Hegira (11 page)

Curtains and banners hung rippling with red and green ribbons tied at their ends, suspended from rafters of dark rich wood inlaid with bone and ivory friezes. Low tables covered by white cloth with a bowl at each place setting awaited them, covering the floor of the hall. The men and women and children of the Trident took their seats on pillows. The captain was given a seat of honor next to a simple wooden throne.

At one side of the hall was a curtained stage. The curtains coursed with the activity behind them, sequins twinkling in the red and green and blue silk.

Everyone stood. Whispers passed — the Queen and King were approaching. Kiril expected long, fine robes and blaring trumpets, but there was no fanfare or pomp. He could barely see the throne over the heads of his crewmates, but what he did see caught him off guard.

The Queen and King were little more than a meter high, well proportioned and graying with age, dressed in simple gray suits and lacking crowns or any overt signs of distinction. They took their seats — the Queen on her throne, the King at her feet. The meal was served.

The first course was clear broth soup with bits of crunchy vegetables floating in it, spiced with curry. Then came a dish of wheat grains steamed and topped with a sauce of shellfish and green beans. The main course was matu paka, beef and pork cooked in broth and butter and garnished with thick leaves of sweet cabbage. Barthel picked at it without enthusiasm — pork was a forbidden item for him — but Kiril thought he'd never tasted anything so delicious. A grain liqueur, sweet and biting, was served with thick cream and a coffeelike brew. Dessert followed. When the company was through with the spiced fruit and cream-egg chiffon, the entertainment began.

The curtains drew aside, showing a stage empty except for voluminous folds of blue cloth draped over hidden set pieces and lighted by dozens of insect-wax lamps. A single man dressed in blue rose from behind a draped box and stood on top of it, drawing a fan from his shirt and spreading it wide. He smiled, whistled, and beckoned with the fan to the left of the stage.

Some of the crew knew what to expect. Many others didn't, and a cry of dismay went up as the beast stalked onto the stage. Barthel felt a chill, as though he was seeing something ungodly.

It was about two meters tall and stood on thick, powerful hind legs, balanced by a sinuous tail. It was sky blue around its throat and stomach and dewlaps and enamel green like a beetle everywhere else. Its eyes were red as rubies and ringed with black and orange. It was a magnificent animal, its gait as smooth as a dancer's, its long mouth studded with glittering teeth. It bowed to the man in blue and hunkered down in the middle of the stage with its tail curled under it. It bird-blinked back to front with nictitating membranes as it surveyed the audience. A thick black tongue slithered between iridescent lips.

A woman dressed in red baggy pants and shirt stood up and climbed onto another draped pedestal. She produced a second fan, spread it, and beckoned to the right. A man-tall, heavy-beaked bird crossed the stage and perched in front of her, beak open, staring and twisting its head. It looked more alarmed than its reptile companion. A second man summoned two lions, and a second woman brought out a tiger four meters long from head to tail with gray-green and white stripes instead of the usual black and orange. The animals took their positions quietly.

The first man began a gliding dance around the stage between the animals. The tiger licked one paw contentedly. The bird stalked forward and joined the man in a strange, appealing ballet. The first woman began her own dance, and the tiger stalked with perfect precision under her swirling legs. The reptile stood up.

With the lions joining in, they became a shifting in-and-out sequence of fluid bodies and startling colors. The first dance ended with one woman riding the tiger and a man leading the reptile by a short halter. Kiril couldn't break his eyes away. He expected disaster and carnivorous reprisal at any instant. As the curtains closed the crew of the Trident crossed their arms and slapped their palms against their biceps. Kiril and Barthel mimicked the applause. A grin covered the Khemite's face, and his eyes sparkled like a child's.

The chandeliers lighting the hall tinkled and quivered slightly. Kiril felt his neck hair prickling. A low, inaudible vibration passed through the floor and tables. The hall was suddenly quiet. Behind the curtains the sounds of scuffling and growls interrupted the silence.

