“The lake,” said Quait.
“Eventually. But first they found another door.” Claver let them digest this, and then he continued. “According to legend, the Quebec came back to this place and tied up. If that’s true, there was a submarine chamber. I think the lake is that chamber.
“Something went wrong. Whatever system they had to keep the water level low inside the chamber failed. Maybe an outer lock got stuck so that it remained open to the sea. Anyhow, eventually the internal ventilation system got old and gave way. Once that happened, once the air could get out, tides began to rise and fall inside the chamber. Now, think about the corridor with the two heavy doors.”
Chaka thought about it and saw no light. Nor did the others. “I suspect it was designed so that one door had to be dosed before the other could be opened.”
“Why?” asked Chaka.
“Because if both doors are opened, we get the effect we just talked about. The water tries to match the water level outside. It rises or falls. Whatever.”
Quait still didn’t see that it changed anything. “So you’re saying they got caught in the rising tide? But you said earlier the tide’s too slow.”
“I don’t think they got caught in the tide. Not that way. If I understand Knobby’s story, the disaster happened more or less during high tide. But if the submarine chamber had broken down, the water would rise and fall each day with the tide.” He looked at Chaka. “If that were so, what would the condition have been inside the chamber when they broke through the second door?”
Chaka saw Quait’s eyes widen. “It would have been full of water.”
“Yes,” said Claver. “They wouldn’t have experienced the leisurely six-feet-per-hour rise or whatever this is we’ve seen. An ocean would have roared out at them. Trapped them all. Drowned them before they realized they were in trouble. Except perhaps for the one man who was up on the landing, hauling books.”
Flojian’s hand touched Quait.
“Not his fault,” said Quait.
Flojian scooped up a handful of water, and let it drain away. “He’d have been directing operations,” he said. “He’d have held himself responsible. For the death of six people. And the loss of everything here.’
For a long time after that no one spoke.
“At least we know,” said Chaka, finally. “Maybe now we can put it to rest.” Her breasts rose slightly as the water pressed upward.
“I don’t think this is working,” Quait said.
Flojian nodded. “We know.” he said. “But it’s starting to look as if nobody else ever will.”
Claver glanced again at the ceiling. “We need a way to measure it.”
“You don’t need to measure it,” said Flojian. “It’s still rising.”
“I hate to say this,’ said Quait, “but I think we ought to try to swim for it.”
They were at the far end of the corridor. By now it was full of water. “I could never make that,” Chaka said. “It’s too far.”
“Count me out, too,” said Flojian. “I wouldn’t get halfway.”
“We can’t just sit here,’ snapped Quait.
Flojian was bobbing slowly up and down in the water, shivering. “Maybe,” he said, “we should have thought of that before we agreed to stay in this rat trap.”
Chaka looked at Claver. “Orin, what’s going wrong?”
“There’s another duct or shaft somewhere. There has to be.”
They relit the other lamps and went looking. The midsection of the ceiling was just far enough away from the gallery to leave it in shadow. There didn’t seem to be anything out there, but it was hard to be sure. Quait swam out with a lamp. He kicked over on his back, raised the lantern, and saw the problem immediately.
Another duct, partially hidden by a beam.
It was centered precisely, but out of reach. There was still six feet of air space left between the water and the ceiling. “We’ll have to wait until the water gets higher,” he said. “Then we can try to block it.
“It’s already too high,” said Claver. “Keep in mind that plugging it won’t stop the rise immediately.
“We need a stick, said Flojian.
Chaka went back to the staircase, submerged, and tried to break off the handrail. When she failed, Quait went down and came back with a seven-foot piece.
But there were no more clothes. They recovered Flojian’s shirt and trousers from one of the other ducts, and Quait used the handrail to push them into the air passage. Within moments, he had sealed it. Meanwhile, the others looked for a substance with which to close the newly opened vent. Claver tried pushing a tabletop against it, but it didn’t work.
“We’ll have to use one of the books,” Flojian said finally.
Claver nodded. “Be quick. Try to find something that isn’t likely to be of practical value.
They picked one that had already been damaged, a biography about a person no one had heard of: Merejkowski’s The Romance of Leonardo Da Vinci.
Quait stood on a chair and wedged it in, jammed it in tight, and then they huddled together, listening to the sounds of the running tide.
The water crept past Chaka’s shoulders.
Embraced the line of her jaw.
Flojian had already climbed onto a cabinet. She joined him, but stayed low in the water because it was warmer.
Claver looked up at the books, stacked on tabletops now barely two feet above the tide. He placed the lamp on top of a stack and went searching for something he could use to gauge the water’s rise. Quait’s seven-foot piece of handrail leaned against a wall.
He recovered it, stood it up straight, and used a knife to mark off the depth. It was at about the level of his collarbone.
Quait moved close to Chaka. “You okay?” he asked.
She nodded. “Considering the circumstances,” she added.
Nobody said much. After a while, the lamp flickered out and they were in absolute darkness. For Chaka, that became the most fearful time of the entire ordeal.
But after a few minutes Claver’s voice cut through the general gloom: “I think we’re okay,” he said. “It’s still moving up. But it’s very slow.
“That brought a cautious “you’re sure?” from Flojian.
“Yes,” he said. “I’m sure.”
Chaka let out a happy yelp and embraced each of her companions. It seemed as if the water grew warmer. They splashed and cheered until Claver warned them they were getting water on the books.
“Damn the books,” said Quait. “We’re going to see daylight again.”
EPILOGUE
Abraham Polk described the Plague as caused by an airborne virus. No one was sure precisely what that meant, but his account of the last days was sufficiently graphic to make clear the nature of the beast. It was a product of the rain forests, and Folk had come to think of it as a kind of trigger mechanism, a safeguard against uncontrolled population growth.
Within another ten years, it is expected that complete sets of the Haven texts will exist in public libraries in both Brockett and the League cities. This set of almost three hundred fifty histories, commentaries, and speculations have been formally named the Silas Glote Collection. To date, approximately a fifth of the volumes have been copied and made available to the general public. The remainder, which are undergoing restoration, study, and/or annotation, can be examined by bona fide scholars.
Coal-fired boilers are now in use on both the Hudson and the Mississippi Rivers. Occasional sea traffic plies between Brockett and the League. Trade has grown slowly, because of the immense distances involved and the difficulties in getting League products overland to the mouth of the Mississippi. But progress is being made, and Orin Claver has turned his considerable abilities to the task of devising an open water route from League cities to the Gulf. His solutions so far have relied primarily on canal building.