“I didn’t actually see you,” he told her. “What I saw was a force that I knew was someone who had earned the right to be there. You are the only one who had come as far as I did. I entered the dome of light and I was drawn to you, suspended ahead, shimmering and very much a balance to me.”
“How a balance?”
“I think either of us, alone, might have been consumed by the light. Together, we were strong enough to remain anchored.”
“Together,” she said. “The Candescents survived by joining. The Galderkhaani transcended by joining. So that’s the takeaway. Hold hands, teach the world to sing.”
“The biggest, oldest ideas are often that simple,” Mikel said.
“But us,” she said thoughtfully, “there at the same time. Are you suggesting we were meant to be there together?”
“I believe that from the very start, everything was designed to bring us there.”
“From the start of what?” Caitlin asked. “Was all this set in motion two weeks ago by stones waking up under the ice? That seems a little arbitrary, don’t you think?”
“I do,” Mikel replied. He glanced at the mask around his arm. “Which is why I believe the sequence of events is older, far older than that.”
Caitlin shook her head. “I’m not sure I’m ready to believe that. I have an okay ego, but not big enough to imagine that all of history was orchestrated so that we could have a chat with the Candescents.”
“ ‘Who am I, that I should go unto Pharaoh, and that I should bring forth the children of Israel out of Egypt?’ ” Mikel said. “Exodus 3:11. My grandmother was a devotee.”
“I am not a prophet.”
“Yet,” Mikel said. “You already know the message and you have your patients and your platforms. Give it time. That’s what I intend to do.” He looked at the sky. “They are out there now, no longer in stones. We may all be changed. We already are.”
Caitlin thought of Jacob, who bristled with newfound confidence. She could not dismiss the idea, but she remained cautious. She tapped her shoe on the steps. “The Candescents are down there as well.” She pointed with two fingers to the south, toward the harbor. “And out there too.”
Mikel nodded. “True. I have to learn to think in many directions. Different dimensions.”
“What I mean is, the change may be slow in coming,” Caitlin replied. “Assuming we were ‘chosen,’ they picked a psychiatrist, someone who works with young minds. They selected an archaeologist who understands archetypes in civilization, is familiar with the many ideas of monotheism, pantheism, atheism.” The sun warmed her and she tugged open her scarf. “What I’m saying is—baby steps. We shouldn’t range too far, try too much.”
“No, you’re right,” he said. He touched the hortatur mask. “I could probably spend an entire lifetime just studying this.” He laughed. “I probably will.”
Caitlin smiled. “And the vision will fade,” she said with a touch of longing. “It will seem dreamlike as time passes. Life will not push out the mission but it will intrude on its urgency.”
“Maybe that’s why the Candescents brought us there in a pair,” Mikel suggested. “So we can keep reminding each other.”
Caitlin could not, did not, dispute that.
They fell silent as they enjoyed the residual connection they had felt. Finally, Caitlin looked from the park to the museum. “I can’t decide whether I should just walk through the park or stroll through the anthropology wing of the museum.”
“You should probably take your own advice,” Mikel said. “Baby steps. You go in that building, you’re going to work.”
“If I go to the park, I’m going to think of the last walk I took, through the streets of Falkhaan,” Caitlin said. She grinned. “We’re stuck, aren’t we?”
Mikel nodded. “There is no turning back.”
Caitlin’s grin became a smile and she hugged her companion, careful not to crush his wrist. She could have sworn she felt something as she leaned against the sling—a comforting familiarity, a sense of being home . . . a kiss.
They parted without another word; Mikel to the curb to catch a cab headed downtown, Caitlin remaining where she was. She continued to watch the traffic and the people, the bikes and the pretzel cart, the nearly barren trees and the sky with clouds—
Clouds that once provided sustenance for a civilization.
No, she told herself with a gentle mental push and a final willingness to surrender. There was no escaping Galderkhaan.
EPILOGUE
The green lands loomed below, thick and full of new and colorful birds that flitted above and through the canopy. Whitecaps stormed the beaches with a healthy fury, washing a shore that glistened with countless beads of light set among the seemingly endless expanse of sand. The sound of the surf was energizing.
Not far above, an airship limped toward the coastline. It was battered and worn. Like its crew of twelve and its two guests, it was strained to near collapse, held together by strength of arm and will of spirit.
