Come Alive Ch. 21

'What's happening?' he asked Eva.

'She's been like this for hours, Henry. I've never seen this before.'

'Have you tried talking to her?'

'Yes. It's like she can't hear me, or even see me.'

'What about the whales? What are they doing?'

'The same. It is like they are rigid and unmoving.'

'The storm is just about here. I'll let you know when it's over.'

'Be careful, my love.'

He nodded and returned to Time Bandits. Anton was staring at him, almost seething with anger.

"Where you go when you fade out like this?" the aviator asked grumpily.

Henry shrugged and turned to Rolf. "Pull up the weather radar, would you?"

The main northeast wall was less than a fifty miles away now, so Taggart looked to the southwest. In the inky blackness he saw towering cloud tops alive with flickering streamers of lightning. "The first wave of wind ought to be here within a half hour," he said, looking at Mike and Anton. "Make sure you've got gloves handy, as well as the big bolt-cutters and that axe. Let's keep the decks clear, and our lines, too. We may need to reset lines that break loose, and in a hurry, too."

"Why you ignore me, Genry?"

"Because I don't have time to explain things in detail right now. When we get past this storm we'll have a long talk...just you and I."

That seemed to satisfy Anton, for now anyway, and he turned to help Mike gather supplies from the garage, so Henry turned to Rolf. "Are you ready for this?"

"In truth, no, yet I don't know what else we could have done to prepare."

"Every voyage has a storm, Rolf. Some bigger than others. Just like life, I guess, but the important thing to remember is this: storms are teachers. You learn from them, or you perish - but we can talk about all that tomorrow, on the other side."

"You seem certain we will be here tomorrow."

"We will be." He winced as the music returned.

"Thanks. I feel a little better now."

"Words matter, Rolf. Especially the right words - at the right time. Every captain learns this, and when this is your ship you'll need to remember this first lesson."

"I will never be able to think of this as my ship, Henry. Time Bandits will always be yours."

"It doesn't work that way, Rolf. A ship can have only one master, just like a life can only have one master. When I'm gone, this ship is either yours - or it isn't. If you feel like it isn't, you'll need to pass it along to someone who can take her over. Is that clear?"

Rolf nodded.

"You're still young, Rolf, and I realize I'm asking you to grow up in a hurry, but I'm only doing that because I've seen something in you. An ability, what I'd call a great inner strength. Maybe you don't get that yet, maybe you can't understand what I mean right now, but there it is. Believe me, okay Rolf?"

"Okay, Henry."

Another hot gust hit, and everyone turned to face a deep, rumbling wall of thunder, but even Henry seemed to cower for a moment when he realized what he was looking at...

A huge, anvil-headed cloud full of lightning was almost upon them, but along the horizon a wall of writhing snakes approached. Water-spouts. Dozens and dozens of black tornadoes, as far as the eye could see.

And they all appeared to be converging on the huge fuel storage tanks in Zeebrugge.

'What haven't I thought of?' Taggart asked as he looked at the coiling snakes.

"Fuel. In the water," he murmured.

"What?" Rolf said.

"What happens if those fuel storage tanks let go? Pull up the local tides, Rolf. Now." Henry took a deep breath, tried to keep a growing sense of panic from seeping into his voice.

"Right! Got it!" Rolf cried.

The graph was clear. It was slack water now, but the flooding tide would return in a few minutes - and if a lock failed the sea would potentially flood into the canals here, and all the way into Brugge. And if the storage tanks failed the canals would fill with inrushing waves of fuel carried by the tides.

And with one spark and everything would soon be lost to fire. Including Time Bandits and everyone on her.

21.12

The lightning was close now. Too close to ignore.

He sighed, looked around his little world and tried to imagine what was waiting for them in the next few hours - and he didn't like what he saw. "Dina, you'd better go below now."

From the tone in Henry's voice she knew this was a command - yet she stood her ground. "No, I will stay with you," she said, reaching out and taking his hand.

The feel of her skin on his was pure electricity now, her love palpable in the darkness - like something he felt hovering beyond the uncertainty pacing back and forth within the growling wind. She was knowledge, and knowledge is strength. The same old story, he thought. Every storm is a teacher, right?

