Jovah's Angel (34 page)

That was one fact that had made Caleb feel more comfortable about joining this mad enterprise. The second one was even more potent: The shipbuilder and his partners, both women, were Edori; and they all planned to join the exodus to Ysral. Any ship they built would withstand the worst that the ocean had to offer.

“Come in, come in, you're right on time,” the shipbuilder greeted them, pulling up chairs and waving to an array of refreshments on a side table. “Anyone hungry? Thirsty?”

“I could stand something to drink, thank you, Marco,” Thomas said, and so with a little more shuffling they all fortified themselves and found their seats. Caleb let Noah and Thomas take the chairs closest to Marco's so they could lean over the unrolled blueprints and diagrams. Noah had done most of the work on the engines themselves, though Caleb had spent long hours going over every formula. His main function had been to question how well certain theories would work in practice and to carp at simple design flaws. But he had been impressed; Noah's work was always sound, but this had been virtually flawless.

“And we're estimating three hundred people per boat,” Marco was saying, tapping on his drawing to indicate living quarters or hold space. “So you've allowed for their approximate weight, I assume?”

“Setting an average of two hundred pounds per person, which is high,” Noah said, “since some of them will be children.”

“And allowing for food, water, a certain tonnage in luggage—?”

“All that.”

“How much space would be required? For the equipment itself and for its fuel?”

Caleb let Noah give the answers and ask his own questions; all of this they had gone over before late-night campfires back in Luminaux and on the road to Breven. It still seemed incredible to him, but here were rational human beings seriously discussing
the machinery they would use to propel themselves into a fantasy:
four ships carrying three hundred people each; food for twelve hundred people for four months, water, fuel, living quarters
…

Jovah spare him the horrors of such a trip. How could anyone be sanguine enough, or fool enough, to contemplate such a venture—no map, no destination, no timetable. No proof. Even the thought of drowning in the rising waters of Samaria would not be enough to induce him to strike out for the mythical Ysral.

Delilah brushed her fingers along his arm to get his attention, then leaned over to whisper in his ear. “What do you think their chances are of finding Ysral?”

“About as good as their chances of surviving the trip,” Caleb said dryly. “Zero.”

“Really? You don't think they'll find it?”

Caleb spread his hands. “How can they find it if it doesn't exist? I think they will sail till they run out of food and water, and they will die a miserable death in the middle of the salty ocean.”

“Even if they don't find Ysral, they may find some kind of land,” Delilah said. She was about as serious as Caleb had ever seen her. “Some pretty island in the middle of the sea. Don't you think? And once they find it, they can name it whatever they want, and live there happily the rest of their lives.”

Caleb shrugged. “Maybe. I certainly hope so. I hate to think twelve hundred people will just—” He shrugged again.

“I can't believe this talk from you!” she said, keeping her voice low. “You, the experimenter, the inventor—”

“I don't risk my life with my experiments,” he said, although that wasn't true; the smoky Kiss in his arm could attest to that. Still. “I take my hazards one at a time. One person at a time, at any rate. If I were going to set off to find Ysral, I'd send one ship with maybe twenty men. I'd let them make the exploration and draw the maps—and I'd have them come back safe and whole before I sent out a thousand men on an idiot's mission.”

“But don't you see?” she said softly. “They're not concerned with safety. They're concerned with living.”

“Well, they'd better be concerned with dying!”

“That doesn't matter to them. They're dying, anyway. Or at least, they don't consider this life they have worth living. Better to die grandly than to waste slowly and unhappily away.”

Caleb glanced over at the three men gathered so tightly around their diagrams. Their expressions were alive, intense, passionate.
“I've never met an unhappy Edori,” he said. “They've always been among the sanest and most cheerful people I knew. That doesn't look like a slow death to me.”

Delilah shook her head slowly. “That's because you have no imagination,” she said.

He was about to protest that fairly hotly when the three Edori came to their feet. “Let's go take a look,” Marco was saying. “You can tell me if the dimensions meet your specifications.”

Caleb and Delilah also rose. “Are we going somewhere?” the angel inquired.

“Two of the ships are almost completed,” Noah said. “We're going to go take a look.”

“Does anyone need to borrow a cloak? It'll be raining,” Marco said. He gestured to a rack hung with a mismatched assortment of coats and jackets.

Noah grinned. “We're getting used to it. We'll be fine.”

But when they stepped outside, all of them were nearly blinded by the brilliant reflection of white sunshine off the wet surfaces of the docks. Marco covered his eyes with an exclamation of surprise, and both Thomas and Noah automatically turned their faces up to feel the loving hand of sunshine across their cheeks. Caleb was amazed at how good it felt, that sudden slight warmth in the sluggish, humid air. Like the others, he felt a smile stretch his face; he felt his heart perk up and his feet lighten.

He turned to Delilah to make some joking remark and found her, too, with her face lifted toward the sky. Unlike the others, she was not merely reveling in the miracle of sunlight. She was assessing the clouds, judging the angle of the sun, making some calculations unfathomable to Caleb, who watched her a moment in silence. When she sensed his gaze on her, she turned to him and smiled, but her expression remained sad, a little wistful.

“Alleya,” she said simply, and nodded her head. Before Caleb could respond, she hurried forward to catch up with the men, and fell in step beside Noah as they started strolling toward the pier.

For Caleb, the next two days passed in much the same manner: Days spent at the Breven docks, going over questions and problems with Marco and his partners; nights spent around the Edori campfires, listening to songs and stories. It was a good life and he enjoyed himself, but he had his concerns as well. He liked these people, and he had to admire their nerve, though it grieved him to think that Thomas, Martha, Sheba, Laban and all those he had come to care about would in a matter of months be lost. Noah had warned him not to attempt to dissuade anyone from making the trip, so he kept his mouth shut, but he couldn't keep from looking around the camp every night and tallying up the faces.
Alive now, but soon to be drowned at sea
. It was an eerie, unsettling feeling, and contributed to his growing restlessness. He would be glad enough when this trip was over.

