Khoil worked the joystick controls. The drone descended towards the scene, crosshairs moving over the tiger’s body.
‘Don’t hurt her!’ Vanita warned.
‘I won’t, my beloved,’ Khoil replied, a hint of impatience in his flat voice. The camera drew closer.
The tiger looked up, a noise catching its attention—
He pulled a trigger on one of the sticks. A flat whap came over the speakers, the image jolting backwards. When it settled again, the tiger had released the goat and was trying to run back into the jungle - but only got a few yards before drunkenly flopping to the ground. A silver dart protruded from its flank.
‘She is down,’ Khoil reported into the headset. ‘Bring her inside.’ On the smaller monitor, the platform lowered into the ground. After a short pause it rose again, several men in white overalls stepping off and moving cautiously to the fallen predator.
‘Is she all right?’ Vanita demanded. One of the men felt the tiger’s body, then gave the hovering camera a thumbs up.
‘She will be fine,’ Khoil assured her. He pushed a button. The words Auto return flashed up on the big screen, the camera swinging round of its own accord and ascending above the treetops. ‘Now, Dr Wilde,’ he said, standing, ‘we can talk. I suspect it will be pointless, but Qexia projected a twelve per cent probability that you might be persuaded to work with me.’
Nina shrugged. ‘Sounds like your projections have a thirteen per cent margin of error, but go ahead.’
As he had earlier, Khoil missed the subtext and took the remark literally. ‘Less than five per cent, actually. But you are undoubtedly wondering why we want to obtain the Talonor Codex.’
‘It’d crossed my mind.’
‘Mr Zec has sent me scans of all the IHA’s research and translations from your apartment. They confirm everything I had hoped - that the Codex contains the information needed to reveal the location of the Vault of Shiva.’
‘So you think it’s real?’
‘As real as Shiva himself.’ Seeing her sceptical look, he continued: ‘You are surprised that a computer billionaire could also be a devout believer? This is India, Dr Wilde. The gods are all around us, as important a part of daily life as water. Vanita and I are both Vira Shaivites - “heroes of Shiva”. Following Shiva has brought us great wealth and power, and we want to show our gratitude by fulfilling the great lord’s plan for the world.’
‘What plan?’ Nina asked, but they were interrupted by a buzzing sound as something flew into the room through an open window: a black and silver flying machine about two feet across its front and slightly longer. It was triangular, a cylindrical shroud at each corner containing fast-spinning rotors. ‘What’s that?’
‘One of my vimanas - the name in the ancient Hindu epics for the flying machines used by the gods. They are described as flying chariots, mechanical birds, even floating palaces . . . the products of a great civilisation now lost to time.’ The little aircraft made its way to a stand at one side of the room, hovered above it, then lowered itself down. As the buzz of its engines faded, Khoil walked to the drone, Nina - and the three bodyguards - following.
She saw that slung beneath its body was a dart gun, a camera lens above it. ‘That’s how you tranqued the tiger? Cool little toy.’ The gun had a conventional trigger, pulled by a mechanism protruding from the drone’s belly. It had a magazine holding two more of the darts, which were fired by a small bottle of compressed gas.
She leaned closer. The amount of tranquillising agent needed to take down an animal as large as a tiger could be potentially lethal to a human. If she could reach the trigger mechanism . . .
‘Vanita has her pets; I have mine. I grew up under the flightpath of Bangalore airport, and when I was a child I thought the airliners were the vimanas my father told me about when he read from the Vedas and the Mahabharata. I actually wanted to be an engineer, to build aircraft, but then I discovered computers.’ Khoil became noticeably more animated as he warmed to his subject. ‘But it is still an interest. I own a large stake in one of India’s military aircraft manufacturers, and I designed this drone myself. Getting a high thrust-to-weight ratio in a small frame was—’
‘Pramesh,’ his wife scolded from the control station, ‘if you must talk to her at all, at least do her the courtesy of staying on topic.’
Khoil’s expression dropped back to its usual blankness. ‘But, yes, the Vault of Shiva. I do believe it is real, and I also believe it contains the means to advance the world into the next stage of existence - the words of Shiva himself, the wisdom of a god.’ Nina looked at him for a long moment. ‘You doubt me.’
‘It seems . . . far-fetched. To say the least.’
‘Why? Your own translations say the priests showed Talonor stone tablets from the Vault. The Shiva-Vedas, the words of the god.’
‘Which doesn’t mean they were literally carved by Shiva himself.’
‘I am not saying they were. But what is important is what they say . . . and when they were made. Dr Wilde, have you heard of the yugas?’
‘Well, you just jogged my memory, so yes - they’re parts of the cycle of existence in Hindu mythology.’
‘Correct. There are four stages in the current cycle: the Satya Yuga, the Treta Yuga, the Dvapara Yuga, and finally the Kali Yuga. The Kali Yuga is the last, and most debased, part of the cycle, farthest from the golden age of the Satya Yuga. It is also the yuga the world is in now.’
‘But that’s a theme with practically every religion,’ said Nina. ‘The present is always the worst time there’s ever been, and things were invariably better in the past. It’s either rose-tinted nostalgia, or “proof” that things have descended into sin and decadence - and the only way out is through whatever flavour fundamentalism the preacher prefers.’
‘In the case of Hinduism, though, it actually is true. The world will sink deeper into the darkness, until Shiva ends the cycle.’
‘By destruction.’
‘So that a new cycle can begin. A new Satya Yuga, a time of enlightenment and bliss. And the Shiva-Vedas will make it happen.’
‘How?’
He ignored the question. ‘The Talonor Codex proved that the Shiva-Vedas were in existence at the same time as Atlantis, around nine thousand BC. Yes?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Then they must come from an earlier yuga - at the latest, the Dvapara Yuga. The Hindu calendar is very old, and we know the exact date when the Kali Yuga began: 3102 BC. Specifically, January the twenty-third, in Gregorian dating. Because the words written in the Shiva-Vedas are from an earlier yuga, they are by definition more pure, more enlightened, than anything created in the corrupt Kali Yuga. They will form the cornerstone of the new era when it begins - when I make it begin.’
‘What, you think you’re Shiva now?’ said Nina, aghast.
‘No, I am just carrying out his will. But to end the cycle, I must have the Shiva-Vedas. They are the key to humanity’s salvation. Without the teachings of Shiva himself from a more enlightened time, the world will fall back into corruption, and everything I have achieved will be wasted. So to get the Shiva-Vedas I must find and enter the Vault of Shiva - and to do that, I need the Talonor Codex.’