Slowly the council members started to file off the bleachers.
One woman called out to the old man, “Come with us. My family will care for you.”
The old man just shook his head. “My place is here,” he said. “There is still the chance we may need to transpire.”
The old guy was going to stay at his post, no matter what. It felt kind of like the sad resolve of a captain going down with his ship. Moments later the council had left the platform and the old man and I were alone.
“What’s your name?” I asked him.
“I am Abador,” he said proudly. “Senior to the Council of Faar.” The guy shuffled over to the bleachers and sat down. He looked tired.
“What is this transpire thing you keep talking about?” I asked.
The old man looked at me with a sly smile. “You have learned much about our world here, Pendragon,” he said. “But there are some secrets that are best kept that way. I will tell you this much: The grand city of Faar is a wonderful miracle. Since we were hidden below the sea, we were never attacked by enemies, we never sought to expand our land, we never wanted more than to better ourselves and be the guardians of Cloral. I truly believe this was possible because we were hidden. We did not face the same difficulties or temptations that control the lives of so many above.”
He took a deep, tired breath and continued, “There have been preparations. We knew the day would come when our existence would be revealed. It was inevitable. Now that the day is here, I face a dilemma. Should we reveal ourselves fully and become part of Cloral once again? Should we allow this perfect world to be infiltrated and corrupted by the petty concerns of the Clorans? Or is it better to cherish what we once had and not allow the dream to be corrupted?”
“I’m not sure I get the problem,” I said. “You’re saying you’ve got a choice between joining the rest of Cloral or being destroyed?”
“That puts it simply,” he answered.
“Then if you’re asking me, I say it’s a no-brainer. You may think the people of Cloral are these horrible boneheads who aren’t as advanced as you guys, but from what I’ve seen it’s a great place. People live in peace. They work hard, they have fun, they respect one another, and compared to where I come from, they pretty much have it all figured out.”
A few distant booming explosions erupted. Abador looked up.
“And what of this . . . attack?” he asked. “Is this what we have to look forward to?”
“No,” I said as strongly as I could. “This is a different enemy. This attack isn’t just about destroying Faar. It’s about destroying the Cloral I just described to you. And if you call yourselves guardians then you won’t roll over and let it happen. Look at it this way, if you give up now, then you’ve failed all those generations of Faarians who helped Cloral become the place it is.”
Abador looked right into my eyes with that same powerful stare that I had seen before. I hoped I hadn’t pushed the guy too far. But I felt strongly about what I had said. Here he was thinking Faar was such a special place that he wouldn’t want to become part of Cloral. But I didn’t think he truly appreciated what a great place the rest of Cloral was. And now that Cloral was in deep trouble, it wasn’t time for the Faarians to give up. I didn’t know what this transpire thing was, but it sounded to me like it was a self-destruct plan. It sounded like he wanted to destroy Faar rather than let it become part of Cloral. That was dead wrong.
“You must go,” Abador said. “I will think about what you have said.”
“So . . . you’re not going to transpire or anything dumb like that, right?”
Abador glanced over at the control podium with the four crystals. The yellow alarm crystal was still glowing. He chuckled and looked back to me.
“You are very wise for someone so young,” he said. “But do not make the mistake of thinking you know all there is to know.”
What did that mean? Before I had the chance to ask him, another explosion hit that made all the others seem like minor fireworks. It was deep, it was loud, and it knocked me off my feet. The marble bleachers shifted and Abador was thrown to the platform as well. I got up and helped the old man to his feet, but he pulled away from me and shouted, “Go! Now!”
“You can’t stay here! Let me take you out.”
“Pendragon, my place is here,” he said with absolute authority. “If the worst comes to pass, and Faar is in danger of being destroyed, I must be here to transpire.”
He glanced back at the podium. I now understood, sort of. That podium was the last resort. He said how they had planned for this day, and if all else failed, he needed to be at those controls. I still feared what “transpire” would do, but if this was his destiny, it wasn’t my place to challenge him. No, I had said all I could and now it was time to go.
“Good luck, Abador,” I said. “I know you’ll do the right thing.”
“Thank you, Pendragon. You have helped an old man see things more clearly.”
There was nothing else to say, so I turned and ran off the platform. When I got to the edge I looked down on Faar and saw what the alarm had set in motion. Hundreds of Faarians were streaming along the paths, flowing out of the mountain like ants from their hill. They were all pulling on their green swimskins, ready to hit the ocean. There were men and women of all ages. Many helped the elderly and the very young to pull on their skins. There was no panic; there were no fights. I wondered if they had practiced this before, like a fire drill. They were going to get out in an orderly manner, and that was good.
Then something happened that wasn’t good. It was a very small thing that didn’t mean much to me at first. But a few seconds later the horrible reality hit me like a shot to the gut. It was something that I felt on my arm. It was a little tickle that I scratched without giving it a second thought at first. But then I lifted my arm up and saw it for what it really was, and my heart sank.
It was a drop of water. Nothing more, just a single drop of water. But then, another drop fell on my arm. Just a drop. No biggie, right? Wrong. I slowly looked up and realized with horror that this single, innocent drop of water came from the dome overhead. That could mean only one thing.
