Ascent of the Aliomenti (32 page)

The boat served a dual purpose. He’d purchased it for his personal use during one of his stays at the Aliomenti outpost on the Iberian peninsula. It was relatively small, meant to hold only two or three people, but he never invited guests on board. He told those who eyed the boat with curiosity that he was using it to transport rocks to a small island community that used them for construction. The news failed to inspire any interest in other Aliomenti to join in; in fact, most suspected that Will, one of the three Old Guard along with Arthur and Adam, was becoming senile after living for a quarter of a millennium.

Will was content to allow that perception to continue.

His story was, to a large degree, true. He was, in fact, transporting “rocks” to his own “small island community” and using them to construct the submarine. The “rocks” were ore mined from several caves he’d located, with rocks containing iron, manganese, and other elements needed to create steel. It was not a perfect system; he was neither proficient at producing steel, nor familiar with all of the component elements, and certainly not proficient at identifying them. What he
did
have were the time, money, and patience required to identify the formulas and develop the skills and technologies to make everything work.

Will maneuvered the boat through the ocean waves, several miles off shore, and rapidly left the visible range of the Iberian Aliomenti outpost. The boat was filled with the “rocks” he’d collected and stored under tarps he kept aboard the small ship. As the boat cleared the horizon and left sight of any of the Aliomenti, Will began to cycle the Energy in his body, feeling the power that never ceased to amaze him. The Energy he possessed now would stun the man who had arrived in the early eleventh century with a mere two months experience in Energy usage. His advanced skills enabled him to detect the Energy levels of others while masking his own, and he was aware of the continually increasing gap between his own Energy skills and those of others. That gap was such that he could use his Energy to transport his raw materials to the island he thought of as home.

The swarms of Energy surrounded Will, the boat, and the cargo, as he pictured a spot within sight of the island. He felt the familiar sense of displacement as all of his senses went dark. An instant later, his senses were restored, and he was floating in the boat a mile away from the island paradise he’d discovered.

Will had considered several names for his island home. The flooding and deaths associated with Atlantis had eliminated that name from consideration. He’d also considered Ararat, the name of the mountain where the ark built by Noah was said to have come to rest as the waters receded, but that didn’t seem right either. He finally settled on Eden, for there seemed to be no evidence that any human being had ever set foot on the tropical island paradise before.

He wrestled the sails into position, capturing the wind and maneuvering the vessel around to the opposite side of the island, where he found the mouth of the river he’d traverse to reach his home at the island’s center. When he arrived, he tethered the boat to the dock he’d constructed and anchored it before moving to dry land.

Will walked toward the house he’d built. The structure consisted of two buildings. The smaller served as his living space, a place for sleeping, reading, and food preparation. The larger building served as a laboratory, the place where he did the planning work for his submarine and built and tested out his ideas. Prototypes of earlier propulsion systems rested to the side, discarded for various failures that combined to point him in the direction of success. With unlimited time and funds, he wasn’t obligated to use known fuels in his design due to monetary constraints. Nor did he wish to squander space for fuel tanks in the cramped quarters necessitated by the submarine.

Ocean water was plentiful, surrounding him at all times, and it contained vast quantities of salt. He’d spent nearly forty years focusing his efforts on a means to use the salt in the water as a fuel source. As he tested propulsion system prototypes, he also extracted metals from the rock samples he’d collected to create metal alloys. He’d molded those alloys into prototype submarine hulls, which he tested for leakages and the strength to withstand the weight of the water. In the prototypes built for the submarine’s body, he propelled the vessel with his Energy. The vessels he tested were intentionally small for that reason. He wouldn’t build the final vessel until he’d perfected the propulsion system and knew its size.

That didn’t stop him from sketching ideas on the paper the Aliomenti had recently started using. He wanted to be able to see his exterior surroundings when underwater, which meant that he needed a large portion of the exterior created from a transparent material. Glass wouldn’t work, for the pressure of the water would shatter it before the craft reached a depth Will considered a minimum requirement for the vessel. At some point, he’d need to travel beneath the massive ocean-going vessels European explorers would operate on their many exploratory missions, and he wanted to be certain those sailors couldn’t see his submarine in clearer water. Thus, depth was critical.

His years of experimentation and careful note taking had finally resulted in the recipe for the composite metal he’d use to construct the outer hull. He’d taken the most recent experimental craft to a depth he’d estimated at nearly 1,000 feet, and had used nanos to simulate an external viewscreen. The nanos were so small that they were impervious to the pressure at these depths, and they were wired into his brain so that he could see the images they collected, collated into a single image. When he closed his eyes, it was as if he was looking out through a large screen, seeing the incredible underwater imagery of the sea floor.

It wasn’t what he wanted for a permanent solution, but it would work in an emergency.

Today, as he thought of the completed craft, he also thought of Hope.

Their separation had lasted an impossibly long time, and though he understood her motivations for doing so, he missed her terribly. He stood up from the rough desk he’d built for himself years earlier, moving away from the sketches he’d drawn of potential cabin designs, and glanced at the shelf. He saw the red velvet pouch he’d been given years earlier by Arthur, at a time when Arthur believed his daughter dead and sealed inside a pine coffin. His anger at the sight of the pouch and his longing for her made him feel the need to take action, for it reminded him that the cause for all of this, including her need to see the world and live in independence away from him, was her upbringing at Arthur’s hands. Though a woman of incredible spirit and vitality, she’d lived in virtual chains, a prisoner and slave in a village her father controlled, a home in which she was never permitted the opportunity to grow through childhood into adulthood. The period where she’d traveled from town to town with Eva for several decades after her supposed death had in many ways been an extended adolescence, and her current stint of isolation from Eva and Will was her transition into adulthood.

