'Tides. Just open the damn thing,' Cayal said, shaking his head, 'I won't be offended.'
Declan needed no further encouragement. He opened the catches on the front of the antique box and lifted the lid. Although the box was deliberately plain on the outside, the inside was lined with pure gold. In it sat the Chaos Crystal. Much to his relief, the skull looked exactly as it had when Declan found it in the 1880s in the collection of a French antiquities dealer named Eugene Boban. Declan had bought the Chaos Crystal from him for a few hundred francs, and then commissioned the less-than-reputable Frenchman to make several other copies in the hope of confusing anybody looking for the real thing — something quite easy to fake when the Tide was out. He'd then hidden the real one and all but forgotten about it ... until the Tide had turned.
The Tides here on Earth were different to Amyrantha, their rise and fall much slower, and yet much more devastating. The King Tide that had allowed them to leave — and destroy — Amyrantha, had risen in a matter of months, which oddly enough, limited the damage it could do (providing the Chaos Crystal remained dormant). This King Tide, the one now consuming Earth, had been building slowly for more than a hundred years. No place on Earth was immune to its effects any longer, although nobody but a handful of immortals knew the truth about what was happening.
As he opened the box, it filled with an angry red light. Declan could feel the Tide draining from him as if the air was being sucked out of the room. The world, brought into sharper focus by the rising power of the Tide, was suddenly muted and dull.
There was no question that this was the Chaos Crystal.
'Satisfied?'
Declan nodded, and closed the lid. As soon as the gold shielding encased it once more, the Crystal's Tide- deadening effect vanished and the Tide came rushing back, a thrill Declan was hard-pressed to contain.
'We'll take the jet from here,' he said, locking the box again, 'I have a chopper standing by on Guam to take us the rest of the way.' He studied Cayal for a moment, still wondering if his willingness to help in this enterprise was genuine. 'Are you sure about this, Cayal?'
'Yes.'
'Lukys is going to be very angry with us.'
Cayal shrugged, unconcerned. 'Only if we tell him what we did.'
That was actually a fair point. Declan nodded and reached for the box.
it's okay,' Cayal said. 'I've got it.'
Declan shrugged, if you want.'
Cayal lifted the box from the desk and turned to Declan. 'Let's do this, Rodent,' he said, 'before I change my mind.'
The helicopter took off from Guam as the sun was rising. The island fell away behind them quickly as they headed south, the weather clear, the sky a cobalt blue — a shade rarely seen anywhere other than the tropics. Declan piloted the craft himself, having learned long ago that it was easier, sometimes, to do things for oneself, rather than rely on other people. Besides, as an eccentric trillionaire known to have a preference for flying himself from place to place, it was a convenient way to disappear when the time came to kill off 'Deke Hawkins', something he would have to do eventually. Perhaps sooner, rather than later, now the other immortals had discovered who he was.
'How far is it?' Cayal asked, the precious box on the floor between his feet.
'A couple of hundred miles.'
'And it's the deepest place on Earth, right?'
'So they claim.'
Cayal fell silent after that and they flew on, heading for the Mariana Trench and the Challenger Deep. As
the sun rose, the shadow of their craft on the ocean's heaving surface shifted imperceptibly, until it was almost directly beneath them. Declan was checking his location against the GPS when out of the blue, Cayal spoke up again.
'Have you spoken to her yet?'
Declan looked at him, shaking his head. 'No.'
'Are you going to?'
'As soon as I figure out what to say. And how to say it.' He made a minute course correction before adding, 'Every word, every communication with the Cape Canaveralis recorded and monitored, Cayal. I can hardly sit down at the main console in Mission Control, have them put Arkady on for a chat and start explaining things to her in Glaeban, now, can I?'
'You could send someone up there. Don't you have resupply ships that visit the exploration vessels?'
'They're drones. They don't have life support.'
'Well, that's not really a problem if you send the right person. Some expert in aliens floating in space that you've managed to dig up with your vast resources. Someone who won't mind the inconvenience of not having, you know, air, food, heat ... that sort thing, on the trip.'
