The Tides of Nemesis (The Windows of Heaven Book 4)

by K. G. Powderly Jr.

  Mother asked, “What does that mean?”

  Her husband gulped some diluted wine. “I made several soundings over the next hour, and found the seabed to be more level, although that could mean we are merely over a plateau. The implications are clear in any case; either the ship is drifting into a shallow zone, or the waters are starting to go down. The increased speed of the windward current leads me to believe that it’s just a shallow, though it may be a combination of the two.”

  Iyapeti said, “How can we tell which?”

  “Until I’m ready to sacrifice a main drogue stone to anchor us in one spot long enough for multiple soundings, we won’t know for sure. Actual retreating waters would likely cause steady currents against the wind, because the Earth’s celestial attraction would pull the water into sinking basins. The odds of drainage and wind going the same direction are small.”

  Khumi curled his lip. “Yeah, but it could still happen.”

  Pahp glared at him. “At roughly three-hundred-sixty to one odds, I think not! Until now, we haven’t even needed to trim the secondary and tertiary drogues, except to compensate for heavy tides, because the winds and water currents have run pretty much in the same direction—as Q’Enukkian Physics predicts that two fluids on a rotating sphere would behave. That will change when the waters retreat; perhaps suddenly.”

  U’Sumi asked, “How can we tell that from just another giant tide?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Tides. The big tides continue. Tiamatu’s core fragments must be taking more time to depart than we expected.”

  A’Nu-Ahki nodded. “I expect super-tides’ll come and go for some time yet—perhaps even after there’s land. That’s one problem—we will be dealing with the tides before any significant drop in average flood depth. Only now there’s the possibility of reefs, and volcanic boils to consider.”

  “Why don’t we just wait for the land to appear on the horizon then?” U’Sumi grumbled, fatigued by the thought of adding other tasks to their already enormous workload.

  “We could be swept into a new ocean basin without knowing it, as the waters retreat,” A’Nu-Ahki said. “If that happened, we would float helplessly until we ran out of supplies—hypothetically speaking, of course.”

  “How do you know that hasn’t already happened?” Tiva asked. Her trapped-rabbit eyes bulged from her rich brown face.

  The Elder smiled. “Aside from the fact that E’Yahavah didn’t bring us here to abandon us, I doubt we’d be getting into shallower water if this were a sea basin. I think we’re over what will soon be land.”

  “But you don’t know,” Khumi said. “And with the compass still doing its dance, you have no way to know!”

  T’Qinna rolled her eyes. “Even if the compass stopped spinning, we’d still have no idea how to take a bearing that matched the old cardinal points. The sky is so overcast we can barely tell east and west. With the sun and moon out of course, there’s no way to know if even that’s a complete match any more. What if the North Pole doesn’t return to the same place?”

  U’Sumi shoveled in a mouthful of the insipid bean paste, and washed it down with some water. It congealed at the bottom of his esophagus, and stopped short in an acidic knot just above his stomach.

  ‘Miha said, “We’re all talking like we actually know what we’re saying! Why don’t you all just listen to your father? He may not know everything, but he knew enough to hear El-N’Lil, and the Divine Word-speaker to build this ship.”

  A sudden lurch with a long creak shuddered through the hull. The deck leaned about ten degrees over to starboard. Howling winds blasted crosswise through the four open ventilation slits in the loft.

  A’Nu-Ahki rose from the table and shouted, “Khumi, trim the port secondaries! ‘Peti, you take the tertiaries. ‘Sumi, you’re with me.”

  U’Sumi followed his father up the ladder to the mezzanine, and then to the bow conning shack. A’Nu-Ahki hobbled for the window, unlocked it with the key he wore chained around his neck, and slid open the cover. Rather than standing in the shelter of a following sea, the bow of Barque of Aeons had turned perpendicular to the gale, despite the sturdy wind foil overhead. The ship rolled from port to starboard, as squalls slammed horrendous waves, broadside, into its hull. A stronger contrary current gripped the vessel’s heavy draft, and turned it at a right angle from its former course.

  U’Sumi shouted to his father over the storm, “We really shouldn’t argue with you so much!”

