Echoes of the Fourth Magic Read online

  With another shudder, the Unicorn began to rise.

  Their moment of hope was upon them; as one, they clung to their bindings. They said nothing, each too engulfed by the probability of impending death to think of anything else, those feelings proving too personal and unresolved to be shared. Totally immersed in their work during the last few days, they hadn’t had time to come to terms with this delicate moment, and every one of them welcomed the contemplative silence.

  It didn’t last. Suddenly the door burst open and a terrified Thompson rushed in, tears streaming down his face.

  “Oh, no,” Doc Brady groaned.

  “I’ve got him,” Del shouted. He wriggled free of his restraints and tackled Thompson, pulling the trembling man down to the vacated seat.

  “Get the hatch!” Mitchell screamed.

  Del ran to the door. Dismay stole his breath when he got there. “The rest of them are open,” he cried. “All the way back!”

  The Unicorn thudded to a stop, the jolt knocking Del to his knees. He froze, fear seizing him, and did not try to rise.

  “We’ve hit the top of the cavern,” Reinheiser explained.

  “No time, man!” Brady cried to Del. “Get back.”

  Del scrambled to secure the hatch, then dove down, trying to slip under the belts with Thompson, just as the Unicorn started moving again.

  Mitchell looked to Reinheiser. “Currents?”

  “Magnetic force,” the physicist answered. “Drawing us to the center of the field interaction.” Suspecting what was about to happen, he warned, “Hold on.”

  Just as Reinheiser finished the statement, it grabbed the sub. Like a great untamed beast, the newborn storm sprang upon the Unicorn, seeking an outlet for its uncontrollable power. It raged about in torment, aimless at first, but then suddenly finding a direction. Its power became purposeful anger, guided as if by vengeance toward the black portal, as if it were a sentient thing, blaming that area for its agony. The storm raced in, pulling the helpless sub along, and tore through the barrier.

  The men’s knuckles whitened under a grip of terror. Up and up they went, spinning and swirling. Up to a world that had once been their home.

  But not anymore.

  Chapter 5

  The Wrath of an Angry God

  THE MINUTES PASSED slowly as the Unicorn spun and bounced through the five-mile trip to the surface. Up and up she went, and then, as suddenly as it had started, the violent thrashing stopped.

  The Unicorn righted herself and sat calm, but the seven men did not release their grips on the belts. “We’ve stopped going up,” Del dared to whisper at length.

  “The surface,” Corbin added. “And we must have broken clear of the storm.” Wide smiles curled upon every lip.

  But even as the seven men began freeing themselves from the straps, the lights went out. And in the blackness an ominous sound became evident, a sound that every seagoing man hears in his worst nightmares. Somewhere toward the back of the Unicorn the ocean had again found its way in.

  “We’re taking on water!” Billy cried. As if to confirm his statement, the Unicorn tilted to starboard.

  “She’s going to roll!” Mitchell shouted. “Get out!”

  Cool-headed Ray Corbin proved the hero this time. At the first sign of danger, when the lights went out, he had wisely groped his way to the base of the conning tower. “I’m at the ladder,” he said calmly. “Follow my voice.”

  Mitchell found him first, and with the captain in position to guide the others, Corbin stated loudly enough for all to hear, “I’m going out with the raft.”

  Little light entered when the first officer opened the outer hatch; the sky above was starless and pitch-black. Undaunted, he threw out the raft, designed to hold twenty men, and blindly scrambled onto it as it inflated.

  Reinheiser was next up the ladder, then Doc Brady.

  “Hurry up!” Mitchell urged as the sub listed farther to starboard.

  But Del had a problem: Thompson was frozen in terror, refusing to move despite Del’s pleas. As time seeped away, anger replaced diplomacy, and Del finally grabbed Thompson’s shirt and hauled the man up the incline.

  “Help me!” he yelled to Mitchell. The captain latched on to the terrified seaman’s shirt and heaved him up the ladder, where Billy Shank was waiting.

  But just as they got Thompson safely onto the raft, the Unicorn listed again. Mitchell was braced by the ladder, but Del lost his footing and skidded away into the darkness.

