Outlanders 20 Prodigal Chalice, page 23
"Why should I stop him?" Kane asked.
"Because you're the only one who can end the threat of Enlil's machine," Balam answered. "You made a promise to the lady. Only by fulfilling that can you end the menace that Enlil's machine poses."
"What lady?" Kane asked.
Balam didn't have time to answer because Harkhuf launched himself across the distance, the knife gleaming in the torchlight.
Kane reacted immediately, feeling himself slip into the Magistrate hand-to-hand-combat mode. He slapped Harkhuf s knife attack away, then delivered a short roundhouse punch lo his opponent's face. However, Harkhuf managed to slip most of the punch's power and spun, sweeping a leg up towards the side of Kane's head.
Unable to avoid the kick completely, Kane rolled with it; spots swam before his eyes with kaleidoscopic intensity. He moved again at once, sidestepping another kick and rolling olio a spinning back fist that hammered Harkhuf across the room and knocked him to the ground.
Blood gushed from Harkhuf s broken nose, looking black in the dimly lit shadows. Still, he was up almost immediately, ending Kane's chances of putting a quick finish to the fight.
Questions spun in Kane's brain even as he struggled to keep his senses focused. If this was real and not some fever-induced dream, what was Balam doing there? And what was the machine?
Harkhuf came at him again with the knife, cutting the air on both sides of Kane's head as he gave ground. Kane focused on his opponent, measuring Harkhuf's reach and stride, getting a feel for how aggressive the man would be if he let him keep coming.
Without warning, the torch on the floor started flickering again.
Kane watched as the warm orange glow cascaded across Harkhuf s face. Then just as suddenly, he realized that more lights had entered the pyramid's room. Stepping back from Harkhuf, who had frozen in place, Kane swept the newcomers with a glance.
They were all hard men, wasted by forced labor, long days and harsh weather. They held sharpened pieces of metal and a few weapons. Their leader was young, his beard fierce and dark, his black hair in disarray.
"There," the leader said. "There is the machine I was given knowledge of through my visions. Come on, my brothers, we have only to take it and unholy wrath will descend upon the lands of our captors and we shall be set free."
Forty men poured into the small room with quiet, desperate haste.
Kane tried to defend himself and resisted several opportunities to kill the men who fought him. Still, there was no escape, and when they saw that he couldn't harm them there were mutterings that they were protected by Moses's divinity. They closed more quickly, drowning Kane in their sheer numbers.
"Balam!" Kane yelled. For some inexplicable reason, the men entering the room hadn't attacked Balam at all.
"Rest easy, Kane. You will wake soon." Balam's voice was soothing. "This is something that happened a long time ago."
"If this already happened," Kane growled, "then why did I have to be here?"
"Are you here, Kane?" Balam asked. "Or do you only dream this?"
"Tell me!" Kane commanded.
"In time, Kane," Balam acceded. "Only in time. You have farther to go. For now, in this time, you've seen enough and done enough."
"What did I do?" Kane demanded as he felt a knife pierce his chest.
"You have prevented Enlil's machine from being taken at the wrong time," Balam said. "That's all that needed to be done here. Enlil didn't see the true danger of the machine he brought to this place for centuries. Then he entrusted the delivery of the world from the machine to a king. Sleep. We will talk again when the time is right."
Blackness filled Kane's vision. Balam's voice and Harkhur's yells grew dim and finally faded, leaving only white noise humming in his ears.
"KANE. Kane, wake up."
Drenched in fevered sweat, the stink of brine filling his nostrils, Kane woke on the pitching deck of Jeweled Lady with Brigid at his side. "I'm all right," he growled, shaking off her hand irritably. He was aware that other passengers were awake and watching him. Some of the men watched him with hot, hungry eyes.
"I'm just trying to help," Brigid said coldly, drawing away to put her back against the ship's railing.