The good weather that Alleya had prayed for lasted only a day. Soon enough, the clouds returned, as dreary and pot-bellied as ever. No doubt the constant rain was contributing to Caleb's malaise, though it appeared to have no ill effect on the moods of his Edori hosts. However, he could tell the weather caused Delilah some stress—more, perhaps, because she knew Alleya could change it and she could not. But she did not complain.

The day before they were scheduled to begin their return journey to Luminaux, only Noah, Caleb and Delilah made the trip into Breven. Noah needed one last set of blueprints, which had not been ready before. The weather was particularly nasty: Instead of the usual chilled drizzle, rain was coming down in a steady slantwise downpour, and there was simply no way to stay dry or comfortable in their borrowed cart. But Delilah insisted on accompanying
them anyway, and the men rigged a tarpaulin over a hastily assembled framework to protect her as best they could. Poor visibility and a soggy road made the trip even slower than usual, and it was close to evening by the time they began their return trip to camp, full into the angle of the rain.

“Doesn't get much worse than this, I'd suppose,” Caleb shouted to Noah as the Edori urged the horses faster once they were free of the city limits.

“Ice!” Noah shouted back cheerfully. “That's worse.”

“But you wouldn't travel in it.”

“Sure. Do it all the time.”

“Edori are crazy.”

Noah grinned. “Allali are weaklings.”

“Smart, safe,
dry
weaklings.”

But within a matter of minutes it became clear that they were contending with more than rain. The wind had picked up dramatically, and the sky, even allowing for the onset of night, was ominously black. Lightning spiked through the clouds, followed by the low growl of thunder. Caleb looked over at Noah.

“What do you think?” he called. “Should we turn back?”

He expected another derisive comment about gutless allali, but in fact Noah looked worried. The Edori glanced over his shoulder at the outlines of the city behind them, then twisted his head a little to get a look inside their improvised tent.

“I don't know! If there was somewhere to find shelter between here and the camp—”

Caleb thought of those flimsy, fluttering tents anchored so impermanently to the earth. No safety there. “Let's go back!” he shouted. “At least we'll have the wind behind us.”

Noah nodded, and fought to turn the horses around back toward the city. They were spooked by another flash of lightning; the horse on the left pulled sharply against his harness, tangling the reins and confusing his yokemate, who came to a dead stop. Noah whistled at them, shaking the reins free, and tried again to turn them.

Delilah poked her head through the slim opening of her makeshift shelter. “What's going on? Are we turning back?”

“Storm,” Caleb said briefly. “Don't want to be stuck out here.”

Her eyes widened as she took in the angry sky, which now resembled a purple bruise edged with a thin line of yellow. A sudden gust of wind rocked the cart, almost causing the tarpaulin
to collapse on her head. The horses had come to a stubborn halt, legs braced against the sodden ground, refusing to move either forward or back. Impossibly, the rain came down harder.

“Let's go back!” she cried, and over the swelling rumble of the storm, Caleb could hear a note of panic in her voice. “It's getting worse! Let's go back while we can!”

Noah nodded and rose to his feet, sawing on the reins and shouting at the horses. With a start, they both leapt forward, causing Noah to pitch forward almost out of the cart. Caleb grabbed his seat; he heard Delilah give a little scream behind him. Now the rain was sluicing down so hard he could scarcely see—not the road in front of him, not the tarpaulin behind him. The horses were galloping helter-skelter into a gray wash of nothingness. Noah called and cursed, pulling on the reins to no avail.

“Help her!” Noah yelled in a hoarse voice. “We've left the road and we may flip over—”

Caleb turned and threw himself across the seat, reaching inside the tarpaulin for Delilah. The sky danced with lightning, illuminating an underwater world of racing silver lines. The cart rocked dangerously from side to side as it careened more and more violently across the uneven ground. A particularly nasty jolt flattened the soaked canvas over the back of the cart. Caleb had just caught Delilah's wrists when the tarp went down, and now he tried to haul her free. Dear Jovah, her wings, lacy and delicate; if he pulled her out too fast he would strip the feathers from her back.

“What are you doing? Get her out of there!” Noah shouted. Caleb held onto one of the angel's wrists, using his free hand to push back the canvas till her head was clear. In the scrim of rain, it was hard to see her face; she appeared to be crying.

“Noah thinks we're going to crash the cart!” he called to her. “We've got to get you out of here—”

He tugged; she wriggled; Noah fought the horses, who were now in a full-out desperate gallop. The wheels hit a shallow ditch, and the cart flew three feet in the air. Caleb wrenched Delilah into his arms, receiving a faceful of wet feathers. The cart slammed back down, knocking them all into each other, then bounced twice, hard. Suddenly, the world turned sideways and they were tumbled roughly into the morass of mud. Horses shrieked; wood cracked apart with a brisk, snapping sound. The heavens responded with their blazing, thundering applause.

It took a minute for the world to stop spinning, but Caleb forced
himself to sit up, clear his head. Delilah lay beside him on the wet ground, facedown, sobbing; Noah, who had been thrown some distance from them, was crawling to her, calling out her name. Caleb staggered to his feet.

“I'll see about the horses!” he cried, and pushed through the curtain of rain to where the two panting animals stood, so caught in their harnesses that they could not move another step. Caleb disentangled them, talking in a low, soothing voice, but he could see by their flattened ears and wide eyes that they were ready to bolt again at any moment. He freed them of everything except their bridles. If they ran again, at least they would trample nothing and no one; at least they might have the sense to eventually find their way back to the camp.