Atlantis Endgame Part 16

"Eat," said the seer. "We shall need our strength."

No one spoke. Several women crowded round the tray, softly exclaiming.

Ela brought the tray to the seer, who sat against the wall opposite from Linnea. All the women stood respectfully back as the old woman touched the stack of flat ceramic dishes, a single round container-a Kallistan jug with lilies painted on the side-the line of flat spoons. Linnea did a rapid count: nine plates and spoons, eight women now in the chamber.

There was one for the woman who had been taken out.

"It appears to be a meal," the seer said in her old, tremulous voice, looking into the container. "It is so finely milled!"

A younger woman turned to Linnea. "Have you such things in Kemt? Or is this priest food?"

Linnea opened her mouth to speak of worlds, aliens, foods that might or might not suit the human digestive system and hesitated. Your only weapon is your brain, Your only weapon is your brain, she told herself. she told herself. Use it. Use it. Were the Baldies watching to see if one of the women might be a ringer? Were the Baldies watching to see if one of the women might be a ringer?

"It is unfamiliar to me," Linnea said only.

"I shall sample it," said the seer. She gave a wry smile. "I am the oldest and the closest to the world of the shades."

So saying she dipped a finger into the serving bowl, tasted. Presently she looked about. "It is a strange food, of a flavor I cannot name, but I do not feel the fires of poison within me."

She signed to the priestess who usually supervised meals, and in silence she served out nine equal portions.

Linnea took hers, waiting until the women had chanted their blessing over the food. Then she tasted it. The consistency was much like pancake batter, the taste not much different. She had no doubt that it was both clean and reasonably nutritious.

"It is not unlike the meal we make with fava seeds, but what herbs set thereto?" someone wondered.

Other comments were offered. Linnea said nothing; the food made her feel energy flowing back into mind and body.

She had just set aside her plate and spoon when a deep rumbling noise caused all the women to go silent, still.

The shaking started then, at first easy, then harder, great jerks and jumps that eventually died away. Fine silt sifted down from new cracks in the ceiling.

Linnea drew in an unsteady breath.

The women began to talk again in low voices, and finally the seer motioned them over, and they began to chant, a steady, soothing rhythm. In their own way, the women were trying to solve the problem, Linnea realized.

The seer shut her eyes and began her breathing.

Linnea shut her own eyes; she no longer felt superior to these women, uneducated and superst.i.tious as they were. She just felt an added sense of responsibility: she could not sleep until she knew what had happened to the woman taken out.

Rescue, she thought bleakly, she thought bleakly, is obviously up to me. is obviously up to me.

How?

"IF LINNEA IS still alive, she's probably not alone," Ashe said.

Eveleen felt excitement surge through her. "That mysterious room Linnea found that one day, do you remember? I really think the elevator shaft connecting the globe s.h.i.+p's original cave connected to that room. Do you think Linnea might be imprisoned there?"

Everyone turned Kosta's way; he was the one who had searched the ruined city.

"If she is, there's no access I can see," he said. "That entire level of the city has fallen. Not one of those buildings has been left standing. I can't speak for any underground chambers, of course."

"The Baldies obviously didn't want anyone around there, not with the shootings," Ashe said. "But they might have been trying to protect themselves against the hill scavengers."

"One of those scavenger guys was about to jump another," Ross pointed out. He made a wry face. "Though I find it hard to believe the Baldies shot the guy with the knife out of some weird sense of justice."

Ashe shook his head. "More likely he found something of theirs while looting."

They were all sitting in the boat directly under a cliff, so that they could not be seen except from the cliffs directly overhead. They'd met at dawn, as planned, rowing back under a sky streaked with brownish-stained clouds, the sea an ominous green.

Now they finished breakfast. Eveleen, glancing at the others, thought that they looked as weary as she felt.

"I found nothing on the northern sh.o.r.e except collapsed huts and landslides," Ashe said presently. "Ross found nothing but landslides up the mountain. I think, therefore, we should confine tonight's search to the city."

