They relit the other lamps and went looking. The midsection of the ceiling was just far enough away from the gallery to leave it in shadow. There didn’t seem to be anything out there, but it was hard to be sure. Quait swam out with a lamp. He kicked over on his back, raised the lantern, and saw the problem immediately.
Another duct, partially hidden by a beam.
It was centered precisely, but out of reach. There was still six feet of air space left between the water and the ceiling. “We’ll have to wait until the water gets higher,” he said. “Then we can try to block it.
“It’s already too high,” said Claver. “Keep in mind that plugging it won’t stop the rise immediately.
“We need a stick, said Flojian.
Chaka went back to the staircase, submerged, and tried to break off the handrail. When she failed, Quait went down and came back with a seven-foot piece.
But there were no more clothes. They recovered Flojian’s shirt and trousers from one of the other ducts, and Quait used the handrail to push them into the air passage. Within moments, he had sealed it. Meanwhile, the others looked for a substance with which to close the newly opened vent. Claver tried pushing a tabletop against it, but it didn’t work.
“We’ll have to use one of the books,” Flojian said finally.
Claver nodded. “Be quick. Try to find something that isn’t likely to be of practical value.
They picked one that had already been damaged, a biography about a person no one had heard of: Merejkowski’s
Quait stood on a chair and wedged it in, jammed it in tight, and then they huddled together, listening to the sounds of the running tide.
The water crept past Chaka’s shoulders.
Embraced the line of her jaw.
Flojian had already climbed onto a cabinet. She joined him, but stayed low in the water because it was warmer.
Claver looked up at the books, stacked on tabletops now barely two feet above the tide. He placed the lamp on top of a stack and went searching for something he could use to gauge the water’s rise. Quait’s seven-foot piece of handrail leaned against a wall.
He recovered it, stood it up straight, and used a knife to mark off the depth. It was at about the level of his collarbone.
Quait moved close to Chaka. “You okay?” he asked.
She nodded. “Considering the circumstances,” she added.
Nobody said much. After a while, the lamp flickered out and they were in absolute darkness. For Chaka, that became the most fearful time of the entire ordeal.
But after a few minutes Claver’s voice cut through the general gloom: “I think we’re okay,” he said. “It’s still moving up. But it’s very slow.
“That brought a cautious “you’re sure?” from Flojian.
“Yes,” he said. “I’m sure.”
Chaka let out a happy yelp and embraced each of her companions. It seemed as if the water grew warmer. They splashed and cheered until Claver warned them they were getting water on the books.
“Damn the books,” said Quait. “We’re going to see daylight again.”
EPILOGUE
Abraham Polk described the Plague as caused by an airborne virus. No one was sure precisely what that meant, but his account of the last days was sufficiently graphic to make clear the nature of the beast. It was a product of the rain forests, and Folk had come to think of it as a kind of trigger mechanism, a safeguard against uncontrolled population growth.
Within another ten years, it is expected that complete sets of the Haven texts will exist in public libraries in both Brockett and the League cities. This set of almost three hundred fifty histories, commentaries, and speculations have been formally named the Silas Glote Collection. To date, approximately a fifth of the volumes have been copied and made available to the general public. The remainder, which are undergoing restoration, study, and/or annotation, can be examined by bona fide scholars.
Coal-fired boilers are now in use on both the Hudson and the Mississippi Rivers. Occasional sea traffic plies between Brockett and the League. Trade has grown slowly, because of the immense distances involved and the difficulties in getting League products overland to the mouth of the Mississippi. But progress is being made, and Orin Claver has turned his considerable abilities to the task of devising an open water route from League cities to the Gulf. His solutions so far have relied primarily on canal building.
Flojian found a lucrative and fulfilling career as Claver’s business manager, and has established himself in Brockett.
His prediction that the wedges would eventually supplant firearms appears to be off the mark for two reasons: The technology of the sleep weapon continues to defy experts; and the wedge simply lacks the authority implicit in a gun, and the sense of exhilaration that accompanies firing a few rounds at a malefactor.
The trail from the Devil’s Eye to the maglev terminal north of the Wabash (which has become a major tourist route) is now unofficially known as the Shannon Road.
Attempts to survey the bottom of the underground lake in hope of finding the Quebec have so far proved fruitless. Two divers using breathing equipment designed by Claver have been lost, leading to speculation there’s a demon in the water. Claver blamed the problem on a faulty piston in the air pump.
Ballooning has become a popular sport in the League. Fatalities and injuries to young men have risen at an alarming rate, and there is talk of prohibiting the device.
Avila’s father, a pious man who had believed that her return from the fleshpots had occurred as a result of divine intervention, had been shattered when she left the Order. He took the news of her loss stoically, held a celebration of her life on the bank of the Mississippi, assuming few would arrive to pay their respects to a fallen priest. As it happened, Avila’s friends were so many, and so enthusiastic, that several fell into the river.
In view of his accomplishments, Quait was granted early retirement from the military and succeeded to Silas’s chair at the Imperium, where he teaches ethics and ancient government.
After the events at Haven, Chaka visited her brother’s grave. He lies with his companions on a gentle hillside overlooking the bay whose tides took his life. She has become the best-known silversmith in the League. She’s had to hire two assistants, and business is booming. Recently she returned from leading a party of cartographers, scientists, and adventurers to the great waterfall at Nyagra, filling in for her husband, who broke an ankle just prior to departure. She and Quait have a son and a daughter, both of whom are receiving as complete an education as their parents can provide.
It has become one of the ironies of the expedition that the most memorable book to come out of it was not any of the notable works they rescued, but was rather the travel book begun by Silas and completed by Chaka, which was published under both their names and now serves as the ultimate guide for overland travel between Brockett and the League.
Flojian married an attractive young woman whom he found working on the docks near the Canal. Her name is Ira, and she recently presented him with twin girls. She knows most of what happened on the road between Illyria and Haven, and she can guess the rest. She’s intelligent, far too bright to make an issue of the fact that her husband occasionally tosses in his sleep, and cries out another woman’s name.
