“Is this Priest still alive?”
“I don’t know,” the Standor replied. “The last I heard of him, his body was alive but he neither spoke nor responded to any kind of stimulus.” Qala regarded Caitlin across Vilu’s back. “Do you think you participated in an experiment of some kind?”
“Again, I don’t know,” Caitlin replied.
“And… north,” the Standor said. She looked out across the sea. “I have flown a considerable direction to the north. There is nothing. Nothing except floating mountains of ice, great sea beasts, and no birds. If there were land, there would be birds. Yet you say you come from there.”
“I—I may have been confused,” she said.
“I believe you have made yourself a crossed net line,” Qala said.
“I’m sorry?”
“When an airship turns suddenly, without notifying its companion, the net between them gets tangled,” the Standor told her. “I suspect you just told a lie to protect a truth.”
Qala didn’t press Caitlin, for which the psychiatrist was grateful. It was the mark of a wise and seasoned commander. Reading about the Vikings to try and understand Galderkhaan, Caitlin had learned that hands were axed for theft. But shipboard, one-handed sailors were of little use, so captains learned to accept small lies told from a crew that dipped, without permission, into the stores of grog or cheese. Qala had just done that for her.
They rounded the end of the street and turned to a road along the coast. The waves were indeed tame beyond the natural horseshoe-shaped harbor, but the sudden expanse of blue-white ocean was not what caught her eye. Caitlin and the Standor were making their way toward a column that was roughly three hundred feet high. It was a smaller, slimmer version of the tower of the motu-varkas, in which she had confronted Pao and Rensat. Her pace slowed as she took in the spectacle of the great airship moored to the top, like some tamed, dark storm cloud, its envelope being replenished by tubes that ran from the nose into the depths of the tower. The airship was, in effect, a highly elongated hot-air balloon, elegant in its simplicity.
“Majestic,” she said.
“The sight of it always stirs me—and others,” Qala agreed.
Caitlin didn’t understand her meaning until she followed the woman’s eyes to Vilu.
“Now we know that the boy is well asleep,” Qala said.
Caitlin leaned toward the boy as they walked. His breathing was normal, the inhalation of sleep, not unconsciousness. She touched his hair.
“We are going to the airship, sweet one,” she said softly. “If you open your eyes, you will see it.”
The boy stirred slightly—
Because of what I said, or because it was my voice, my touch? she wondered. She took his fingers in hers. Please, Jacob, if you are in there let me know.
The straight line of the boy’s mouth curved into a small, sweet smile. Caitlin kissed him as they continued to walk.
The path to the tower stretched about a quarter mile ahead, along a rocky, heavily eroded section of beach. At least two dozen wharves had been erected there, beyond the horseshoe harbor, each extending about a hundred feet from the shore. On this side of the tower was a sliver of beach: black sand where Galderkhaani presumably enjoyed recreation, though not this early in the morning. Perhaps it was reserved for the crews who had limited downtime.
There was no longer compacted sand underfoot but large square slabs of stone about a yard on each side. They appeared, like the tower, to be carved from basalt. There were designs cut in many of them—the names of Galderkhaani. Though Caitlin could read them, she had no idea who any of them were. As they crossed over one, she noticed Qala shift her grip on Vilu so that he was nestled in the crook of her elbow, leaving her hands somewhat free. She touched her forehead lightly with her left thumb while holding her other hand flat toward the ground.
To you who sleep.
Caitlin initially thought they were the equivalent of commemorative steles honoring the dead. Perhaps the one they had passed was someone Qala had known. But that idea changed as she peered ahead, into the morning mist that still clung to sections of the shore. The road of stones stretched into the distance as far as she could see along the coast. These weren’t just road stones, she realized: they were most likely graves. Considering their size, either the people within had been cremated or they were interred vertically. Or perhaps the sea claimed the remains from below, through liquefaction.
“Where are you truly from?” Qala asked suddenly.
The question was asked with greater insistence than before. “As I said, I can’t seem to—”
“You do not honor the ascended,” Qala remarked. “You cannot have forgotten something so basic—not when you know how to speak, to read, to minister to a child. If you are not lying, then you are certainly withholding information.”
Caitlin quickly replayed Qala’s words and gestures in her mind, realized with a jolt that she had missed it: the “ascended” Qala had used in her gesture was plural, not directed at a specific individual but at all of them. It was a custom, no doubt, to pay homage when one set foot on the road. Caitlin should have been present enough, at least, to mimic the salute, even crudely.
She did not consider saying that her mental state had caused her to forget. Qala was not a fool. And it occurred to Caitlin, then, that she might need an ally for whatever was coming, especially one with an airship. She hoped it was possible to explain some things without revealing them all.
Caitlin stroked Vilu’s hair once again, then turned toward the strong gaze of the Standor and fixed those gold eyes with her own.
“You probably will not believe what I am about to tell you, Standor Qala,” she answered as they continued along the path, “but I am from the north. Only not from this place… or time.”
The Standor made a face. “Is this more wordplay?” she asked. “Another ‘time’?”
“Yes,” Caitlin said, gesturing carefully, seeking superlatives that could help her state precisely what she meant. “I am from the distant future, not by design but by accident. I am here because a pair of transcended souls forced me to come.”
CHAPTER 6
Mikel slept heavily, as though he’d been drugged.
After setting his phone to wake him, he collapsed, sprawled across a bench in the library of the module that served as a social and recreational area of the base. He did not dream, did not get to think of “things” before he drifted away. Casey Skett had relieved him of having to make any decisions. All that Mikel had now was an assignment and he had to be clear-headed to make it happen.
The ibuprofen Mikel had swallowed before sleep kept the pain of his broken wrist from being much of a distraction. The screeching winds were now the equivalent of white noise. Mikel stayed put until the alarm sounded.
Waking with the beep, Mikel found the room still and quiet with only distant sounds as the team of scientists and engineers went about securing their relocated base and undoubtedly researching the phenomenon they’d witnessed—the pillar of fire, biblical in dimension, that inexplicably erupted from the ice. Mikel knew they would not come close to understanding it without his help. Now he had to go down there and convince them of that.