Submitted for the January 2024 prompt: Weather Warnings

When Ove Haak found the crack in the Spyre, he squeezed his eyes shut, then looked again. Hovering in his helipack midway up the stem, no land at his feet, his legs felt weak.

 

In twenty years of service as Inspector, he had never seen a crack so ominous.

 

Haak retrieved his tablet and pointed its optical gauge at the fracture: thirty-seven centimeters long, four wide at its midpoint. He accessed records from his inspection of this location two weeks earlier. No such split had been apparent.

 

This one was new, and already large.

 

He swallowed. It was now his task to inform those who lived in resplendence on the surface. For at its peak the Spyre culminated not in a peak or tangle of vines, but in a thirteen thousand hectare landmass perched above the cloud lines, with soil and an atmosphere rich enough to support human life. The Cap: home now to eight thousand descendants of the Arkship, all mercifully oblivious to the swirling storms and poisonous seawater below.

 

Oblivious, for now, to their own impending doom.

 

* * *

 

Maneuvering the helipack downward through snapping winds, Haak returned to their cabin on the tiny shore where the Spyre met the Mist Sea, a dingy hovel fastened with steel bolts to the base of the Sprye’s stem.

 

“You’re tracking sand inside!” yelled Louisa as he entered. “Off with your shoes. Why are you back so soon?”

 

“I have to radio in.”

 

“What?”

 

Haak walked to her and kneeled so they were eye-to-eye. “I found a crack, Louisa, halfway up the stem. A big one.”

 

She put down her yarn and needles. “Oh. Oh my. Can it be stopped?”

 

“Not as I can see. Crack begets crack. The Spyre will split and snap. Down comes the Cap. And the people on it.”

 

Louisa rocked forward and back. Haak stood and walked to the radio room.

 

“Don't call them,” she said.

 

“I have to. I am the Inspector of the Spyre.”

 

“Yes, but.”

 

“But what? Speak your mind.”

 

“Ove, what good will come of it? They've posted inspectors here for two hundred years, you and your predecessors, yet they've never made a single plan to deal with this possibility. You know that."

 

Haak stood motionless, pondering her objection. It was true: the Council had no contingencies. The original Arkship had crashed into the Mist Sea two centuries ago, and the four escape shuttles that found their way to the Cap lay rusting since. Museum pieces. Inspectors were for show, to quash the worries of the populace. That's why they dispatched only one at a time.

 

In the radio room, Haak toggled switches and then looked out the window. The Spyre stood sturdy, immovable. Encased by gray bark and ivy tendons, it had risen over centuries from muddy depths, its thick roots clawing across the ocean floor, leeching onto mossy reefs and shoal, rising above the watery void through sea breezes and rain clouds and blankets of cumulus, higher even than nighthawks dared to soar. Up, up, out of the sea the Spyre had clamored, thick as a thousand tree trunks fused into a solid mass, now dented and pockmarked but unbowed by seasons of bitter winds and piercing rain.

 

At least, that is what schoolchildren were taught. For those who lived on the Cap, belief in the strength and solidity of the Spyre was sacrosanct.

 

Louisa may be right, Haak realized. He'd pause for now. He needed to be certain, his proof incontrovertible. He would wait three days, then measure the crack again.

 

* * *

 

"Well?" Louisa asked when he returned from his re-inspection. He had completed it just in time: a spate of storms was moving in from the north. Vibrations from merciless gusts rattled their walls and pitted their windows with sand.

 

"The crack is worse," he told her. "Far worse. More than doubled in length.”

 

She stood at the stove and stirred a pot of oats and barley. "How much time?"

 

"Months. Maybe a year. Depends on the storms. I need to tell them."

 

She put down her stirring spoon. "And telling them will do exactly what? Will it give them time to build another Arkship and escape? To find a second forsaken world that barely offers hope?"

 

He scowled and turned back to the window and its murky view of the whipping winds.

 

"This world was never meant for humans, Ove," his wife continued. "The Arkship's destination was a terrible mistake. The mission was foolhardy. You know that. What's going to happen should not surprise anyone."

 

"I have a responsibility. I am the Inspector of the Spyre."

 

"Please. Do you want them to spend their final months in fear? They'll turn on each other. They'll lash out at the Council, and at us. Some will try to come down here, to escape. And we can offer nothing."

 

Haak clasped the back of a chair and rocked slightly.

 

"Ove," she said. "Spare them this now. Let them live their final months in ignorance. By the time the Spyre's instability signals the truth, the end will be upon them. And us."

 

He entered the radio room. She followed and stood behind him. He powered the transmitter and flipped the microphone on, then activated the call signal.

 

"Haak?" crackled a voice through the speaker. "This is Sarla. Your report is late."

 

"Sarla, I want to tell you--" He stopped.

 

"Yes. What is it? Go ahead."

 

Haak closed his eyes. Louisa moved toward him and cupped her palm against his cheek, then kissed his forehead.

 

He nodded to her, then turned to the transmitter.

 

"Sarla, I want to tell you that storms are moving in. We're both fine, but we'd appreciate a supply of provisions as soon as you can muster."

 

"Absolutely. We'll lower a bin down in the morning. The usual?"

 

Haak exhaled. Louisa returned to the kitchen.

 

"The usual, Sarla. Nothing more than the usual."