by James Axler
Kane and Brigid forged their way through a bewildering labyrinth of fissures, galleries and small caves. Every few hundred feet, the path was marked by the blue radiance of a light panel.
They squeezed into another crack in the rock and were plunged into complete darkness. They felt their way for a few minutes, then in the black void ahead of them, Kane saw a filtered, pale blue glow. The scope of the illumination was far wider than one of the light panels.
"Do you see that?" he asked over his shoulder.
"I do," Brigid answered. "Maybe it's a natural phosphorescence given off by fungus and lichens."
Their ears detected a distant, almost inaudible reverberation. The regularity of its throbbing rhythm instantly gave them both the knowledge of its nature.
"Archon power generators," blurted Brigid. "Like the ones we saw in Dulce, and in the spacecraft beneath Kharo-Khoto."
The passage ended on a broad shelf of basalt, thrusting out over a cavernous space so vast their eyes could only dimly perceive its true proportions. Their first stupefied impression was of an alien underworld, occupying the entire center of the Earth. As their eyes adjusted, they gained a sense of perspective on the vista spread out before them.
From the stone shelf, the ground sloped gently downward toward a collection of structures. The buildings were of black basalt, quarried from the cavern walls, and Kane realized they were built in the same odd architectural style as the surface cities Balam had shown him.
The structures were low to the ground, windowless and some of them sprouted fluted spirals. A tower identical to the Administrative Monoliths, but less than half the height, jutted up from the center of the settlement. Like the villes, the city plan was a wheel, radiating out from the central tower.
The roof of the enormous cavern was tiled with the light panels, every square inch completely covered by them, except for where jagged stalactites thrust down.
The area wasn't quite as gigantic as their first stunned impression, perhaps only half a mile in circumference. They saw and heard no signs of people in the streets, only the rhythmic drone.
"Agartha," Brigid murmured. "Shamballah. Bhogavati. The source of all the myths about underground kingdoms."
Kane swept his gaze over it, mentally comparing it to the visions of the mighty cities Balam had imparted to him. It had a desolate, abandoned look to it, evoking more sadness than awe.
"No one has lived here for a long time," he said quietly.
As they walked down the slope, Brigid sniffed the air and detected the faint whiff of ozone. "The power generators are probably hooked up to an air-circulation system, either recycling the oxygen trapped down here or pumping it in from the surface."
They approached the city cautiously, alert for any signs of habitation. Brigid gestured with her left hand toward the tower, opening her mouth to point out a detail to Kane. The motion detector on her wrist suddenly emitted a discordant beep. Both of them came to sudden halts.
She raised the LCD to eye level. Three green dots marched across the window in a more or less straight line. At the bottom edge of it, a changing column of digits flickered.
"Three hits," she breathed tensely. "About ten yards ahead of us."
"Zakat and his people?"
Brigid shook her head. "If they survived the cave-in, they couldn't have gotten ahead of us."
The two people stood out in the open, and the only available cover was the nearest building. To reach it, they would have to run in the direction of the approaching contacts.
Kane double-fisted his Sin Eater. "We've got no choice but the old brazen-it-out strategy."
Brigid hefted her mini-Uzi, remarking sourly, "Your favorite."
They stood stock-still as three figures appeared around the corner of a building. At first glance, they looked like Asians, but when they drew closer, Kane drew in his breath sharply and he sensed Brigid stiffening beside him.
Clothed in flowing garments of a saffron hue, their bodies were short and stocky, and their hairless heads unusually round. Their skins were pale, but with a bluish pallor, perhaps due to the illumination cast by the light panels. They looked like human beings except for two details — their huge, large-pupiled dark eyes and their six-fingered hands and feet.
They didn't appear excited at the sight of Kane and Brigid, almost as if they were a welcoming committee sent to meet them at the city limits.
"Don't make a move," Brigid said. "I don't think they mean us harm."
She held up her right hand, palm outward in the universal sign of peace. The Agarthans — if that was who they were — showed no signs of recognizing it. Their blank expressions didn't alter.
