. For my surprise both of them got up and gave me a hug.
"Please, Lara, do sit down. Please, sit down."
I stumbled around the table and got my things from the tabel I had been sitting in and joined them at the corner table.
"I wasn't sure you still worked here. I felt like leading a wild goose chase," I remarked. The couple nodded.
"How long has it been, Angela? Ten years, fifteen? Yes, we're still here, there's a small vocational school here, we sort of volunteer there. We are both retired, Angela and I."
I had no idea how to approach the subject I had come to discuss. Luckily I didn't have to.
"Lara, please tell us about yourself. What do you do for living? Why did you seek us?"
I told them a short version of my professional history, and mentioned Ihad just been to Egypt and came here out of the blue.
"An archaeologist, then? Good choice, I have to say. What university or museum?" Angela asked, and John nodded, his mouth full of curry.
They were a lovely, old couple, who were still seemingly in love. I didn't remember much of them but somehow their distinguishingly warm relationship had remained visible in my mind.
"I do have a post with the British Museum, but I mostly do sort of freelancer work." They obviously hadn't read anything about me. In the scale of science, I am a celebrity. I do the kind of work that gathers attention.
"Freelancer work?" they asked.
"I recover artefacts for museums, private collectors and such."
Angela smiled. "Sort of an Indiana Jane, then?"
It's always somehow refreshing to talk to people who don't have any prejudices about me. Of course I'm not a celebrity like Madonna, but my books have gathered a fandom. When speaking with people like the Gilliams, I can choose what the image they get of me is like. Magazines write a lot crap. Nepal has obviously been spared by paparazzis. A true shangri-la.
I smiled back. "Quite like that, yes."
John looked mysterious. I wiped off an eyelash from my cheek and asked what he was thinking.
"I was just wondering what you did with that dagger."
The dagger. Of course. They msut've heard. Peking university. I had donated the dagger of Xian to Peking's historical museum, which was owned by the state university.
"You really thought Nepal was remote enough to prevent any news from coming through? We've been following your career for years. It's a lovely thought that we might've affected it somehow," John said, his face a smile.
I relaxed. I was with good people.
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