Declan smiled. 'Someone like you, for instance?'
'Well, you can hardly go yourself, can you ... you being a nut-job trillionaire and all? And I'm not doing anything of consequence at the moment.'
Declan gave a non-committal shrug. 'Why don't we just wait until the Cape Canaveral returns to Earth?'
'That's two years away, Rodent, even if you'd ordered them to turn around the day they found her. I checked.'
That was a little concerning. Clearly, Cayal had given this some thought. Perhaps that's why he's here ,Declan wondered. He's not trying to save Earth. He's hoping to impress Arkady.
Declan didn't let on what he was thinking, however. He kept his tone deliberately neutral. 'How
do I explain putting a human in a drone without life support?'
'Lie about it.'
Declan didn't answer him right away, realising Cayal's suggestion had genuine merit. He was equally certain Cayal was offering his help so he could get to Arkady first.
Fortunately, Declan was saved from having to agree to anything for the moment by a subtle beeping coming from the flight console. He glanced at the screen and moved the collective control forward. The chopper began to descend toward the ocean.
'We're here.'
Cayal looked around at the endless expanse of the featureless Pacific Ocean and nodded doubtfully. 'I'll take your word for it, Rodent.'
Declan checked their altitude once more and then let go of the collective control stick as he plunged into the Tide. Then he reached forward and shut down the engines. The helicopter stayed in the air, its rotor blades motionless, held there by the Tide.
Cayal grinned in the abrupt silence as the engines cut out. He wasn't worried. He would have felt Declan drawing on the Tide. The Immortal Prince glanced over his shoulder at the empty seats behind them. 'There's a trick I bet you've never pulled when you have a busload of your mortal minions on board.'
'I don't trust the GPS any longer,' Declan explained. 'They don't maintain it like they used to.'
'We're going to have feel for the deepest point using the Tide?'
Declan nodded and then warned, 'Just don't open that box, or we'll be swimming back to Guam.'
Cayal grabbed at the catch to open the sliding door. He leaned out over the side looking down at the heaving waves and then pointed a little to the west. 'Over there.'
Declan used the Tide to manoeuvre the chopper to the point Cayal indicated. He could feel it too, but not as well as Cayal could, as much of his attention was concentrated on keeping the chopper in the air.
They hovered silently in the air for a moment before Cayal turned to Declan. 'This is the deepest place on Earth, right?'
'The Mariana Trench is close to seven miles deep, pressure down there is about eight tons per square inch and it's roughly fifteen hundred miles long by forty miles wide. Even if Arryl is telling Lukys right this minute what we've done with the Chaos Crystal, by the time he finds it again, and figures out how to retrieve it, the King Tide will have retreated.'
Cayal nodded, satisfied that if they couldn't destroy the Chaos Crystal, the very least they could do was hide it in a place nobody — not even a Tide Lord — was ever likely to find it. He lifted the wooden box onto his lap and turned to Declan with questioning look.
'Are you sure about this?'
Declan nodded without hesitati
on. One destroyed world was enough for his immortal conscience to bear. 'Positive.'
'We'll be stuck here.'
'I know.'
'I'm just saying —'
'Do it, Cayal!' he cut in impatiently.
The Immortal Prince nodded, took a deep breath and tossed the box out of the helicopter. It landed in the water a few seconds later, bobbing on the surface for a moment before proceeding to sink beneath the waves.
They sat in silence, watching the Chaos Crystal disappear, and then Cayal turned to Declan. 'This moment may well go down in history as the most noble or the most stupid thing either of us has ever done, Rodent.'
'Only time will tell,' Declan agreed, reaching forward to restart the engines.
'And you do realise we are going to have to retrieve it eventually, don't you? We will want to leave this world someday. I mean, nothing lasts forever.'
'Except us,' Declan said as the engines roared to life. He pulled back on the stick as Cayal slid the door shut, not letting go of the Tide until he was sure they had sufficient altitude to avoid the waves. He turned the helicopter north, back toward Guam, back to the new future they had just created.
And back to figuring out what he was going to say to Arkady.
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