Battle On The Marathon

by John Thornton

  She nodded and stepped over the inflated side and into the raft. I noted that without Bartlet as our leader, none of us really gave commands. We all sort-of asked each other, and looked for consensus and mutual support.

  “Engaging the nullifiers,” Kulm said as he sat at one end of the raft, and Radha sat at the other. “Manipulating gravity here. I will give them a five percent negative induction.”

  The raft slowly lifted up off the grass. As it got about two meters up, Kulm called down, “See it is working!” He waved and smiled broadly.

  He adjusted a few controls, and the bow of the raft tipped slightly downward and it began to move ahead. As it did, the top roof, the canopy, began to buck in the breezes. It flapped against the permalloy frame we had constructed. The raft canted sideways, dropped down, and then picked up speed. It narrowly missed the wrecked elevator building, as Kulm made corrections on the nullifiers. It shot upward about ten meters, but was still tilted sideways. I could no longer see Kulm but could hear him cursing the controls. The aerial raft twisted and dipped, and Radha dove out from the stern as the raft dropped suddenly. She rolled across the grass and was safe. Kneeling there she looked back at the rocking raft.

  “Land it!” Tudeng cried out. “Shut it down!”

  The raft’s stern smacked into the ground, the frame ripping a divot of turf loose. Then the bow plopped down hard.

  I rushed over, and Kulm was sitting on the inflated cushions rubbing his ankle. He looked at me with sad eyes. “It is tough to keep under control. Too many variables on the nullifiers.”

  “What about some mechanism to help?” I asked. “If some feedback mechanism just kept it up and off the ground, we might be able to design some kind of simple propeller system to get us moving.”

  “Those destroyed automacubes,” Tudeng suggested. “Any one of their processors could easily handle the eight nullifiers.”

  “They were all really busted up in that incident at the beach,” Matkaja stated. “But maybe?”

  “More problems,” Radha said and gestured down the pathway.

  A crowd of locals had been watching us. From the looks on their faces, they were not at all pleased. Many were downright hostile. Rolf emerged from the crowd and walked over to us. He said, “I need my tools back, hopefully in good condition.”

  “We will still need them for a bit longer,” Kulm stated. “I know this test looked bad, but we are doing what we can to find a way to move everyone off the island.”

  “Cripes! Since you have come here, nothing has been the same,” Rolf stated and walked away. As he walked away he was gesticulating at the crowds. “They can use the tools as long as they want, I do not care anymore. Fishing is gone, life is worthless.”

  I looked in the crowd for Jandrea, as I knew Carol was staying at her home, but did not see her. In the whole crowd, no one looked even the least bit sympathetic, let alone supportive. I knew we would never get any help from them. I had serious doubts about what was to happen.

  After the crowd dispersed, we walked down to the beach where our friends had died. I remembered that part, the deaths, way too vividly, and have ever since. I did not recall stacking the wrecked automacubes off to the side of the grave, but maybe I had helped in that. The horrors of the deaths were etched into my mind, but some of the aftermath and cleanup was gone. Nonetheless, the automacubes were stacked in a pile. Each of them was charred, blackened, and had holes ripped in their chassis. It looked like nothing usable would come out of them, but it was something to try.

  We all tore into them, carefully dismantling each one and seeking what components we could utilize. One of the green automacube’s processors was still functional. The engineering one, which, originally, was the most structurally solid of them, was a total loss. It had been peppered with large chunks of shrapnel, and all its systems were just junk. From the yellow one we did get a usable battery pack, a drive motor, and a drive wheel shaft. An internal cooling fan had blades that would serve as a propeller. We stripped wires, cables, and relays from all three, but had to go through those carefully because so much had been damaged.

  We worked on that project for days, alternating with each other on doing the patrols. Food was getting somewhat more meager, as no one had caught any fish at all for days, and the supplies of stored food were dwindling. The flock of sheep had all been killed for fresh meat, and the gardens were not really producing like I thought they should have been. I passed that off as my ignorance on how things grew in Foreigner, but I also knew the loss of the automacubes might have contributed to the failures of the crops. No rains came. The fresh water supply was tasting strange, even after we filtered and boiled it.

  Like I said, we worked for days to figure out exactly how to repurpose the processor and get all eight of the gravity manipulation nullifiers into a feasible series. After accomplishing the synchronization of the nullifiers, via the processor, we still needed a way to activate and control it. We connected in a small console which we crafted from the manipulation arm off one of the automacubes. The plan was to make a home-made, simple, old-style joystick. Once that was assembled, installed, and tested, our flying raft, as we began to call it, would ascend and lower on command. In that simple up and down function, it was fairly stable.

  Getting a propulsion system made was not much more difficult. We had one of the drive wheel motors from the automacube. The axil would spin at a variable speed depending on how much energy we supplied into it. The lufi amalgam battery, the motor, and the propeller we connected together and then mounted it on a pivot to allow the propeller to be rotated, and tipped. It was not ideal, nor pretty, nor cutting-edge, but it served its purpose. Well, it sort-of worked to give us forward propulsion, but no brakes and no reverse.

