Lord of All Things

by Andreas Eschbach

  Charlotte looked around. The boat still. So it hadn’t been a bad dream. Morley was asleep on the black, shuddering bottom of the rubber dinghy, green-faced and breathing raggedly. Angela was sitting by the rudder, rubbing her arms. And the island…

  “What’s that?” Charlotte gasped when she saw the island more than half a mile away. The sun was slanting down behind it, low on the horizon, casting long shadows across the bare southern shore. Which now looked entirely different.

  “We noticed it about an hour ago,” Adrian said, passing her the telescope. “It looks like the machines are rebuilding the whole island.”

  Charlotte clambered up and put the telescope to her eye. What had been a rugged cliff, a mountainside, was now a wall of smooth, massive steel ribs hundreds of feet high. It was no longer a mountain, it was a fortress. The beach was gone. In its place gleamed miles of featureless sheet steel. And everything was moving. She could see bizarre formations growing up on the battlements, changing, looking at first like gun emplacements and then radar antennae and then something she couldn’t identify at all. But whatever she could or could not recognize, the air of threat was unmistakable.

  She swallowed. Her mouth was dry. She would have given a great deal for a cup of strong, hot coffee. “Somehow I still feel like all this is just a dream.”

  “It must have been at it for a while now, but we didn’t notice before,” Adrian said. “The coast was in shadow all night long, and there were dark clouds for a while.”

  “Why did you let us sleep?” Charlotte rolled her shoulders and felt the tension there, as though she were a block of ice. “I’m cold. Horribly cold.”

  “We couldn’t wake you. Eventually, we gave up trying.”

  Charlotte remembered nothing at all. “Did you keep trying the radio?”

  “Yes. Still hopeless.”

  For a while nobody said anything. The boat swayed, and the sea slapped lazily against its inflatable sides. The silence was unnerving.

  Angela came crawling over to join them. “I was afraid you would both freeze to death,” she said, her teeth chattering. “Which would be the more merciful way to go.”

  “I’ve been thinking. Someone’s bound to pick up the signal,” Adrian said. “The jamming signal, I mean. They’re scanning every frequency all along the coast. Eventually, someone’s going to come. Air-sea rescue. A search party…” He touched the bag in the dinghy that held their survival gear. “We have three flares.”

  An almighty crack sounded from the island. They all turned to look.

  “That’s the third time,” Angela said. “But it’s never been this loud before.”

  Charlotte stared at the island that had become a weird steel nightmare and wished fervently that she were anywhere but here. She was already half-frozen. She wouldn’t last much longer. Perhaps, she considered, the best thing would be to pluck up their nerve and go back on land. No matter what might happen next.

  “Wha’ was tha’?” Morley had struggled to sit up, but they could hardly make out his words. “Shit…cold…I’ve…man…you hear s’mthing?” He stopped and stared at the island. “Fuck!” he yelled at last. “What the hell is going on over there?”

  “Those things are converting the island,” Adrian said, passing him the telescope.

  Morley ignored it. “It looks like the Fortress of Solitude,” he said. “And we’re all out of Kryptonite!” He sounded close to delirium.

  There was another crack, so loud this time that the whole sky echoed with the sound.

  “Whoa, that’s all we’ve been waiting for!” Morley groaned. “The ice!”

  “Do you think it’s the glacier calving?” Adrian asked. “Is that the noise?”

  Morley put out both arms and grabbed hold of the rope that was strung through eyelets around the outer rim of the dinghy. “No, man,” he answered thickly. “The whole damn ice shield is slipping. Hold on tight!”

  5

  It began with a rumbling. First it was a distant growl like unusually loud thunder. Then a sound as though an army of madmen were rolling barrels full of rocks down the winding stairs of countless towers somewhere behind the mountain chain. And then there was a movement—tiny, almost insignificant, but nevertheless terrifying. They saw something vanish that up until that point had seemed nothing more than a small patch of snow atop one of the cliffs. In fact, it was part of the ice cap. The glacier had begun to slip. Nothing could stop it now. As it came down, it made a sound like the whole earth and sky shattering together. Everything around thrummed with a deep, gut-shaking vibration, a frequency more felt than heard.

