"When I press this crystal, here"—she pointed to the side of the scepter—"the battery closes its circuit and maintains an electrical energy field. Indy, would you please lower the lights in this room?"
He did as she asked and returned to the couch alongside Gale. A deep gloom filled the room; Caitlin was a shadowy figure perhaps ten feet away from them. In the dim light they could barely make out the scepter in her hand.
"Watch closely, listen carefully," Caitlin instructed. Indy had the strangest feeling that she was drifting away from him, floating almost phantomlike through some distant tunnel. Her voice took on an ethereal quality, coming to him with the soft ringing tones of an echo.
"This is the wand of the great Merlin," she called out. "It has the power to draw energy from the earth, from the air about us, from the waters in the streams and rivers and lakes. It reaches into the clouds to reap pure energy as a farmer clears his fields. The scepter; a goddess of energy."
Indy saw her move the instrument in a wide circle, then stop its movement, holding it out before her. "You wish to see, to feel its effect," she said to Indy, a mixed statement and question to which there could be only one answer.
"Yes," he said quietly.
"Your mind will leave you," came a dire warning.
"It has more than once," he said dryly. A bit out of line for the solemn moment, but a retort he couldn't hold back.
He felt Gale squeezing his hand. A touch of reassurance, he knew. But why? What was so terrible about energy gathering?
"We begin," Caitlin said. She held the scepter aloft, her finger pressed against the yellow crystal, and power flowed through it. More crystals began to glow as energy streamed up, like liquid mercury, to the top of the scepter. A low humming sound seemed to come from everywhere. Indy felt the room temperature dropping. There was a slight glow from the red ruby at the top, becoming brighter with every moment.
Indy felt as if he were being elevated out of his body. He was physically seated on the couch, Gale by his side, squeezing his hand, yet he was ascending. Mind? Body? What? He couldn't tell, but he had no desire to fight for control of himself. Go with it.... The voice was his own, an inner voice releasing him from his natural survival reactions.
Pressure built against his ears. No sound, but a cooling pressure as smooth as a summer breeze. It flowed through his ears, through his skin, through muscle and sinew and bone into his mind. The crystals blazed before his eyes, highlighting the goddesslike figure of Caitlin. Her voice floated toward him like ripples shimmering on a silver pond. "Tell me," she said softly, "what you fear the most."
Indy tried to speak, but no sound issued from his lips. He found himself falling backward through a mist that was condensing all about him. Then he was falling, down through a well with glowing walls, falling forever. Yet it was so strange... no air rushed past his body, no sudden gasp shook him.
"Think of what you fear...." The voice... Caitlin? Who was Caitlin? And where—
He heard his own voice, thin and from a distance, as if he were calling across some unfathomable void. He struggled to recognize words, but they danced just beyond his grasp. Old memories rushed up, swept over and through him and sailed beyond. Moments of past dangers, fears, struggles.
They vanished and abruptly he no longer fell. He was walking, the surface beneath his feet an endless stretch of blazing coals that should have instantly set his shoes ablaze, but he felt no heat from the flames. There! Before him, out of shimmering fire mists... a huge form taking shape, swirling, in and out of focus. He stopped, concentrating on the form.
It towered over him. He seemed to be rushing toward the creature, his feet unmoving, but his body was impelled forward until he stood beneath an enormous dragon, a great scaly creature with huge fangs and firebreath, massive tail lashing angrily, glowing eyes staring down at him.
A whip was in his hand, magically. The biggest whip he had ever held, impossibly huge and long. It sang like a screech of torment, and he snapped it with all the strength at his command. It cracked like a peal of thunder, booming and echoing.
Leather slashed into scales, ripped through a dragon foot, tore it apart from the leg. The creature raised its head and roared, its other front leg extending gleaming claws, plunging toward him.
