Defender of the Future
Part one of
The Tidesinger Trilogy

Chapter Eleven

They found Chang nosing around near the gates, fascinated by the little brightly colored reef fish that ebbed and flowed like the current. The reef-dwellers for their part were fascinated by the angler, and bold ones kept trying to nibble on her lantern--at which point she snapped them up into her mouthful of spiky teeth. Ecco had wondered why she was called an angler-fish.

There was a little difficulty in persuading Chang to accompany them--she took one look at Karkol's "friendly" grin, and fled into the weeds with a thin shriek. Weeding her out was helped by the fact that her glowing lantern tended to give away her position, but it still took a lot of persuading to get the angler-fish to quit the cover of the rocks and come out into the open water. She hovered around behind Ecco, eyeing the great white with unconcealed dread.

"Come off it, Chang," Ecco pleaded. "He's not interested in you, honest."

"Yeah, I'd need to eat ten of you for a good-sized meal," the shark broke in wickedly.

Ecco sighed in resignation as the little angler dashed back into the seagrass. "Karkol, you're not helping..."

At last the unlikely threesome moved off towards the gates, Chang always keeping Ecco between herself and Karkol. Despite Chang's doubts, Ecco was finding a strange affinity between himself and the young great white. Karkol was cheerful and optimistic, and he had perhaps a little too much confidence in his own strength (Ecco thought privately). It was comforting in a way to have those powerful jaws along--he could imagine what they might do to any Foe who dared to show themselves.

"Here," the great white said, rising up through the water. To Ecco's immense surprise, Karkol actually stuck his head right out of the water, blinking myopically in the air. His pointed snout indicated something above them, at the top of the gates.

"Some sort of pulley system..." Ecco murmured thoughtfully, and tailwalked for a few moments to get a better look. Man-things, those were--there was still some lore that told of Man, the builder of Atlantis. Great iron chains were attached to the top of the gates; they ran into holes in the cliff-face above, where rusted iron spars suggested some sort of ancient machine lay within. The chains were slack now, but if they were pulled to somehow, they would lift the gate up in its grooves and allow passage beneath its stone span. Ecco frowned as another problem presented itself. "Karkol, Man was landbound. What if the controls for this gate are up there somewhere?"

"I don't think they are," the great white said, turning towards him. "This whole place, right... apparently it used to be above ground. There was a kind of lake, and the city was in the middle of it. It's all sunk down for some reason." Karkol paused, thinking his words out. "You know that big building in the center? I reckon the controls are in there. There's all sorts of cool stuff, but I couldn't explore it all properly because there's no light inside--you can't see two inches in front of your nose."

"Well, we've got light!" Ecco grinned. "Chang, I think we need your services again!"

"This is all beyond me," the angler-fish remarked to Ecco as they headed back towards the sunken city. "You all rely so much on light up here! Where I come from, we just use it to attract food and stuff." She blinked, looking up at the wavering disc of the sun with wonder in her eyes. "And I didn't realize there was an end to the world! What's up there? Is it some kind of giant angler-fish?"

"The sky," Ecco told her. "There's creatures that actually live there, too. Birds--they swim in air like we swim in water. It's much harder to swim in air, though, which is why we can't do it--we aren't strong enough to hold ourselves up."

"Some fish can do it," Karkol broke in, glancing sideways at them. "There's flying-fish, which sort of glide and flap. Apparently there were sharks who could do it too, ages ago." The great white looked a little sad as he followed Chang's wondering gaze. "Of course, we're limited in what we can do because we can't breathe up there. Ecco'd be fine if he ever learned to fly, but I guess we're stuck down here."

"What do you mean, 'down here'?" Chang asked, half-laughing. "This is up! Very, very up!"

The streets stretched out before them. Karkol led the way to the main building, swimming gracefully down what would once have been Atlantis's main road. Ecco looked around as he followed the great white, trying to imagine the city as it would once have been--before the long slow decay took hold of it.

"Kinda creepy, isn't it?" Karkol asked, reading his thoughts.

"Yeah... a little." Ecco looked up at the great circular building, dark and featureless beneath its covering of weedy slime. "How do we get in?"

"There's a hole round the back." Karkol headed off that way, glancing back to encourage the others to follow him. "I noticed some of the bricks were loose, so I pushed 'em out. I couldn't go far in, though, like I said."

Ecco rose to breathe, then dived to inspect the hole. Chang was there before him; she moved aside to let him pass and then brought up the rear. Her light seemed much brighter in the darkness of the building. Ecco blinked several times, re-acclimatizing himself to the level of light.

