Andre Norton - [Time Traders (Ross Murdock) 07]

by Atlantis Endgame (epub)

  Then, trusting to the murk outside to hide any cracks of light, she got busy.

  ——————————

  LINNEA FORCED HERSELF to concentrate on walking, which was a challenge perilous enough. The terrible red light from the north was bright enough to distract one but not bright enough to highlight the many places on the walk down where the foot could get stuck in a hole or cause one to slide.

  The priestesses had given Eveleen mildly curious looks, though in the darkness her mixture of modern clothing (khaki trousers) and Kallistan (her knee-length thin linen robe) had barely been visible. Linnea did not worry. She knew by now that what you expect to see you see. The priestesses were not looking for visitors from the future any more than they had recognized the Baldies as beings from another world.

  Their only conversation was about the strangeness of the blue priests. Between the time Linnea had been taken away and their subsequent freeing, they had managed to convince themselves that the priests had sought someone from Kemt.

  "Perhaps," Ela said as they trod in single file, except for the two helping Stella, "they wish to go there, as our island is where the spirits have chosen to battle."

  "Yes," several of the other women said.

  "Our island is no longer a place for the living." The seer's old, cracked voice was wry.

  Stella stumbled; the other two caught her up but necessarily jarred her arm. She gave a hiss of pain but made no protest. The others fell silent, the youngest two smoothing the road with their sandaled feet so that Stella would not trip.

  In this manner they made their way slowly down to the beach. Out on the water, Linnea saw a tiny row of golden lights. That had to be their ship. She felt a surge of relief at the idea of settling down into her hammock once again.

  The others exclaimed in mild voices and then sat down above the line of sea wrack to wait. Linnea was thus left alone with her thoughts, which arrowed straight back to her conversation with the Baldies.

  What could she think? Her mind reeled with questions, with emotional responses to the questions, and of course no answers. She longed to sit down with Gordon, except she suspected he would have as few real answers as she did. He'd fought against the Baldies but did not know them.

  Were they the enemy—or not?

  She was just wondering when the sound of shouting voices carried, faint as the cry of distant seabirds, from the ruined city behind. She turned. The priestesses all turned. The thick, still air carried the sharpness of male shouts but no words.

  Then, out of the darkness lanced three or four bright blue points of light. They arced across the ruins, and one angled down past the cliff at the water, hitting the boat!

  Their boat!

  She sank down onto the sand and covered her eves.

  CHAPTER 28

  THE MEN HAD just climbed, dripping, aboard the scavenger ship when they saw lights lance out of the darkness, pierce the thick smoke obscuring the sky, and then stab across the harbor.

  Ross squinted against the eternal haze. He saw a brief, reddish flare of burning wood. Their ship! Someone had blasted their ship!

  He grabbed the field glasses away from Stav, cursing steadily as he slammed them to his eyes. Eveleen was on that ship . . .

  But when he brought it into focus, he saw a shadowy figure moving around on the deck. It had to be his wife. Or . . . ?

  "Come on, let's move," he snapped.

  "No wind. We'll have to use the oars," Kosta replied.

  Ashe was at the other side, watching the ruins through his glasses. Stav, Ross, and Kosta each picked up oars. Ross was glad that the galley wasn't below decks; the surface of the deck stank bad enough. Whoever those scavengers were, it was abundantly clear that basic hygiene was not remotely a part of their paradigm.

  At last Ashe closed up his glasses and sat down to pick up his oar. He matched rhythm with the others, and then said, "It's difficult to be sure, but I believe the scavengers regrouped and tried to rush the Baldies."

  Kosta said, "They might have been drawn by the noise we made in our raid."

  "It's possible," Ashe said. "It's also possible that the Baldies think they're part of our group, or that we're allied."

  Stav snorted. "They might not even know the difference."

  Ross sighed, trying not to worry about Eveleen. "I wonder what the hell they did, or said, to Linnea."

  "I expect we shall soon find out," Gordon said, and then they fell silent, putting their backs into lift, push, lift, push.