"All right with me," Ross said, drumming his fingers on the s.h.i.+p's rail.

Eveleen swallowed. "I would really like to search for Linnea," she said.

Stavros glanced up. He was busy with a welter of wires and plastic; Eveleen saw dark smudges under his eyes. He had not slept at all for over thirty-six hours. "I am trying here to rig some kind of a location device, using the strain meters," he said. "If we use their tech, we give ourselves away." He shrugged, his mouth tight.

Kosta sat back, his hands cradling his coffee mug. "I did not cover all the areas I would have liked. With all of us working, perhaps we can either identify sections to focus on, or else rule out the area entirely."

"What about the Kayu?" Eveleen asked. "Ought we to look for them-for rescue, if for nothing else?"

Ashe sighed. "The only location we know of for them is on top of the mountain. We'll have to a.s.sume they have taken care of themselves. We definitely can a.s.sume that they are, for whatever reason, incommunicado."

No one spoke.

Ashe nodded once. "Then all five of us will search the city area tonight, and cover it as closely as we can. We'll use infrared scanners, and a new set of radio codes. Get some sleep: as soon as the sun sets we'll outline our specific search goals, and we'll land under cover of night."

CHAPTER 23.

NIGHT. FAR IN the north, lightning p.r.i.c.ked the sea; the delayed rumble of thunder stayed in the distance, no more than a low, fretful threat. The air was thick with dust, still, and hot. It smelled of burned rock to Ross, who occasionally spared a glance to that storm moving eastward. It did not seem that the edge of it would brush Kalliste. Too bad. Getting soaked would be a relief.

Ross turned his head and made out Eveleen's silhouette against the soft light of the southern stars, just barely visible through the slowly drifting haze of volcanic steam and smoke.

Ross glanced down at the infrared reader in his hand. He held it out, moving horizontally from left to right. Then, when distant lightning briefly lit the rubble around him, he moved forward another thirty feet.

Slight scrabbling sounds to his right indicated that Eveleen, too, was performing a sweep-and-move.

Ross and Eveleen spent another immeasurable time working across the landscape in a rough zigzag. They could not see Ashe, Kosta, or Stavros, but Ross sensed them strung out along the face of the mountain.

So far, no one had used the radio. Could the Baldies sense them?

No sign. The infrared reader showed blurps and blobs that had to belong to birds or small animals. Some moved in hops; others jetted upward.

Sweep, pause, move. It became a pattern, almost a drill. Ross, tired from too many nights of interrupted (or skipped) sleep, was just feeling his brain settle into a kind of routine when he became aware of noise to the left.

He whipped up the reader, and at first saw nothing. But he heard harsh breathing and rubble clattering.

Lightning flared. Ross smelled the attacker a split second before he saw the stocky figure with something upraised, a sharp, nasty smell of unwashed body and badly cured goat skin. The attacker vaulted around the side of a ma.s.sive slab of stone, which explained the lack of a reading.

Grunting with effort, the man heaved something directly at Ross's head. He sidestepped, and a huge jar smashed down where he'd been. The scavenger uttered a low growl and flung himself onto Ross.

An angry, desperate battle ensued, the two men teetering on loose rubble, each trying to get a purchase. The scavenger was short but enormously strong, fighting to kill; Ross was still in self-defense mode, which flared, quick as the distant lightning, when a second attacker appeared behind, a stone upraised.

Then came a sound not unlike the whirring of a great owl's wings, and Eveleen leaped up, turning midair, using her velocity to arc out her foot in a perfect side-kick. The edge of her shoe caught the second guy right across the bridge of his nose, and he howled, dropping the stone, and then launched himself at her, arms swinging.

Ross's adversary made the mistake of turning his head to see. Ross used an ankle-sweep to knock him off balance, and two solid punches, one to the face and one to the gut, sent the man cras.h.i.+ng down the hill amid a shower of little rocks.

A palm-heel strike to the solar plexus from Eveleen sent the second one to his knees, fighting miserably for breath.