  “DelGiudice!” Mitchell cried.

  “I’m okay,” Del replied, rubbing a new bruise on his shoulder. Unmercifully, the Unicorn assumed an even steeper angle. “I’ll make it,” he assured Mitchell. “Go ahead up.”

  Mitchell shook his head, not so certain that Del could get back to the ladder. But the captain had no way to help, no ropes, or even wires, close at hand that he might throw to the distant man. He moved out of the sub.

  Del heard his companions calling as he groped around on all fours. Even for those moments that he managed the steep incline, he could not find the ladder. Then the sub rolled some more, practically on its side, and the ocean streamed in through the open hatch, hungry to claim its prize.

  “She’s on her side!” came Billy’s distant cry as the raft drifted away. “She’s going over! Del!”

  Del slumped back against the now vertical floor, resigned to his fate. He didn’t even notice that the water pouring in was strangely warm.

  Suddenly he felt himself rising, and not with the water; it wasn’t deep enough to buoy him. His eyes darted around. What sort of delirium gripped him? He was floating in the air! And then, miraculously, he was at the ladder!

  “How?” Del asked aloud, but he didn’t wait for any answers. He fought his way out the hatch, plunged into the warm ocean and swam toward the dim outline of the raft and her six passengers.

  They hauled Del aboard silently and gathered at the edge of the huge raft.

  All was quiet save the rustle of wet clothes and the occasional groan of a soft-soled shoe on the rubber raft. Behind them, far off now and racing away, the wild storm raged, but the men took no notice. They stood solemn, peering into the blackness, waiting for a part of their lives to come to an end. And then, with a mere gurgle, the vast, unconquerable ocean took the Unicorn.

  “Well, she’s gone,” Corbin said, staring vacantly into the black void.

  What more could they say?

  They settled in for the night along the perimeter of the raft and lay quietly, remembering and wondering in blackness as the empty hours passed. The crisis and great loss of the past few days forced Del into a contemplation of his own mortality. Despite all his efforts, death remained unanswerable and irreversible, a frustrating and terrifying concept because he simply could not know.

  For perhaps the first time in his life, Jeff DelGiudice experienced the emptiness of his rational inability to accept faith.

  A few hours later, without warning, dawn exploded over the eastern horizon, shattering the black calm of night and whatever tranquility the men might have had. Startled from their dreams and thoughts, they faced the surprising, stunning light.

  Even though its lip had just broken the horizon, the raging sun burned at their eyes, and as it climbed into full view, the sky turned a bright red and the temperature soared. Waves of heat ripped through the air above them. The ocean flashed bloodred as choppy swells caught the sky’s fire in brilliant reflections, appearing as sheets of flame flicking against the sides of the raft.

  “What the hell is going on?” Mitchell cried as he reflexively dodged the splash of red water. The very sky above them seemed battered and torn.

  “They must have done it,” Corbin realized, scrambling unsteadily to his feet. “They finally did it!”

  “War?” Mitchell gasped. He turned to Reinheiser, who was staring blankly at the merciless sun. “Nuclear war?”

  Reinheiser shrugged his shoulders listlessly. “There could be other explanations,” h
e said unconvincingly, overwhelmed by the apparent betrayal of his cherished science. What had the idiots done—or failed to do—with the marvelous tools and inventions?

  “Whatever happened, we’ve got to get some protection from this sun before it burns our skin away,” Doc Brady said.

  “Get the cover out,” Mitchell said absently, his voice subdued. This horror transcended anger, leaving nothing but emptiness in its wake.

  “We are gathered together on a most solemn occasion,” Ray Corbin proclaimed, still standing. The men watched him with unchanging expressions as he deliberately reached down and picked up one of Mitchell’s rifles. “We stand alone as witnesses to the ultimate stupidity of mankind. We have come to bury the dead.” He raised the rifle above his head in uplifted palms, then tossed his offering into the red water.

  The shoulders of the sitting men visibly slumped. Mitchell wanted to rush over and choke Corbin, more for destroying what little morale was left than for throwing away the rifle. But the furious captain found that he couldn’t even shout at the man. Corbin’s sarcasm had touched him, had made him realize his own frustration at the very real possibility of an escape that had brought them back to a barren earth.

