Atlantis Endgame Part 2

"It's possible," Ashe said. "In which case none of us would exist."

Eveleen shut her eyes, struggling-as she always did- with the idea of time and what the higher-math experts termed superpositions. After all I've been through, you'd think I could get used to thinking in the conditional, nonrelativistic tenses, superpositions. After all I've been through, you'd think I could get used to thinking in the conditional, nonrelativistic tenses, she thought wryly. And she noticed Ross rubbing his forehead; he was having just the same trouble. she thought wryly. And she noticed Ross rubbing his forehead; he was having just the same trouble.

"The key thing to remember is that we seem to have gone back," Ashe said. He added with a faint, sardonic smile, "I say 'we' even though all we have is Eveleen's earring. But I know Ross won't be kept from going on this mission-"

"d.a.m.n straight."

"And I confess I would pull any strings I had to pull to be there as well."

Ross flipped his pencil into the air. "All right, so what we're looking at is a trip to the past. See if we find any Baldies. If we don't, we come back. If we do, then what?"

"Circ.u.mvent them, of course," Eveleen said.

Ashe nodded at her. "If they did tamper with Thera's volcano, we have to find out what they intend. We might also be the ones who caused the evacuation-"

"Oh, yes," Eveleen exclaimed. "I was just thinking of that. Those people have no other way of knowing, do they? So do you think we are the ones who got them safely away?"

"We won't know anything until we get there," Ashe said. "And well begin training at once; we will have to a.s.sume that time is pressing."

"Why?" Linnea Edel asked, leaning forward. "If we can truly travel back to any time-a concept I still have trouble grasping, even with the evidence before my eyes-why can't we just take a few months-years, even-to prepare and go back at our leisure?"

Gordon Ashe indicated the three earrings. "To put it simply, the anomaly of this earring being here twice might be something the Baldies can vector in on. We don't want to find out if your discovering that earring, and our bringing it here to its original self, has triggered some kind of detector; the sooner we go back to 1628 B.C. the better."

"So who is going?" Ross asked, hands on his knees.

Kelgarries said, "You, and our top two Greek Time Agents. Stavros Lemkis is down in the labs experimenting with some of the technology you brought back from your previous mission." He nodded at Ross. "Konstantin Skrumbos, our maritime expert on that time, is flying back from the Aegean right now, so he can join the briefing sessions."

Eveleen felt a surge of excitement. Few women agents went into human prehistory because so few cultures had permitted women to move about. But the Minoans had been different.

Milliard got to his feet. "Jonathan?"

A youngish man stepped forward. He looked tired. Eveleen felt a surge of compa.s.sion; had he been up for days and nights? But tiredness wouldn't explain that painful quirk to his underlids, the lines beside his mouth. This man was deeply unhappy.

"As yet," Jonathan said, "no one has established what language the people of Kalliste spoke. Linear B has proved to be an Ancient Greek form, but those tablets date from a later time. The few written artifacts from our time are written in hieroglyphs we call Linear A, which have recently been recorded. They, too, proved to be a kind of proto-Greek, but we have very few words in that language-not enough for your communication needs."

He paused to look around. "There are many archaeologists who still feel that the Kallistans first came over from Anatolia, that they are Hitt.i.tes or Luvians, or even Amorites, bringing the bull worship with them, though it developed into a much more peaceful form. We've put together a core vocabulary that might enable you to understand some words, or at least to begin to form a vocabulary. You will pose as traders, say from Egypt, and we'll give you some Ancient Egyptian language training as well as some Ancient Greek, since traders in that area did get all around the eastern Mediterranean."

Milliard frowned. "The thing to keep in mind-never lose sight of-is the fact that in this situation, we know, or think we know, the year the volcano exploded, but we don't know the day. So we'll put you where we think you're safe, but you'll have to act fast. There's no time to be digging in and doing linguistic studies, no matter how tempting they might be." He cast a meaningful glance Ashe's way, but Eveleen wondered if the warning was actually for Mrs. Edel, who had been listening with intense focus.

"Yes," Ross said, his wary expression back. "Fast. I like fast."

"Marilyn can show you the sim on what happens when the volcano goes off, based on evidence from St. Pierre early in the twentieth century, and Krakatoa, and St. Helens. It's fairly grim," he said.

No one spoke; Eveleen saw Linnea Edel looking down at tightly gripped hands.