The dome that had protected Faar for hundreds of generations was starting to crack.
JOURNAL #8
(CONTINUED)
CLORAL
As I stood on the steps of the council platform I looked up at the glittering dome that had kept the oceans of Cloral away from Faar for hundreds of generations. What I saw looked like rain. The droplets glistened in the light as they fell. Believe it or not it looked beautiful, like thousands of small, glittering diamonds falling from the sky.
But these beautiful gems brought some seriously bad news. If the dome were cracked and letting in water, where would it stop? Could the pounding that Saint Dane was delivering weaken the dome? If that was the case, then the pressure from the millions upon millions of pounds of water might eventually crack it—like an eggshell. That image was too horrifying to even imagine. I could only hope that the alarm was sounded early enough so that Faar would be evacuated.
And the explosions continued. Saint Dane’s attack was relentless. The entire mountain shuddered with each new blast. I couldn’t imagine what kind of weapon he had that could destroy something that had been rock solid for centuries.
Then I thought of Spader and Uncle Press. I didn’t yet know of the disaster that had happened in the hauler hangar. The only thing I could do was stick to the plan. So I ran for the tunnel that would lead us out of Faar and to my rendezvous with Uncle Press and Spader.
It was getting treacherous. Enough water was now falling from the dome that the pathways were getting slippery. Since many of these paths were right on the edge of humongous cliffs, I had to be careful or a simple slip would mean splat. So I moved quickly, but carefully. Soon I joined the flow of Faarians headed for the tunnel, and safety. It was still orderly, but people kept looking up at the falling water and I could tell they were on the
edge of panic. Still, they held it together and kept moving toward the tunnel.
Then, just as I was about to enter the tunnel, I saw something that totally lifted my spirits.
“Hey!” I yelled.
Spader was coming out of the tunnel, carrying the other two air globes. It was a struggle for him because he was working against the tide of people flowing in the other direction. I stepped to the side of the path, out of the stream, and waited for him. When he finally got to me, he was all out of breath and excited.
“Where’s Uncle Press?” I asked.
“It’s a tum-tigger down there, Pendragon,” he blurted out. “They launched one hauler and then there was an explosion. They can’t open the doors to launch the rest.”
Oh, yeah, things were getting worse. Faar was on the verge of collapse, and the haulers weren’t on their way. Saint Dane was winning.
“Press is still down there,” he said. “I think we’ve got to get him out.”
We both looked up at the dome. The water was coming down harder now. Whatever cracks were made by the explosions were getting bigger.
“Let’s go get him,” I said, and we both ran along the path back into the mountain to get to the aerovator.
It wasn’t easy. There were hundreds of Faarians moving in the other direction. We tried to be respectful, but ended up having to push our way through. Now was not the time to be polite. When we finally got into the mountain and to the tube with the aerovators, we saw a pretty huge Faarian guy directing traffic. He was making sure that as each aerovator arrived, everyone got off quickly and kept moving toward the escape tunnel.
Another aerovator arrived and people flooded out. As soon as it was empty, we tried to jump into the car. But this big guy grabbed us both and pulled us back.
“No passengers,” he said firmly.
“But we’ve got to get down to the hauler hangar!” I shouted.
“Don’t you hear the alarm?” the man said. “This is an emergency. These lifts can only be used for the evacuation.”
This guy was big and he wasn’t kidding around. There was no way Spader and I could push past him and force our way onto the aerovator. But we also couldn’t take the time to run all the way down to the bottom of the mountain. We were stuck. I had to make this guy understand how important it was that we get down there, so I grabbed him by the arm and forced him to look right at me. When I spoke, I tried to do it slowly and calmly.
“Listen to me,” I said. “There are people down there who are in danger. It’s really important that we get to them. We have to use this lift. Please let us pass.” I didn’t act all frantic or threaten the guy or anything. I just tried to get across how important this was. At first, I thought he was going to shove me out of the way, but a strange thing happened. He kept looking at me and I sensed that he was relaxing. It was totally weird. He went from being a brick wall in our way to a puppy dog. He then stepped out of the way, leaving the path open for us to enter the aerovator.
“I understand,” he said softly. “Good luck.”
Spader and I walked past him, not sure what had just happened. But we weren’t about to question it. We got on the aerovator, I grabbed the controls, and we headed down.
“What was that about, mate?” Spader asked. “It’s like you hypnotized him or something.”
“I have no idea,” was all I could answer. I was just as confused as he was. The only thing I could think of was the way Uncle Press had done the same thing to Wu Yenza back on Grallion. She was all ready to throw us out of her office, until Uncle Press talked her out of it. I was thinking now more than ever that the ability to get through people’s toughest defenses might be a special Traveler ability, like understanding all languages. This was something I was going to have to learn more about, no doubt about it.
But that would have to wait, for we were almost at the base of Faar’s mountain.
“We’ve got to get them out of there,” I said. “This place is going to get very wet, very fast.”
“They’re all working on the water doors,” Spader said. “I’ll bet they don’t even know what’s going on out here.”
