Orson Card - Empire

Cole sent Mingo and Benny around to the west side of Genesseret to reconnoiter the eastern shoreline. They didn’t need to go all the way to the dam. As soon as they had observed and photographed the whole eastern shore, they should come back around and, again, if Cole had not told them otherwise, round both lakes and return to the cache.

Only Cat was with Cole now, moving together near but not on the crest of the ridge between lakes. Occasionally they would cross over the ridge and move down the other side, since they were observing the far shores of both lakes now.

They were near the peak of the ridge now, approaching the observation tower. Now they moved even more stealthily, moving slowly and methodically toward the tower from two different directions. There was no sign of any kind of wiring, though that hardly proved that there was no wiring. Nor was there any sign of cameras—but, again, that might simply mean that the cameras were very small and well concealed.

In the southwest, clouds were building. A summer thunderstorm? That would be potentially disastrous—lightning could do worse things than an EMP gun. Even fog would be irritating, forcing them to wait till it cleared to complete the mission.

Cole crept back away from the cleared area around the tower; he knew Cat was doing the same. They would move slowly around to two other vantage points and inspect the other two sides of the tower.

It was in the midst of this maneuver that Cole’s receiver vibrated. He immediately began backing farther away from the tower. He pressed the go-ahead button.

“Mingo here,” said Mingo. He was talking softly, but articulating very clearly. “Come down to the area twenty feet above the clear-cut zone. Right where you are, just go down. No structures, no sign of tunneling, but something you need to see.”

Cole pressed the go-ahead button again, requesting more information without having to speak aloud.

“If you don’t see it, then we’re crazy,” said Mingo. “I’m not going to predispose you.”

Cole pressed the code for Cat, knowing he had heard. Cole whispered, “Down to Genesseret.”

It took only fifteen minutes to move, relatively noiselessly, to the zone twenty feet or so above the clear-cut zone. Whatever they were supposed to see, Cole couldn’t see it.

And then he could. The ground was suddenly wet underfoot.

Cat noticed it, too. He moved toward Cole and when they were near enough, said in a low voice, “Somebody ran the sprinklers this morning.”

The ground was sodden, as if it had been heavily watered. From about fifteen feet above the waterline, the pine needles no longer carpeted the forest floor in a natural way. They had been carried downward as if by receding water, hanging up on tufts of grass, roots, rocks, any obstruction, the way floating pine needles would when the water drained away.

Cole switched on his transceiver and coded for Mingo. “Is this about even with the top of the dam?”

“From what we can see,” said Mingo, “it could go ten feet higher. But the line is absolute. Everything below it soaked, everything above it as dry as normal. Benny has me for ten that this lake has been fifteen feet higher within the last twenty-four hours. Which is impossible and/or weird.”

“You bet against him, though.”

“Somebody had to,” said Mingo. “It’s how he pays for food.”

“Anything else on our side?” asked Cole.

“Nothing.”

“And we’ve seen nothing on yours. Anything near the dam?”

“Just the old road 20, where it dives down under the water. The new road’s on our side, but it’s already overgrown with grass and saplings. Nobody’s using it.”

Cole sat and thought for a while. This obvious change in the water level was weird, but it was hard to see what the point of it would be. Why would they have released so much water, so rapidly? The lake was small, as reservoirs go, but it was still millions of gallons of water. By now Mingo had probably figured out approximately how much. He asked.

“If it was all released in a single flow, it would be enough to cause flooding downstream,” said Mingo. “The valley floor is populated. The neighbors would complain. Cole, this water was here, no more than a day ago. It went somewhere.”

Mingo was a civil engineer and it was his business to be able to make guesses that were worth something.

“Any sign of it draining right now?” asked Cole.

“No,” said Mingo. “In fact, it’s at the usual waterline right now. Where the vegetation changes. The high level seems to be the rare condition.”

“Heavy rainstorms here lately?”

“No,” said Benny. “Dryish summer for this area.”

“Rain heavy enough to raise the water level this high, you would have seen it on the news. ‘Washington State washed out to sea,’ that would have been the story.”

“Somehow they’re raising and lowering the water level of the lake by massive amounts,” said Cole, “and I can’t think of a single reason why.”

“I’m still trying to think of how,” said Mingo.

“Anybody get close enough to the shoreline on Chinnereth to see if it does the same?” asked Cole.

“Drew here. We reconnoitered the shoreline while we were waiting. Nothing like what you describe. The shoreline was the first wet area. No flooding higher up.”

“Load here. Ditto. If the water level rose fifteen feet on Chinnereth, it would flood that cabin.”

Cole sat and thought for a long moment.

“Maybe they dumped a huge amount of rubble in here,” said Mingo. “That would raise the level. But that wouldn’t explain why it went back down.”

“No roads where they could dump the rubble,” said Benny.

“While we’re complaining about what they don’t have here,” said Load. “I don’t remember seeing any power lines running away from this dam.”

“No, there were power lines,” said Benny.

“And a power station? Lots of transformers? Where?”

“No. Nothing like that,” said Benny. “But definitely power lines. No, wait. They ran along Highway 12. But I never saw them link up with the dams. Sorry.”

“This was officially a hydroelectic project,” said Cole. “There are turbines in the dams.”

“So maybe they use the power right here,” said Cat. “In their vast system of underground factories and training facilities.”

“Cat and I are going back up to the observation tower to check whether there’s any kind of vent up there for an underground system.”

They all switched off their transmitters. It was harder going uphill. But not slower. That’s what all the stairstepping and rock climbing were for.

Now Cole knew what to look for, he climbed a tree well back from the cleared perimeter and scanned for some kind of pipe or vent hidden in the tall grass.

Bingo. There were about two dozen small pipes, sticking up only a few inches above the ground before they bent over to keep water from coming in. At ground level you couldn’t see them for the grass.

Cole pointed his soundcatcher toward them and was able to pick up a difference between the pipes and the surrounding area. They were connected to something that was actively producing noise.

He climbed back down the tree and backed away from the cleared area, heading down the Chinnereth slope this time. Cat was soon near him, though they did not talk and remained fifty feet apart as they made their way down the slope.

Near the cleared edge of the woods, but not close enough to be seen, they stopped and Cole approached Cat. Across the water, the cabin sat on its little island. It had a chimney, which might very well contain vents for more underground structures.

It might also contain something else. An entrance.