A shadow appeared across the screen of mist. Liphar staggered into the opening. His brown face was haggard, his clothing soaked through. He was plastered with mud from head to foot, the exact image of the clay grotesques crowding the frieze niche.
Born out of the void, breathed Megan, and her heart stopped momentarily until she saw Susannah’s hooded form struggle in behind him. The pair scrambled up the tunnel like two drowning rats in a last effort to save themselves, fell stumbling past Megan as she was opening her mouth in relieved welcome, and collapsed at the foot of the stairs, choking and shivering. Megan ran to kneel beside them.
“Thank god!” she said. “Are you all right?”
Her chest heaving, Susannah nodded weakly, unable to speak. Tyril helped Liphar to sit up and began to swab mud off his face with a corner of her shawl. Susannah dragged herself up to lean against the bottom step. She caught Liphar’s eye and they gazed at each other with exhausted pride.
“We made it!” she gasped.
“Thought for sure you were dead,” muttered Megan gratefully.
Susannah fumbled to unsnap a mud-soaked pocket. She pulled out Liphar’s blue talisman and raised it in victory, then returned it to him. Tyril nodded approvingly.
Liphar took on a worn, self-satisfied look. “Khem khe!” he exclaimed, tapping at his thin chest between attempts to wring mud and water out of his clothing. Still fighting for breath, he chattered at Tyril compulsively, as if to tell the tale was to relieve himself of its terrors. Tyril listened with folded arms, now and then shaking her head with maternal sympathy.
“You look awful,” said Megan. “Dry clothes, first. Can you walk?”
“Not just yet, I think,” mumbled Susannah. She shuddered convulsively and sank back on the steps, trying to coax her numb face into a smile. Megan helped her push back her hood. Mud dripped from her shoulders onto the stone. Her forehead and cheek were streaked with blood. Her hands were raw and bleeding.
“Are you all right?” Megan asked again.
Susannah winced as she tried to shrug, then sighed, a shivering intake of breath. “Yeah. I guess so. Most of the way, the trail held up, but here and there… Meg, did you ever think it was trite when someone claimed they’d seen death staring them in the face?”
“That bad, huh?”
“That bad.” They were silent a moment, listening to Liphar’s chatter. Tyril was trying unsuccessfully to get him out of his wet clothing, blotting at his cuts and scrapes, scolding softly. Finally she gave up and rose, laid a reassuring hand on Susannah’s shoulder and headed up the stairs. Liphar lay back on the cold stone and closed his eyes.
“Did you ever find Weng?” asked Susannah fuzzily.
“I didn’t know she was lost.”
“But CRI said… ah, never mind.” Thinking was like trying to wade through deep water. Susannah wondered how much of what she remembered of her fourteen-hour ordeal was real and how much imagined.
“Weng’s seeing to the salvage of our gear in the Lander before the floods carry it off to parts unknown. It’s Taylor and Emil we can’t find. One of the Sleds is missing.”
“Oh, my god!” Susannah jerked upright, remembering. “It took off! I saw it! I was up there with the storm coming and I tried to warn CRI but there was all this static and—” She fell back weakly.
“Easy now,” urged Megan. “They’re idiots to have done it, but we’ll find them, soon as the weather lets up.”
“But it’s not going to let up! Ask Liphar. According to him, it’s going to get worse.”
Megan glanced behind her, glad that the darkening void was hidden from view by the curve of the tunnel. “How much worse can it get?”
“Ask him. Have you noticed how he seems to know about these events well ahead of time?” Her head sagged to her knees.
“Well, I…” Megan pursed her lips dubiously and went on.
“Also, we’ve lost contact with CRI.”
“Completely?
“Even the main terminal in the Lander. Haven’t been able to raise her since we lost contact with you up on the cliffs. Stavros is in a state.”
Susannah’s bruised mouth twisted. She pushed at the wet hair clinging to her face. “I’ll bet he is. You don’t lose contact with a system like CRI just because of a little weather.”
“It was odd—the last transmission we could distinguish, she was complaining about outside interference. Now there’s nothing but noise on all frequencies. The force field’s out, of course. We’re on emergency power.” Megan fingered the small power pack on her belt. “Haven’t used one of these in years.”