  During those days of building our flying raft, none of the local population came out to ask about our endeavors. We still continued our patrols. One of us walked the occupied parts of the island both all day and all night, yet the local people were increasingly standoffish. I frequently checked on Carol to see how see was. Jandrea, was cool and aloof, each time I visited.

  I am pretty sure others felt that too.

  The day we departed, I wondered how the people would react. Kulm took it upon himself to walk all over the island announcing the fact that we were going to offer rides to the island of Bokn where one of the two towns in Foreigner was located.

  “Attention everyone! Listen to me! You must leave here. We will take everyone to the town of Baltia on Bokn!” Kulm called out as he walked. “We will take everyone to the town!”

  No one responded to him, and several people turned their backs and retreated into their homes.

  Kulm was determined, “You can escape today! We are leaving today!”

  Only Earle and Sylvia answered that call. Even when we picked up Carol, with a stretcher to carry her to our flying raft, Jandrea did not want to come.

  “You need to flee from here,” I told her. “We are taking Carol to hospital, and you should come with us.”

  “I am not going in that bizarre thing you have built,” Jandrea said. “I have shown you hospitality, generosity, and compassion. I have tended to your wounded friend as if she were my very own daughter. Her stumps are healing. But I must speak out. I think it is supreme foolishness to try that thing with Carol. She insists on going with you, but what will she do when you crash? Have you thought of that?”

  “I have, actually. I worry about that too,” I replied, “but staying here is dangerous. Carol must to get hospital. Will you please come on the first ride with us?”

  “First ride? No. Not the first ride, nor the last ride, for that first ride you take will be your last. I will never get in that contraption, it is unfit for man or woman, and not suitable for children. It is foolishness!” Jandrea scolded me. “If you must use it, just send one of you, and have that person send back the officials in a boat. If that person even makes it across the waters to that town. No, I doubt that thing will even get off this island,
let alone reach anywhere else. Crash on the land or crash in the water, it will be the same. You will die. The only safe way is to wait for a boat to take us away.”

  I just shook my head. Over and over Earle and Sylvia had explained how their findings showed that the Jellies, whatever they were, had been attacking boats. But the local people refused to believe it. Yet, I tried one more time.

  “There are enemies coming, and they already sank all your other boats. That defense boat was destroyed. Sending back a boat would be risky,” I stated.

  Jandrea laughed a humorless laugh. “Risky? Flying in some ridiculous life-raft built by children is more than risky. It is plain foolishness.”

  “But the drinking water supply will probably run out soon. We can carry everyone to Baltia. In that town, things must be better.” I told her that, but had no idea at all that it was true. I had tried asking that IAM Lenore for a status report on the towns or islands, and all I got back was refusals to answer.

  “Dunderhead! I heard about your crash in that thing before. And that defense boat blew up when you were at the beach. You claim it was some creature in the water, but that is foolishness. It was a shipwreck, tragic, terrible, sure, but not the result of some creature from a dark lagoon or whatever foolishness you claim.” Jandrea threw up her hands and turned away. “Do what you will, but I will have no part in it. Fools and idiots, claiming creatures no one sees and building contraptions no one could control. Be gone with you all!”

  I replied, and I think I kept the doubt out of my voice, “We will ask whoever we find to send back help. Maybe a boat, or maybe someone could drain out and reopen up the corridors beneath the island.”

  Jandrea ignore my final comments.

  We carried Carol out toward our flying raft. As we did she said to us, “Jandrea is terrified by all this. Do not be angry with her. She took good care of me, but is overwhelmed by all this. I wish I could have helped you more with building the vehicle, but I just do not have the legs for it.” Her smile and attitude was amazing. I really wanted everything to be good for her, but had my worries.

  No one from the island would come with us. No one. Not the children, or the youth, or the adults or the elderly. The two hundred some people did not even come out to see us off. All that we had were the five of us intact people, Carol with her stumped legs, and the two oceanographers.

  “I have supplies packed. Water, food, and the other raft canister. We might as well bring it along,” Tudeng stated, as she brushed her hair back over an ear. “No one here will need it, and well, if we do go down in the sea, it would be a backup.”

  “I have my conservation slate, with all my translation programs on it. The recordings are still being translated from Jellie talk, into orca song, and then into our standard language so we can understand it,” Earle stated as we loaded Carol into the flying raft. “The hydrophones will transmit to us for a while, so we can get the remaining conversations, but I am many hours behind in decoding it all.”

  “Earle, we have done well,” Sylvia stated and patted his arm. “We have also been sending everything to that IAM Lenore system. I wish we would get some kind of response from that. It is nothing like the lattice of compeers and our usual communications.”

  Carol was belted into a corner where she would not slide around. She insisted on being armed with a gimp. “I can still shoot if need be, and my stance is good, right? It was hard when I lost my legs, I had been rather attached to them.”

  I almost laughed, but caught myself.

  As we all loaded up, the oceanographers just sat toward the back, and they too used straps to restrain themselves. Radha took up the navigation position at the stern, and Kulm sat before the joystick controls.

  “They should come with us,” Kulm stated. “It is the only way.”

