Atlantis Endgame Part 20

"But they shot at us! They shot at our boat!" Ross protested.

Linnea looked his way. "But we don't know that. Did you not all agree that the Baldies might not be able to tell the difference between you and the scavengers? That it's possible they thought this boat theirs?"

"What a nasty judgment on us," Eveleen muttered. "Not to see a difference."

"Yet that could have been true all along," Ashe said. "We've encountered them in the past. We don't know if different groups of them are ones who've just discovered their murdered world or if they've mixed us up with people of our prehistory, but either way, we probably haven't looked too good to them."

"Is this rescue plan a voting thing, or not?" Ross asked.

Ashe turned his way. "Do you think we need to vote on it?"

"No, I think we need to act, and fast. I don't care what the Kayu said about having a week. That d.a.m.n island in the north is blowing bigger by the minute. If we're going in, let's go and get the h.e.l.l out. Remember, where we're sitting is part of the caldera."

Ashe nodded. "Let's get in, then, and do what we must."

He turned to direct Kosta to start the engines, but then the radios at everyone's belts gave a brief, high burst of static and then lit.

Ross and the others grabbed their radios.

From them, in wide-spectrum stereo, came the mellifluous voice of the Kayu translation computer. "We shall take the !!! with us. But departure must be immediate, if you are to successfully translate both s.p.a.ce and time."

The seabirds shrieked, unheeding, and the water lapped against the sides, a subtly faster pattern. The only human sound was Kosta's voice, still cursing.

"The seven days we spoke of was predicated on certain energy figures at the time, but those have considerably altered," the voice went on. "There is no safety here for finite beings; only the ent.i.ty can remain. You must go, and so shall both our races, the !!! having failed to destroy your time-line and we having failed to hear the ent.i.ty we sensed cross time."

"Ent.i.ty?" Ashe said, looking puzzled.

"The ent.i.ty that only the serpent woman could sometimes hear. And it would not speak when the !!! placed their devices in the temporal world."

"Wait," Linnea said, taking Ashe's radio from his hand and kneeling on the deck to speak into it. "Tell us! What have we done in our future to make them so desperate to destroy us in our time?"

There was no answer.

Ross realized that Kosta's cursing had gotten louder.

Ashe said, "Kosta? The engines?"

"Are fine," Kosta called.

"Then fire them up and get us out of here. Unless there's another problem?"

Everyone now got to his or her feet, crowding around the hatchway.

Kosta stood there looking up, his face gleaming with a sheen of sweat, his eyes black, his mouth tight with anger and tension.

Stav gasped, and said something in Greek. Kosta shrugged one shoulder and then said, "The onboard damage is not too bad, just some splinters and melted plastic-but the time-gate is compromised."

"Compromised? How?" Eveleen asked.

"The Baldies' laser fire damaged the portal rods. If we can't fix them in time we won't be able to sync up with the gate."

He gestured at the violence behind them. "And then we shall see, up close, Kalliste become Thera-"

He stopped, but they all knew what came next: before we die. before we die.

CHAPTER 29.

-FEAR. EVELEEN STOOD there on the deck, trying to think.

The mission was over. They were done. In fact, they had to leave. But the time-gate was broken.

None of these facts caused the least reaction in her. She felt unreal, as if the red sky and the black sea and the never-ending smell of burning rock had replaced reality.

Her eyes turned Ross's way. In the ugly red light he, too, looked stunned.

Then Gordon Ashe moved. "Let's get down to the fixed point as fast as we can; we have spare rods." A rattling roar from the disintegrating island punctuated his words.

Stav shook his head. "Yes, we shall, but it will be a close thing. And even with the new rods, can we recalibrate it well enough in the time we have left?"

"What does that mean?" came a whisper at Eveleen's shoulder. Eveleen cast back a distracted look and saw Linnea.

"All speed. Set the sail to help," Ashe added, as the wind had been flowing out of the west-and they knew that the wind would carry the volcanic detritus east-but no sailing s.h.i.+p could sail into the eye of the wind. Bracing the sail round to catch that west wind might aid the struggling motors and help propel them southward just a bit faster.

Eveleen said to Linnea, "Whether or not we manage to fix our side of the time-gate, we still have to get to the same spot the Russians are waiting at." She paused. "Good news and bad news: it's probably close enough to reach before the volcano blows but too close to survive if the gate fails us."

"But what did Stavros mean about recalibration?" Linnea asked.

"Our signal, which emanates from the portal rods, allows the Russians to calibrate the gate at their end. I don't understand the details, but the science types all agree that it's dangerous to linger when pa.s.sing through a time-gate-and no one knows, or wants to know, what happens if you try to back up. There's some indication that that's what happened to a big Russian time-base that blew up a while back. At the time we thought it was the Baldies. Now-"

Linnea nodded. "So pa.s.sing through on a boat sounds dangerous."

