The Balance Omnibus

by Alan Baxter

As if on cue he felt a furious wave of anger flooding across the psychic wavebands again. He closed their disguise tightly, throwing meaningless images into the pilot’s mind as he filled his own thoughts with nonsense. The presence of Lucifer’s fury lingered for a heart stopping few moments before moving on.

  With a shuddering sigh of relief Isiah relaxed. Time for action. He released a tiny portion of his consciousness, sweeping his thoughts out across the vast land below them. As he got his bearings and decided on the course he’d prefer the pilot turned in his chair, shouting over the noise of the engines.

  ‘We’ll hit Flores in about thirty minutes. Remember, I know nothing when we land.’

  Isiah nodded, smiling tightly. ‘Of course, no problem.’

  He used the pilot’s conversation to begin to implement his plan of sabotage. He turned his attention to the plane’s controls, the compass, the bearings, bending them slightly from true readings. When the pilot looked back and checked his instruments he made a small noise of surprise and corrected his course. Isiah smiled. That was only a couple of degrees but it would start to take them a fair way off course. Isiah glanced at the inert form of Samuel beside him, tightened his disguise again.

  After a few minutes he rose from hiding once more. ‘Do you know the time, buddy?’ he called out.

  As the pilot turned to be heard Isiah twisted the controls again. So that the pilot would not be suspicious he tweaked the plane’s flaps this time as well, adjusting their course. ‘Thanks,’ Isiah said as the pilot turned back. They were several degrees off course now. Isiah retreated under his cover.

  He let a few more minutes pass, then gently relaxed for hopefully the final time. First he let his mind wander into the pilot’s radio, causing a little damage, melting a couple of connections, just to be certain. Then he scanned the pilot’s mind. He had to stifle a chuckle. The pilot had realised that they were off course somehow, but couldn’t figure out which way or how it had happened. And he was too embarrassed to mention it. Isiah knew full well that Flores airport was way off to the east of them. He wanted to come down northwest of the airport and leave himself and Samuel a relatively easy trek north to the site. But while they were already as far north as the airport he wanted to drag it out, gain some ground. A trek from the airport to the site would take far too long. He wanted the plane to come down nearer. It would still take them a few hours in dense jungle, even with Isiah’s extra abilities to make it easier, but that should time things about right.

  With a silent apology to the blissfully ignorant pilot Isiah let a pulse of energy out of his mind. The pilot slumped in his seat unconscious. Isiah immediately locked up the plane’s controls, maintaining their present course while letting the altitude drop slowly. It would take them several minutes to reach ground level at this rate of descent. He would try to soften their landing when it came to it. He tightened down his cloak again, crouching once more in mental shadows.

  As the plane began to skim dangerously close to the jungle canopy Isiah had to act. Sam, wake up.

  Samuel was less surprised this time, but his fear was palpable. What’s going on then? Where are we?

  About to crash, Isiah replied with a laugh.

  Samuel’s mind voice was high, panicky. What? The plane is gonna crash? Has he found us?

  No, Samuel, he hasn’t. Everything’s under control. I’m letting you back to your body now. When you come round just sit still and don’t panic. We’re crashing deliberately.

  Before Samuel could respond Isiah let him go, at the same time releasing his disguise. Samuel opened his eyes and gasped involuntarily at the sight of the jungle whipping by just a few feet beneath the plane. ‘Are you ever going to stop freaking me out?’ he asked, looking at Isiah with wild eyes.

  Isiah smiled. ‘I doubt it. Sit still, I have to bring us in.’

  Using his mental ability to gently nudge the flaps Isiah guided the plane as best as he could. He pulled back on the power, slowing the plane as much as possible. Cracking sounds began stuttering through the cabin as the tops of trees snatched and grabbed at the undercarriage of the small plane.

  ‘What’s up with the pilot?’ Samuel asked, bracing himself in his seat.

  ‘Unconscious,’ Isiah replied shortly. ‘I put him out.’

  ‘Don’t you think it would be better to let the fucking professionals handle a situation like this?’ Samuel held up a placating hand at Isiah’s flinty glance and squeezed his eyes shut.

