by Dana Fredsti
He leaned in, resting his cheek against hers.
“Ms. Bly, you’re such a beautiful young woman. I am so looking forward to making you my—how did you put it?—my concubine. I trust you have no objections?”
“None.”
“Now let me hear you say, ‘I want you to make love to me.’”
“I want you to make love to me.”
Her lack of passion annoyed him. “Does that excite you?”
“I feel nothing,” she replied, her voice that of a ghost.
The light in her brilliant sea-green eyes had vanished, leaving them lifeless as those of a corpse. Mehta’s smile died as his lust shriveled into disappointment.
“We’ll need to work on your enthusiasm,” he muttered. Leaving the three standing in silence, he left the room and walked down the main corridor toward the bridge.
Outside the main viewport, the day was drawing to a close, the red sky darkening from bruised crimson to indigo. His goal, the earth-bound star on the horizon, lay directly ahead, with a constellation of lesser lights laid out like a jeweled royal robe spread before it. Behind it, the black but glittering shadow of the Mediterranean stretched. The sight was breathtaking.
“Computer, put us in a holding pattern over the city. I want to circle it all night long.” The Ship obeyed without a word. Mehta exhaled, frowning. Everything was going to plan, but nonetheless, a bitter emptiness ate at him.
He was very much alone.
21
Somewhere in the Western Desert, North Africa
Dawn – Seven days after the Event
Amber opened her eyes and sat up. The soft light suffusing the tent’s material told her it was just before dawn.
A tent?
The last thing she remembered, she’d been riding through the moonlit desert with Cam. How had she ended up in a sleeping bag in a tent?
Someone was in the bag next to her, snoring gently. Cam. She reached over and shook him awake.
“Cam. Cam, wake up! What happened? How did we get here?”
He rolled over, scowling at her through half-opened eyes before pulling the sleeping bag over his head again.
“Good morning, Amber. I hope I’m not disturbing you.” The voice of the Vanuatu came from outside the tent. Leaving Cam to reclaim his sleep, Amber felt around the tent for a zipper. There wasn’t one, but it seemed to intuit her hand’s search, and the nylon-like material split open to let her out.
The hovercycle and the rover drone both hovered faithfully just outside. All around them, dunes of sand stretched in every direction. It was still cool, but she could feel the promise of the desert heat that would come soon enough.
“Where are we?” Amber asked. As she did, she felt another sensation, growing steadily.
“You traveled a considerable distance during the night before stopping and setting up camp. We are now somewhere in the Western Egyptian Desert between the Qattara and Al Fayyum Depressions. I can provide more exact coordinates if you wish.”
Amber looked around for a likely place to pee, settling on the other side of the tent. The rover followed her like a puppy.
“Uh… Ship? A little privacy, please?”
“Of course. My apologies.” The drone retreated to a discreet distance. Amber watched it float away, quickly did her business, and stepped back out in front of the tent.
“Amber,” the rover said, “may I ask you a question?”
“Go for it.”
“Your plan is to head north to pursue the Vanuatu, is it not?”
“That’s right.”
“Approximately seven hours ago, you abruptly veered off due east without comment, and would not respond to repeated attempts to ask about the matter. Do you remember this incident?”
“No, not at all,” Amber said with growing concern. “We were headed out across the desert, going north—like you said—and then… I… I don’t remember what happened.” Amber’s stomach took a nosedive as she realized she’d had another black-out, like the one on the Vanuatu.
“That’s quite remarkable. It is a good sign that you are communicating freely, and appear to be in full possession of your faculties again. It’s unfortunate, however, that we don’t currently have access to the sickbay. Perhaps we should discuss a contingency plan, in the event you experience a similar episode.”
“What do you mean?”
“Perhaps Cam can be instructed to take over piloting the hovercycle during this period of uncertainty. Also, optimal travel requires us to revise our direction, and proceed toward the north once again.”
After a brief moment of consideration, Amber shook her head.
