8 – Crevasse

In the depths of the long J'nanin night, Rachel tossed and turned on the floor of the tower room. In the depths of her dreams, she saw things that made her think.

She saw her family – her parents, grandparents, Jane, Jordan... Then they disappeared, and their faces were replaced by the crazed face of Saavedro. He spoke to her, raspy.

"Twenty years... twenty long years alone. They took everything I had. My wife. My two baby girls."

Rachel shuddered and moaned. Saavedro's face loomed closer and his words echoed around her head.

"It would have been better... if I had died."

With a gasp, Rachel sat up. Beside her, Jordan mumbled in his sleep and rolled over. She stood up, slowly and shakily, walked silently to the elevator shaft door and stepped outside. The night was crystal clear and quite cold. She looked up; the stars winked down at her just like they did at home in the desert. Breathing deeply to steady herself, she set off down the ladder and towards the whistling rock.

"I don't see it."

Brittany sighed. "Look harder."

Catherine stared at the board, her eyes roving from piece to piece. "No," she sighed eventually, "I just can't see it."

"All right," said Brittany, "let me see if I can help you. Show me where your rook can move."

Catherine pointed. "Along there... and up there."

"Good," continued Brittany. "Now, you see how my king is blocked in by your knight and bishop?" Catherine nodded. "Right. So, the only way it can escape from an attack is to the queenside. Still with me?"

"Oh, I think I see now!" exclaimed Catherine suddenly. "If I move my rook... here..." she did so, "... your king can't move from that square, right?"

"That's right," smiled Brittany. "So I have to make a move," Brittany moved her pawn, "and now you can win by checking my king... how?"

"With my..." Catherine paused to survey the board again, "other bishop?"

"Yes, well done."

Catherine moved her bishop to attack Brittany's king. "So... because your king can't move, and you can't block the check... that makes it checkmate and I win?"

"Yes," Brittany said with another smile. "You're getting the hang of this."

When Jordan and Maddy woke, Rachel was not in the tower room. Initially, they were worried, but when they got up and went outside, they saw her sitting down by the lake with her feet in the water.

Jordan, slightly concerned, hurried down the ladder as he wasn't thinking properly this morning. Maddy, whose brain was working somewhat better (despite not having had her morning coffee), went back inside the tower and took the elevator down, arriving before Jordan did.

"You okay, Rach?" asked Jordan immediately upon making it down the horrible spindly ladder next to the Edanna tusk.

"Hmm?" murmured Rachel, looking up. "Oh, yeah. Sorry. Just thinking."

"About what?"

"Well..." Rachel got up with a sigh. "I really feel sorry for Saavedro. Is that crazy?"

"Yes," replied Maddy.

"No," replied Jordan at the same time. Maddy frowned at him.

"Come on, Jordan, if it wasn't for him we wouldn't be here."

"True," said Jordan, "but it's not like what he wants is so terrible. He just wants to see his wife and kids again."

"Oh, and the best way to do that is to endanger thousands of other, innocent lives?"

"Well, sure, it's a bit extreme, but missing your family will do that to you."

"Come on, Jordan, he's putting the entire D'ni civilisation at risk! Not to mention us!"

"You wouldn't understand, Mop, you've never been married..."

This argument continued for a while, with Rachel staying quietly out of it. Eventually she managed to convince them to start moving towards the third tusk, the one with the boulder in front of the door. It was located at the very easternmost tip of the island, with a hole in the ground leading down through the rocky outcrop to the moveable catwalk with the boulder on it, and another, smaller ladder leading down to the controls for moving the catwalk.

"...will you at least agree that if you hadn't seen your family for twenty years, you'd be a bit mad too?"

"Not enough to risk killing thousands of people who had nothing to do with it." Maddy was steadfast in her lack of any sort of sympathy for Saavedro.

"Guys," said Rachel, "shut up. Whether or not we're sympathetic towards Saavedro, we still have to get this boulder out of the way."

The three of them silently moved down to the catwalk controls.

"All right..." muttered Maddy. "So we have to try and use these to roll the boulder back so that it's behind the ladder, right? That way we can get through to the tusk door. Seems simple enough."

To the surprise of both Jordan and Rachel, Maddy managed to successfully manoeuvre the boulder into the correct position. Without making any comments that might have got them punched, they followed her out and down the ladder to the door of the tusk. Maddy pushed opened the door and stopped dead.

"Oh dear."

Jordan and Rachel moved forward to peer over her shoulder. The inside of the tusk had been badly damaged – the walls, which had been flawless in the other tusks, were chipped and cracked, and the floor had a large gaping hole in it, making it impossible to enter the tusk without falling.

"Well..." Rachel sighed. "At least the book is still intact." Indeed, the marble pedestal and the book cage hanging near the ceiling were still very much in one piece.

"Not much help if we can't get over there, though, is it?"

"Well... could we find something to put in the hole?"

"So, how are you feeling about it now?"

"I can't believe I missed that," sighed Catherine. "That was so obvious."

"Yes," said Brittany, "but you'd see it now, right? You've got to learn from your mistakes."

"Hmm... So, could we play a full game now?"

"Sure, if you feel confident. But let's have lunch first. Sometimes just a break will help you to see things you might otherwise have missed."

Saavedro paced back and forth in his bunker, pausing occasionally to listen for Atrus arriving. But no – still nothing. He cursed again, then lay down, resting but not sleeping. He hated sleeping. His dreams were perpetually haunted by Sirrus and Achenar. When he was on J'nanin, Saavedro had frequently gotten by on little more than two or three hours of sleep a day – after all, when you're insane you don't really care how much sleep you get. And still now, he slept as little as he felt he could get away with.

Soon, he thought. Soon... soon I will feel better. Soon I will have my resolution... or my revenge.

Maddy sank down on the sandy cliff in the shadow of the third tusk. Jordan and Rachel were close behind her. After such a cold night it was bound to be a hot day, and it was. Jordan and Rachel, of course, were used to the heat, but Maddy not so much. And after all that, they'd come up empty-handed.

"So... what now?" Jordan turned and surveyed the tusk.

"Well..." Maddy wiped her brow before continuing, "I suppose we should go back down there and see if there's any other way of getting across."

Nodding their agreement, Jordan and Rachel followed Maddy down the ladder and back to the door of the tusk. The floor was shattered enough to be completely uncrossable – the thin edge that remained did not look safe.

"Well, why don't we -" Rachel broke off mid-sentence.

"Why don't we what, Rach?"

"Why don't we try and get the boulder in the hole?" Rachel gestured at the boulder that they had moved out of the way of the door. "Now that the tusk door is open, we could use the moving catwalk thing to roll it straight in."

"I can't believe we didn't think of that straight away," muttered Maddy.