Brigid spoke a few words of Tibetan to them, and still they didn't react. Kane noticed the strange, sluggish uniformity in the way they walked. Alarmed, his finger rested lightly on the trigger of his blaster.
"If they don't stop," he side-mouthed to her, "I'm going to fire a warning shot."
"They don't appear to be armed."
"And they don't appear to be friendly, either."
"Maybe they just don't understand."
As three figures drew closer, Kane suddenly realized why they didn't understand, and his stomach lurched sideways. Not only did the three men appear identical in shape, form and clothing, but also they all wore the same slack-mouthed, vacant expression. Their staring eyes were dull, and the look they gave Kane and Brigid was the same one a cow might give to a passerby. Spittle flecked their lips, and their chins glistened with drool.
Kane felt a surge of horror and didn't know why. Mental retardation is pitiable, pathetic, not horrible — but the three men were.
"Oh, my God," Brigid breathed. "They're idiots."
The triplets halted a few feet in front of them, gazed at them in impersonal silence, then simultaneously pointed to the tower.
"An invitation," muttered Kane, "or a command?"
"Whatever," Brigid said, "I think we'd better accept. It's where we were going eventually, anyhow."
The Agarthans turned and marched back in the direction they had come, not looking back to see if the outlanders were following them or not. Kane and Brigid fell into step behind them.
"It'd be nice to know if we're guests or prisoners," Kane remarked.
"They probably don't care one way or the other," she declared. "They were assigned the task of meeting us, they're fulfilling it and that's all there is to it."
"Who assigned it?"
Brigid shrugged. "I'm sure we'll find out."
They passed windowless dwellings that reminded them both more of mausoleums than homes. The streets were completely deserted, and the silence was absolute except for the tramping of their feet.
They followed the three men to the base of the tower, through a low-arched doorway and into a corridor. The hallway curved around, then abruptly became a flight of stairs — small stairs, exactly like the image Balam had implanted in Kane's mind.
"Seems a little redundant," Brigid commented wryly carefully balancing herself on the small, irregular risers.
"What does?"
"They live in the cellar of the planet, yet they build another cellar beneath it."
Kane felt too tense to chuckle. A dim light shone below, its radiance peculiar, suggesting an electric arc light as seen through a milky mist. The throbbing drone grew louder as they descended, like the murmur of a far-off crowd.
When the steps ended at another archway, they saw a pair of generators. Twelve feet tall, they resembled two solid black cubes, a slightly smaller one placed atop the larger. The top cube rotated slowly, producing the drone. The odor of ozone was very pronounced.
Past the generator-flanked door, they entered an oval gallery whose walls, floor and ceiling seemed coated by a lacquer of amethyst, reflecting the light cast by flames dancing in a huge bowl brazier.
At the very center of the gallery, in a stone-rimmed depression, stood a stone altar, with a figure behind it. Kane caught his breath. The scene was
exactly the same as Balam had shown him. Around the altar reposed bare bones, hollow eye sockets staring into eternity.
Lam stood at the altar, eyes wide open and seeming to stare straight into Kane's soul. Within his long fingers rested the cube of dark stone.
At first glance, the figure appeared to be a life-size statue, crafted with marvelous perfection. The high-boned face exuded a dignified calm, aware of all the immensity of time. The two big eyes were veiled by heavy, shutterlike lids.
Kane forced himself to step closer, heart hammering within his chest, focusing on the black yet somehow shining stone gripped in the six long fingers.
A hoarse, disembodied voice echoed through the gallery. "This is who we are."
* * *
Balam stepped from the wavering shadows cast by the flames in the brazier. Like their escort, he wore a simple, draping robe of saffron. He gestured around him with one hand.
"Thousands of years ago was our migration. This is all that remains of the exodus. This is the nest of the Archons you sought in order to destroy. This is the home base of your enemies."
