"But how did Jode know about Sebastian's powers?" I asked. "Weren't they a secret?"
"I'd hoped so," Myoko said. "But I told you there were incidents when Sebastian was young… like that time the horse tried to kick him. I was always afraid word might leak out. Silly me, I was only worried about slavers; I didn't even think of shapeshifting aliens."
"So let me get this straight," Gretchen said. "There's a horrible gooey alien who's already killed several people including a Spark Lord. This alien intends to trick some hideously strong adolescent psychic into doing something awful. There's a homicidal Sorcery-Lord who's on her way to stop them… and that lecherous old Warwick Xavier is tied into this too, plus the entire Ring of Knives. All these dangerous people are racing to Niagara Falls for some unknown cataclysmic smash-up, and you want my boat so you can be at ground zero when the shit hits the fan?"
Silence. I said, "Yes, Gretchen, that pretty well sums it up."
She smiled radiantly. "Then what are we waiting for? Let's go."
15: EAST WITH THE NIGHT
According to my pocket watch, we set sail at 4:35. NikNiks yammered in the rigging; Zunctweed grumbled at the wheel. The rest of us turned in to grab as much rest as we could.
I can't say I slept much. In a spirit of adventure, Gretchen issued us all with hammocks to be slung in the Dinghy's bunkrooms: bunkrooms stinking of NikNik, a wet furry smell that was much like any other wet furry smell, but more pungent. NikNiks practice basic hygiene and sanitation, but they still produced a junglelike stench of suffocating proportion — fierce farts and pheromones, not to mention the aromas of mating and childbirth.
Gretchen took the captain's cabin and gave me a long lingering leer that suggested we should share the bed. I turned my eyes elsewhere, drawing on the full awesome power of my Y chromosome to feign obliviousness. (What hints? I didn't see any hints. Why don't women just come out and say what they're thinking?) Now was not the time to provoke a Gretchen/Annah furor… or even worse, Gretchen/Annah/Myoko. Let confessions wait until we'd faced whatever lurked in Niagara Falls.
So I headed for the bunkroom with everyone else — even Impervia, who'd been loath to leave Zunctweed unsupervised. She suspected our captain would head for the hills if someone didn't watch him… though Gretchen swore the Kinnderboom family sorcerers always enchanted their slaves with spells to prevent escape or disobedience. If Zunctweed tried any tricks, his muscles would seize and he'd fall over in an epileptic fit. Most slaves made the attempt only once; after that, they resigned themselves to servitude.
But that didn't satisfy Impervia: she would have stayed on deck all night if Oberon hadn't insisted he'd be the one to watch Zunctweed. Our holy sister gave the big red lobster an appraising look, and apparently liked what she saw. After a moment, she patted Oberon's shell and headed below.
So we bedded down in the hammocks. I shan't describe the inadequacies of such sleeping contraptions — more eloquent writers than I have expounded at length on the sensation of being webbed in, the saggy discomfort of no back support, the disturbing sway as the ship rolls — nor shall I grouse about occupying such cramped quarters with so many other sleepers. Pelinor didn't snore, but one of the women did… and in the darkness, I couldn't tell which it was. I crossed my fingers it wasn't Annah.
Or perhaps Myoko.
Even without the snoring, I wouldn't have fallen asleep easily — too many thoughts churned in my head. Especially about Niagara Falls.
I'd seen the Falls once while chaperoning a field trip from the academy. Despite its reputation as a wonder of the world, I wouldn't have gone to Niagara on my own free time; I didn't expect to be impressed by water obeying the law of gravity. But when I got there, the Falls were truly impressive, with their roar, their mist, and their fury… not to mention the spectacular gorge they've cut over the eons, kilometers long, slowly eaten backward by the plummeting water. One look at that gorge and I knew the world was ancient. That in itself justified the trip.
I was also grudgingly impressed by the area immediately surrounding the Falls. Several city blocks were remarkably preserved from OldTech times. Twenty-story buildings (hotels and casinos) still scraped their fingernails against the sky, their decor hardly changed since the twenty-first century… including the electricity running the lights and elevators.
Yes, electricity. For five centuries, a portion of the Falls' plunging water had been diverted through sluices, hurtling down millraces and directed over turbines to generate hydro power. Niagara was a major energy center in the OldTech era, and tourist guides claimed the facilities had remained in operation ever since, tended by a monastic order called the Keepers of Holy Lightning. The Keepers were typical crackpots, believing that OldTech days represented the peak of spiritual enlightenment. By contrast, the world of the present was a cesspool of Vanity and Sin, an affront to everything sacred, blah, blah, blah. Therefore, the Keepers disdained modern ways (sorcery, psionics, associating with aliens) and applied themselves to Living In The Past. They kept Niagara's turbines turning, repaired any breakdowns in the power grid within three kilometers of their generating station, and even hand-crafted lightbulbs so their electricity would have some useful function to perform.
You can find similar orders in other parts of the world. In Sheba, a group of ultra-conservative Sufis still operated the facilities at Aswan… sponsored (said my grandmother) by the Sparks, who had no interest in Sufism or electricity but wanted technologically competent people to care for the whole facility. Spark Royal didn't want a dam break that sent a wall of water careening down the Nile valley. That was the sort of thing Sparks were sworn to prevent — disasters on the grand scale.
Such thoughts made me wonder if the Sparks also supported the Holy Lightning in Niagara Falls. Possibly. Probably. It doesn't take sophisticated equipment to produce electricity from falling water, but it's hard to make everything you need with just a small cadre of true believers. Even simple copper wire requires ore, a refining furnace, and wirepulling equipment… all of which added up to a hefty wad of cash. Did the electricity business really produce that much income when the power was being used only to dazzle tourists?
The more I thought about it, the more I was certain the Niagara hydro station survived through Spark backing: money, materials, and more. (If some tooled-tungsten chunk of OldTech machinery broke down, where could the Keepers get a replacement except Spark Royal?) So why did the Sparks do it? Unlike Aswan, Niagara had no dam; if the generators broke and the power went out, it would put a damper on tourist business but wouldn't endanger lives.
Why would the Sparks care about the Falls?
Unless they were using the electricity for something themselves.
Unless there was some life-or-death need to keep the turbines running.
Unless there was some secret something, a deadly threat known only to the Sparks; and all hell would break loose if the machines ever fell silent.
In which case… in which case…
I couldn't finish the thought. I couldn't even imagine what the threat might be.
But Jode was taking Sebastian to Niagara. A Lucifer had gained influence over a powerful psychic who could do almost anything.