The Spell of Rosette - Kim Falconer [153]
‘I’ll let you know if I see one.’
Rosette continued to frown as she stripped and joined them. She tasted the water and drank her fill before rinsing in Drayco’s shallow pool. With a sudden start, she bound out.
Maudi? Drayco leapt after her, his hackles rising.
‘Hey, you two. What’s going on?’ Jarrod asked, following them. He scanned the water’s surface but it was smooth as glass. ‘What is it?’
‘I don’t know, but this is all disturbingly familiar.’
‘What do you mean? Have you been here before?’
‘Yes. No. Not this place but somewhere like it. Under Los Loma.’
‘You’re comparing those caverns to this paradise?’ He swept his hand out towards the falls.
‘You didn’t see it. There was a pool there, and the water tasted sweet—heavenly—just like this.’
‘And?’ he prompted.
‘At the bottom of the pool…’ She leaned her body forward, straining to see under the surface.
‘What?’
She shook her head. ‘Maybe I’ve had too much sun. There are no monsters at the bottom of this lagoon, are there?’
‘None that I can see.’
‘And you have amazing sight. All the same, I’m going to look for some fruit and have a bit of an explore. You coming?’
‘Let’s find the horses. We can cover more ground with them.’
They’re not far. Grazing in a meadow.
‘Lead on, Drayco. There isn’t much left of this day and I don’t want to go to sleep with an empty stomach.’
That’s not going to happen, Maudi. Follow me.
An’ Lawrence sat across the table in Kreshkali’s apartment, studying textbooks and sipping spice tea from Dumarka. Scylla was crouched by a small hole in the wall, stalking her fourth rat.
‘They won’t give her indigestion, will they? I can’t imagine what rats in this city eat.’
‘She’s tough,’ Kreshkali said, looking briefly at the temple cat before pointing to an elaborate three-dimensional drawing. It resembled ladders entwining round each other. ‘See these spiral chains? They have encoding here and here, in the Pi-stack. This is the key to bringing down the solar shields. The access codes…’
‘Are in the spell? In Rosette?’
‘That’s right. If this plan goes right, there’ll be real sunshine on Earth before long.’
‘I still don’t understand what the solar shields are.’ An’ Lawrence leaned forward, holding his mug with both hands. ‘And I don’t understand much of this at all.’ He waved at the drawings.
‘Here’s the concise history.’ Kreshkali took a drink from her cup and stared at An’ Lawrence and Zero. ‘Centuries ago, the Earth’s ozone layer began to thin.’
‘And ozone means what, again?’
‘Ozone is triatomic, a molecule comprised of three oxygen atoms. It’s much less stable than O2, and it’s a pollutant—a poison—at ground level, but in the stratosphere…’
‘Stop.’ Zero massaged his forehead. ‘What’s O2?’
‘That’s the essential stuff in the air you breathe. About twenty percent.’
‘Oxygen?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why don’t you just say oxygen?’
Kreshkali looked at him, one eyebrow going up. ‘Because the shortened term makes the telling faster.’
‘In theory,’ An’ Lawrence broke in.
She exhaled in a rush. ‘It’s like this,’ she said. ‘Ozone forms a layer in the atmosphere around Earth. It filters out harmful rays of ultraviolet light from the sun. Actually, it absorbs them, keeping out electromagnetic radiation—wavelengths of 320 nanometers and lower.’
‘It filters out damaging light?’ An’ Lawrence asked.
‘UV light, yes.’
‘And when that light gets through? What happens?’
‘What happened, is more like it,’ Kreshkali said. ‘It caused big problems with oxygen production—single-celled animals were hit the hardest. Protozoa and algae were decimated and the largest oxygen-generating biosystem—the ocean’s plankton—started to die.’
She took a deep breath. ‘People started to die from skin cancers, there was reduced fertility and a peculiar effect on consciousness that contributed to vast numbers of casualties…suicide.’
‘And why did the ozone thin?’ Zero’s mouth turned down like a shark when he asked.
‘Pollution, mainly halocarbons.’
‘Didn’t the temple hierarchies know?’ An’ Lawrence asked.
‘The world leaders, you mean? Oh, they knew,’ Kreshkali said.