They were in a very large room; outside the circle of Chang's light, everything was dim and in shadows. There were dim reflective eyes here and there, from the fish that had found their way inside. Ecco looked around slowly, seeing that the room was filled with shelves upon which were odd rectangular objects. He nosed one, and it separated out into sheets upon which were odd, faded markings. A few more moments and the object drifted slowly apart, becoming rags and wisps. "Oops," Ecco said, slightly embarrassed.

"Don't worry." Karkol slipped between the towering shelves, heading for the back of the great room. "They're all like that. I tried to pick one up before and it just dissolved in my mouth--tasted gross, too. Whatever they are, I don't think they're supposed to be underwater."

"Man-stuff," the dolphin murmured thoughtfully, following the shark through the dimness of the hall. Chang bobbed at his side, her tail vibrating hard. Karkol cruised just outside of the circle's edge, a big gray shadow. His eyes glowed palely with reflected light.

"There's an opening here," the shark informed them, coming back. "I couldn't find it before because it was too dark. It goes deeper in... want to take a look?"

"Sure," Ecco said, after a quick glance at Chang. He didn't need air yet, but the thought remained at the back of his mind. Syuuii! He hated being always dependent on the surface--he'd never thought about it before, the air had only been a few fluke-strokes away, but his adventures in the air-starved Undercaves had made him rethink his own design.

The passage they entered next was a little cramped for the three of them, and Karkol went ahead again, Chang swimming in the middle so that both of them could use her light. Ecco glanced up at the ceiling and saw that there were odd globes set into the brickwork; he swam up and nudged one with his snout and it didn't feel like rock. "Weird..."

"What's that?" Karkol asked, glancing back.

"Nothing." Realizing that Chang was leaving him behind again, Ecco hurried to catch up. They reached the end of the corridor quickly enough, and found another wooden door blocking their way. Karkol took one look and broke it down, swimming on through the gap with wooden splinters cascading down around him.

"He's strong," Chang whispered, impressed. Ecco just nodded, glad that the angler-fish was getting along with the great white.

They entered another, smaller room. To Ecco's relief, there was a trapped bubble of air here; he rose and refilled gratefully, ridding himself of the faint light-headedness that had been stealing over him. That done, he swam back down to where Karkol was circling slowly, and looked around.

The circular room was filled with machinery, all dark and dead. In the center was a great cylindrical device within which something floated; there were levers and buttons all over panels on the bottom. Banks of other controls were dotted around the room. Ecco examined them closely, curious to know what they had once done. His snout brushed over buttons experimentally, but nothing happened--there was just a muffled click from one or two of them. "I think it's broken," the dolphin said finally, a little reluctant to just give up.

"Ecco?" That was Karkol, sounding excited around the other side of the big cylinder. "There's a really big one here, come take a look!"

He had found a lever that was fixed into the ground; it was around two feet long. There was a little zigzag symbol embossed onto the mosaic-tiled floor next to it. Ecco frowned at it, trying to figure out what the picture might mean. After a moment, he carefully took the lever in his mouth and tried to push it. It gave a little, but not much. Ecco struggled with it, thrashing in the water so that Karkol gave him a startled look. "Drat, it's stuck," he said at last, pulling back. "I can't budge it."

"You want me to try?" Karkol asked. Without waiting for an answer, he swam down and nosed at the lever. Ecco backfinned involuntarily as he saw the shark's upper jaw come forward in his mouth, baring the deadly teeth. Karkol's jaws clamped around the lever, teeth screeching on the bare metal; the great white began to surge forward, sweeping his tail back and forth. Ecco and Chang exchanged alarmed looks as there came a loud, metallic groaning noise from somewhere far below them.

"Careful--!" Ecco got out, afraid that Karkol would bring the whole place down on them. The shark ignored them; his eyes had rolled back in his head, as they would do when he charged an opponent, and he was forcing his big body forward through the water. The lever moved suddenly, swinging forward and nearly catapulting the surprised shark into the wall. There was a heavy clunk from below, and the creaking stopped.

Light flickered, suddenly, startlingly bright; they all winced. The cylinder flashed and flickered several times, fizzing loudly. Then it began to shine with a strong, white light. The globes in the ceiling went on one by one, and turning Ecco saw them going on all down the corridor too, reaching out from the center room. Punk. Punk. Punk. A big crystal was suspended in the cylinder--this was glowing white-hot, sending out surges of energy through cables at the top.

"Was that supposed to happen?" Karkol asked through half-shut eyes.

"Looks like it..." Ecco rose to breathe then came back down to have another look at the room, now that it was so brightly lit. Almost at once, he spotted two or three small objects scattered around the base of the big lever. "Hey, Karkol... I think you lost some teeth."

The shark grinned at him, revealing that he still had plenty left. "Don't worry, happens all the time. They just grow back."