  * * *

  Billy Shank took many more shifts than the others outside the tent of the raft’s cover, and he stayed out hours at a stretch, until his eyes burned from the dazzling light and he lay near dehydration in a puddle of sweat. It wasn’t a form of self-persecution; Billy was simply determined to live the last few days of his life in defiance of the horror.

  Black thoughts and empty silence dominated the atmosphere under the tent. The men faced the grim reality in private, more alone than any of them had ever been. For Del, though, a sliver of hope fought back against the despair. Tugging uncomfortably at the rational side of him, which refused to admit blind faith, was the notion that a miracle had saved him on the bridge of the sinking Unicorn. And on a deeper, still unfathomable level, the thought of intervention by some angelic overseer hinted at a sense of comfort beyond anything Del had ever experienced.

  Day was a brutal trial of endurance in the sweltering 120-degree heat. Even outside the stuffy tent, a good breath of air was hard to come by. Lungs and throats ached with fire in the parching dryness and lips cracked within cracks. Strained eyes, bloodshot from the uncanny brilliance, stung relentlessly even when closed.

  Nights were better. When the temperature dropped to more tolerable levels, some of the men ventured out to join Billy, hoping for a nostalgic glimpse of normalcy, a relief from the constant pressure. And yet they were always disappointed, for the night sky was ever the same, unblemished black. Not a single star would grace them with its fantasy-spawning light, nor did the moon arise with her alluring glow. Del focused on this perversion, and to him it became the greatest tragedy of all. He desperately wanted to see a star again before he died.

  On the afternoon of the fifth day, their water supply nearly exhausted, Billy lay alone outside the tent. The sea sat calmer this day, a smooth, dull crimson below the thin mist that hugged the surface. Billy sprawled across the edge of the raft, his hand drawing shapes in the water. He fell asleep in that position, unaware that the raft had entered a strong current and was steadily accelerating. Several hours and many miles later, Billy woke and looked up with a start. Dead ahead, his sweat-filled eyes beheld a beautiful sight.

  “A mirage,” he gasped, closed his eyes tightly, and rubbed the sleep from them.

  But when he looked again, the vision remained.

  Their way was blocked by a wall of golden light stretching from the sea to the sky and for miles in either direction.

  Billy’s breath came in short puffs. What barrier was this? The gateway to death? To heaven? Or had the heat brought him delirium?

  The raft continued toward the golden sheet and Billy’s apprehension grew. He needed someone now—Del, or anybody. “Hey!” he shrieked between gasps. “Come see this!”

  The men under the tent reacted slowly to the call. Some were asleep, others lost in daydreams or distant memories.

  “Hey!” Billy yelled again. Heads finally appeared from the tent, and amid questioning and unbelieving exclamations, the six men crawled to the front of the raft.

  “A giant sunbeam,” Del remarked.

  “What could it be?” Mitchell asked Reinheiser, a trace of panic in his voice as he was once again faced with something unknown and so obviously beyond his control.

  Reinheiser just shrugged his shoulders and shook his head. He wasn’t talking much these days. He had expected a future world of marvelous machines and great discoveries, but something apparently had gone very wrong. Someone had pushed the wrong button, or, in a fit of economic timidness, had continued to ignore signs of impending disaster, and simply washed away his technological dream. The bitter reality around him had forced Reinheiser to question the value of science, and thus the value of his entire existence.

  “Here we go!” Del said as they rushed into the light.

  Instantly the temperature dropped to a comfortable level and their vision became a yellow-golden blur, bereft of individualizing shadows and shades of depth. Everything, the orange raft, their blue clothes, Billy’s black skin, melded together in the uniform hue of their background.

  The raft exited the golden sheet without any warning, and the startled men were greeted by a cool breeze and blue skies and the bluest water any of them had ever seen. After a moment of shock, they cried out in delight, even Mitchell and Reinheiser, and Thompson sobbed with joy. Some of the world had escaped the devastation, it seemed.