The aerovator hadn’t even stopped moving when the two of us jumped out and ran through the tunnel to get out of the mountain and reach the hauler hangar. One thing I noticed right away was that there were no more Faarians evacuating down here. That was good. Maybe it meant that the city was nearly empty. I could only imagine what it looked like outside of Faar, in the ocean with thousands of green swimmers in the water. I knew they would be okay out there, but if the dome over Faar continued to crack, they wouldn’t have a home to come back to.
It was a sad thought, but there were bigger problems to deal with right now. Spader and I ran out into the open to find that it was pouring rain. Water was now flooding through the cracks in the dome.
I looked up at Faar’s mountain and was relieved to see that the paths weren’t clogged with people anymore. That meant everyone was getting out. From the looks of things, it was none too soon.
We continued running toward the hauler hangar. Spader held the two air globes, and I had mine. I hoped that when we got inside we would find that they had fixed the damage and that the haulers were all on their way. Once that was done, we could get the heck out of Faar and deal with Saint Dane. That wasn’t a happy thought.
We were about twenty yards away from the entrance to the hangar, when we heard it.
It sounded like thunder. It was different than the explosion sounds. The explosions were a low rumble. This new sound was like the sharp peal that comes right after a nasty bolt of lightning strikes. But it wasn’t short and sweet. No, this sound continued as if it were the longest crack of thunder in history. Unfortunately crack was the perfect word to describe it.
Spader and I froze and looked up to see a sight so horrifying, I hate to even remember it long enough to write about it. The dome that protected Faar from the ocean above was beginning to crack. I saw long slits of light starting to spiderweb their way across the coral-covered surface. In seconds the force of the water would smash through and flood the rest of Faar.
“Uncle Press!” I shouted, and started to run for the hangar.
“No!” yelled Spader, and pulled me back.
It was a good thing, too, because an instant later, a section of dome caved in. It wasn’t the whole dome, just one section, but it was directly over us. If I had kept going, I would have been crushed by the torrent of water that was on its way down.
“We gotta get out of here!” Spader shouted.
I couldn’t move. I looked up at the broken pieces of dome and the tidal wave of water that was now plummeting toward us. I then looked to the hangar. Uncle Press was in there.
“Pendragon, move!” shouted Spader, and pulled me back toward the mountain. We had maybe ten seconds before the water would hit. Would it be enough time to get to the aerovator? The two of us booked back toward the mountain tunnel on a dead run. We got inside, but we weren’t safe yet. As soon as the water hit, it would flood the tunnel and keep coming. This was the beginning of the end of Faar.
I heard a deafening boom outside behind us as the pieces of dome and water crashed down. Immediately the water came surging through the tunnel, headed for us. All we could do was run and stay ahead of the torrent that was quickly shooting through the tunnel to get us.
We made it to the tube and saw that our lift was still there. That was huge, because if it hadn’t been, we’d be dead. We both dove in and turned back to see the flood of water was rushing toward us. I grabbed the control stick and slammed it all the way forward. The aerovator blasted off so quickly that the two of us were thrown to the floor. I had a death grip on the control lever. There was no way we were stopping. Now our biggest concern was if the rising water would destroy the aerovator tube before we got out. I held my breath, expecting the speeding car to suddenly stop. But it didn’t. We kept rising. Moments later we were back to the escape-tunnel level.
The Faar
ian guy who was guarding the lift a few minutes before was gone. No other Faarians were around. Spader and I ran through the empty corridor. I feared what we would find outside of there. Would the dome have totally collapsed? If that had happened, we might as well stop running because it would be over for us. The weight of the water would be too much. The whole mountain would probably be crushed.
As we got closer to the end of the tunnel that led out of the mountain, the sound of rushing water was deafening. It sounded like Niagara Falls out there. This gave me hope. It meant that the whole dome hadn’t collapsed, just the one section that we saw crumble. If that were the case then we still had a shot at getting out. The two of us reached the entrance and cautiously looked outside.
What we saw was both horrifying and wondrous. So far the dome was holding. But there was a huge, jagged hole that must have been thirty yards wide. Water was pouring down so hard, it looked like it was coming from a powerful hose. Imagine a hole thirty yards wide with a solid stream of water powering through. It was awesome, and frightening.
“Pendragon, look,” said Spader.
He was pointing down. What I saw made me catch my breath. The water was rising inside Faar. It was only a matter of time before the entire city would be underwater. But that’s not what hit me. Spader was pointing to the hauler hangar. The water was rapidly rising and would soon cover the huge building. If this weren’t bad enough, the sight that really made my heart sink was near the door where we had been only a few minutes before. There was a pile of rubble that must have been pieces of the collapsed section of dome. It had fallen right in front of the hangar, blocking the entrance. I had hoped that Uncle Press and the Faarians would be protected inside the hangar. Their only hope would be to wait until Faar was submerged, then swim out. Uncle Press could even buddy breathe with one of the Faarians in their swimskins. They would make something work.
But now that the entrance was blocked under a ton of rubble, there was no way they’d get out of there. Now their only hope would be if they could repair the pen doors and escape that way.
The Lost City of Faar Page 26