The Sacred Vault

by Andy McDermott

The move gave him the extra fraction of an inch he needed. He wormed into the duct. Christ, it was tight! His shoulders were the widest part of his body, so theoretically he would fit all the way in - but he was already experiencing an unpleasant sense of claustrophobia.

  ‘Keep going,’ Mac told him.

  Eddie grunted and kept advancing, little by little. The top of the duct rubbed against his head, forcing him to turn it sideways, adding to his discomfort. ‘Shit,’ he said, the sweat that had already formed on his fingertips causing them to slip on the smooth metal. ‘I can’t get a grip.’

  ‘Hang on,’ said Matt. ‘I brought some things that might help.’

  Eddie looked ahead, his living room reduced to a rectangle surrounded by dull steel. Lola peered through the slot at him. ‘How you holding up, Eddie?’

  ‘Fucking champion,’ he said with an unconvincing grin. Lola moved away, her face replaced by Matt’s rounder features.

  ‘Here you go, mate,’ said the Australian, putting something in Eddie’s hand. ‘See if that works.’

  He examined the heavy object: a thick disc of dark metal, topped by a plastic casing with a switch set into it. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Portable electromagnet, for underwater salvage. Self-contained; the battery’s in the case, and very powerful. Give it a try - just push the switch. Careful, though. Don’t get your fingers trapped under it - it’s strong enough to crush ’em.’

  ‘Thanks for the tip.’ Keeping his fingers clear of the metal disc, Eddie flicked the switch. The magnet instantly clamped itself to the steel with such force that the entire duct rattled. ‘Jesus!’

  ‘Not very stealthy,’ Mac remarked drily.

  ‘Baby steps, eh?’ said Matt. ‘Let’s see if it works first. Eddie, try pulling yourself along with it.’

  Eddie switched off the magnet and stretched forward as far as he could before reactivating it. Even with the disc flat on the metal, there was still a clunk of contact. ‘That’s going to be a problem,’ he muttered, dragging himself forward, ‘and - shit!’ The magnet slipped along the steel panel with a piercing screech. ‘And that’s definitely going to be a problem.’

  Matt reappeared at the opening. ‘Crap. I was afraid of that. It’s designed to support a perpendicular load, not parallel - it’s just going to slip all the time.’

  Eddie switched off the magnet. ‘Bollocks. Thanks for trying, anyway.’

  ‘Oh, I’m not done yet, mate!’ Matt retrieved the magnet, replacing it with another device. ‘This might work better.’

  ‘A suction cup?’ said Eddie, turning it over in his hand. The flattened black rubber dome was about five inches in diameter, a

  U-shaped hinged metal handle attached. ‘Now we really are getting all Jim Phelps.’

  ‘There’s a lever under the handle - you push the handle up, move the lever across and pull the handle back down to create the vacuum. When you want to release it, just shove the lever back the other way.’

  Eddie tested it, air hissing from the cup as he drew back the handle. Pulling himself further into the duct, he was relieved to find that unlike the magnet, the suction device held firm. He released it with another hiss, moved it along, then clamped it down again. Pull—

  ‘Hrmm,’ said Mac, as Eddie’s backside wedged against the top of the duct. ‘You may need to lose a few pounds there.’

  ‘Eddie got back,’ sang Lola, giggling, then blushed. ‘Sorry. It’s not funny.’

  Karima crouched for a closer look as Eddie wriggled in an attempt to clear the obstruction. ‘She has a point, though. It’s not so much the size of your bottom—’

  ‘You saying I’ve got a fat arse?’ came an echoing complaint.

  ‘—as what you’re wearing. Your clothes are catching on the edge. You won’t be able to do this in jeans; you’ll need something tighter.’

  Mac put a palm on Eddie’s butt and pushed down. Eddie hauled himself further inside. ‘I hope that was Karima’s hand.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Mac, winking at her.

  Now that he was fully inside, Eddie was able to advance. It was still horribly tight, but using the suction cup he reached the other end in fairly short order. Matt and Rad pulled him out. ‘Jesus. I’m not claustrophobic, but that might get me started.’ Just traversing the short distance had left him sweating. How would he manage in the vault’s much longer duct?