  Again Mitchell turned to the physicist, and again Reinheiser merely shrugged his shoulders and shook his head.

  “Now we’ve got to pray for some rain or a place to land,” Ray Corbin reminded them. “Blue skies won’t fill our water bottles.”

  But the men paid little attention to Corbin’s words. Their salvation was at hand and they would hear no more of death. Not now.

  The raft continued to drift in an easterly direction for the rest of the afternoon and through a beautiful, crimson sunset. And that night, clear and cool, the stars came out, a billion it seemed, and Del was overjoyed to witness their twinkling for the first time in weeks. Truly it was a night to lie back and appreciate the gentle sway of the ocean below and the vastness of the heavens above, far beyond mortal comprehension yet intimately pleasing to the soul. So the men lay serenely about the perimeter and unanimously agreed upon a pact that if anyone awakened before dawn, he would rouse the others, so they, too, might enjoy the first wonderfully normal sunrise. One by one they drifted into the comfort of untroubled dreams.

  Del opened his eyes just before dawn, the sky a deep blue as the still-hidden sun worked the inevitable transition from the black of night. He stirred the others and the raft became noisy with shuffling and yawning as they all positioned and prepared themselves for the coming event.

  They talked and joked and stretched the night away with complacent groans, but when the watery rim of the eastern horizon glistened suddenly in sparkling reflection and the sky above it steadily pinkened, the men hushed in unison.

  It came as the visual music of the cosmos, timeless perfection; the first ray of the sun peeked at them across the mirror-calm water. She mounted higher, the giver of light, on the unseen, untiring wheels of spherical order. Seven men stood as one and applauded, and in every mind came the fleeting realization that before them was a moment of spiritual awareness, too often taken for granted. For most, the thought would pass as quickly as the dawn, rekindled far too infrequently to make any difference in their character. But for Jeffrey DelGiudice, the experience proved lasting. Never again would he look at the beautiful world about him in quite the same way.

  When dawn turned to day, though, the men discovered a new problem. The raft sat still on the water, nothing but unmoving blue ocean as far as the eye could see. Corbin’s warnings about the water supply loomed suddenly before them. They had dared to believe th
at the currents that had pulled them from the devastation would be their path to salvation.

  This newest dilemma was more than Thompson could take. He leaped to his feet and punched at the sky. “Will you get it over with?” he screamed to God above. “Bastard! If you want us dead, then do it now and no more games!” He looked around suddenly, as if a revelation had stricken him, meeting his seated companions’ unbelieving expressions with a sincere look of understanding. “That’s it! Don’t you know?” he howled with apparent glee. “It’s all a game!”

  Mitchell turned a menacing glance at Brady and Corbin and warned in all seriousness, “Control that idiot or he’s going overboard.”

  But even as the captain spoke, Thompson dropped to the raft, alternating wild laughter and sobbing. Tears streamed freely down his face and he kept whispering, “Just a frigging game,” desperately begging anyone to agree with him.

  Later that morning they drank the last of the water, and then sat helpless, quiet, betrayed. How long would it take? each of them now wondered.

  Those contemplations were stolen by a loud splash, and then another.

  “Dolphins!” Doc Brady shouted as a large bottle-nosed dolphin broke the surface and arrowed into the air. In seconds the water around the raft churned as dozens of dolphins danced and soared all about them, silver-flitting needles weaving intricate patterns in the azure fabric of the sea.

  “Unbelievable!” Del whispered, seeing the display in an inspiring light. A week ago he might have viewed the dance as a pleasing diversion, but now his vision went much deeper. In their evolution, the dolphins had become perfectly suited for their world, the embodiment of nature’s ability to flow toward perfection. They were the flesh-and-blood music of universal law and divine order. Del wanted to share his revelation and see if the others, too, saw the true beauty of it all, but no words good enough came to him.

  The ballet went on for several minutes.

  Then a dolphin sat up in the water, half of its blue-gray body effortlessly still in the air a few feet in front of the raft. It stared with intelligent eyes into seven puzzled faces and began clicking and whinnying and waving its long nose frantically.