Kane's head felt as if it weighed a thousand pounds. He breathed out gently, feeling the ache in his bruised chest. "It's not you, Baptiste. It's the people around us. If they see weakness in Fiddler or any of us, they're going to be scared and uncertain. Like it or not, we're leading this escape attempt, and those people are going to be expecting us to be leaders. Especially in light of the way we left Fiddlerville one step ahead of the Magistrates."
Brigid remained quiet.
Kane let the silence draw out for a time, listening to the smack of the waves against the boat's hull and feeling the cool night air wash over him. Before he knew it, the heat of the fever drained away and left only freezing temperatures in its place. When he spoke, it was hard to keep his teeth from chattering. "Returning to Cerberus redoubt wasn't the answer, Baptiste."
"You're sick," she replied flatly. "The last place you need to be is out here."
"I don't think so." Kane had difficulty swallowing because his throat was so dry. "We're supposed to be here."
A curious look flirted with Brigid's beautiful face. "Is that the fever talking?"
"No."
"You had another dream."
Kane hesitated only a moment, knowing he couldn't lie to Brigid. "Yes."
"Of Egypt?"
"Yes. But the time period was different. Ramses II was pharaoh. He was the leader of Egypt when the Israelites were there."
"The story of Exodus, from the Christian Old Testament, begins there," Brigid said.
Kane struggled to remember what he knew of the religion. It hadn't been something he'd been terribly interested in while he'd been at Cobaltville, and the fever and pain in his head made it hard to remember things he might have otherwise remembered with no trouble at all. "There was a man named Moses."
"He led the twelve tribes of Israel from the lands of the pyramid builders," Brigid said.
"I don't know about that, Baptiste, but he was there in my dream."
"Moses?" The idea seemed to interest Brigid and trouble her all at the same time.
"Yeah. He came after the machine that Enlil gave Djoser." Kane told her about the dream, having an easy time reconstructing it because it was so fresh in his mind.
"The manna machine," Brigid said when he'd finished.
Kane shook his head and regretted it when the pain reached a flashing crescendo that made his vision spot and his stomach roll threateningly. "I haven't heard about that."
"I have," Brigid replied thoughtfully. Her brows furrowed as she searched her photographic memory. "I read about it in the Cobaltville archives. How much do you know about the Christian Bible?"
"Not much, Baptiste," Kane admitted. "I've never read it, but I've heard passages of it in the Outlands in different places. Prayers for funerals and marriages and births still exist in different forms throughout most places. But then, so do all kinds of other religions. Some of them probably weren't even around before the nukecaust."
"There's a story in the Old Testament," Brigid went on, "about Moses and the way he led the Israelites from the pharaoh. Many biblical scholars believe that the pharaoh the Israelites were escaping was Ramses II, although you can find other documentation that the pharaoh was someone else."
"The story, Baptiste," Kane growled. He wrapped his arms around himself in an effort to keep warm.
"You're cold?" Brigid asked, concerned.
"Yes. It's the fever. It'll pass."
Brigid frowned. "If the fever passes."
"It'll pass, dammit. Get on with the story." Anything, Kane thought, to help him forget about the pain filling his head.
Brigid pushed herself up. "I'll be right back."
Irritated, thinking it would serve Brigid right if he was 'Weep by the time she got back, Kane leaned back against the inning and tried to relax. He and Grant had talked earlier and divided up the watch, neither of them willing to trust the captain and crew, or Fiddler for that matter.
Since leaving the ville and being trapped aboard Jeweled Lady, Fiddler hadn't exactly been a social butterfly. As it turned out, she'd lost two members of her crew in the firefight despite her best attempts to keep the upper hand during the confrontation. She hadn't blamed Kane, but she obviously hadn't felt like seeking out his company, either.
Kane didn't fault her, and he had his own concerns. Especially when the fever returned with a vengeance. He'd also noticed that she'd set up her own watch, even though the crew of Jeweled Lady didn't seem overly ambitious in the loyalty department.
An uneasy demilitarized zone had settled into place over the ship.
Brigid returned only a few minutes later. She carried a blanket, a bowl and a large tankard. She handed him all three. The bowl contained spicy soup, and the tankard held mulled wine.
