“Ian! We’ve been spotted—they’re shooting at us!”
“So much for Gretchen’s information,” he said through his teeth, taking the Chaloupe deeper. “I would not put it past her to have added an hour to the travel time she told us.”
“She has no reason to do that, and there’s only been the one fallen tree,” Alice said, but her mind was focused wholly on peering through the murk. “Can we risk turning on the lamp? We have to find the bottom in any case, and we’ve less than a mile.”
The lamp in the rounded nose of the boiler didn’t do much good, but at least it illuminated the rocky, jagged floor of the chasm enough for her to keep them from hitting it and risking a puncture in their iron cylinder. She hoped that it was also not enough to be seen under all the weight of water in what had fast become not a river, but a deep lake.
“Engines reversed,” Ian said tersely. Construction rubble came into view—broken rocks, scaffolding, buckets. Now the current pushed them against the sheer wall of the earthwork and cement that rose out of sight in the darkness.
“That current is rather stronger than I expected,” she said, her arms aching with the effort of holding the legs steady on their task. If she had had a spare moment to think about it, Alice would have been gibbering with fear. But it was all she could do to keep the Chaloupe creeping along the base of the dam, searching for the aperture containing the flow regulator.
It seemed an eternity until, on the right, a wall rose to box them into a corner.
Ian swore violently. “We’ve missed it. We’re on the right bank, directly beneath the guard tower.”
She would not commence gibbering now. She would not be sick. She would take a deep breath and grip the controls and get them out of this fix before someone saw the glow deep under water—or the guards upstream got the message to the tower that they were under attack.
Slowly … slowly … they turned the Chaloupe about and crept back the way they had come. How long was this wretched dam? Did it even have a flow regulator? Were they going to die here, drowned by water spraying in through multiple bullet holes?
“There.” Ian let out a breath as though he had been holding it. “Slowly, now. We don’t want to overshoot it. Our mistake has cost us precious minutes.”
By now, Alice’s hands had frozen into claws on the levers that controlled the spider legs. She hardly dared breathe as she crept up to the aperture built into the base of the dam—a tunnel that narrowed into a spillway on the other side. According to May Lin’s information, which was several months old, the aperture contained a huge butterfly valve that turned back and forth so that the flow could be shut off altogether.
“Brace the spider legs on either side.”
Slowly … do not make a mistake … allow for the pressure of the current … that frighteningly strong current …
“Legs braced,” she whispered.
They clung, splayed across the hole like a spider in the center of her web, the legs braced on either side. May Lin had calculated that the legs would hold in this position for less than five minutes before they collapsed from the pressure and the Chaloupe was swept into the tunnel and wedged fast.
Which was the plan, but still … it was a dadblamed terrifying plan.
“Right, then.” Ian released his harness and swung himself over the floodgate into the rear, where he ignited a lamp in which was wound two feet of fuse. “Alice, are you ready?”
Ready to drown? No. Ready to go with him, come what may? “Yes.”
“I will open the hatch. We must get out and close it again before the water fills the forward chamber, goes over the floodgate, and douses our fuse.”
“The hatch will hold for twenty seconds, no more,” she reminded him. “It was the best I could do on short notice.”
“It will work. Come, a kiss for luck.”
The kiss was worth the seconds it cost. Then, Ian shoved on the hatch while Alice braced the iron arm that held it open. Ian hauled her out through a torrent of ice-cold water, and her boot heel barely cleared the hatch before the arm failed and it slammed shut with a hollow sound that echoed weirdly underwater.
The cold was paralyzing, but she could not gasp. Immediately the current pushed her against the earthwork, flattening her and pulling her legs into the aperture. No! If she were to somersault forward, she would be sucked in and heaven knew what was on the other side. A cliff, perhaps. Clawing, crawling crabwise, half swimming, they struck out for the surface in the general direction of the left bank.
Ten seconds.
She was already running out of air thanks to her frantic swimming—and the current—all that rushing water leaping headlong through an aperture too small—
Fifteen seconds.
Alice’s concentration narrowed to the dim form of Ian beside her, swimming against the current with Olympian strength and getting absolutely nowhere. She paused just for a split second to orient herself—to gaze frantically upward as though she might be able to see the surface—you fool, Alice—
The merciless force of the water grabbed her. She was sure she screamed, for her mouth filled with water and pushed the last of the air out of her lungs. Headlong, she was sucked past the Chaloupe, grabbing fruitlessly at anything—a spider leg—a vane—only to have it torn from her hands by the current as it carried her into the tunnel. From the drag on the safety line, Ian was being pulled willy-nilly behind her—paying with his life for her mistake!
Twenty seconds.
She would drown and Ian would drown and no one at Hollys Park would ever know what had become of them—
With a crunch, the spider legs collapsed and now they were being pushed forward by the bow wave, deeper into the tunnel, as the Chaloupe did what she had designed it to do and rushed forward into the aperture. With a grinding scream, the little vessel wedged itself tight into the tunnel.
Ian hauled on the rope and her head broke the surface like resurrection morning. With the force of the outflow temporarily plugged up, leaving a few inches at the top in which to breathe, she dragged blessed air into her lungs, her head spinning, stars whirling in her vision—
“Alice, swim!”
