Isle of Broken Years

by Jane Fletcher

  “She hit the window, and she didn’t hit me.”

  “And mastered fully automatic fire. We heard it in the corridor. You didn’t push the safety down far enough.” Floyd was also laughing. “So, Cat, has it been worth it?”

  As she had seen from the deck, the wall display was a map of Atlantis. Rather than cloth or material, it looked to be painted on glass, similar to the maps, although it was positioned high on the wall. Even the aliens might have had trouble reaching the top. Clearly, it was not intended for touch control.

  Catalina went to the desk, which was covered in controls. Each had two labels, one unintelligible, the other in Greek. It took a few minutes to spot a likely contender, Revealing the epithet of terminals. She pressed it.

  Lights sprung up on the map. The location of every docking station was marked and beside each one was a six-letter code.

  “Oh, yes. It was worth it.”

  * * *

  Catalina typed the key code. If this did not work, what next? However, the keypad lights flashed blue, and the flying platform gently disengaged from the docking station. She looked up. The sky was darkening. Sunset was not far off, but they should be back at the Squat before nightfall. People would be surprised to see them and even more surprised at their news.

  They would be able to tell Liz about Gerard. Catalina hoped knowing what had happened to him would give her comfort. The flying platforms would let them move freely between islands. They would not need the Inflatable and could save fuel. Visiting the farm would be safer. Kali and Ricardo could raise their child in the tower.

  The tower—the most important news of all and the hope that one day they would escape. Was it too much to hope they would learn how to control the jumps, or even simply work out what year they were in? Could they stop whatever was preventing the Okeechobee Dawn from working? Then they could use the fuel they had saved and fly away with Babs. The first thing was to find more key codes, now that she knew what to look for.

  The platform was approaching the side of the pit. As it entered the tunnel, Catalina heard Sam say, “We’ll be back.” They all would. Catalina was going to crack all its secrets.

  Chapter Twelve

  The blaze of afternoon sunlight in her face dazzled Sam. She held a hand up to shield her eyes as she stepped up onto the roof. The air was hot and humid after the controlled conditions inside, but the salt in the air smelled good to her. It always would—the sea was in her blood.

  She looked back through the doorway. Three stairs down, Liz had not moved. Her expression was tentative, and quite out of character. She was clearly trying to summon her resolve.

  “You can come back another time, if you’d rather.”

  Liz sucked in her breath. “No. I’ve spent too long as it is, putting it off. Eight days is more than enough. Let’s get it over with.” She climbed the last few steps.

  “He’s over here.” Sam pointed.

  Nothing else was said until they stood by Gerard’s remains.

  “Oh, you daft bugger.” Liz slumped onto the bench.

  “We didn’t know what you’d like us to do, and when you said you wanted to see where we found him, we thought we’d wait.”

  “Thanks. He’s been here thirty-eight years. He wasn’t going anywhere.” Liz looked out to sea. “That’s the Squat over there?”

  “Yes.”

  “He had his binoculars? You can see folks with them?”

  “Yes.”

  “So he sat here, watching us until he died. Poor bastard. I didn’t even wave to him.” Tears spilled down her face.

  Sam hovered anxiously. What should she do? She was no good at times like this. Someone else should have volunteered to guide Liz.

  She patted Liz’s shoulder. “Are you all right?” A silly question, but she did not know what else to say.

  “Yep. I’m fine. Just give me a mo.” Liz dashed a hand across her eyes then leaned down. She slid a tarnished ring off Gerard’s finger bone, then sat, holding it in the palm of her hand. “Bloody cheap wedding ring. We weren’t going to do it, you know—get married. It was out of fashion with our friends. Then we were in Las Vegas, got drunk, and woke up the next morning with curtain rings on our fingers. I still stuck with calling myself Liz Anderson, rather than Madame Dupuis.”

  Liz leaned down again. In removing the ring, she had brushed away debris and revealed a folded note under Gerard’s hand. The paper was yellow with age but had been sheltered from the weather. One short word was written on the outside in faded ink. Sam could see it started with an L, but without recognizing a letter, she would have guessed what it spelled.

