Outlanders 32 Evil Abyss, page 20
"Neither do you," Nora retorted.
"I know men like him...outlaws, hunted men without scruple, doing whatever they think is necessary to survive."
"Are you describing the general," Nora asked dispassionately, "or yourself?"
Kane ignored the gibe. "You don't understand the back story of the struggle, or the political situation here."
"Politics is politics," she snapped. "Throughout the world."
"You met him less than a week ago, and you've already promised that Cerberus would help him overthrow this Devi-Naga.”
"She promised me nothing, Mr. Kane."
Glancing over his shoulder, he saw Zhou Tzu standing beside Nora. His long black hair was rolled back under his straw hat. He was dressed very much like Kane. "It sounds to me like you gave her a hell of a sales pitch," Kane said darkly. "Or was it easier than that? Did you just take advantage of the fact she was vulnerable and grateful to a man who she thought saved her life?" Zhou Tzu's face remained as immobile as if it were carved from amber. "I told Miss Pennick the truth. That is all."
"Which I sure as hell don't understand," Kane retorted, his tone and his patience ragged. "So how could she? How can you maintain a military hereditary rank and a state of war while observing a hereditary truce with your enemy? What kind of war can you wage that way...General.”
Zhou Tzu’s lips moved in a cryptic smile at the sarcastic emphasis on his rank. "You would be surprised, Mr. Kane, at the number of foes I war with here. Laotian and Thai bandits, tribes of Bottom Feeders. It is my duty, my role, my purpose in life to guard the borders of this land. The Devi-Naga's traditional role is to preside over the holy city of Angkor Thom and safeguard the gift of the Naga."
Kane scowled, repressing the urge to ask about the tribes of Bottom Feeders. "What's the gift of the Naga?"
"It's part of the mythology, the religious lore here," Nora interposed. "The temple-tomb complex of Angkor Wat was built over a site that contains the Naga's essence, kept in a harmonic balance. It was never to be trifled with or put out of balance, else all of humankind would suffer."
"Yes," Zhou Tzu said. "A corollary myth would be that of Pandora."
Kane blinked in momentary puzzlement. "Are you trying to tell me there's a magic box under the city?"
"Actually," Zhou Tau replied smoothly, “in the original Greek myth, it was a beautiful golden urn, given to Pandora by the gods as a wedding gift. Her husband, Epimetheus. warned her never to open it, but eventually human curiosity got the better of her.
"She prized up the lid of the urn and released lust, greed, hatred and all the other sins upon humankind. She closed the lid in time to keep hope at the bottom, to compensate us for the evil that men do:' He lifted his hands, holding them palms up at the same level. "Thus, the balance between yin and yang to which I referred yesterday is achieved."
Kane shook his head ruefully. "Too damn bad you didn't rescue Brigid, too. She'd be right at home listening to this lecture"
'I mentioned I was an educated man," Zhou Tzu said quietly.
Nora gazed at him raptly "You are far more than that, my general."
Kane's stomach slipped sideways at the tone of worship in Nora's voice, but Zhou Tzu didn't react to her comment. His expression inscrutable, he stated, "It is the balance I seek to restore or my land will be plunged into bloodshed and civil war...easy prey for our other enemies once they learn of our internal discord."
"What are you talking about with the essence of the Naga?" Kane asked. "The earth energies you told me about?"
Zhou Tzu nodded. "The ancient Khmer lived in Angkor Thom with the ability to manipulate them, maintaining them in harmonized balance. Most of that knowledge was lost over the centuries and I speculate that was the main reason the Khmer Empire disappeared. I think their fortunes took a turn for the worse when the essences of the Naga slipped out of balance.”
Kane leaned against the rail, crossing his arms over his chest. His irritation was slowly being subsumed by interest. "I don't know how much I believe about geomancy, but could there be a machine under the place? Or is it strictly a natural phenomenon?"
"I surmise a bit of both," Nora said.
Zhou Tzu nodded. "It's possible a machine of area was constructed to channel the earth energies and to keep them in balance, in sync. My role as warlord and Kumudvati's as the Devi-Naga are expressions, physical manifestations of that balance...the effulgence of the Sudarshana chakra or the supreme personality of godhead."
