She stepped tentatively forward onto the steaming soil. The soles of her sandals did not burn, so she led the way, the priestesses coming slowly behind. Behind them were the rescuers, shining their lights ahead, down the path that they had made.
For a long time they walked, as the warm, dust-laden acid rain washed the mud from their clothing, stinging their eyes.
The world revolved gently, and Linnea staggered once or twice, trying to breathe deeply against the dizziness. The playing lights, the rain thrumming against nose and mouth, didn't help. Every time the poor woman behind her gasped in pain, Linnea's insides tightened.
Crazy hopes ran through her mind. Were their rescuers perhaps from the Project? Maybe the Project of the future? Linnea couldn't recall anyone talking about weapons that burned away landslides, creating a flat pathway. But she was sure they hadn't told her anything they didn't think she needed to know.
Only now she did need to know.
On and on.
The entire trip was conducted in silence, until at last a cliff loomed, blacker than the surrounding night. One moment rain pattered, loud, in their ears, and then it withdrew into a hissing curtain behind them, and Linnea could breathe. She realized that they had entered a cave of some sort. Faint bluish light glowed at one end, through a rough archway.
A hand touched the back of her shoulder, urging her toward their light. She obeyed the unspoken command, and was glad to do so. Light, shelter, maybe food? Oh, and clean, dry clothing?
But. . . what about these women? Linnea thought, her expectations withering away. The Project would surely not permit anyone to see modern technical gear, electric lights, and machine-stitched towels and clothes?
Through another archway, into a round room that was again lit by bluish light. Linnea had just enough time to see that there was nothing in it but shapeless cloth of some sort on the floor, and then she turned around as the others entered.
The last priestess walked in, and Ela and the others eased the wounded woman down. Linnea ignored them, trying to empty her mind, staring at the two figures in the doorway: two figures who were slim, of medium height, their fine features quite hairless, their clothing a shimmery suit of bluish purple.
Baldies.
They had not been rescued; they had been captured, by the Baldies.
Then a door slid soundlessly shut, locking them in. She released her breath; they hadn't singled her out. She remembered the warnings about those blue suits and telepathy. Perhaps the fear of the women around her had masked her own thoughts; perhaps their suits couldn't distinguish thoughts in people close together, especially when all of them had to be radiating fear quite powerfully.
"Where are we?" someone asked softly.
"I do not recognize this place," the seer replied, her voice tremulous. "I very much fear that our own house might have fallen in the shaking."
Linnea hesitated, unsure about speaking. What could she say?
CHAPTER 20
"I THINK," ASHE said, "we'll just have to assume that the Kayu are either dead or in hiding. There is no way to get back up that mountain to the cave where we met them, and even if we did, what would we do or say?"
"We might get them to explain how they think the Baldies are respectful of life," Ross muttered.
Ashe's mouth twitched. "You just can't leave that alone, can you? I admit that the same question has crossed my mind as well. But we'll have to leave that one for leisure moments. Right now, let's go down today's checklist."
It was morning, the full glare of morning. Steam rose from shingle on the beach and from the ruins of Akrotiri, drying in the sunlight half a mile away. They had been shaken awake by a quake sharp enough to rock the boat.
Still, they had landed directly below the ruins of the city. There was no human sound beyond what they made; the harbor, so busy the day before, was empty, the only life the cawing seabirds overhead. Farther up the mountain, swallows darted and chased, their tails streaming.
Ross clipped his radio to the outside of his belt. Now that the need for disguise was over, he wore baggy work pants with sturdy pockets. Eveleen and Stavros stood there in diving gear, Stav with a foot propped on the taffrail. Kosta had changed to a rough linen work shirt and baggy pants.
"Do we all understand the codes?" Ashe went on, tapping his radio.
"Understood," Kosta stated.
"Got it," Ross said.
Eveleen nodded once, biting her lip. Behind her, Stavros half-raised a hand in agreement.
