The man held up the case in his hands. Bouyer reached out and took it. The man went to his knees, lifted his head up to the rain that was just beginning to fall, as if the drops were soothing to his burned flesh, then collapsed, dead.
Bouyer knelt next to the body, putting down the still warm and smoking case. Bouyer noted that the man’s eyes were narrow. Was he a Chinaman, like one of those working on the railroad in the east? Where had he come from?
Bouyer turned from the body to the case. Whatever the metal was, it had been partially melted and warped. The latch to open it didn’t work. Bouyer pulled out his hatchet and went to work, cutting through. As he worked, the storm passed and the sun broke through the clouds. After many strokes, the blade bounced off something hard. He saw the glint of crystal. He uncovered a skull, then another. Eventually he extracted eight from the case.
Bouyer stood, looking at the eight crystal skulls reflecting the sunlight. He turned to the body and picked up the smaller man. He carried the body to his cabin and placed it inside. Then he started a fire in the Center of the small room. Bouyer went back out and watched as flames engulfed the structure. Then he loaded the skulls, adding in the one he’d already had, into a pack and tied it off on his horse. He mounted the saddle, turned the horse toward the north and set off.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Dane looked down as the F-14 banked and began descending. He could see a lake below so long that the north and south ends extended over the horizon. Lake Baikal, where the Shadow was still drawing fresh water. As they got lower, Dane could see that the water level had dropped significantly, at least two hundred feet.
A small city was to the left, and the pilot headed them toward a runway at an airfield on the edge of it. As the wheels touched down. Dane could see a Land Rover racing down the runway. When the plane came to a halt. The pilot opened the canopy. The Land Rover pulled up and a door opened. An old man with a long white beard climbed out and waited as Dane climbed out of the plane.
“Mister Dane, welcome to Russia. I am Professor Kolkov.”
“Foreman sends his greetings,” Dane said as he shook the professor’s hand.
Kolkov laughed. “Foreman. Quite a character. We’ve chatted many times but never met face to face. We averted many a disaster for our countries working together.”
“Now we have another one,” Dane said.
“The latest reports from our people monitoring the radioactivity from Chernobyl are not encouraging,” Kolkov said. “Moscow will be covered within four days.”
“Is the equipment ready?” Dane asked.
Kolkov turned to the east, in the direction of the lake. “It Was brought from the salvage people who worked on the Kursk.” He paused. “You do know that sinking was not an accident.”
“A gate?”
Kolkov nodded. “Over the years we’ve lost five nuclear submarines to the Shadow. The reactor is taken, the ship sinks, and many brave sailors die.”
They got in the Land Rover and Kolkov began driving. Dane asked the question that had bothered him on the flight while reviewing Ahana’s data. “Why does the Shadow need our nuclear reactors? According to Nagoya, the Shadow can manipulate forces we can only theorize about.”
In response, Kolkov pointed toward the front of the Land Rover. “One day we will run out of petroleum. We will still have the technology, but without the fuel, it will be worthless. I suspect the Shadow exhausted its natural resources and is using its technology to come to our world to replenish them.”
“Who do you think the Ones Before are?” Dane asked.
Kolkov shrugged. “Perhaps rebels among the Shadow?”
“Why don’t they help us more directly? This vision-and-voices thing is not the best mode.”
“Perhaps they don’t have access to the same technology as the Shadow. There is much we don’t know.”
Too much. Dane thought. “Do you think the Shadow is alien or human? We did find humans inside the Valkyrie suits.”
Kolkov brought the Land Rover to a halt at a pier extending out over dry lakebed. The water was almost a quarter-mile away. He looked at Dane. “I hope it is not human. That would mean one time line is destroying many others just to keep itself going. But I also saw the Nazis invade my country many years ago, so I do not doubt the evil man is capable of.
“On the more positive side, if it is human, that means it is as vulnerable as we are so perhaps we can eventually defeat it. First, however,” he opened his door, “we must save ourselves.”
Amelia Earhart knelt at the edge of the Inner Sea. She saw Rachel’s dorsal fm cutting the black water not far off shore. Behind her was Asper, who had been the ship’s assistant surgeon onboard the Cyclops, a naval coal freighter that had disappeared into the Bermuda Triangle in 1918. Although he had been saved by the Ones Before, the rest of his crew had gone into the Valkyrie cave-an example of the strange apparent fickleness of their unseen benefactors. Earhart. Asper, and the samurai had conducted a raid once into the cave, killing as many of the hapless victims as possible, and Asper had recognized several of his crewmates. They had stopped doing such things because the scope of the task was overwhelming, with thousands of humans strapped to tables being worked on. Also, they were afraid if they were too active, the Valkyries would mount an expedition against their camp and wipe them out. Asper currently had the two Valkyrie suits in tow, a line tied to each, each suit bobbing behind in the air like an oversize white balloon.
Earhart closed her eyes as Rachel came to a halt, lifting her gray body a third of the way out of the water. Earhart felt the connection with the dolphin, a soothing presence flowing into her mind.
“Taki is gone,” she whispered.
“He knew he had a duty,” Asper said.
“Duty.” Earhart slowly got to her feet.
“When are they coming?” Asper was looking out over the Inner Sea at the dozen portals that were visible.
“Soon. Very soon.”
There were dozens of boats grounded on the dry lakebed. A zodiac had picked up Dane and Kolkov from a hastily rigged wooden dock and brought them to a large fishing boat that held a submersible steady with one of its booms. They transferred directly from the zodiac to the submersible.
A man in a wet suit and sporting a thick gray beard was seated on top of the submersible, directly behind the hatch. He had a small cup in his hand, and while Dane climbed onboard, he tossed it into the water muttering something in Russian.
“This is Captain Gregor Kalansky,” Kolkov said.
Kalansky grunted an acknowledgment.
Kolkov indicated for Dane to precede him into the craft. He slapped the metal hatch as Dane slid by him. “Mir I, just like the space station. Not very imaginative. It is the same submersible that went down to the Titanic for the filming of that movie by the same name.”
Kalansky came in next, pushing past Dane and taking his place at the controls and ignoring his two passengers.
“How deep is the gate?” Dane asked as Kolkov pulled down the hatch with a resounding thud.
“At the very bottom,” Kolkov said. He nudged Dane to · take one of the small jump seats directly behind the pilot.
Kolkov handed Dane a piece of paper. “A map of the lake bottom. Baikal is the deepest lake in the world. The oldest, too. It holds-held-one fifth of the world’s fresh water. More than all your Great Lakes in America combined.” He pointed back and forth. “Seven hundred kilometers long.” Then he pointed down. ‘’Three tectonic plates join right below us. Plates that are spreading away from each other and have been doing so for about thirty millions years. That is why the fault below us is so deep.”