The Basingstoke Chronicles (23 page)

"Old man?"

Rodrigo and I shared a look of disbelief as we squeezed past the bears to follow him. We
watched as the time-traveler scurried along the cliff rim and stopped at the neck of the waterfall.
Strangely, the Kuti River no longer fell to the sea at that point. The old man turned and held up a
victorious fist. I beheld the brilliance of his handiwork. A fresh water channel now tipped the
torrent over the cliff face a further forty feet to the south. It was a problem that had somehow
never occurred to me. With the mouth of the cave below blocked by a cascade, the fleet could
never have set sail. As surprised as I was to see him here, it was the speed of the time-traveler's
ingenuity that left me speechless.

All this overnight?

"Finally found a use for the blasted thing," he said, referring to the catalyst of the
explosion.

"What thing is that?"

"Ha! Just a quick sample from my cuisine, Englishman."

"Look!" cried Rodrigo, his glare anchored to the cove below. "It's already begun!"

I leaned over the cliff's edge to an invigorating sight. A solitary blue sheet flapped in
search of its first open wind. The vessel itself seemed hardly to move, yet inched forward on the
tide. It was manned by over two dozen fellows and decked with all manner of covered wooden
boxes.
Very wise,
I thought,
to ready the supply ships first.
The great exodus
had begun before my very eyes.

"You've been busy, old man," Rodrigo said.

"I take it you came straight here instead of entering the Palace," I said to the
time-traveler.

"Hmm...but of course. Alpaca and the Prince have a great deal to learn about time," he
replied. "While they sought to convince a poisoned king to give up his poison, I knew the cure
lay elsewhere. There are times for awaiting permission, and the prelude to a seismic event isn't
among them. Yes, I came straight here to ready the fleet, and then on to the villages with
shocking tidings. Ha! Those rumors spread faster than any firestorm, let me tell you.

"Hmm... I see you intend to voyage with the fleet and bring these bears with you, time
machine be damned?"

"Time machine be damned!" I agreed.

"Well, who am I to argue? When a man's will ticks on its own..."

He led us down the staircase in the rock, where we joined Pacal Votan and a score of
other men assembled on the beach to assist the first evacuees in this daunting exodus. Puma
Pawq'ar had already assumed command of the first vessel, and had left word for the four of us not
to dally ashore too long.

So ingeniously had the time-traveler's advice been implemented the night before that a
number of lifts and pulleys now transported supplies and personnel from the cliff top to the
beach. The natives' organization was a marvel of simplicity. Those mysterious residents of the
underground habitat assisted at every stage of the evacuation, obviously well primed by Puma
Pawq'ar. A significant store of supplies had been maintained in the cave long before the time
arrived to use them; decades in the planning, it now seemed a shame to rush these careful
procedures into action.

Sensing that Darkly and the bears would not react kindly to the chaos to come, I
convinced Pacal to board them on the third vessel. The cargo hold on this ship was built to house
ten or twelve wanakus, the llama creatures, for the voyage, and was therefore reinforced. I tried
to lure the bears inside with a meal of fish apiece. To my relief, they took the bait, or rather
devoured it, without a single defiant gesture. Only Darkly himself, strutting by me at a slow,
impertinent pace, appeared to perceive something untoward. I like to think he trusted me, and that
our tacit understanding, borne through many hardships, culminated in his silent acquiescence. My
turn had come to save
his
life. As I bolted the door, I caught the briefest of glints in his
eye as he looked up. Hope? Fear? Love? Contentment? Exactly what does a bear feel, apropos of
man?

I stayed with him as the ship was made ready for sail. I jumped ashore to help pull it
clear from the cave, and then watched it drift inelegantly to the open sea. What new worlds
awaited Darkly, and what might he make of them?

The first truly violent earth tremor occurred before we had finished loading the eleventh
vessel. People on board ducked, held one another tight. Rows of stalactites shattered, shed
droplets and rock shards all about. The cave itself trembled like the jaw of a beast in agony. The
entire land mass seemed to convulse. For a moment, it ceased. The line of evacuees froze.

