Trees were down everywhere, some from the waves, some blackened by lightning.
Later, when he told Whit what he’d done, the older man frowned. “They’ll go back with the idea their gods don’t want them to leave the isthmus.”
“Maybe,” said Digger. “But they’ll have a much better chance to go back. Right now, it’s all I care about.”
At the lander, Julie told them she’d been in touch with the Jenkins. “The channel’s down again,” she said, “but it should only be temporary. Roka and Kulnar are pretty well destroyed. T’Mingletep took a major hit. But Kellie says the rest of the Intigo looks pretty good.
“Marge said there was a substantial storm surge, as well. Seven, eight meters of water across much of the isthmus.”
“How about the Goompahs?”
“They can’t tell for sure. It looks as if a lot of them should be okay. The ones who were smart enough to do what the goddess told them.” She smiled, nodded at Digger, and broke out a bottle. Drinks all around. “Gentlemen.” She raised her glass. “To the defenders of the weak.” It was a French cordial. Where had she been hiding it?
THE BEACH WAS covered with dead fish and shells and debris. The smell was terrible, but Telio was grateful that he was still alive. And ecstatic that the celestial powers knew him by name. And cared about him.
The captains had formed a small party, and they were inspecting the three hulks. There’d already been talk that they would be taken apart and the wood used to make new vessels. Some of the crew had brought in fresh water. They had plenty of fish, and they’d discovered a fruit very like the kulpas. And some of the local game had proven to be quite savory.
He was going to be busy taking care of the injured over the next few days. That was a task that would be difficult because his medicines had been lost with the ship. There were a few strains and some broken bones to tend, and one case of a sweating illness that would probably respond to cold compresses and rest.
But it was over, whatever it had been, and most of them were still alive. T’Klot was still visible in the sky, both night and day, but not as a thunderhead. Rather it was now simply shreds of cloud.
Under ordinary circumstances, with their ships wrecked and the mission in ruins, he suspected they’d all have given in to despair. But he had heard the voice in the wind, and his comrades wanted to believe him. They knew now what they had not known before, that the gods were with them. The road home would not be easy, but Telio had no doubt he would see it again.
Avery Whitlock’s Notebooks
Tonight, perhaps for the first time, I can see the true value of faith. It strikes me as a priceless gift. Those of us who have traded it for a mechanical universe may have gotten closer to the actual state of things, but we have paid a substantial price. It makes me wonder about the value of truth.
— December 17
chapter 50
Lookout.
Friday, December 19.
THE RETURN TO the Intigo was painful. The cities were filled with mud and debris. Buildings were smashed, towers knocked over, fields flooded. The eastern cities, where the waves had hit, had been virtually swept away.
And there were corpses.
“No way you can get through something like this without losing people,” said Whit. “The consolation is that there are survivors.”
Yes. But somehow Digger had thought they would do better. He could see the Korbs beginning to file back down from the ridges and mountain slopes.
THEY GOT COMMUNICATIONS back with the Jenkins. Kellie and Marge had also been sobered by the carnage, but they were nevertheless putting the best face on things. “We saved the bulk of them,” Marge told them. “I think we did pretty well.”
In the midafternoon sky, the last pieces of the omega were drifting sunward. Whit gazed after it. “When can they expect another one?” he asked.
“If the pattern holds,” said Digger, “about eight thousand years.”
“Long enough,” he said. “Good-bye, farewell, amen.”
He wrote something in his notebook, frowned at it, shook his head, rewrote it, and entered it with a flourish. Then he sat back and looked outside at the flooded land below.
Digger found himself thinking about Jack. He’d have been pleased they’d done as well as they had. In fact, he suspected Jack would have been surprised that Digger had come up with a workable plan.
“Problem?” asked Julie, glancing over at him.
“No,” he said. “Just thinking about the ride home.”
THE JENKINS WAS on its way back to Lookout. Kellie reported that a fleet of ships, loaded with supplies, would begin arriving in a few days.
Julie took them to Mt. Alpha, where they traded in the AV3 for one of the smaller landers.
They switched on the lightbender and, at Whit’s request, made for the temple at Brackel.