Ross picked up his infrared scanner. His heart raced, his hands trembled, but all his senses were heightened; in a weak, easterly flare of lightning he made out maybe six others, all converging.

"It's a gang," he whispered to Eveleen.

She nodded-he sensed it rather than saw it-and pulled her weapon, holding it in her hand as they eased back down to the south.

They dodged round a broken building and crouched down beside a well, both peering out, their scanners up. By these they watched the gang's progress to the southwest, downhill. Shouts, thuds, and the clatter of stones broke the summer stillness at one point.

By the faint reflected glare of the dim LED light on the scanner, Ross saw Eveleen grimace. "Took care of their two guys, is my guess."

Ross nodded. Her tone in "took care" made it clear that she didn't believe any more than he did that the scavengers dealt out first aid. Well, he had no sympathy, none at all; he flexed his hand, feeling tingles run up his arm to his neck. Probably broke a couple fingers, d.a.m.n it all. Jammed, anyway.

They waited until the scavengers had moved southward in a clump; then Ross radioed the signal for DANGER: MOVING SOUTH.

He clicked off the radio and he and Eveleen scooted straight uphill, scanners constantly moving.

The rubble altered abruptly from treacherous landslides to jumbles of jutting stone, forcing them to proceed slowly.

"Something's going on," Eveleen breathed, barely loud enough to hear.

Ross saw her facing southeast. He held up his scanner.

Indeterminate flickers registered on the very edge. Whatever was going on was on the other side of the ruined city.

Smas.h.!.+ A shower of stones and a scrabbling noise caused Eveleen to gasp. Ross crouched, weapon up.

"Na-a-a-ah!" A very bad-tempered goat plunged right between them, head low, horns b.u.t.ting the air.

The animal leaped, struggled for purchase, and then trotted downhill, scolding the night.

Eveleen breathed a laugh of relief. "I guess we must have stumbled onto its hiding place."

Ross risked a quick glimpse from his flashlight, s.h.i.+elding it with his palm. Sure enough, there was a pocket cave underneath a great fallen wall. Again, the stone was too thick for the infrared to have sensed the animal.

Ross sighed. "You know, this is a waste of time. Unless our targets are right on the surface, we're not going to get anything; these sensors just don't have the penetration we need."

Eveleen nodded. Ross saw her profile outlined against the slightly softer darkness of the sea, the water touched with reflected glimmers of starlight.

"Hear that?" she murmured.

Ross turned his head. Faint echoes of shouts rose from somewhere toward the coastline.

"Let's go see if they need help," she suggested.

"Right."

Their progress was slow, until they found a relatively undisturbed stretch of pathway. But then that, too, ended abruptly at another great landslide. They picked their way over carefully, forced to test every step, lest they be carried downhill with another slide, some two hundred yards.

But just before dawn eased the darkness to a faint, orange-tinged smear, they found the others, all except Kosta.

Ross said, "Scavengers are roaming around in a gang."

Ashe nodded. "They clearly think this city is their territory. We had to fight them off twice. Kosta went chasing after them," he added. "I searched a little more, until a landslide forced me back."

"Any sign of the Baldies?"

"Nothing found, though I thought at one point that I saw an artificial light."

"Was it just a lamp?" Ross asked.

Ashe shrugged, a gesture that looked to Eveleen almost Gallic. For some reason it made her smile. "Landslide, and then a fight, prevented us from going up there. Maybe it's nothing."

"Nothing on our end, either," Eveleen said. "Except a crabby goat."

Ashe breathed a short laugh, and then the swift crunch of footsteps brought all them alert and ready.

They relaxed when the strengthening light shone on Kosta's tired face, his stubble p.r.o.nounced. He grinned.

"Find the Baldy hideout?" Ross asked.

"No. These scavengers-" Kosta shook his head, muttered in Greek, then forced himself to say in English, "After they tangled with us, several of them retreated in one direction."

Ashe rasped his hand over his chin. "So you followed them?"

Kosta's white teeth gleamed in the morning light. "Yes. And I discovered they have a s.h.i.+p."