Isle of Broken Years

by Jane Fletcher

  “Yes. Thank you.”

  Catalina took a step toward the nearest flying platform, and then turned back. “Is it all right if I sit with you for a while? Or would you prefer to be left alone?”

  Sam was so surprised it took a while to work out her answer. “No. I mean, yes, I don’t mind you staying.”

  Catalina dithered, as if wondering whether to leave after all but finally sat down facing Sam so their knees were only a foot apart.

  She looked so different from the first time Sam had seen her. Instead of the elegant embroidered gown, she wore the shirt and shorts of the castaways. Her hair was no longer sculptured ringlets but was tied back in a ponytail. Her skin was tanned and devoid of paint or powder. Yet there was still the stamp of a keen mind in her eyes and a defiance to the set of her shoulders and head. She was also the most beautiful woman Sam had ever seen. Being near Catalina put a huge strain on Sam’s ability to think straight.

  The silence dragged on while Catalina stared at the deck. Sam was starting to wonder if this was a new, extreme way to make a point of ignoring her, when Catalina said, “I’m sorry about sending you down to the Minotaur last week.”

  “That’s all right. You didn’t know it was there.”

  “And I’m sorry I accused you of murdering Alonzo.”

  “I was the nudge that pushed him over the edge.”

  “No. It wasn’t your fault.”

  “Um…thanks.”

  “We haven’t got off to a good start. I saw you as one of the pirates.”

  “I was.”

  “You’re better than them.”

  “They weren’t all bad.”

  “The men who wanted to rape me?”

  “Well, yes. Jacob was a bad one.”

  “I didn’t see much difference between him and the rest. If the hens hadn’t escaped that night, we both know how events would have gone. Alonzo said the blessed Virgin Mary came to my aid.”

  Sam opened her mouth and then closed it. Was it a good idea to explain how far from the truth Alonzo had been?

  Catalina continued. “I was hoping we could make a fresh start and become friends.”

  Sam’s mouth went dry. Before she could summon her voice, there was the clatter of more feet climbing the stairs.

  “This is so cool. I’ve got to show her.” Madison’s voice.

  “I think you will have better luck showing her than trying to explain.” Jorge’s head appeared, followed by the rest of him.

  Madison was a few steps behind. “Awesome. You’re still here.”

  Catalina shifted around. “Me or Sam?”

  “You. Sam can come too, if she wants. But you have just got to see this.”

  “What?”

  “Back in the Squat.” Madison offered a hand to pull Catalina to her feet. “You know, ever since I got here it’s been bugging me. No computer terminals. I’m thinking, like, they had to have them. Right? I mean, they probably had tablets, or something alien that did the same thing. But you must have seen around the place, the screens on the walls. I’ve been thinking, like, I just know it’s a terminal, but how to turn it on? Then I saw the hand Sam bought back, and I think, duh, it’s got bio-security. The Greeks must have made a silicone copy of an alien handprint. So I put it on, touched a screen, and ta-da, we’re online. Except I can’t read a word of it.”

  “Pardon?” Catalina had evidently made no more sense of it than Sam had.

  “I told you you’d have to show her,” Jorge said.

  Madison looped an arm though Catalina’s and led her back to the stairs. “I know you haven’t seen a computer. But it’s like if you broke into my home in Austin and were looking for books. There’d be a couple of magazines you’d pick up. But you’d miss my e-book reader. You’d probably think it was, like, a really boring cheese board or something.” Her voice faded away, with her still talking about texting, streaming, uploads, and various other words which sounded as if they ought to be English but were completely lost for meaning.

  “That Madison, she is so enthusiastic, but makes so little sense, don’t you think?” Jorge said.

  “I guess she knows what she’s saying.”

  Jorge laughed and leaned against a rail. “But it’s all good. We’ve gotten into the tower. We’re starting to wheedle out the aliens’ secrets. I know everyone laughed at me and my hoard of treasures. But I can feel it. We’re going to get away from this island, and I’ll live out my life as a rich man. It is all good.” His eyes were fixed on the sky, or maybe a vision of all the things he would buy.