Eveleen nodded. "The scientists were afraid of that, so they put those engines in so we could get through at what they figured was a safe speed. But now, if the Russians don't get an accurate reading and open the gate at the wrong moment, well, I suppose the resulting bang will be lost in the Thera explosion, but we won't know."

Linnea winced.

Ross and Stavros were already busy at the simple sheet-ropes and braces that controlled the single sail. And there was a breeze, if a fitful one, stirred by the hot air coming south meeting the western flow. The water currents were also fitful, probably due to steam vents opening in the ground below the sea.

As Linnea watched, the men finished sheeting the sail home, and the s.h.i.+p began to pick up life. She realized she could not hear the engine adding its contribution to their speed; she could only feel its vibration.

"Now," Ashe said, his voice rasping with evident exhaustion. "Konstantin. Tell us what to do to help fix that time-gate, if you can."

"We must generate light on deck," the man replied, making motions with his hands. "I must disa.s.semble the rods and lay out the pieces so that I can examine the damage."

"That's a clear order," Eveleen murmured. "Our part is to clean up the deck, then." She sent a humorous look Linnea's way, hoping to ease the woman's stricken expression.

Linnea nodded, gave her a perfunctory smile, but it was a polite smile, and did not mask the inner turmoil that Eveleen could so plainly see.

They worked quickly, and in silence, s.h.i.+fting all the decorative "trade goods" belowdecks-those that they'd gotten for the scientists, that is. The fake things they threw over the side, figuring every bit that lightened the boat's load increased speed. And in the blast to come, no one was ever going to find those floating plastic jars or fake furs.

The blast to come-maybe it had even started. Eveleen saw that she was not the only one glancing often over her shoulder at the north. The scary thing was, they didn't seem to be moving at all, yet she was able to feel the wind and saw little rippling waves slapping up the bow and pa.s.sing, with oily-looking foam, down the sides. The current did not seem to be setting north, so what was the problem?

When they got the last items clear, and the men began bringing up the big metal rods that were the frame of their time-gate, she stood on the taffrail and stared northward.

No, the familiar outline of Kalliste had diminished. But what had steadily grown was that red glare in the north. In fact, it had grown so much that it seemed to have come closer; the red now climbed high into the sky, tentacles of glowing smoke straining toward the horizon. Dawn was near: a greater light glowed in the east, but underneath it spread the violent reddish-brown cloud, reaching horribly outward in snaking fingers. Some even stretched westward, writhing upward like a monster out of the worst nightmare. Eveleen made out house-size chunks of matter spewing high into the sky and coming down with fiery force into the sea.

The sound, she realized, had grown steadily, a rumbling, rus.h.i.+ng roar.

"It's as I thought," Kosta said.

Eveleen turned around and saw that he had laid out the portal rods on the deck. She'd thought of them, from the name, as being simple rods of metal; instead, they were hollow cylinders, now open like elongated clam sh.e.l.ls and packed with circuitry and bizarre metallic shapes.

"The shunts in several rods were overloaded somehow by the Baldy weapons. I suspect they actually are a combination of laser and plasma fire, carrying quite an electrical punch."

"Did we pack enough replacements?" Ashe asked in an equally loud voice, his tone superficially calm, but there was a hard snap to his consonants, the question that is not quite an order.

"Of course, a full set," Stav shouted. "More than we need."

Everyone heard that, and Eveleen saw the hope in their faces.

Ashe said, "But will it take longer to replace the bad ones and test them all, or just replace them all? I a.s.sume we'll have to check the calibration of every one of them, whether or not we replace them."

"Exactly, especially under these circ.u.mstances," Stav said, after a short colloquy with Kosta during which they both glanced at the island slowly falling away behind them.

"Then let us not risk any weakened ones. Let's replace all the shunts. That, any of us can handle," Ashe said. "Stav and Kosta are the only ones who can handle the calibration; that leaves two rods for each of us remaining."

Stav nodded once and then knelt down to explain how to install the shunt cradled in his hands.

But before he could speak, a deep, ripping clap spun them all around. As they watched in horror, flame jetted upward from that distant island far into the sky, followed by a cloud of hot steam.

Moments later heat smashed at them, and the boat surged over the top of a big, warm, green wave that raced outward at unimaginable speed.

"Come on!" Ashe shouted. "Get to work!"

Eveleen saw everyone force his or her attention forward again.

They listened, with desperate focus, to Stav's explanation and demonstration-the process a simple mechanical one- and a brief systems check. Then the rest of them began work on the other rods while Stav and Kosta installed and began to calibrate the first one.

Soon there were fewer rods unrepaired than waiting, freeing some of them to a.s.sist.

Stav motioned Eveleen into the bow, where she crouched, looking back along the length of the s.h.i.+p. She couldn't help herself. She had never been able to turn her back on danger, and this was the worst danger she had ever confronted in her life. Thick globular shapes rose high into the morning sky, spreading out; as yet most of the eruption pushed into the east, carried by the higher streams of wind. In those globes incandescent ash could be seen darting about like gigantic fireflies from h.e.l.l.