A faint rumble began. Could it be waves breaking outside? No! The ground vibrated
underfoot. Gasps and cries from the native families echoed round the cave. The walls and ships
appeared to oscillate as the tremor picked up momentum. Just then, a terrific thunder hurtled
through the cave. For a split second my feet lifted from the ground; the island itself leapt from its
roots and torqued the knots of my stomach.

Rodrigo was convinced something disastrous had just taken place inland. "What about
those hundreds of families still on the way?"

I agreed. The embarkation was going well, but the vast proportion of people had yet to
reach the cave. We dashed out of the cave and up the staircase to the cliff top, to see what had
happened.

The air was heavy, the sky deathly dull. People no longer walked along the worn path
through the forest, they ran.

"The east is aflame!" cried one.

"The heavens are falling!" insisted another.

As none of them could have seen beyond the forest, we chose to jog on and observe for
ourselves what had taken place.

A grey shroud descended over the forest roof.

"Don't go that way!" urged a young father holding his child. "For your lives' sakes, don't
go that way!"

When I looked up, the vista struck me still. None of the warnings had been exaggerated.
The heavens had indeed fallen, the east was indeed aflame, and the highest peak of the mountain
range had just erupted its full volcanic fury.

A bulbous dust cloud plumed thousands of feet from the volcano, here and there slashed
by flaming streaks, fireballs wrenched forth from the bowels of the earth. Wherever these
missiles landed, fire erupted. Soon, a score of infernos littered the countryside. Rodrigo assured
me these projectiles were lava bombs, super-hot chunks of fiery rock, among the deadliest
weapons in a volcano's arsenal, and that, despite being many miles from the funnel, we were still
in range.

"All those poor..." A horrid realization hit me before I could finish. I sank to my knees,
crushed, gasping for oxygen. Somehow in the midst of the furor, I had forgotten all about the
Queen, Chasca Quilla! That the vast majority of the population had likely been rent apart
mattered surprisingly little to me; in the heat of survival, one's circle of family and friends takes
on more importance than a billion strangers. I had only known Chasca Quilla for a few days and
wished we had been closer, yet the thought of her having been taken to her death by force
appalled me.
She ought to have sailed with her son.

Suddenly, being annihilated by an eruption seemed too easy an end for her husband,
Vichama Supay, whom I now imagined beneath my fists as I pounded the dry soil. The expletives
I spewed rivaled in heat anything hurled up by the volcano. Only the thought of poor Puma
Pawq'ar leading the fleet out of harbor--at once orphaned and crowned, the last of a royal
bloodline--stopped me. Had he secretly hoped to take his mother with him? Had they planned to
sneak out one night and sail away together in defiance of the Kamachej?

Certainly that would not have surprised me. But there had always been respect in the
Queen's words for her husband. Perhaps she acquiesced to his plan through a sense of duty, of
loyalty, or even to unfetter the rest of us from his misguided rule.

The volcano pumped an inexhaustible supply of ash into the atmosphere. As the grey sky
grew darker and what appeared as gentle snowflakes began to fall, I could bring no comparable
weather experience to mind. In minutes, fertile Apterona was a bowl of charred pipe weed, the
heavens above a ceiling of poisonous tobacco fumes.

No sooner had Rodrigo suggested we head back to the fleet when K'achita flung herself
into his arms. She was breathless after having chased us through the forest. Pacal Votan and the
old time-traveler followed close by, shouting for us to return with all haste.

"What are you thinking, you crazy future men?" she snarled. "Are things not desperate
enough without you running
toward
danger?"

"You thought the volcano needed a head start?" added the old man.

"Or you forgot that your friends would never leave you behind," said Pacal.

"Steady on. We're coming, but we had to see this for ourselves," I answered, not
convincing them for a second.

"He's right," said Rodrigo, "it was all
his
idea."

Our attentions switched to a trail forming in the tall grass ahead. Something approached.
It was too small to be a man, too large to ignore. As we turned to flee, K'achita stopped us. Her
sharp features softened with a maternal glow. The tiny figure of a girl emerged, crying, ghostly in
the premature dusk. The old time-traveler was the first to rush over and comfort her. His
reassurance that everything would soon be back to normal appeared to calm the girl, yet hit me
for a six. I do believe it was the only lie ever to escape the old man's lips. Lifting the child to his
shoulders, he led us back down the forest path with redoubtable vigor.

