The Flooded Earth

by Mardi McConnochie

  “Why give you a hard time?” Annalie was saying. “You didn’t make the building fall down, did you?”

  Essie shook her head and laughed uncomfortably, feeling a little glow of gratitude toward her, and for a moment they both looked away awkwardly, unsure what to say next.

  Essie fiddled with her shell and her maths homework popped up. It caught Annalie’s eye. “Are you still working on that?”

  Essie groaned. “Don’t you just hate maths? It’s so hard here!”

  “Do you think so?” Annalie said, then stopped herself. “I could help you with it if you like.”

  “That’d be great,” Essie said, “if you don’t mind.”

  “What else am I going to do?” Annalie asked dryly, looking around the common room.

  Essie glanced around too, and noticed for the first time that although some of the girls had formed into little knots and were talking and laughing together, most of them were sitting alone, their headpieces pulsing and glittering as their feeds poured each private, individual stream of news and pics and music into each private, individual head.

  “Okay,” Annalie said, angling the shell so they could both see it. “This is what you have to do.”

  Over the weeks that followed, Annalie and Essie became good friends. Annalie helped Essie with her math, and Essie helped Annalie with her languages (Essie had learned several at her primary school). It soon became clear to Essie—and to the rest of the class as well—that Annalie was dauntingly clever. But she also had surprising gaps in her knowledge. She had no real idea what a shell was for, beyond the basics; she had never searched the links; she had no newsfeeds of her own and couldn’t really understand the point of them. Essie tried introducing her to some of her favorites—fashion, music, celebrities, cat vids—but Annalie confessed she found most of them either boring or baffling.

  “I’d rather read a book,” Annalie said.

  “You’re so weird,” Essie sighed.

  Spinner the thief

  Annalie left the interview with Beckett, her head spinning. It was too late now to go back to sport, so she went to her dormitory and sank onto her bed. The other girls would be back soon, and she needed some precious time alone to try and make sense of what she’d just learned about her father.

  Could any of it be true? Had Spinner really once been a scientist, working on top-secret projects for the Admiralty? Spinner was very smart—she could imagine him using his ingenuity and mechanical know-how to help create something important, maybe even top secret. But the Admiralty part? That was harder to imagine.

  Spinner ran to his own schedule, did things his own way. He wasn’t much of a one for rules. As long as things got done, he didn’t much care how they got done. This, Annalie knew from her school, was not the Admiralty way. Triumph College was all about rules and regulations, systems and processes. Following the timetable. Meeting the deadlines. Everything perfect to the last detail. Everyone held to the same exacting standards. There was a right way and a wrong way to do everything, from making your bed to plaiting your hair and organizing your school supplies. There were locker inspections and desk inspections to make sure everything was in its place. Everyone kept explaining how important it was when you were at sea to pull your weight, to work together, to make the team stronger. Annalie didn’t feel like she was part of a team. It felt more like being in prison.

  If Beckett was telling the truth about her dad once working for the Admiralty, it did make her wonder what Spinner was thinking when he encouraged her to go to an Admiralty school. All this time she’d assumed he had no idea what he was letting her in for, and now it turned out he’d known exactly what it was like—he’d been a part of it himself. But he’d never let on, not for a single moment.

  Spinner had never really been an Admiralty-hater, like a lot of the grown-ups she knew. It wasn’t a good idea to criticize the Admiralty publicly, but you’d hear plenty of adults grumbling privately about living under the jackboot of a military dictatorship, because they didn’t like the immigration laws, or customs controls, or they thought boat registration fees were too high.

  Spinner wasn’t political like that; if you tried to pin him down he’d say that the Admiralty did a lot of good things in a difficult situation, and if you really pressed him he might say that perhaps it was time to agree that the state of emergency had passed, and it was time to let the civilians do more of the work. But he wouldn’t go any further than that.

  How strange to think that Spinner had once been part of the Admiralty. She knew he’d never gone through a school like Triumph—things were different when he was young, before the Flood. But had he served on an Admiralty ship, like she would have to one day? In a way it was easy to imagine Spinner, who loved the sea, as an able seaman on an Admiralty ship. It was harder to imagine him following all the rules and regulations that drove her so crazy.

  And as for the part where he went off to work on a top-secret project and stole their research? That part was completely impossible to imagine.

  Spinner was not a thief. She knew that for sure. Spinner was supremely honorable. He’d never steal something that didn’t belong to him. Never.

  But if he hadn’t stolen the research, why had they been living off the grid? She understood now that that was exactly what they’d been doing. There was no question her father could have made a better living if he’d wanted to—made more money, lived in a more comfortable house in the official part of town, with indoor plumbing and a permanent power supply. But that would have made him visible. And he’d managed to stay hidden all this time—right up until the moment he sent her to school.

