Channeling Cleopatra by Elizabeth Ann Scarborough

the mortgage. Foreclosure suddenly
became a very real possibility.
    The dam was attached to land on each side of
the semicircular harbor of the island. On the western side it was
moored against the far western side of the island containing Fort
Quait Bay. On Leda's side it was connected on the seaward side of
the dike that was all that had remained of a little peninsula that
had held the palace complex and some other structures.
    It was possible that Leda, having just
descended the ladder, could make it back up to the top of the dike
before the water ruptured the dam, but most of the other people in
the basin were too far from the ladders, shallow staircases, and
makeshift elevators worked by hand pulleys to make it. Besides,
there was bound to be some sloshing. Big sloshing. Anyone on the
dam would be knocked off. Probably the same thing would happen to
anyone on one of the narrow dykes or at Fort Quait Bay. The ladders
didn't matter. If the dam broke, they were all screwed and very
very wet.
    For a few seconds, no one breathed.
    The ground shook. The scaffolding rattled as
if attacked by hail. A few boards popped up. The dam groaned. The
quivering Jell-O did give a slosh, a slight slosh that spewed three
glistening spumes of spray over the dam, wetting the upturned faces
of the diggers. Then the shaking subsided. For about fifteen
minutes, nobody moved. Nothing happened.
    Finally, feeling a little dizzy from the
lack of oxygen that came with holding her breath, Leda cautiously
exhaled. Since the same exhalation was echoed by all of the other
people in the basin, it sounded like a single strong burst of wind.
Then everyone began fanning out, checking their work areas for
damage.
    Before she began inspecting the area around
her, she looked up toward the top of the dam. Her father was up
there, grinning down at her, and made a gesture of swiping his
forehead with his hand as if wiping off sweat.
    "Phew, for sure, Daddy." She grinned back
and waved.
    All around him, the engineering crews
swarmed over the dam like monkeys.
    Duke turned away to prowl the perimeter with
such deliberation that she thought of him as a big cat with a long
clubbed tail lashing from side to side. He walked up it and on the
way back down, scanned the harbor bed.
    She was still standing there, staring around
her and waiting for her heart to slow down and the blood to stop
roaring in her ears, when he hollered. She looked up again to see
him standing with his hands cupped around his mouth. He was close
to the eastern edge of the harbor, perhaps half a mile away and
seventy feet above her, so she could hear him faintly. Then he
pointed. She turned and shielded her eyes, trying to read what he
was calling to her attention. Several times she looked up and saw
him shake his head. Most of the other crew members were on their
bellies already, lying across the scaffolding and crawling
awkwardly along, examining the sea floor.
    She stepped over three of them and walked
down another few yards of scaffolding before he raised his hand
three times and pointed definitely at the spot where she stood. Two
boards had been dislodged and were sticking up at about a
twenty-degree angle from the boardwalk.
    She dropped to her knees, then to her belly,
and examined the boards and the area around them but couldn't see
anything. She glanced up. He was still pointing. She waved her arms
in a negative gesture. Damn. Next time she should bring the cell
phone. He turned his hand palm up and made a shoving motion. She
should look under the scaffolding.
    Okay. She did. And she saw it. The old man
was amazing. He had great eyes. When she glanced back up to let him
know she'd seen it, he dropped his binoculars back to where they
hung from his shoulder on the opposite side from his pistol. Old
fart. He hadn't wanted her to see the binoculars.
    Beneath the scaffolding, silt and trash had
shifted, revealing a crack between two pieces of what seemed to be
hewn stone. That wasn't unusual, as