Alpha Adventures: First Three Novels Read online

“Did you get this in Nikko?” he said, absentmindedly fingering the doll as Savannah pulled the truck out of the street where it was parked and onto the main road.

  “Go right,” Ryo said to Savannah, and then to Travis, he said, “Yes, I think I told you about the monkeys yesterday, right? There are lots of them in Nikko, you’ll see them. “They’ll rob you though, if you let them.”

  Travis couldn’t quite place what was on his mind; an elusive memory of something. His mental filing cabinet was usually so well organized, but of late he had been misplacing information, simple stuff that he had known for years. The monkey was familiar; something to do with his studies of anthropology, which was strange, as usually he was concerned with the study of human kind and not the animal kingdom. Fiona was the teams’ environmentalist; she should be the one thinking about chimps, locked in her cell in England. Monkeys were still scampering through his mind as the truck pulled onto the Tochigi Expressway, purple grey mountains topped with snow slowly made themselves known as the conurbation ended and the skies lightened to allow the sun through for the first time that day.

  The sunshine had a positive effect on Savannah in particular, and she fell back into her usual habit of singing along to Motown songs on the radio as she drove, which Travis took as a sign that she was having a good time. It was the first time he had heard her do that in a while. It was almost like they weren’t looking for a needle in a haystack with people looking for them to visit violence upon their heads. Ryo had taken to singing along just as badly as Savannah. It sounded to Travis like they had moved on from Curtis Mayfield and were now butchering Marvin Gaye, although with Ryo clearly not knowing many of the words.

  Within half an hour, it was clear that Ryo was entirely superfluous to requirements as a map reader. The road signs, which were helpfully written in English underneath the Japanese lettering, showed that Nikko would only take another thirty minutes or so provided the antique van didn’t give up the ghost. Ryo had clearly come along for the excitement, which Travis reasoned was fair enough seeing the conversation at home was clearly limited. He got as comfortable as he could on the cracked faux leather seat without pushing Ryo into the gearstick, and let his eyes slide over the scenery outside.

  The next thing he knew, Travis was being shaken awake by Ryo. The van had come to a stop, and his mind immediately assumed that it had broken down. As he woke fully from his doze, he saw that in fact the little delivery vehicle had performed its duties well and delivered them safely to what he assumed was Nikko. It was a peculiar place. Travis yawned, stretched and felt the vertebrae in his neck pop in their familiar, satisfactory manner. Savannah had already exited the cab, but Travis was blocking Ryo’s exit.

  “Come on, sleepy! Time to go!”

  Ryo was unreasonably excited, Travis felt, but he unclipped his seat belt and got out of the van. Nikko seemed sparse and grey in the afternoon gloom. Low buildings, three stories at the tallest, lined the street. His eye was naturally drawn to the imposing snow-capped mountain. It was unavoidable, seeing as it was the skyline, so close was Nikko situated to it. It gave Travis a slight sense of vertigo, as if he were an ant crawling up the face of a god.

  “So now what?”

  Savannah had walked around the rear of the van, and her voice felt so close Travis imagined he felt her breath on his ear.

  “We’re here, on the basis of some old man saying the name of the town. What next?”

  “We need to find Mizaru, Kikazaru, Iwazaru and Izanami. Or what was it? ‘Mizaru, Kikazaru and Iwazaru go to meet Izanami with glad hearts’, right? So if we find the first three, we can ask them to take us to Izanami. Maybe she knows where this mine is.”

  Travis knew he was stretching here. There was only the word of a senile old man to suggest that these people even existed.

  “Ryo, you know this place, right? Who can we talk to? Think of someone who knows a lot of people.”

  Ryo was adjusting his woolen hat. The boy had been right to dress for the tundra, it was late afternoon and the temperature up here was beginning to drop.

  “I don’t know many people, but there are lots of monks who tend the temples here. I met one the last time I was here. He might remember me; he bandaged me up when I was bitten by the monkey.”

