This Falling Sea
A Novel by Ryan Grabow
First Draft preview, July 2025
http://www.egrabow.com/eden/
CHAPTER S20 (excerpt)
This draft is subject to future edits.
Sarsa climbs through and sets her feet on the diamond plate, now fully dislodged and lying on the mausoleum floor. The plate wobbles beneath her feet. In her flashlight beam she can see the backs of fallen portraits and plaques and such crushed beneath it.
The room is larger than she expects, shimmering in its opulence even as the ruins of its security system litter the floor. Although the ceiling lights are out, many of the exhibits still come to life as they approach. A statue of the deceased illuminates with flickering lights at its base. The figure of the man is about twice her height, with glowing yellow eyes of diamond surrounded by golden borders that zigzag around his face. The thing reminds her of a statue they have in Rai Ver While; though she can remember the figure of the woman perfectly — a priestess, obviously — she can’t remember who it’s of. Beside the diamond and gold highlights, the metallic bulk of this statue also gives off a yellow sheen. Rather than fabricated stone, Sarsa realizes, the figure is crafted out of iridium.
She turns away, disgusted at the waste of valuable material.
A personal spacecraft is on display beside it. Some broken signage is all that illuminates it, casting the same mess of half-letters as the signs outside. She gazes despondently at the vessel, knowing such adventures are beyond humanity now.
An ancient voice begins talking from the largest exhibit in the room, a tank with several dolphins. Nitcef stares at the creatures within, which are real preserved specimens — Sarsa can tell because a falling orb cuts into one of them — illuminated by holographic water just like the kiosk in the transit station. As with Nitcef, this is Sarsa’s first time seeing dolphins with her own eyes. They seem so big and frightening in the yellow glow; she notices that each of them have symbols tattooed on their waterproof gray skin, as many as the fingers of a hand. Among them she finds a large and colorful crest. A column, round at the top, progressively disintegrating toward the bottom, as if coming together bit by bit to form the whole. Even at a distance the crest animates, enlarges, mesmerizes, shifts hues between darkest green and brightest abfore, raining onto the emotions of the viewer, enforcing the greatness of the crafter, feeding submission like a drug, a wonderful drug, while terrifying the viewer with ideas of its displeasure, equating it with death itself.
Sarsa, not knowing what she does, steps a little closer.
“Nitcef! Get away from there!” Novarro springs out of the shadows to grab him by the shoulders, turning him away from the dolphin display.
This snaps Sarsa out of her haze. She’s still in the dark by the spacecraft. Novarro doesn’t even see her.
“What?” Nitcef asks, disoriented.
“Don’t stare at the crests,” Novarro orders him.
“But I only mean to... I’m not...” Nitcef stammers, his memories an incoherent mess.
Sarsa recalls again the image of a tree emerging from a book, and her embarrassment when Zanine forces her out of its trance. She knows how easy it is to run into those hypnotic things, how much Zanine does to purge them from Rai Ver While. Sarsa steps out of the shadows and takes Nitcef by the hand, much as he does earlier for her.
“This isn’t your fault,” she insists. “Everything’s all right.”
“Everything’s all right,” Nitcef repeats, nodding.
“The dolphins are his slaves,” Ont explains. “Venitcen. Do you have any tape in that backpack?”
“There is,” Sarsa speaks. “We can tape over the crests.”
Venitcen slides the backpack off his shoulders and searches through it.
“My men get snagged on those things constantly.” Novarro pats Nitcef on the back. “Don’t worry. They’re harmless.”
“Even you, Novarro?” Nitcef asks.
The big man steps back nonchalantly, a coy smile on his face. “Memories like that are so hard to speak of.”
Ont stands at a display case with the deceased’s skull and ribcage within it. The glass shell is obliterated by one of the fallen orbs, which rests where the bones of the left leg are supposed to be. The man’s portrait towers above it, almost as high as the vault doors. Golden lines zigzag throughout his olive tone skin, just as the statue portrays. In the portrait, he bears a strong posture and shows off tailored clothes. A bejeweled beard, the very hairs of which are gold, emerges at the bottom of his chin. There’s a yellow flare of bioluminescence around the pupils of his eyes.
Broken lighting leaves the top of his portrait in darkness.
“Behold the honorable... whoever,” Ont speaks.
The man’s dry bones are scattered all over the floor. Venitcen kicks them out of his way as he searches for crests to cover up.
“He wouldn’t like seeing us take his property,” Nitcef speaks.
“The dead have no property,” Novarro replies.
Sarsa, thinking of her mother and grandmother, throws him a stern look for that.
Novarro notices and clears his throat. “Save for their honor. Don’t kick the bones around, boy. Have some respect.”