Again the whip struck. Indy brought the leather across the snout of the enraged beast. Blood spurted from a long slash across the mouth of the dragon, splashing over him. Huge teeth bore down on him, and he ducked, slipping on dragon blood. Again the whip cracked, again scales tore away, blood spurted, but the dragon head was closer, and flames roared downward. He threw up his arm to protect his face, feeling scorching heat, the whip forgotten. The great fangs clashed again and again, snapping at him, and—
A woman's voice cried out to him. "The sword! Take the sword!" He could hardly breathe, but there! In the air hovered a sword, light blazing along its cutting edges. He flung away the whip, pushed into the fiery breath to grasp the sword hilt. Shouting with his anger, he rushed forward and rammed the blazing steel into the throat of the beast. A scream of pure agony burst about him, flames everywhere, needles stabbing his entire body—
He stood in the center of the room, soaked in perspiration, gasping for breath. No mist, no fog, no thunder or needles... no dragon.
Caitlin talked to him softly, soothing. "You're out of it now, Professor Jones. Breathe deeply, stand your ground. You're back with us."
He looked down on his own body. No scorched clothing, no dragon blood.
What...?
"Do you understand now?" Caitlin's voice was clearer now; lights came on in the room. It seemed she knew his thoughts, knew the confusion leaving him slowly, saw the clarity returning to his eyes.
"Do you understand now, Professor? It is the scepter. It works with my mind. It gathers energy to me, which I can then radiate outward. It is a mind wave from me that matches that of your own mind. So I created the images you encountered. Our minds were as one."
"It was... it was incredible. It was real," Indy said quietly, his breathing again normal.
"It can be used many ways," Caitlin added. "And it can be a terrible weapon because it brings up your own forbidden, forgotten memories."
"But you said you created the images."
"Yes. But if they were not already in your own mind, you would never have seen them." Caitlin gestured with a wide sweep of her hand. "All of us have memories, terrible dreams, so awful we remove them from conscious memory. But they are always there, always waiting to get out."
"So I was fighting myself," he said, barely above a whisper.
"Yes."
"But... what about the sword?"
"You learned to fence with a sword, did you not?" He nodded. "And you have seen Caliburn, and experienced its great power, and all those were your memories also."
"Then... this must be how many of the ancient priests and shamans controlled so many people," he said aloud, but as much to himself as to Caitlin and Gale. "What we have discussed before. Merlin... he had electrical power, as did the ancients six thousand years ago. The Assyrians and the Babylonians..."
"And it will help me to destroy Cordas," Caitlin said. "When do we leave, Jones?"
"Dawn tomorrow."
21
"Five o'clock! Everybody up and at 'em!"
Indy pounded on the door to the apartment shared by Gale and Caitlin. He grinned as he heard the thump of a pillow thrown against the door.
"Ten minutes. Coffee's hot. Eggs, bacon, toast, ham, potatoes. Get with it, ladies!"
He could just hear Caitlin. "Bloody barbarians, these colonials. Coffee, indeed! What's wrong with piping hot tea?"
Gale's laugh followed. "Tea will be waiting. And I'll wager Indy's all packed and ready to go."
They gathered in the small dining room. The museum staff had a "frontier breakfast" waiting for them, including biscuits, gravy, and a half-dozen varieties of jam. Carruthers and Judson arrived moments after they were seated to join them f
or the early-morning meal.
"We'll travel from here in two taxis," Carruthers explained. "No limousines at this point. I can't see any reason for attracting any unnecessary attention."
Indy nodded in agreement. "Where to?"
"Floyd Bennett Field. It's a navy airfield on the edge of Long Island Sound. South shore. We've got a Sikorsky S-38 amphibian waiting and ready to go. In fact, we'll fly down to Florida with you, make sure all your arrangements are satisfactory, and then you're on your own. Our, um, our office would prefer to have the Sikorsky land in the river, and we can then taxi to an army depot out of sight of everyone else. Everything you requested will be waiting for you there. And if anyone is watching our approach and landing, and then the people deplaning, why, the airplane will leave the river with the same number of people who went ashore."
"Neat," Indy said.
"That," Gale said as she stepped from the taxicab at the airfield, "is undoubtedly the ugliest flying machine I have ever seen."