  Travis looked around. The temples Ryo was referring to were clearly visible. Despite their age, no buildings in Nikko had yet overshadowed them in terms of height or grandeur. One looked to be at least ten stories tall, off in the distance to the west. He couldn’t see any monkeys; however there were several signs on the street displaying pictograms instructing visitors not to feed the primates. Savannah scooped her long blonde hair into a rough bun at the back of her head and settled a beanie over the top— Travis checked the pockets of his borrowed coat, but found no hat to wear.

  “Ok, Ryo. That sounds like the best option now. Which temple are the monks in? There seems to be a lot of temples here—wait a minute, wasn’t there an ‘amethyst’ temple?”

  Ryo stroked his chin, “I think that means the Nikkō Tōshō-gū, it’s very highly decorated, very old, too. Like five hundred years old, or something like that. Hando—that’s the priest who helped me—he might be there. We’re not in tourist season but people still come to see it, so most of the priests are there too.”

  Savannah clapped her hands, a gesture that meant an end to discussion and Ryo led them towards the temples through the modern streets. Nikko as a modern settlement was only a small town, Travis realized as they walked. If the Namarisawa family really had lived here, they must have been quite well known. Unfortunately it was unlikely that anyone was old enough to remember them now.

  As he pondered the problem of locating the next clue, he was brought back to the present by a laugh from Savannah.

  “Travis, Look!” she said, pointing across the street.

  Following her extended arm with his eyes, he saw an irate shopkeeper, and what looked like several grey dogs about the size of Alsatians. Not dogs, he realized. Monkeys. Pink faced, and clutching a variety of stolen goods from the shop they had just raided. The shopkeeper did not get too close to the animals, but yelled at them from a safe distance. Both sides of the argument were keeping a wary distance, with good reason, Travis thought. He had been expecting something like capuchins, marmosets or something, but these were serious animals.

  “Ryo, one of these things bit you? I’m surprised it didn’t take your arm off,” Savannah said.

  “It was only a little one. The big ones are strong; they can easily gang up on people and beat them. Most of the shopkeepers put bananas out for them, to try and stop them from stealing valuable things, which has made many more monkeys, which makes them steal more… I guess this guy ran out of bananas.”

  The monkeys who had raided the shop scampered away, carrying a variety of fruit and vegetables. One smaller one was struggling under the weight of a huge watermelon. Travis made a personal note to avoid the beasts at all costs, as the animals disappeared around the back of the shops, and the three humans passed under a Torii marking the beginning of the temple district.

  Chapter Eleven

  Under different circumstances Savannah and Travis could have happily spent a lifetime investigating the Shinto temples of Nikko. By any standards they were ornate; some verging on gaudy to the western eye, brightly painted carvings covered nearly every external and internal wall, telling stories of Japanese legends and myths. Despite their pressing business, they couldn’t prevent themselves from discussing the historical and anthropological meanings of the carvings as only lecturers are able to do; which is to say, it was highly tedious for Ryo to listen to. He politely put up with it as long as he could, but eventually interrupted Travis as he was for the fifth time thinking out loud about a particular pictogram of the creation of the earth and insisted they move on to the Nikkō Tōshō-gū itself.

  Fortunately, for Ryo’s sanity and the adventurers’ quest, the Shinto priest Hando was indeed outside the amethyst temple as they a
rrived in front of it. Despite the incredible craftsmanship they had already seen in the temple district, all the finery was overshadowed by the Nikkō Tōshō-gū. The building seemed to glow despite the wan autumnal sun, purple hues, gold and red. The effect was slightly maddening to look at and make sense of, and Travis felt that if he had tried to look at the building whilst drunk he would have felt ill from trying to organize the complexity of images and color tones in his mind. His attention was captured by a series of finely wrought carvings depicting the monkeys that infested the town; the three wise monkeys, see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil; monkeys in adulthood, monkeys becoming parents, monkeys dying. He presumed it was some kind of metaphor for the human life cycle. Ryo was speaking in rapid Japanese to the monk, who gave the Americans a quick bow each and a smile. He clearly remembered Ryo from his previous encounter.

  “This is Hando-San, I’ve told him why you are here and he’s agreed to answer your questions if he can,” Ryo said.

