Resurrection by Arwen Elys Dayton Page B

deepened, became a rumble, and then the ground shook. It was as though some great motion were taking place deep within the earth.
    The Lion watched as the table leapt up from the desert floor. Behind it, the shuttle itself was moving, vibrating on its support struts. The table jumped and twisted and landed on its side.
    The Engineer watched as the mold, freed of its lynchpin, fell apart. The substance within had expanded, forcing the sides to separate from each other. A hard block fell out onto the desert floor. Even at this moment, he noticed that the resulting cube looked more like cement than natural rock and would have to be reworked. Then the cement block bounced toward him, and he jumped to one side, pulling his wife safely away.
    After several seconds, the ground quieted. There were a few residual waves of motion, but these soon dissipated. The disturbance had been brief but intense. The three of them looked back at the camp. The domed tents still stood, relatively unaffected by the motion. But beyond them, at the workers’ camp, most of the huts had collapsed.
    “Mother save us!” the Doctor breathed, and then she was running toward the huts to tend to the injured.
    “What in the name of Her Wrath was that?” the Lion asked, moving to follow the Doctor.
    “Unstable land mass, I think,” the Engineer replied. “Shifting to relieve pressure.”
    “That was pretty violent! How big an area do you think was affected?”
    The Engineer and the Lion looked at each other, and a thought passed between them.
    “The Champion !” they said in unison.
    In minutes, they had climbed up into the shuttle, strapped themselves into the pilot seats, and had the engines revving up. The Engineer waited only till power reached minimum safe levels; then he gunned the throttle and sent them skyward. At ten thousand feet, he leveled off and pointed them north to the Mediterranean Sea. Below them, the camp had disappeared, and towns along the Nile flashed by. It was difficult to see damage from their altitude, but the Lion thought he could see larger buildings in other cities collapsed into rubble.
    The river was the only clear feature from this height, its canals cutting through the narrow strips of fertile land on either side. Heavy boat traffic moved up and down the water. Then they were over the delta, where the great Nile branched into a dozen arms on the final leg before returning to the sea. Then they were over the ocean. Below them, along the coast, Egyptian ships sailed east and west on trade routes, their sails augmented by slave rowers. The sea looked blue-black today, against a sky of pale blue.
    As they flew, the Lion glanced down at the ocean and noticed something strange. He saw a long dark line far out in the water. It was not a straight line, but a slight arc, and it was moving—very fast, he realized. He did not recognize what it was, but he knew there was something wrong about it. It was moving toward the coast.
    “Engineer, look at that.”
    The Engineer glanced down; then he and the Lion knew what it was. Like a three-dimensional drawing on a flat piece of paper, its shape suddenly made sense, and they stared in horror as the line defined itself into a wall of water. No wave could ever be that high. Just as they realized what it was, it swept into a caravan of ships and engulfed them entirely. They were too high up to see the encounter in much detail, but it was clear the ships and their crews were destroyed. And the wall of water was heading for the coast.
    “Saintly Mother’s curse!” the Engineer breathed. The shaking of the earth had covered an enormous area, and his urgency to find their own ship doubled.
    He arrowed the shuttle north and west, and soon they were approaching their landing site. They flew above a chain of tiny islands, and the Engineer let the shuttle lose altitude. Theirs was the second-to-last island in the chain. In a few moments, they could see it, its steep cliff walls rising high