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"I don't think this is working," Quait said.
Flojian nodded.
"We know." he said. "But it's starting to look as if nobody else ever will."
Claver glanced again at the ceiling. "We need a way to measure it."
"You don't need to measure it,' said Flojian. "It's still rising."
"I hate to say this,' said Quait, "but I think we ought to try to swim for
it."
They were at the far end of the corridor. By now it was full of water. "I
could never make that," Chaka said. "It's too far."
"Count me out, too," said Flojian. "I wouldn't get halfway."
"We can't just sit here,' snapped Quait.
Flojian was bobbing slowly up and down in the water, shiv-
ering. "Maybe," he said, "we should have thought of that before we agreed to
stay in this rat trap."
Chaka looked at Claver. "Orin, what's going wrong?"
"There's another duct or shaft somewhere. There has to be."
They relit the other lamps and went looking. The midsec-tion of the ceiling
was just far enough away from the gallery to leave it in shadow. There didn't
seem to be anything out there, but it was hard to be sure. Quait swam out with
a lamp. He kicked over on his back, raised the lantern, and saw the problem
immediately.
Another duct, partially hidden by a beam.
It was centered precisely, but out of reach. There was still six feet of air
space left between the water and the ceiling. "We'll have to wait until the
water gets higher," he said. "Then we can try to block it.
"It's already too high," said Claver. "Keep in mind that plugging it won't
stop the rise immediately.
"We need a stick, said Flojian.
Chaka went back to the staircase, submerged, and tried to break off the
handrail. When she failed, Quait went down and came back with a seven-foot
piece.
But there were no more clothes. They recovered Flojian's shirt and trousers
from one of the other ducts, and Quait used the handrail to push them into the
air passage. Within moments, he had sealed it. Meanwhile, the others looked
for a substance with which to close the newly opened vent. Claver tried
pushing a tabletop against it, but it didn't work.
"We'll have to use one of the books," Flojian said finally.
Claver nodded. "Be quick. Try to find something that isn't likely to be of
practical value.
They picked one that had already been damaged, a biography about a person no
one had heard of: Merejkowski's
The Romance of Leonardo Da Vinci.
Quait stood on a chair and wedged it in, jammed it in tight, and then they
huddled together, listening to the sounds of the running tide.
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The water crept past Chaka's shoulders.
Embraced the line of her jaw.
Flojian had already climbed onto a cabinet. She joined him, but stayed low in
the water because it was warmer.
Claver looked up at the books, stacked on tabletops now barely two feet above
the tide. He placed the lamp on top of a stack and went searching for
something he could use to gauge the water's rise. Quail's seven-foot piece of
handrail leaned against a wall.
He recovered it, stood it up straight, and used a knife to mark off the depth.
It was at about the level of his collarbone.
Quait moved close to Chaka. "You okay?" he asked.
She nodded. "Considering the circumstances," she added.
Nobody said much. After a while, the lamp flickered out and they were in
absolute darkness. For Chaka, that became the most fearful time of the entire
ordeal.
But after a few minutes Claver's voice cut through the general gloom: "I think
we're okay," he said. "It's still moving up. But it's very slow.
"That brought a cautious "you're sure?" from Flojian.
"Yes," he said. "I'm sure."
Chaka let out a happy yelp and embraced each of her companions. It seemed as
if the water grew warmer. They splashed and cheered until Claver warned them
they were getting water on the books.
"Damn the books," said Quait. "We're going to see daylight again."
EPILOGUE
Abraham Polk described the Plague as caused by an airborne virus. No one was
sure precisely what that meant, but his account of the last days was
sufficiently graphic to make clear the nature of the beast. It was a product
of the rain forests, and Folk had come to think of it as a kind of trigger
mechanism, a safeguard against uncontrolled population growth.
Within another ten years, it is expected that complete sets of the Haven texts
will exist in public libraries in both Brockett and the League cities. This
set of almost three hundred fifty histories, commentaries, and speculations
have been formally named the Silas Glote Collection. To date, approximately a
fifth of the volumes have been copied and made available to the general
public. The remainder, which are undergoing restoration, study, and/or
annotation, can be examined by bona fide scholars.
Coal-fired boilers are now in use on both the Hudson and the Mississippi
Rivers. Occasional sea traffic plies between Brockett and the League. Trade
has grown slowly, because of the immense distances involved and the
difficulties in getting League products overland to the mouth of the
Mississippi. But progress is being made, and Orin Claver has turned his
considerable abilities to the task of devising an open water route from League
cities to the Gulf. His solutions so far have relied primarily on canal
building.
Flojian found a lucrative and fulfilling career as Claver's business manager,
and has established himself in Brockett.
His prediction that the wedges would eventually supplant firearms appears to
be off the mark for two reasons: The technology of the sleep weapon continues
to defy experts; and the wedge simply lacks the authority implicit in a gun,
and the sense of exhilaration that accompanies firing a few rounds at a
malefactor.
The trail from the Devil's Eye to the maglev terminal north of the Wabash
(which has become a major tourist route) is now unofficially known as the
Shannon Road.
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Attempts to survey the bottom of the underground lake in hope of finding the
Quebec have so far proved fruitless. Two divers using breathing equipment
designed by Claver have been lost, leading to speculation there's a demon in
the water. Claver blamed the problem on a faulty piston in the air pump.
Ballooning has become a popular sport in the League. Fatalities and injuries
to young men have risen at an alarming rate, and there is talk of prohibiting
the device.
Avila's father, a pious man who had believed that her return from the
fleshpots had occurred as a result of divine intervention, had been shattered
when she left the Order. He took the news of her loss stoically, held a
celebration of her life on the bank of the Mississippi, assuming few would
arrive to pay their respects to a fallen priest. As it happened, Avila's
friends were so many, and so enthusiastic, that several fell into the river.
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