it:
The curved cylindrical doorway was roughly the size of a coffin, and on one side of it there were three cast- iron levers and the Chinese symbol for “dwelling”:
The ceiling of this tiny space was crudely stopped up with concrete—presumably plugging a pipe out of which fell some horrific liquid.
“Not exactly elegant,” Jack said. “But effective.”
Wizard shook his head. “This system was designed by the great Chinese architect, Sun Mai, a contemporary of Confucius and, like him, once a student of Laozi. Sun Mai was a brilliant craftsman, a man of rare flair. He was also a castle-builder, fortifications and the like, so he was well suited to this task. And how does Mao tackle him? With concrete.Concrete. Oh, how China has changed over the centuries.”
“The trap system,” Jack said seriously, gazing at the darkness beyond the open doorway-recess. “Any research? Like the trap order?”
“You cannot study this system’s traps beforehand,” Wizard said. “It possesses multiple thresholds, through which one passes by answering a riddle in situ.”
“Riddles in situ. My favorite…”
“But riddles related to the works of Laozi.”
“Oh, even better.”
Wizard examined the concreted doorway and the chamber beyond it, then he nodded at the body bags. “It seems our Chinese rivals have met with some considerable difficulty. If they’d asked me the right questions during my interrogation, I might have been more helpful.”
“So what’s the trick?” West said.
Wizard smiled. “What is Laozi’s most well-known contribution to philosophy?”
“The Yin-Yang.”
“Yes. The concept of duality. The idea that there are two of everything. Elemental pairs. Good and evil, light and dark, and all that. But there’s more to it: every pair is connected. In the good, there is some evil, and in the evil, some good.”
“Which means…” Jack prompted.
Wizard didn’t answer. Let him figure it out for himself.
“…if there’s two of everything, then there are two entrances to this system,” Jack said.
Wizard nodded. “And?”
Jack frowned. “The second entrance is connected to this entrance?”
“Well done, my friend. Full marks.”
Wizard strode to the wide circular well shaft in the floor, the one that matched the entry shaft in the ceiling, and peered down into it.
“There is indeed a second entrance to this trap system. Down there.”
Wizard said, “The tunnel system branching off this chamber is called the Teacher’s Way. A second tunnel system situated below us is called the Student’s Way.”
“So how are they connected?”
“Simple. They must be tackled simultaneously. Two people, one in each tunnel, moving alternately through their respective traps, each disabling the other’s traps.”
“You have got to be kidding me…” Jack had survived many trap systems over the years, but he had never encountered anything like this.
“It’s the ultimate trust exercise,” Wizard said. “As I set off in the upper tunnel, I trigger a trap. That trap is nullified not by me, but by you in the lower tunnel. My life is in your hands. Then the opposite occurs—you trigger a trap, and I must save you. This is why our Chinese friends are experiencing such difficulty in there. They don’t know of the lower route. So they use concrete and brute force, and in the typical Chinese way”—he nodded at the body bags—’ they just weather the losses and make very inefficient progress. They’ll eventually get through, but it will cost them many lives and much time.”
Jack bit his lip, thinking. “All right then. Stretch. You take Scimitar, and find the lower entrance. I’ll enter through here with Astro and Wizard. Tank, you stay here with Pooh Bear. Keep in radio contact with Vulture up in the chopper, because I suspect we’ll be needing a rapid evac. All right, everyone. Buckle up. We’re going in.”
LAOZI’S TRAP SYSTEM ENTRY TUNNELS
THE CYLINDRICAL DOORWAY (LOWER)
MINUTES LATER, Stretch’s voice came over West’s earpiece:“We’ve found the second entrance. About sixty feet below you. Narrow doorway, cut into the wall of the shaft. Identical to yours. But intact. No concrete clogging its upper recess.”
“Step into it,” West instructed.
Down in the shaft, Stretch and Scimitar were hanging from individual ropes in front of a narrow recessed doorway hewn into the wall of the vertical shaft.
The shaft itself dropped away beneath them into infinite black, depth unknown. Guided by his helmet flashlight, Stretch stepped off the rope and into the doorway…
…only to see the entire doorway suddenly rotate around him on its axis, its curved walls spinning ninety degrees so that the entry gap was sealed, and he found himself trapped in the coffin-sized recess, bounded on every side, with nowhere to go.