Ashe looked around. "We transmit only when we have to, and we transmit only the codes, and only on the move. If we discover we need to refine the codes, they can wait until tomorrow. Got it?"
Again a round of nods.
"All right, then. Stavros, will you issue the weapons?"
In silence Stavros removed three modified energy weapons from the locker below. These weapons were the reason Eveleen was on the diving team and not on the search team. She would defend herself with the expertise of the martial artist, but she was not certain she could bring herself to use one of these energy weapons and had said so up front.
Ashe turned to her now. "You two know what to do, right?"
"Get the globe ship into a hidden cove, camouflage it, and if we have time, try to get inside."
"Good. Just be back here by sunset, so we can gather with no lights showing. If this place becomes unsafe, we'll let one another know," Ashe repeated, looking from one to another.
Again they nodded, and that was it. Ashe and Ross maneuvered the smaller rowboat out and splashed it into the water. Then they and Kosta climbed over, Ross settling into the stern, the others sitting side by side and manning the oars as Ross kept lookout.
No one spoke. Ross sent a private glance at his wife, to catch a smile in return and a tiny wave of her hand. Then she turned away, reaching for her scuba gear. Stav said something to her in a voice too low for him to hear.
Ross shifted his gaze to the coastline stretching away to the west. It was quite a sight: the shore was lined with an unappetizing tangle of sea brack and dead fish. Unappetizing to humans, at least. An astonishing variety of birds dove and cried and cawed, each flap or peck sending up dark clouds of flies. The smell of sulfur, brine, and rotting fish made Ross breathe through his mouth.
——————————
ASHE AND KOSTA rowed swiftly. Ross kept scanning the coast, not just for slim hairless figures but for suspicious blurs: over breakfast they'd discussed the possibility of holographic "stealthing." If the Baldies could project false images, they might be able to hide themselves from plain sight. He also watched for any revealing gleams or glitters.
As they dragged their boat up onto the shingle and covered it with a layer of seaweed, nothing was in evidence but birds and fish and flies.
Then the three separated, Ashe to investigate over the hills to the north, Kosta up the road to the city and as far as he felt safe, and Ross to try the pathway to the oracle, again as far as it was feasible to do so.
Ross set out at a quick pace, despite the steamy heat radiating from rain-washed stones scattered about. An aftershock caused him to pause, watchful. He could hear the shifting of the earth below ground; it sounded a lot like a train racing along a subway line one level below, only somehow more sinister—a grim reminder of the magma explosion building toward zero hour.
Up ahead he spotted at least two major landslides. The trail still could be picked out, but he was going to have to do some detouring.
"I can make it," he muttered, shading his eyes. "But if anyone is under those tons of mud, it's not going to be me who finds them."
He grimaced, shook his head to clear it of such thoughts, and set out at a faster pace.
——————————
STAVROS AND EVELEEN stayed silent as the ship plied its way parallel to the cliffs, heading east. His job was to keep as close to the rocks as he could without crashing into unseen ones below the surface; hers was to use the field glasse
s and scan constantly for Baldies. Close as they were—sometimes she could have reached out and touched the rough rock, stippled with the remains of shells from millions of years in the past—she still felt horribly exposed.
Stavros kept the engines at low to muffle the thrumming. They glided past birds' nests and crabs scuttling over wave-washed stones, past little beaches with discolored foam and dead fish piled high from the storm surf of the night before.
Nothing disturbed them, and at last Stavros cut the engine and put down the anchor.
Eveleen, sweating profusely by now, pulled on her mask; her scuba gear was already on, in case she'd have to make a fast dive.
It was such a relief to slide into the water that Eveleen permitted herself to shut her eyes and just float for a moment. The air was already unbearably hot outside and would only get hotter.
She opened her eyes, flippered over and grabbed the sled, then looked around. Ah. The cave was still there. She pointed and tried not to let herself think about quakes and rockfalls as they arrowed down, down, as she directed Stavros along the seafloor, heading for where they had left the globe ship.