  Sam turned her head. Down on the ground, she could see Catalina, still being treated to a breakneck monologue as Madison towed her along. Could she and Catalina become friends? That would be good too.

  * * *

  “Okay, everyone. I guess you’ve heard we have news for you.”

  Liz did not need to raise her voice. At the sight of her and Catalina getting to their feet, conversation around the common room died. Rumors had been spreading all day. The few people who had not yet finished their evening meals hastily gobbled the last mouthfuls. Sam shifted to the side slightly so she could have a better view.

  “I’ll leave it to Cat to do most of the talking. I’ll just chime in now and then, making a pain of myself.” Liz turned to Catalina. “It’s all yours.”

  “Thank you.” Catalina stepped forward. “The papers Sam brought back from the lower floors have been very useful. Apart from what’s in them, they’ve helped tie together clues from elsewhere. Up until now, I’ve had more guesswork than anything else. The trouble is the Greeks weren’t writing things down as a record of events. Mainly they’re notes between people, and they don’t bother explaining things both parties already knew. However, I’ve pieced together enough to build a coherent story. There’s holes, but they’re more about motives than what happened. We don’t have much of an idea why the aliens acted as they did. The humans are more straightforward.”

  Liz added, “It’s possible, even if we had an alien here, it couldn’t explain. There’s no reason their logic should make sense to us.”

  Catalina nodded. “As for what they did, as others worked out, the aliens came here from the stars, over three thousand years ago. They created Atlantis as an artificial island and rounded up humans to work for them. They were here for about a hundred years. I’m afraid the computer terminals aren’t much help. I’ve spent a few days looking at them, but the writing isn’t in any language I know. I assume it’s alien. But judging by the diagrams and pictures, Atlantis was a research outpost. They were working on various things. Most we don’t understand. However, some aliens were studying humans and the state of our culture at the time.”

  “I’ll chip in here,” Liz said. “Their main technique was what’s referred to in the scientific world as buggering things up. A bit like an entomologist taking the queen out of an ant colony to see how it falls apart without her. The upshot is what archaeologists call the Late Bronze Age Collapse. Dozens of cities were destroyed. Most civilizations around the Mediterranean vanished. We don’t know how much the aliens did directly and how much was due to them knocking everyone off balance. I guess it didn’t matter to the poor bastards at the time who were too busy dying to make notes.”

  Catalina took over again. “The aliens also studied individual humans. For some reason, they focused on the Greeks. Most were slaves or the subject of experiments. But in the later stages of their time here, the aliens either selected the brightest or enhanced them to make humans more intelligent. There was a group of forty or so, including Tydides and Meriones, who were educated in alien technology. Maybe the aliens needed their help, or maybe they wanted to find out how good humans were at learning. Or maybe it was some reason that won’t make sense to us.”

  Sam suspected the motive was something nasty. The hunters were programmed to kill humans, and that did not point to love, friendship, and respect between the two species.

  “The trouble really started when the al
iens were getting ready to leave Earth. Tydides learned about it, and he also learned that when the aliens left, Atlantis would sink, and everyone on it would drown. Some common slaves were returned to Greece, taking the legend of Atlantis with them—who knows why—but the scientists were all earmarked to go down with the island. Maybe the aliens were worried what educated humans might do when they weren’t being supervised.”

  “As you can imagine, Tydides and the others weren’t thrilled when they found out,” Liz said.