  The two adventurers asked about the amethyst mine, which elicited a non-committal response from the monk. Despite rewording their questions several times, either the monk had no idea of the mine’s existence or he was unwilling to give up its location. The temple carvings they could see were heavily inlaid with amethyst crystals, but Hando could only tell them about the age of the artifacts and not where the precious stones themselves came from. Travis thought the amethysts themselves were far lighter than the Deep Russian stone that Mrs. Richards had shown them.

  “Ryo, ask him who Mizaru, Kikazaru, Iwazaru and Izanami are, please. If we find out who—”

  Savannah was cut off by the suddenly stern look Hando gave her. He had clearly understood something from the Japanese names she had spoken. Ryo translated for him.

  “Izanami-no-Mikoto was a goddess, of creation and then death. She made these lands with her husband Izanagi-no-Mikoto, according to legend. When she died, she ate the fruit of the underworld and became the goddess of death. Creepy, huh?”

  “Very,” Travis said, “I’m not sure about how relevant that is to our investigation, though. What about the other names?”

  Ryo asked the priest, who turned and pointed to the wall behind him.

  “Mizaru, Kikazaru, Iwazaru,” the monk said, pointing at a different section of the carving on the temple, moving from left to right. Travis and Savannah moved closer to see clearly. The old monk had pointed to the depiction of the three wise monkeys.

  “That’s their names, in Japanese?” Savannah asked.

  “Hai. That’s them. Sanbiki no saru. I don’t get it, what does it mean?” Ryo was evidently as confused by the riddle as his western companions.

  “Where Mizaru, Kikazaru and Iwazaru go to meet Izanami with glad hearts, right?” Savannah said, “but it can’t literally mean that the three wise monkeys go to meet the goddess of death, can it? It has to be allegorical.”

  “Maybe.”

  Travis turned around to regard the courtyard square where they stood. There were few tourists at this time of year, and the place was almost deserted apart from the occasional monk going about his duties and some of the ubiquitous grey-furred primates lounging lazily on the steps to another smaller temple.

  “Maybe we should ask them.” Travis pointed at the monkeys.

  Apparently there was no need to translate his glib remark, as Hando became quite animated.

  “Hando-San says not to pester the monkeys,” Ryo translated. “He says that those who chase monkeys will be reincarnated as one. I think that he’s only half joking.”

  “Follow the monkeys to death. Yeah, I think I get it. But when you asked Mr. Iwate about the amethyst mine that is what he said.” Travis pondered for a moment, and then was struck by an idea. “Ryo, ask Hando-San where the monkeys go at night. I think I might have an answer to this riddle, but I need to know what these apes do when they’re not robbing shopkeepers.”

  Ryo relayed the message, and Hando simply nodded, pointing up towards the mountain that lay less than a mile away.

  “The monkeys climb a mountain every night? That sounds inefficient to me,” Savannah said, “if they’re scavengers and thieves, why not just stay close to the food sources?”

  “Sav, they’re smart animals. It’s not like they’re rats or raccoons. These monkeys have their own motivations. Come on, I have to get back to the town; we need to buy a few things and the hour is getting late. I don’t know what the goddess of death has to do with all this, but I’m sure the answer to all this is to be found by following these monkeys. Ryo, extend our thanks to Hando-san.”

  Travis spun on his heel, feeling energized and enthused for what felt like the first time in an eon. Savannah and Ryo trailed in his wake, leaving the monk and the amethyst temple behind.

  “Travis, care to fill us in? What’s the plan?” Savannah said when she had caught up to Travis’ brisk pace.

  “All in good time, all in good time. We need to get some fruit, and there must be a hiking store in town. I saw some sign posts that looked like trailheads, points of mountain trails earlier.”

  “Ok, look. I know we’re clutching at straws, but do you really think that climbing a mountain at night is such a good idea? We’re not mountaineers, we have limited equipment.”

  Savannah only slightly deflated Travis’ mood with her reasonable assessment of the probable insanity of the plan.