  “We’re not in the direct zone of collapse,” Adrian said at the top of his voice, thinking out loud rapidly. “The part of the ice shields that slips off to the north will collapse into the bay, and then the two cliffs will channel the wave it throws up, and even when the rest of the ice splashes down to the south, we’ll only catch the edge of those waves.”

  “Amen,” Morley shouted out, gripping the line tight. He pressed his head down against the side of the dinghy.

  Charlotte copied his actions. Adrian shouted something else, but the thunder all around was too loud for her to make out his words.

  It’s just the edge of the wave, Charlotte told herself again as an invisible hand lifted the boat and flung it into the air. We’re not in the direct zone of collapse, she thought as it dropped back down like a stone. And then a breaker hammered down on them as though someone had tipped a swimming pool full of ice-cold water on their heads. For a terrible moment Charlotte felt nothing at all, felt that she was floating, and if it hadn’t been for the line she would have been carried clean away. Then came a furious blow, and the line twisted wildly in her grasp, wrenching her shoulder—and Charlotte was right back where she had been, in a boat that was now half-full of icy water.

  “Goddamn!” somebody yelled. Adrian, right next to her. He moved fast, raging and cursing without a break as he bailed water overboard.

  Charlotte had never heard most of his curses before in her life, and she was somehow impressed he had such a stock of hitherto unsuspected profanity. The dinghy bucked and writhed, this way and that, as if they were being flung around on a poorly designed roller coaster. Charlotte had no idea how Adrian could do anything but hold on as tight as possible. The sea raged around them, and the spray flew, a nightmare of waves clashing, roaring, and bursting. But Adrian was bailing. We’re not in the direct zone of collapse. It’s just the edge of the wave. Good to know.

  Eventually—hours later, it seemed to her—the sea calmed down. Perhaps it had only been a few minutes, but they were the longest minutes she had ever lived through. Minutes of water that had soaked her all the way through. Despite that, she didn’t even feel cold. Rather, she felt numb from the neck down, as though she had been given a full-body anesthetic.

  “We’re through the worst,” somebody said. Adrian. Or Morley. It didn’t matter who. They weren’t in the direct zone of collapse. It was just the edge of the wave.

  Now there was ice floating all around them. Charlotte raised her head and turned it with effort. Ice floes everywhere she looked. The debris of the glacier, jostling and shoving restlessly as though angry at how things had turned out. She shivered against her will. She was freezing for real now; the cold had seized hold of her and was gnawing at her body. It’s over, she thought as she realized she could barely feel her hands. We won’t last another hour like this, never mind a week.

  “Perhaps…” she began, then burst into a fit of coughing. She gathered her strength and started again. “Perhaps we should go back on shore. What do you say? We don’t know for sure they’re still after us.” And even if they are, at least it’ll be quicker, she thought.

  Adrian stopped bailing beside her. He glanced from her to the island and back again, his face a mask of terror. “But there’s nothing left on land. The hut’s gone, our gea
r is gone…”

  And then they heard another rumble.

  “Oh no,” Angela moaned. “Not again.”

  Adrian and Morley looked at one another, baffled.

  “What else can be happening?” Adrian asked, coughing. He was wet, too.

  Morley just shook his head, perplexed. He was as pale as a sheet and said nothing.

  The noise became louder, and the louder it grew, the more clearly they heard that it was different from the previous noise. This time it came from far below them, a vibration that rose from the depths of the earth and only became a sound when it reached the surface. They could see fine ripples on the sea all around them, spreading out as though the island were a tuning fork held in the water. And then it was no longer a rumbling but a high, piercing whine that hurt their ears. Something cracked like a whip. A thunderclap rolled out over the Arctic Ocean and echoed back from the sky. And then something huge and slim shot up from behind the metal walls of the mountains, shot into the air like an arrow from an enormous bow, and burst into flame high above them, becoming a glare that hurt their eyes. The whining stopped. Whatever it was went up and up, dazzlingly bright, first in utter silence and then, after a few seconds, with a thunderous roar that echoed down to where they watched.

