“There isn’t any way,” she said simply, fatalistically. “The spin of the funnel has been broken by Tamerlane’s forces. When the fish men overran the Academy, they knew enough to destroy the air passage. Our funnel to the surface has collapsed.”
Christóbal grunted. “What about the sea lanes? Are fighting craft still holding the Inner Circle line?”
Shara shook her head. “Communication is gone. Enemy swimmers have captured the Green Line. Since then, the War Room’s received no reports. Our submersibles have been isolated and flooded.” The image of drowning men entombed in their iron graves was not a pretty one.
“And the locks?”
“You saw for yourselves. Swimmers everywhere are systematically shutting down our channels of departure. We’re hemmed in on every side.” She looked at Aladdin fearfully. “The Amphibs have seen to it that no military craft can sail. They’ve all been destroyed or rendered useless.”
The gravity of her words sank into Aladdin’s belly like a leaden weight. Strangled. Cut off from all outside contact, and from any avenue of escape. Tamerlane had been thorough, all right. His vengeance would be complete. By darkout — at the latest — the entire western half of the Two Plates would be under water. Reclaimed by the sea forever, exactly as he had prophesied.
“Well, we can’t just stand here and die,” growled the big Spaniard. He fondled his blade, cursing beneath his breath. “I for one would rather die in the streets — fighting those damned fish men, one at a time.”
“Our only chance is to get to the locks,” said Aladdin, “and hope to find some transport that’s still operational. We’ll commandeer it from the Amphibs and try to make a break into the sea.”
“We’d never reach the surface,” said Shara. “A military craft would be pulverized long before it reached the perimeter.”
“At least it’s a chance,” countered the adventurer.
“Aye,” rasped Christóbal. He glanced at the salt rain angling in through the shattered windows.
“Not a military craft,” said Shara, a gleam suddenly coming to her eye. “But maybe, just maybe a civilian one...”
Aladdin snapped his fingers. “The turtle!” He took Shara’s hands in his own. “The Amphibs wouldn’t have paid much attention to a scientific vessel.”
“They might have overlooked it,” agreed the yellow-haired girl. “But the fish men would still be swarming across the central locks. We’d still face a fight.”
“And hope the floods don’t come and the sky doesn’t burst before we reach them,” said Aladdin. But if the scientist’s tiny craft were still at the quay, anchored and silent amid the tumult, and if the submersible hadn’t been too badly damaged during the bitterly contested fight for the locks, they might, might, be able to break out of Cinnabar.
“Well, old friend, what do you think?”
Christóbal lifted himself to his full height, grinning. “You offer a choice of dying here or dying there, capitán. Do you believe we can make it?”
Aladdin scowled. He didn’t know the answer, but he was prepared to give it one hell of a shot.
Chapter Thirty
Heavy smoke clung to the great plaza. Tongues of flame licked up the sky chambers of the Pavilion and adjacent public buildings. There were fires raging across the city, as Aladdin and Shara fled from the rubble of the grand state hall and into the open. The rain pelted harshly; the sky was dark and lowering, as the bubble dome shuddered with the force of the sea pounding against it. Here and there, screaming rockets burst forth in colour across the ravished heavens. Rivers of water flowed without control through the streets. The plaza was littered with the corpses of the city’s defenders. Pockets of resistance were still holding out, but from every vantage point, Aladdin could tell that the fish men were in command.
While Christóbal guarded the rear, Aladdin and Shara hurried across the devastation, toward the sanctity of the War Room. The tunnels to the central locks were blocked, and, ducking a barrage of harpoons, hurled from nearby roofs, they entered through the smashed doors of the hitherto most closely guarded fortress of Cinnabar.
Like everything else, it, too, was only a remnant of its former self. The hulks of smouldering fish men and the stink of burning flesh were everywhere.
“This way,” said Shara knowingly, leading them down the sets of metal steps, into the inner sanctums. The walls were shaking. Great tremors, far more powerful than before, were rocking the city above from end to end. Obelisks and towers of coral cracked and shattered, adding to the damage.
