'You can take it aboard, Hutch.' George let go the line and started up.
The currents dragged Richard along the sea bottom. Above, the shuttle hull was dark, and close, in sunlit water.
Henry was also drifting. 'Heads up,' he said. 'The tide's a bitch.' His voice was shrill.
'Hang on, Henry,' said George. 'I'll get you.'
Hutch was frantic: 'Let's go!'
Richard got a hand on the cable. He was still on the bottom, and his arms were weary.
'George,' cried Hutch. 'Come back. We'll get him with the shuttle. Richard, where are youT'
'With the chase.'
'On the cable?'
'Yes.'
'Okay. We're out of time. Hang onto the line. Got that? Don't let go, no matter what.'
There was a loose end on one side of the artifact. He got it around his waist and knotted it. Then, wearily, he stopped struggling.
'There he is.' Hutch's voice again. Richard wasn't sure who she meant. He thought, She's always been there when 1 need her. He felt strange. Disconnected.
'Relax, Henry,' said George. 'We've got you.'
'Goddammit,' Hutch said, 'the son of a bitch is on top of us.' Over the voices, he heard a murmur, like a wind stirring.
'You still there, Richard?'
'I'm still here.'
'Can you secure yourself to the cable?'
'I already have.'
'Okay. About thirty seconds and we're going for a ride.'
'Don't lose the chase, Hutch,' he said.
George: 'Here, take him.' They must be talking about Henry.
And Carson: 'Get out of there, Hutch.'
'Okay, I got him. Hang on, Richard—'
His line jerked and the sea brightened. He rose a meter, moved horizontally, and started to settle. There was a second tug, stronger this time.
The water rushed past him.
The wave was not like the others. This was a mountain of water, a liquid behemoth roaring toward her across the open sea, breathing, white-flecked, green, alive. It crested five kilometers out, and broke, and built again. And Hutch had waited until she could wait no longer. There would be no lone Tower standing after this one. George had finally got Henry on board. 'Go,' he told her, and Carson was frantic. Eleven hundred meters high. You're not going to get out, Hutch—
The last of the Knothic Towers awaited the onrush. The sea had withdrawn and its base was mired in muck. The angel-creature on its pinnacle knelt placidly.
The ruined Temple glittered in the sunlight. She saw no sign of the beach monkeys.
Henry's voice came out of the hold, demanding to know what was being done for Richard. Little late to think about that. Hutch was ten meters off the surface now, watching the line, watching for some indication he was still there.
The chase came out of the sea first. Richard dangled beneath it. Reassured, she began to climb. 'This'll hurt,' she warned him. And she poured the juice to the magnets. He cried out. But she could hear his breathing. The shuttle rose, fleeing inland, fleeing toward the defile, running before the wall of water. This was not a wave, in the sense that the earlier tsunami had been a wave. The entire ocean was rushing inshore, hurling itself forward, mounting the sky, blocking off the sun. Bright daylight turned wet and furious, and the thing kept growing. White water boiled at its crest.
Hurricane-force winds ripped at the spacecraft, hammered it, drove it back toward the surface.
Too slow. She was moving too deliberately, trying to protect Richard, but in the shadow of the monster her instincts took over: she cut in her jets, quarter speed, the most she dared. The shuttle leaped forward, climbed, and the ancient river valley opened to receive her. Spray coated her wings and hull. The roar filled her ears; George, trying to be stoic, bit down on a whimper.
The tail was thrown violently to one side, and she almost lost the controls. Alpha pitched and yawed; her stabilizers blew.
Then they broke out, wobbled, and looked down on the crest. Hutch, for the moment, ignored the half-dozen bleeps and flashing lights on her board. 'Richard,' she cried into the link, 'you okay?'
No answer.
'Richard?'
She listened to his carrier wave.
DOWNLINK HOLO
'Hello, Richard. Greetings from Nok.' David Emory squares his shoulders. He is an intense man, with intense eyes, and quick birdlike gestures. His skin is very dark; his hair at this period has just begun to gray. He wears an open-necked short-sleeved brown shirt with huge pockets and flaps, of the style made popular by the dashing simmy adventurer, Jack Hancock.
He is seated on a small boulder, overlooking a river valley. Behind him, white and red sails are visible on the river. Docks, a winding road, and a pair of ferry stations line the banks. The countryside is cut into agricultural squares. The setting is quite terrestrial. Save for the enormous ringed planet which hangs like a Chinese lantern in the sky, one might think he was in Wisconsin.
This is Inakademeri. Nok. The only known world, other than Earth, which is currently home to a living civilization.
The colors are slanted toward purple, a bright but nonetheless gloomy twilight.
He waits, allowing time for his correspondent to take in the view. Then: 'I've heard about your problems on Quraqua and I can't say I'm surprised. Vision is in short supply. Here the natives are waging a global war, and we'll be lucky if we don't all get blown up. Bombs falling day and night. World War I without gasoline.
'To answer your question: we do have what you describe as a discontinuity. Around AD. 400. Religious background, sinful world, vengeful deity. Sodom and Gomorrah on a global scale. According to the sacred texts, it happened in a single night. We don't take that too seriously, but we cannot account for the general destruction. Bill Reed thinks some sort of virus might have got loose and done the damage. The truth is probably more mundane: major wars, combined with plague and famine.
'You asked about the age of civilization here. Common wisdom puts it at six thousand years, roughly the same as ours. Also like us, they have an Atlantis legend, a place called Orikon. Except that this one really existed, Richard. Don't know how old it is, but it would go back a long way.'
He gestures toward the river valley. 'Incidentally, you will be interested in knowing that tradition places Orikon in this area. Come see it, before they blow up the neighborhood.
Cheers.'
— David Emory, Response CKT144799/16 (Received on Winckelmann, June 16, 2202)
INTERLUDE
PASSAGE
The flight home lasted twenty-seven days, eleven hours. This brought the Winckelmann in approximately two days behind schedule, well within the inexactitudes imposed by transdimensional travel.
During the voyage, the members of the Academy team went through a period of mourning. Those who had argued to press their luck at the Temple found that their exhilaration over having recovered the foundations of a Linear C vocabulary was diluted by a shared portion of guilt. Henry, particularly, sank into dark moods. He spent time with his people, but they could see that the life had gone out of his eyes.
They responded to all this, for the most part, by losing themselves in examining their trove of artifacts and data, and beginning the decades-long process of analysis and interpretation. No such retreat was available to Hutch.