Chang was buzzing around the room, looking at everything with avid interest. Ecco followed her example, and whistled loudly as he saw something interesting on the back wall. He swam up and took a good look for himself.

The walls were covered in small stone tiles, as was the floor; now that there was light, the pictures were visible, dolphins and all kinds of sea creatures. The walls looked like a reef in stone, Ecco thought. The Atlanteans, whoever they had been, had certainly liked the sea. He turned away from the beautiful images, though, because something else had caught his eye. One of the walls was covered not in fish but in some sort of diagram; wavy lines curved down over the stone surface, decorated here and there with symbols. Ecco frowned, trying to make it out. The shapes looked somehow familiar...

He whistled again in excitement. This was a diagram of the machinery of Atlantis! Ecco stared hungrily at the symbols, willing them to come clear in his mind. That squiggle must symbolize opening of something... the gates? What was the little zig-zag shape? Karkol was saying something, but he ignored it--he was starting to get the idea--

"ECCO!"

His concentration broke. Angrily he whirled around. "WHAT?"

Karkol's expression was grim. "I've been trying to get your attention. Chang says--that noise--it's the Foe?"

A cold thrill went right through Ecco. He hadn't been listening, had been pouring all his mind into the picture. The screaming of the Foe was clearly audible. "They're inside the complex," Karkol said harshly, looking towards the doorway. There was no other way out, and no way to defend it.

Ecco bit down on his fear, and turned back to look at the picture again. The shark yelled at him in frustrated fury, but he ignored Karkol completely. All the answers were here, if he could only figure it out in time...

"They're coming!" Chang wailed. "We're gonna be eaten alive!"

"Let that be the least of your worries," Karkol muttered. "If we get killed, the Foe win..."

"Nobody's doing any dying yet," Ecco snapped. "Just hang on! I'm almost done!"

"Ecco, we haven't got any time!" Karkol sent a wild glance down the passage and saw the Foe--ten, twelve of them maybe--appear at the other end. They took their time progressing up the tunnel, knowing that their quarry was going nowhere. The shark quailed, understanding instinctively that this enemy was beyond him. "Ecco, do something!"

Ecco didn't take his eyes off the picture. "Can you see a switch near the door?"

"What?"

"A button or something! Press it!"

"This is not the time to start messing around!"

"Please, Karkol, just do it already! It'll close the doors!" He stared at the picture with single-minded concentration. "I think I've figured it out!"

"What switch?" Karkol snarled, staring around. He could see nothing that looked remotely pushable. "Ecco, damn it!"

Suddenly a small shape pushed past him. Chang's little light fell full on something that had been almost fully covered over by sediment. Karkol blinked, looking at the angler-fish in something like amazement. "Here," the angler-fish whispered. "I can sense metal behind it."

"I'll thank you later!" He poked the switch hard with his snout, lifting it up. There was a scrape of stone from above them, and then a clunk. Karkol watched the doorway with fascinated horror. The Foe were nearly halfway up the tunnel now. With agonizing slowness, a heavy stone slab began to judder its way down into grooves that had been carved there. Realizing what was going on, the Foe surged forward, their screeches accelerating to fever pitch. Karkol's last sight was of them searing towards him through the electrically-lighted water... then the stone slab thudded down into place. A moment later something hit it with terrible force. It held, for the moment.

Karkol turned. "Ecco, how we coming along with those gates?"

The dolphin was still looking at the picture on the wall. "I think I've got it! It's all to do with this glowing thing... it's like some sort of central control! We can open the gates from here!" He turned, a worried light in his eyes. "That is, if it still works..." The crystal was flickering slightly, as if some ancient power source was slowly giving out.

"Just tell us what to do," Karkol said tightly. Chang nodded.

Ecco glanced back at the picture once more, and then slowly backed away, turning towards the main console. "I'm going to try and get the machine to open the gates. The Foe won't take too long to get in here. See if you can delay them with something."

"And how are we supposed to do that?" Chang asked. Ecco ignored her; he had settled down in front of the console and was frantically lifting switches and pressing buttons with his snout.

Karkol glanced left and right, saw broken steel girders on the floor. He swam down and took hold of the end of one, then started to try and lift or push it forward. It took an immense effort, but it moved slowly, screeching and scraping over the tiled floor. Chang watched, not understanding what he was doing. Grimly the shark forced the girder into place across the doorway, where a long crack had appeared in the stone. He didn't wait--he went back for another. Methodically he piled as much junk as he could in front of the doorway.