There were no quakes on Hegira. There were no records of quakes except on the Obelisks; it was assumed they were plagues visited upon the First-born in moments of hubris. But very clearly the palace lights were swaying, and the floor sustained its subsensuous murmur. The King and Queen stood up hesitantly, and a retinue of guards surrounded them. A man dressed in flowing, shiny green robes passed along one side of the hall with two lackeys in red following, each carrying bowls of incense. They left the hall.

The reptile poked through the curtains and stood on the apron of the stage, uncertain and unwilling to jump into the audience. A trainer dressed in black came out and led it backstage again. Its tail swished back and forth like a cat's under the curtain.

Barthel crouched wide-eyed by the table.

The captain ordered his crew to be seated.

Outside, it had been dark for an hour and a slight drizzle was falling. The watch on the Trident felt the tremor as a singing in the hull. Water rippled from the shore, and the logs of the bund creaked.

Bar-Woten walked up the ladder from the engine room and went to the port side to stare out into the dark. He could see nothing but the patient gleam of the fire doves and small, fitful glows of disturbed animals in the water. He squinted his eyes, looking directly north.

A hand span up from the horizon, something dimly flickered, and it wasn't a fire dove. It was in the same vicinity as the Weggismarche Obelisk — could, in fact, have been the top of the spire — and it suggested heat lightning on a warm summer night. Its flicker sent sympathetic flashes across the sky like messages between gods.

Suddenly, from across the sea, it was daylight. To the south the glow was dull gray and listless, but in the north the day was full and bright. Bar-Woten saw the Obelisk clearly, a line of white drawn from the sky down, its top lost in the sheet of daylight glow.

It was no longer vertical. With clocklike slowness it changed its angle. The tremble that made his feet ache and his head throb was a much-reduced and distant effect. The Obelisk was tilting and falling.

He was enough of a seaman now and had studied the charts enough to know that the fall of anything of such size would create havoc along that distant sea and coastline. The result would be more quakes, and something he had never imagined until now, but knew was inevitable.

The sea would rise from the collision of world and spire like an unleashed monster. He knew instinctively it would carry itself to Golumbine and beyond. He had no idea how fast such a vibration could travel through water or the land beneath, but it would be rapid.

He ran to the poop deck and toid a cabin boy to take a message to the captain. As the boy ran to the gangway and crossed to the shore, the Ibisian saw the final moment of the fall.

In awful silence the spire dropped below the horizon. The daylight flickered and bunked out.

With agonizing awareness of his ignorance, Bar-Woten tried to calculate how long they had. He had learned enough about basic physics in the last few months to make a guess — it would be measured in hours instead of minutes — but how many? Sound traveled through rock faster than through air or water.

In a half hour the crew and hundreds of Golumbines were running along the bund and docks.

The captain boarded without ceremony and issued a call to general quarters. “We're taking the ship out to sea,” he shouted. Sails were rigged and steam was brought up. The boilers protested the rapid heating by creaking and pounding.

In another half hour the ship was ready to cruise at one third out of the harbor. The Golumbines followed its example, hauling their boats ashore if they were small enough or following the Trident out to sea. Bar-Woten watched the barges and outrigged clippers following in their wake. In the wavering glow of lamps mounted along the sides of the boats, he saw the faces of sailors working at oars and rigging or simply waiting, eyes north and mouths wide.

When the engines were up to full steam he turned his deck gauge over to another sailor and went to find Kiril.

The Mediwevan was stowing gear with a dozen other men. Bar-Woten helped them, and as they worked he asked Kiril what he had read about big waves and the First-born.

“They were called tidal waves,” Kiril said. “That's about all I know. But we don't have any tides here — I'm not even sure they were caused by tides on Earth.” He shook his head. They'd never seen really big waves except those caused by a storm at sea, such as the waves on the beaches in Mures-Werd. “If the Obelisk fell — ”

“It fell!” Bar-Woten said firmly.

“Then we probably won't survive.”

“What are they going to do on the island?”

“Head for the highest hills they can find. Or behave as people usually do and be washed out to sea. I don't know! The captain warned them, but he doesn't know what he's talking about any more than the rest of us.”

