Near Avapol.

Friday, December 12.

THE SKY WAS blanketed by Marge’s rain clouds. Three of her chimneys were up and running. The fourth would be erected that night on an island forty klicks off the west coast, midway between Mandigol and Sakmarung. Over the last two days, no one in Hopgop or Roka, or in the four cities located in the center of the isthmus, had seen the sun, the stars, or the apparition.

It was still visible from T’Mingletep and Savakol in the south, and from Saniusar in the far north. There, the Goompahs watched the omega grow visibly larger each night. It filled their sky, a terrifying vision, grim and churning and lit within by demon-fire.

Digger sat, concealed within his lightbender, in a pavilion in the middle of a rainswept park. The park was deserted, as were the surrounding streets. Whit was out positioning projectors. He’d gotten good at it, and obviously enjoyed the work.

They’d done the calculations again, and the cloud was not compensating for its new position, was probably unable to compensate, and would consequently reach Lookout when it was early afternoon on the Intigo. Since it was coming out of the night, that meant it should expend most of its energy on the far side of the world.

Halleluia! Add that to the cloud cover Marge was putting up, and the Goompahs had a decent chance.

“Don’t get too confident,” Whit had warned him. “Conditions here will still be extreme.”

Digger had seen only the shimmering haze of Whit’s lightbender, and considered how difficult it was to communicate when you couldn’t see people’s expressions. Was he becoming seriously pessimistic? Or cautious? Or was it just a reflex that you never claim victory lest you tempt the fates?

“And don’t forget the round-the-world mission,” he’d added, apparently determined to dampen the mood. He’d been like this since they’d lost Collingdale. The others had expressed their regrets, had been sorry; but Collingdale reportedly hadn’t been easy to get to know. Digger, in fact, had barely had time to say hello as he passed through the wedding and took Kellie and the Hawksbill out to chase the omega. Kellie had spoken little about him since her return. He hoped she was too smart to assign any guilt to herself for the loss, but she had made it clear she didn’t want to talk about the experience.

Whit, however, must have been closer to Collingdale than anyone had realized. He’d been visibly shaken by his death.

The round-the-world mission had been gone ten weeks. Bill was keeping an eye on them and reporting periodically. They’d lost a couple of sailors. One had fallen overboard; another had contracted a disease of some sort and been buried at sea. Otherwise, not much was happening. The wind stops, they stop. The wind picks up, and they’re off again. “They’re steering crooked,” Bill had been saying the last three days. “They’re off course. Had almost a week of bad weather, so I guess they can’t see the stars to navigate.”

The ships were approaching the eastern continent and would soon, Digger thought, have to turn back.

The rain around the pavilion was almost torrential. It had been falling steadily for a night and a day. Marge, it seemed, was very good at what she did for a living.

A couple of signs were posted announcing an afternoon slosh at Broka Hall, giving the time by sundial. In the event of rain, bells would be rung at intervals. A moraka was also scheduled that evening at the edge of the park, weather permitting. Music and snacks. Compliments of the Korkoran Philosophical Society.

Whit had known what a slosh was. But he had not seen the term moraka previously.

“It’s hard to explain,” Digger had told him.

“Try.”

“It’s an orgy.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“The orgy starts at nine?”

“Something like that.”

“Sponsored by the Philosophical Society?”

“Apparently so.” Digger grinned.

“This place has some unique aspects.”

There was no one about. He could see a Goompah adjusting shutters in one of the buildings lining the park, and another hurrying across a street. And that was it.

Bill broke into his musings. “Weather update,” he said in a voice copied from weather reports back home. He enjoyed doing that. “Expect continued rain in the central sections of the isthmus at least until tomorrow.”

“Bill,” he said, “we only have three chimneys up. Are they more effective than we thought?”

“I do not think so, Digger. I believe what we are seeing is partially due to natural meteorological conditions. The arrival of a low-pressure area from the west coincided—”

“—It’s okay, I don’t need the details. Is there any chance the rain will remain with us over the next few days?”

“Until the cloud arrives? No. The weather system will pass over the isthmus by midday tomorrow. After that, it will be up to Marge’s chimneys.”

The streets and cafés in the cities were virtually deserted. The Goompahs were staying home in substantial numbers.