Aladdin rushed onto the lower landing, weapon in hand. If he’d expected to be met by attacking fish men, he was to be mistaken. There was nothing down here at the lowest and most secret levels. Only the lightless solitude of empty chambers and corridors. Ahead stood the briefing room, the chamber Aladdin recalled so well, its walls filled with maps and graphs of the sea, the drawings of the grand and mighty empire of the Two Plates. A glowlamp flickered, and when Aladdin peered inside, he saw a solitary figure slumped in the seat of the Legion Commander.
“Flavius!”
The old warrior glanced up at the intruders with lifeless eyes.
“Flavius, how — how did all this happen?”
The proud soldier lifted his chin, and stared at the young surface stranger and his companions. He clutched his walking stick, wrapping his fingers tightly around it. “They caught us by surprise,” he drawled slowly, factually, without emotion. “Tamerlane must have suspected Rufio’s plans all along — and he was ready for them. Cinnabar broke our only rule of war. She attacked the Hellixian air umbrella. But our strike was ineffective — not that it matters to the fish men. They were prepared for life-support without air — ”
“You knew that,” flared Aladdin. “I told you myself what Tamerlane said.”
The old warrior nodded wearily, adding a thin and mirthless smile. “It didn’t matter. Rufio has paid for his error.” He raised a hand and pointed to the shadowed corner of the room. A crumpled form lay hunched in the dark, its hands around the hilt of the sword that had punctured its gut.
“We gave them the excuse to retaliate in kind,” Flavius went on, oblivious to the shock on the faces of his visitors at the sight of the dead Legion Commander. “Feel no pity for him. He was honour-bound to take his life for his failure.”
Aladdin stared at the forlorn body, then turned again to Flavius. “He was only partly to blame, Flavius. The catalyst for what’s happened. None of you listened to me while you still had the chance.” Tears welled from Aladdin’s eyes as he spoke, bitter and angered at the meanness of those who might have stopped the war if they had only been willing.
“Blame us not, Aladdin,” said Flavius. “This was the culmination. The final throes of our mutual savagery. No one could have prevented it.” He looked evenly at the bedraggled adventurer. “Not even you.”
Aladdin bit his lip. “You could have tried. Even to the end, you could have tried. The Privy Council, Damian — Damian could have done something. He was in command. He was your supreme leader, the voice of the will of the people...”
“Damian?” Flavius regarded Aladdin questioningly, then with laughter. But his tone was tinged with bitterness and rebuke. “No, my surface friend,” he drawled. A hint of contempt flickered in his grey eyes. “Not Damian. Never Damian. Nor the august Privy Council. Like the military, they were relegated to following orders, never initiating them. Duplicity has long governed our lives. Haven’t you learned that yet?”
An icy shudder coursed through Aladdin’s skin as he listened to the old soldier. “But the Privy Council was responsible for all decisions,” he protested. “The voice and will of the people.”
Another laugh, harsher than before. “Puppets! Spineless and self-serving. Are you still so blind?” Flavius looked toward the girl, the scientist daughter of a man he loathed. “Has he never been told?” he asked.
Shara stood there mute. She shook her head.
“Never been told wh
at?” demanded Aladdin, turning his gaze from the soldier to the girl and back again. “Told what?”
“About the right, the divine right of the monarch.”
“Monarch?”
Flavius sighed, shaking his head sadly. “No, of course you don’t understand. You never did really understand anything about us, did you? But then I suppose we should accept the blame for it. You were never supposed to.”
Again the secrets, the lies and purposeful half-truths, which omitted so much of Cinnabar’s past. “Tell me, Flavius,” he seethed, squeezing out the words. “Tell me now or so help me I’ll take this humming knife and — ”
“It wasn’t always so, Aladdin,” cried out Shara. The teary-eyed girl placed herself between the adventurer and the sitting soldier. “Please believe that. Once our monarchs were noble and just. The madness came later, much later. And we were powerless to stop it.”
Aladdin lowered the still-warm blade. “Shara, explain it to me. Please. I still don’t understand...”
It was Flavius who spoke. “The dwarf, Aladdin. The court jester. The misshapen idiot who pranced at Damian’s feet. He made the rules. He set the shape of our lives. He and his crazed forebears — our divine monarchs!”
