HE WAS BREATHING again. It was shallow, and his pulse was weak, but he was alive. She called his name, propped him up and held her hands against his cheeks and rubbed them until his eyes opened. He looked confused.
“Hi, Digger,” she said.
He tried to speak, but nothing came.
“Take your time,” she said.
He mumbled something she couldn’t make out. And then his eyes focused on her and looked past her at the bulkhead. “What happened?” he asked finally. “How—here?”
“I pulled you out of the water.”
“Water?” His hands went to his clothes.
“What’s your name?” she asked gently.
“Dunn. My name’s Dunn.” He tried to sit up, but she pushed him back down. “She okay?”
“Tayma? She’s fine. You saved her.”
“Good. Thanks, Kellie.”
“Kellie? Do you know who I am?”
“Kellie,” he said.
“No. Kellie’s with the Hawksbill. Try again.”
ARCHIVE
(From the Goompah Recordings,
Savakol, Translated by Ginko Amagawa)
I’m no public speaker and I don’t like being up here. If you want to know what happened today at Barkat Beach, I’ll tell you what I saw, or what I thought I saw. And I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions about explanations.
I went because I’d heard the keelots were going to be there, and that they would perform the kelma. I went with Quet. We were standing near the front, close to the water.
They went through the ceremony without any problems, and Tayma started out into the ocean. She was praying as she went, and had gotten about ten or fifteen paces when something began to chase her. I don’t know what it was. Something in the water but we couldn’t see it.
She didn’t notice it, but just kept going. We were yelling for her to look out, but she probably thought we were trying to persuade her to come back.
We could see it was going to catch her, and everybody screamed louder. A few cleared out. What happened next is hard to describe. But there was a big fight and then a window opened in the sky. ”
chapter 38
On the surface near Hopgop.
Friday, December 5.
MARGE AND JULIE descended beside the rainmaker they’d brought down the previous night, ready to go to work.
They’d rehearsed often on the way out, and they fell to with a minimum of wasted effort. The rainmaker was already centered among the eight trees that would serve as moorings. Marge did a quick measurement among tree trunks to determine a flight path for the helicopter. When she was satisfied she had it, she released the anchor cables. Julie meantime dropped a feed line in the stream, attached it to a set of four sprinklers, and inserted the sprinklers in the ground around the chimney. Then she connected the line to the pump.
Next they attached the cables to the trees, arranging the slack so that, when the time came, the chimney would be able to rise evenly to a height of about ten meters. Then they disconnected the vertical lines that held the package together. And that was it. It looked like a wide, sky-colored cylinder, made of plastic, open at top and bottom.
“Ready to go?” asked Julie.
Marge nodded. “Yes, indeed.” She was proud of her rainmakers, but trying to look as though this were all in a day’s work.
“Bill,” said Julie, “Get the landers and the helicopter ready.”
“They are primed and waiting.”
Marge planted a pickup on a tree trunk so they could watch the action on the ground. When she’d finished, they got back into the hauler and Julie took them up, directly over the top of the chimney.
They did a quick inspection, and Marge pronounced everything in order. “Let’s go,” she said.
Julie descended gently until they touched the top of the chimney. “That’s good,” she told Bill. “Reconnect.”
Marge felt the magnetic clamps take hold.
“Done,” said Bill.
Marge started the pump. On the ground, a fine spray rose into the air and descended around the rainmaker. “That’s not really going to make the clouds happen, is it?”
“It’ll speed things along,” said Marge.
Julie grinned. “The wonders of modern technology.” She swung round in her seat. “Here we go.”
She engaged the spike, the vertical thrusters fired, and they started up. The top of the rainmaker rose with them, extending like an accordion.
“You ever have a problem with these things?” asked Julie.
“Not so far. Of course, this is the first time we’ve tried to use them off-world.”
“Should work better than at home,” Julie said. “Less gravity.” And then, to the AI: “Bill, let’s get the first lander aloft.”
The interior of the chimney was braced with microscopically thin lightweight ribs, and crosspieces supported the structure every eighty-six meters. A screen guarded the bottom of the chimney, to prevent small animals from getting sucked up inside. (Larger creatures, like Goompahs, would be inconvenienced if they got too close, would lose their hats, but not their lives.)
As they gained altitude, the omega rose with them. For the first time, Marge could see lightning bolts flickering within the cloud mass.
“Four hundred meters,” said Bill, giving them the altitude.
There was an external support ring two hundred meters below the top of the chimney. The first of the four landers, under Bill’s control, rose alongside and linked to the ring.
“Connection complete,” said the AI. Both vehicles, working in concert, continued drawing the chimney up.
Marge could see lights in Hopgop, on the east along the sea. The big moon was up, and it was moving slowly across the face of the omega.
“Seven hundred meters,” said Bill.
The ship swayed. “Atmosphere’s pushing at the chimney,” said Marge. “Don’t worry. It’ll get smoother as we go higher.”
“The other landers are in the air.”
It struck Marge that the cloud looked most ominous, most portentous, when it was rising. She didn’t know why that was. Maybe it was connected with the disappointed hope, each evening, that it wouldn’t be there in the morning. Maybe it was simply the sense of something evil climbing into the sky. She shook it off, thinking how the Goompahs must be affected if it bothered her.
“I have a question,” said Julie.
“Go ahead.”
“When it’s all over, how do we get them down? The chimneys?”
“When the omega hits, we push a button, and the omega blows them into the sea.”
Julie frowned. “They won’t drag? Cause some damage on the ground?”
“I doubt it. In any case, it’s a necessary risk.” The construction materials were biodegradable, and within a few months there’d be no trace of the chimneys anywhere.
They were getting high. Hopgop looked far away. Overhead, the stars were bright.
“Twelve hundred meters.”
Near ground level, a second lander moved in alongside the chimney and tied onto a support ring on the opposite side from the first. “Second linkup complete,” said Bill. “All units ascending.”
At twenty-two hundred meters, the third lander joined the effort, connecting with a ring at right angles to the other two. Marge was sitting comfortably, reassuring Julie when the hauler occasionally rocked as the weather pushed at the chimney. Julie had never done anything like this, and when she put on goggles and saw the chimney trailing all the way to the ground, her instincts screamed that it was too much, that the weight had to drag the hauler out of the air. It came down to Marge’s assurances against the evidence of her eyes.
“Keep in mind,” Marge said, “it’s the same thing you brought down out of orbit. It’s no heavier now than it was then.”