“I told CRI there was something wrong with my suit,” Susannah began. Then she frowned. “What did she mean, outside interference?”
“Who knows. Sunspots.”
“Visitors?”
“In this weather?”
Susannah’s grin was halfhearted. She held up her bloodied hands. “Great, Meg, it’ll be just like the good old days, when they dropped you in the bush with nothing but a canteen and matches. Some fun, eh?” She stretched, tried to sit up and fell back with a groan. “I think my body’s coming apart.”
“Even I don’t remember those good old days,” Megan returned. “Come on, I’ll help you up the stairs.” She pulled herself up from the step and struggled to raise Susannah to her feet and hold her there. “How bad is it out there, really? How much chance do those two have?”
Susannah took a pain-filled breath, wavering on rubbery legs. “Oh, it’s not so bad. What snow was left, the rain is melting, and between them, the canyons are six meters deep in angry rock-filled water. The plain is being torn to ribbons, the cliffs are one mammoth Niagara Falls with a full-blown river raging at their feet, complete with one-ton chunks of ice. All in all, it’s terrific flying weather. Wanna hear more?”
She paused, blinking as if the rain still battered her eyes. “They’ll make it back, Meg. I did, didn’t I? Like for instance, you know that network of ledges carved into every rock face around?” She mimed a weak little dance step and caught herself with a hand against the wall. “Would you believe they’re all above flood level? Liphar and I would be dead without them.”
Megan grasped her friend about her waist to support her up the: stairs. “I know, I know. Remember the pueblos…”
The giant winch sat at an angle to the opening of the mirrored cylinder entry to the Underbelly. While the crew struggled to maneuver it into position, it blocked the exit completely. The crowd fell silent as forward motion ceased. The stoutest set down their loads. They shouldered in to grab hold and lend their strength as the crew struggled to pivot the winch around.
A single alto voice began a work chant. Its simple minor-keyed melody spread through the crowd like a fire in dry brush. The shriek of the storm was subdued to atonal accompaniment. Stavros wished for his recorder. Like many of the Sawl ritual songs he had been studying, this chant took the form of a three-part dialogue. Two of the voices were always sung solo, but the responsibility was passed around from verse to verse. The third voice was a resounding choral answer to the first two. The language of the songs differed from spoken Sawlish in ways that made Stavros suspect that a more ancient version of the tongue was preserved in the ritual. He listened rapt as the melody rose and fell with the wind.
The winch rocked and creaked. Inch by inch, the vast rear wheels edged about until, with a final swell, the chant broke into a cheer. The machine lurched and rolled ponderously forward into the cylinder.
As the crowd began to move again, Stavros and McPherson made a last hurried circuit of the Underbelly. Icy water bubbled up through the shattered floor. Sodden paper and clothing squished underfoot. The deserted cookfires hissed into ashes and sad plumes of smoke.
McPherson stared at the remaining Sled for a long moment, then impulsively ran to sweep the junk from its windscreen onto the wet ground. Then she turned on her heel and followed Stavros to the exit. At the rear of the line filing through the cylinder, he halted.
“Wait. The emergency lights.”
She caught his sleeve. “It’ll take too long.”
“We’re going to need them.”
“That’s what I said about the Sled.”
He would need her help to retrieve the lights, and knew he would not get it. In Danforth’s memory, she would refuse him that last indulgence. As if in protest, the ground shifted again and rose in a prolonged quake. The glassy floor began to separate like a cracked ice floe. Edge screeched against edge as the looser sand beneath was washed away. The emergency lights dimmed and lashed about on their cable. The Lander’s support struts cried out in metal anguish. The squeal vibrated through Stavros’s jaw. McPherson grabbed his elbow and yanked him into the cylinder.
The tube was clear. They ran down the silvered length into the gray light beyond. The ceiling of the ice tunnel had collapsed. The laden Sawls threaded a slow path through the ruins. The walls ran slick with water as the rain pelted in. Frigid slush puddled in the hollows. Above the ragged edge of the walls, the sky was disappearing into night. The Lander’s sixty meters of metal loomed over the struggling caravan at an uneasy tilt. Stavros prayed again that the ice walls would hold.