The city itself wasn’t as severely damaged as they’d expected. A lot of buildings were down and areas flooded, but a substantial number of structures, occupying the wide arc of hills that circled the inner city, had escaped the worst of the water damage.
The temple had also come through reasonably well. A few Korbs were there, wandering through the grounds, looking dazed and battered. The walkways were covered with fallen trees and limbs and an ocean of sludge. A section of roof had been blown off, the interior was flooded, and several statues had been broken. But Lykonda still stood proud, her torch raised. A circle of Korbs stood respectfully around her, and someone had planted a small tree at her base.
ON HER HILLTOP outside Hopgop, Macao pulled an animal skin around her shoulders and tried to smile bravely for the children. Pasak, her cousin, had returned with an armload of cabaros. Ordinarily, cabaros weren’t considered very tasty. But there wasn’t enough fish to go around, and everything else was pretty much depleted. It looked as if it was going to get pretty hungry in the neighborhood over the next few days.
Nevertheless, she would have been ungrateful to complain. She was alive. As was most of her family. A few names were missing, including one of her cousins, but when she thought about the nature of the disaster that had overtaken them, she realized how fortunate they had been. Had they been in their homes when the storm surge came, few of them would have survived.
Everyone was giving thanks to the gods. As if they weren’t equally responsible for the storm that had drowned the land. Yet Lykonda had come to their aid. She’d seen the goddess herself.
It had been a Lykonda who somehow resembled Macao.
Well, that had been a trick of the light. But how did one explain the rest of it?
Behind her, someone threw a few more branches on the fire.
She looked out at the ocean, cold and gray. She had never before thought of it as a monster that could hurl giant waves at them. Who would have believed such things could happen? None among them, not even the oldest, knew of any similar occurrence. Nor was there anything in the Archives.
Yet it was precisely what the zhoka had predicted. Except that he’d had the wrong night.
How was that possible? Why would a demonic creature try to help them? She’d told her story over and over during the last couple of days, while the rains were pouring down, how the zhoka had warned her they needed to get to high ground, that T’Klot was a terrible storm. So many had seen the goddess in the streets that they were now prepared to believe anything. Unlike the audiences that had debated her over her tall tales, people now accepted her story, and assigned everything, good and ill, to celestial powers.
For Macao, the problem went deeper. Her view of reality had been shattered. The world was no longer a mechanical place, a place controlled by physical laws that were accessible by reason. There were gods and demon-storms and a creature called Digger Dunn and who knew what else?
She shuddered, pulled the animal skin close round her shoulders, and leaned nearer the fire.
Avery Whitlock’s Notebooks
Eventually, we will discover that honest communication with the Korbs will be to the benefit of both species. But that day is far off, because it will require more wisdom than we now possess. And more experience than they now have. Meantime, we can take pride in the fact that we have done what we could, and that the Korbs will, one assumes, still be here when that far-off day arrives.
— December 19
chapter 51
Woodbridge, Virginia.
Wednesday, December 24.
THE REPORT FROM Lookout arrived, as it always seemed to, at 2:00 A.M. It was the best possible news: as much success on the ground as they could reasonably have hoped for. There’d been substantial casualties among the Korbs, but an estimated 80 percent of them, thanks to Digger’s inventiveness, had taken to the hills. Of those the vast majority had survived. And her own people had come away with no additional casualties. Hutch never got back to sleep.
The staff came to work knowing that the Academy had a new set of heroes, and emotions ran high through the morning. The commissioner called a press conference, the politicians were delighted, and, because it was Christmas Eve, everyone went home early.
Hutch, of course, was ecstatic. The Korbs would live, and it was possible to assign meaning to the deaths of Jack Markover and Dave Collingdale.
She spent the afternoon toting Maureen through the malls for some last-minute shopping. Then, reluctantly, she went home, knowing the media would be there.
Did it seem like coincidence that the good news had come on Christmas Eve?
Was it true that the Academy teams had violated the Protocol?
No, she replied to both questions. And added not exactly to the latter.
They crowded up onto her front porch. A few neighbors wandered over to see what was happening. Drinks appeared from somewhere. Bells jingled.
What could she tell them about this Digger Dunn? Had he really masqueraded as a god? Wasn’t that—?