Balam nodded to the three men who stood shoulder to shoulder, eyes and expressions uncomprehending. "They are the last of the original hybrids created here, birthed to command the future. They are the immortal kings sung about in Agarthan legend. They bear the mingled blood of both our peoples."
His whispering voice held no emotion, no heat, but both Brigid and Kane sensed a grief so deep it was almost a despair. "We had no choice but to expand our breeding stock, our gene pool. To purify our impure blood."
Kane could not find words, but Brigid inquired quietly, "More and more genetic irregularities began cropping up, congenital defects became commonplace?"
She indicated the triplets with one hand. "They appear to be suffering from a form of myxedema."
Balam nodded, but did not speak.
Kane tried to dredge up anger, even pity, but all he found within him was a cold, weary resignation. "You misled, tricked and nearly obliterated humanity because of birth defects?"
Balam whispered, "One avoids disease by living in accordance with the laws of health. If not, one is at the mercy of those who spread disease."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Kane demanded.
"We set for ourselves the goal of not being affected by the disease spreaders. So we manipulated them to infect their own kind."
"Disease spreaders," Brigid repeated bitterly "You mean humanity."
"Humankind had as many opportunities to check the disease, to cure it, to immunize themselves as they did to spread it. The final choice always lay with them. What you know as the Totality Concept could have accelerated man's development. Instead, it was used to accelerate the disease."
Kane wished he could squeeze the trigger of his blaster and so blot out Balam, but he knew it wouldn't blot out reality.
"You could have had the stars by now," Balam continued. "You chose the slag heap instead."
"We're nothing but savages to you," Kane said lowly. "Like you said, you will reign when man is reduced to the ape again. So it's all over, isn't it? The human race has come to an end."
He didn't expect a response, but if Balam did, he figured he would agree. Instead, Balam husked out, "Nothing ever ends, Kane."
Balam stepped down gracefully into the depression, walking among the bones, standing beside the stiff figure with the black stone in its hands.
"This is Lam. My father. Within his hands, he safeguards our forebears' archives, the keys to what might have been and what yet may. His vigil is almost done."
Brigid frowned. "Explain."
Balam's mouth quirked in an imitation of a smile, which was almost as startling as his reply. "Would you have me explain the workings of one of your primitive aircraft if you did not first have a grounding in all the mechanics of its operations — the laws of friction, aerodynamics, electricity? Do you expect me to explain with a single sentence the nature of the trapezohedron?"
He paused to cough, then stated, "When my people first determined the course of their future, they consulted the trapezohedron. Through it, they saw all possible futures to which their activities might lead. From the many offered to them, they chose the path that appeared to have the highest ratio of success."
"What are you saying?" Brigid asked impatiently. "That the stone is some kind of computer, extrapolating outcomes from data input into it?"
"It does more than extrapolate. It brings into existence those outcomes."
Brigid's eyes suddenly brightened. "You're talking about alternate event horizons."
"That is one description," replied Balam. "You experienced something similar recently. Time is energy. A flow of radiation particles your science has named chronons. Chronal radiation permits objects in sync with its frequencies to go up or down. This is the basic underpinning principle of what was called Operation Chronos."
"But we didn't go up or down," Brigid objected. "It was almost as if we went…" She paused, groping for the right word. "Sideways."
"Side-real space, where there are many tangential points lying adjacent to each other."
"Parallel casements," murmured Kane.
Again came the ghost of an appreciative smile. "You remembered."
"But I don't understand what it means."
Balam beckoned to him. "I will provide a small demonstration, so perhaps you may glean a faint comprehension."
Hesitantly, Kane stepped down into the depression, eyeing the motionless figure of Lam apprehensively. "Is he dead?"
Balam said only, "Touch the stone, Kane."
He didn't move. "What will happen?"
"That only you can say. Touch it."
Tentatively, Kane reached out with a forefinger, placing the tip on the cold surface of the black stone so as not to come in contact with the flesh of Lam. He waited for something to happen. Then it did.