They flicked on their lamps. The water was unusually turbid, masking their vision. An occasional fish flicked in and out of view, its darting seeming nervous, furtive. The light did not penetrate in shafts, but seemed to come from everywhere, a sinister, nasty reddish color.
Eveleen swam quite close to the cliff wall before she saw it. She nearly ran into the dangerous protuberances before her lamp caught suddenly on the glitter of stone newly sheered, amid wildly waving little plants of unimaginable types, colors, and variations.
Sheered rock?
Eveleen's guts clenched as she felt her way down, down, Stavros no more than a vague silhouette nearby. She remembered about how far down the ocean floor ought to be, and so once again nearly ran into a sharp, upthrust rock.
Landslide. Her breathing sounded harsh and the sharp scent of sweat filled her mask as she flippered back and forth, hands out, lamp beam moving constantly, until she was sure.
At last she sighed and for a time floated, suspended in the warm water, like the clouds of dust particles around her. Their marker had, of course, disappeared, probably buried. So, it seemed, was the globe ship.
Stavros shaped his hands into a ball and then pointed down.
Yes, it's under the landslide, blast and damn, Eveleen thought, pointing. It's got to be buried under all that rock.
Stav gave a shrug and then backed the sled up and anchored it a safe distance away. He flippered back and set his hands to the topmost rock. He braced his flippers against another stone and then started pushing and shoving, pushing and shoving, bubbles exploding with furious energy from his release valve.
Eveleen swam down in two strokes, set her hands to the opposite side of the stone, and pushed with all her strength.
The stone shifted; a plume of reddish dirt billowed up, obscuring their faces. Eveleen resisted the temptation to wipe her eyes—as if that would clear her vision!—and watched in satisfaction as the rock tumbled down to the seafloor.
Again they chose a big stone, worked at loosening it, and sent it tumbling with lazy slowness to the seafloor. Eveleen dug at the silt beneath, sending billows out into the water.
They kept digging, tossing stones and shifting mud, finding nothing underneath but more stones, more mud, and tangles of sea creatures and plants.
When Eveleen realized that they had uncovered perhaps six feet of area, and that the seafloor was maybe six feet below that, she had to face the fact that she'd chosen the wrong place. Oh, that was, as far as she could tell, where they had left the globe ship. But it could have rolled away and then been buried, and how would they ever know?
They kept searching until the warning lights on their air packs sent them up again, empty handed.
CHAPTER 21
THE SUN, AN angry-looking scarlet ball of fire, dissolved into the purple murk stretching along the western horizon, leaving Ross in thickening shadows. He had a flashlight now, along with his radio and a canteen, but—mindful of Baldies and those scavenger attackers lurking about somewhere in the hills—he didn't want to advertise his presence unless he had to.
Having found absolutely nothing on his long, hot, dangerous and thoroughly miserable climb, he now discovered he'd miscalculated how long it would take to climb down.
The trail was all but obliterated. He'd had to pick his way up shifting rubble and shale, twice setting off minor slides.
Getting down was far more difficult than he'd surmised. He'd counted on following his own tracks, but the tremors after he'd started up must have set off more minor rock slides, because his prints vanished with irritating frequency.
He paused, wiping gritty sweat from his face, and stared out at the horizon. The sun was gone, leaving a faintly glowing purple bruise smearing the west, its faint glow reflected in the ocean, vanishing swiftly.
Overhead, clouds of dust and smoke obscured the starlight; the pre-Kameni Island was smoking steadily now, preparing for the next, and biggest, blast.
Meanwhile the strange, violet light would totally vanish very soon.
Get moving.
He forced himself to clamber down, glad at least he didn't have to do this climb in sandals tied on with thin leather thongs. That's right; think of the positive, he told himself with sour humor. Well, he'd found no bodies, except for a goat. The poor beast at least hadn't suffered; a bouncing stone appeared to have broken its neck before it knew what hit it.