Indy and Caitlin stood by her side, studying the ungainly winged creature on the flight apron. "It looks like some kind of prehistoric reptile," Indy added. "One that mutated in the egg and was then kicked out of the nest by its mother."
That the S-38 was. It barely resembled an airplane, and had it not possessed a seventy-two-foot wingspan, as well as a lower sesquiplane, half-wing and half-hull support, it would have been difficult to identify as such. Its long forward hull resembled the beak of some huge, awkward pelican, while its blunt and stubby fuselage seemed to have been chopped off at its aft end. The upper wing loomed above the boatlike hull on enormous struts, and from the wing, its two four-hundred-horsepower Wasp engines were suspended in seemingly precarious fashion. As if to emphasize the Erector-set-like design, the tail assembly and the upper wing were connected by two long booms, partly supported by a long strut attached to the stubbed rear fuselage.
The S-38 bore the markings of Pan American Airways. Indy turned to Carruthers. "I thought this was a navy job."
"It is. But Pan American has been running commercial test flights from here down through Florida and Central and South America. It's a common sight right now and won't attract undue attention. But your pilots are navy."
As if on cue, two young men in civilian clothes approached from the hangar, introducing themselves as Jim Barrett and Rex Silber. Gale tugged Barrett's arm. "I hope this thing flies better than it looks," she said, doubt clear in her voice.
Barrett laughed. "You're in for a great surprise, Miss Parker. This old girl is the best handling and flying job of its kind. Nothing ever built can match its ruggedness or reliability. I know it looks like it has more drag than an overstuffed balloon, but we'll be flying nonstop to Florida at a steady cruising speed of a hundred miles an hour. We can get her up to a hundred and thirty for shorter ranges. She'll get into the air like a homesick bird on migration. Catch this, ma'am. We can climb out with a full load at a thousand feet per minute."
Gale was impressed. "Really?" Then she cast a baleful eye at the ungainly-looking flying boat. "But if ever you lose an engine, with all that drag..." She shook her head to emphasize her doubts. "I suppose," she added slowly, "that's the advantage of the flying boat. You can always land her on the water."
Jim Barrett drew himself up to his full six feet three inches. "Miss Parker, I will have you know that on test flights we have shut down one engine in the air and on just one engine remaining, we have flown nonstop from this airfield to Jacksonville."
Gale slipped her arm around Barrett's. "Then I'd love to try her out myself."
She took him completely by surprise. "You, miss? A girl?"
"Try woman," Gale said sharply.
"Sorry." He cast a pleading eye at his grinning partner. "All right. When we're on our way, you certainly can have a go at it."
They started for the Sikorsky, Gale still held the navy pilot's arm. Sweetness wafted from her like a mist. "I'm interested in something," she said as coyly as she could manage.
"And what would that be, Miss Parker?"
"How much flying time do you have, Mr. Barrett?"
"Why, I'm not sure of the exact figure, but it's something on the order of about fifteen hundred hours." The pride was evident in his voice.
"Impressive," she told him.
"You seem to know a few things about the flying game, Miss Parker. Have you had some time at the controls?"
"Oh, yes. Dear me, I certainly have," she said, dripping honey.
"There! That's great." He patted her hand. "Would you mind telling me how much time?"
She squeezed his arm and looked up with a childish innocence. "You said you had fifteen hundred hours? What's three times fifteen hundred, Mr. Barrett?"
"Why, that's forty-five hundred hours."
"How wonderful! You've guessed how much time I have logged. I'm looking forward to our trip."
Before Barrett could close his mouth, Gale had rejoined Indy and Caitlin.
The navy pilots took off smoothly, swung out to sea, and climbed steadily to three thousand feet. Scattered puffy clouds a thousand feet below them offered an exceptionally smooth ride. Barrett came back from the cockpit to check the cabin and gave them the added good news of a fifteen-knot tail wind that would reduce their time to Port Jacksonville.