It was necessary only because of Arthur and his actions.

Would Arthur one day learn that Elizabeth had lived, had changed her name and become immortal just as he had done? Will frowned. She could hide far more easily now, but the progression of the Aliomenti suggested that they’d eventually cover the world, and hiding a woman of such immense power from them forever would prove an impossibility. It would take no more than a brief slip from any of the few who knew her to reveal the secret. His frown deepened. It seemed likely that Arthur would recognize Hope as Elizabeth if he ever saw her picture, and certainly he’d have the chance to do so when the Hunters located the original Will Stark in the twenty-first century. Arthur would have a deep interest in the woman that Will had chosen to marry. Certainly, he’d recognize in Hope’s eyes his own daughter, just as Will had recognized Josh in Fil’s eyes.

Would Arthur resume his efforts to control her again, even after a thousand years?

Will’s frown turned menacing. He’d never give Arthur that opportunity. No promise would keep him from protecting Hope, for protecting her was the promise that trumped all others.

He grabbed a slip of paper and tore off a scrap. Fighting to keep his hand steady, he wrote a message to the future Arthur, a message of warning. Will would not tolerate a future in which Arthur and his minions hunted his bride. The Hunters, along with Arthur, would become the hunted if and when they did so.

He finished the note and considered where to put it. Sending it to Arthur now was pointless; he didn’t want to
tell
Arthur that Elizabeth still lived. When Arthur realized that Elizabeth might still be alive, he’d seek confirmation, and Will wanted to be certain that his warning message was waiting for him. His eye fell upon the red velvet pouch, his memory moved to the last home the pouch had known, and his mind was made up.

He knew the perfect place to store his message.

XXV

Power

1300 A.D.

Fifty years later.

“What would you
do
with it, though?” Anna asked.

Anna, along with her sister, Sarah, had been instrumental in developing magnifying lenses, and their progress had been remarkable. While their lenses weren’t yet powerful enough to see individual cells, they were able to look at the stars and observe the planets and come to the realization that there was far more to the universe than their home planet. Their observations over the past several decades led to conclusions relating to heliocentricity, viewpoints Copernicus wouldn’t formally propose for another two centuries. The Aliomenti were, once again, ahead of their time.

Will’s latest observation did not relate to magnifying lenses, however. He’d hypothesized that lightning must be made of something comparable to Energy, and that they could perhaps capture that energy for their own uses.

“I’m not sure, not yet,” Will replied. “Yet I think we could find something incredible to do with it. Lightning can set fire to entire forests and destroy buildings. What could we get it to do if we could somehow channel it to our purposes?”

Sarah shook her head, as she watched a young man named William work on polishing the lenses the sisters made. They sold them in human cities as reflecting mirrors, but privately focused on their magnification capabilities. “Why would we want to destroy buildings or set fires in forests, though? Even if we had enemies, there are far more efficient ways to eliminate them.” She nodded at William. “He’s become quite proficient at creating and throwing knives, for instance. Why try to track and capture lightning when he can throw a knife and hit his target? Why not use our Energy to handle the problem?”

Will sighed. “I hope we don’t think of it in those terms. Many, many years ago, we looked at a raging river. The only thing a raging river could do was flood and destroy our homes, or perhaps drown us. But we looked at the power of the water and channeled it to do something no more exciting than turning a wheel on an axle. Yet that provided us with unending supplies of fresh water and eventually a means to turn gears that increased our productive capacity by many multiples, letting us develop the money we needed to expand to Watt and other outposts throughout so much of the world. Perhaps we could have used the waters and redirected them to flood our enemies, but we found more productive uses by thinking about the water in a different fashion. I see lightning, an incredible force of nature, and wonder what we might do with it.”

Anna looked thoughtful. “I hadn’t thought of it that way. Lightning isn’t so much a force, because it doesn’t push anything. It’s more like... fire. I guess that’s why it can start fires when it strikes in just the right place. But how can you control
fire
?”

She glanced toward William, and Will watched the young man as he pondered his response to her question. William seemed oblivious to his audience. He had put down the lens he’d been polishing, recognizing that it was time to change his focus. He moved to a large oven where the smiths heated metal. Will watched, stunned, as William reached into the oven and retrieved a container of molten iron and carried it toward forms he’d use to shape a new sword.

He’d touched the red hot container with his bare hands, without any sign of pain or physical damage. Will stared at William, then back to the sisters, who both reacted as if this was nothing unusual.

Anna realized that Will was shocked at what he’d seen, and merely shrugged. “He’s always done that. I guess it’s just a gift he has.”

“But...” Will stammered, unsure why that particular skill raised so many alarms in his mind.

“We use the metal ducts to channel heat through buildings,” Sarah noted, resuming the previous conversation. Will found himself temporarily distracted from contemplating William’s unusual skill. “Could
that
be the way you channel lightning? With metal ducts?”

“Well...” Will focused himself on the conversation at hand. “With the fires in the furnaces we control where and when those fires
start
, so it’s much easier to control where the heat
goes
. The problem with lightning is that we never know where it will strike, and even if we do, how would we move metal ducts to capture that lightning?”

Anna nodded. “That’s the thing with the water, though. Way back at the start, back when the Aliomenti started in that first village... the water wasn’t where you needed it to be. So you... moved it.”