  Mac had the same thought. ‘Eddie, you look knackered, and that was only six feet. And when you do it for real, you’ll have equipment with you. We’ve got to find a way to make it easier.’

  Eddie wiped his brow. ‘Okay, Matt - you’ve got until tomorrow to invent a shrinking ray.’ The joke produced a little levity in the room - which instantly vanished at the rasp of the entry buzzer. ‘Shit, that’ll be Zec. Mac?’

  Mac drew a revolver and took up position in the study as Eddie buzzed Zec into the building. ‘Okay,’ said Eddie to the others, ‘stay cool and I’ll handle this.’ He was about to go to the door when he noticed a cup from which Mac had been drinking, and hurriedly took it into the kitchen. The fewer people Zec knew were involved, the better.

  A knock on the door. Eddie let the Bosnian in. Zec was carrying an impact-resistant plastic box the size of a briefcase, as well as a holdall. He took in the hostile faces with a dismissive eye before regarding the ducting. ‘This is the size of the vents in the UN?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Eddie.

  He put the box down at one end of the duct, pushing it into the opening. It fitted - just. ‘Lucky. You will need to take this with you.’

  ‘What is it?’

  Zec pulled the box back out and opened it, revealing a piece of equipment that looked like the guts of a desktop scanner mounted above a transparent plastic tank some five inches deep. ‘Portable rapid prototyper. Fill with—’

  ‘I’ve used these,’ Matt cut in. ‘There are two lasers in the scan head, and where the beams cross they turn the medium in the tank solid. They build things up layer by layer, like a 3D fax machine. Once whatever you’re making’s set, you just lift it out of the tank.’

  ‘So what’s this one going to be making?’ asked Eddie.

  Zec smiled sardonically. ‘Your wife’s hand. I will give you a memory card with her handprint tomorrow.’

  Matt regarded the prototyper dubiously. ‘What’s its resolution? The ones I’ve used haven’t been accurate enough to copy fingerprints.’

  Zec took a moment to remember the answer. ‘Sub-millimetre, whatever that means. It will be good enough.’

  ‘It’d better be,’ rumbled Eddie.

  Matt had more technical questions. ‘What about the base medium - is it a photopolymer or a thermoplastic powder? How long will take to make the handprint?’

  The mercenary frowned. ‘Ten minutes, and the liquid is in the bag - what it is does not matter!’ He faced Eddie. ‘All you need to know is that it will work. But once the handprint has been created, you must wait until it cools to the right heat before you use it.’ He opened the holdall and took out a digital thermometer. ‘The security scanner checks body temperature as well as handprints.’

  Eddie kneaded his forehead. ‘Great, one more thing to worry about.’

  Zec looked at the blueprint. ‘How is your plan coming?’

  ‘It’s getting there. But it’d be getting there faster if we could actually work on it. You’ve delivered your little toy, so fuck off and leave us to it.’

  Unbothered by the insult, Zec headed for the hall. ‘You have until tomorrow night to bring me the Codex. I will be waiting.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Eddie said coldly. ‘So will I.’ He waited until Zec had departed, then locked the door.

  Mac emerged from the study. ‘Bastard. I had a perfect shot at him the whole time, too - I would have put a bullet in his head if you’d given the word.’

  ‘Not just yet,’ said Eddie. ‘Can’t do anything to him until Nina’s safe.’

  ‘You know that he’s almost certainly been told to kill you the moment yo
u hand over this book? And they probably intend to kill Nina too?’

  Eddie smiled grimly. ‘Course I do. That’s where Plan B comes in.’

  11

  India

  A sharp rap on the door jolted Nina out of her boredom.

  She had been a prisoner in her suite since the previous day; meals had been brought to her, but there was always a guard in the hallway outside. She had considered escaping via the window, but it was too high for her to jump down - and she was still constantly being watched electronically, the guard entering within seconds to order her to close it. Sullenly, she sat up. ‘What?’

  Tandon entered. ‘Mr Khoil wants to see you.’

  She had no interest in seeing him, but decided it would at least alleviate her cabin fever. Besides, anything more she could find out about his plans might be useful. ‘Okay, lead on.’