  A cold feeling washed over her. What if it was her fault he’d been recognized after all this time? She could see now that he’d taken precautions; she was enrolled under her mother’s surname, Go, not Wallace. “It doesn’t mean anything, it’s just what’s on your birth certificate,” Spinner had said casually, giving her some vague story about a mistake made at the registry office that he’d never quite got around to correcting. He’d done it to protect her—and himself. But somehow, in spite of his precautions, they’d found him, and now his past had come roaring back to catch up with all of them.

  Where have you gone, Spinner? Annalie wondered, lonely and afraid. And what am I supposed to do now?

  Then something surprising happened.

  Her shell rang.

  Will

  Annalie’s heart started to beat faster. She picked up her shell and checked the number. Her shell didn’t recognize the caller.

  “Hello?” she said, cautiously.

  “Annalie? It’s Will.”

  Relief flooded through her. She had never been so glad to hear her brother’s gruff voice. “Will! What’s happened? Are you okay?”

  “Yeah I’m okay. But there’s something I need to tell you. Spinner’s done a runner.”

  So Beckett was telling the truth about that, at least: Spinner really was missing. “Tell me what happened.”

  Will filled her in on the events of the previous evening, then told her what he’d found when he went back to check the workshop.

  “They messed the place up pretty good,” he said.

  “Did they find what they were looking for?” Annalie asked.

  “What makes you think they were looking for something?”

  “I know they were.” And she told him about the visit she’d just had from Beckett.

  “So what is it they think he stole?” Will asked.

  “He said it was top-secret research. Whatever it is, it’s important.” Annalie hesitated, then said, “You don’t think he did it, do you?”

  “Spinner? No way.”

  “That’s what I thought,” Annalie said, relieved.

  “Remember when we lifted that stuff out of Old Man Hang’s garden and Spinner got so mad and made us give it back?” Annalie remembered it well
. “He’d never steal anything. There’s no way. I bet this Beckett guy’s just trying to set him up.”

  “The only way to find out for sure is to find Spinner. Do you know where he’s gone?”

  “Nope. He wouldn’t say.”

  “But did he say when he’d be back?”

  “Nope. He just told me to stay at Janky’s.”

  “Hey, Annalie!” She heard Janky’s voice in the background.

  “Hey, Janky,” Annalie replied. “But he must have given you some idea—”

  “If he had, I’d tell you,” Will said, a little crossly.

  They were both silent for a moment.

  “Do you think he might have taken the boat somewhere?” Annalie asked. “Beckett said they’d checked the boat but he wasn’t there.”

  “I haven’t been down there yet,” Will confessed. “I’ll go there now and let you know what I find,” Will said. “Talk to you later.”

  “Wait. Will—”

  “What?”

  “Be careful.”

  Will made a pfft sound. “I’m always careful,” he said, and hung up.

  Annalie rolled her eyes. “Yeah, right.”

  The Sunfish

  Spinner’s boat was called the Sunfish. It was a 39-foot-long ketch with two masts and a hull painted bright yellow. It was a sailing boat, with various enhancements and modifications that Spinner had designed and built himself, including an engine with a solar-powered battery. The boat had been designed for long-distance solo sailing, although Spinner didn’t often need to sail by himself; the twins had been crewing for him since they were tiny.

  Spinner’s business was based in his workshop, but the three of them spent a lot of time at sea, often going on quite long voyages. They had all sorts of reasons for taking the boat out: sometimes they took a load of reconditioned machinery or spare parts to sell at a regional market, or they made a delivery of something Spinner had built. Sometimes they went looking for things he needed—parts, components, the carcasses of old machinery. At other times, it seemed, they just went for fun, to see new places or old friends. Spinner had a lot of friends in far-flung places, and getting to them could be perilous, but Will loved the long sea voyages—they were the best times of all.

  School always made Will feel shut in and restless; he much preferred being at sea with Spinner. He loved the pleasure of those moments when his dad left the boat in his hands, loved the rhythms of the days at sea, the way the sun and the tides and the weather dictated the work, rather than something as random and silly as following a clock. At sea, you worked when you needed to work, and when you didn’t need to, you did nothing at all. Sometimes the water was rough, sometimes it was hard work, and sometimes it felt like they might actually be going to drown; but Will always felt safe with Spinner on the boat. He had a feeling, although he would never actually admit this to anyone, that the Sunfish would always protect them, him and Spinner and Graham and Annalie. It was a special boat, and he loved it.

  Spinner kept the Sunfish at a mooring in the Eddy. Will and Janky headed down there, stopping only for an after-school snack to refuel them for the trip.

  The Eddy smelled, as usual, of saltwater and rotting seaweed. Something about the way the water flowed into the Eddy at high tide meant that there were always piles of rotting seaweed collecting there. It was low tide now, and they could see the large extended family known as the Kelpies hard at work collecting it up to sell on as fertilizer. The Kelpies had cornered the market in Eddy seaweed.

  “You know how profitable that business is?” Janky remarked, looking enviously at the kids their age who were hard at work hauling and bundling the seaweed into reeking piles.

