The tug boat stood at anchor in the water a kilometer out on the ocean swells, far enough not to be noticed if they kept quiet, close enough to watch the Tsarevich's ship through Ayaan's old field glasses. They waited for darkness to fall. A nearly perfectly straight boardwalk confronted them, a grey and linear extrusion of American decay. The buildings on the shore, an endless line of restaurants and gift shops and unrecognizable brick piles stood weathered and old in the twilight, the color of sandstone mesas in some desert eroded by memories, by secrets she didn't share. This was the country of her ancestry but she knew none of its signs and meanings. They were forgotten now: the windows on the boardwalk were all broken out and blank or boarded over with rotting drift wood. Sunlight striped the insides of empty rooms, lit up places where roofs had fallen in over time. Some of the buildings were fronted with rusty gates like the bars of jail cells. Some of them had come down'lightning, rain, wind, who knew what had toppled them. Maybe the roots of the trees that choked the wide streets, maybe over a decade the root systems of so many trees could break down the foundation stones of pleasure palaces and arcades. Soot and smoke damage darkened the countenances of most of the structures that remained standing.
At the boardwalk a parade of monsters hurried down an improvised gangplank and into the forests of the unreal city, flopping, crawling things, things with no legs, monsters with bodies warped by death, monsters who had yet to die. They laughed and sang hymns and psalms that floated out over the water. In single or double file they headed into the foliage and out of sight.
Night fell, eventually. The Tsarevich's ship blazed like an anglerfish in the black water, its lights the only illumination in the world except for cold and distant stars.
Sarah found herself paralyzed, unable to do a thing. What would Ayaan do in her place, she asked herself? She would try to learn more about what she faced. She would sit tight and send in a scouting team and try to get some sleep. The sleep part was right out, but maybe Sarah could take a lesson from the rest.
'You can see in the dark, right?' she asked Ptolemy.
my more vision was like yours was is vision more than yours it was, the soapstone told her.
'Just be careful,' she told the mummy. 'This is simple reconnaissance. There's one of yours on that ship, probably. Don't go rushing in though or you'll get us all killed.'
There was one of hers in that ship, too. Sarah's special vision couldn't let her see through the hull of a ship or the dense trees choking the streets of Asbury Park. She didn't need it to know that Ayaan was still alive, though. She had to be. Otherwise this long trip had been for nothing. Otherwise Jack had lead her on a wild goose chase. She couldn't believe that anyone'not even her cranky old ghost'would put her through so much if she couldn't expect a reasonable chance of completing her mission.
Or maybe... maybe it didn't matter if Ayaan was still alive. Maybe the mission had changed. Jack had hinted at a new game, with higher stakes. Maybe this rescue mission that had consumed her for so long had always been about something she didn't understand.
They moved in close to the shore, running the engines just a touch though the diesels still grumbled and coughed and roared, well to the north of the Tsarevich's landing zone. Sound travels far over water, especially at night. Sarah hoped the waves would cover their noise. The got as close as they dared and then Osman cut the engines and they drifted in until the tug's flat bottom hissed on the bottom. Ptolemy scampered over the side and onto the beach in a spray of sand, then disappeared instantly into the blackness.
'Okay,' Sarah whispered, and Osman took them back out to sea. They needed help. Jack had told her as much'she couldn't face down the Tsarevich on her own. They needed an army he said, or atom bombs, well, they weren't going to get that. But maybe they could get some help. Farther up the coast, around the curve of New Jersey, past Raritan Bay and the Harbor. New York, the place she didn't want to go. 'Next stop Governors Island,' she whispered to Osman, and he nodded, didn't even chance a verbal agreement.
END OF PART ONE
Monster Planet
Chapter One
It was hot, the air was dry. Ayaan could hear a constant thrumming, a rumbling, bass sound that tickled the bare soles of her feet. Her feet... her feet hurt. She could feel pain in her ankles, her legs, her toes. When she looked down at them they seemed too big, they seemed to swim up at her, swollen and very dark and bruised. Blisters surrounded her toenails, blisters that popped and wept a clear fluid.
Her arms... her armpits were numb, she couldn't feel them at all. Her arms were replaced with twin bars of searing light. It was the only way to describe it. There were no arms there, just pain, and only an abstract kind of pain at that.
In the unmoving air of the engine compartment they kept her metabolism ticking over slowly, so very slowly. When a doctor came and asked her to lift her head, it took all the energy she possessed. She wanted very much to sit down.