He shrugged. "I admit the roles are largely theater, to keep an ancient tradition alive. Even though my line of descent is traced to the offspring of the first queen and king of Cambodia, legends of men who mated with serpent princesses and founded royal houses are widespread throughout Asia. Kumudvati and I are hardly unique, folk lore ways.
"However, a very prominent man of my line, Jayavannan the Seventh, was the Khmer ruler most concerned with his subjects' welfare. He saw to the construction of roads, hospitals and even healing shrines built over intersection points of the Naga essence."
"He sounds like quite the benefactor," Kane commented dryly.
Zhou Tzu scoffed. "Jayavarman the Seventh was also the Khmer ruler most obsessed with celebrating his own divinity. All of the construction was performed by forced labor...free people pressed into slavery. He enslaved and impoverished the country.
"Thousands died due to his Olympian ego. Finally outlying territories revolted and after a long, bloody straggle he was deposed. As karmic restitution, male members of his line were charged with the task of opposing the rulers of Angkor Thom, if in principle rather than by actual deed. I am the latest in a long line, perhaps the last."
"And Kumudvati?" Kane ventured. "The Serpent Princess. Is she the last in the line, too?"
Zhou Tzu hesitated before replying, "I cannot tell you that because I don't know. It is forbidden that we ever meet, since we symbolize opposite poles. Yin and yang. However..." He trailed off, the corners of his mouth drawing down in a thoughtful frown.
"However what?" Kane asked.
Before the man could answer, Nora uttered a high- pitched shriek and took two stumbling back steps, her eyes fixed on the rail upon which Kane leaned. Swiveling his head in the direction of her wild stare, he saw a brown claw, glistening with river water and clotted with mud, rise up and slap around the side. The long square nails of the webbed fingers were caked with muck and beveled at the edges.
General Zhou Tzu stepped swiftly toward Nora, arms sliding protectively around her shoulders. At the same time, he shouted sharply, "To arms! Bottom Feeders!"
Chapter 21
Noon brought yet another heavy rain shower to the jungle. The downpour was so intense the branches of the trees couldn't keep the rain from soaking Brigid through to the skin.
Only a few minutes before she had been grateful that she, Javalara, Yasovar and the two elephants had left the open farmlands and entered the cool shade of the jungle. Now she huddled down on Maya's back as the tropical rain pounded her; virtually blinding her and making it difficult to breathe without inhaling water
The elephants, on the other hand, were overjoyed by the cooling storm, filling their trunks and bleating in pleasure. At the very least the downpour reduced the high level of Maya's stink to the tolerable point. "Well reach our vimana very soon," Javalara said reassuringly to Brigid. He had to half shout in order to be heard over the drumming of the rainfall on the foliage. The downpour abated as abruptly as it had come, and almost as abruptly, tendrils of mist closed in, as if spewed from the undergrowth. Straightening, Brigid massaged the base of her spine. A dull ache had settled into her lower back and hip joints, making her wonder if she were getting, as Grant often grunted, "too old for this shit."
She swallowed a sigh of resignation. Riding on an elephant through a rain-soaked Asian jungle was just the latest in a long series of travails she had endured, from the time she'd first met Kane shed been an archivist for the baron then, and her eidetic memory had been a hidden blessing as she searched through an the files kept in Cobaltville's Historical Division. If she saw it, she remembered it.
As a trained archivist, though, she knew misinformation often began with half truths, than grew into speculative transitions as someone worked to record the event. No information was sometimes better than half information. The primary duty of archivists was not to record predark history, but to revise, rewrite and often times completely disguise it.
The political causes leading to the nukecaust were well-known. They were major parts of the dogma, the doctrine, the articles of faith, and they had to be accurately recorded for posterity. The Cerberus database contained unedited and unexpurgated data, and having access to it was one of the few perks Brigid found in her life as an exile.