Light, sound, vibration and solidity flared up through him, and the circuitry of his nervous system seemed to fuse as awareness and perception multiplied.
He saw himself dying on the street. He leaned against a lamppost with one hand, with the other pressed over his stomach, blood oozing between his fingers. His body wore tight black breeches and high black boots, an ebony uniform jacket with silver piping tight to the chest and shoulders. He saw an insignia patch on the right sleeve, worked in red thread, a thick-walled pyramid enclosing and partially bisected by three elongated but reversed triangles. Small disks topped each one, lending them a resemblance to round-pommeled daggers.
A broad black belt held half a dozen objects sheathed in pouches. Between his feet lay a Sin Eater and a peaked uniform cap.
As Kane watched, he saw himself sag to his knees, toppling sideways and down, sprawling across a cobblestoned gutter. Another figure slid into his frame of vision. It was a tall man, almost cadaverously lean, wearing an identical uniform.
Kane instantly recognized his narrow, sunken-cheeked face with its odd, flat complexion. The dark curved lenses of sunglasses masked his eyes. Before holstering his own Sin Eater, Colonel C. W. Thrush nudged his body with a booted foot.
Kane jerked his hand back, stumbling as if from a blow. Present and future mingled in his mind for an instant of utter chaos. Sounding half-strangled, he gasped, "I saw myself. I was wounded, dying. Is that my future?"
"No," Balam replied. "Your present on a parallel casement. On a lost Earth."
Kane blinked, desperately trying to rid his memory of what he had just seen, snatching for some straws of comprehension. "I don't understand."
"If you seek hard enough, to every question you shall know the answer." He paused, and added cryptically, "There are others who seek answers."
At that moment, Grigori Zakat, Gyatso and Trai stormed in.
25
Zakat wielded the AK automatic, his face streaked with blood that trickled from a laceration on the side of his head. Gyatso's turban and spectacles were missing and a bruise purpled his forehead. Only
Trai appeared unhurt by the rockfall. Kane assumed Yal had been seriously injured or killed, but he didn't figure on asking about him.
Zakat swept the barrel of the autorifle back and forth in jerky arcs, covering the triplets, then Brigid, then Kane and Balam.
His eyes widened when he saw the figure of Lam and widened even more when he got a good look at Balam. He seemed to be struck speechless, tongue glued to the roof of this mouth.
Gyatso's reaction was similar to when Leng first saw Balam. A torrent of words spilled from his lips and he dropped to his knees, bowing his head. Balam regarded him disdainfully, then coldly turned his back on him.
"Nobody move," croaked Zakat, his face shocking pale beneath its layer of dirt and blood. He had to forcibly wrest his gaze away from Lam and the black stone. "Disarm yourselves."
Kane and Brigid exchanged glances, and Kane growled, "Screw you. You're the one who's outgunned."
Zakat laughed, a wild, high tittering with notes of hysteria running through it. "Ah, but I have more targets."
He stepped swiftly behind the triplets, who looked his way disinterestedly. "Who are these cretins?"
"They have the minds of children," Brigid stated with a forced calm. "They're harmless."
"But you force me to use them to prove to you that I am not."
The shot sounded obscenely loud in the gallery, thunderous echoes rolling. The little man in the center arched his back, as if he had received a fierce blow between his shoulder blades. A wet crimson blossom bloomed on the front of his robe, the fabric bursting open in an eruption of blood. He toppled forward into the depression, bones clattering and rattling with the impact.
The other two men clapped their hands over their ears, eyes wide in wonder, drooling mouths each forming an O of wonder.
"You sick bastard!" Brigid shrilled, bringing her Uzi to waist level.
"To save the others," Zakat replied mildly, "all you have to do is disarm."
Kane holstered his Sin Eater, unbuckled it from his forearm and dropped it to the floor. He unscabbarded his boot knife and laid it next to the blaster. Reluctantly, Brigid unslung her Uzi, holding it by the strap. Trai rushed forward, snatching the weapons, frowning uncertainly for a second at the Sin Eater.
