Not a century before, this had been home to perhaps half a million people. What remained were the grooves for the roads, and, here and there, the remnants of a building made of stone or brick or adobe mud, substances that the rain dissolved more slowly. There were also expanses of twisted metal and cracked concrete. It looked and felt like the ruins of a truly ancient place abandoned for thousands of years, not fewer than a hundred.
Here and there were also very regular-looking holes in the ground, rather evenly spaced along the old boulevards.
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings,” Kat muttered, looking at the barren remnants of the city. “Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair.”
“Eh? What?” Colonel N’Gana asked, startled.
“Oh, just an ancient poem that stuck with me,” she told him. “It was supposedly on a stone marker in the middle of the desert in an ancient empire. The punch line was that only the marker remained. Every trace of the king and his awesome works was gone. This place reminds me of that. This city, or what’s left of it, and even this lonely, empty shell of a once vibrant world and civilization. How thin it all is! Our civilization, our institutions, beliefs, laws, comfortable ways of life. How fragile.”
Harker looked around and understood her point. The colonel ignored it; it was irrelevant.
“The pattern indicates a subway system,” N’Gana noted. “Of course, there wouldn’t be any trains left, nor power for them or for lights down there, either, but I wonder just how much survived below?”
“The rains would run down into the tunnels and dissolve most of the stations and track bed,” Kat Socolov noted. “Besides, it would be darker than pitch down there and we have nothing to create light.” She sighed. “What a weird world this is! Some deep buried things from the past have a residual power supply so the looter could broadcast his warning before he died, and we have a crack at the codes, but just lighting a fire anywhere on the surface would ring alarms and bring the Titans. Crazy.”
“Well, we’re going to have to work out some way to light our way once we get to Ephesus,” Harker noted. “And there has to be some way. Our original freebooter got down as far as he could until he was blocked by a cave-in. I wonder what he used for light? He faced the same bare assed situation we do.”
“It might be time this evening to see if our young natives have any ideas on how to light up the darkness,” Kat said thoughtfully.
But they didn’t. Their entire lives had been devoted to making no signs, no impact at all that would draw attention to themselves and those around them. The humidity was so high in the region that wildfires were virtually unknown, but they associated fire with lightning and local blazes and were terrified of it. There was no way to know short of finding and joining a Family and watching the process, but Kat suspected that one aspect of training from the time when these people were very small was an absolute terror of fire.
The only other possible source wasn’t that useful in the end, either. There were swarms of flying insects that gave off white and yellow light as they flew, probably to attract mates or perhaps to recognize one another as friends or signal poison to enemies. The stuff did glow, and held its glow for a while, but it was so weak and the quantity was so small that it wasn’t viable.
“The Dutchman’s man found a way,” N’Gana pointed out. “If he did, then we will find one, too.”
Through the night, and the next three nights, they heard a good deal of clicking from Hunters about in this region, which also implied that one or more Families also roamed the area and thus provided prey for them, but none of them, Hunters or Family members, came near, and all eventually faded into the darkness.
There was one last river to cross as well. They could see the low rounded mountains of the coastal range ahead, just beyond it. This river was more difficult to handle, being old and deep, but Harker, using the knowledge of the two natives, was able to gather enough wood and strong vines to lash together a basic raft that, he hoped, could be steered with two poles. Not only the young natives, but also Hamille was very happy to have this, even though it would not hold all of them. At least the river at this point was no more than a kilometer wide.
“Two of us will have to swim it,” Harker told them. “One of us should be up there as the captain and handle one of the poles.”
“Don’t put yourself out on my account,” Kat told him. “I can swim this.”
“I wasn’t even considering being gallant,” Harker replied. “I’ve handled these rafts before, although ones that were better made with stronger materials. I know how it handles. Colonel, are you up to a swim?”
“I defer to you in this,” he replied. “I believe this sort of a swim would be easier than all the walking we’ve done.”
There were some quick lessons on how to use the poles—logs chosen because they were somewhat flattened on one side—and particularly how to manage them when in the channel and it was too deep to reach bottom.
“We’ll shove off in the raft first,” Harker told them.
“Give us some time to get clear and some sense of how it handles, then follow. If anybody falls in, your job is to keep them from going under. If the raft comes apart in midriver, then each of you take a target of opportunity and I’ll take the one that’s left!”
It didn’t come to that, although it was a pretty hairy operation. The raft was not really navigable; the logs slipped, opening and closing gaps that caused some considerable danger to those aboard. In the center channel, Harker used his pole alone as a makeshift rudder to allow the current to take them across without also sweeping them down to the ocean. Littlefeet looked scared to death, but he did his job, obeying Harker’s commands exactly, and they made it, having drifted a good two kilometers south while crossing.
Once on the other side, the raft was quickly abandoned. Just in case they had to return this way, Harker and the two natives pulled it completely up onto the bank and then just into the thick trees beyond.
They jogged back up to try and join the two swimmers as quickly as possible and made very good time. Harker was both pleased and amazed at how effortless this had become. He felt he was in better shape now than he’d been in training all those years ago.
They reached Kat first, who was breathing very hard but feeling proud of herself. N’Gana was a hundred meters farther on, trying to bring his breathing under control. He was still breathing as hard as he’d been when he’d pulled himself onto the shore.
Harker wondered a bit at that. Neither he nor Kat was exactly a champion athlete and he’d never have the kind of bodybuilder shape N’Gana had, but the man shouldn’t be breathing as hard as he was.
“I’m all right!” the colonel snapped. “It’s just age catching up with me, I fear. I’ve walked this far. I’ll make the journey.”
There was nothing to do but accept his assurances, but it bothered Harker. It suddenly occurred to him, though, that if something did happen to N’Gana, then, if he hadn’t forced himself into this party, Kat Socolov might well be the only one available to get Hamille into that bunker or whatever it was.
And just beyond those hills, no more than a half day’s walk away, and maybe a day through, they would be there. Then it would get really dangerous.
There was a reason why the energy grid was so clear in the night sky. They were close to one of its anchors, and a climb over the twelve-hundred-meter hills to the top of the pass between showed a sight that few humans had ever seen at ground level and remained whole.
Below, the remains of the Grand Highway still showed, joining other old routes that were still visible after all these years, even with large parts overgrown by jungle. Ephesus, the continental capital, had been four times the size of Sparta. There had been a spaceport out there, on the bluffs, which was still easy to recognize because of the sheer lack of anything growing there. That whole district was still possible to make out, and that was good, because that was where they had to go.