Chapter 16: Crossing Lines
The walrus didn't even look up as the pod silently flew by over its head.
"Sorry," Belle said miserably.
"It's fine. It's better to follow a hundred false leads than to risk missing that one time…"
The scouting flight was going much better than Soreto had feared. Belle kept her eyes open and her mouth shut, for the most part. Now, when Soreto was dazzled and worn out from the glare of the sun on ice, Belle still was managing to pick out dark spots and movement.
It wasn't her fault that all of those spots had been seals and walruses and oddly, tourists. Where had all the tourists come from so suddenly? Surely this was the wrong season.
They passed over yet another enormous iceberg, both examining it closely. They flew on.
"I never want to see another penguin in my life," Belle announced.
Soreto made an annoyed sound. "Helicopter—again!" She took the pod under water. For a frozen desert, Antarctica seemed to have a lot of traffic lately, especially where they wanted to search. She supposed it might be a good thing. Maybe some survivors had been found already. Maybe all the helicopters and inflatable boats in the area were searching for more. She wondered if there was any way to infiltrate the local research bases, or tap into their communications.
After passing under an iceberg or two, they returned to the air and resumed the search.
"Ian HAS to be somewhere," Belle burst out.
"I hope you'll remember to mention if you happen to see Mel, Dumas or Seth as well."
"Of course!" said Belle indignantly, adding in a quieter tone, "Well, maybe not Dumas."
They flew over a large island, scanning for anything that looked human. This one was deserted completely, however. They were getting pretty far from the area where the ship went down, so Soreto changed course to return over unexplored territory.
They continued in silence for some time.
"Do you think they're okay?" Belle asked in a small voice.
Soreto remained silent. She had no answer.
After another long silence, Belle asked, "Are you in love with Ian?"
Soreto had no answer for that, either. Was she? She loved Agi, of course, but she loved Mel, Tarlant and Hasmodai as well. They had worked together for so long, even before coming to Earth. Agi had always had a smile that could turn your heart inside out, and she had known not to read too much into it. Back on Greecia there had been professional standards, mutual courtesy, lines you did not cross. During their long, soul-wearying mission on Earth, it became even more important to respect each other's personal boundaries.
It had been wrong to kiss Agi that way on the ship, of course. Even now, she wasn't entirely certain whether it had been done only to express her anger, to open his eyes and to outrage Belle, or if those had only been her excuses for doing something she had genuinely longed to do. But she knew she had crossed the line.
All things considered, she didn't really regret having done it. And if Agi was really gone…she might have regretted never kissing him even more.
"Flo? Sorry- Soreto?"
Soreto looked at Belle. This was the first time the girl had called her by that name, the first time she had spoken anyone's Greecian name without a tone of mockery. Soreto had always felt there was something aggressive in the girl's insistence on using their Earth names when nobody else was doing it.
"It's fine," she said. "Either name works."
"How come you all have two names? Which is your real one?"
"They both are. It's complicated." Soreto sighed. "I suppose it's about time you knew everything that's going on." It was ridiculous to keep being annoyed by the girl's ignorance when they had actively kept her in it. "We'll all have a talk tonight and explain everything."
Belle nodded. "So, will I get a code name, too?"
Soreto had to bite her lip to keep from laughing. It was simply too childish. And yet, how like a complete outsider the names must have made Belle feel.
"We'll have to see about that," Soreto said. Of course they would give the child a Greecian name if it would smooth things over. They were short on supplies, they had lost most of their equipment and half their team, but names were available in unlimited supplies, and there was no need to ration kindness. Still, in letting Belle know the truth about them and their origins, Soreto would be crossing another line, one that Agi had definitely not wanted crossed.
They returned to the campsite with no success to report.
"So, what do we do now?" Tarlant asked, and they all looked at her. The same way they all, herself included, used to look at Agi, expecting him to have all the answers.