  “A rocket!” Adrian yelled. “It’s a rocket!”

  Nobody contradicted him. What else could it have been? They watched as the dot of light dwindled away higher and higher into the sky, without vanishing from sight or even growing noticeably less intense. The effect was that of a giant running a welding torch across the sky. There was a peculiar sound behind them. They spun about. It was Morley, croaking and hooting, a crazed cry of triumph.

  He gasped. “Saved! We’re saved!”

  “Morley?” Adrian shook his shoulder. “Are you crazy?”

  Morley’s grin spread right across his face. “Don’t you understand? Now they’ll come! Anything that floats or flies will be headed this way at top speed to see what’s going on!”

  Morley was right. In less than half an hour a formation of three jets came thundering overhead and circled Saradkov at a good distance. Adrian fired a flare. One of the jets peeled off, flew above them, and wagged its wings briefly—was that a sign he had seen them? Then they flew off, and it was quiet once more.

  “And now?” Angela asked.

  “They’ll come,” Morley said, his voice so burdened with hope that it was painful to hear.

  Charlotte couldn’t stop shivering. She felt hot from the shaking that gripped her body. Was someone bending over her, talking to her? Angela? Her hair was wet, she had red eyes and was shivering herself. Charlotte could no longer understand what she was saying, could only hear the strange sounds of a foreign language, yearned for someone to take her in their arms and speak words of comfort in French: “Ne t’inquiète pas. Je suis là. Je m’occupe de toi. Tout va bien—Don’t worry. I’m here. I’ll take care of you. Everything’s all right.”

  Everything was shaking. Everything was cold. Time stood still. The cold was devouring her, sucking the life from her body, and freezing her into stone. Nobody came. Hours passed…an eternity.

  Then there was noise again. A machine coming down from the sky. A helicopter blasting ice-cold air down onto their ice-cold clothes, wrenching the breath from their lungs. Her heart skipped a beat. Hands grabbed hold of her. Someone hoisted her up and wound a thick rope around her. She was lifted up into the air, higher and higher toward the churning silver blades that were sending down the shivering cold air and the deafening roar. Someone was talking to her, yelling at her through the din, but she couldn’t understand a word. She fell backward. Blackness rose up all around her, and she sank down into it.

  She woke up once, in a soft bed with white sheets. It was warm, incredibly warm, and everything was all right. Then it went dark again.

  Bright light. Something shaking her. Would it never end? She didn’t know why the shaking terrified her so, but it did. Charlotte opened her eyes and saw a familiar face. Adrian.

  “Thank God,” he said. “I thought you’d never wake up.”

  Charlotte blinked and tried to sit up. Then she noticed the IV in her left arm, hooked up to a drip bag full of some clear fluid above her. “What’s happening? Where are we?”

  “Onboard a Russian ship whose name I can’t remember for the life of me. It seems to be an icebreaker or something like that. It’s huge anyway.”

  It all came back to her. The island. Leon. The machines. Escaping, then the boat and the wave that hit them. “They saved us?”

  “Well, they fished us out of the water at least.”

  Charlotte looked around. She was in a sick bay with ten beds, three showing signs of use. Four, including her own. “Where are the others?”

  “Down in the canteen or whatever you call it onboard a ship. They’re eating. I stayed here because you were tossing and turning dreadfully and babbling away in every language under the sun. They gave you something because you were the worst hit by the cold. It might have made you feverish.” He pointed to her arm. “Should I tell the doctor to unplug you? Then we can join the others. I have to admit, I’m hungry, too.”

  Food was about the last thing Charlotte wanted just then. She looked again at Adrian. He was wearing dark blue fatigues with Russian tags. She looked down at herself. They had dressed her in the same, but without a jacket. At the moment she was wearing a dark blue T-shirt that was much too large for her, leaving her arms free.