  “So profitable they can afford to keep the Three Kings as muscle,” Will said.

  “I heard someone tried to steal their patch once and they caught them and staked them to the bottom of the Eddy to drown, and when the tide went out the bodies had been all chewed up by fish,” Janky said with bloodthirsty enthusiasm. Everyone had heard this story, and Will had no idea whether it was true, but they loved repeating it to one another.

  They walked along the busy promenade, following it out to where Spinner had a mooring, far up the west side of the quay. Will began to hurry as they drew closer, trying to pick out the familiar shape of the Sunfish’s masts from among all the other boats lying at anchor.

  At last he reached the spot where the Sunfish was usually moored, and his heart sank. The boat was gone, and another was moored in its place. Anger boiled up inside him. Gone for less than a day, and already someone had stolen their mooring? It was too much. He thought he saw movement aboard the interloper’s boat, and then a man came up from below decks, whistling. Will shouted at him, “Hey! Hey you!”

  The man looked around to see who was calling him.

  “Yeah you, buddy!” Will shouted.

  Janky yanked on Will’s arm. “You reckon this is a good time to be calling attention to yourself?”

  Will realized he was right, and the two of them ran away and didn’t stop until they were well out of sight of the boat owner.

  “What do you think happened?” Janky asked. “Do you think your dad might have taken the boat himself?”

  “Graham said the Admiralty were already here when they got here,” Will said gloomily. “They must have impounded it.”

  “Or stolen it,” Janky offered. “Or sunk it.”

  Will glared at him.

  “But they probably impounded it,” Janky said hastily. “If it was Admiralty, that’s what they would’ve done.”

  “They keep them over at the shipyard in the new port, don’t they?” Will said.

  “That’s where they put my uncle’s boat when he got pulled in for smuggling.”

  “Did he get it back?”

  Janky nodded. “Eventually. It took months though.”

  “Months?”

  “They told him when he got it back that if they ever caught him again, they’d burn the boat.”

  “Did he stop?”

  “Course not.”

  “And?”

  “They burnt the boat.”

  They both walked along in silence for a little while.

  “So now what?” Janky said.

  “I need to get the boat back, don’t I?”

  “How?”

  “Dunno yet.”

  “If they catch you, you’ll get in heaps of trouble. Why don’t you wait until your dad comes back?”

  “What if he doesn’t come back?” Will said.

  “He will,” Janky said, not sounding very convincing.

  Will felt bristly inside, angry with himself for letting out the thought that Spinner might not come back, as if by saying it he had risked making it come true. “They wrecked the workshop and stole all our stuff. The boat’s all we’ve got left. I have to get it back.”

  Janky walked beside him in silence, skepticism rising off him like a smell. “I just don’t think it’s the best idea,” he said finally. “Your dad wouldn’t want you to get in trouble, would he?”

  “He wouldn’t want them to burn our boat either,” Will said. “Anyway, if they don’t catch me, I won’t get into trouble.”

  Janky just looked at him and shook his head.

  Don’t do anything stupid

  “It’s gone,” Will reported. “We think the Admiralty’s impounded it.”

  “Can they do that?” Annalie asked.

  “They can do whatever they want.”

  They both knew this was true.

  “Don’t suppose you’ve heard from Spinner?” Annalie asked.

  “Nope. You?”

  “No. It’s just so frustrating not knowing anything.”

  “Yeah, I know. I’m sure Graham knows where Spinner went, but the stupid bird couldn’t tell me.”

  “W
hat do you mean? Did Graham go with him?”

  “Yeah, he was with him, but then he got lost and came home again.”

  “He was with him?” Annalie repeated, excitement rising. “But didn’t you—”

  “Of course I asked him,” Will interrupted, already knowing what she was going to say, “but he didn’t make any sense.”

  “You’ve got to ask him the right questions. Be patient with him.”

  “I was patient!” Will said impatiently.

  Annalie let that go. “Maybe tomorrow you should ask around a bit. See if anybody else saw where he went. If we just had a couple of clues—”

  “Yeah, totally, I might do that,” Will said.

  Annalie frowned, detecting something in his voice. “You might do that?”

  “I mean, that’s a good idea, yeah.”

  “You’re up to something, aren’t you?”

  “No,” Will said. “I’m not up to anything.”

  “Truly?”

  “Spinner told me to stay put and keep my head down and that’s what I’m going to do.”

  Annalie didn’t believe him. But she was in Pallas, halfway across the country. What could she possibly do?

  “Okay,” she said, still suspicious. “Why don’t you give Graham a biscuit and ask him about Spinner again.”

  “Yep. Sure thing.”

  “And Will? Don’t do anything stupid.”

  She heard Janky’s voice in the background. “Isn’t that like saying don’t breathe?”

  Will’s voice over the phone was sweetly reasonable. “Don’t worry. I’ve got it all under control.”

  “Well,” Annalie said. “Okay.”

  “I’ll keep you posted,” Will said, and hung up.