  Liz sat, staring at the paper in her hands. When she made no move to read it, Sam asked. “Do you want me to go?”

  “If you don’t mind, dear. I’ll be fine up here with Gerard. I think I know my way back, though we didn’t have a ball of yarn with us. If I’m not down in an hour you can send out a search party.”

  “Right.” Sam patted her shoulder once more.

  Catalina was hunched over the map in the entrance foyer. She kept her head down. “Was Liz all right?”

  Sam restrained a sigh. Since their return from the tower, Catalina had been acting oddly, refusing to look in her direction whenever possible. Sam had hoped revealing Alonzo’s secret would change Catalina’s opinion of her—which it clearly had, just not noticeably for the better.

  “Mostly. She wanted to be left alone with him.”

  “I can understand that.”

  “She said she ought to be able to find her own way back, and something about a ball of yarn.”

  “That’s from Theseus and the Minotaur.”

  “Who?”

  Catalina glanced up for the barest split second. “It’s an old Greek legend. The Minotaur was a monster, half man, half bull, that lived in a maze called the labyrinth. Theseus was the hero who killed it. His lover gave him a ball of yarn to unwind on the way in, so he could find his way out afterward.”

  “Right. Well, I guess we don’t need the yarn, since we have maps.”

  “And no Minotaurs.”

  “That too.”

  “Anyway, I’m pleased you’re here. There’s something I’d like you to do for me.”

  “Sure. What?”

  “You’ll need this.” Without looking up, Catalina held out a scrap of paper.

  It was a key code. Sam was getting used to Greek letters. “Anything special about it?”

  “It belonged to someone called Meriones. He’s the most senior person I’ve found a code for. It gives access to more rooms than anyone else’s. He’s the only one who can get the elevator to go to the green floors.”

  It had been obvious from the start that floor numbers in the tower got higher the lower you went, which must have made sense to the aliens. It also seemed likely the first number, or color, related to function. The top twenty-six red floors were domestic, from what they could tell. The thirty orange floors below were stores. To date, nobody had gotten any lower. The key code used to summon the elevator controlled which floors they could reach.

  “Is that where I’m going?”

  “Yes. Floor 464. Green-purple-green. It’s where Tydides had his workroom. I’m fairly sure I’ve pinned it down.” Catalina tapped the map. A room lit up. “I want you to pick up every book and piece of paper you can find. There’s a bag over there you can take.”

  Sam looked at the map. Despite being many floors below the bottom of the pit, the middle of the tower was still empty. She pointed to the central void. “Is anything there?”

  “It says, Comparison of everything driving mechanism.”

  “Do you know what that means?”

  “No.”

  “Does Floyd or Liz?”

  “No.” Clearly, Catalina wanted her to go.

  Sam was not sure which was worse—Catalina accusing her of murdering Alonzo or Catalina acting as if she was not there. At times, Catalina even seemed to deliberately plan things for them to be together, just
to make a point of ignoring her. Sam was getting rather tired of it.

  “All right. I’ll be back soon.”

  Sam set off for the nearest subway station. She had spent a chunk of the previous week in the maze of corridors and had begun mastering the maps. Sam felt sure she could find the workroom.

  “Oh, and um…”

  “Yes?” Sam turned around.

  For the first time, Catalina was looking at her. She smiled awkwardly. “See you later.” And went straight back to the map.

  * * *

  The corridors of floor 464 were markedly different from those Sam was familiar with. The air felt heavier, thicker, and carried a faint smell of oil and cat piss. The lighting was a few notches lower, with an odd tint that made the green and purple lines on the wall seem to glow. The floor was dull green and dimpled.

  Sam stepped out of the elevator into an octagonal area twenty feet across. Corridors led away to her left, right, and straight ahead. A map was fixed to a wall nearby, but Sam did not need it. The route was easy enough to remember. She settled the strap of the bag over her shoulder and headed down the hallway on the left.