Agi had never said, "How should I know?" or "Not a clue." Soreto wondered what they would have done if he had. She knew she could not say it now.
"Tarlant, you said you left some of that salvage behind," she said. "Was there any of our sensor or scanning equipment?"
"Just bits and pieces. A few sensor panels. None of the control systems."
"Can we interface the sensors with the controls in the escape pods? Or the robots?"
"Maybe."
"All right, tomorrow I'll watch the camp. I want you to take Belle and Tina and the robots and bring back every scrap of equipment you can find. We'll find a way to make it work."
Soreto had no idea if there was any sense in what she was ordering, or if it would be of any use: the important thing was, her team had a direction and a plan, for at least one more day.
Hasmodai examined the dismantled generator. It was, as Pirya had described, a series of layers. Many of the layers had eerily familiar patterns.
As Hasmodai had first become acquainted with Earth culture, the similarities between some ancient symbols and the energy patterns the scientific team had used to open the Zone had struck him as either a macabre coincidence, or some sort of instinctual recognition of natural patterns of force. Now he had to wonder if fragments of Poromet's legacy had indeed been remembered this long.
"I'm pretty sure your uncle opened the Zone," Hasmodai said. "Of course, he didn't quite realize what he was doing."
"Yai, e al thet na Eareth av happed, na Greecia haps anow?"
Hasmodai had listened to enough ancient recordings to be able to make sense of the archaic dialect, though he had never found it nearly so charming before. Pirya had seemed to comprehend the story of his own adventures and mission, at any rate.
"Yes, the same thing is happening to Greecia," he confirmed. "I think your uncle may have unwittingly set off or accelerated Earth's last ice age."
"E Eareth ais frozed stil."
"Hmmmm…no. Actually," he informed her unhappily, "your ship seems to have drifted near one of the planet's frozen poles, so when the ice age ended, your automatic systems failed to—"
"Ay lang ev y sleapt?"
"Well, first, you must understand that time flows at a different rate on the Earth as it does on—"
"Ay lang?"
Hasmodai took a deep breath and let her have the bad news. "You and your people have been in stasis sleep for a little over nine hundred Greecian years."
The way she went pale, slumped against the wall and slid to the floor, he was glad he had not told her how long it had been in Earth time.
"It's all right," Hasmodai said. "Now that you know, we can move your ship nearer the equator. Once the solar cells have charged—"
"Zaios woll wekken."
Hasmodai hesitated. Yes, if he had understood her story correctly, once the ship was in a warm climate, the tyrannical Zaios and his people would wake. Somehow, the idea of an enormous, armed Greecian spaceship on modern Earth under the command of a thousand-year-old Earth-hating tyrant struck Hasmodai as a bad thing.
He might have been able to hack into the program and change the reawakening settings, but he hesitated to risk the lives of the Atalantans and their life support systems any further than he already had.
"We'll have to see that your ship takes off from Antarctica, then," said Hasmodai. "Let me have a look at your power system, maybe I can do something with it. If not, I have friends who are good with mechanical work, I'm sure that they would help you."
Or he hoped they would. As Pirya led him through the ship, Hasmodai tried to shake off the feeling that he was shirking his real mission. After all, even Agi must admit that the discovery of the dimensional generator and its history had proven to be relevant to their investigation. And these people were from Greecia, stranded here for nearly two hundred fifty centuries. How could he just leave them here?
How could he leave her?
Any concern he had felt over whether the solar power system would be beyond his abilities to repair vanished when he saw it. Advanced as it might have been nine hundred years ago, Hasmodai had put together model spaceships as a child with a more complex and effective power structure. Even a quick scan showed how flawed and inefficient the system was.
"It looks like the dermic conducting layer has deteriorated badly," he said. Actually, he thought it had probably been flawed from the beginning.
"Dhou kanst mende?"