Life in Cobaltville had been predictable and she sometimes missed the monotony of routine. She knew Grant and Kane often longed for it, as well. Their whole lives, from conception to death, were ordered for them, both at work and at home. Ville dogma, ville upbringing, convinced them how lucky they were to live on the bounty of the baron and not to have to scratch out a starvation existence in the Outlands. As long as they obeyed the maddening and contradictory volume of rules, they had security, medical and even retirement benefits.
It was the life Brigid had led, Kane and Grant had led, the only life they had known. Now they were forced to live with prices on their heads, which any so-called citizen could collect just by giving information about them and it was all because they had sinned by trying to learn truth and develop a concept of a larger destiny. But during her time with Cerberus and her travels and travails, she had learned many people shared her hunger for truth. She counted the Magickers among them. Brigid took a deep breath of the steamy, moisture saturated air and realized the thin fabric of her garb was plastered tight against her body. At the moment, she didn't care, because breathing in the wake of the storm was like trying to hyperventilate in a sauna on full boil. The path the elephants followed twisted snakelike upon itself through a jumble of trees and vines. More than once the humans upon their backs were forced to lay almost completely flat to keep from being scraped off by branches. Brigid couldn't help but curse in pain when a thorny vine snagged her shoulder, inflicting a scratch.
Yasovar called out, "Be of good cheer, Baptiste. We're almost at the end."
She resisted the urge to snap back, "For your sake, we'd better be."
Maya lumbered around a turn and entered a clearing. Huts of wattle, mud and thatch took shape our of the mist. No one seemed to be around. Javalara and Yasovar halted the elephants and had the big animals bend their forelegs no they could dismount easily.
Brigid silently endured the burning pain in her back and pelvis as she slid from Maya's back and dropped to the ground. She felt as if both hip sockets had been replaced by rusty hinges but she made no complaint. She did, however, favor Brother Yasovar with an icy glare when she caught him eyeing her and saw how the wet cloth clung to her full breasts. He averted his eyes but didn't seem particularly embarrassed. While his elephant knelt, he took down the crate containing the interphaser and placed it safely to one side.
Javalara marched toward the huts, saying, "Follow me, Baptiste."
While Yasovar attended to the elephants, Brigid did as the man requested, carrying the saddlebag slung over her shoulders. She followed Javalara into the largest of the huts. Not surprisingly, the interior was completely bare of furnishings, despite its size. Only a scattering of straw and grasses lay on the hard-packed dirt floor. The sunlight peeping through the cracks in the walls glinted on circlet of dull metal on the floor.
Grasping the ring with both hands, Javalara heaved up onto it, a grunt of exertion escaping from between clenched teeth. Brigid stepped forward to help the man, but a metallic clank resounded within the hut and the Magicker released the ring and rocked back on his heels. He panted, "Stand back, Baptiste."
Mystified, Brigid retreated back to the threshold, although as far as she could see his tugging on the metal circlet had accomplished nothing. Then, with a clanking rumble and a grinding of gears, the entire floor of the hut tipped upward. Javalara stepped quickly to her side as the floor continued to tilt, slowly rotating on hidden, squeaking pivots.
The floor turned completely over. As it did, a small teardrop-shaped craft hove into view, clamped securely to the underside by an arrangement of clamps and vises. As the floor completed its rotation, Javalara gestured grandly and announced, “Vimana of the Magickers." Brigid wasn't impressed. The length and beam of the air cruiser appeared half that of the one that had buzzed them only a couple of hours rasher. She didn't see wings or any apparatus that allowed it to become airborne. The purple-tinted hull was smooth, almost seamless. Peering through the bubble-enclosed cockpit, Brigid saw nothing resembling a conventional control panel, either.
Javalara said apologetically, "I know it doesn't look like much—"
'"That's an understatement and a half," Brigid cut in curtly, walking around the cruiser, eyeing it clinically. "It doesn't look like it can seat more than two."
'Three,' Yasovar spoke up from the doorway. "Providing the third person is fairly small, light of weight and doesn't mind being cramped."
Brigid cast him an annoyed glance. "I mind."
Javalara stepped up to the starboard side of the craft, knelt and ran his hands over the underside of the fuselage. "Do you know how the ancients built their vimana’s, Baptiste?"