  The sounds of cracking and tearing became unrealistically loud in the tiny plane as it dropped below the canopy. It jumped and rattled like a toy as branches slammed into it. As the wings ripped from the fuselage Isiah surrounded himself, Samuel and the pilot in a protective bubble of energy, cushioning them from any blows. Samuel’s voice rose in a cry of fear as the plane crashed down through the trees and undergrowth, tearing apart around them. With a bone shaking thump it nosedived into the forest floor and came to an abrupt halt, throwing them painfully hard against their seatbelts. Samuel grunted as the wind was forced out of him. The pilot jerked around like a rag doll. Everything was still and quiet. Then the sounds of the jungle rose, hoots and whistles and susurrating insects.

  Isiah undid his belt and jumped out through the torn body of the aircraft. ‘Come on,’ he called out to Samuel. ‘We have to move as quickly as possible.’

  Samuel chose not to question him and let himself out of the plane as well. ‘What about the pilot?’ he asked as they ran from the wreck.

  Isiah shrugged. ‘He’ll have to trust his luck. He should be fine. He’ll wake up in a little while and wonder what the hell is going on.’

  Samuel chuckled. ‘Did you put him out before we started to come down?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Isiah paused briefly. With a shrug he quickly concentrated, repairing the damage he had done to the pilot’s radio. Give him a fighting chance, at least.

  Samuel laughed again. ‘He’s going to trip out when he wakes up then.’ The surroundings began to catch up with him. ‘Jesus, it’s fucking hot!’ He was running in sweat already, soaked and panting for breath as they ran, stumbling through the thick greenery.

  ‘No shit, Samuel. We’re in the jungle now.’

  After a few more minutes of running as well as they could Isiah slowed to a walk, the heat and humidity oppressive as they made their way through the clinging undergrowth. He looked up through the gaps in the treetops, checking the position of the sun. They should make the site soon after dark. He hoped that would be soon enough.

  Thomas Drake chuckled softly as he watched Katherine Bailey untangling a small knot of cables. ‘It will never cease to amaze me,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  Drake waved his hand openly at the bench table drenched in afternoon sunlight. ‘All this. Here we are in the depths of the Central American jungle, miles from anywhere, and you’re about to e-mail your boss.’

  Katherine laughed. ‘The beauty of modern technology, eh? That’s it. David will get my article and hopefully just run with my suggestions. I usually get a pretty free rein from him.’ She flashed Thomas a cheeky grin. ‘He trusts me for some reason.’

  Thomas laughed. ‘I’m not surprised. You have a level of charm which I fear you abuse at every opportunity.’

  ‘I wouldn’t go that far,’ Katherine said, feigning a hurt pout. ‘I just know how to get what I want. I’ll pay for it though,’ she added more seriously. ‘David will make sure I get back here to complete a feature on my way back from Rio. I’ll have a lot of work to do in order to get my week off, but I’ll cope. Swings and roundabouts, Thomas, that’s what life is.’

  ‘How very insightful, my dear. And how very true.’

  ‘What is so very true?’ said a familiar voice behind them.

  They turned to face a beaming Pedro Sanchez. ‘Just a small life observation,’ said Katherine, beginning to smile by osmosis. ‘What’s with you? You look like the Cheshire Cat!’

  Pedro wrung his hands in that nervous way of his, t
hough this time it was obviously to help contain his excitement. ‘You must come and see, my dear friends. We have made a fabulous discovery!’ He turned and trotted away.

  Katherine and Thomas exchanged a quizzical look. Katherine put her laptop under the table in the shade, pocketed her cell phone. The two of them jogged to catch up with Sanchez.

  ‘Looks like he’s heading for that dig that he hoped would lead beneath the pyramid,’ Thomas observed as they approached him.

  Sanchez stopped and waited by the tarpaulin covered excavation, motioning them to join him. Two of the local workers stood nearby, their faces downcast. When Thomas and Katherine reached Sanchez’ side he simply pointed down. The floor of the dig, which had previously been a stone slab, was now an open space, blackness in the shadow of the tarpaulin. The large slab itself leant against the end wall of the excavation.

  ‘What’s down there?’ Katherine asked. She could not shake the uneasy feeling that she didn’t really want to know.

  Sanchez grinned. ‘Let’s find out shall we.’

  Thomas looked up, surprised. ‘You haven’t been down there yet?’

  ‘No, not yet,’ Pedro replied, shaking his head. ‘The stone was just this minute removed. When I saw you two over there I thought you’d like the exclusive!’