Kelgarries spoke up, looking tense and tired and very serious, "What we can be sure of is that nothing within a hundred miles of the blast-whatever day it occurred on-could have lived through it."

CHAPTER 4.

THE AEGEAN SKY was mild as milk, a pale, hazy blue with gauzy brush strokes of high cirrus that reminded Ross of southern California. The cargo vessel now plowing its way through the choppy seas could have been heading for Catalina Island. Strange, how you expect the cradle of civilization to be exotic, to strike the senses with profound or dramatic impact. Not like familiar territory.

"Look there. Just off to the northwest," Gordon Ashe said, coming down one of the steel ladders and pointing off the starboard bow.

Ross turned his attention briefly seaward. Just past a smaller craft, equally nondescript, he saw b.u.mps on the horizon. He heard clunking and clanging on the steel ladder from the bridge. Down came Eveleen and Linnea Edel, the latter with more care. All of them had field gla.s.ses. Ross pulled up his own pair and shaded the sun with one hand while he focused with the other.

Thera, at this distance, even looked a little like Catalina. He envisioned yesterday's flyover: an island cl.u.s.ter looking like a half-submerged donut. The center, now a peaceful lagoon, with brilliant clear water and a couple of islands dotting it, was the sleeping caldera of the mighty volcano that had blasted fifty cubic miles of matter into the sky.

Everyone studied it in silence as the cargo ship made its way in a slow circle all round the island cl.u.s.ter. Behind them, glimpsed earlier that morning, lay Crete, a long, thin blade of an island. Way off to the northwest, behind Thera, lay more of the Greek islands, and finally Greece itself. To the northeast lay what was once ancient Anatolia, Turkey now.

Getting a basic familiarity with the island and its surroundings now would save them a lot of time when the beautiful little craft lying shrouded in the cargo vessel's hold was launched through the great time-gate two nights hence. They wouldn't, of course, limit themselves to seventeenth-century B.C.E. technology: the ship had a small, virtually silent engine concealed in its stern, but it was only for emergencies. And there'd certainly be no GPS satellites to lock onto, so they'd be navigating using techniques that differed very little from those of the mariners of that period. Best, as always, to go in with as much information as possible, even though there was no way of knowing just how much the surrounding sea and islands had been changed by the volcanic explosion.

It was hard to imagine this peaceful, sunny scene vanishing under a fireball of steam and vaporized rock, then choking under a pall of volcanic ash as glowing volcanic rock fell like h.e.l.lish hail. Ross shook his head. He knew the reality was the huge magma dome deep underneath the island, just welling up, shouldering aside the rock around it. ... Somehow going up against a volcano seemed tougher than facing aliens with laser weapons. You can't even pretend to negotiate with a volcano.

He felt a nudge against his arm, and saw Eveleen at his shoulder, silently studying the biggest island. They were close enough to see striated rock, compressed levels of pumice and ash angling up, indicating tectonic activity no less powerful- only slower.

"I don't care what that lady finds," Ross muttered, glancing over at Linnea Edel. "In and out." don't care what that lady finds," Ross muttered, glancing over at Linnea Edel. "In and out."

Eveleen grunted in agreement. "What bothers me is that they don't have dates for the Big Blow. It's educated guesswork, but still guesswork."

"I don't mind being put in there a year in advance," Ross said. "I don't want to jet through the gate to find ourselves in the middle of the eruption."

"No." Ashe appeared on Ross's other side, silent of step. "None of us does." He looked amused.

Ross figured he'd complained enough, so he didn't respond. The truth was, he flat-out did not like this mission. There were too many variables. On the surface it looked easy: go in, see if the Baldies are around, and if they are, find out what they're up to. But in Ross's experience, the "easy ones" were the ones that always went screwy. Usually that just meant they had to use their wits, and maybe their fists. But how do you use either against a volcanic eruption?

He said nothing, though, as the cargo ship angled round the western portion of the island and steamed north.

When they had completed their circuit, the team descended aft to the wardroom, which had been made over into a command post. Maps had been pinned up against bulkheads, with labels in English and Cyrillic: the Russians in the other ship were due to come over for the last planning session, over dinner. Stavros and Konstantin were already there.

Ross and Eveleen had just gotten fresh coffee and were sitting down when the ship gave a lurch and m.u.f.fled clanks and metallic groans announced the skiff grappled alongside.

A short time later three Russians ducked through the hatchway. Without a word the ship's steward handed out the dark Russian tea they all favored, in the little gla.s.s cups held in wire frames.