McPherson pulled at his sleeve. The wind tore the words from her mouth before he could hear them. He blinked away rain and his premonitions of a tumbling Lander, and looked where she pointed, up the wall. All along the top, as far as they could see into the darkening downpour, towering sprays of water and foam reached into the wind, scattering into mist. Stavros put an ear to the ice. A symphony of roaring assaulted him. The wall seemed to bulge under the pressure of the tons of raging water and rock beating against its other side.
“Water’s way above our heads out there!” he shouted to McPherson. Ahead, the long caravan had slowed. Patient Sawls crowded the broken tunnel. Stavros shifted uneasily, feeling the walls close in again, but McPherson was watching him. The steady pressure of her hand at the small of his back helped him catch his panic before it could run away with him. He glanced again at the surf breaking along the wall, his high excitement souring in his throat. It was for him, at his urging, that the Sawls were down here risking their lives without complaint to rescue objects whose use or value was unknown to them. It was he who had asked that the winch be brought down from the safety of the Caves, the winch that kept blocking their escape route. Why had the Sawls gone along so willingly? Had his self-indulgent hysteria convinced them that these objects must be somehow essential to the Terrans’ survival?
Stavros was astonished by his own selfishness. There was not, would never be a way to repay such generosity, unless it be to dedicate himself to them with a loyalty that spoke of his gratitude.
The crowd stirred into motion. The line moved steadily along the flat for several minutes, winding among the ice chunks from the broken ceiling. Stavros remained at the rear, urging the stragglers along like an anxious sheepdog. As the tunnel curved into a bend, rock outcroppings appeared in the cliffside wall. The pace slowed again as, up ahead, the winch stalled on the incline. Once more, the work chant rose to drown out the storm. Stavros danced in place, adding his own whispered urgings to the chorus. He breathed a little easier with each small gain in elevation that lifted them farther out of the path of the flood. The floor ahead was rock, solid ground at last. Over the crush of rain-drenched heads and burdened shoulders, he could see the ice walls spreading apart to open into a circle. The familiar cone shape of the ballast stone, with its pierced tip, loomed in the darkness, and beyond, the safety of the cliffs.
The Sawls strained and sang. The winch inched up the last steep slope and lumbered across the rock terrace to nudge against the ballast stone. Rain pelted down. Spray arched over the walls. From the twilit upper reaches of the cliff face, cascades rushed outward into space and smashed down onto the wide stone steps that ascended to the Caves.
The winch crew gathered around the stone. Several strands of stout rope passed through the hole at the tip in a loose knot. The long ends ran straight up into blackness at the cliff top, holding taut against the storm. The wind strummed at them madly, and Stavros hoped that Weng was listening to this wild music for Fiixian solo bass.
The crew loosed the hanging ropes and wrapped them around the winch in a sling. When the ends were secured and the knots double-checked, they joined the end of the line struggling up the steps. McPherson followed, dodging the avalanche of falling water. Stavros lingered on the bottom step, unsure of what kept him there.
The great circular well was now empty, but for himself and the winch waiting trussed and silent in the downpour. He climbed a flight, then halted. From this higher vantage, he could see over the ice wall. The Lander was a darker shadow against the deepening night. The surrounding snowpack had melted. A stubborn circle of ice around the Lander’s base was all that held the flood at bay. From that faint halo, two pale thinning ramparts snaked in tandem toward the cliffs across the no-man’s-land of angry water that separated Stavros from his passage Homeward.
Stavros struggled to identify the emptiness that haunted him. What am I missing? What have I left behind? He shivered. His tunic was soaked through. The last Sawl was disappearing up the stairs.
My self-respect, he decided, in a rare surge of irony, washed away in the storm.
He shivered again, uncontrollably, and took the next flight of steps at a gasping run. Halfway to the lowest cave mouth, he slowed to ease the pain in his lungs. The winch rose past him, swaying in its harness like a slow pendulum. The cries of the crew slid down the rocks, faint and satisfied. Stavros pushed himself upward, panting, flight after flight. Strong hands pulled him up the last few steps into the shelter of an overhang. A blanket was draped over his wet shoulders. A steaming mug was thrust into his fist. His numbed fingers curled reflexively around the heat. He stood dazed with relief to be out of the punishing rain. He was conscious only of the rough wool of the blanket wrapping his cheek and the warmth spreading inward from his palms.