  Tandon took her through the palace to a large, high-ceilinged room. For a moment, she wondered if she had been brought to some bizarre high-tech disco: the room was dark, lights flickering inside a tall dome-shaped framework at its centre. The illumination came from dozens of large flatscreen monitors, arranged inside the frame to form an almost 360-degree wall of video.

  ‘Come in, Dr Wilde,’ Khoil called from the heart of the display. Tandon directed her to a gap in the screens. She blinked as she entered, the view from inside the dome almost overwhelming. Each screen seemed to be showing something different - broadcasts from TV networks all over the world, web pages, complex computer-generated graphs and charts, all of them constantly changing.

  Khoil stood before a slim stand resembling a lectern in the middle of it all, looking up at one particular cluster of screens. He raised a hand and made a pinching gesture with his thumb and forefinger. The information spread over several monitors shrank down to just one; a sideways sweep, and a different set of figures expanded to take its place. He took them in, then raised a hand to his ear as if holding an imaginary telephone, tapping at the air with his other index finger. On the screens, a pointer moved over a representation of a numeric keypad that had appeared over the images. Sensors in the lectern were reading his movements, Nina realised: a gestural control system. After a moment, a man spoke in Hindi over loudspeakers. Khoil issued terse instructions, then lowered his hand to end the call. The virtual keypad faded away. He checked the screens, then turned to Nina. ‘Welcome to my infotarium.’

  ‘Great,’ she said, unimpressed. ‘Does it get the History Channel?’

  ‘It gets every channel. It allows me to process data in a fraction of the time it would take using conventional media. It is the most efficient way to avoid being crushed by the weight of information I deal with each day.’

  The constant flicker of the screens was already making Nina feel vaguely nauseous. ‘I think I’d prefer a newspaper.’

  ‘I should have known that as an archaeologist, you would have a preference for the archaic. But then, Vanita does not like it either. She says it gives her a headache.’

  ‘I bet you hear that a lot, huh?’

  Khoil either ignored the mocking jibe or, just as likely, failed to understand it. ‘The future of information delivery is not why I brought you here, though.’ He gestured with both hands, holding them flat and moving them apart: that’s enough. The visual cacophony disappeared, replaced by the infotarium’s equivalent of a computer’s desktop. He raised a hand and ‘tapped’ in mid-air; an icon pulsed as if touched, text zooming to fill the display.

  She recognised it immediately as a translation of the Talonor Codex - but not quite the same as the one she had read. The phraseology was subtly different, and some of the sections not yet completed by the IHA had been filled in. ‘Is this your own translation?’

  ‘Yes, performed by Qexia. As I said in San Francisco, it is much more capable than the typical translation program. It learns through analysis - not just about languages, but any subject. The more information it has, the more accurate the results.’

  ‘It obviously doesn’t have all the answers, though. Otherwise why would you need me?’

  ‘Even though Qexia produced this in a matter of hours rather than the months taken by the IHA staff, it still cannot make deductions when the database lacks sufficient information.’

  ‘Score one for experience and intuition, then,’ said Nina, remembering their conversation at the exhibition hall.

  Annoyance briefly crossed the Indian’s placid face. ‘However, it has told me enough for now. By analysing the Codex and cross-referencing it with all the other data accessible to Qexia, it has discovered the approximate location of the Vault of Shiva.’ Another mid-air tap, and a map swelled on the wall. ‘It was actually quite obvious in hindsight - any true follower of Shiva would have guessed it, but Talonor’s journey helped confirm it.’ He pointed, a cursor fixing on a particular location. ‘Mount Kailash - the home of Lord Shiva.’

  ‘Isn’t that in Tibet?’

  ‘Yes. About seventy kilometres from the border between India and China - though since the border is disputed, it is hard to be precise.’

  ‘But definitely on the Chinese side, though,’ Nina pointed out. ‘Could make it hard for you to go nosing around.’

  ‘Not at all. For one thing, I have excellent connections with the Chinese government - my company provides software and services for them. For another, the Sacred Mountain is a place of pilgrimage for Hindus. Thousands travel there each year. It is the tallest unclimbed mountain in the world - not even the Chinese dare interfere with the site.’

  ‘But you’d dare, right?’

  Now he seemed almost offended. ‘Of course not. Besides, the Vault is almost certainly not on the mountain itself. It took the priests a day to reach it.’