  ‘We would,’ said Katherine, as Thomas snapped a photograph. ‘But am I the only one that is nervous?’

  Sanchez chuckled. ‘Not at all, my dear. This is the essence of discovery. Nothing could illustrate the heights we reach for more than a dark hole in the ground. It’s the unknown, you see. It’s a place that hasn’t felt the step of men for centuries. Imagine what we could find down there.’

  ‘I’d rather not let my imagination get away from me,’ Drake said, smiling crookedly. ‘But I can not deny my intense curiosity.’

  Sanchez swung his maglight up from his belt. ‘Come on.’ He hopped down into the dig, twisting on his torch as he did so. As the beam splashed across the dark rectangle before him they could clearly see steps leading down.

  ‘It’s very similar to the entrance to the chamber that has the skull in it,’ Katherine said as she and Thomas climbed down behind Sanchez.

  ‘It is,’ Sanchez replied. ‘However, at first glance it appears to go deeper.’

  As Katherine followed Drake down the steps behind Sanchez she glanced around the sunny site once more. Stifling a gasp her eyes locked with those of the village elder that had spoken to her the night before. He sat cross legged on the floor, chewing, some fifty feet from them. His gaze was flinty, harsh. As Katherine looked at him, unable to tear her eyes away, he shook his head. He slowly reached into his pocket and withdrew a small stick-like object with feathers and twine wrapped about it. Leaning forward he flicked it at Katherine, making her jump. Then he slipped the fetish back into the folds of his clothing and stood up. His fingers flashed briefly, like some bizarre sign language, before he turned and walked away. The whole incident took five seconds, but Katherine felt completely shaken by it. She jumped again when she felt a hand touch her forearm.

  ‘Are you all right?’ It was Drake, his face serious, his white hair and beard seeming to glow in the gloom.

  Katherine looked back to point out the old man, but he was nowhere to be seen. She let out a short laugh. ‘Yes, fine. Go on.’

  They made their way down, trying to avoid touching the walls or scuffing the stairs. The stone stairway led down some ten or twelve feet before levelling out into a painstakingly carved corridor. Sanchez stood at the bottom of the steps, playing his torchlight around the walls and ceiling. Every part of the tunnel-like corridor was intricately carved, images swirling one into the next. Sanchez’ face was lost in wonder.

  ‘Do you recognise the symbols,’ Katherine whispered, not daring to speak too loudly in such a remarkable place.

  Sanchez took a deep breath through his nose before answering. ‘Some of them, yes. A lot of them relate to the long count calendar, some of them to pictoral directions, but there’s a style at work here that I have never seen before. And some of the symbols themselves make absolutely no sense to me. This will take weeks to catalogue.’

  ‘How far does this corridor lead?’ Thomas asked.

  Sanchez let his torchbeam slide along the floor in front of them, raising it by increments to judge the distance. The powerful beam of light forced away the shadows before reaching another surface, another carved wall. It looked like a dead end. ‘The pyramid entrance is almost exactly twenty yards from this dig, in a direct line,’ Sanchez said. ‘If this tunnel leads under the pyramid, as I hoped it would, then that wall ahead of us is blocking the way. I would estimate that wall is in line with the outer wall of the pyramid. I think the entrance that we are using would be directly above it.’

  ‘So this tunnel simply ends there?’ Thomas asked, voicing the concerns of them all.

  Sanchez shrugged. ‘I hope not. But there’s only one way to find out.’ He walked towards the end wall, playing his torch beam around the walls. The shadows danced and flickered, eerie animations playing as they passed.

  ‘Is it me or is this passage sloping downwards ever so slightly,’ Drake asked, almost to himself.

  ‘Yes, it is,’ Sanchez answered matter-of-factly. He reached the end of the tunnel and stood looking at the offending wall, shining his torchlight around the edges and corners. ‘I wonder how to move this,’ he muttered.

  Katherine was still trembling after her brief encounter with the old man, but she thought that she could feel more. She hated to admit to these ‘feelings’ and ‘senses’ yet they were so strong. ‘I’m scared,’ she blurted out, before she even realised she was going to say anything. When Drake and Sanchez turned to look at her, eyebrows raised, eyes concerned, she added, ‘You remember that I said the air in the skull chamber became heavy when you lifted the hessian cover?’ They both nodded. ‘Well, here it’s far worse. Can’t you feel it, Thomas?’ She could feel tears welling up in her eyes which she refused to let go. It reminded her of being a child, irrationally scared of the unknown. ‘I have no idea where this feeling comes from,’ she said in a shaking voice. ‘But we must be careful.’