On deck, an exhausted Standor Qala—at her command post for several sleep periods, without having rested—watched the epic vista roll toward them as they soared below the thin clouds.
“I did not imagine such riches existed,” Femora Loi said from her side.
“She said it did,” Qala said.
“Who?”
“Someone quite remarkable,” the Standor said. She did not want to try and explain that the woman in the cabin was not the woman who had directed them here.
“I wish they could have seen this at home,” Loi said, his voice heavy.
“Perhaps they do see,” Qala replied.
The Femora shook his head. “I do not believe in the ascended,” the officer said. “I can say that, now that there are no Priests to prosecute me.”
“They were a resilient group, and the Technologists,” the Standor said. “Others may have escaped as we did.”
“I pray you are correct—only for their lives, not their divisive beliefs.”
“See to a landing,” the Standor said. Her eyes drifted to the weakened balloon. “We will have to set down very soon.”
“Clearing or treetops?” Femora Loi asked.
“Treetops,” Qala said. “There might be predators and we have no weapons. We can re-rig the plank to descend from there.”
“The balloon?”
Standor Qala considered the question carefully. “Deflate,” she said. “It hasn’t much more life and I would not see it torn.”
“It will be done,” Loi replied.
As the Standor stood there, her beloved airship drifting lower and nearer to the trees, she heard a fresh creaking on the deck behind and below her. She turned to see Bayarma and Vilu, their eyes on the spectacle ahead. Qala motioned them to join her, and they climbed the narrow stairs. Qala could see that the woman’s eyes were damp; she had a birth mother and birth daughter in Galderkhaan, and she had been mourning them in private. But her eyes quickly grew clear, her expression hopeful as she saw the new lands.
“Where are we?” Vilu asked eagerly as he gripped the railing and pulled himself up slightly.
“North,” Standor Qala replied.
“Lasha said there was nothing to the north but water,” the boy declared. “He told us he knew that because he was friends with Tawazh.”
“Lasha and the sky god will have to sort that out between them,” Qala replied. “For we have gone north, quite some distance, and there you see our new home.”
“What’s it called?” Vilu asked.
“It doesn’t have a name, as far as I know,” the Standor told him.
“Then let’s call it Falkhaan-Qala,” he said. “That way people will always know who found it.” The boy beamed. “The greatest Standor in Galderkhaan, in all of history!”
“I’ll think about that,” the S
tandor said, her gold eyes moving back to Bayarma. “Will you be all right?”
She looked at Qala with soft eyes. “The poet Vol—you know of him?”
“I do, though only from postings in the courtyards of . . .” Her voice trailed off, unable to say the name of any cities so recently lost. “I have seen some of his words, yes.”
“I read his scrolls to my daughter,” Bayarma said. “He wrote, ‘Nothing is ever truly lost, so long as it is remembered.’ I will never forget those who were unable to join us.” She stopped gesturing briefly to lay her hands on her chest. “They will always live here. And—”
She hesitated. With a look, Standor Qala encouraged her to go on.
“I believe in the Candescents,” the woman told her. “I believe they have a plan for us. I do not think we are here by accident.”
“We are here by the grace of the wind currents and by the heart of our crew,” Qala said. “If those be the work of the Candescents, then we are not here by accident.”
“Hull mooring imminent!” Femora Loi shouted across the deck to all hands.
The Standor put a loving arm around Bayarma’s shoulders, picked up the boy with the other, and stepped back from the railing as the great airship sighed its last and thumped onto the sturdy tops of the great trees below. An emotional cheer rose from all quarters of the ship as the crew, save those who were deflating the balloon, turned toward the command post from their stations, toward their leader, waiting for instructions.
“Let us begin our new lives,” the Standor said as ropes secured the ship and envelope, and the survivors of Galderkhaan moved aft to meet their new home.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
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GILLIAN ANDERSON is an award-winning film, television, and theater actor and producer, writer, and activist. She currently lives in London with her daughter and two sons.
JEFF ROVIN is the author of more than 100 books, fiction and nonfiction, under his own name, under various pseudonyms, or as a ghostwriter, including numerous New York Times bestsellers. He has written more than a dozen Op-Center novels for the late Tom Clancy. Rovin has also written for television and has had numerous celebrity interviews published in magazines under his byline. He is a member of the Author’s Guild, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, and the Horror Writers Association.
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ISBN 978-1-4767-7659-0
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The Sound of Seas Page 27