  Catalina continued. “Tydides wasn’t bothered about the aliens leaving. In fact, he was quite happy about it. But he didn’t want to go to the bottom of the ocean, and he didn’t want to return to Greece. He was used to hot showers, air coolers, flying platforms, and the rest. I doubt he’d have liked the Bronze Age Mediterranean, even if it wasn’t sliding into a dark age. So he hatched a plan to sabotage the alien’s departure. Their spaceship formed part of the tower. It’s still there, at the core. It’s what provides the energy to keep everything running. It’s one reason why Atlantis wouldn’t survive after it went. The island would become top-heavy and sink. So in order for the spaceship to leave, it had to disengage from the tower. This was the bit the Greeks sabotaged. They waited until the aliens were aboard their spaceship, and then they blew up part of the mechanism. But it didn’t work quite as planned. And this is where I need to hand over to Liz.”

  “Yes, well. I’ll try to keep it short and sweet. I let Cat do the lion’s share, because I knew if I got going, I might as well be speaking Greek for most of you.” Liz smiled. “As Cat said, the spaceship is still locked inside the tower, with the dead aliens on board. The core beneath the pit is labeled, Comparison of everything driving mechanism, which I interpret as Universal Relativistic Engine. It’s Einstein’s theory. Nothing can go faster than the speed of light, so the only way to fly between the stars is to either shrink space or play games with time—and there’s less difference between these two options than you might think. That’s what the aliens’ relativity engine does. Except, once it was sabotaged, it couldn’t work properly. It keeps trying to manipulate time so it can jump to another star, but it’s held here. So it jumps through time instead, taking Atlantis with it.”

  Liz was right. She might as well have been speaking Greek as far as Sam was concerned.

  “So. Now that that’s over with, I’ll pass you back to Cat.”

  “Fortunately, the how and why aren’t important. There’s good news and bad news for us. The good news is we don’t need to understand how the spaceship works or do anything clever. The Greeks sabotaged the controls and locked the spaceship in. The caretakers would normally have repaired the damage, so the Greeks changed their programming. This took trial and error, and Meriones, who did the work, wrote it all down in his notes, which we have, as well as the alien hand to get onto the computer system, and a memory stick. All we need is to get to the caretaker control room, and Liz is confident she can—” Catalina looked at Liz quizzically. “What was it again?”

  “Reinstall the original command protocols.”

  “Right. Then the caretakers will repair the sabotage and the spaceship will leave. Once it’s gone, Atlantis will start to sink, but Babs’s seaplane will be able to fly again.”

  “What’s the bad news?” Floyd shouted.

  “The bad news is that when the Greeks blew up the controllers, the aliens were trapped on the spaceship and couldn’t leave, which was very quickly fatal for them.”

  It struck Sam that if the aliens had artificially enhanced human brainpower, they had been a little too successful for their own good.

  “Before they died, they managed an act of revenge. The hunters on the outer island were supposed to deal with runaway slaves. The aliens changed their orders so they’d kill everyone on sight.”

  “Luckily, the aliens were pushed for time,” Liz said. “The hunters ignore people up trees, because the outer island wasn’t overgrown back then, and there weren’t many trees to hide in. The aliens either didn’t think so far ahead or didn’t have time to write new tree-climbing routines.”

  Catalina nodded. “I agree the aliens didn’t have much time. There weren’t any hunters on the inner island or in the tower, and they weren’t able to ship any across. However, there were a few other bio-robots they could use. They’re based on the aliens themselves. Maybe they were replicas used to test equipment. As you know, Sam ran into one, and from the way it reacted, they’re also set to attack on sight. From what I can tell, there are twelve of them, roaming around the lower levels in the tower. They each patrol a particular location, so the upper floors are safe.”

  “But let me guess, the control room we need to get to is guarded by one,” Floyd said.

  “Yes.”

  “How bad are they?”

  “They’re big, they’re strong, and they were built to be indestructible.”

  “Like a superhero?”

  Catalina frowned. “Possibly. If I knew what a superhero was.”

  “Don’t worry about it.” Floyd grinned. “If we all jump the Minotaur together, do you think we can overpower it?”

  “No. We need a better plan than that.”

  Yaraha asked, “Supposing we get our better plan and we return to the world. Could we have any idea what year it will be?”

