Atlantis Endgame Part 6

Ross said with grim humor, "Right. There is no Red Cross waiting to help them, no friendly government wanting to aid refugees."

Ashe turned back to Linnea. "You or Eveleen might have to try to get inside the oracle caves, if the priestesses will talk to you."

"Better than the alternative," Ross muttered, but under his breath.

"Let's keep that as a backup plan, then," Ashe said, and no one disagreed.

They finished eating dinner, and as everyone was tired, their heads slightly aching from the oppressive heat and the polluted air, the men camped out on the deck of the ship under the stars, and Eveleen and Linnea used oil-soaked torches to light their way back to their rented room, Eveleen sleeping near the open window, where the slightest sound would waken her instantly.

JUST BEFORE DAWN the women hiked back down to the boat.

"The way I see it," Ross said to Eveleen a couple hours later, as they trudged up the long switchback trail toward the oracle, "is that it was too easy. A vent right around the corner from the oracle? We should have seen that as a setup."

Eveleen said, "What I'm afraid of is that they have put some kind of thingie in a whole slew of vents. What the heck do we do then?"

"Gordon said the same thing when we were thumping our way back down the mountain yesterday, nearly quaking off the trail once or twice."

"Then he thinks it probable." Eveleen heaved a sharp sigh and paused at a turning in the trail. She looked out at the blue-green ocean, deceptively placid in the hazy early morning light. "Vents. Does that mean-"

"Already thought of it," Ross said, grinning. "While you were in the sweatbox, Gordon told Stav to do some diving and exploring. The boys are taking the boat out to pre-Kameni Island today to do just that."

Sweatbox: their unfond name for the tiny shower cubicle the scientists had built into the stern of the boat. Ross thought of that cramped s.p.a.ce-the banged elbows and knees as he tried to manipulate the spray hose and the lukewarm water- and laid himself a hundred-buck bet none of the science jockeys back home actually had test-driven the blasted thing.

"Here's the goat trail we marked yesterday," Ross said. "We may's well start here."

The two of them checked the pathway in both directions and then quickly eased off down the narrow little trail. There was very little brush behind which to hide. They would have to trust to the haze and to their neutral clothing-Eveleen had forgone her bright kilt-skirt and jacket-underdress for a plain robe of dusty brown-to avoid notice.

Ross squinted against the fierce glare of the sun, looking for the thin thread of smoke he'd seen wisping out of the mountain in this direction. These things could be deceptive, depending on air currents and wind.

Up, up, pausing for sips of water in the spa.r.s.e shade of smoke-withered olive trees. Eveleen bent once to touch one of the lovely red lilies. Ross grimaced, thinking of the report he'd seen three thousand years up-time: these plants were totally wiped out. Some life-forms came back. The red lilies didn't.

They came upon the vent suddenly, feeling it first as an oven blast of sulfuric air.

After consultation with Ashe and Linnea over breakfast, they had agreed no longer to use the Baldy-tech device. They would scan with their own equipment, which used only pulses of sonic energy and heavy-duty computing power to filter out the returns from seismic noise. There was a lot of that on Kalliste, unfortunately, the upside being that their little pings were unlikely to be detected by the Baldies amidst the stew of heat, sonics, and piezo-EM emitted by the volcano.

Ross held his breath against the hot gases, knowing he should slip on his breathing mask. But the tests ought to take only a moment, and it didn't smell as bad as it had the other day. Then he remembered the basic vulcanology training all the agents had gotten: By the time you stop smelling it, it's already too late. Hydrogen sulfide is fifty times more poisonous than hydrogen cyanide, and far more insidious. It just takes one sudden puff from a vent. By the time you stop smelling it, it's already too late. Hydrogen sulfide is fifty times more poisonous than hydrogen cyanide, and far more insidious. It just takes one sudden puff from a vent.