Kane looked the question at her.
"Jeweled Lady is a cargo ship," Brigid explained "She's heavy with goods that Harry Lindstrohm, the de facto baron of Campecheville, sent as payment for the help Fiddler had been giving him in procuring emigrants. Maybe it won't be a comfortable trip across the Gulf, but we're not going to starve."
"Tell me about the slave revolt in Egypt," Kane said.
"It wasn't a revolt," Brigid said, resuming her seat at the railing. "According to the Old Testament, the Christian god sent plagues and sicknesses among the pyramid builders. Eventually, fearing the wrath of the god, the Israelites were set free of the city and fled across the lands. The pharaoh pursued them. Then the Red Sea was parted—"
"A whole sea?" Kane asked doubtfully.
"Yes," Brigid answered. "And there was some documentation unveiled to support physical evidence that that event had happened."
"Parting a sea sounds like something Enlil or Balam might be able to do with the tech they had," Kane said. During their search for the truth of the Archons, they had seen a number of amazing things. Parting a sea sounded simple when compared even to a mat-trans unit.
"I don't know. None of the theories I ever read suggested anything like that. Of course, none of those writers and historians knew about the Archon Directive."
"The Red Sea was parted and the Israelites made their escape," Kane prompted.
"The pharaoh and his people followed them into the Red Sea," Brigid said. "Walls of water reportedly stood on either side of them. When the Israelites reached the other side of the sea, ahead of the pursuing Egyptians, the sea closed again, destroying the army that followed them."
Kane waited, savoring the soup and reliving the fever dream.
"According to the Old Testament," Brigid went on, "the Israelites fell into depraved ways and didn't celebrate the god that had freed them from Egyptian tyranny. Moses journeyed up onto Mount Sinai and received the Ten Commandments that later became the cornerstone of that theology. Due to their excesses and failure to recognize the god that had freed them, as well as Moses's own pride during a later incident, the Israelites were doomed to wander for forty years before they were delivered to the land of milk and honey they'd been promised."
Kane glanced up at Grant in the stem. He stood near the plotting desk and smoked, his cigar coal glowing orange against the dark night.
"During their years of wandering in that harsh land," Brigid said, "the Israelites were given the gift of manna. Six days out of the week, but not on the Sabbath because that was ordered to remain inviolate to spend worshiping their god, manna was said to rain down from the heavens."
"Manna?" Kane repeated.
"The descriptions I've read about it were basically that manna was some kind of confection. It was described as white and fluffy, having taste and texture, but also like milk whey. The Israelites were said to have gathered bushels of it to serve at meals for their families. Some treatises I've read suggest that the manna was manufactured by an alien machine."
"Enlil's machine," Kane said.
Brigid shrugged. "Maybe. There was never any proof. It was never found."
"Moses took the machine that night," Kane pointed out. "Perhaps," Brigid said. "But that doesn't explain why you're dreaming about it now."
Kane silently agreed. He finished his soup and settled back against the railing, pulling the blanket more tightly around him. He kept thinking about the dreams, turning them around every way that occurred to him, but he couldn't find any explanation that suited him. Whatever the reason, he was sure, Balam knew it. Somewhere in all that thinking, sleep reached out and took him.
Chapter 21
Lindstrohm woke from the dream in a cold, shivering sweat. He peered around the room and found that he'd gone to sleep at his desk. He sucked in deep breaths, willing his heart to slow to something near normal.
He pushed away from the desk and walked toward the balcony. Details of the dream in Egypt threaded through his mind. Ka'in had been there, as well as some other creature that Lindstrohm was certain was somehow connected to Enlil Ka'in had known the creature; he had called it by name: Balam.
Lindstrohm had never before heard of the creature, nor did he have any clue as to what its purpose in his dreams was. But he was certain it didn't mean him any good.
He paused at the doorway to the balcony and peered out at the moon-silvered water. The sky to the east was lightening, already turning a pinkish purple; soon it would be morning.