Eveleen hoped the fleet had not gone east; any of those clouds of burning ash touching s.h.i.+ps would convert them into instant gas.

"Is that it?" Linnea cried, working next to Eveleen, who could only shake her head. The noise pounded her ears, her skull, her teeth, her bones.

Stav appeared next to them, handing a completed rod to Linnea and motioning so they put their heads close to his. His breath smelled absurdly of coffee, Eveleen realized, which added to the surreal aspect of the terror gripping them all. One part of her gibbered in weird laughter; the other apparently took in his rapid flow of instructions, though when she looked down, her hands lay there like a pair of spiders, unconnected to her, unable to move.

"Here, help me push it down," came Linnea's urgent voice, her lips just next to Eveleen's ear. She'd already placed the portal rod in its bracket. "This one first, and then that one," she said, motioning to the wire harnesses and jacks.

Ah. This thing first and then that.

Simple directions seemed to be what she needed. Another clap, even louder than the first, caused them all to jump, but everyone worked fast. Eveleen knew that the unmeasured tons of rock being spewed into the sky would be coming down soon, bringing with it a killing downblast that would send out lateral shock waves of volcanic gla.s.s shards to shred whatever wasn't being burned by the ash clouds.

They were running out of time . . .

"Next."

They moved along the hull to the next position. Linnea again settled the rod. Now Eveleen's hands worked quickly, independent of her mind; her eyes tracked Linnea's small hands, with their thin skin stretched over tendons and age spots, but fast hands, expressive hands.

Yellow light, weird yellow light, cutting weakly through the red-shot darkness slowly enveloping them, made Eveleen realize that the day had been banished by a volcanic night.

The air was hot; another surge lifted the s.h.i.+p, pa.s.sed beneath, and set them down, bringing even hotter, thicker air, more difficult to breathe . . .

Someone slapped a mask over her face. She did not look up, but kept working. As she breathed in gratefully, she realized how close she had come to fainting.

But they were done. She looked up, her head pounding, her thoughts thick as the lava spewing into the stratosphere overhead.

Linnea motioned; no one could hear voices anymore. The roaring had taken over the world.

Eveleen crouched where she was as Stav, with a face of pain, reached down and triggered the gate. She looked over the side of the boat, but the sea was so frothy and filthy with ash that she couldn't tell if it was boiling along the portal rods, as it had when they had first pa.s.sed through the gate. How would they know when they were synced?

A third clap, this one so loud they could only feel it as it tried to scour their bones, and Kosta smacked the engine into high. Hot wind blew into their faces as the s.h.i.+p shuddered, racing fast over the churning water.

Eveleen's imagination jammed into overdrive as well. As vividly as though she were somehow there, like a G.o.d proof against the violence, she saw the magma exploding upward, vaporizing the pre-Kameni Island, billions of tons of white-hot rock and searing gas punching up through the atmosphere almost to the edge of s.p.a.ce, spreading out in a choking cloud that would bring killing winters to the Earth for years to come. And below, the sea racing in, exploding into superpressurized steam as it raged against the liquid rock.

Another surge, the greatest one yet, raced under them; they braced for the murderous shock wave of steam that they knew would be following behind- And air and earth and sky began to rip apart in an explosion of noise and light and power. Her bones shuddered as the night around them flared with light and ahead the strange straight-line vortex of the gate manifested, sucking in the violence rus.h.i.+ng past them.

Eveleen felt hands seize her roughly, throwing her violently down on the deck, and Ross's body on top of her. Moments later the gunwales burst into flame sleeting violently forward under the impetus of the h.e.l.l wind chasing them; the sail vanished in a flare of light and the mast burst into flaming splinters. A thunderclap smashed at her ears, clamping her skull in a vise of silence while the devil played his organ music through her bones. Eveleen squeezed her eyes shut and shouted with pain as a whip of fire flayed her and the nausea of the transition was lost in a world of pain- -and the shaking roar ceased abruptly, the fire cooled. The boat rocked violently for a moment, then calmed.

She squirmed out from under Ross and slapped at her smoldering clothing and then at Ross's. He'd been more exposed than she. She barely noticed the pain of her burns; what she did notice was the pressure in her ears and a total absence of sound.

Around her the others did the same. It appeared that everyone had come through. They were alive.

After a moment she stood up and looked around. The still-smoldering gunwales of the boat were burnt almost to the deck; all around them, she could see sparks falling gently down upon the sea like a benediction.

Eveleen ripped off her half-burned mask, and sucked in the cold air, still tainted with the breath of h.e.l.l that seemingly had tried to follow them through the gate. She wondered what it had looked like from the Russian s.h.i.+ps, now faithfully veering in toward them.

They were alive, and home. home.

She turned her face into Ross's shoulder and wept.