He put on his mask and motioned Eveleen to do the same. Theoretically, if there was another of those devices, the sonics would reveal it, and since it had to be manipulating the ferocious energy output of the vents in some way, the strains and currents that it produced in rocks and lava would help disclose its shape.

They each took a reading, looked, but were not really sure what they had. There were patterns, but nothing suggested an actual object. Ross motioned to Eveleen and she held up her instrument to reveal the IR port. Ross triggered the link, and the two machines compared and manipulated the stored sonic patterns. Now a shadowy shape emerged, too regular to be natural. But the devices still couldn't nail down its distance or size well enough. "Well, now we know that they didn't move it."

"Why can't the detectors resolve it better?"

"Maybe there's too much seismic noise and it's turned off, or maybe it's still running cloaked but emitting sonics as part of its operation. That would scramble things. Let's find another and give the computers more to compare," Ross suggested. "Maybe then they can zero in on it."

"Right."

First to locate another vent.

"There." Eveleen knocked against his arm and pointed upward, almost straight into the sun, which was burning down through thick haze just behind the mountaintop.

"Oh, h.e.l.l," Ross snarled.

"Yeah, looks like my idea of it, too," his wife retorted.

Ross cracked a smile, and they got busy toiling upward along tiny goat trails, often slipping and sliding in fresh rock-falls. They removed their masks once they were a good distance from the vent; it was a hot, exceedingly dangerous climb, made worse by the weather.

They stopped at noon to eat their bread and cheese and rest in the shade of a spectacular slab of volcanic rock thrusting up from some age-old eruption.

Out over the ocean a thin line of thunderheads marched, their outline ragged. The sea was a sick green, the sunny glare at its worst, glinting off bits of rock. Far below they could see a steady procession of folk making their way slowly up the pathway to the oracle.

"Why would people do that to themselves?" Ross said, shaking his head.

"Why do people in our day read weather reports, or even check the astrology predictions in the paper, much as they laugh?"

"Eveleen, it's too hot to even pretend that's the same as gambling their lives against whatever this 'oracle' might say."

"But I think it's the same impulse. We don't like going into the unknown. So we use whatever tools we have. The weather reports generally work. The astrology predictions speak so generally you can always translate them to match your experience. And these people-" She waved her hand up the trail. "Well, who knows? Linnea told me that one theory holds that the priestesses who served the oracle had the best gossip network going and knew everything about everyone. I guess you could do that with a small population. Remember, even modern market research relies on something called the Delphi effect-you can get information out of large groups of people even if none of them know the actual, exact answer."

Ross raised an eyebrow, but Eveleen's face was serious. Well, there were a lot of things he'd never heard of; evidently the Delphi effect was one of them. He sighed. "It makes sense if people are asking whether or not they should marry some person with a rotten rep, or even about crops and other information based on collective experience and knowledge, but what about this couple we saw yesterday, with a sick kid? They wanted to know if the wasting fever would go away."

Eveleen rested her hands on her knees. "Of course they couldn't really answer something like that, but they probably told the people to make a flower offering to the G.o.ds, which at least would give them comfort."

"Some comfort."

"About as much comfort as 'We shall have to do more tests,' gives parents in our time, when their kid has some disease the medical field can't identify."

Ross wiped sweat off his forehead. "Hah."

Eveleen grinned. "You're just grumpy because it's hot, and there's thunder in the air, and no enemy to shoot at."

"Add in a mountain-size nuclear bomb under our feet or, knowing the Baldies, something even worse, ready to blow at any moment, and you've got that right."

Somehow that seemed the right moment to get to their feet, stash their flagons at their waists, and get moving.

The climb was long, hot, and increasingly steep. Rock slides were common, making the ground unstable. Tiny tremors sent pebbles skittering down the mountain, bouncing crazily. They both were stung on hands and faces by tiny bits of rock.

They worked their way steadily upward, the trail carrying them northward over the spectacular cliffs and great, violent upthrusts of rock, until they were able to get glimpses of the northern segment of the crescent-shaped island, with the doomed little pre-Kameni Island hazily lying to the west. Smoke rose slowly from distant vents, adding to the brownish-gray pall.