Ecco looked up at the picture again to check what he had done, then down at the keys before him. As far as he could tell, the switches were all in the positions that were shown on the walls. There remained only one thing to do... He looked down at the centerpiece of the controls, a big red square. No time like the present... He pushed it down. There was a heavy boom and then an almost unbearably loud clanking noise from somewhere far below them. The crystal flickered wildly.

"The gates?" Karkol asked through a mouthful of metal.

"They should be open..." Ecco squealed suddenly as the crystal flickered right out. With a whine that dropped to a murmur, the lights all went out. The clanking stopped. The three companions were left in the dark again, save for Chang's own little light. The Foe were almost through the stone slab; Karkol heard the tangle of girders beginning to move, pushed back across the floor. The tip of one moved into a dim greenish shaft of moonlight...

Light?

The shark looked up, and his jaw dropped open as another mystery was made clear. There had been great convex glass windows, once upon a time; now it was almost completely overgrown with weeds. There was a faint, diffuse light in here, from where the light of the outside found its way through a thin patch in the cover of green. Karkol grinned as another idea fought its way into his head.

"Follow me!"

There were no Foe outside, which was possibly fortunate for them. They were not, thus, around to witness the sight of a great white shark bursting out of the side of a building of Atlantis, shards of glass falling all around him like stars. Seaweed hung onto Karkol's fins like streamers as he surged up, breaking through into the dark evening water of Atlantis. Ecco and Chang were right behind him. "Go!" the dolphin yelled, then snatched up the angler-fish in his jaws and chased Karkol's retreating tail.

Swarms of Foe erupted from the building right behind them as they dashed off towards the gates, flying over city roofs. The moon was huge in the sky above them, a giant oval--three or four more days would have the silver orb at full. There wasn't much time left, Ecco realized grimly.

He nearly had a heart attack when they reached the gates. They had gone up, yes, and now they were coming down again! The power failure! The giant portals of stone had been slowed in their descent by the chains that should have held them up, and by the weight of water they had to push out of the way, but they were sliding down inexorably towards the deep groove in the ground in which they had stood for so long. "Faster!" Ecco yelled through his mouthful of Chang, passing Karkol by like a silver bolt of lightning.

The shark took a look behind him, and sped up himself. The Foe were coming for them fast--faster than they could swim. This was going to be tight...

They were neck and neck as they shot under the gates. Karkol felt his dorsal fin brush and then scrape against the descending weight of stone--as the larger of the duo he had one moment of heart-stopping terror at the thought of being crushed--and then they were out into the open sea. The gates closed behind them with a thunderous bang, and the reverberations bowled Ecco right over in the water. Chang went flying.

Karkol, being biggest, recovered easiest from the wash of water against his body, and then responded instinctively to a sudden feeling against his side. He turned, whiplike in the water, and his jaws came down on a Foe's outstretched limb. Metallic claws clutched at his head, scoring bloody rents. The shark responded to the sharp pain the only way he knew how--his eyes rolled back, a blood-red mist filled his brain, and his body began to take care of itself.

Ecco and Chang were sensible enough to back off to a safe distance. Two of the Foe had gotten out under the gate before it closed--and they didn't live long. The sight of an angry great white shark was not one a dolphin got to witness often, and now Ecco had seen it twice... He sideyed Chang, both of them considering the same thing.

"Should we leave?" the angler-fish whispered.

Ecco was sorely tempted. He had a terror of seeing the great white turn on him next--and even if Karkol and he had worked together in the ruins, that had been an alliance born of necessity.

Foe blood, acrid, tainted the water. Ecco sighed and shook his head. "We stay..."

Karkol snapped and bit at the water, searching for more enemies to fight. Slowly a voice (voices?) penetrated the blood-red mist in his head, forcing his conscious mind to push its way back to the surface. "Karkol? Karkol, it's okay, they're gone... they're dead..."

He shuddered and forced himself to a stop. Sight returned slowly, as if he were swimming from murky water to clear. The taste of the Foe was in the water all around... but they were not there. The shark shook his head, a little dizzy, and then looked towards Ecco and Chang, who were waiting several lengths away. They both had frightened, wary expressions on their faces. Karkol blinked as memory came back online and he remembered the recent events. The shark attempted a grin. "Uh, sorry... must've kinda lost it for a moment there..."

"You don't say," Ecco said flatly, then hesitated. "Um... are you... okay?"

"Never better, trust me." He glanced at the gates. They were hard stone, possibly two dolphin-lengths thick. Even the Foe would have trouble getting through them. "Guess we're safe for now."

The three unlikely companions looked at each other, dolphin, shark and angler-fish.

"Come on," Ecco said finally, turning to swim away. "I don't know about you guys, but I just want to get the heck out of here before they find another way out again." He paused, glancing at Karkol. "And," he said, "we need to talk."