  The scavenger ship had a very light draft and skimmed along the water, which was alive with little waves. Nervous little waves, Ross thought. The sort you'd expect to see after a whole lot of earthquakes.

  They rounded the last point and angled in toward the harbor. Out on the water, which reflected glitters of crimson from the increasing glow northward, they perceived a small black lump.

  Ross's heart gave a lift when the lump resolved into a rowboat with a single occupant: Eveleen.

  As they drew abreast of the figures waiting on the shoreline, Kosta sounded the bottom with his oar. They maneuvered in as close as they could, and there followed a couple hours of very hard work.

  It was especially hard in that murderous light, with the possibility of being fired upon by more weapons. No one knew where the Baldies were, or why they'd fired, or where the scavenger gang was, for that matter. So they worked as quickly as they could, helping Eveleen unload the barrels of water and the sacks of grain and beans and lentils that she'd selected for the priestesses.

  "You're giving away all our camouflage," Ross whispered to his wife as they passed the sacks up into the scavenger ship.

  She snickered. Then said, "If we need camouflage anymore, then we're in serious trouble."

  Ashe gave them a grim smile as he passed up a big hard round of goat cheese that Kosta had traded for in the harbor the day before the big quake.

  "I put some purifier in the water," Eveleen added in a murmur. "It might not last their entire journey, but I figure their systems have to be used to whatever biota will develop by the time they reach Crete."

  "That's the last barrel," Ashe said. "Let's get them aboard."

  Among those on the first trip was a woman whose family had been fisher folk. She understood the basic principles underlying hauling wind. Through Linnea (the women did not talk directly to men, they discovered, though Ross noticed a couple of the younger ones taking peeps at the four male Time Agents, Kosta and Stav especially), Kosta gave some quick lessons.

  The woman nodded, obviously listening carefully. She seemed to comprehend that their lives were in her hands.

  Ashe said, at the end, "Tell her that it's important not to go anywhere east."

  Linnea looked up. "We discussed it while we rowed over. She says shell take them northwest, if the gods of the winds will smile on them. It's easier to find land than it is to find islands."

  "A wise choice," Ashe said.

  All this in Ancient Greek, of course.

  Ross and Ashe then bent to help the last woman up, the one with the broken arm. They waited while Linnea gave her a cup of something to drink that she said was more Kemtish herbs. From the bitter smell, Ross guessed she was dosing the woman with antibiotics. Good idea.

  And then they climbed down, the five of them balancing in the little rowboat. Linnea crouched down into a ball in the stern sheets, and off they went.

  Ross watched the women take control of their new home. Some of them were already cleaning, throwing garbage and filth over the side, others busy settling the sick one. The pilot was handling the sail as if she knew what she was doing, and the narrow little craft picked up speed, sailing away westward on the faint, fitful breeze stirring off the water.

  I hope they get away, Ross thought, and then turned his attention back to the others.

  "I think it's safe to talk," Ashe said, as the oars lifted and splashed. "Our boat first. What happened?"

  "I don't know," Eveleen replied. Ross c
ould hear her regret and self-blame in her voice. "I turned on the lights below in order to see what I was doing. Did that make us a target? I didn't think the light carried."

  "I could see tiny pinpoints of light," Linnea murmured.

  Ashe said, "The contrast with the total darkness in the south was apparently enough to guide their aim. Did you see how much damage was done?"

  "No, I just turned on the fire extinguisher, and left the foam all over, then got back to the last of the flour sacks. I didn't know what else to do, outside of getting that food to Linnea's group," Eveleen replied.

  Various nods of acquiescence from the others were the only response.

  Ashe said, "Linnea? Are you ready to brief us on your experiences? Or do you require some recovery time?"

  "No, I can talk," the woman said. She sounded at first as if she'd aged ten years, but as she spoke her voice gained firmness.

  As Linnea outlined what had happened to her, they finished crossing to the ship.

  Kosta was the first one up. He dashed below, then returned, and in the reddish light from behind them, Ross and the others saw his relief.