Lanterns burned in the morning mist that had descended over the bay during the night. They glowed softly in the streets of the ville, and they glowed distantly on the small cargo boats running barrels of oil in to the warehouses along the shore. He'd deliberately stepped up the production schedule for the night, taking half loads into the warehouses instead of full ones. It would give the Tong spies more to count, and Lindstrohm was certain there were spies.
The Tong junk sat sedately at anchor in the harbor. Its Ideated sails lay neatly folded in small stacks along the rigging. Armed crews walked the immaculate decks, and an officer in charge stood in the stern.
The meeting yesterday with Ren and Yip had appeared to go well. Lindstrohm felt good about that. If an arrangement could be made with Wei Qiang, an arrangement without any duplicitous action on the part of the old Tong warlord, it would benefit them both.
But Vasquez's arguments kept pulling at the logic Lindstrohm tried to build on. With Qiang's ships in the area, the Tong master would show no hesitation at stepping in to take over the oil-reclamation operation if Lindstrohm showed any weakness or proved unfit.
He closed the doors to the balcony and returned to the large desk. Books lay scattered across it, and the oil lantern he'd been working by earlier had exhausted the fuel reservoir. Several of the books in his library had been on World War II, and a surprising number of them were in English. Still, he couldn't help wishing that he had access to the Samariumville archives for a few hours. Then the information he felt he lacked would be at his fingertips.
He refilled the lantern reservoir and lit the wick, only then aware of the shadow that shifted in the main doorway. His heart froze for just a moment, but he made himself sit behind the desk.
"How long have you been there?" he asked.
"Not long," Narita Vasquez answered.
By not staring at her directly, he was able to see her more clearly. When she had trained him to use his peripheral vision in the dark like that, he'd remembered other times in his dreams when he'd known to do it. So many things he now did stirred memories of the dreams.
"I felt you around me today," Lindstrohm said.
Vasquez said nothing.
Lindstrohm turned up the lantern's wick, making the bubble of light around his desk swell until it reached the doorway. "I wasn't imagining things, was I?" he asked.
She didn't answer for a time, and Lindstrohm didn't press her. The one thing he'd never experienced before was the feeling he had for her. She completed him in ways that he'd never imagined, and being away from her yesterday—aware that she was gone not because she'd chosen to go on a voyage, but because she was deliberately staying away from him—had been more painful than he could have imagined
"No," she said finally "You weren't imaging things. I watched over you."
"I never saw you."
"You weren't supposed to," she said with a trace of quiet sarcasm. "If you had seen me, Ren and Yip—and their hatchet men—might have seen me, as well."
"Why were you watching me?" Lindstrohm asked, knowing that he knew but only wanted her to say.
"Because I don't trust the Tong as blithely as you seem to." Vasquez shifted inside the doorway, then stepped forward and came on into the room. She wore jeans and a long- sleeved shirt with the sleeves rolled up. Her hair was left unbound, cascading down her shoulders. She wore a .40 caliber Smith & Wesson semiautomatic pistol on her right hip, high and tucked into her side.
"And what should it matter if they betray me?" Lindstrohm said. "They might save you the trouble of wishing I was dead."
Vasquez frowned irritably and crossed her arms over her breasts. "Don't be petulant, Harry."
Lindstrohm made himself breathe in and out. "I apologize." He looked away from her harsh glance. "So what are we going to do?"
She ignored the question and turned her attention to the hooks, maps and papers on the desk. "What is this?"
"I was researching something."
"What?"
"The U-boat I dreamed about." Lindstrohm glanced back id all the texts scattered across his desk.
"What is a U-boat?" Narita asked.
Lindstrohm blinked as he looked at her, only then realizing that he hadn't had the chance to tell her about the nightmare he'd had the previous night. "A U-boat is an undersea boat. A submarine. The Germans used them extensively in World War II to take down British ships, as well as cargo ships."
Vasquez nodded. Her understanding of history had grown a lot during the years they'd been together. She didn't talk as much as he did, and he talked a lot about the way the world had been before the nukecaust. Some of those times had included the events that had led up to skydark.