The Russians, two men and a woman, sat down, and Ashe took over to run again through the familiar drill. Too familiar. Ross knew he should pay attention. This launch through the biggest time-gate ever made-stretched between two ships- was a first for both the Russians and Americans. There were too many firsts here, but none of them concerned Ross. Stavros and Konstantin, who would remain aboard their craft, would masquerade as Kallistan sailors. They were actually in charge of the time-gates. Ross couldn't do anything about that, so he scowled down at his coffee. The mission wasn't really real yet, in a sense. Wouldn't be until he and Eveleen went to their cabin for the last time, and pulled on those costumes waiting there.

And she put on those earrings, one of which was lost for over three thousand years.

EVELEEN STOOD WITH her feet apart, rolling unconsciously with the ship, as she stared down at the earrings in her hand. She had never been much of a philosophic type. Action was what she liked and understood. But you can't help picking up ideas as you go through life, and she remembered someone or other talking once about the single flap of a b.u.t.terfly's wings causing a forest halfway around the world to fall a hundred years later.

How can one ever know for certain which of our movements causes disaster? Well, she wasn't about to test that theory now. She knew that one of these earrings would, somehow, end up on that island. Where its mate would go- where she she would go-was what she had to discover. would go-was what she had to discover.

But she wouldn't risk doing damage to history by leaving those earrings behind. Or leaving one behind, and tossing the other one onto a road in Akrotiri on their arrival.

She sighed and put the earrings in her ears, then turned around to find Ross watching her. His gray eyes were wide, and wary, but he didn't say anything other than "Let's get it over with."

Together they exited the cabin, leaving behind all their obvious twenty-first-century trappings: watches, rings, running shoes, machine-st.i.tched synthetic fabrics. Their equipment had all been cleverly disguised.

Eveleen wore a flouncy three-tiered skirt and a short jacket with embroidery along the outer arms and down the sides. Under it she wore a thin cotton garment. Ross wore a brightly colored kilt of mostly red and black cloth, his skin dyed a deep brown with a long-term sunscreen worked into the chemical makeup of the dye. His black hair, which he had been growing, had been crimped and permed into tight curls, which he held back from his face with a thin gold headband. Both of them wore sandals that tied up their calves.

They met Ashe and Linnea Edel down in the hold. Eveleen was startled to see how different they both looked. Of course Ashe was good at taking on attributes of whatever culture he chose to adopt, and now he appeared to be a trader, his blue eyes hidden behind brown contact lenses.

Linnea Edel, however, had loosened her curly hair, and dressed in the flowing garments of a Kallistan. She looked so like a Greek woman she could have stepped from one of the beautiful painted pots or wall frescoes.

Their two Greek agents, Stavros and Konstantin, had donned the plain linen kilts and sandals of sailors of the time. Konstantin looked like a Greek pirate. Stavros, though superficially resembling Konstantin in his brown skin, dark eyes, and curling hair, was thinner, wirier, and he wore the indefinable air of the engineer.

Both of them were waiting beside the beautifully crafted little boat that would be their trading vessel. Its simple lines concealed an amazing concentration of equipment, including, fastened along the bottom, a small undersea sled for scuba exploration.

"Everyone in," Ashe said, waving his hand.

They climbed in, Stavros and Konstantin going down into the hold where the electronics that would synchronize them with the time-gate were hidden.

Linnea Edel looked around, ran her hands up her arms. With a pang of compa.s.sion, Eveleen saw that the skin along her arms was rough with goose b.u.mps. She was frightened; that was easy enough to see.

"I think I'll ride this one out below," Linnea said with a faint smile.

Ashe nodded once, and the older woman vanished below as well, to seat herself among the carefully aged wooden barrels that would, if the mission were extraordinarily lucky, return full of volcanic test materials and various Theran goods- Kallistan goods, Eveleen thought, correcting herself. Eveleen thought, correcting herself. The island is now Kalliste. The island is now Kalliste.

Kallistan goods for the scientific brains back home to happily pore over.

"You two going below?" Ashe asked. Eveleen couldn't quite get used to his gaze, suddenly so dark. Even though she knew that the effect was just caused by lenses, they still gave him a faintly sinister air.

Ross shook his head once. "Want to see."

There was no enjoyment in his tone. Eveleen knew that Ross, in fact, hated the translation between one time and another as much as she did. It was too easy, when one saw that glaring light, and smelled the energy-tortured air, to believe that humans were never meant to endure that wrench.

