Timeline. Part 53

Standing behind the green knight, she held up the cylinder, so he could see it. He nodded vaguely, continuing to dodge and back away. She saw he was tiring fast, losing ground, the green knight advancing on him.

Kate had no choice: she ran forward, leapt into the air, and landed on the green knight's back. He grunted in surprise at the weight. She clung to him, brought the canister around to the front of his helmet, and fired gas through the slit. The knight coughed and s.h.i.+vered. She squeezed again, and the knight began to stagger. She dropped back to the ground.

She said, "Do it!"

Chris was on one knee, gasping. The green knight was still on his feet, but weaving. Chris came slowly forward and stabbed the sword into the knight's side, between the armor plates. He gave a roar of fury and fell onto his back.

Chris was on him immediately, cutting the laces of his helmet, kicking it away with his foot. She glimpsed tangled hair, matted beard, and wild eyes as he swung the sword down, and severed the knight's head.

It didn't work.

The blade came down, crunched into bone, and stuck there, only partway through his neck. The knight was still alive, looking at Chris in fury, his mouth moving.

Chris tried to pull the sword out, but it was caught in the knight's throat. As he struggled, the knight's left hand came up and grabbed his shoulder. The knight was immensely strong-demonically strong-and pulled him down until his face was inches away. His eyes were bloodshot. His teeth were cracked and rotten. Lice crawled in his beard, among bits of discolored food. He stank of decay.

Chris was revolted. He felt his hot, reeking breath. Struggling, he managed to put his foot on the knight's face, and he stood up, forcing himself free of the grip. The sword came free in the same moment, and he lifted it to swing down.

But the knight's eyes rolled upward and his jaw went slack. He was already dead. Flies began to buzz over his face.

Chris collapsed, sitting on the wet ground, trying to catch his breath. Revulsion swept over him like a wave, and he started to s.h.i.+ver uncontrollably. He hugged himself, trying to stop it. His teeth were chattering.

Kate put her hand on his shoulder. She said, "My hero." He hardly heard her. He didn't say anything. But eventually he stopped s.h.i.+vering and got to his feet again.

"I was glad to see you," she said.

He nodded and smiled. "I took the easy way down."

Chris had managed to stop his slide in the mud. He had spent many difficult minutes working his way back up the slope, and then he took the other path down. It turned out to be an easy walk to the base of the waterfall, where he found Kate about to be beheaded.

"You know the rest," he said. He got to his feet, leaned on the sword. He looked up at the sky. It was starting to get dark. "How much time do you think is left?"

"I don't know. Four, five hours."

"Then we better get started."

The ceiling of the green chapel had fallen in at several places, and the interior was in ruins. There was a small altar, Gothic frames around broken windows, pools of stagnant water on the floor. It was hard to see that this chapel had once been a jewel, its doorways and arches elaborately carved. Now slimy mold dripped from the carvings, which were eroded beyond recognition.

A black snake slithered away as Chris went down spiral stairs to the crypts below ground. Kate followed more slowly. Here it was darker, the only light coming from cracks in the floor above. There was the constant sound of dripping water. In the center of the room they saw a single intact sarcophagus, carved of black stone, and the broken fragments of several others. The intact sarcophagus had a knight in armor carved on the lid. Kate peered at the knight's face, but the stone had been eroded by the omnipresent mold, and the features were gone.

"What was the key again?" Chris said. "Something about the giant's feet?"

"That's right, so many paces from the giant's feet. Or gigantic feet."

"From the giant's feet," Chris repeated. He pointed to the sarcophagus, where the feet of the carved knight were two rounded stumps. "Do you suppose it means these feet?"

Kate frowned. "Not exactly giant."

"No...."

"Let's try it," she said. She stood at the foot of the sarcophagus, turned right, and went five paces. Then she turned left, and went four paces. She turned right again, and took three paces before she came up against the wall.

"Guess not," Chris said.

They both turned away and began to search in earnest. Almost immediately, Kate made an encouraging discovery: half a dozen torches, stacked in a corner, where they would stay dry. The torches were crudely made, but serviceable enough.

"The pa.s.sage has to be here somewhere," she said. "It has to be."

Chris didn't answer. They searched in silence for the next half hour, wiping mold off the walls and floor, looking at the corroded carvings, trying to decide if one or another might represent a giant's feet.

Finally, Chris said, "Did the thing say the feet were inside inside the chapel, or the chapel, or at at the chapel?" the chapel?"

"I don't know," Kate said. "Andre read it to me. He translated the text."

"Because maybe we should be looking outside."

"The torches were in here."

"True."

Chris turned, frustrated, looking.

"If Marcel made a key that took off from a landmark," Kate said, "he wouldn't use a coffin or sarcophagus, because that could be moved. He would use something fixed. Something on the walls."

"Or the floor."

"Yes, or the floor."

She was standing by the far wall, which had a little niche cut into the stone. At first she thought these were little altars, but they were too small, and she saw bits of wax; evidently, they had been made to hold a candle. She saw several of these candle niches in the walls of the crypt. The inner surfaces of this niche were beautifully carved, she noticed, with a symmetrical design of bird's wings going up each side. And the carving had not been touched, perhaps because the heat of the candles had suppressed the growth of mold.