  “I don’t think trimming the secondary stones can compensate for this!” said his father. “We need to drop anchor, and lower the hull pool lid!”

  A’Nu-Ahki slid the cover shut, and circled the instrument console to go aft. U’Sumi made to follow, but stopped when he saw the giant compass.

  “Pahp, Look at the compass!”

  His father turned, and squinted at the crystal dome.

  The needle had stopped its slow rotations. They were on a heading of one-null-three degrees, east-southeast.

  “Let’s get to the pool!” the Old Man shouted.

  They stumbled down the mezzanine, zigzagging into the loft bulkheads on either side with each deck roll. Directly ahead, water sloshed over the hull pool rim. Khumi threw the lever that sent the pool lid down the drive screws under its own weight. The pitch and roll emergency sensors on the automated system had not been designed for such rapid deck reversals.

  “Never mind the auxiliary drogues!” A’Nu-Ahki shouted, as he limped into the pool area. “Help me drop the main stone!”

  Khumi asked, “To the bottom?”

  “To the bottom. The waters are departing!”

  Khumi stopped the pool lid from closing completely at about a half-cubit, and joined U’Sumi and their father by the main capstan.

  Iyapeti, who had been trimming the port quarter stones, noticed the commotion by the giant winch, and came forward. “What’s happening?” he yelled over the screeching air vents.

  “E’Yahavah’s illustrating Pahp’s point!” U’Sumi replied.

  A’Nu-Ahki pulled the release lever that disengaged the capstan’s lock, and allowed the main drogue stone to make a controlled plunge for the bottom. Khumi manned the sounding winch, and dropped a new plumb line. The anchor struck the ocean floor, grabbed at some irregularity there, and yanked the ship into a slow drag, with a halt that knocked everyone over. A moment later the plumb line also went slack.

  Khumi winched it back taut, and shouted, “Four-hundred and seventeen cubits—no, wait!” The line went slack again. He re-adjusted the tension, and said, “Make that three hundred and ninety-six cubits!”

  ‘Peti yelled, “It’s draining too fast!”

  A’Nu-Ahki winched in the slack anchor line until the weight of the drogue stone stalled the capstan motor. The main stones were too heavy to haul up once dropped. Moments later, he was able to haul in about ten more cubits of cable due to the receding water.

  Khumi said, “Three hundred and seventy-nine cubits!”

  “We’ll lock it at cruising depth,” A’Nu-Ahki said. “That way the incoming tide will draw us back up, and wash us in closer to high ground!”

  “Three hundred and sixty cubits!”

  U’Sumi’s father spooled in the remaining cable, and locked the capstan at cruising depth.

  “Three hundred and twenty-four—no, wait! It’s coming back! Three hundred and thirty-two…”

  The seas rushed in even more rapidly than they had departed, but instead of lifting the ship with its anchor off bottom, the main drogue cable went taut with a long, painful creak. U’Sumi peeked under the nearly closed hull pool lid, and saw the waters reach up through the walled-off decks as if to grab him. The entire vessel began to groan, and list by the stern.

  He shouted, “Cut the main cable; it’s snagged!”

  A’Nu-Ahki nodded. He and Iyapeti manhandled the cutters onto the thick steel-weave line where it left the capstan. Metallic twanging echoed through the loft, as curls of the ca
ble’s outer windings snapped from the stress even before the cutters could close on them. The main capstan trans-axle itself began to shake, while billows of ocean water spilled over the hull pool bulkhead at the aft end and nearly washed the cutters away.

  Before they could close the bite on the line, the hole in the drogue stone must have given way. The deck jumped, and the cable whipped up into the pool lid with a furious clang, warping the enormous steel plate.

  The ship rushed upward to resume its normal draft. Wild returning seas left U’Sumi’s stomach churning in the depths, while the vessel spun out of control in the sudden wave swell, a total slave of the new tidal currents.

  “Make ready to drop a new drogue!” A’Nu-Ahki roared over the waters, soaked and clutching the capstan winch controls.

  Iyapeti shouted back, “It’s too rough to handle the stone tackle from the rack to the pool. Maybe we should try the tiller-oar first!”

  “Do it!”

