"Nothing," said the project director. "Nothing that won't wait."
Canyon recognized an emotional situation when he saw one. They were still sitting on their island as the day crept forward, waiting for the water to go down, waiting to launch an almost hopeless search for the whatzis that had been washed away.
But they didn't want to talk to him. No matter how gently he tried to frame his questions, How does it fee] to know so many people are rooting for you? and If you had all this to do again, is there anything you might have done differently?
"Nobody wants to be rude," Hutch told him, "but I just don't think this is a good time for an interview."
"Okay," he agreed. "I understand how you feel. But if you change your mind, if anyone does, please call me. Okay?"
He was sorry about their situation. And he would have helped if he could. Sitting quietly, staring at the displays of the approaching giant, of the vast sea that surrounded the tower, he understood their frustration. He almost wished he'd followed his father's advice and gone into engineering.
He decided he'd try again when they got closer to the end. His superiors at home were pressing him to acquire what they were referring to as an exit interview with MacAllister. "After all, he's the one everybody knows." But Canyon trusted his own instincts on this one. It was the two women who packed the emotional impact, who would bring tears to people's eyes around the world. Especially Hutchins. Slight of stature, quiet, almost elfin in appearance, there was much of the girl-next-door in her. And Canyon knew if he could get her to agree to talk during the final hours, as he was sure he could, he would give the public an emotional jolt like nothing anyone had ever seen before. If Hutch wouldn't cooperate, Kellie was another possibility.
As to the others, he didn't much like Nightingale, and he was afraid of MacAllister. You never quite knew what he might say.
Hutch made a premature effort to land them at the tower, but the water was too deep and the currents too swift. So she turned away and retreated to another hilltop, and they waited another forty-five minutes, watching the tide run back to the northeast.
The second effort succeeded. She got down, and they piled out into hip-deep water. First they made a careful inspection of the tower, assuring themselves that the capacitors weren't there somewhere, missed by Kellie and Hutch in the preliminary search.
Then they waded out toward the south. They'd divided the area into parcels and they tried to work within their assigned boundaries, tried to be methodical. We'll stay on this side of a line between the tower and that tree over there. It wasn't very efficient, but it worked to a degree. The real problem was that the search area was immense.
Nightingale and Mac brought with them a conviction that the units could nevertheless be found, probably because they thought this was their only decent chance at survival.
The land was not as flat as it had seemed. The depth of the water varied, up to their ankles in some places,over their heads in others. The current was strong and, in deeper areas, consistently threatened to knock them over. Hutch had arrived with no illusions about their chances. Left to herself, she'd have put all her money on the sky scoop, gone to Mt. Blue, and spent the remaining time surveying the hexagon. But she was tired, and she was not up to arguing with two males who probably already thought she'd made an inadequate effort when there had still been a chance.
She'd expected Nightingale and Mac to give up fairly quickly because of the amount of effort required to maintain the search. And the sheer size of the search area. But as the hours passed, their determination, or their desperation-it was difficult to know which- grew. They moved farther and farther south of the tower.
Kellie, who was teamed with Nightingale, seemed to have become resigned. She stayed close to her partner, worked hard, plunging her hands beneath the surface constantly to examine one suspect rock or another. But Hutch could see that she had no real hope of success, could see it in the way she paused occasionally while they rested to look out over the vast expanse of running water, sometimes gazing north, no doubt wondering whether the capacitors might somehow have gotten on the wrong side of the tower. Or were fifty kilometers away. She could hear it also in the listlessness of her voice. And who could blame her?
Once they thought they had one of them, but it turned out to be something much like a turtle shell.
When it got dark, they quit. They were exhausted, annoyed, frustrated. They were aching from pushing against the currents and constantly bending over. The knowledge that the capacitors might be within a few meters at any given time had made it impossible to give up. But fianlly they crawled back to the lander, hauled themselves into the cabin, took turns cleaning up in the washroom, and collapsed into their seats.
The water was starting to rise again anyhow. Hutch took them up.
"Can I make a suggestion?" said Marcel.
"Go ahead."
"First, am I correct in assuming you've given up looking for the capacitors?"
Hutch glanced around. They all nodded.
"All right. I want to move you to high ground for the night." "Okay."
"For the moment, there's nothing more you can do. Tomorrow, I'd like to persuade you to go to even higher ground." "Mt. Blue," she said.
XXIX
We are all afflicted with a Lone Ranger syndrome, a belief in the masked stranger who arrives well armed at dawn and settles problems in a straightforward simplistic manner. The character, whose origin stretches back to the twentieth century, owes his longevity to the fact that he connects with our most primal impulses, and represents the way we truly would be, if only we could. That we cannot results not only from a lack of courage and ability, but also because the world is simply not built that way. When the night is dark and the storm closes in, one had best be prepared to help himself. Because as surely as the stars wheel overhead there will be no one else, masked or otherwise.
— Gregory MacAllister, Introduction to The Last Mythology by Eve Shiu-Chao
Hours to breakup (Est): 42
They locked down for the night atop a ridge in a howling blizzard not far from Bad News Bay. The ground shook constandy. Hutch slept off and on. She and Kellie both spent time listening hopefully to operational reports from the small armada overhead.
They heard Janet Hazelhurst issuing crisp directions to the Outsiders, who were getting ready to remove what they called the Alpha shaft from the assembly; they heard John Drummond's team working out the details of getting everything pointed in the right direction, and Abel Kinder debating the location of the pickup site with Drum-raond: "It's easier to get here, but the weather looks doubtful, so we need to go farther north."
They heard Miles Chastain and the shuttle pilots planning their assignments. In the early-morning hours, Marcel came on to give them details, the coordinates and altitude and timing of the pickup.
"We've moved it slightly," he said. "But not by much." Rendezvous would occur in precisely twenty-five hours and eleven minutes, mark. Three hours after sunrise day after tomorrow. "At 10,276 meters."
"Ten thousand two-seventy six?" said Hutch. "What happens if we come in at seventy-five?"
He laughed. "You'll be fine, but I'm serious about the precision of this. At its lowest point, we expect the center of the scoop will be at seventy-six. The mouth will be fifty-three meters in diameter. The lander, at its widest, is about fifteen meters. That means you have nineteen meters leeway on either side."
"All right. We should be able to do that. How much time are we going to have?"
"Pinpoint. A couple of seconds. We'll have everything timed so it arrives exactly where it's supposed to, when it's supposed to. But it's just going to be passing through. You get one shot at it. It conies in, it goes down, it starts back up. After that it's gone."