No bodies, no sign of anything human. Not that people of the past were given to Utter on the scale of modern times, he thought as he leaped over a flat stone precariously balanced on two others and came down on sand. He slipped a little, caught his balance, and sneezed from the ever-present dust. He'd had to resort to the breathing mask higher up, because of dust and smoke, a lethal combination; now its particulate filters desperately needed changing.
No, no sign of anything, animal, human—or Kayu. And what about those guys, anyway?
His question, of course, winged out into the universe unanswered, but he'd already forgotten it when he realized that the faint lights groping about down to the left were not hallucinatory flickers due to exhaustion, hunger, and miserable heat, but they were actual lights.
The landscape had changed so much he had only a general sense of his bearings. Straight ahead was the peninsula, thrusting directly west. That meant Akrotiri was to the left, though of course there were no more buildings jutting squarely up, forming a skyline.
Ross crossed a cliff face, picking his way with care mostly by feel, not by sight, until he was maybe a thousand yards above the northern end of the town. Yes. Lights. Was it his team? Should he radio?
No. If they were chasing someone, they wouldn't want to respond and give away their position. Meanwhile, he wasn't moving fast enough to get away from his own.
So he started to run, awkwardly leaping and sliding downward, until some unseen flaw in the rubble brought him down hard.
He sat up, wincing. Nothing wrenched, nothing broken— thanks to countless drills with Eveleen on how to fall without breaking your neck.
Lights again.
He filled his lungs, ready to yell, but caution made him blow the air out again and frown into the murky darkness that had so quickly descended. Yellow light, very faint yellow light. The distances weren't right for those to be flashlight beams.
Therefore . . . lamps?
Ah. He spotted a sturdy outcropping of ancient volcanic rock, exposed now by the ground around it having slid down toward the city.
He eased down and crept on hands and knees along that rock, staring downward, into where he'd seen those lights. He heard noises: running feet, a grunt. Fighting?
Was it Ashe and Kosta?
Linnea?
Again he filled his lungs to yell, but then a ferocious blue-white light lanced out of nowhere and for a moment lit the entire scene before it vanished.
Ross sat back, stunned by the light, by what he'd seen. The afterimage played itself against his retinas: the two obviously male silhouettes, one short, stocky, with a wild beard, the other thin and wiry, the first with a knife upraised—the blue-white light gleaming on greenish, unpolished bronze— the other clutching an armful of loot, and then the one with the knife falling, soundlessly, burned by the laser-strike.
Desperate scrabbling sounds skittered up the rock face, echoing slightly against the few still-standing walls below. That would be the second figure, trying to make off with its loot.
Those hill scavengers! But who did the shooting?
Baldies. They were here, just below.
Ross realized he was sitting exposed on this cliff and eased back slowly, looking around. Of course he wouldn't see them. What snoop gear did they have to make searches comfortable and easy? Infrared? Something that detected life-forms? He cursed soundlessly as he eased back and back, away from the cliff, and then ghosted down the side of the great slab of rock.
He was just reaching for his radio to fire off a signal—Baldies here —when a voice rose, an angry shout, not in Greek but in the local language.
A moment later again one of those white lights lanced out. Ross heard a thud. It was close—no more than fifty yards—and then silence.
He removed his fingers from the radio at his belt and faded as quietly as he could to the north, away from the ruins. The Baldies, or whoever had those weapons, were obviously on the prowl, and there was more than one.
He'd get to firm ground, preferably with a hill between him and those weapons, and then signal.
CHAPTER 22
LINNEA WOKE UP slowly and reluctantly. Her mouth felt dry and nasty; her joints were stiff; her clothing was impossibly gritty. She felt her scalp prickle, as if all the mud in it had decided to come to life, sprouting many legs.
Andre Norton - [Time Traders (Ross Murdock) 07] Page 15