“No, and no,” she said firmly. “We don’t have time to teach Cam the basics of driving a hovercycle—he’s never even ridden a bike. And we should keep moving this direction.”
“May I ask you why?”
“I—”
She stopped.
Amber didn’t have a good reason. She appeared to be leading them on a wild goose chase, and yet… she couldn’t shake the compulsion it was the right decision.
“I’d like to keep following this route—until we get to the Nile.”
“Amber, I hope you won’t be offended when I say this raises some concerns. Nonetheless, I fully support whatever you decide.”
“Thank you.”
Amber jostled Cam awake again, this time with more success. The tent and sleeping bags compacted down to an almost weightless bundle the size of a sandwich roll, and the tiny cubes of travel rations they ate for breakfast were surprisingly filling. Amber almost made a joke about Elven Lembas bread, but the reference would be lost on Cam. They ate quickly and broke camp, eager to get going before the worst of the heat.
* * *
We never would have made it this far on foot, Amber thought grimly as they sped over the dunes. In fact, they probably wouldn’t have made it halfway across the veldt shard before succumbing either to the heat or another hungry carnivore.
She wondered how many different shards they’d crossed so far. All of the sections around here were desert, so the demarcations were difficult to see. With the hot Egyptian wind constantly re-sculpting the landscape, there was no real way to tell. If they dug underfoot, would they find ancient relics, freshly-laid dinosaur eggs, or somebody’s cell phone?
In the back of her mind lurked the suspicion that she was taking them on a wild goose chase, for no good reason. Why did she want to head east so badly, anyway? Was the Ship right to be worried about her? There was so much going on in her subconscious these days, she didn’t know what to think.
So she made herself stop thinking about it.
“I have good news,” the rover said. “There is a large water source up ahead.”
She and Cam both let out celebratory whoops. On the knife-edge of the horizon they could see a thin gray-green blur. The blur broadened into a line that stretched into a brighter green, and then they left the desert altogether as the terrain changed.
Red gave way to green—hot, saffron sand to cool, lush marshland. Amber tried increasing the vertical lift to avoid cutting through thickets of reeds, rushes, and sedge, but after a few stomach-churning leaps she gave up and treated them as obstacles, seeking to avoid them instead.
The tall grasses were full of life, too. Knots of tapir-like mammals the size of chubby St. Bernards rooted around in the muck. Swallows and thrushes wove intricate aerial patterns in pursuit of honeybees and dragonflies. After a few minutes the marsh reeds became dominated by papyrus and flowering lotus blossoms, marking the boundary of a vast freshwater lake. At the water’s edge, flotillas of wild ducks and geese bobbed along, and the occasional ibis patiently stalked frogs and fish.
“Do we want to try the cycle on the water?” Amber called back to Cam.
“We do!” he answered without hesitation.
Amber grinned and gunned the cycle. They burst out of the reeds, scattering the startled shorebirds, and sailed across the surface, kicking up a spectacu
lar fantail in their wake. The rover sped alongside them, staying close as a fretful mother.
The lake was enormous—Amber couldn’t see the far shore. Were there inland seas in Egypt? Up ahead a clump of long, low shapes caught her eye, but they turned out to be sand bars. On a whim, she turned the cycle toward the longest one and sailed down it.
“Amber—look out!”
The end of the sandbar began to rise. She revved the bike forward, ramping off the end in a dramatic jump just as an enormous skull lifted out of the water, snapping its gigantic jaws. This was no sandbar. It was a crocodile the size of a bus.
Holy shit.
The cycle’s leap took them through the air to splash down again just as the croc’s massive body crashed behind them. The resulting wave slammed into the back of the bike, thrusting it forward, then somersaulting over, flinging them head over heels. Bike, rider, and passenger spiraled away in separate directions. The crocodile thrashed after all its scattered morsels.