A torrent of hopes and horrors spun my mind as I tried to keep pace with the others
along the river bank. Dying firelight checkpoints hinted at our route. The men stationed
thereabouts had vanished, wisely seeking the next available ship. I wondered how many vessels
had left the cove. How long would the voyage take? What would our new destination be
like?

I glanced at the water. A small whirlpool had formed in the center of the river. It quickly
grew. The water level was falling at a rapid rate.
What the hell?
I halted. Back-stepping
into Rodrigo, I watched in horror as the ground heaved beneath us. I tried to keep my balance.
The water course ripped apart a few meters ahead...into a widening chasm! As I clutched at
Rodrigo, a violent tremor hurled me sideways into the river. Water shot up my nostrils. I was
only a few strokes from the bank but the counter-current was incredible. It fed into the
chasm.

All I heard was a deafening thunder as I swam the most powerful front crawl of my life.
No use. The current was pushing me back. I shouted for help. In the corner of my eye I saw Pacal
holding Rodrigo as he leaned out over the water's edge, no more than ten feet behind.

Rodrigo yelled, "Baz, forget swimming upstream. Make for the side."

Oh my God.

I knew that if he didn't catch me I would be sucked into the chasm. Despite a desperate
sideways lunge, I lost ten feet to the current. A strong hand gripped my outstretched forearm.
Water piled over me as Rodrigo dragged me to the side. Pacal pulled me out. I went to lie down
at the river's edge while I coughed up water, but Rodrigo lifted me to my feet.

He pointed ahead.

A momentous obstacle still lay in our path. The chasm, which stretched far into the
forest on either side, was growing. K'achita and the old man were on the far side; Rodrigo, Pacal
and I were stranded inland.

Our eyes darted feverishly about, seeking some means of getting across. We had no
other chance of reaching the fleet.

"There!" cried Rodrigo, pointing to a twisted cable of entwined lianas to our right. It
looked neither sturdy nor sufficient, but he sprinted to it nonetheless. My heart wrenched to see
him trying for such a futile bridge.

"No, Rodrigo!" I screamed. "It won't hold!"

K'achita waited, every few seconds forced to shuffle back as the ground crumbled before
her feet. Her man was almost across the vine when an almighty shock ripped the bridge free from
her side. Rodrigo hurled himself across.

A cascade of earth, foliage, rocks and water broke away from the opposite edge and
plunged from sight. The old man flung the little girl away, but in doing so lost his footing and
plummeted into the abyss.

I looked across at Rodrigo. With twenty feet between us, there was no way to reach him.
I searched the crevasse once again but found it hopeless.

"It's no use!" insisted Pacal, grabbing me by the shoulders.

Rodrigo didn't dally. Pointing to his wrist and then to the south coast, his instruction for
us was clear. His final wave farewell hit me like a blunt club to the stomach. The exchange was
over with so fast, I barely had time to wave back. But in that moment, I knew I would never see
him again.

My last memory of Rodrigo is of him ushering K'achita from the brink and of her
kneeling to lift the lost little girl to her shoulders. As the world caved in about them, their
protective instincts proved indomitable. Could God be so callous as to prevent their escape? He
undoubtedly tried. I like to think that as the dust rose to blind us from their flight, Rodrigo and
K'achita conquered every obstacle on their way to the ocean, to the fleet we were now forced to
abandon.

"It's the time machine, then," I said, "and let's pray it's undamaged."

Pacal and I raced back along the river until we breached the forest. We chanced a
crossing where another fissure had wrenched the river bed up to a steep angle. The water had
drained away, leaving slick mud. We slid across. The enormous antelope herd we had seen
stampeding from east to west now raced uphill toward the northern tree line. Pacal and I held our
breaths as they raced out of our path. We pressed on for the opening in the forest from which
Rodrigo and I had emerged that first day, but I failed to locate it. The ash-filled air now rendered
the east vague and ethereal. I could barely identify an orange glow in the direction of the
volcano.