  Tydides’s workroom was nearby, just around the corner after the first intersection. Sam stopped at the door and pulled out the note with the key code. A sound like a bubbling rumble of thunder echoed down the deserted corridors. The bass roar ended on a rising whine. Sam turned her head, trying to identify the source. Was it some sort of machine? But whatever it was, the sound had stopped.

  The room was in darkness, but as soon as Sam stepped inside, the ceiling started to glow with normal, white light. The door shut behind her. Sam looked around. Tydides’s workroom was smaller than she had expected, although not cramped. A wide table ran down the middle, littered with scraps of finely worked metal. A long desk took up part of one wall, and above it was a shelf, filled with books. Sam could see it would need more than one visit to collect them all. Maybe she could bring Torvold next time.

  A chair with small wheels on the legs was pushed under the desk, and on either side were a set of drawers. These held a mixture of small instruments and what was surely rubbish. Why had Tydides kept a tray full of buttons, tiny bolts, and bent wire? However, the top drawer on the right contained two notebooks. Scrawled inside was a mess of text, diagrams, and tables of numbers. The writing meant nothing to her, but Sam was certain they were Tydides’s working notes, jotted down. The scribbling would surely be of more interest to Catalina than the books on the shelf. She slid both notebooks into her bag and moved on.

  At the end of the room, farthest from the door, stood three tall lockers. Hanging in the first were two of the boiler suits, bright red in color. Sam opened the second locker and found herself face-to-face with a grinning skull. She leapt back and almost fell. Her heart tried to burst through her rib cage. The bag hit the floor with a thump. The skeleton stayed put.

  Sam leaned her elbows on the central table while her pulse returned to normal. In her time at sea, she had dealt with many dead bodies. The unexpected surprise had startled her, but in the run of things, living beings were the only dangerous sort. The dead were no longer a threat. Sam returned to the locker.

  The man had been wearing one of the red boiler suits, which had helped keep his skeleton together. The material had stood up well to both the passage of years and to having someone decay inside it. Even so, Sam did not imagine many would happily wear it now. A search of the pockets produced a writing instrument, six small copper discs, two seashells, and a folded letter. Everything else had turned to dust. The letter Sam put in her bag. There was no clue to the cause of death.

  The final locker was empty. Sam was about to close the door when a minor discrepancy caught her eye. Was it her imagination or was this floor slightly higher than the others? She stood back to compare. The difference was no more than an inch, but it was there. The locker had a false bottom. Sam used the skeleton’s pen to poke around until she was able to lift the corner of a thin metal sheet.

  Underneath lay a wad of paper, covered in writing and fine line drawings, a short metal stick with jewel-like buttons on the side, and a bizarre glove with four fingers and two thumbs. It was made from the soft bendable material the castaways called rubber. Sam had no clue what it was for, but someone had thought it worth hiding. The glove went into her bag with the rest.

  After another ten minutes, Sam was ready to leave. The only thing left was to select as many of the books from the shelf as she could carry. But which ones to take first? Sam pulled down a couple and flicked through them. The problem was, she had no way to know what they were about. She grabbed five at random. The rest could wait.

  The bass roar sounded again. This time much, much nearer. It might even be in the corridor outside. Instinctively, Sam backed away from the door. Now she could also hear the clump, clump, clump of footsteps, far too heavy to be human. A wheezing whine, like an old dog. A clink of metal. What was it? All the time, the footsteps got louder. Sam cursed herself. With the dangers of the outer island, why had they assumed the tower was safe?

  Sam’s back touched the wall at the end of the room, next to the lockers. Had the thing in the corridor killed the dead man? Regardless of whether it would help, Sam stepped into the empty locker and pulled the door shut. The pounding footsteps were now directly outside the workshop. Sam held her breath. The steps halted. Another roar. Sam listened for the sound of the door opening, but then the steps resumed in the same, steady rhythm. Slowly, the sounds faded.

