The Flooded Earth

by Mardi McConnochie

  “If that article’s even half-true, then Beckett’s a bit more than a rotten apple,” Essie said.

  “Right,” Annalie said soberly. “Let’s hope we never run into him again.”

  A sighting

  Their next stop was an island that was a major staging post for travelers. It had a reputation for being rough and wild, but they hoped that as long as they were careful they’d be okay.

  They didn’t plan a lengthy stop: it was decided when they landed that Pod would fill the water tanks, Will would go and look for the spare part he needed, and Essie and Annalie would look for food. They would only be in port for an hour or two.

  Pod stood at the watering station, listening to the water as it poured from the hose into the tanks. Graham was perched on the railing beside him, watching the world go by.

  “Nice town,” he squawked. “Trees.”

  It was a nice town, spreading around the wide harbor, a jungly mountain rising up behind it.

  “We stay here? No more sea,” Graham suggested.

  “Can’t stay here. Bit more to go,” Pod said.

  “Pod and Graham stay here.”

  “Don’t you want to see Spinner?”

  Graham let out a shriek.

  “Then we got to stay on the boat a bit longer. Be patient.”

  Graham whistled to let him know what he thought about being patient. “Spinner bad,” Graham grumbled. “Go away too long. No biscuit.”

  “He misses you too,” Pod said. “I’m sure he wants to get you back.”

  “See Spinner again, Graham bite nose off!” he said defiantly.

  Pod had filled the first of his tanks. He put the hose into the second tank and screwed the lid securely back onto the first tank, keeping a watchful eye on what was going on around him. The port was a busy one, and all three water-pumping stations were occupied by different boats. There were two men standing nearby, not doing much, and Pod was trying to decide whether they looked suspicious or not, when he heard Graham let out a great musical squawk. He turned in time to see Graham taking off, wings flapping at a great rate, shrieking “Spinner! Spinner!”

  “Graham!” he shouted. “Come back!”

  But the bird had already vanished into the crowd.

  * * *

  Essie and Annalie had treated themselves to hot, flaky sausage rolls, golden-brown and warm from the oven, as well as the usual much less interesting provisions, and were walking back toward the boat.

  “Have you thought about what you’ll do after all this is over?” Essie asked.

  “You mean, after we find Spinner?” Annalie said. “Well, we’ll give him the boat back. And then I guess we’ll take it from there.”

  “Do you think he’s going to want to keep you and Will with him?”

  “I don’t know,” Annalie said. “He’ll probably keep Will. But he might want me to go back to school.”

  “Is that what you want to do?” Essie asked.

  “I don’t know if they’d even have me back,” Annalie said.

  “Oh, they’d have you back,” Essie said. “You don’t have to worry about that.”

  “You reckon?”

  “You were one of the smartest people in our year,” Essie said. “They’d have you back like a shot.”

  Annalie was silent for a moment as they walked along. “What about you? What will you do?”

  Essie felt a wave of sadness wash over her. “I don’t know. Mom said she couldn’t afford to keep me at Triumph any more, but then Dad said he was going to make them take me back. I don’t know how much leverage he’s going to have if he’s a convicted felon.” Her eyes filled with tears at the thought of her dad humiliated, diminished, locked away with dangerous, violent criminals.

  Annalie looked at her sympathetically. “We’ll work something out. Maybe they’ll take us both back.” She paused. “Back to locker inspections and cleaning our boots with a toothbrush.”

  “Climbing ropes in sports.”

  “Fun people like Tiffany.”

  Essie laughed through her tears. “So much to look forward to.”

  “We could always switch to piracy.”

  “There’d be a lot less rules.”

  Annalie shot her a more serious look. “Well, whatever happens, there’ll always be a place for you on the boat, you know.”

  Essie gave her a little smile of gratitude.

  * * *

  Pod finished filling the water tanks in an agony of uncertainty. He knew he should be chasing after Graham, but he couldn’t leave until the tanks were filled and paid for—and even when they were, he didn’t want to leave the boat unprotected.