  Khumi was already attempting to raise the pool lid, only to find the drive screws had also warped. He cursed. “We can’t do anything until we dismantle the pool lid assembly!”

  Iyapeti said, “In this sea? It’s suicide!”

  U’Sumi only distantly heard the cacophony of animals panicking below through the ocean’s roar in his ears.

  “We’re not going to escape ‘this kind of sea’ unless we can drop the tiller and then the stone!” their father insisted. He nodded for Khumi to go ahead with the dismantling.

  U’Sumi dove for the tool locker on the starboard side of the pool loft, and produced two large spanners. He braced himself, and handed one up to Khumi, who had already climbed the diagonal stanchion of the aft joist that held the bolts for the first drive screw assembly.

  U’Sumi scrambled forward and pulled down the overhead access ladder. Centripetal demons pulled at his body, as he crawled up to where he could just reach the forward drive screw mounting bolts. He paused to vomit up the bit of bean paste he had eaten, and then attacked the coupling.

  Iyapeti swung the railed overhead hoist over to catch the lid as it fell, while A’Nu-Ahki rigged the tiller-oar tackle, attaching it to the main capstan. A test of the trans-axle proved that it had not bent under the snagged drogue.

  U’Sumi’s head spun as the first of four bolts dropped from his screw mount assembly. Water flew in through a ventilation slit, and nearly knocked him from his perch, but it also shocked him back from his dizziness.

  Iyapeti yelled, “The hoist is secured to the lid fasteners!” He then completed the cut on the compromised drogue stone cable.

  Khumi worked on his last bolt, while U’Sumi fumbled at his second.

  “Hurry up! We need to drop our last bolts together!”

  U‘Sumi tried to work faster, but this only made his hands cramp.

  Another transverse wave hit. U‘Sumi saw his spanner land on the warped pool lid, and slide over the edge into the bottomless well.

  “I dropped my spanner!”

  “What?” Khumi asked.

  “I dropped the spanner! It went into the pool!”

  “Well, isn’t that just marvelous!” Khumi roared, as he shimmied down his overhead brace, and scurried to U‘Sumi’s ladder, spanner in hand. “Get down!” he snapped.

  U‘Sumi slunk down the ladder, too sick to feel much humiliation.

  “‘Peti, I need you up where I was!” Khumi shouted. “The last bolt is only hand tight! When I give the word, we drop them together!”

  The lid assembly bucked to break loose from its last moorings.

  U’Sumi moved off to cling to a frame pylon, and only vaguely followed the final removal of the pool cover. When the bolts dropped, the entire assembly swung out from over the pool, an enraged pendulum on the hoist tackles. It almost knocked the heads off U’Sumi’s brothers, who had not taken time to attach any stabilizing guy-wires. Iyapeti leaped from his perch in the rafters, and jockeyed the hoist to move with the lid’s momentum, bringing it down to the deck on the port side of the hull pool.

  Another wave struck broadside just as the assembly slid to a halt. An angry claw of white water reached up through the pool, over its walls, and snatched Khumi into the slot-shaped hole from his hold on the ladder.

  U’Sumi fell backward, and struck his head. The ship swirled in the gigantic wave trough, its centripetal force helping him regain his feet with his back wedged against the stanchion. He lacked the balance to keep himself there long. When the deck leaned forward, U’Sumi used the momentum to leap at the hull pool bulkhead, and peer down inside.

  Khumi hung by the tips of his fingers above angry breakers that slammed against the hole’s reinforced sides.

  U’Sumi jumped up, leaning over the pool rim to grab his brother, while his own legs dangled above the deck. Khumi gripped him at each elbow, as U’Sumi clasped his brother’s forearms.

  Another wave almost flipped U’Sumi over the rim, into the pit with his brother, but he caught himself by bending hard at the waist and flexing his stomach and thighs. Using the momentum of the reverse swell, U’Sumi pulled himself and his brother back over the bulkhead, until he fell over backward onto the deck. Khumi now hung, from the waist up, over the pool rim. Then A’Nu-Ahki’s wiry youngest son swung a leg over, diving onto U’Sumi before another wave could toss him back into the bottomless pool.