She didn’t know whether she was up or down, but somehow, between the drag of the security line at her waist and the water under her, she oriented herself and swam after him with all her remaining strength. She still could not touch the bottom, but allowed the current to take her down the tunnel until a half-circle of lighter gloom appeared a distance ahead.
“Valve!” she croaked. “Stay left.”
If they passed through it one on each side, the security line would snag and they would be trapped, flapping hopelessly, one on each side of the valve, until they drowned.
Ian struck out for the left side and in seconds, they had been swept through and out into cold space.
Alice screamed, a high, keening sound as she fell, not knowing what in the name of heaven lay beneath them. Yet somehow Ian hauled on the line and yanked her against him, cradling her so that they would land with her body uppermost.
Her heart broke with love for the man who, even in this dreadful extremity, would put her life before his own.
With a splash that deafened her all over again, they landed in a broad pool. Fortunately, their feet were forced up and they skimmed beneath the shallow surface, their bodies pummeled by the fall of water from above. If they had landed just a centimeter differently, they would have clocked their heads on the rocky bottom and been washed down the water’s course to drown, unconscious and very probably dead.
They passed on either side of a submerged rock. The security line caught and both Alice and Ian jerked to a halt. Instinctively, she put her feet down and found solid ground.
“Up here!” Ian gasped, scrambling up the bank and hauling her up behind him like a trout on a line. They collapsed in the mud, gasping and shivering. Alice went into his arms and wrapped both hers around his back as though she would never let him go.
“We’re ali
ve!” she groaned. “I don’t know how.”
“We’re not supposed to be on this side,” Ian said grimly, his teeth chattering with the cold of the April night. “The Chaloupe will go up at any moment. We were supposed to be on the other side, above the maelstrom. We must get out of the way.”
But there was nowhere to go. Over his shoulder, Alice’s frantic gaze took in the sheer cliffs and the guard tower at the top of the dam. The massive bulk of the earthwork, looming into the sky. The channel of the creek below the dam that was about to be filled with tons of water that they would have avoided had she not taken that brief second to rest and been caught like a bit of soap in the drain.
They could run, climbing over the rocks in the riverbed, but the water would catch them in seconds.
As though Ian had also realized that this was it—this was the end of their journey together—he passed an arm about her and squeezed her tightly against him.
From far away came the sound of thunder, and the ground shook.
Ian sucked a final breath into his lungs and pointed. Far above them, the dam’s lamps seemed to shudder. The sound of the river became a triumphant roar, and then with a boom! like the very trumpet of the archangel Gabriel signaling the end of the world, the dam collapsed in on itself with slow unwillingness.
The hungry river leaped into the gap with a roar.
And as it did, the stars were blotted out.
Something landed heavily on the rocks beside them. Alice dragged her gaze from the spectacle of her own death to see what poor creature had fallen to share in the end of the world.
“Bloody hell, get in!” Benny Stringfellow screamed from a basket, both hands outstretched.
Ian leaped up and flung her over the gunwale by main force. Alice landed in a heap in the wicker bottom, then jumped to haul on the back of his shirt and drag him over the side. Even as she did so, the basket swung into the air and began its ascent, and the momentum flung Benny against her, weeping.
“We thought you was dead—we couldn’t see you—oh MarymotherofGod, it’s too late!”
Alice had enough sense remaining in a mind wiped completely blank with surprise to fling herself to the opposite side of the basket from Ian, so that they did not overbalance and tip themselves out. Her eyes widened as they rose one agonizingly slow foot at a time, and she could see.
More and more of the earthwork whirled away into the widening gap in the dam until with a final crack, the last remaining buttress fell into the maelstrom and the crunch and snap of agonized rock breaking into pieces filled the night. The roar of the river took on a deeper, even more terrifying note as the water was flung through the narrow gap and leaped into space over the place where they had just been crouching, lunging past it for the plains below.
The guard tower that had been attached to the north side of the dam keeled over like a woman in a faint, the men inside screaming as they plunged into the frothing monster of water. On the south side, as the basket crested the chasm, men poured from the gatehouse and out on to the mesa, panicking and running through the sage and pinon pines in every direction.
The basket rose through the air and reached its docking station in the stern of the ship. Whose ship? For this can’t be Swan—have Benny and Jake gone a-pirating? Is it the Rangers, returned to investigate at last?
“Jake,” she said in a high, unnatural voice as he stopped the winch. She did not think she could climb out of the basket under her own steam. The only thing holding her up was her death grip on the gunwale.
But he did not answer. He was gazing down through the hatch, his mouth agape, as the enormous bottled-up river behind the dam pushed the last of man’s efforts to control it out of its way and poured through the canyon like the wrath of God unleashed upon a disobedient humanity. It crashed through the turn in its former course, throwing up water so high against the cliffs that Alice felt the spray of the torrent upon her face, blown back by the wind.
“Swan, gain fifty feet and proceed westerly at five knots,” Jake ordered the automaton intelligence system.
Swan! But how…?