  Sanchez nodded. ‘We will.’ He turned back to the wall and ran his fingers around the edges, along the side walls and the ceiling.

  Thomas crouched beside him. The floor of the corridor was sandy, centuries dry and undisturbed. He ran one finger along the ground at the base of the end wall, brushing the sand aside. As Katherine watched he began working a little more quickly. ‘I say,’ he said after a moment. ‘Look at this.’

  The three of them crouched side by side. There was a definite groove along the very base of the wall, like the bottom of an extremely tight fitting door. ‘That’s exactly what we’re looking for,’ Sanchez said. He took a small tool from his pocket, like a blunt ended awl with a rounded plastic handle. He carefully drew it along the groove that Thomas had discovered, tracing it along the base of the wall. About eight inches in from the side wall, the groove stopped. Sanchez leaned closer, shining his torch closely at the groove. ‘Aha,’ he whispered. He drew his tool upwards, following what at first appeared to be simply more of the carved bas relief of all the walls. But this carved line was deeper. As Pedro’s tool scraped softly along it dust floated out, clouding around the glowing torch. The edge of a doorway began to emerge.

  Thomas and Katherine stood back, Thomas taking the torch, to let Sanchez work. The archaeologist took painstaking care, clearing the dusts of time from the shallow channels. Several minutes later he stood back, watching as Thomas played the torchlight around the end wall. The wall itself was about seven feet square, the dimensions of the corridor. About eight inches in from each side, and the same distance from the ceiling, a dark line was now clearly visible.

  ‘There are no hinges or handles,’ Thomas observed, stating the obvious. ‘Is this another doorway like you described before? A stone blocking up the hole?’

  Sanchez nodded. ‘I would imagine s
o. Of course, the question is how to remove it, especially in such a confined space.’ He stood staring at it for a few moments more, then reached out his hand. ‘I wonder...,’ he mused, laying his palm against the right hand side of the door stone, about halfway up from the floor. He gave it a tentative push.

  ‘What are you thinking?’ asked Katherine.

  Sanchez stepped back, gently wringing his hands. ‘There was a site in Mexico, near Chichen Itza. The men there discovered an internal doorway which at first appeared to be simply a stone. However, when they attempted to remove it they discovered that it seemed to be locked in. It turned out to have a central fulcrum and it rotated on that axis. Like a revolving door, with one face rather than two.’

  ‘If that was the case,’ Thomas said, ‘then the edges of the door would have to be bevelled so that it would open one way and lock shut the other.’

  ‘Precisely,’ Sanchez agreed. ‘But which way?’

  Thomas shrugged. ‘Why don’t we push on both sides and see?’

  Sanchez stood thinking for a moment. Then he sighed. ‘Why not? However, we must push very gently, slowly building up the pressure. If we push too hard all at once we might disturb or damage something.’

  The three of them leaned against the right side of the doorway, slowly increasing their efforts. After a moment, just as Katherine was thinking that they would have to give up and rethink, there was a slight cracking sound. Dust rained down around them.

  Sanchez looked around, checking the edges he had cleared earlier. ‘Again,’ he said. ‘Gently.’

  With a scraping sound and more showers of dust, the door shifted, a fraction of an inch. All three of them jumped back, not wanting the door to suddenly give way. The whole stone was definitely at a slight angle to the rest of the wall. Sanchez took his small tool out again and cleared more dust from the edges. He was beginning to smile broadly.

  Katherine swallowed hard. She was fighting against a palpable sense of dread. At Sanchez’ instruction they leaned once more against the door. Knowing now how hard to push they began shifting the slab. It seemed to move more easily than its enormous weight should have allowed. It scraped, millimetre by millimetre, angling inwards. They could see the wall in cross section as the door moved, giving them an idea of how thick the walls were. The wall itself was cut at an angle, allowing the door to slide against it, but lock into place when flush. The other side of the door was cut at a parallel angle. The door would only pivot open and closed in one direction. The edge came clear of the wall with a pop. All three staggered back as cold, fetid air rushed out from the gap, a noise like a giant sighing. The stench was unbearable.