Conversation became impossible. The thick air was made thicker by sulfurous stenches. They realized at about the same time that their increasingly intense headaches were not caused by the heat and slipped on their breathing masks, which indicated that they were being exposed to dangerous gases, hydrogen sulfide foremost among them. And though no one was around to see them, they still followed orders, both swathing their heads and lower faces with lengths of rough cloth to hide the masks.

Their headaches faded away slowly as the breathing masks removed the dangerous gases from the air. The relief gave them both energy, and they picked up their pace again. As they climbed toward what appeared to be the summit, the thunderheads sailed inexorably toward them, lightning occasionally flashing down to stab the sea.

They were high enough now to look directly down into the clear, blue-green water. Now they could see some of the underwater vents releasing vapors that heated the water within the ring: these were discolored silver-green in some places, and in one or two an ominous rusty-tinged green, like an old bruise. Above the sea hung strange palls of dust and smoke tinged with a sinister orange.

Ross nodded, and Eveleen took out her palm-sized video cam, sweeping the scene with care. "I wish I could see Akrotiri from here," she murmured.

"Maybe higher up," Ross said. "Though the distance will make it look like a toy city."

Eveleen nodded, tucking the cam securely into her belt-pouch. "Let's go."

They trudged up the last distance to what had to be a gigantic vent. Ross, ceaselessly watching for signs of Baldies standing guard, kept his hand near his side, where he wore a weapon. Memories of his hand burning, of helping Ashe cross-country with a bullet wound in his shoulder, made him wary.

At last they reached the vent.

Whose instinct reacted first?

Before he saw anything except swirling smoke and vapor, Ross knew there was someone in that vent. Eveleen let out a startled exclamation about the same moment he palmed his weapon and aimed it, flicking the safety off.

A figure slowly emerged, hands out-held.

They waited, not speaking, as the figure resolved in a humanoid form.

But the Baldy Ross expected failed to materialize. Instead, he stared at a being he'd only glimpsed once before, years ago on his very first run, at a station buried in ice: A triangular face, sharply pointed chin, angled jaw, small mouth, hooked nose. Dark skin covered with long, silky down, crest over the head, and below that two round eyes. Intelligent eyes.

The being slowly brought a furry hand to its chest and squawked in its high voice, using a language full of trills and clicks.

Moments later pa.s.sable Greek emerged.

"You must come within, for I do not wish to cause you damage."

A small device glinted at them from the other hand and Ross realized it was some kind of weapon.

CHAPTER 9.

"YOU NEVER MARRIED?" It was early-Eveleen and Ross were just past the oracle. The place was mostly empty but for the fallen greater buildings of Akrotiri, built haphazardly all along an axis, with the small rooms furnished with benches and bins and cubicles of stone.

Men did not have access to the buildings identified with the priestesses, only those that were made for general use or for men's concerns. Religion here was an integral as well as natural part of everyday life, as one could tell from the rise and fall of voices in song, the processions, the stylized clothing of various members of the religious callings. Women's rooms were not open to men, and Linnea went there alone, leaving Ashe to investigate those belonging to men only.

She had just emerged from one, wherein some local women were singing a lilting song as they decorated a young girl with flowers and a bright kilt, and last clasped a necklace of stylized serpents around her neck. On the walls was the famous fresco of the ladies, the flowers bright and fresh, the perspective breathtakingly graceful. A golden glow from oil lamps made the colors seem real.

Linnea had had to blink away tears. She had known what to expect, yet still she had not been really prepared for the effect of such free, bright, and generous beauty, and the corresponding claw of loss.

So she put her question about marriage to Ashe when she emerged, and he glanced at her, looking amused, and said, "No."

Just that word seemed bald, ungracious. She knew she had trespa.s.sed, even though she had taken care to use the Ancient Greek, not just to protect them, though no one paid them the least attention, but because its wording was necessarily quaint and distant from their habitual English, and so it created its own borders of finesse.