  Sam let herself out of the locker. Of course, there was no saying whether the creature was dangerous. It might merely be a different sort of caretaker, but she had no wish to put it to the test. Sam filled her bag with as many books as she could squeeze in—it would have to do. She was not coming back.

  She stopped at the door. If only it were possible to edge it open and peek out. Sam summoned her courage and waved her hand over the control disc. The door whooshed aside. The corridor was deserted.

  Sam crept out, trying to make as little noise as possible. She got to the intersection and peered around the corner. The elevator was just fifty feet away. Nothing was moving, no sounds except the whisper of ventilation fans, no sign that anything had passed by since she was last there. Sam stepped forward and heard the thud of heavy feet.

  She could go back to the workshop, but where would that leave her? Sam ran. She reached the keypad as the roar rang out again. This was no caretaker. She stabbed at the keys, and in her haste hit the wrong button. Again, she tried the key code.

  Another roar, and now the pounding beat of running. The elevator door opened. Sam hurled herself in and hit the colored keypad. Any floor would do, other than the one she was on. Sam struck a third button and looked up.

  People might have thought it was a man with a bull’s head, if they had never seen a bull and could accept a man ten feet tall, with four arms and mottled skin of silver and bronze. The flat face, with its short curved horns, was angry, bestial, but intelligence glinted in the red eyes. It was naked except for a loincloth. The bulging muscles were shockingly inhuman. Each hand held an axe like the one Torvold had found. And it was charging up the corridor toward her, roaring.

  The door closed. Sam heard the Minotaur smash against the outside and the clang of repeated axe stokes. The caretakers would have repairs to make. Could the axes inflict enough damage to stop the elevator from working? Then Sam felt the lurch as it began its assent to the world above and sunlight. She was safe, as long as the Minotaur could not work a keypad.

  * * *

  Sam leaned over the rail. She could imagine she was in the crow’s nest of a huge, invisible ship. Of course, there was no bow wave or flock of seagulls swooping over the ship’s wake. There was no snap and creak of the sails, no smell of tar. The flying platform did not pitch and yaw beneath her feet. Yet the view to the horizon was the same, as was the wind raking though her hair, and the taste of salt on her tongue.

  Sam looked back to the docking stati
on she had just left. The sun was high and puffs of cloud drifted overhead. Sparkling waves rolled onto yellow sand. From the air, the green outer island looked like a tropical paradise. It was a shame about the hunters. Sam had not even taken the risk of disembarking, but had immediately tapped in the return code.

  Four docking stations were spread around the outer island. Along with the one in Old Town, another was, fortunately, at the site of the farm they still harvested. The inner island had eight, despite its smaller size. The flying platforms had obviously been mainly for the aliens to use. Now the castaways had them, and Sam was not the only one to spend hours flying from station to station. They all had their own copy of the map. How long before she got bored with flying? It was easy to understand Babs’s obsession.

  The destination was drawing near, the docking station closest to the Squat. Sam thought about going somewhere else, but maybe it was best not to overdo things. She did not want the fun to wear thin.

  The deck of the docking station was warm under her bare feet. Sam wandered to where it jutted out above the sea and sat with her legs dangling over the edge. The sun felt good on her face. Maybe she should go to the tower and continue exploring, although this was not as appealing as it had been. The Minotaur had not shown up on the upper floors, but it might have friends around.

  At the sound of feet on the stairs, Sam glanced over her shoulder and saw Catalina step onto the deck. Was she going somewhere, or was it another carefully contrived opportunity to act as if Sam did not exist? Either way, there was no point in saying anything. Sam returned to looking at the sea.

  “That isn’t a safe place to sit.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Where you are. If you fell into the sea…well, you wouldn’t get out again.”

  “I’m not going to fall. I’ve ridden a crow’s nest through a hurricane.”

  However, Sam could see she was making Catalina nervous. She scooted back from the edge and swiveled around to sit, cross-legged. “There. Happier?” Although she had every intention of returning to her former position once Catalina left.