  Will came back, carrying spare parts, as Pod was paying for the water.

  “Problem,” Pod said. “Graham took off.”

  “Stupid bird,” Will growled.

  “I think he saw your dad.”

  Will stared at Pod for a moment, frozen to the spot, then turned to look wildly at the crowd. “Did you see him?” he cried. “Where did he go?”

  “Only saw Graham flying off after him. He went that way.” Pod pointed.

  His heart pounding, Will ran. Could it really be true? Spinner, here?

  * * *

  “Did you ever used to watch that vidshow Below Decks?” Essie asked.

  Annalie shook her head.

  “Oh, it was the best show. It was all about young Admiralty sailors and officers going to sea for the first time. There were heaps of them: Below Decks: Courage, Below Decks: Victory. There was even a Below Decks: Triumph.”

  “Really?”

  “They didn’t shoot it on the real ship. I’m sure most of it was done in a studio, although you couldn’t tell. Below Decks: Courage was the best—it was the first one, the others were all spin offs. It looked so exciting, being on a battleship and doing your service. Having adventures, doing good deeds, saving the world. There was a lot of romance too, which I wasn’t so keen on, not when I was little anyway.”

  “And you thought that’s what it would really be like?”

  “Well, I hoped,” Essie said.

  “The reality is probably a lot less fun,” Annalie said.

  They walked in silence for a moment or two.

  “What do you think will happen to us if we don’t go back to Triumph?” Essie asked.

  “I guess, eventually, we’ll go somewhere else.”

  “My parents always told me that if you didn’t go to the right school, get into university, make the right kind of start, you’d never get anywhere. Do you think it’s true?” Essie asked.

  “The world’s full of people who don’t go to good schools or university, and they still lead interesting, valuable, important lives,” Annalie said firmly, although she felt much less certain about this than she sounded.

  Essie considered this. “I don’t care about valuable and important. But I’m hoping for interesting.”

  “What do you want to do when you grow up?” Annalie asked.

  “I hadn’t really worked that out yet,” Essie said.

  Annalie stopped suddenly, and caught Essie’s arm. “Look—is that a uniform?”

  Almost as if their talk of the Admiralty had conjured him up, they saw an Admiralty marine standing in a doorway, looking about as if she was monitoring the street.

  “Is she looking for someone?” Essie asked.

  The two girls looked at each other, suddenly full of dread. “We need to get back to the boat!” Annalie said.

  * * *

  Will had stopped running, out of breath, and was now walking down the main street, calling, “Graham! Where are you?”

  It had occurred to him that even if Spinner were here, he probably didn’t want someone walking down the street hollering his name for anyone to hear.

  He had been through the marke
t, pounded his way up and down the main street, and was now getting deeper and deeper into dangerous territory. The people around here were looking increasingly scary, and he didn’t feel safe. But what if Spinner was here somewhere? He’d shipped out with the Kangs—perhaps he was hiding ashore with them too.

  He spotted a bar with a Kang mark beside the doorway. It seemed to have no actual door, as if it never closed; inside it was a smoky, beer-smelling cave. He was just plucking up the courage to go in when Graham came flapping down and landed beside him.

  “Graham! There you are! Pod said you saw Spinner.”

  “No Spinner,’ Graham said mournfully. “I follow, I lose, I find. But he not Spinner. He say, Go away!”

  Will looked at the disconsolate parrot, his own heart sinking. He hadn’t realized until now how desperately he’d been hoping to find Spinner, to know that their journey was finally over and he could hand the responsibility back to him. “You’re sure it wasn’t him?” he asked.

  Graham swung his head from side to side. “Same Spinner hair. But no Spinner. Then I get lost.”

  Will let Graham sit on his shoulder as he began the long trudge back toward the boat. “How did you get lost? You only had to fly back to the port. You can see it from here.”

  * * *

  Essie and Annalie ran down the boardwalk to where Pod was waiting. “We need to get out of here,” Annalie said. “There are marines on the streets.’

