“Yeah. Why? What do you think I need?”
“I don’t know. How about food and water?”
“This place provides everything we need. I’ll explain as we go.”
Sam shrugged. “Okay. We’ll follow you.”
“I’ll just lock the door to the cottage. Rex is pretty good at keeping stray monotremes from wandering inside, but if we’re going to be away for a while, I should make sure it’s secure.”
Sam suppressed a grin. “Sure. Do whatever you need to do to keep oversized wildlife from taking over your habitat.”
Jess walked quickly toward the cottage. She took a small glance across her shoulder to make certain that Sam and Tom weren’t following her.
She opened the building’s single door and adjusted the intricate wooden lock so that it secured when she closed it again.
Jess’s eyes traced the outline of the single roomed wooden cottage. Starting at the kitchen, she confirmed that the single fire was indeed out and there was no meat left on the smoking rack above it. The windows were all bolted shut.
Her eyes settled on a dark figure at the farthest corner of the room.
She held her gaze there for just a moment. About to turn around and leave, the figure moved. She stopped, holding the door open slightly; her eyes darted toward Sam and Tom — who were outside being convinced to play fetch with her pet echidna. Her eyes returned to the man at the end of the room.
He was struggling to move his arms and legs. Bound by thick kangaroo hide the man had almost managed to slip the gag off his mouth.
Jessica frowned, and moved quickly toward him.
She shifted the gag upward, adjusting it so that it bound her captive’s mouth harshly, cutting into the soft skin around his lips and cheeks.
The man opened his eyes wide in terror, as though they could scream in place of his gagged mouth.
They were a deep purple color.
And they watched her as she turned and walked out of the cottage, closing the door behind her.
Jess met Sam and Tom and all three of them headed south, deeper into the submerged world of the 8th continent.
Sam fell into step next to her. “You said that the Gifted Ones wanted to speak to me?”
“Yes,” she said, without changing her stride.
“Why?”
She made a suppressed grin. “I don’t know, but if I had to guess… I’d say they need your help.”
Chapter Five
Jessica didn’t wait to elaborate.
Instead, she set the pace with a determined stride as they headed deeper into the mysterious submerged world of the 8th Continent. Sam kept up with her, walking at a fast pace, while Tom settled behind them, taking in their new environment, constantly scanning it for signs of danger.
The trail followed the river as it meandered in a southeasterly direction. Eucalyptus regnanss trees, more than three hundred feet tall, lined the river, casting dark shadows across the valley to the west. The ancient trees were the world’s second largest, surpassed in height only by the California Giant Sequoia trees. Above, the purple hue of the sun pierced the horizon, turning the sky dark purple.
“What’s up with your sunlight?” Sam asked.
Jess turned her palms skyward, making her lips form an intentionally coy smile. “What about it?”
“It’s not natural is it?”
Jess glanced at the purple hue of the setting sun on the horizon. “Oh, that… you know, having been born down here, the orange thing that you topsiders have, seems strange to me.”
Sam thought about that for a moment. “That makes sense. I still wonder why? I mean, where did the Gifted Ones draw the sunlight from? And what makes it that unnatural purple color?”
“Oh, that I can answer. Violet is at one end of the spectrum of visible light, between blue and the invisible ultraviolet. It has the shortest wavelength of all the visible colors. It is the color the eye sees looking at light with a wavelength of between 380 and 450 nanometers…”
Sam said, “How the hell did you work all that out down here?”
“My mother was an engineer, like her mother before her. She explained it to me years ago. Basically, it has to do with the way the light is drawn in through the obsidian, filtering out all visible light with the exception of the color purple before ultraviolet takes its place.”
“Wow…” Sam suppressed a smile. Despite growing up in a prehistoric world, she was well educated in science and technology. “Good answer.”
Jess stopped and pointed at the large river. “That’s the Sentinel River. It divides this entire continent in half. The Gifted Ones who want to speak to you live on the peak of a mountain roughly fifty miles south of here.”
Sam said, “That doesn’t sound too far.”
“It is when you’re walking through the 8th Continent.”
Sam’s eyes narrowed. “Why?”
“It can be a dangerous place. There are no roads or well-worn trails to follow. No straight lines. We have to constantly alter our directions to achieve our navigation goals.”
Tom asked, “Why don’t we build a raft and take the river?”
Jess shook her head. “You don’t want to get too close to this river.”
Tom grinned. “Why not? Does it have crocodiles?”
“Yeah, but you don’t have to be afraid of those so much. They keep to themselves. It’s the bunyips that are deadly.”
Sam said, “I thought bunyips were nocturnal?”
“They are. But the enormous canopies of the variety of forests that dwarf the Sentinel make some parts of the river permanently fixed in darkness — and bunyips come out in darkness.”
They continued walking due south.
Sam said, “Tell me more about the 8th Continent.”
Jess smiled. “What do you want to know?”
“Everything.”
She laughed. “You might want to be a little more specific.”
“All right. How big is it? Can you describe its topography? What sort of civilization lives here?”
“Okay.” She closed her intelligent gray eyes for a moment, as though considering where to start, and then opened them, fixing her gaze on Sam. “From what I’ve been told, it’s roughly half the size of the Australian continent. The entire place is one giant dome biosphere. The Sentinel River is the entire continent’s primary source of fresh water and splits the dome in two. It runs in a clockwise direction following a roughly south, to west, to north, to east course.”
Sam cocked an eyebrow. “The same river runs around in a circle?”
“Afraid so.”
“Why?”
Her eyes narrowed. “Why what?”
“What makes it go around?” Sam asked. “I mean, a normal river is fed by gravity, always trying to reach the lowest point, before eventually settling on a level equilibrium when it meets the ocean. So what drives this one to go around in a giant circle?”
Jess shrugged. “Beats me.”
Sam’s lips twisted in an incredulous smile. “Weren’t you curious?”
“Sure I was.” She folded her arms across her chest. “But some things about this place I have never been able to explain using my knowledge of science. My guess is that the Gifted Ones built this place so that a magnetic pulse drives the river from the south back to the higher grounds of the north, where gravity can once again allow it to flow. But that’s just a guess. People have looked for a mechanical pump, or some sort of mechanical device used to drive the water up hill, but no one’s been able to locate such a thing. It’s like the entrance to this place…”
“The entrance?” Sam asked. “What about it?”
“Well, we’re more than a thousand feet beneath the surface of the ocean. So why doesn’t water flood the entire biosphere?”
Sam grinned. “I had the same thought, but shrugged it off, guessing that the dome shaped entrance created a natural S-bend like that used in plumbing.”