Then he added, as though he realized that he had sounded ungracious, "Though it was not an easy choice. But it seemed the best one. My absences would put a burden on a family."

She nodded. She had a brother in the military, and she knew what his wife had suffered when he would be gone one year, two, often without any communication. For twenty years she had spent holidays alone with their children, and birthdays, except for last-minute surprises; he had almost missed their daughter's wedding.

"You did not think to marry within the Project?"

"In the very early days there were few women. And I am, unfortunately, a member of the last generation. A wife with me would take my mind from the work to her, to protecting her. Though I know it's not fair, or right. But instinct is hard to argue with."

Linnea nodded. "Ross and Eveleen have managed."

"Many of the younger agents have paired off successfully, though not all the marriages last. They did not find it easy to adjust. Though they are much alike, and I believe they have an excellent chance of going the distance."

"Adventurers," Linnea said, the noun she chose calling to mind Homer and his tales.

They had emerged from one building and had tried another, but it was all fallen in, destroyed so badly that no one had even excavated the rubble yet. Either that or it had fallen relatively recently.

On to the next one, much smaller, roofed with woven mats. They peered in windows, watching people come and go. Though they could not examine every room, at least they could watch for anomalies.

The noon sun beat down, the air breathlessly hot, drifting with faint ash-fall. One of the tremors froze everyone for a moment into a tableau, a still life backlit by garish sun, while hissings of little stones sifted down from cracks in the walls.

Then songs rose again, donkeys brayed, children laughed, adults' voices exclaimed in question, concern, annoyance, worry, with many glances skyward up the mountain.

Linnea had just looked over to say something when the communicator Ashe wore next to his skin pulsed just once.

It was from the boat.

"An attack?" she spoke without thinking, but at least she'd used Ancient Greek.

He said nothing, of course, but nodded his head upward when they reached one of the narrow intersections. They toiled up a steep street, with a cliff to one side, looking down at roofs, some with withered gardens. Behind them were more buildings. As he left it to Linnea to peer in the windows and go into what buildings she could, he found a tiny join where one wall did not quite meet another, shaded by a very straggly wild palm. Trusting to its protection, Ashe raised to his eyes a slim pair of field gla.s.ses, shading them by his palm.

Linnea, seeing what he was about, backed out of his field of vision, instead watching the occasional pa.s.serby to draw attention away from Ashe if necessary.

She waited until his hand lowered.

"Baldies on the beach," he murmured.

Linnea felt her heart lurch.

They eased into a crowd moving down toward the sh.o.r.eline, where the early morning fishers were just arriving in with fresh catch.

Linnea peered up along the sand, which seemed to shimmer in the heat. A thunderstorm was on the way, she realized, though judging from the faint, acid-tangy breeze and the slowness of those clouds, it would not arrive until sundown.

Ashe drew in a breath. He stepped aside from the street into an angle of the low wall that guarded the street from the sheer fall to the next level below. He leaned over, looking down, concealing his actions as he raised the gla.s.ses again, mostly covering them with his palm so it looked as if he were shading his eyes.

"I should have expected that," he murmured. "Right out in sight. Of course. People will see what they expect to see."

Silently he handed Linnea his gla.s.ses, and she copied his movement, covering them with her palm to shade her eyes as she scanned.

The sh.o.r.eline seemed curiously flattened, colors muted. But there, not far from their anchorage (was that chance?), where the road from the city to the harbor pa.s.sed close to the sh.o.r.e, there stood a group of slender hairless humanoids, all dressed alike in rich, glimmering fabric that changed from blue to green to purple depending on how the wearer moved.

The Kallistans walking past looked at them but did not linger or approach them. It was as though an invisible line were inscribed in the sand around them.

"I wonder if they have the same effect going as at that apparently abandoned building?" said Linnea in a bare whisper. "But what are they doing?"