  Liz answered. “Actually, dear, I can make a guess. It’s the graph. The further back in time you go, the longer Atlantis stays put between jumps, until at about 1150 BC, where the curve crosses the y-axis and the island is stable. That has to be when the sabotage occurred and Atlantis started jumping. At the other end of the line, the jumps get closer and closer together, until there’s no time between them at all, and the curve crosses the x-axis. I’m betting that’s when Atlantis ends up after its last jump. If I’m right, the year will be 2025, give or take a few.”

  “There’s another issue.” Babs looked troubled.

  “I know, dear,” Liz said. “More than one. Or maybe sides of the same issue. You go first.”

  “The Okeechobee Dawn was a three-seater aircraft. There’s a weight limit. Charles and I stripped the spare seat out and everything else we could when we put in the extra gas tanks. Even if we ditch the fuel we don’t need, she can only carry six people, seven tops. And there’s fourteen of us.”

  “Thirteen,” Liz corrected her.

  “Who aren’t you counting?”

  “Me. The control room is at the heart of the tower. Once the caretakers do the repairs, it’ll be minutes before the whole thing goes down. I doubt anyone is quick enough to get out in time. I’m certainly not. I don’t run that fast anymore. Once we get rid of the Minotaur, I’ll give you time to get to the seaplane, then I’ll upload the command protocols.”

  “No. We’ll draw lots.” Catalina looked shocked. Clearly, Liz had not mentioned this before.

  “We can do that for the other slots on the seaplane. Of course, if half of us get killed fighting the Minotaur, there won’t an issue. I understand how to do the reinstall. Plus I’m the oldest. I’ve had the best years of my life. Gerard and I can go down together.”

  “I won’t let you do it,” Catalina said.

  “It’s not your call, dear.”

  “We need to talk it over.”

  “We can talk, but I don’t see us finding any other outcome. Either seven escape, or we all stay here for the rest of our lives.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  “You can’t just throw your life away.” Catalina was outraged. “There has to be another way. If not, we stay here.”

  She and Liz were alone in Liz’s room after the meeting. Grimacing, Liz pushed herself up onto the bed. “Then we’ll all die before our time. Atlantis takes a toll.”

  “There’s a difference between taking your chances and giving up.”

  “It makes no difference to me.”

  “You can’t say that,”

  “I just did, dear.”

  “But—”

  “No buts.” Li
z’s voice was firm. She shifted around on the bed to get comfy and then patted a spot beside her. “I guess there’s no point asking you to take a pew.”

  “No.” Catalina was too agitated to sit. It was all she could do not to pace the room.

  “I didn’t want to say anything.”

  “About what?”

  Liz sighed loudly. The rueful shake of her head looked like part of an old argument she was having with herself. She lifted her arm and probed the fingertips of her right hand into the side of her left breast. “In there. I first felt the lump four years back. Not a bloody thing I could do about it, except keep checking to see if it was getting bigger.” The corners of her mouth pulled down. “I don’t know. No way to be sure what size it was when I first noticed. Memories play tricks with you. But it’s spreading. Last few months, I’ve been feeling drained, short of breath. I’m an electrical engineer, not a doctor, but I know a bad sign when I see it.”

  “What?”

  “Cancer, dear. I don’t know what they called it in your day. If I’d been in New Zealand in 1980, when I first noticed, maybe the docs could have done something. It’s too late now, even if I went back. But here, I won’t even have morphine to take the edge off the pain.”

  “You’re in pain?”

  “Not too much right now. Mostly what can be put down to old age. But it won’t stay that way. So, like I said, it makes no difference to me. I hadn’t wanted to tell folk, but I might have to. Just so they know I’m not playing the bloody hero.”

  * * *

  Catalina sat on the purple grass listening to the argument go round in circles. Liz had announced a vote would be held on the issue, in a week’s time. Which, in her words, “was long enough for everyone to make their bloody minds up.” But from the state of the discussion, Catalina suspected the timeline was a little short.

  “We can’t leave people behind. It would be murder.” Babs was adamant.