But endure it they would. The Russians had lost an entire base in the Baltic through a misunderstanding of how the big portals worked. They insisted they had mastered it, and supposedly here was the proof.

Eveleen thought, as the cargo bay doors began to widen, that if anything went awry, hopefully they would never know what hit them.

"Sit toward the center," Stavros said in heavily accented English.

"Speak Ancient Greek," Ashe corrected, using the Greek of Linear B, so painfully decoded just within the past twenty-five years.

Why is he being dogmatic? Eveleen thought, looking Gordon's way. Then she thought back to the hasty training, the many sessions prefaced with "As you've already learned," and "As you well know ..." Eveleen thought, looking Gordon's way. Then she thought back to the hasty training, the many sessions prefaced with "As you've already learned," and "As you well know ..."

They did know. That is, all of them except Linnea. Just the day before Kelgarries had taken Ross and Eveleen aside and said, "Your archaeological expert is a first-cla.s.s academic, and you can rely on her for information. But she only sat through training tapes. There wasn't time for anything else. Watch out for her."

Eveleen sighed. Of course they would watch out for one another. And, so Linnea Edel hadn't had the full course of training? Neither had Ross, once upon a time. And Linnea seemed a lot more sensible than a very young Ross probably had been.

At the inward image of a very young, and impetuous, Ross, she grinned. Stavros flashed her a smile, raised a hand, and then restated in the language they'd all been drilling as hard as they could, day and night: "Sit along the keel."

Ashe, Eveleen and Ross settled along the benches running down the middle of the narrow deck, under a very plain awning. The great engines of the cargo ship thrummed through the wood of the boat, making Eveleen's bones thrum in vibration.

The boat slid, at first slowly, then faster and faster down a ramp, until it shot out onto the choppy waters of the Aegean, reflecting lights from the three ships now steaming in an exact parallel.

Water sprayed up, cooling their faces with shocking suddenness. The boat shuddered and wallowed, and Eveleen clasped her hands tightly together, determined to show no nervousness. She so much preferred to be taking action herself, but this was not part of her job: she could do nothing.

As she forced herself into the steady breathing she'd made second nature during her long studies in martial arts, the boat settled into the rhythm of the waves. Stavros and Konstantin efficiently deployed the single sail, and then sheeted it home.

Now the little boat came alive, lifting the prow up and over the waves. The wind was little more than a gentle breeze, but these shallow craft had been designed for the trickish zephyrs of the Mediterranean climate, and the cargo ship fell away with surprising speed behind them, until it was just running lights against the black horizon.

Eveleen tipped her head back and looked up at the full moon, the Pleiades stretched across the sky like a broken necklace.

The two Russian ships ahead on either side were black silhouettes against a sky barely lit by a gibbous moon. Then a sheath of blue light flickered over their hulls. The air seemed to tighten, and Eveleen thought she heard, deep below the range of human hearing, a vast bell toll, rolling like an irresistible tide through her body. Ahead the sea glowed, a line of bluish light drawn through the chop between the two ships. She heard the slap of flying fish on either side of their small craft as sea life fled the sudden tension in the fabric of the world. Now light billowed up from the sea, diaphanous waves of mist, like a sea-level aurora.

The ship surged forward as a wind began to blow toward the gates, and as the glowing mist surrounded them, Eveleen's skin p.r.i.c.kled, but not from the power being deployed around them to wrench a 3,600-year-deep hole in the universe. There were shapes in the mist, wraiths moving, reaching, supplicating, fleeing her direct glance and seen only in the corner of her vision. No one spoke, but everyone was alert and scarcely breathing.

Stavros reached down, pushing on something in one of the storage chests on either side of the keel. The water around their craft suddenly boiled without heat as the series of portal rods carefully s.p.a.ced along both sides of the ship pulled power from the field now building between the Russian ships. A faint, keening note of power leashed to an extreme degree made Eveleen grit her teeth as the mist began to flow inward toward a bright point of light. It was not a vortex, but straight lines converging on an infinity that flowed hungrily forward to engulf the boat, as though her blind spot was expanding to fill her vision. She saw the prow vanish, wrenched away in a direction her eyes couldn't follow; then nothingness slid forward toward the group huddled in the middle of the boat. There was now no sense of motion, only a sense of a physical violation so great it made nausea seem pleasure by comparison. It seemed endless- But only for a moment. Her blind spot filled the world and dwindled behind her, giving her for a moment the feeling of eyes in the back of her head, and they were through, sailing into ancient waters.

