Jack Chalker - Balshazzar's Serpent

“That’s the best instructions I’ve had in a long while,” Robey commented. “ ‘Do whatever you must.’ I like that.”

Corby paid no attention, adjusting his probe and then making a number of passes over the spot where he’d been shocked, only from the upper bank. “Got’cha!” he muttered to himself, smiling grimly. “Won’t shock me again like that. Huh!”

“What is it?” Robey asked him.

“It’s only three meters deep and it stops about twenty-point-three centimeters above the canal. Damned clever. When they need to irrigate it just runs right underneath. And that’s their first line of defense, too. Got idiots like me standing in the wet grounding ourselves when we run into it.”

Erin wasn’t impressed. “You mean they’re both squeezed into something about the size of a private bathroom? Sounds more kinky than threatening.”

“No, I doubt if that’s the case. The odds are it turns and goes into the bank and under. Second line of defense. A bit of a maze.” Corby sighed. “Let’s see if I’m lucky enough to at least be on the side that matters.”

He began slowly passing the probe over the dry, hard-packed dirt and smooth rock in a broad sweep. “Nope. Not my day,” he sighed, and looked over at the opposite bank. “I have no particular desire to jump back down into that muck or go back and walk around,” he told them. “Ruth! Catch and do a sweep!”

With that, he threw the probe across to his assistant who caught it rather nimbly. Within a few minutes, Ruth was doing much the same as he but over on her side, and coming up with the same results.

“Sorry, Brother Corby, but there’s nothing registering here, either!”

“Got to be!” he snapped, not so much at her as at the problem itself.

“You mean they really are in a three-meter-square box we can’t see?” John asked him.

Corby brushed off the comment, too busy working the problem. The large hands waved in the air as he mentally worked out various theories. Finally, he called, “Ruth! Throw the thing back here! Got a theory to test before they pop back out!” She started to just throw it, but he yelled, “No! Wait! Not across the damned thing! Back here!”

He walked a few meters beyond where he’d worked out the “vault” or entrance or whatever to be, and then she threw him the probe and he caught it. Now the display started to flash as if defective, and they understood that Corby and his computerized probe were very much mentally intertwined at that moment. Finally, he nodded. “Got to be. Okay, people, let’s see if we can crack this safe!”

He sent Erin back to bring him some more devices from the saddlebags and, incidentally, to hide the scooters in the corn. She then brought back a number of small cubes, no more than eight centimeters square, which he proceeded to put all around the invisible vault. Then he drew them even farther back, and close to the rim of the ditch on either side.

“Now what?” John asked.

“Now we wait, damn their eyes! I got other things to do!”

Eve, on the other side, just shook her head. “I never believed anything was truly invisible or could be. How is this possible?”

“It’s not invisible, not in that sense,” Ruth told her. “It’s just projecting a false and very convincing picture of what you’d expect to see there. If you saw a visible vault there but found that you could pass your hand through it, you wouldn’t think that odd, would you?”

“Of course not. A hologram.”

“Exactly. Well, same principle, only it’s not the vault that’s the hologram, it’s the area around it. Nonreflective, probably gives the signature of whatever we’re seeing to any probes. The only time it might be detected would be when it opens, but that’s for a very brief time and the energy involved would be so slight that you’d have to know where to look to detect it.”

“But—where are the two men? Certainly not inside there .”

“We’ll find out when we get in,” she said matter of factly. “Providing, of course, we don’t blow it.”

Eve was fascinated at the very idea of a vault. They didn’t have such things in her area of The Mountain , nor would anyone need them. You’d have to have something of your own worth stealing. Only Doc and the security staff and the Ordained would have anything like that, and it wouldn’t be something of this sort.

But how did these people get such a thing? And what did they own that had to be protected?

“The people farming here—they would have to know that this was here, wouldn’t they?” Robey asked Corby.

The tall man nodded. “Sure. That’s one reason why this is barren here. But they built it where they did so that it wouldn’t accidentally be in the way of harvest wagons, big animals, that sort of thing. It isn’t that unusual for even some of these lost and reverted folk to have remnants of the technology they brought here, or even to keep it hidden from us. The question is, what are they hiding and why do they think it’s so important that they’d risk us finding it? If you’re going to pretend to be a primitive, be one. Don’t keep sneaking off and checking to see if the crown jewels are still there. It’s like being so fearful of a pickpocket in a group that your hand keeps going to the pocket where you carry your valuables, thereby pointing out just where they are to every thief in creation. They aren’t just hiding something from us here. Who cares if they do? No, they’re up to something, and I’m afraid it’s the devil’s work.”

There was some noise from the front of the invisible vault or entrance and on both sides the professionals hissed, “Down and quiet! They might not even see us! Let them get well clear!”

They barely had time to do this before there was a crackling and first Gregnar, then Alon appeared, walking back up the irrigation ditch. If either was concerned that they left the door unlocked they didn’t show it, but each of them was carrying a heavy looking case full of what nobody else yet knew. Still, they didn’t even give a glance backward, and might not have seen all that company anyway. Robey in particular noted with admiration that Corby’s professional eye had placed them where the same illusion that masked the vault helped mask them from anyone exiting into the cornfield.

There was a danger if either went along the path and looked back, but that didn’t seem to be a problem. When they reached the field, they said something to one another but neither gave more than a furtive glance around and then both men walked off in opposite directions, each carrying their new load.

“Give them a few minutes,” Corby said quietly. “If they’re any good at all and spotted us, they’ll double back. I want to make sure they’re well away.”

It was a nervous five minutes, but then Corby decided that either the coast was clear or it no longer mattered. Getting up, he took his probe and pointed it at the unseen chamber, this time picking up whatever those small cubes had recorded.

“Got ’em! Not a problem, like I said,” Corby exclaimed with satisfaction. “Fairly simple locking mechanism at that. We’ll have no trouble playing it back. Robey, Toloway, come with me. Ruth, Erin, you cover for us. Anybody shows up, you know what to do.”

Both women reached into the folds of their robes and showed impulse rifles. “Yes, Brother. We know what to do.”

“Then let’s find out what they’re up to, shall we?” With that, he walked forward of the mysterious vault area and jumped back down into the muddy ditch. Steeling himself, Robey followed and managed not to fall on his face in the mud; Corby more gently lifted Eve down.

Corby then waved his probe to cover the whole area, invisible or not, and nodded to himself. “Step up, children, and watch that first step,” he warned, then stepped back a couple of steps, almost knocking Robey over, and jumped forward and up. There was a crackling sound and he vanished.