  They didn't nail the engine, then,Ross thought, and sat down on deck. The air was miserably hot, smelled worse than ever, and faint sounds, a rushing rumble, emanated from the distance. Hairs prickled on the back of his neck. Yeah, they'd said a whole week, but his body thrummed with fight-or-flight adrenaline. It sensed danger now.

  "...and that is when you came in," Linnea finished. "I was not able to ask any more questions, nor clarify any of theirs to me."

  Ashe rubbed his hands over his face.

  Ross said, "Well, look on the bright side. At least we fritzed out any tech they had there. I shot it all myself. So they can't come after us, especially if the globe ship is gone."

  While the others talked, Eveleen and Stav went down to the little galley area, and the homey smell of freshly ground coffee added its blessed, and unlikely, scent to the terrible odors of a volcano preparing to blast.

  Kosta had gone down again to clear away the mess that Eveleen had made with the extinguisher foam and repair any holes he found.

  So it was Linnea who looked from one to another, and at last back to Gordon Ashe, before saying, "It changes everything, does it not, if it's true?"

  Ashe sighed. "I think we might take it as true. Let me brief you, and you tell me what you think."

  So he told her what the Kayu had said and recounted everything else that had occurred since she'd gone. He also told her what the big quake was, how it had been set off.

  She pressed her knuckles against her mouth once or twice but otherwise stayed silent.

  When Ashe was done, her first question took Ross by surprise. "Did they say they had somehow monitored the Priestesses of the Serpent? Perhaps radioed suggestions to them, as part of their policy?"

  "They didn't say anything like that, but it's not out of the realm of the possible," Ashe admitted. "Why?"

  "It's just so strange that the seer predicted that quake just before it happened, sending the people to evacuate. And you say that most of the city had gotten out of the buildings and down to the shore before it struck. That is an astounding coincidence, if the Kayu, or even the Baldies, were not manipulating the priestesses without their knowing."

  Ashe stirred as Eveleen and Stav passed out mugs. For a time no one spoke, and the only sounds were those of the water lapping against the sides of their boat, the creak of wood in hull and mast, the distant, harsh cry of seabirds, and farther off that hydraulic rumble that promised violent action soon.

  Then Ashe said, "I really believe that those questions are, for now, academic. The thought I cannot get away from is that we're going to have to go back up into that ruined city and rescue the Baldies."

  "What?" Ross nearly dropped his coffee.

  "Huh?" Eveleen stopped in the act of pouring more.

  Stav said something under his breath, and down below, Kosta cursed in Greek.

  Only Linnea nodded, a slow nod. She'd expected just that, Ross realized. "It changes everything, doesn't it?" she said. "That they have a ... a moral directive? Each of them? The Kayu saw behind the Baldies' mandate a genocidal logic, and killed their sun in order to save other worlds, and the Baldies were changing worlds in order to protect some future that we are not permitted to see, lest we change it even from here and somehow destroy our fulfillment?"

  Ashe laughed. "You put it better than I would have. I was going to say, 'Damn it; it's the right thing to do.' "

  "But they shot at us! They shot at our boat!" Ross protested.

  Linnea looked his way. "But we don't know that. Did you not all agree that the Baldies might not be able to tell the difference between you and the scavengers? That it's possible they thought this boat theirs?"

  "What a nasty judgment on us," Eveleen muttered. "Not to see a difference."

  "Yet that could have been true all along," Ashe said. "We've encountered them in the past. We don't know if different groups of them are ones who've just discovered their murdered world or if they've mixed us up with people of our prehistory, but either way, we probably haven't looked too good to them."

  "Is this rescue plan a voting thing, or not?" Ross asked.

  Ashe turned his way. "Do you think we need to vote on it?"

  "No, I think we need to act, and fast. I don't care what the Kayu said about having a week. That damn island in the north is blowing bigger by the minute. If we're going in, let's go and get the hell out. Remember, where we're sitting is part of the caldera."

  Ashe nodded. "Let's get in, then, and do what we must."

  He turned to direct Kosta to start the engines, but then the radios at everyone's belts gave a brief, high burst of static and then lit.

