The Fifth Harmonic by F. Paul Wilson

Author:F. Paul Wilson
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781612830766
Publisher: Hampton Roads Publishing

5

I'd thought it was stifling before, but now we were way beyond that. We were following some sort of animal trail, using our machetes only when we had to, which thankfully wasn't all that often, winding our way through the thick greenery toward one of the black cinder cones. The air grew hotter and more sulfurous with every step.

We'd entered the borderlands of hell, where even the palmettos seemed to be melting. The trail had petered out a ways back—whatever animals used it were apparently smarter than humans and didn't come this far—but we didn't need it anymore, because as the ground became rockier and less hospitable, the trees and underbrush were petering out as well.

Finally we passed our last stunted palm and with only scrub grass to cushion our way we approached the scarred black flank of the cinder cone. Somewhere past the line where the grass browned out and died, we stopped at the bank of another kind of river: an obsidian channel of hardened lava.

This old lava had flowed and swirled around more permanent rocks that had been here first—granite, I thought—leaving them sitting like islands in the stream. The jutting stones among the lava gyres looked like a Zen rock garden done entirely in ebony.

“Didn't you tell me the lava was flowing?” I said, staring down at the rippled rock.

As if in answer, a jet of steam hissed through a finger-thick hole in the crust, about thirty feet to our right.

“It is flowing,” Maya said. “Just below the crust, oozing from the heart of the cone to the lake shore. It has been quiet for many months. But now . . . that temblor last night must have disturbed it.”

“How does that affect my getting to this fire tine?”

She pointed across the solidified flow. “They are over there.”

Another steam jet let loose with a whistle.

“You're telling me I have to walk on a crust of old lava over a stream of red hot lava . . . just to get a tine?”

“Yes. The fire tines are on the far side, inside that crevasse in the wall over there. The best way to get across is to go from rock to rock, stepping on the crust as little as possible.”

“Because it's so hot?”

Maya was staring straight ahead. “Because the crust could crack and collapse.”

“You've got to be kidding, Maya. I'd have to be crazy to set foot out there.”

She kept staring straight ahead. “Not crazy if it will help save your life.”

Suddenly I wanted to shout at her that I had no proof that it would do one damn thing for me. All I had was new-age mumbo jumbo and her assurances. Not enough—not nearly enough!

But I said nothing. Instead I placed my gloved hand against my pocket and felt the shape of the earth tine through the fabric. I hadn't thought I'd be able to bring that one back, but I'd done it.

I studied the glistening black expanse, gauging the distance. Not much more than thirty feet across—forty, tops—to the narrow rocky ledge on the far side.

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