Instantly submerged, Amber swam frantically for the surface as the pounding water tumbled her about like a rag in a washer. Then the massive reptile smashed down nearly on top of her, its jaws crashing closed scant inches from her torso. She could smell the carrion stench of its breath even as the splash of the impact sent her hurling away again.
* * *
Thrown under the water and disoriented, Cam struggled to reach the surface. A shape came slicing through the water straight for him—the hovercycle, corkscrewing past him. He broke the surface, shaking his head to clear the blinding spray from his eyes just in time to see the water dragon headed his way.
Where is Amber?
Gasping for another breath, he dove back under the water, kicking frantically to distance himself from the deadly jaws. He surfaced for air again.
“Amber!” he yelled, but he couldn’t see her anywhere. Another movement caught his eye. A stone’s throw away, the unpiloted cycle bobbed crazily in the water, trying to buck its way back into the air. He paddled hard, swimming toward the machine and away from the beast as fast as he could.
Sensing his movement in the water, the reptile snaked toward him with sinuous lashings of its mighty tail, twice as fast as any man. It closed the distance between them in only a moment, and its jaws—longer than Cam’s whole body—opened wide to snap him up.
Something whistled through the air arrow-fast and struck the creature in its eye socket. A cacophony of flashing light and ear-splitting sound erupted as the rover danced around its head, darting at the monster’s eyes again.
The beast dove under the water to escape the flying ball. Cam swam without pause until he reached the cycle, using the handle to drag himself up into the saddle. Imitating what he had watched Amber do, he twisted the handlebar, making the cycle roar up out of the water. It bucked like a wild horse until he managed to grab hold of the other handle to slow his mount.
“Where is Amber?” he shouted to the rover, and it shot off to find her. Leaning over to bring the hoverbike around, he watched carefully for the water dragon. It burst out of the water and only a crazy twist of the handlebars kept the nightmare jaws from clamping down on him. Reaching a safe distance—at least for the moment—he spotted the rover hovering over Amber. She was flailing her arms in the water, and he increased his speed again.
“Grab on!” he yelled, slowing down only enough to reach for her hand and haul her up behind him. The cycle raced forward, narrowly ahead of one final snap of the monster’s voracious maw.
She grasped him tightly as they sped off, drenched, gasping for breath, leaving behind a long fantail of water spray and a frustrated prehistoric reptile with an unsatisfied appetite.
22
The Island of Pharos
Alexandria Harbor
1165 Ab urbe condita (412 A.D.)
Morning – Six days after the Event
A shining tower of white marble dominated the tiny island of Pharos. For eight centuries it had been the tallest building in the world. By day, a great mirror of polished bronze reflected brilliant sunlight from its beacon. By night, that same bronze disk projected the light of a furnace into a beam visible to ships at sea one hundred and fifty leagues away.
To enter the tower, a visitor first ascended through a massive square building two hundred and forty feet tall. Above that a three-hundred-foot stairway continued up an eight-sided tower to a small octagonal balcony at the top, affording a spectacular view of the sea. A final cylindrical structure extended up to the open cupola housing the beacon itself. At the very peak, atop the roof of the cupola, a large statue of Poseidon gazed down upon his kingdom.
Far below, on the rocky shore of the island, a team of four investigators looked out on the Mediterranean surf. There had been extraordinary phenomena across the city, with reports from the local fishermen of still more strange events—for example, the dead body lying before them on the rocks.
Calix, magistrianos to the prefect, was an Egyptian, though he preferred to dress in the current Roman style with a belted tunic and hose under a clasped mantle of patterned crimson. A handsome man, sharp-eyed with olive complexion. He kept his black hair close-shorn.
His role was to serve as one of the agentes in rebus. Officially speaking, this meant he was entrusted to be a courier of sensitive imperial information. Off the record, it meant the scope of his duties could be greatly expanded as needed—which was constantly. At his side stood his Greek slave Onesimus, tall and broad-backed with a head of curly hair, used to serving on atypical missions for the civic government of Alexandria, capital of the Egyptian Diocese of the Eastern Roman Empire.
