The Sacred Vault (15 page)

 

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 jabbed 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.’

‘That’s still ten years of chaos.’

‘Better ten than a hundred.’ He stepped closer to her. ‘I am not a passive man, Dr Wilde. I rose from the slums by seeing opportunities and taking them, changing the world around me to my advantage. This will be the ultimate opportunity, and I
must
take it, for the good of all humanity. I will end the Kali Yuga - but I will also guide the beginning of the Satya Yuga.’

‘The downfall of civilisation as a business opportunity, huh?’

‘More a guiding hand. I have been assembling resources worldwide - people with vital skills, stockpiles of food and shelter, secure data archives in remote locations like Mongolia and Greenland, a satellite communications infrastructure that will be unaffected by wars on the ground. They will all be put to use to help those in need following the collapse.’

Nina narrowed her eyes. ‘With strings attached, I’m guessing.’ ‘The world must learn that Shiva is the one true lord of creation. Which is why I hired Urbano Fernandez. Some of the items he obtained for me were for their protection; they are irreplaceable cultural treasures that would surely be stolen or destroyed during the chaos.’

‘And they’ll just happen to be in your private collection for “safekeeping” while all this is going on, right?’

‘But,’ he went on, ignoring her, ‘the others will provide me with leverage in places where the word of Shiva might not be heard.’ ‘Places like Saudi Arabia,’ she realised. ‘If there’s a global collapse, nobody’ll be paying for their oil - and they don’t have a hell of a lot of other resources. So then you tell them, “If you want help, if you want the Black Stone back, I want something in return.” ’

‘Correct. Money may not be much use after the collapse, but influence will be. Having power over the Saudis gives me influence over Islam, power over the Italians gives me influence over Roman Catholicism, and so on. I will use it to spread the word of Shiva - the true, uncorrupted word that waits inside the Vault.’

‘Sounds kinda far-fetched, if you ask me,’ Nina scoffed. ‘You won’t turn over centuries of belief and tradition with blackmail.’

‘People will do anything when they are hungry and desperate. When one god has failed them and another offers them hope, will they take it? I think so.’

Nina slowly circled him, Tandon shadowing her. ‘So how are you planning on bringing all this about? I don’t see how a search engine can be a harbinger of the apocalypse.’

‘Then you are short-sighted, Dr Wilde. Qexia will play a vital part.’

She could tell that he was itching to impress her with his cleverness; the question was, how much would his ego let slip? She injected a disbelieving, faintly mocking note into her voice. ‘You’re going to end the world with search results? How?’

He raised his hands, the virtual keyboard appearing on the screens. Some commands, and the walls lit up with numerous pages from news sites around the globe. ‘People choose sources of information not because they trust them to be impartial, but because they reflect their own view of the world. Their biases - their passions, if you like.’ He regarded the screens. ‘All these pages are about a terrorist bombing in Mumbai two weeks ago. As you can see, it was covered by dozens of news agencies in different countries, each of which had its own interpretation of events.’

‘That’s hardly news, if you’ll excuse the pun.’

More commands. ‘When people want information about a subject, they turn to a search engine. Like Qexia. Now, these are the results a Hindu living in India would see when they searched for information about the bombing.’