A stroboscopic series of blue flashes and wailing sirens split the night as fire services and EMS went racing by, headed for the port and the leading edge of the storm; Henry flipped on the radar and tried to measure the distance to the leading edge. He used the cursor and mapped out the distance - eight miles - and then knew that was that, the wait was over. The storm was making landfall - right now - and so the fuel storage tanks would soon be feeling the first impacts of 200 knot winds. He looked to the southwest and saw the writhing snakes, so guesstimated a bearing and placed the closest waterspout on the radar display - "Just about there," he murmured.

"What?" Anton asked as he came into the cockpit.

"The waterspouts are just about on top of the fuel storage yard."

The aviator nodded and turned to look at the sky.

"How about some juice?" Dina asked, her voice a life preserver. When everyone nodded she ducked below, then started passing up plastic cups full of fresh squeezed OJ, and Taggart watched her little ballet with more than a sense of wonder. Everything she had done since Amsterdam she had done out of strength - and with Love. Was that what had attracted him to her in the first place? Had he seen this moment coming - back in May?

Because right now he was almost sure that he had.

Britt and Rolf - and that fiercely glowing lump in his breast - had taken him from the uncertainty of his voyage to the sheer certainty of her Will - and yet everything since had been leading them all to this moment, to this last confrontation.

'Because every storm is a teacher,' he repeated. 'Right, Dad?'

Then - 'Dina is my storm, my teacher,' he realized as he watched her come up the companionway steps. Their eyes met. They never wavered, never once looked away, even as the feelings of strength and love returned. Then she nodded - just once - when she saw the understanding in his eyes.

Another flash. A few seconds passed - then the deep rumble of thunder still a few miles distant.

He drank his juice, marveled at the simple strength contained in this magic liquid...

Just as more lightning hit. A massive, prolonged volley - the following thunder sounding more like a burst of rifle shots not even a second later - then he saw a billowing mushroom of boiling flame rising over the port area, and the tank farm.

Within seconds the blast wave hit, sending Time Bandits reeling and knocking Mike and Rolf off their feet, and yet this first blast was only a precursor to the second, much larger wave that hit seconds later. Henry instinctively turned away from the searing heat that followed - just as another wave of the storm hit -

A searing pain in his chest announced the arrival of the first hot gusts, and he watched the outside air temperature readout leap from 118 to 135 Fahrenheit, just as scalding rain began slamming into their exposed skin. Henry looked at the fabric awning that covered the cockpit and wondered if it would hold up to this assault - while Mike and Rolf leapt to get under its protective embrace.

"Yeow!" Mike yelled, holding up his arm while he inspected the rising welts. "This shit is hot, Henry. I mean, like, really hot."

Anton held his hand out and quickly pulled it back under cover. "This not right, Genry. Something very wrong here..."

But his words were cut off by another blast from the port - just as a writhing, snakelike tornado came into view - now just a few hundred yards away and heading right for them.

21.13

For some reason Judy Garland was the first thing he thought of when he saw the tornado. Dorothy and Toto, running for home as that writhing black twister came for them. And the funny thing about it? Dorothy's celluloid storm wasn't an abstract weather formation, it was a living beast full of malicious intent - and that thought too ran through Henry Taggart's mind as he stared at the writhing black snake coming up the canal.

"Get below. Now," he growled as the snake's menacing hiss grew louder.

No one argued, and Dina led the way down.

"Where's Clyde?" Henry called out.

"He's not down here!" Rolf answered from the galley, and then Henry heard the boy running up the companionway.

Yet Henry was already off the boat and running for Clyde's tree by the time Rolf was back on deck, and he saw the pup squatting and doing the deed right in the middle of the tow path as he ran up.

"Way to go, Fudge-butt!" Henry said, leaning over to rub the pup's ears.

Rolf ran up - carrying Clyde's leash - and he snapped it on. "Sorry. I forgot the poop-bags..."

Henry laughed at that - hard and loud. "Yeah? Me too. Time to beat feet," he said, scooping up Clyde and dashing back to the boat.

"You were so weak earlier today," Rolf said. "How are you doing this?"

"I don't know. Maybe it has something to do with a tornado crawling up our ass..."

"Ah yes, so I see."