There was no time for talk, or even for joy. Swan’s vanes and propellers took them higher, widening the panoply of disaster unfurling below. The river reclaimed its dry course, crashing around curves and spilling through canyons that had never felt such an onslaught since the day the earth had formed. And now, as they proceeded westerly, Alice realized with horror the full extent of what they had done.
In the distance far below were the water meadows, where the turns and crescents of the river flattened and became civilized enough to support plant life, water birds, animals … and the town and military fort that had sprung up in the valley. Ranged in rows outside the town were the white tents of the Ambassador’s forces, still asleep in the grey hour before the dawn.
Alice clutched the rail as the river, flouted by men for long enough, roared and lunged into the valley to devour the innocent and defenseless.
Chapter 15
During that day’s work, both Evan and the captain had had difficulty concentrating on their tasks. One eye always seemed to be cast toward the sky, searching for a glimpse of the pigeon, and the other toward the guard towers, from whence it would certainly be shot down if it were seen. But as the sun set, both men glanced at one another and wordlessly resigned themselves to another stroll in the dark to the equipment yard, for which they would have to come up with another pretext.
But no pigeon came.
Evan went to bed with an odd feeling of anxiety, which prevented his sleeping well, though his bunk was not uncomfortable. When he started awake in the darkness before dawn, he could tell by the harsh breathing of his companions that he was not alone.
“What was that?” Dutch muttered. “Something has happened. An earthquake?”
Captain Fremont was already throwing on his clothes. “Get dressed,” he said tersely. “That was an explosion, if I’m not mistaken. Dadgummit, that young rascal could have told us!”
“You do not think—” But Evan couldn’t finish. Surely Alice and the witches would have warned them before blowing up the dam. Surely they would have waited until their friends were clear of danger.
By now the soldiers had been roused by the urgent summons of a trumpet in the parade ground, and in the melee of yanking on boots and locating arms, Evan, Dutch, and Fremont were utterly ignored.
“Come,” Evan said, grabbing Dutch’s arm and beckoning Fremont around the side of the building. “To the behemoth. No matter what happens, we must stay with it.”
They could hear de Sola calling for his sword in the officers’ quarters, and Evan felt a moment of guilt for not joining him. For really, what could the three of them do? They were not about to fight the prisoners, whom the law now regarded as free men but who were too important to the construction to set free, should they take this opportunity to stage a coup. The three of them could not take up arms and march, for this was not their fight.
While the likelihood of fighting was low, the danger to life and limb if the dam had collapsed was extremely high.
They ran to the equipment yard to find the trumpet had already caused the sentry to desert his post. Evan swarmed up the behemoth’s leg and inside, where he ignited the boiler and prepared for movement. The captain heaved Dutch into the pilot’s chamber and scrambled in behind him.
“Find a security line and attach it,” he ordered. “We may have a bumpy ride.”
Dutch held a finger in the air. “Listen.”
Evan flipped open the vents on either side of the viewing port, and cranked the isinglass outward.
Once, as a child, his grandmother had taken him to Scotland on holiday. Shivering, he had attempted to build a sand castle on the beach in a howling gale while she walked up and down attempting to convince them both they were enjoying themselves. The sound of the wind roaring over the waves, whipping them into a frenzy, had soured him on oceans forever.
That same sound now froze his blood. �
��The water!” He cranked the viewing port closed like a madman. “Close everything and brace yourselves!”
There was just enough steam pressure in the boiler to allow Evan to raise the behemoth from its resting position and brace its legs, knees bent, trunk angled forward, like a pugilist taking the measure of his opponent. In the distance, dawn broke over the eastern peaks and he saw the steam loader—that very vehicle they had once imagined could toss rail cars at the dam to damage it from the outside—fling its arms to the heavens as it was engulfed and went over backward. Evan had no doubt that the piles of iron rails, containers of cement, and heaps of lumber were being scattered willy-nilly as though they weighed nothing. And perhaps this was what saved them to some extent, for as the water expended its force on the heavy equipment, it was slowed down. However, the millions of gallons behind it had no such compunction.
“Cast off—here we go,” Captain Fremont muttered, as he and Dutch hung onto the truss on either side of Evan, their security lines attached to their belts.
The water meadows were engulfed in the maelstrom and a huge wave struck the palisade of the equipment yard with a crash. Down it went and disappeared in the swirling muck. The behemoth shuddered as the wave hit it, and the water climbed its legs as though the machine were getting into the bath. Higher—higher—
Don’t let it reach the boiler, Evan prayed. We shall be helpless to come to the aid of all these poor people—
The behemoth rocked under the onslaught, and Evan controlled the walking apparatus with all the strength in his body, making tiny adjustments to the behemoth’s stance in an effort to help it bear up under the strain.
And then the land itself came to their aid, spreading the water far and wide, cupping it at the foot of the mountains and throwing it back into the riverbed, the lowest point in the valley. The main force of it thundered away to the south after taking a careless swing through the water meadows, leaving a mile-wide path of detritus and death in its wake.
Fields of Gold: A steampunk adventure novel (Magnificent Devices Book 12) Page 14