  ‘And an hour to get back.’

  ‘A paradox that Qexia noted. It may be that a river connected the two locations, and they were able to return downstream in a fraction of the time needed to get up it.’

  Nina almost pointed out that Talonor had travelled away from the river to visit the Hindu temple, but decided that giving him potentially helpful information was a bad idea. Instead, she shifted the subject. ‘I still don’t see how opening the Vault of Shiva will bring about the end of the world. So you make an amazing archaeological find, tablets that may have been written by Shiva himself - then what? That on its own won’t bring about the apocalypse.’

  ‘The apocalypse is coming, no matter what, Dr Wilde.’ Khoil faced her, reflections on his glasses turning his eyes into discs as blank as his expression. ‘Humanity is sinking into a new dark age of violence and depravity. Barbarism will reign. Within the next fifty years, modern society will be destroyed.’

  Nina cocked her head. ‘You’re not the first person to make a prediction of imminent armageddon. The Book of Revelation, Nostradamus, all that 2012 Mayan calendar nonsense . . . and every one of them was wrong.’

  ‘Not this time. It is inevitable.’ He waved a hand, more screens lighting up round them. Images appeared - deforestation, factories belching pollution, rioters, burning buildings - as well as chart after chart in which the lines shot alarmingly either up . . . or down. ‘Qexia makes logical predictions based on available data. Every prediction produces the same result - the end of civilisation as we know it. The only variable is the timeline.’

  ‘Nice little Powerpoint demonstration,’ Nina said sarcastically. ‘But applying math to a prediction of doom doesn’t mean it’ll happen. People have been doing that since Thomas Malthus in the eighteenth century, and we’re still here.’

  ‘But you cannot deny that society is becoming more degenerate as we descend deeper into the Kali Yuga. It is written in the Mahabharata: “sin will increase and prosper, while virtue will fade and cease to flourish.” See for yourself.’ Another gesture, and the depressing display was replaced by columns of text. ‘These are the most common search terms entered into Qexia. Billions of people have access to the greatest source of knowledge in history, and what are they looking for?’ He jab
bed at the screens, words flashing an angry red under his virtual touch. ‘Sex! Pornography! Trivial news about worthless celebrities! Images of violence and destruction! Society’s innermost desires laid bare. Moral corruption is all around us. Is this worth saving?’

  ‘Okay, so it’s not perfect, but . . .’

  A small smile creased Khoil’s smooth cheeks. ‘Shall we see your innermost desires, Dr Wilde?’ A stylised keyboard was superimposed over the screens; he ‘typed’ in the air, the keys blinking as he entered a string of text.

  Nina was unnerved to see her name amongst the words, more so when a new list appeared. ‘Wait, how did you get—’

  ‘Qexia remembers everything. Who used it, and when, and why. And then it analyses that new data, and adds it to everything else it has learned. It can even tell with a high degree of probability whether you or your husband are using it.’ More commands, and the list split into three columns: one headed by Nina’s name, one by Eddie’s and the last labelled Indeterminate. He highlighted one of the items in Eddie’s list. ‘For example, I find it unlikely that you would have an interest in this particular subject.’

  Nina scowled, even as she blushed at the discovery that her husband apparently had a kink of which she was unaware. ‘Oh, I’m going to have a talk with him about that.’

  ‘You are hardly innocent yourself, Dr Wilde. Shall we see?’ The cursor hovered over her list.

  ‘Uh - no, okay, point taken!’ Khoil smugly dismissed the display. ‘So what are you planning on doing with all this information? Blackmail everybody who’s ever used the internet?’

  ‘No. I am going to bring about the end of the Kali Yuga.’ He said it with the same flat, robotic matter-of-factness that characterised the rest of his speech. ‘The collapse of present civilisation is inevitable, but because it is part of the cycle of existence, restoration - a new Satya Yuga, a new dawn of virtue - is also inevitable. My computer models have told me that the sooner the Kali Yuga ends, the shorter the period of chaos before the Satya Yuga begins. As I said, it could take fifty years for the collapse to happen naturally, fifty years of decadence and decay, meaning the recovery would begin from a lower point. It could take a century for the new era to begin - a century of pain and suffering. But if the collapse were to happen now . . . it would take only ten years.’