Swiftly she flipped through her mental index card file of data and at length admitted, "No, not really. Only that they operated on principles that combined the spiritual and with the mechanical."
"That's very astute," Javalara said. "Among the more famous aliment texts that mention vimana’s are the Ramayma and Mahabharata. Other lesser known texts include the Samarangana Sutradhara, the Yuktikalpatau of Bhoja, dating back to the twelfth century A.D." "There's the Rig Veda, too," Brigid interjected. "Many scholars feel the tales of the vimana’s are the same as the legends of flying carpets."
Javalara nodded. "Possibly. The Samarangana Sutradhara says that they were made of light material, with a strong, well-shaped body—ah, here we are." He pulled on a small lever and from either side of the vimana popped ribbed wings made of material that reminded Brigid of a polymer like Dacron or Mylar. They were folded tight against the fuselage like those of a bat at rest, and like bat wings, they were scalloped on the edges.
"According to the texts," Javalara continued, 'Iron, copper, mercury and lead were used in their construction. They could fly great distances and were propelled through air by motors. The Samarangana Smadhma devotes 230 stanzas to the building of these machines, and their uses in peace and war."
Clearing his throat, he quoted in a singsong cadence, "'Strong and durable must the body be made, like a great flying bird, of light material. Inside it one must place the Mercury-engine with its iron heating apparatus beneath. By means of the power latent in the mercury that sets the driving whirlwind in motion, a man sitting inside may travel a great distance in the sky in a most marvelous manner.'"
Brigid smiled wryly and pulled off her turban, shaking her hair free. “That doesn't sound like any kind of theory of avionics I'm familiar with."
Javalara chuckled and straightened. "Me, either. But the texts say that by using the prescribed processes it was possible to build a vimana as large as a temple. The Ramayana describes a vimana as a double-deck, circular aircraft with portholes and a dome. It flew with the speed of the wind and gave forth a melodious sound." "Hmmm," Brigid muttered. "Sounds like a classic description of the flying saucer or disk. I wonder which came first, the vimana or the flying saucer? The operation of either fits into accepted scientific theory." "Who can say?" Javalara replied. "There is much about our land, its legend and lore that does not fit with modern scientific theory."
"Like the ongoing problem you want my help to solve?" Brigid challenged. "The one that deals with— and I quote—the 'generation, balance and manipulation of energy!"
Yasovar said sadly, "Yes. In our attempt to solve it, we tried to force it into our perceptions of scientific law. We failed and were banished. But our attempts still resulted in an unfortunate result."
Brigid ran her fingers through the tangles in her heavy mane, trying to work them out "Explain." While he inspected the vimana, Javalara said matter-of-factly, "Angkor Thom is built upon a convergence of earth energy lines. Angkor Wat, the palace of the Devi-Naga, was deliberately constructed over a vortex of geomantic energy. Are you familiar with the term?" "Somewhat," Brigid answered carefully. 'The literal meaning of the word geomancy is to 'divine the Earth.' Generally, geomancists believe that the energy of the planet is the very force from which humanity draws its life." Yasovar put in, "It's also a science, mapping out places where strands of earth energy join together, forming a power point or a vortex. That's the function of your machine, isn’t it?"
Despite her many years of working to perfect a poker face, Brigid couldn't completely conceal an expression of astonishment. "How do you know that?"
Javalara chuckled patronizingly. "We may wear robes, eat bad food and use elephants to get around, but we're not completely primitive. There are some among us who have experience with computers... me among them. I took your machine, your interphaser and downloaded some of its data into a PC we have hidden in a monastery. The information was very illuminating. It confirmed an aspect of the Angkor Wat vortex I had long suspected."
"Which is?" Brigid inquired.
"The energy web of the planet is multidimensional. Strands of it travel through space, connecting all things in the universe to one another. The so-called essence of the Naga is a point where the very fabric of dimensional space is distorted, but the distortion was maintained in harmony and balance for many centuries." Brigid felt her heart speed up in sudden comprehension. "And you disturbed the balance?"