"Let's put these few hours to good use," Indy told Gale and Caitlin. He spread maps and charts across a worktable unfolded from the side bulkhead. "The better you memorize details of these charts, the better our chances of doing everything we're on our way to do, especially if we get separated."
His finger moved along a chart and stopped at a small town marked Olustee Station. "Note this place," he said. His finger moved to a nearby location. "And this one as well. It's called Ocean Pond. From everything I've gathered so far, this is the main area we'll be working."
"Olustee," Caitlin said aloud. "What a strange name. Does it have special meaning?"
"Sure does," Indy told her. "It's an old Indian name for an outpost that became a small frontier town in northern Florida. Biggest place close by is White Springs. In the American Civil War, some terrible battles were fought in this area. Gettysburg or Antietem, hardly anyone knows the name of Olustee. But there were some ghastly casualties on both sides." He tapped the chart again. "Besides, this area is the last reported position of the wagon train carrying the gold."
"Then that should be our best chance to find the gold. Maybe even before Cordas," Gale said with conviction.
"What makes you so sure?" Indy pressed. Seated behind him, leaning forward to hear every word, were Judson and Carruthers.
"If the gold is still in this area," Gale explained, "the ancient coins will draw us to its location. If what we have been told of these coins is true, and they really date back to the Roman Empire, and most especially if Jesus did handle them, then they will have a powerful psychic aura." She gestured to Caitlin. "And she is like a divining rod. Her body and mind perform as one. She can find water, metal, anything, beneath the ground. It does not have to be visible."
Indy nodded slowly. "Well, I've seen divining rods used all over the world. I don't question that in any way."
"There is also the scepter," Gale added. "No one knows its strange and wonderful powers better than you."
"Don't remind me," Indy said, a cold shiver suddenly running through him. "But the scepter. The way I understand it is that it's also a divining rod on its own radio frequency. Like the way it worked with—on—me."
"That is how," Caitlin broke in, "the mists were formed back at the Glen. How the roads twisted in time. How we may even cut ourselves off from the rest of the world by going into another time."
Indy nodded slowly. "No argument on that from me."
Caitlin laid her hand on Indy's arm. "This is important, Indy. What can you tell me about the battles that were fought in that area?"
"Confession time," Indy replied. "I've been a Civil War buff for a long time, but I did some heavy reading the night before we
left. After that session with the, ah, dragon, I couldn't sleep. So I went into the archives."
They waited for him to continue.
Indy looked through a cabin window for several moments as he arranged his memories. "The major battle was known as the Battle of Ocean Pond. Others call it the Battle of Olustee Station. Depends on who was writing the history. But it's all the same fight. Lots of rapid troop movements. Infantry, cavalry, artillery. Both sides winning, then losing. Both sides advancing, then retreating before the final actions."
"When?" Caitlin asked.
"Early February 1864."
"What started the battle?" Gale asked.
"Early in February," Indy replied, "the Confederacy received intelligence reports of Union forces closing in on the city of Gainesville. The worry factor in the Rebel camps went right through the top of the tents. The Rebel commanders figured accurately that if they didn't stop them, the Yankees would smash right through Gainesville, advance along the low hills to the north, soon be in position to burn the town of Lake City to the ground, then fan out with their cavalry and wreck the Columbia Bridge"—he tapped the chart—"that spanned the Suwannee River.
"The only way to break up the enemy advance, besides moving defensive infantry and artillery into position, was to strike with Confederate cavalry. Unfortunately, there was little enough of cavalry forces. They'd have to use smarts and courage to make up for an overwhelming Union advantage in mounted troops.
"Well, as soon as they'd gathered their forces, the Union set off under the command of Brigadier General Truman Seymour. They started their movement with thirty ships carrying men, guns, and horses out of Hilton Head." His finger again tapped the charts. "They moved fast, and with skill, but before they knew what was coming down on them, the Yankees swept in from St. John's River. They stormed into Jacksonville with such surprise and strength they took the entire city without firing a single shot."
Indiana Jones and the White Witch Page 21
