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empire. The punch line was that only the marker remained. Every trace of
the king and his awesome works was gone. This place reminds me of that.
This city, or what's left of it, and even this lonely, empty shell
of a once vibrant world and civilization. How thin it all is! Our
civilization, our institutions, beliefs, laws, com-fortable ways of
life. How fragile."
Harker looked around and understood her point. The colonel ignored it; it was
irrelevant.
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"The pattern indicates a subway system," N'Gana noted. "Of course, there
wouldn't be any trains left, nor power for them or for lights down
there, either, but I wonder just how much survived below?"
"The rains would run down into the tunnels and dis-solve most of the stations
and track bed," Kat
Socolov noted. "Besides, it would be darker than pitch down there and we have
nothing to create light." She sighed. "What a weird world this is!
Some deep buried things from the past have a residual power supply so
the looter could broadcast his warning before he died, and we have
a crack at the codes, but just lighting a fire anywhere on the surface would
ring alarms and bring the
Titans. Crazy."
"Well, we're going to have to work out some way to light our way once we
get to Ephesus,"
Harker noted. "And there has to be some way. Our original freebooter got down
as far as he could until he was blocked by a cave-in. I wonder what he used
for light? He faced the same bare- assed situation we do."
"It might be time this evening to see if our young na-tives have any ideas on
how to light up the darkness," Kat said thoughtfully.
But they didn't. Their entire lives had been devoted to making no
signs, no impact at all that would draw atten-tion to themselves and
those around them. The humidity was so high in the region that wildfires were
virtually un-known, but they associated fire with lightning and local blazes
and were terrified of it. There was no way to know short of finding and
joining a Family and watching the process, but Kat suspected that one aspect
of training from the time when these people were very small was an ab-solute
terror of fire.
The only other possible source wasnt that useful in the end, either. There
were swarms of flying
'
insects that gave off white and yellow light as they flew, probably to
attract mates or perhaps to recognize one another as friends or signal
poison to enemies. The stuff did glow, and held its glow for a while, but it
was so weak and the quantity was so small that it wasn't viable.
"The Dutchman's man found a way," N'Gana pointed out. "If he did, then we will
find one, too."
Through the night, and the next three nights, they heard a good deal of
clicking from Hunters about in this region, which also implied that one or
more Families also roamed the area and thus provided prey for them, but
none of them, Hunters or Family members, came near, and all
eventually faded into the darkness.
There was one last river to cross as well. They could see the low
rounded mountains of the coastal range ahead, just beyond it. This river
was more difficult to handle, being old and deep, but
Harker, using the knowledge of the two natives, was able to gather enough wood
and strong vines to lash together a basic raft that, he hoped, could
be steered with two poles. Not only the young natives, but also
Hamille was very happy to have this, even though it would not hold all of
them. At least the river at this point was no more than a kilometer wide.
"Two of us will have to swim it," Harker told them. "One of us should be up
there as the captain and handle one of the poles."
"Don't put yourself out on my account," Kat told him. "I can swim this."
"I wasn't even considering being gallant," Harker replied. "I've
handled these rafts before, although ones that were better made with
stronger materials. I know how it handles. Colonel, are you up to a swim?"
"I defer to you in this," he replied. "I believe this sort of a swim
would be easier than all the walking we've done."
There were some quick lessons on how to use the poles logs chosen
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because they were somewhat flat-tened on one side and particularly how to
manage them when in the channel and it was too deep to reach bottom.
"We'll shove off in the raft first," Harker told them.
"Give us some time to get clear and some sense of how it handles, then follow. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]