  “Fly over some of the houses on our way and let them see how stable we are,” Matkaja advised. “Maybe they will change their minds?”

  “Good plan,” Kulm stated.

  The flying raft lifted straight up, and Earle gave out a gasp as it rocked and shook a bit. The propeller at the stern began slowly, with Radha directing it. Kulm our pilot, and Radha our navigator. Even though Kulm maneuvered the flying raft over the pathways, and around past Rolf’s house, and Jandrea’s house and over many other places where we knew the people were, no one came out. So, our flight took off in the direction of that island called Bokn, where our destination, the town of Baltia was located.

  At first, we tried flying at about two to three meters off the surface of the see, but there was a lot of wave action, and winds buffeted us. That happened almost immediately after we got out over the water. I check my wristwatch, and could see on the general geography that we were heading in the right direction, but none of us had any idea what we would find.

  “I am taking us up another two meters,” Kulm yelled out over the howling of the wind.

  The raft shook and bucked, and Earle cursed under his breath.

  From the stern opening, I could see back to the island we were leaving behind. As our flying raft got higher up in the air, I could see out across the sea. Some distance from the island, there was a dark brown smudge on the sea stretching for as far as I could see. The sky tube’s light was shining down on the sea, and around the island the sea looked normal, but beyond that, the strange brown color was not reflecting the light like the regular water did. Then it hit me, that brown stuff looked like what we had seen down in the corridors.

  “Nearly the whole sea?” I said and gestured out the back.

  Radha glanced over and she just solemnly nodded.

  Foreigner now looked even more foreign and strange. Kulm directed our flying raft even higher, as he thought there would be less air turbulences, and so we climbed upward. I could then see way off in the distance behind us, and beyond the island. In that brownish discoloration, there were some spots which glowed an irritating purplish color. It was not very distinct, or really definite, but something was lighting up the brown from below and it cast a deep bluish or purple cast to it.

  “Kulm? How does it look ahead of us?” Matkaja asked, just as I was thinking the same thing.

  “Odd, we will be coming up on that other island soon, but the water does not look right,” Kulm answered.

  “Is it that same kind of toxic junk we saw in the corridors?” Carol asked. “That was nasty stuff.”

  “More nasty than you children will ever know,” Earle stated.

  Tudeng gave him a stern look, but I think he either missed it or did not care. He focused on the small display on his conservation slate. “I have another ten of the orca’s cantos translated. They claim the Jellies are poisoning all the sea, and from what I saw outside, they are correct.”

  “How current is that?” I asked.

  Before he could answer, the entire raft was struck by a strong gust, and tipped sideways at a disconcerting angle. Kulm and Radha brought it back under control, but we rocked and shook and were quite jostled about. Earle never did answer that question, and I did not ask again.

  The voyage, or flight I guess would be a better term, seemed to take forever, as the winds occasionally threw hard gusts at us from various directions.

  “We are coming over Bokn Island, but something bad has happened,” Kulm announced.

  I wanted to crawl forward, but the ongoing jostling and bucking of the flying raft prevented me from doing that.

  “Burned-out rubble in some buildings I can see. Also, and it is weird, but showers are pouring down on it. Reminds me of a severe rain day in Kansas. Does each island on Foreigner get different rain times?” Kulm said to himself. He sounded very stressed.

  “Burned-out?” I started to ask, but was interrupted by a jarring and rocking of the raft.

  And that was when the rain hit us. But it was not normal water rain. It was raining some of that toxic brownish slush stuff. It was somewhat washed out brown, but I did not want to touch it at all. Fortunately, the canopy over us was blocking that ou
t, but some of the spray was bouncing into the raft’s interior. The smell was terrible.

  “Land quickly!” Radha stated.

  “Agreed,” Kulm called back. “This junk is hard on the raft.”

  “What?” Earle cried out. “I must get to the authorities!”

  “I am doing my best!” Kulm snarled as he wrestled with the joystick.

  I looked over and saw sweat running down Radha’s face. She was gripping the propeller controls firmly, and switching the systems in quick and sudden movements.

  As the flying raft descended I saw, out the back of the raft, the tops of sunken and wrecked ships protruded from the brown waters of the sea. The sea coast was not normal. Brownish sludge was all around the island. As we actually moved over the land mass of that island, I looked down to see the town we had reached, but something was drastically wrong. The buildings below were not from a living and active town. They were obscured somewhat by the brown rain, but I could still see what Kulm had meant by calling them burned-out. The noncombustible permalloy was charred to a charcoal-like black in many places. Roofs were caved-in, and walls were missing. Windows and doors hung on swinging hinges, fluttering in the winds. The town was crumbling. No lighting was anywhere. What had once been decorated gardens, artfully placed around the buildings, were now ugly. The gnarled trunks of dead trees reached upward, but they were leafless, and looked more like the fingers of dying people raised upward in a forlorn attempt to grab at something just out of reach. Other things, shrubs, bushes, and foliage was also naked and dead in the toxic rains. It was a weird skeletal landscape of dead buildings, dead landscaping, surrounded by a dead sea. Just a soggy, wetness enclosed by creepy shadows.