Which made Henry laugh even more, even as they climbed on board and hopped into the cockpit. "You go first and I'll hand him down to you." And after he passed Clyde down through the hatch he went to the helm and looked at the display one more time before he powered everything down; the eye was visible on the radar now though still offshore, but it was headed their way and he wondered what that might lead to...

Then he made his way down the companionway steps and into the galley just as a colossal gust tore through the boats moored in the canal. He heard a few shrieks and screams, then people struggling with boats that had come undone; he heard what sounded like a high-pitched freight train coming close and that reality pushed everything else from his mind. Looking through trees and houses, he saw the twister scything its way through boats moored a few hundred feet aft of Time Bandits, followed by more screams and several small explosions as bottled propane tanks ruptured and ignited. He ran up the steps and into the night, Rolf and Anton right behind him...

Then another wall of scalding rain hit.

+++++

She could hardly stand it.

The orcas were still out there, still motionless, still silent in the night - yet - she could sense they were calling out to her. Reaching. Reaching out to her. For her.

Then...puzzlement? Why wasn't she answering?

Can she not hear us?

Yet no matter what she did, what she tried, she couldn't make the connection.

She looked at Eva - now dozing on the sofa, and so cut-off from her frustration, her fear a dissolute reminder of that other life. That life before all this happened. Life before Henry Taggart came into their lives. Her life. And now something was growing inside her womb. Something - like Henry? Or...was it something else?

She stood and cinched up her bathrobe, then walked out onto the balcony.

And still they looked at her.

She went back inside and put on her clothes then walked down to the water's edge - oblivious to the world around her. Heedless of the several biologists gathered on the rocks monitoring the orcas, or of the harbor police still in their boats searching for the two missing swimmers. Now everyone gathered on the rocks was watching this woman swim out to the orcas.

Curious. Unsure what they were witnessing.

"That's Dr Bauer," one of the police officers said over the radio net. "She hasn't been seen at the clinic for days...!"

"Those are wild orcas," one of the marine biologists yelled into her radio. "They'll kill her!"

Police jumped into their Zodiacs and rushed across the water, men gathered on bow platforms with heavy rifles at the ready. The inherent confusion of adrenaline and testosterone taking on a certain mindless momentum all too familiar to one of Them.

To Pinky.

Who was overhead now, looking down at the all the pieces moving on this new board, moving to take the White Queen.

Would the others listen to her now?

+++++

Their foul weather coats offered some protection from the scalding rain - but not to the people fleeing the carnage after several tornados tore through the moored boats lining the canal - and the results were predictably catastrophic. Anton collected a pregnant woman and tossed her across his shoulders then sprinted back to Dina - waiting on Time Bandits to take care of the injured; Mike dove into the canal and plucked two drowning children from the inky water - just before fuel arrived on the flooding tide. He passed them up to Rolf, then he carried more injured back to Dina.

Henry was first to smell the fuel arriving on the tide, and at the same time he saw flames spreading inland from the port area, heading for Brugge, heading for their stretch of the canal. It was, he figured, only a matter of minutes before the fuel ignited, turning the canal into a miles long inferno...like a torch in the night leading to their deaths.

Then some sort of environmental protection vessel appeared, stringing booms across the canal, booms meant to arrest the flow of contaminated water into the ancient city, then several brigades of fire services arrived - apparently setting up some kind of fire line here on the western edge of the city. Would it be enough, Henry wondered, as they began spraying foam into the canal.

Then Epsilon hit in all her fury.

Scorching winds blasted through the region, winds so hot they literally fried everything they touched. "Get down!" Dina yelled. "Cover your face!"

Trees ignited. An ancient row of medieval townhouses went next, and Henry knew then that his nightmare had been a window to the future - and as he wondered what that meant the incessant music poured into his mind.

The grass along both sides of the canal withered under the onslaught, then sparks began raining down from the sky, and as Henry looked on helplessly the water in the canal turned to fire.

21.14

Soon two boats were between Britt and the orcas; men warned her to turn around and return to shore, so she dove under the boats and continued swimming to the largest female -

Who remained resolutely still.

Even as a policeman chambered a round and took careful aim.

Evan as Britt swam up to the large female and rested there in the water beside her.

The female turned and looked at the man on the boat pointing at her with the oddly formed stick, and centuries of instinct told her to be very careful now.