Signs had been posted announcing sloshen to discuss “recent unsettling events.” Digger and Whit had posted projectors at a couple of them so they could watch from the ship. Ironically,the unseasonable weather had added to native disquiet, as had reports of voices and disembodied eyes, mystical flashes in the sky (which might have been the chimneys or the AV3, or both). There’d been zhoka sightings on the highways and, most terrifying of all, the levitation of Tayma, the priestess at Savakol, followed by a window opening in midair. Witnessed by hundreds.

Digger, Whit, and Kellie had watched fully a dozen Goompahs rise and swear they were there, or knew someone who was there, when it happened. “She literally rose out of the sea,” one bull-sized male had said, “and floated through thin air across the water, over the water, until she was set down by an unseen hand on the beach.”

The consensus seemed to be that the confluence of supernatural events portended approaching catastrophe. But they wondered, if such a thing were actually about to happen, why the gods were permitting it. Where were they, anyhow? There was a palpable sense of irritation that the local deities were not on the job.

Earlier that day, Digger had stood outside a schoolroom and listened to the teacher and students discuss the approaching cloud. The students were probably a young-adolescent equivalent. It was hard to tell. But some of them wanted to know whether the teacher still believed that supernatural events did not happen.

“It is simply,” the teacher had argued, “that there are parts of the natural world we do not yet understand.”

The youth in Avapol may have been too polite to laugh, and too smart to argue: but even Digger, who had not yet begun to learn the nuances of nonverbal communication among this alien race, could see what they thought of that opinion.

As Whit put a projector in a tree, he caught a glimpse of Digger. When he’d finished, he turned, looked toward the pavilion, and waved. Digger waved back.

“That’s the last one,” Kellie told him. She was in the lander. This was her first day back at work, giving Julie a well-earned chance to sleep in a bed again.

The last one in Avapol. They still had two cities to visit.

It was getting tight. The Goompahs would have three more days of relative calm. During the midafternoon of the third day, the omega would hit the far side of the planet, and conditions would deteriorate. The cloud that had struck Moonlight had delivered most of its energy during the first seven hours. It had systematically picked out every city around the globe still standing and demolished it. Then it had abated.

At Lookout, the actions of the Hawksbill had thrown the omega off schedule. Furthermore, Marge’s weather would hide the targets. The cloud, not knowing better, would raise hell on the other side of the planet, and the Goompahs, during the first few hours, would get their feet wet. During the course of the evening the Intigo would rotate beneath the main body of the storm, but by the time it arrived in the lethal zone, the thing would be starting to dissipate. And it would, they hoped, not even see the cities.

“You guys ready to come home?”

Digger watched Whit moving steadily through the rain. “Give us thirty minutes to get there.”

She would pick them up on a hilltop on the northern edge of town. “I’ll be there,” she said.

Digger got up from his bench.

“By the way,” she said, “the media have arrived.”

“Really?”

“The Black Cat Network, of all people.” The Black Cat Network tended toward sensationalist journalism. “They’re asking permission to send in a ground team.”

“Tell them no. We have no authority.”

“I already told them.”

He sighed. He couldn’t really blame them. This was a pretty big story. And they’d come a long way for it. He was tempted to tell them to go ahead, but if he did, Hutch would fry his rear end. “They can do whatever they need to with telescopes.”

“Okay.”

“And tell them they can have access to the pickups.” He thought about that. Maybe it wasn’t a good idea. For one thing, they’d undoubtedly find out about the morakas. “Do we have guidance from the Academy on any of this?”

“Hutch says cooperate, but they are not to set foot on the surface. If they do, they will be prosecuted. She says they’ve been warned.”

“Okay. Tell them we’ll help where we can. Don’t mention the pickups.”

“Good,” she said. “I think that’s prudent.”

BLACK CAT REPORT

Thanks, Ron. This is Rose Beetem in the skies over Lookout. At the moment, we can’t show you the cities of the Goompahs. They’re under a heavy cover of rainstorms. I have to report to you that we have been asked not to land on the planetary surface, because of the Noninterference Protocol, and we are adhering to that request.

But we expect to be able to follow the action on the ground as the situation develops. Meantime, it is late evening over the Goompah cities, which are concentrated on a relatively small landmass in the southern hemisphere. What you are looking at now is the rim of the omega. It is just rising, and, as you can see, it is an incredible spectacle.

Avery Whitlock’s Notebooks

It is hard not to conclude that my entire life has been a prelude to and a preparation for this moment. If we do not succeed here, nothing else I’ve done will have mattered very much.

— December 12