The Romance of Atlantis by Taylor Caldwell Read Free Book Online Page B

gravitation to the moat itself, are treated chemically in our purifying plants and the residue expunged. The great Lazar created this system with great foresight.”
    She looked at him sharply for an implied rebuke.
    His face was noncommittal.
    “Go to, Fresto,” she said. “I interfere with thy work.”
    She looked at Creto with a sigh.
    “It is almost dawn, Majesty,” he said.
    “How dost thou know in this devilish mist?” she said wearily.
    She threw a cape over her shoulders as they stepped into the barge, and shivered. “If only I knew what to do.”
    Creto gave her his strong arm. “That is what thy ministers are for, Majesty.”
    “But the people will blame me, as honest Fresto did.”
    “I heard naught of blame,” Creto staunchly replied.
    “Oh, yes, why wasn’t the daughter of Lazar equally vigilant?”
    “But how couldst thou know the evil the gods would contrive?”
    Salustra smiled mirthlessly. “My subjects, used to having things done for them, care not for excuses.”
    She reached out and touched Creto’s cheek. “One more stop, dear protector, and we call it a night.”
    There was a flickering light in the solar-energy center, the most accessible of a chain of stations which spiraled laterally up the mountain so as to capture the arching sun at all times.
    Guards posted at the entrance quickly stood aside on recognizing the Empress. The director came forward holding a candle in his hand. “If we had only had some inkling—” he began.
    Salustra cut him off. “You would have had a larger candle, forsooth.”
    The manager had the intelligence to blush. “We do find ourselves in unaccustomed straits, Majesty.”
    She looked around a darkened chamber, toward an outside balcony. There, in the approaching dawn, she could see a series of giant rubylike crystals slanted toward the sky. “And what is being done to remove these straits?”
    The manager, Zeno, was a product of the civil-servant system, like the others Salustra had encountered. He made no attempt to dissemble. “The Minister for Science just left, Majesty, and we are under his direct orders.”
    “And the orders?”
    “That we remain on duty through the crisis.”
    “You may be here a long time, Zeno.”
    He bowed. “My staff and I stand ready to do what we can.”
    “That is very well, but meanwhile thou providest a spectacle of a solar-energy center without sufficient light to move around in. What has happened to thy independent generators, man, so thou canst at least see thy own shadow?”
    For a moment he hesitated.
    “Speak up, man.”
    “The Minister for Solar Energy, Majesty, has never encouraged any other energy.”
    “And why not?” Her voice was sharply insistent.
    The manager suddenly became uncomfortable. “By the same reasoning,” he said uncertainly, “that the Minister for Tidal Energy resisted our efforts to modernize our system.”
    “And what was that?”
    “So that the one would not be more important than the other.”
    Salustra drew a deep breath, and her lips curled in disgust. “It is no wonder that we have no ready way of overcoming this crisis. We have blockheads for ministers.”
    She turned to Creto, but spoke almost as though to herself. “One knows a civilization is moribund when jackals quarrel over the first bite.” Her eyes took on a look of brooding intensity. “Underneath our Mount Atla and a hundred other mountains simmers enough volcanic energy to heat ten million homes, fuel ten million land wagons and a thousand ships, and a hundred great pumps if need be. The scientists call it thermal energy: It is the earth’s own steam heat, and yet we have done nothing with it because some thought it would spoil the aesthetic features of the mountain tops, while others have selfishly sought to make their department first.” She sighed. “Whom the gods would destroy they first make brainless.”
    Her mood lifted, and her voice grew less intense as she motioned to the crystal-like