Sarsa turns back to the case and shakes her head. “This man is nothing like Zanine. Slaves, of all the rotten things to own. He may as well pour acid on his name.”
“His name is nothing unless God speaks it,” Ont adds.
Venitcen spots a crest at the base of the display. He pushes some finger bones out of the way to cover it with tape.
Nothing illuminates the yachts. The first one is on its side, fallen on top of a catamaran. The small vessel punctures the hull of the large one.
Behind the wreckage stands the only other vessel large enough to chance on the open sea. Sarsa walks carefully around it with the others, everyone inspecting the hull with their flashlights. There’s a metal ladder attached to the deck, only reaching down halfway. Ont is able to hoist himself onto it and climb up. On board he finds a rope ladder that reaches all the way down.
There’s superficial damage to the deck. A bar at the stern is damaged by an orb. Exquisite bottles of liquor are scattered across its counter and newly-broken on the deck plating. Nitcef picks up one of the intact bottles and watches the rancid goo slosh around inside. To Sarsa, the liquor spilled on the floor just smells like rot.
“Of all the days to be sober,” Nitcef laments, setting the bottle down.
“I think I’m gonna puke.” Sarsa turns away.
While Nitcef cleans the deck, Novarro the hull, and Venitcen the floor, Sarsa and Ont try to get a response from the yacht’s controls. They open the dashboard to access the battery underneath, the same type Novarro uses in the vehicle. No indicators will light on it.
“Nothing cycles power to the battery,” Sarsa speaks. “It just sits here this whole time.”
“Then it’s beyond repair,” Ont groans. “At least without any power, the yacht’s systems are more likely to survive the EMP.”
“At lot of things in here survive the EMP.” Sarsa brushes the hair off her face. “So many thick walls between the beach and here.”
“I don’t look forward to hauling this down the ramp,” Ont speaks.
Sarsa lets out a sigh. “One impossible thing at a time, please.”
Nitcef walks up, examining the floor as he goes. “This boat is marvelous. Do you see it below deck?”
“Don’t you see the panels I leave open down there?” Ont speaks. “What we need is a marvelous battery to go with this thing. The hardware all looks right. There’s just no power.”
Nitcef looks at the dead battery under the dashboard. “I don’t suppose the batteries for the plasma rifles would help?”
The touchpad has all types of visual information that might help them. Sarsa can’t help but shout a curse when it displays the same repair icons as hours earlier. The device still doesn’t work.
“The rifles aren’t that picky, Nitcef. We can power those things with coal if we have to.” She tosses her touchpad into the backpack. “This room’s full of power receptors, what about those?”
“This room’s also full of arcing electricity, just before we enter.” Ont spins his finger toward the ceiling.
Sarsa looks at the fat cable hanging limp from the ceiling, welded to the metal tracks the orbs use, scorched and shredded by the release of energy, barely lit from below by flickering, dying exhibits.
“Yeah, power receptors don’t like that,” she replies.
“And they don’t do us any good on the water,” Ont adds.
Nitcef gestures to the solar panels embedded in every horizontal surface of the yacht. “We’ll have the sun out there.”
“Can Novarro’s vehicle just run on the sun?” Sarsa asks him sarcastically.
Nitcef stares patiently at her.
“I’m sorry,” she speaks. “This is all so stressful.”
“Some of those signs outside must be powered by batteries like this,” Ont offers.
“Motion sensors and a few LEDs aren’t enough,” Sarsa replies. “We need something that draws more power.”
Ont rests his head against the dash. “More power, sure, but too much wears out the battery.”
“What about the kiosk?” Nitcef asks, staring across the mausoleum.
“We just rig up some capacitors for that,” Sarsa replies, only half-following, wondering if it’s time to get Novarro’s advice. She hears the synthetic voice from the dolphin display start up again. Nitcef looks at her, and she looks back.
Sarsa stands up and looks over the yacht’s toppled neighbor to see Venitcen putting tape on the dolphin’s skin, trying not to look directly at the tattoos.
“Like the kiosk?” she asks hopefully.
Ont’s eyes widen. “Yeah, I think that’s the right amount of draw.”
“Come on.” Sarsa grabs their diamond prybar off the dash and they start down the ladder.
Venitcen stops as they approach, watching them break into the panel. He jumps back when the shimmering yellow waves become a blinding red light and the luxuriant voice becomes an ear-piercing whine.
“Yes!” Sarsa gleefully shouts as they undo the clips and pull the battery off its contacts.
The alarm ends as abruptly as it starts. For the first time since the Forgetting, the dolphins in the case are cast into darkness.