CHAPTER 5.

THE FIRST THING to hit Ross was the acrid odor. No smoggy New York day smelled as bad as this. His hindbrain gibbered with warning at that invidious, pervasive whiff of smoke and the stench of brimstone.

There was no fire, of course. But on previous missions, when Ross transferred into human prehistory, one of the first things he noted was how the stars in the night sky were astonishingly bright: clearer, much clearer, than the clearest night in his own time. This time they were just as faint as the stars over New York City, but there was no kilowattage of civilization to blame.

The haze was volcanic ash.

When are we, exactly? he thought. And then shrugged. Useless to think in terms of exact correlation between dates. When they returned up-time, they'd emerge from the gates whenever they were next energized-probably only moments after they'd entered, no matter how long they spent here. What mattered was when they were in relation to the day of the eruption. That had been the computer jockeys' job. If they hadn't done it right, if there wasn't enough time to make sure the volcanic explosion happened, there'd be no second chance, for a kind of exclusion principle governed time travel: their presence here excluded their earlier presence. Research, and bitter experience, had shown that only inanimate objects could bilocate, like Eveleen's earring. Sentient beings could not. If they tried to jump up-time and then back here again to gain more time to figure things out, the boat would arrive intact but empty of life, like the he thought. And then shrugged. Useless to think in terms of exact correlation between dates. When they returned up-time, they'd emerge from the gates whenever they were next energized-probably only moments after they'd entered, no matter how long they spent here. What mattered was when they were in relation to the day of the eruption. That had been the computer jockeys' job. If they hadn't done it right, if there wasn't enough time to make sure the volcanic explosion happened, there'd be no second chance, for a kind of exclusion principle governed time travel: their presence here excluded their earlier presence. Research, and bitter experience, had shown that only inanimate objects could bilocate, like Eveleen's earring. Sentient beings could not. If they tried to jump up-time and then back here again to gain more time to figure things out, the boat would arrive intact but empty of life, like the Marie Celeste, Marie Celeste, the famous half-brig that'd run afoul of the natural time-fold in the Bermuda Triangle. Seventy years later, that story, and others like it, had inspired the research that led to time travel. Had led to Ross and Eveleen, and the other agents, being here, days? weeks? away from an explosion of unimaginable magnitude. He wondered briefly what happened to that crew, then dismissed the thought. If they didn't succeed here, there'd never be a the famous half-brig that'd run afoul of the natural time-fold in the Bermuda Triangle. Seventy years later, that story, and others like it, had inspired the research that led to time travel. Had led to Ross and Eveleen, and the other agents, being here, days? weeks? away from an explosion of unimaginable magnitude. He wondered briefly what happened to that crew, then dismissed the thought. If they didn't succeed here, there'd never be a Marie Celeste, Marie Celeste, and . . . No time for that. He wrenched his thoughts away before he got a headache, feeling a grin twitch at his lips at the inadvertent double meaning of "time." and . . . No time for that. He wrenched his thoughts away before he got a headache, feeling a grin twitch at his lips at the inadvertent double meaning of "time."

Almost at once Ross turned his head from the silent stars to the hatch to the below-deck area, where golden light glowed.

Stavros had jumped down as soon as they were through. He popped up now. "We came through fine," he said, in the Ancient Greek they must all speak now.

Ross felt Eveleen relax beside him. He said nothing, of course. She'd hate him noticing. He also saw Ashe's grim profile ease slightly.

"Good," Ashe said, as though aware of attention turning his way. "It is night in both worlds. Much to do on the morrow. Let's get some sleep while we can."

They nodded, and trooped below, ducking under the narrow roof. Hammocks woven of net had been provided, and they had all practiced sleeping in them. Ross climbed into his, aware of the breathing of the others, and the balmy air that was just this side of being stuffy and too warm. The day would be blistering, unfortunately. No help for that. Air conditioning was now three thousand years in the future.

The steady lap-lap of the water along the sides, and the gentle rocking, sent him into a deep sleep that only broke when he heard voices.

It wasn't just the voices of his team, either, he realized. Bright sunlight shafted down into the crowded hold, golden rays that fired thousands of dust motes.

On deck was comparative silence; the voices came from beyond the ship. Ross looked around, realized he was alone.