Aladdin’s head reeled. “The fool? The court fool?”
“It was never what Damian or the Council decreed,” continued Flavius, for the first time letting his emotion show. “Now do you understand why we in the military despised the Council and all it stood for? We never had any choice, Aladdin. Yes, and even I would rather have seen Cinnabar destroyed in a final burst of fiery glory than to allow her to go on bleeding to death slowly, sapping our strength, brutalizing, and murdering our young in wars we all knew could never be won.”
The walls of the chamber began to quiver. Above, the rumbling grew fierce. The city was beginning to collapse around them. Aladdin stared at the proud old soldier, refusing to believe that such a mighty empire could have been at the mercy of a line of deformed insane rulers, yet at the same time realizing that every word Flavius said was the truth.
“That limp corpse over there,” Flavius pointed to Rufio, “he was not the destroyer of Cinnabar. He was the saviour. The only one who, after so many centuries, took action into his hands and ended our suffering once and for ail!” Flavius stood now, walking stick in hand, and lifted his right arm. “Hail, Rufio!” he cried. “Hail to the man who had the courage to do what I never could!”
“He’s mad,” muttered an astounded Christóbal.
The soldier turned to the giant and laughed. “Yes, mad. We were all mad, as crazed as the dwarf who caused us to fight. But now our divine monarch is dead — the last of his idiot line.” He spat on the floor. “Cinnabar’s wars have ended at last. The sea belongs to Hellix, as perhaps it always did.” He lowered his voice and slumped back into his seat.
Aladdin was aghast. He recalled vividly the dancing dwarf and his ridiculous acrobatics, the military’s loathing of his rhymes and verse. But it had not once occurred to him that there had been purposeful venom in those rhymes — commands, edicts, and the insane joys of warfare — while so many of his people were dying. “How... how could this have happened — for nothing?” Aladdin cried out. “Your world, your civilisation was so marvellous. You had so much to give — so much to give.”
“Decay,” said Shara quietly. “Our empire has been rotting for a very long time. You saw it yourself, Aladdin, the lethargy of our people, the fatalism by which we governed our lives. In ages past, during the time of Shara, our eternal symbol, things were very different. You must believe that once we meant well and sought only good.”
“Grieve not for us,” added Flavius. “Our demise is fitting and just. Our people have been waiting for it a long time. We are not sorry it has come.”
“But to die like this — ?” Aladdin vented all the anger and frustration that had welled up inside him for so long. “Damn every one of you!” he flared. “You could have built a future for the whole world to follow. Been the beacon of brightness for all mankind. Instead you have made your people suffer, suffer as no others in history.”
“We have paid for our sins, Aladdin,” said Flavius. “Trust that we have paid a thousand times. I once had five sons, Aladdin. Each in his turn was slain in battle. Do you know what it’s like for a father to watch his children die — one at a time — knowing that each of their fates was inevitable?” He shuddered with painful memories. He felt now the anguish of the woman he loved who had wept herself to sleep every darkout, until, finally, she could take the pain no longer, and took her own life. Yes, and countless others whose lives were equally miserable. There was no happiness in Cinnabar nor had there been for many, many decades. How could he possibly hope to make Aladdin see that this was the only way — the best way.
“And what of the children now?” asked Aladdin, straining to control himself. “The young innocents who will be ravaged by the coming floods?”
Flavius pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed wearily. “I am sorry for the young,” he said reflectively. “Truly I am. I was once young, too. But if this hadn’t happened, their future would be no different from my own. Tell me, Aladdin, is it not better to die? To find peace?”
There was a long and grimly silent pause. Aladdin felt the anger vanish as he looked at the pitiful old soldier who welcomed death so fervently. Flavius was one of the few Cinnabarians he had grown to love and respect. In another time, another place, such a man might have been his teacher and friend.
“Capitán,” came Christóbal’s sobering voice. “We must go.”
Flavius regarded the surface adventurer with sad but smiling eyes. “Leave me now,” he said. “The way to the central locks is open. Flee, and go with your god.” The ceiling was rattling; outside in the corridor a shard of coral smashed to the ground.