Next to them was another slave, Aspasius. Despite his Greek name, he was Hyrcanian, from south of the Caspian Sea. A thick-browed and silver-haired man, he said little, given to think carefully before he spoke. In his own way, the Hyrcanian was as much a scholar as a servant, and devoted to his mistress of many years.
She was the fourth member of the morning’s expedition, a striking Greek-Egyptian woman of a certain age. Like Calix, she had an olive complexion and keen eyes that displayed her delight in observation and learning. Though of aristocratic bearing, she nonetheless dressed modestly in a simple chiton and tribõn—a homespun philosopher’s cloak—for a wrap. Her beauty charmed those who saw her, but her brilliance and learning entranced all who had read her books or heard her teachings. She was Hypatia, the philosopher, mathematician, and astronomer, and the most famous woman in the world.
Gulls circled overhead, protesting the group’s presence, eager for their own chance to examine the body stretched out on the rocks, being lapped at by the waves. Calix knelt down by the deceased. Crabs scuttled away from his reach. Hypatia turned to the younger slave.
“Pace it out, Onesimus,” she said. “I want to know how long, from end to end.”
The Greek nodded and carefully made his way across the rocks, then back again.
“I make it thirty-two paces, tail-tip to head, my lady,” he reported. Aspasius dutifully recorded the figure down on his sheaf of papyrus.
Calix turned to her. “Do you suppose it is one of the same beasts that appeared in Lake Mareotis? Its neck is certainly long enough.”
Hypatia shook her head. “No, this is something new. Those are freshwater creatures, this one lives in the sea. And their feet are more like those of elephants, not flippers.” She knelt beside the magistrianos for a closer look at the creature’s head. “Also, the lake-dwelling animals are herbivores. These teeth are for consuming meat.”
Watching her examination carefully, Aspasius sketched the body and head with a thin stylus of charcoal.
Calix nodded. “Any idea what killed it?”
She thought for a moment, then got up to take a few steps over and crouch by the long, reptilian neck. The smooth flesh was crisscrossed with a number of perfectly circular scars.
“These are curious,” she murmured, running her fingertips over them.
“I’ve never seen a harpoon leave marks like that
,” Calix agreed.
“Nor I, though I’m no expert there. If I were to guess, I’d hazard that it got these from a kraken of the deep. They are said to grow to monstrous size, though few men have ever seen one.”
“Or lived to tell of it, if they had.”
Hypatia stood again. “There are scholars at the Museion who will want to further examine this beast before it rots.” She pointed out to the shipwreck stranded on a sandbar about three hundred paces away. “But I think we’ll find answers to our current problem there.” It had been a Chelandion, a bireme galley-ship. Sliced in half with its banks of oars poking up into the sky at all angles, it looked more like some dead insect.
“The fishermen said it washed up after the morning of the Wrath-Fall,” Calix said.
Hypatia looked at him. “The Wrath-Fall? Is that what they’re calling it in the agora?”
“Seems fitting, doesn’t it? The sky turning into a pillar of fire ringing the city, the return of the wilderness all around us, all these giant beasts, and the great wave striking us afterward. What else could that be but the wrath of the gods?”
“The people in the streets of Pompeii and Herculaneum must have asked the same thing when they looked up and saw the rain of ash and fire falling toward them.”
He raised an eyebrow. “You see all that’s befallen, and call it the mere hand of Nature?”
“Is not everything done by Nature’s hand, even if the gods call it forth?” she retorted. “All I say is this—if this is the wrath of the gods, they have an odd sense of humor, and poor aim.”
“Hear me, Father Zeus,” he said, raising his face to the sky in mock piety. “Throw your next lightning bolt at her, and not me!”
“No, truly,” she protested. “Look here. I grant you the ring of fire was terrifying, extraordinary, and majestic—and for that spectacle, for the wilderness that now surrounds us, and the arrival of these giant beasts, I can offer no explanation. Yet here we remain, alive and well.”
