The Hunt for Shambhala

30

Ahuja stood calmly before the low platform and assessed how hard he had to jump to get on top of it and reach the statue’s arms. He took another deep breath and glanced back at the gun in Kaleka’s hands. Mumbling just one more quiet, fast prayer, he started to sprint toward the platform. He skipped down the steps, dodged the darts and then leaped toward the statue’s arms.

Then he vanished, leaving only a scream behind.

“What the hell?” Decker said.

Selena looked at him, confused. “I don’t understand.”

“He just vanished into the bloody ledge!” Riley said.

Johar took a step closer. “He ran straight into the statue and just… disappeared!”

“Like black magic…” said Kaleka.

Madan moved forward. “You see my predicament. Shambhala is the other side of this strange altar, and yet whenever my men try to climb over it they simply disappear. It is most inconvenient, but I am more than certain that a woman of your abilities, Professor Moore, should be able to traverse the obstacle and lead us through into the sacred kingdom.”

“You’re out of your mind, Madan!” Decker said. “You can’t send an innocent person into whatever the hell that thing is!”

“She goes, or Kaleka here will kill you all, starting with Dr Silva.”

Kaleka grabbed Diana Silva and hauled her over to the side, raising his gun to her neck.

“You son of a bitch, Madan!” Decker growled. “You let her go!”

“It’s fine, Mitch,” Selena said, reaching out and touching his arm. “I’ll go.”

“Good,” Madan said. “I can afford to lose no more of my men, which is why you and your friends will be the next to offer your lives for my destiny.”

“You’re crazy,” Riley said.

Madan grinned. “That is what my psychiatrist kept saying right up to the moment I had him killed, however, that is another story. Right now, your little team is going to leap into the arms of this statue, one by one, until we figure out what is happening.”

Selena walked forward alone to the top of the steps and took a deep breath. She looked down the ancient stone staircase and started to study the chamber. Turning to Riley, she gave him a wink and without further warning she sprinted down the steps.

“Lena!”

Triggering the booby trap as she rushed down the steps three at a time, the poison darts fired with little puffs of dust and bounced off the rock walls in all directions, but she was through. She was going fast, but not as fast as the other men and now she unexpectedly stopped dead in her tracks and struggled to stop herself falling inside the statue.

Decker squinted in confusion as he stared at what was happening right before his eyes. None of it made sense and he thought he was losing his mind. Selena was no longer in the chamber but she was now upside down. He rubbed his eyes, and moved forward. Everyone else joined him, including Madan.

“My God!” The Indian billionaire said. “What is happening?”

Selena turned and walked back to the base of the steps. As she drew closer she suddenly flipped up the right way again.

“Lena?” Riley called down the steps. “Are you okay?”

“Come on down,” she shouted. “The water’s fine.”

Madan was suspicious, and ordered Kaleka to send his men first. They ran down the way the Englishwoman had just done and screeched to a halt at the base of the steps as soon as they were past the blowpipes. This time, none of them leaped into the statue’s arms.

When they were all in the lower level of the chamber, the mystery suddenly became clear.

“It’s like a pseudoscope,” Selena said, “a kind of optical instrument that reverses a person’s sense of depth perception — look at the mirrors.”

She pointed to four very large, strategically positioned mirrors which they could now see from their new location in the chamber. “Everything you could see from the top of the steps wasn’t reality, but a version of it via these mirrors. Clever.”

“I don’t understand,” Diana said.

“It’s simple,” Selena continued. “Just like a pseudoscope, the chamber uses these four mirrors to reverse the image and swap what your right and left eye sees. This has the effect of changing the depth perception, so things that are close appear further away and things that are further away appear closer. It also means that elevated objects appear as depressions, or holes, and holes appear as an elevated object — as we have just seen.”

“Yikes,” Riley said, pulling a face. “That’s grim.”

“You can buy them online,” Selena said casually.

Charlie peered down into the hole. “So that guy thought he had to jump onto the statue’s platform to get across when in fact it wasn’t a platform but a sodding great big hole.”

They peered down into the hole. It was a carved in the shape of the statue but concave and not convex, and at the bottom of it near the head was a dark tunnel leading to nothing but darkness.

“Precisely.”

“So he just leaped to his own death,” Decker said, giving a low whistle. “That’s nasty.”

“Wonder how deep it is?” Riley said, wincing.

“Maybe they’re still falling…” Charlie whispered.

“Pseudoscopes are usually much smaller,” Selena said, “but the one built by the makers of this challenge is much more impressive — still, it gave the same effect. Once you get past the mirrors you can see the illusion, so that’s why they built the steps with the poison darts. By forcing people to run so fast toward the statue they ensured they never had enough time to stop once they realized it was all fake. By the time they realized what was going on and that they were leaping into a pit it was already too late to stop.”

“Ingenious!” Madan said. His eyes glazed over in a thousand-yard stare. “So how do we get across?”

“This way,” Selena said. She pointed at what had looked like a convex block of stone from the wrong side of the mirrors, but now they could see it was in fact a doorway which opened to reveal the center of the temple — Shambhala itself. “I am not so rude as to deny you your destiny,” Professor Moore,” he said, leaning forward cautiously to check for further traps. “So please be the first to enter Shambhala.”

Selena stepped out of the chamber and found herself bathed in light. She gasped when she saw the source — several hundred yards away at the bottom of a ravine was a lake full of sparkling, glowing water. It was so powerful it was almost like a sun.

She felt a gun push into her back as Madan joined her. He gazed out over the strange underground canyon and beheld a true cornucopia of ancient riches. Statues and ornaments rested where they had been for millennia and golden idols and jewels glittered along the riverbanks, but Madan was only interested in one thing.

“Ah — the Land of White Waters…” he said, his voice trailing away to an amazed whisper. “We truly are in Shambhala…”

Selena was amazed when she saw the lake. It was glowing a powerful white neon color, so bright she almost had to shield her eyes.

“It’s just like Stanhope described!” Diana said.

They continued their way down to the water. “What the hell is all this?” Decker said. “Why is this water glowing, Madan?”

Madan smiled. “You want to know, don’t you?”

“If we’re going to die here then I don’t see why we can’t,” Selena said, forthright.

“Very well. It is my belief that the water is glowing because of a very high lunium content.”

Selena looked confused. “Lunium — what’s that?”

“A very special substance which, as far as we know, is found only here due to its unique location at the foothills of the Himalayas. It was named by Stanhope because its brightness reminded him of the moon.”

Charlie said, “I still don’t get it.”

“Have you ever heard of tritium?”

Selena shook her head. “Never.”

“Me neither,” Johar said.

“Don’t look at me either,” said Riley.

Madan stared at the water. “This is understandable. Tritium is a radioactive isotope of hydrogen. It is used for many purposes, including as a radio luminescent on watches and other instruments so they glow in the dark. It collects in the atmosphere and falls to earth in precipitation. Then it pools in places like this. It exists only in trace quantities, however.”

“I see.”

Now he smiled. “And it is also used as a key ingredient in the manufacturing process of neutron bombs.”

Selena’s mouth opened with shock and she turned to Decker, staring at him to see if they were thinking the same thing. “Oh my God… you’re making a bomb!”