“Revelation. And the danger that comes with it, like the apple in your Bible. Everything you believe is counter to my own religion, Kurt. Everything you strive for, my religion teaches is illusory. Go down that road, and you’ll only bring misery to yourselves and the world.”
“And I say everything that is wrong with your religion can be seen in the medieval barbarity of your country, Keyuri. You teach acquiescence and despair. We teach hope and triumph.” He turned to the others. “This door has been waiting for the right men to open it: the triumphant heirs of Frederick Barbarossa. And it opened! That’s the lesson here.”
“Kurt, we can’t go down there without lights,” warned Kranz.
“Maybe we can make torches,” said Diels. “Look, there’s a rack of staffs to the side here. They must be antique weapons or tools. We tie on some brush, light a match, and proceed. If we carry several we can light the next with the last one and have some time to look about.”
“Good idea,” said Kranz. He strode and seized one, and…
It lit.
The upper third of the staff glowed. The German almost dropped the staff in surprise and then raised it higher, in wonder. When he lifted his arm, the tip shone brighter. In bright daylight the output would seem modest, but in the gloom just beyond the massive gate, it sent shadows fleeing. “What magic is this?” Kranz gasped.
“Shambhala,” Keyuri said.
“See?” said Raeder. “It’s a sign from God-our God-that we’re on the right path. A sign that our nun’s fears are groundless.”
The others picked up staffs as well. With the touch of a human hand, each glowed. The light staffs tingled the palm as they illuminated, and there was an odd energy to the air, a feel like an approaching thunderstorm.
“I hope it’s not black magic,” said Muller.
“No more magical than a battery torch would be to a medieval knight,” Raeder said. “We’re encountering what we came for, a technology more sophisticated than our own. Our theosophist philosophers dubbed it Vril, but under any name it’s the power that girds the universe. We can’t detect it, but these staffs absorb it from the air or the cave walls. We’re going to find it, comrades. We’re going to control it. And when we control it, we control the world.”
“Then where is everybody?” Muller asked. “Why were the doors sealed, opened only by special blood? I sense a wickedness about this place.”
“You’ve turned into an old woman, Julius. We’ve got two nuns, not one!”
The other Nazis laughed.
“This from a man who’s marooned us all? Who let poor Franz fall into that river?”
“Who just led you to the most exciting find in all history, if you have the sense to seize it. My God, here’s your magnetic anomaly, your underground cavity, your source for a hundred scientific papers and everlasting fame! And you don’t want to walk down this ramp? Fine! Then sit outside with the machine gun and keep watch for more interlopers like Benjamin Hood.”
“You’re not rid of me so easily. I want to keep an eye on you. I’m the only one here who retains common sense.”
“Then stop undermining morale and help lead the way. Live up to the ideals of the SS, Julius. The fact that no one remains is a blessing. We can explore the city in peace.” Raeder’s eyes burned.
They descended, Muller in reluctant lead. The main avenue remained the size of a train tunnel, and from it opened doors on both sides, dark rooms beyond. They peered into a couple but they were empty, with stairs leading both up and down into darkness. “It’s a vast hive, I’m guessing,” Raeder said. “See the size of the steps? These were people, just like us.”
They didn’t pause to explore any other rooms. Instead they kept to the main path, noticing more decay and detritus as they did so. There was broken pottery and scraps of odd material, flexible like cloth but stiffer and harder-canvas, or oilskin, but from a substance they’d never felt before. The deeper they went, the more cracks appeared in the tunnel’s walls and ceiling. From them water dripped, the leachate forming small stalactites. Some of the bas-relief carvings-presumably of kings and queens, courtesans and captains, royal pets and a zoo’s bestiary-seemed deliberately defaced. If Shambhala had been sealed, it had not been when it was in pristine condition.
“They were fleeing, I think, and dropped things behind,” said Keyuri.
“Or they were an army issuing forth,” said Raeder.
“Or they were fighting each other,” said Muller. “Rioting.”
At last the ramp leveled and they came into an enormous cavern the size of a train station, the ceiling so high that it was lost in darkness overhead. Raeder guessed the stone hall was a lobby or assembly area for this underground maze. Arched doorways directly ahead led to what had evidently been a huge dining room, with stone tables and benches, some of them shattered. Beyond was a stone counter and ovens. On the walls were faded murals of fantastically opulent gardens and pavilions, with brilliantly colored birds, huge butterflies, and grinning apes. Eden in a cave.
“I suspect they worked down here but didn’t live down here,” Diels said. “There’s too much love of nature. That’s what the valley was for.”
“Or they missed the nature they’d abandoned,” Keyuri said.
“But why dig underground at all?” Kranz was baffled but fascinated by his own bafflement. Here was a lifetime of research and prestige! “What was down here?”
“Come, before these glow staffs decide to dim,” Muller said.
“I don’t think they’ll ever dim,” Diels said. “I think that’s the tingling, that they replenish. Can you imagine a lightbulb that powers itself forever? That alone would make us rich, Kurt.”
“I just hope you’re right,” said Muller. “It’s a long climb back in the dark.”
They went back to the cavernous lobby. There were more small doors to the left side, leading to dark, tight chambers. To the right, however, was a large, garagelike opening. When they explored this, they realized there was a hangar door half-attached. It had been knocked askew into this new room but still hung by one hinge. This gigantic door was metal, and a solid red from rust. Flakes littered the floor like cinnamon.
Beyond was a vastness into which their light would not initially reach. There was a sensation of cold, empty space, and their footsteps on the stone floor echoed.
“Lift the staffs as high as you can,” Raeder ordered.
When the glow strengthened, its light was reflected ahead by vast, hulking machinery that filled the wall opposite the door. It reminded them of a factory or power plant, its engines extending into a cave hewn from rock. As they approached this apparatus, their light brightened even more and the staffs vibrated more. There was a faint insect hum.
“This is no ancient civilization,” Diels murmured. “This is some incomprehensible future.”
Some great beast of a machine, the size of a hundred locomotives, loomed above them, a great matrix of pipes, wheels, gears, drums, pistons, and levers receding into gloom. Cables looped like vines. Catwalks allowed access to higher levels. At the top, pipes branched out from the machine like the limbs of a tree to run and entwine along the ceiling. At the machine’s center, these pipes gathered into a trunk that dived into a faintly glowing pit in the earth, as if this apparatus had organically grown out of some kind of hell.
Some parts were metal, but other parts, including the piping, were of dull-colored material the Germans couldn’t guess at. There were no obvious wheels or buttons for control, and no obvious purpose to the contraption. It did have a focus, however. In the center of the machine, at floor level, horizontal tubes from left and right ended in a gap. In this gap was a stone cradle. And lying on this cradle was another staff, this one looking as if it were made of crystal. Its ends were aligned with the hollow pipes that ran in two directions from the machine.
These pipes disappeared into horizontal tunnels about ten feet in diameter at either end of the huge room. The tunnels themselves extended into darkness.