  “Wait and see. If the first stage of my plan doesn’t work, then there’s not going to be much point in following the monkeys anyway. Have some faith!”

  Travis gave his most winning smile, accompanied by a wink. Savannah didn’t look like she bought into it at all. Within an hour, Travis had assembled the items he needed. Savannah and Ryo both carried three full shopping bags full of bananas, and thanks to the Thyri-backed credit cards all three were freshly equipped with new hiking boots, coats, gloves and hats. Travis held a hessian bag with dozens of plastic rods about six inches long and half an inch thick.

  “Now, my friends, let’s hunt some chimps!”

  “They’re macaques, Travis. And this is a really, really bad idea.”

  Savannah looked about as enthusiastic about approaching the monkeys as she would if asked to get into a cage with a tiger.

  “Just do as I told you, and it’ll work out fine. Trust me.”

  The trio had taken a position at the beginning of the mountain trail that led out of town, where they had seen some dozens of macaques camping out in between their pirate raids on the shopkeepers. At Travis’ word, Savannah and Ryo began throwing bananas into the no man’s land between the humans and the primates. A handful of larger macaques, clearly the dominant males in the troop, immediately snatched up the fruit and ran back to their fellows. Another volley of bananas, and several more macaques joined the gathering crew. Savannah and Ryo kept up the launching until four bags of bananas had been thrown, and Travis called a halt to the salvo.

  “Okay, nice aim, guys. Now check this out.”

  Travis pulled out a handful of the plastic rods and tossed them where the bananas had landed. As he hoped, the rods were collected by the macaques and carried back to the group. In the fading sunlight he could see the macaques biting the rods, and disappointed cooing noises arose when they discovered that they were inedible. Travis stepped slowly into no man’s land, and thirty pink faces turned to watch him. The macaques in Nikko did not overly fear humans, but nor did they trust them not to be carrying a broom to beat them with.

  Travis held up one of the plastic rods. Sixty simian eyes followed his hand. Taking one end in each hand, he bent the rod down, curving the plastic and cracking the ampoule contained within and allowing the two reactive chemicals to mix. Green semi-luminescent light burst forth from the glow stick, and Travis saw several macaque jaws open comically in astonishment. He threw the rod closer to the macaques, which scattered around it, unsure of the bright light, presumably anticipating heat. Travis repeated the process four times, and orange, pink and yellow joined the green light. T
he rest of the glow sticks he placed on the ground at his feet, and casually walked back to rejoin Ryo and Savannah on the human side, grinning broadly.

  “Ok, so you’ve given the monkeys glow sticks, Prometheus. What happens now?”

  Savannah still doubted that anything would happen, but still spoke in a hushed voice to keep from spooking the primates.

  “Sav, are you familiar with the ‘Hundredth Monkey’ theory?” Travis said.

  “Of course, but that was discredited. New behavior is learned through observation and repetition, not through spontaneous primate mysticism.”

  “Yep, and what we’re going to do now is witnessing exactly why the theory was wrong. Observe. We have given these macaques a tool, and shown them how to use it. Eventually one of them will- ah, look! There he goes!” Travis pointed to the macaque troop. One of the monkeys had succeeding in bending his glow stick the right way, and was now hooting with pleasure at the yellow light he had created.

  “And, for his next trick, The Great Monahan will demonstrate the amazing speed of observational learning in primates! Ta da!”

  Travis raised his hands and waved his fingers in a jazz-hands manner, as more and more macaques solved the puzzle and began waving their glow sticks around.

  “Well done, you are clearly a genius,” Savannah dripped sarcasm, but in good humor. ”What’s next? Introduce them to techno music?”

  She considered the primates for a moment. It did look like a miniature rave was taking place.

  “I do have to say, I think this may be some kind of world record for learned behavior. You should write a paper when we get back.”

  “What the researchers always miss,” Travis said, “is that a system of reward does not necessarily have to be food based. Here we’ve rewarded the monkeys twice, once with food and again with entertainment. Now we’ll be able to follow the macaques in the dark, see? They’re having too much fun to put the glow sticks down, and I’ll bet good money they won’t even care that we’re following them.”