  “What else is happening?” she asked. “What’s going on with the island?”

  Adrian sighed. “No idea. They cross-examined us, but I don’t know how much they understood of what we were trying to tell them. At any rate, we have someone keeping an eye on us all the time, and there are a whole lot of ships and subs out there—it’s kind of impressive.”

  “Let’s go and look.” She swung herself upright and sat on the edge of the bed, then she had to stop, as she felt dizzy.

  “Wait, I’ll tell them.”

  Adrian hurried over to the massive steel door with its heavy bars, stuck his head out, and called to someone. Meanwhile, Charlotte impatiently eyed the distance to the closest porthole and tried to compare it to the length of her IV hose. It was close enough. She got up, grabbed hold of the bedframe, and waited for the ship to roll that way. She scurried over to the thick, round glass.

  Well, look at that. Outside, in the unreal half-light of the endless Arctic day, was a whole fleet. Charlotte squinted. Those weren’t just Russian ships out there. Was she seeing things, or was that—

  “Hey, hey!” Adrian was back, taking her by the arm. “The doctor’s on his way.”

  Charlotte pointed out at one of the submarines, its conning tower silhouetted dark and massive against the waves. “Isn’t that an American flag?”

  “What?” He peered through the pane. “Hey, you’re right. That’s great!” Like all the Americans Charlotte knew, Adrian Cazar found the proximity of US troops reassuring. He had been on edge every time they had to deal with the Russian military.

  The doctor appeared, a young man with prominent jug ears who was as nervous as if he had only just graduated the week before. But once Charlotte was back at her bed, he removed the IV deftly.

  “Wait here,” he said in guttural English. “Captain is coming. He want to…ask you questions.”

  Adrian made a face, and once the doctor had gone, taking the infusion with him, he said, “Well, I just hope I won’t starve before he’s done.”

  It took less than five minutes. The man who introduced himself as Captain First Class Vladimir Korodin had ice-gray hair and ice-gray eyes. He was wearing a plain uniform, his only sign of rank the three men who accompanied him and watched his every movement with awe and devotion, nodding obediently as they hurried to carry out his orders.

  “They tell me you speak Russian,” he said, turn
ing to Charlotte.

  “Da—That’s right,” she said.

  The captain stood at the foot of her bed as firm as a rock—except for his fingers, which were tapping out a restless rhythm on the bedframe. “Then I would like to ask you to tell me once more what happened. What your friends have reported is, to put it mildly, so fantastical that I was beginning to doubt whether any of my crew really speaks English.”

  One of the orderlies ducked his head. Evidently, he had been drafted as an interpreter.

  Charlotte nodded. She would have preferred not to have to remember it all, but it was a small price to pay for being rescued. So she told him what had happened and answered all his questions.

  “Ask him if that’s really an American ship out there,” Adrian added once she was finished.

  The captain understood that much English. Without waiting for Charlotte to translate, he said, “Yes. That is a submarine of the US Sixth Fleet. Of course the Americans noticed the rocket launch, and since a launch from Russian territory without warning is against the test-ban treaties, we were obliged to allow them access to prove that we had nothing to do with the rocket.” A shadow flitted across his face. “Back when I was a young man, something like this would have started the Third World War.”

  A curly-haired sailor appeared in the doorway, looking like a uniformed cherub. He had been running, and now he said breathlessly, “Captain! They’re here.”

  Korodin gave a brief nod. “Good. Thank you. I’ll be there at once.” He looked at Adrian and Charlotte. “And I would ask you to join me on the bridge as soon as you can.” He glanced at the doctor, who was lurking in the background. “Do what you can for her. This is important.” Another glance, this time at the orderly who had looked so shamefaced earlier. “You show them the way.”

  Then he left, followed by the other two orderlies.

  The doctor checked Charlotte over one more time and seemed satisfied with what he saw. “You have come through it very well. You will probably have no frostbite,” he told her in Russian. He was visibly relieved not to have to speak English any longer. “Before you leave our ship, I will give you a cream and tell you how to apply it to the wounds on your feet.”