The Trident was four kilometers northwest of the island when the captain decided the water was deep enough. The sails were furled, and all the ship's hatches battened and bolted. The bow was swung about in the direction of the Obelisk, and the boilers cooled. The excess methane in the tanks and fire chamber was blown out the rear through valves. All compressed gas tanks were double sealed and anchored to the deck plates and beams with thick rubber-coated chains.

It was quiet. The crew secured themselves below decks to stanchions and bulkhead hooks, using slipknots in case they had to abandon ship. The Trident made her usual share of ship noises. The water lapped against her steel hull.

An hour and a hah7 after the fall the distant island hummed and wailed like a bottled demon. The deck watch and the captain and officers on the bridge observed through binoculars. Trees cast off their leaves like dogs shivering water.

From the north they could hear a wind rising. It sounded like a moaning woman. In the dark, clouds began to build and obscure the fire doves along the horizon.

The ship's electrical system was shut off. Below decks, the crew lighted hand-held candles.

Above the Trident, the sky whipped itself into a glittering frosty green foam. Snow fell in hand-sized flakes onto the ship and the sea. The air chilled, then became as warm as a mid-summer night and thick with moisture. Water dribbled down the bulkheads.

Ahead, kilometers off, a mound of sea rose across the entire horizon.

“That's it,” Prekari said.

The bow jumped and the ship screamed. Rivets popped along the deck like bullets. With the speed of a cargo boom hauling a light load, the wave brought the ship to its mammoth peak, bucked it about in white water and foam, and twisted it around. It lurched sideways into a trough like a toboggan down a slope of snow, veering and weaving, water pouring over its decks. The mizzenmast snapped free from the poop deck and toppled over, breaking lines and driving the spanker spar through the steel plates of the deck like an arrow. Barthel stared at the splintered shaft, barely a meter from where he was strapped down.

The dog-tail waves that followed bounced the Trident vigorously, but she took them with little trouble. In the wake of the big wave the water churned and boiled. Things rose from the sea bottom that had lain undisturbed for centuries. A barnacled and crumpled wreck bobbed to the surface almost under the Trident, masts and hull above water for several seconds before it sank like a stone. The sea was clouded and silty, and big gouts of bubbling mud exploded.

Tangled knots of seaweed floated like the hair of drowned women.

Aching and shaken, the crew untied themselves and scrambled on deck to see what could be done. They shook their heads in disbelief. Some cried — men, women, and children alike. People hugged each other like long lost friends.

“It's not over yet,” Bar-Woten said. No one listened — they were wild with elation and danced on the deck as the air grew moist again. Snow drifted peacefully to the deck. A snapping cold wind raced over the ship and painted hoarfrost on the rigging.

The captain called from the bridge for all to brace. A second wave was coming, larger than the first.

They had only a few minutes to get below and tie themselves in again. The Trident took water in her bilges faster than the pumps could remove it and rode lower by a meter, listing slightly as she turned into the approaching mountain.

Kiril helped tie the last errant child and took hold of the edges of a beam, knowing he had no time to rope himself. His stomach seemed to fall to his feet. Outside was a sound none had ever heard before — the insane deafening roar of atoms being destroyed. A flash covered the sky.

The ship plunged. The bulkhead of an aft compartment separated and bent like the metal in a child's toy. Kiril swung around and lost his grip, bounced off a secured collection of crates, and fell somewhere, he didn't know where. It was dark at the bottom.

Golumbine was almost unrecognizable. The wharves and bunds were gone or covered with mud and silt. The long boathouses had been ground into wet and splintered wood, and the boats were scattered wreckage. The island lay quiet as a tomb. No one moved. The ship drifted into the filthy harbor, fragments of wood and corpses of animals and humans bumping against her bow. The city of Mappu was not visible from the ocean and may have been protected by its surround of hills, but they could see no activity at all. To a height of fifty meters the wooded hills were ragged and stripped.

Dat and one of her guardians still stood upright, though smeared with weed and mud to the waist. The other serpent column wasn't visible. The daylight was milky and incomplete, the north gray and dark.