“That was very well done, Senhor Ibiá.”
He was being spoken to. Probably an answer would be expected.
“Was it?” he mumbled, squinting about vaguely for McPherson, who knew better but would be unlikely to give him away. The cave mouth swam into focus. All around him, Sawls busied themselves with the last of the rescued cargo. Oil lanterns flared from hollows in the rock. From the niche above his head, the hundred obsidian eyes of an entryway frieze winked lamplight back at him.
Weng stood in front of him, with eyes that might also have been obsidian. She wore spotless white. Her rank insignia was a glint of gold at her collar.
“Very well done indeed,” she repeated. “You might like to know that Dr. James has rejoined us safely.”
A smile curled his lips before he could bid it away. “Ah,” he said merely. “And Liphar?”
“As well.”
He shrugged the blanket closer and tried to stop shivering. “Danforth?”
“No.”
He shook his head. “Where’s McPherson?”
Weng nodded behind her. To one side of the cave mouth, the little pilot hunkered down, staring out into the storm. A Sawl blanket draped her shoulders. Her blond hair was plastered to her head like a skullcap.
Suddenly she stood, and called out sharply. “Commander!” The blanket slid to the ground.
Weng and Stavros joined her at the edge. The Lander held its ground bravely out on the plain, a tall sentinel wreathed in ice. But as they watched, the flood claimed a victory. The ice encircling the Lander’s base groaned and crumbled. Water rushed in, carrying a flotilla of icebergs to swirl about in the Underbelly.
“Shit,” growled McPherson. “There she goes.”
A-Sled swept out from beneath the Lander, buoyed aloft on the crest of a wave. The current tossed it like a toy boat on a string, then swallowed it altogether. The Lander tilted crazily. For a moment, it seemed to bob in the water, a dark renegade berg loose among luminous brothers. It rocked back and forth,
as if recalling a habit of equilibrium, then lurched up abruptly.
McPherson cried out, and Stavros was stunned by the spasm that tightened his throat as he imagined a burst of flame, and the valiant engine rising like the phoenix from the flood that it was now sinking into.
The Lander dropped and tipped to one side, falling. Just as the tension must break that held it in its slow deliberate collapse, it halted midway and settled, angled but still standing.
McPherson cheered. “Atta girl!”
A glance at her hopeful face finally identified the loss that had plagued Stavros back on the wet stairs. Both McPherson and Weng saw the Lander as their lifeline, though the older spacer had the weathering of many past crises to help her remain unruffled through this one. For them, the number-one priority was knowing that escape from this alien planet was still possible.
That’s what’s missing. If terror comes so easily to me, why don’t I feel threatened by the loss of a Sled, or even Lander? Why does the regret feel more like relief?
Stavros left them there at the entry. Confused and weary, he climbed the long stairs to lose himself in the firelit welcome of the Caves.
BOOK TWO
“ ’Tis a naughty night to swim in.”
King Lear,
Act III, sc. iv
9
The storm settled in with the night. The rain-dashed cliff sank into blackness, then came alive again as a faint brave glow awoke in each cave mouth. In the stone shelter at the side of each entry, an oil lamp was lit as the storm watch took up its stations. The shelters were hive-shaped and small, the masonry clean and tight, but the door holes remained open to the weather. The storm was merciless in its intrusion on the watchers’ comfort. They wrapped themselves tightly in woolens and oiled leathers, hugged warm jugs of tea to their chests and prepared with stolid patience to gaze for endless hours into the wet darkness.
A tall woman draped in leather as dark as the storm appeared at the lowest cave mouth as that entry’s watcher crawled into his shelter and lit his lamp. Water roiled in the gutters flanking the entry and raced off the edge to swell the flood roaring a meager distance below. The rain beat at the woman’s face as she bent to exchange a word with the sentry. She laced her hood more tightly about her lean dark head, then moved on to the next watchpost. She carried no light herself, braving the night and the storm to use the exterior stairs that were the shortest route between each cave mouth. The wind snapped her leather poncho wetly against the cliff rock as she paced up the stairs, taking them two at a time without haste.
The Wave and the Flame Page 9