“Good-bye to you as well, old soldier. I hope you rest in the peace you seek.”
Flavius nodded, with tears in his eyes. He sighed as his visitors turned and left. Then he faced the shadows again, waiting patiently for the sea to consume him.
Chapter Thirty-One
The surface waters of the central lock were brightened by a handful of torch-bearing Amphib craft, which sat silently in the canal, forming a ring around the few moribund Cinnabarian transports, each in its berth, flooded, useless, and bobbing like a massive mountain of iron. Aladdin slinked along the shadows made by the overhead. The tubular tunnel was dank and smelly. Here and there, the forms of humming-knifed corpses rotted along the canal banks. Figures of Amphib guards were scattered about, hovering victoriously over the enemy vessels, watching keen-eyed for any last pockets of Cinnabarian troops seeking to commandeer a ship. But there were none — only slain troops floating face-down in the water and seeping red blood into the murk. Even in the tunnel, Aladdin could feel the vibrations from what was happening above. Cinnabar was at last in its final throes.
In the flickering torchlight, Aladdin caught a glimpse of the pinched frog-faces of the patrolling Amphibs. He moved past the transports in silence, searching for the turtle. As the air was dangerously thin, his breathing was laboured. There was no hum of generators, no recirculation of fresh oxygen into the locks.
Signalling to Christóbal to hold his place at the recess, Aladdin crawled deftly to the darkest part of the bank and slipped his feet into the water. This part of the canal was shallow — waist-deep at most. Twenty paces farther, where the turtle stood moored to a small quay, the water was much deeper.
An Amphib craft moved in from the distant mouth of the tunnel. A torch burst into light along its prow, and as Aladdin sheltered himself beside the hull of a transport, he saw the gleaming barrels of harpoon guns ready to be launched. The cold waters lapped against him, as the new craft was gliding swiftly toward him. His fingers locked with deathlike rigidity around his humming knife, and he lowered himself into the water, up to his neck.
The voice of the Amphib in the prow echoed with brittle resonance. He couldn�
��t follow what they were saying, but from the movements of the guards along the opposite bank, he knew that at least some of them were being withdrawn. At last a stroke of luck — if he wasn’t spotted.
Aladdin instinctively resolved to reach the turtle while the visiting craft was being loaded with the departing guards. He grabbed hold of a transport’s fin and propeller shaft, and took a deep lungful of the clammy, noxious air. Then he slipped totally beneath the waterline, and swam in darkness toward the quay. Moments later, he felt the cold solidness of the turtle’s hull. Groping with his eyes shut, he felt for the stepladder that would take him to the hatch. Grasping the handhold he hoisted himself up, as his lungs were bursting for a fresh swallow of air. Head and shoulders rose above the waterline. An enemy swimmer, harpoon gun in hand, stared down at him. Both men were equally stunned to see each other.
Aladdin’s hand lurched out. He yanked the Amphib down into the water, and rammed his humming knife through the enemy’s bowels before the fish man had time to scream. Then deep into the murk he dragged him, watching the fish man squeal in agony while the heat of the blade inflamed his innards. He weighted the body down with a rock.
Slowly he rose to the surface. A small circular glow rippled around him, caused by the burning corpse, but with torches shining all around the surface, no one seemed to notice. Aladdin positioned himself beside the handholds and, when the enemy pickup craft had finally taken its last passenger and turned to leave the tunnel, Aladdin made his next move.
With the agility of a cat, he bounded up the ladder, and reached the hatch. Several Amphib guards were patrolling across the way. Quickly Aladdin started to unscrew the hatch, prayerfully hoping that the turtle had not been flooded. It had not been. He slipped inside and found himself standing, dripping slime and water, at the edge of the engine room. He hurried to the pilot’s compartment. It was midnight-dark inside; he scrambled across the cabin and felt for the instrument panel. As far as he could tell nothing had been damaged. The throttle and various controls for air stabilization seemed undisturbed. He did note, however, that the torpedo bay was empty.
The Thief of Kalimar; Captain Sinbad; Cinnabar Page 105