  Ross and the others grabbed their radios.

  From them, in wide-spectrum stereo, came the mellifluous voice of the Kayu translation computer. "We shall take the !!! with us. But departure must be immediate, if you are to successfully translate both space and time."

  The seabirds shrieked, unheeding, and the water lapped against the sides, a subtly faster pattern. The only human sound was Kosta's voice, still cursing.

  "The seven days we spoke of was predicated on certain energy figures at the time, but those have considerably altered," the voice went on. "There is no safety here for finite beings; only the entity can remain. You must go, and so shall both our races, the !!! having failed to destroy your time-line and we having failed to hear the entity we sensed cross time."

  "Entity?" Ashe said, looking puzzled.

  "The entity that only the serpent woman could sometimes hear. And it would not speak when the !!! placed their devices in the temporal world."

  "Wait," Linnea said, taking Ashe's radio from his hand and kneeling on the deck to speak into it. "Tell us! What have we done in our future to make them so desperate to destroy us in our time?"

  There was no answer.

  Ross realized that Kosta's cursing had gotten louder.

  Ashe said, "Kosta? The engines?"

  "Are fine," Kosta called.

  "Then fire them up and get us out of here. Unless there's another problem?"

  Everyone now got to his or her feet, crowding around the hatchway.

  Kosta stood there looking up, his face gleaming with a sheen of sweat, his eyes black, his mouth tight with anger and tension.

  Stav gasped, and said something in Greek. Kosta shrugged one shoulder and then said, "The onboard damage is not too bad, just some splinters and melted plastic—but the time-gate is compromised."

  "Compromised? How?" Eveleen asked.

  "The Baldies' laser fire damaged the portal rods. If we can't fix them in time we won't be able to sync up with the gate."

  He gestured at the violence behind them. "And then we shall see, up close, Kalliste become Thera—"

  He stopped, but they all knew what came next: before we die.

  CHAPTER 29

  —FEAR. EVELEEN STOOD there on t
he deck, trying to think.

  The mission was over. They were done. In fact, they had to leave. But the time-gate was broken.

  None of these facts caused the least reaction in her. She felt unreal, as if the red sky and the black sea and the never-ending smell of burning rock had replaced reality.

  Her eyes turned Ross's way. In the ugly red light he, too, looked stunned.

  Then Gordon Ashe moved. "Let's get down to the fixed point as fast as we can; we have spare rods." A rattling roar from the disintegrating island punctuated his words.

  Stav shook his head. "Yes, we shall, but it will be a close thing. And even with the new rods, can we recalibrate it well enough in the time we have left?"

  "What does that mean?" came a whisper at Eveleen's shoulder. Eveleen cast back a distracted look and saw Linnea.

  "All speed. Set the sail to help," Ashe added, as the wind had been flowing out of the west—and they knew that the wind would carry the volcanic detritus east—but no sailing ship could sail into the eye of the wind. Bracing the sail round to catch that west wind might aid the struggling motors and help propel them southward just a bit faster.

  Eveleen said to Linnea, "Whether or not we manage to fix our side of the time-gate, we still have to get to the same spot the Russians are waiting at." She paused. "Good news and bad news: it's probably close enough to reach before the volcano blows but too close to survive if the gate fails us."

  "But what did Stavros mean about recalibration?" Linnea asked.

  "Our signal, which emanates from the portal rods, allows the Russians to calibrate the gate at their end. I don't understand the details, but the science types all agree that it's dangerous to linger when passing through a time-gate—and no one knows, or wants to know, what happens if you try to back up. There's some indication that that's what happened to a big Russian time-base that blew up a while back. At the time we thought it was the Baldies. Now—"

  Linnea nodded. "So passing through on a boat sounds dangerous."

  Eveleen nodded. "The scientists were afraid of that, so they put those engines in so we could get through at what they figured was a safe speed. But now, if the Russians don't get an accurate reading and open the gate at the wrong moment, well, I suppose the resulting bang will be lost in the Thera explosion, but we won't know."