  Iyapeti and A’Nu-Ahki appeared not to have even seen Khumi’s near fatal fall because they had been busy detaching the hoist lines from the lid assembly. By the time they made ready to re-attach the lanyard to the tiller-oar, and lower it through the pool; both Khumi and U’Sumi had regained their feet with grim smiles and a quick handshake. They pulled the hoist forward to where the main line connected with the tiller’s wide blade end. Then U’Sumi helped his brothers draw it with pulleys toward the capstan tackle, which they would use to control the oar blade.

  Securing the oar required two men to brave dangling over the angry waters from the pool again. This time Iyapeti and U’Sumi attached the hoist lines fore and aft, each using the detachable overhead ladder in turn, as deck movements permitted. They then released the oar from its mount, and the trolley-hoist lowered the blade end of it into the pool.

  U’Sumi heard his father call to him from over by the capstan, where the Elder manhandled the tilling tackle onto the rotor cleats. A’Nu-Ahki pulled something shiny from his cloak, and held it up. U’Sumi fought his way aft to hear him. His father held Yafutu’s old hand compass, pointed to it, and then clipped it to the brass railing around the main capstan spool.

  A’Nu-Ahki shouted, “Go to the compass console, open the window, and oracle back to me a heading that puts the bow leeward to the storm! High tide should align the currents with the wind again, at least for a time!”

  U’Sumi zigzagged forward through the mezzanine, and climbed to the bow shack. Wind and water blasted his face when he opened the window. Air forced him backward around the compass console, and into the chair. The ship spun out of control in each giant wave trough. It took several revolutions for him to mark which heading would hold the bow leeward.

  He switched on the ship-wide oracle, and shouted, “Come to course null-nine-six!”

  Slowly, painfully, with many over-shots and adjustments, the tiller-oar brought Barque of Aeons onto a heading that tacked between null-eight-two and one-null-five degrees—roughly east. The new course was just stable enough to allow them to hoist another main drogue stone to the stand-by harness, and attach it to the capstan line for a new drop. The tiller had to be disengaged and retracted before they could lower the new stone—the work of another half-hour, during which the ship began its erratic spin again.

  Finally the stone went down to its cruising depth, and the currents began to pull the ship into its lee—back to a more stable form of mayhem.

  U’Sumi shook, unable to resist catching his breath in the console chair. He did not rejoin his father and brothers until Khumi began to drop the plumb line for a new sounding, after the drogue had alread
y reached cruising depth. The spindle whined until the line went slack at a depth of five-hundred and twenty cubits.

  “Not near as deep as before,” U’Sumi said, as his brother cut and released the cord through the pool, and reloaded a new spool on the winch.

  “No,” Khumi said, “the water’s definitely on its way out. But what happens when we ground outside the cozy shelter we enjoyed when we started this voyage, and these four-hundred-cubit tides wash back in on us?”

  U’Sumi was too exhausted to think of an answer.

  With the slowing of the rift eruptions, the newly-spread ocean floors had a chance to settle, as contraction cracks deepened into great stone alligator scales out from the rift zones. They appeared to Q’Enukki as the serpentine dorsal columns of a horrendous brood of fiery leviathans entwined around the Earth’s crust, all sinking into a long fitful nap on the new seabeds. The ocean floors sank, due to the contraction of the deep cooling plates under their own weight. Settling of the mantle currents, further below, no longer pushed the plastic magmas upward because of the decrease in fluid displacement from the slowing of the subducting ocean floor slabs.

  Cavitation currents across the separating continents gave way to non-cyclical sheet erosions at low tide. Nearly all the remainder of the most superficial sediment layers washed into the sinking basins. At first, the shift was subtle. Then, a tidal resonance developed between the moon and the departing core fragments. It was too weak now to pull at the mantle, though there would be massive adjustments and occasional horizontal tectonic spurts in the Earth’s crust for many centuries to come. Volcanism would gradually slow over the next millennium—interspersed by super-eruptions.

  Yet gravitational effect on the oceans and winds remained extreme.

  Two days after they dropped the new drogue stone, T’Qinna spotted volcanic boils off to what had become northeast. Patches of bubbling water stretched away into the mists outside the bow window in a dead calm sea.