"I could fix it, I suppose," Hasmodai said. "But it would probably be much more efficient to simply convert to ambient power collection. The solar collection panels have an adequate network of coverage, and the collection area could be extended to incorporate the entire hull surface. All it would take is a fairly routine reconfiguration of the molecular structure."
Rather to his surprise, Pirya didn't appear confused. She just crossed her arms and looked at him with narrowed eyes.
"E ay," she demanded, "purpost dhou effet sich majacle?"
Hasmodai smiled and pulled a tool out of his bag. "I don't suppose you've seen a particle converter before? It should take me about half an hour to plot the structural alteration and set the echo range parameters, then the reaction chain should complete the conversion on its own over the next day or so."
The look of stunned wonder on her face was simply adorable.
Hasmodai couldn't suppress his own smile as he began to program the molecular restructuring of the energy collectors. So, he'd be here a day or so. The team could get along without him. If Agi had a list of who they could afford to lose most, Hasmodai was sure he'd be at the top of it. Besides, they knew where to find him if they wanted to. It was they who had abandoned him.
Hasmodai took a long look around at the Atalanta, the ship he had dreamed of all his childhood. "You know," he said to Pirya, "there are people on Greecia, historians and antiquarians, who would consider any alteration or modernization of this ship's system as a crime against the universe."
"Dhey airent here," Pirya said pointedly.
"No, they aren't." Hasmodai activated the converter, and set in motion the systematic vandalization of a historical treasure.
Dumas couldn't really blame the diplomat for delaying them. They had turned up at the South East Islands embassy in Australia with no visas, no passports and no excuses, and demanded immediate transport home. The fact that the ambassador had personally met Damien at the royal palace was probably all that protected them from an interrogation by embassy security agents. As it was, Dumas was sure the reason for the delay was that the ambassador wanted to assure that Dumas was not fleeing the law, and that the distressed woman accompanying him was not a hostage.
Three hours working in the tiny access hatch of the climate regulator, plus four hours in the same hatch with Dumas and Seth during the flight had left Mel a wreck. She was shaking as if she were still in Antarctica, huddled and staring down at her feet. Dumas found a sort of vengeful humor in the entire situation.
The ambassador returned, his face officially apologetic. "I'm so sorry for the delay, Mr. Damien. There doesn't seem to be any commercial flight leaving for the islands for over a week. However, since you are a friend of the royal family, please let me lend you my personal airplane."
The ride in the taxi did nothing for Mel's nerves, and it wasn't until they were out walking across the runway at the airport that she stopped hyperventilating. By the time they reached the ambassador's hangar, she had almost stopped shaking.
But when they approached the plane, and she saw it, and realized, she froze. "No," she said emphatically.
Dumas didn't argue, he just seized her arm and forced her into the little plane's cabin.
"Seth, go sit with the pilot," Dumas ordered. "Make sure he realizes we're in a hurry. Lives are at stake." Seth entered the plane's cockpit as Dumas deposited Mel into one of the four passenger seats, sitting across from her. She sat with her face buried in her hands as the plane wheeled out onto the runway, built up speed and took off.
His broad, obnoxious smile was making Dumas's facial muscles ache long before Mel finally looked up and saw it. He was disappointed that she did not comment.
"I was just remembering," he said, "how cold the Antarctic sea was."
She looked up at him again. Her eyes were like windows into Hell. "Do you know what you are, Dumas?" she demanded in a fierce, unsteady voice.
"I do," said Dumas, smirking more broadly. "But if it makes you feel better, you can say it. I've heard all the bad words already."
"You are a wounded, emotionally crippled child, so starved for love and so certain you don't deserve it that you—"
Dumas put his hand on Mel's shoulder and released a stunning jolt from his energy pack. She slumped down in her chair.
"What did you do?" Seth demanded, as he came through the door from the cockpit.
"Stun burst," said Dumas. "I put her out for the trip. She'll thank me when she wakes up."
He picked up a magazine, opened it, and held it in front of his face, remaining silent for the rest of the flight.