She thought, Symmetrical.

Excited, she went quickly to the next candle niche. The carvings depicted two leafy vines. The next niche: two hands clasped in prayer. She went all around the room in this way, checking each one.

None had feet.

Chris was sweeping his toe in big arcs across the floor, sc.r.a.ping away the mold from the underlying stone. He was muttering, "Big feet, big feet."

She looked over at Chris and said, "I feel really stupid."

"Why?"

She pointed to the doorway behind him-the doorway that they had pa.s.sed through when they first came down the stairs. The doorway that had once been elaborately carved but was now eroded.

It was possible to see, even now, what the original design of the carving had been. On both left and right, the doorway had been carved into a series of lumps. Five lumps, with the largest at the top of the door and the smallest at the bottom. The large lump had a sort of flat indentation on its surface, leaving no doubt what all the lumps were meant to represent.

Five toes, on either side of the door.

"Oh my G.o.d," Chris said. "It's the whole d.a.m.ned door."

She nodded. "Giant feet."

"Why would they do that?"

She shrugged. "Sometimes they put hideous and demonic images at entrances and exits. To symbolize the flight or banishment of evil spirits."

They went quickly to the door, and then Kate paced off five steps, then four, then nine. She was now facing a rusty iron ring mounted on the wall. They were both excited by this discovery, but when they tugged at it, the ring broke loose in their hands, crumbling in red fragments.

"We must have done something wrong."

"Pace it again."

She went back and tried smaller steps. Right, left, right again. She was now facing a different section of wall. But it was just wall, featureless stone. She sighed.

"I don't know, Chris," she said. "We must be doing something wrong. But I don't know what." Discouraged, she put her hand out, leaned against the wall.

"Maybe the paces are still too large," Chris said.

"Or too small."

Chris went over, stood next to her by the wall. "Come on, we'll figure it out."

"Do you think?"

"Yeah, I do."

They stepped away from the wall and had started back to the doorway when they heard a low rumbling sound behind them. A large stone in the floor, right where they had been standing, had now slid away. They saw stone steps leading downward. They heard the distant rush of a river. The opening gaped black and ominous.

"Bingo," he said.

03:10:12.

In the windowless control room above the transit pad, Gordon and Stern stared at the monitor screen. It showed an image of five panels, representing the five gla.s.s containers that had been etched. As they watched, small white dots appeared on the panels.

"That's the position of the etch points," Gordon said.

Each point was accompanied by a cl.u.s.ter of numbers, but they were too small to read.

"That's the size and depth of each etching," Gordon said.

Stern said nothing. The simulation continued. The panels began to fill with water, represented by a rising horizontal blue line. Superimposed on each panel were two large numbers: the total weight of the water and the pressure per square inch on the gla.s.s surface, at the bottom of each panel, where the pressure was greatest.

Even though the simulation was highly stylized, Stern found himself holding his breath. The waterline went higher, and higher.

One tank began to leak: a flas.h.i.+ng red spot.

"One leaking," Gordon said.

A second tank began to leak, and as the water continued to rise, a jagged lightning streak crossed the panel, and it vanished from the screen.

"One shattered."

Stern was shaking his head. "How rough do you think this simulation is?"

"Pretty fast and dirty."

On the screen, a second tank shattered. The final two filled to the top without incident.

"So," Gordon said. "The computer's telling us three out of five panels can't be filled."

"If you believe it. Do you?"

"Personally, I don't," Gordon said. "The input data's just not good enough, and the computer is making all kinds of stress a.s.sumptions that are pretty hypothetical. But I think we better fill those tanks at the last minute."

Stern said, "It's too bad there isn't a way to strengthen the tanks."

Gordon looked up quickly. "Like what?" he said. "You have an idea?"

"I don't know. Maybe we could fill the etchings with plastic, or some kind of putty. Or maybe we could-"

Gordon was shaking his head. "Whatever you do, it has to be uniform. You'd have to cover the entire surface of the tank evenly. Perfectly Perfectly evenly." evenly."

"I can't see any way to do that," Stern said.

"Not in three hours," Gordon said. "And that's what we have left."

Stern sat down in a chair, frowning. For some reason, he was thinking of racing cars. A succession of images flashed through his mind. Ferraris. Steve McQueen. Formula One. The Michelin Man with his rubber tube body. The yellow Sh.e.l.l sign. Big truck tires, hissing in rain. B. F. Goodrich.

He thought, I don't even like cars. Back in New Haven, he owned an ancient VW Bug. Clearly, his racing mind was trying to avoid an unpleasant reality-something he didn't want to face up to.

The risk.

"So we just fill the panels at the last minute, and pray?" Stern said.

"Exactly," Gordon said. "That's exactly what we do. It's a little hairy. But I think it'll work."

"And the alternative?" Stern said.

Gordon shook his head. "Block their return. Don't let your friends come back. Get brand new gla.s.s panels down here, panels that don't have imperfections, and set up again."

"And that takes how long?"