Britt swam into her pectoral and the orca wrapped her in a protective embrace, then one by one the orcas slipped under the surface and were gone.

+++++

Firefighters sprayed more foam on the water; others sprayed water on the grass, halting the fire's spread - for the time being, anyway. But now Henry noticed that the wind was so hot, and so strong, that the hot rain had simply stopped. Evaporated - before the water made it back to the earth's fulsome embrace? Was that what the future held? Wasn't that the route Venus had taken on her way to the runaway greenhouse that defined that planet's atmosphere now?

But...why here, and why now? Wasn't something like this supposed to be decades away - if it ever happened at all? What had changed?

With his back to the wind he looked up at the sky.

Yes. Two of them were up there, two wildly spinning orbs so easily mistaken for bright stars.

'Have you given up on us?' he asked the sky. 'Did we disappoint you so deeply?'

Two more orbs joined the first two - but Henry could still see no signs of Pinky.

But worse still, they were all simply ignoring him now. Or at least they seemed to be...

Another shattering explosion from the port and the sky turned red again; roiling black clouds twisted and climbed into the night, their twisting red bellies full of embers just waiting to fall back to earth.

+++++

Eva woke to the sounds of a furious commotion out on the water, so she went to the balcony to see what was happening. Little red boats a few yards off the rocks were turning in frantic circles in the night, while a helicopter fluttered overhead, a white hot spotlight pointing down into the sea, and there were hundreds of people on the rocks lining the shore. These people were pointing and seemed agitated - but what about?

"Britt? Have you seen this? When did it start?"

Then the silence of no reply hit her. Icy fear reached out for her, grabbed her by the gut.

"Britt?"

A discarded robe in Britt's bedroom; her running shoes gone. An impossible chain of events unspooled in her mind's eye.

"Oh, no..."

She closed her eyes and reached out for Henry.

'What's happened?' he asked.

'Britt has returned to the sea, there are police looking for her in boats and helicopters.'

Then...Pinky's spinning orb was there with Henry...

'She is with me,' she sighed. 'Do not worry.'

'Pinky?' Henry almost screamed. 'Where have you been?'

'There are many difficulties I must attend to now, Henry.'

'And Britt is with you? This is supposed to put me at ease?'

'They will not hurt me,' Britt said.

'And they won't hurt Pinky - as long as you're there with her,' he thought - but like all such unfiltered thoughts, off it went, reeling away into the infinite.

'They will not hurt us, Henry.'

His mind filled with images of orcas and babies coming into the world and he tried not to jump to unwarranted conclusions. 'Pinky, do you know what you're doing?'

'Of course. How is the storm?'

'Bad.'

'Be careful, Henry. The Others know what has happened, so I do not think they will help you again.'

'I've figured that out already. Where's Eva?'

'She will be here soon.'

Henry tried to clear his mind. 'Alright. You be careful too.' He could just make out the faintest contours of her smile, then she was gone - leaving him to worry about Dinky and the others. Were factions forming? Were The Others split by unseen differences? If so, dare he even consider trying to meddle in their affairs? Play one off the other...?

"No," he said aloud.

"What?" Dina asked, still treating the injuries of one of the people pulled from the canal.

"Oh...nothing. I was just thinking..."

"Henry," Rolf called out from the tow path - now pointing towards Brugge, "look at the fire!"

Henry turned, watched helplessly as another cluster of medieval buildings disappeared behind another gout of towering red flames - even as fire services tried to quench this latest rampage. "Why does if feel like our history is being devoured?" he muttered.

"Maybe because we are tired of the past," Dina replied wearily, wiping away sweat and soot from her forehead. "Maybe we have grown tired of hauling around all these ancient ideas. Or maybe we simply always lust for the new and are ready to burn away our past when the weight of her burdens become too much."

Henry shook his head. "Like reinventing the wheel or squirrels in a cage running round and round. Maybe we're going nowhere fast."

"I need more gauze pads. Do you know where they are?"

Henry nodded and went below - and he found Dinky waiting for him. He was a pale blue version of Pinky, only taller, so Dinky was sprawled out on the sofa in a futile effort to fit into the cramped space.

"Well, long time no see," Taggart said - a little too sarcastically. "To whom do we owe this pleasure?"