  “Looking for someone,” Essie added. Pod looked at them sharply. “Didn’t see no Admiralty ships when we come in,” he said.

  “No,” Annalie said, “but they’re here. I don’t like it. I think we should get out of here as soon as we can. Is Will back yet?”

  “Not yet,” Pod said, and explained what had happened. Annalie stared when she heard Spinner’s name.

  “We should go and look for them!” Essie said, catching her excitement.

  “Too many of us running around,” Pod said. “Everyone’ll get lost.”

  “You’re right,” Annalie said. “We’re better off staying here. Let’s get ready for a quick departure.”

  * * *

  Graham was grumbling. “When go home?”

  “I don’t know,” Will said. “Soon.”

  “When soon?”

  “Like I said, I don’t know.”

  “Spinner lost. Will take Graham home.”

  “They wrecked our home, remember?” Will said in gloomy rage. “We don’t have anywhere to go back to.”

  He turned a corner, and as he did so, a figure stepped out into the path directly in front of him. Will almost collided with the man who was not in uniform, but had something of an Admiralty look about him.

  The man smiled and his lip curled up to reveal sharp teeth. With horror, Will recognized the man who’d chased him out his own bedroom window back in Lowtown.

  “Hello, Will,” said Beckett. “Long time no see.”

  Beckett again

  Will turned to run, but hands gripped him firmly. Two marines had come up from behind and grabbed him. He struggled and wriggled, trying to wrench himself free, but the men were too strong for him.

  “Graham!” Will shouted. “Tell Annalie!”

  “Catch that bird!” Beckett roared, but Graham was too quick for them. He soared up into the sky and flew away.

  “Cuff him,” Beckett said, and one of the marines zip-tied his wrists together. “Now, if you know what’s good for you, you’re going to tell us where to find your father.”

  They walked Will down toward the port. Will expected them to take him aboard one of their ships, but there were none lying at anchor in the harbor. Instead they took him to the office of the harbormaster. He realized they were outside the Admiralty’s jurisdiction here; they didn’t operate a base or even have an office in town, so the harbormaster’s office was the next best thing.

  He tried surreptitiously to see whether the Sunfish had left harbor. When he sent Graham to warn the others, he’d meant they should get away and save themselves while they still had a chance. This, he thought, was really rather noble of him; but he also felt sick with fear about what was going to happen next.

  They sat him down on a hard visitor’s chair. Beckett relaxed in the harbormaster’s chair, across the desk from him, while the marines went to wait outside the door.

  “You’ve been hard to catch,” Beckett said. “I thought we’d track you down a lot sooner than this.”

  Will gave him an unfriendly look and said nothing.

  “Well, here’s how it’s going to go. I already have you in custody. It won’t be long until I find your sister and that boat of yours. When I do, I’m going to confiscate the boat—again.” He smiled horribly. “Then we’re going to dismantle it down to the smallest joint and rivet. We’re going to break it down until there’s nothing left of it, just in case the item I’m looking for is still aboard. Okay? That’s the first thing I’m going to do.

  “Then, I’m going to charge you and your sister with breaking into an Admiralty facility, stealing a boat from our custody, and unauthorized exit from Dux. I’m going to charge your sister with kidnapping that girl you’ve got in tow and fraudulently obtaining money from her father’s account.”

  “We didn’t kidnap her!” Will said, forgetting he had intended to say nothing at all.

  “But you did steal her father’s money, didn’t you?” Beckett said, his smile gleaming. “Be assured of this: you’ll be spending the rest of your teenage years in juvenile detention, and so will your sister. She can forget about going back to Triumph College. That’s done with. She’ll be sent to the girls’ facility in Oates Lake, and you’ll be at the boys’ facility on Mount Staggar or Fort Beacon.”

  Oates Lake was an industrial town on the shores of an old, dry salt lake. It was hot, remote, and harsh, famous for its colonies of prisons and its toxic-waste dump. Mount Staggar was a boys’ prison next to a mine; really, it was a labor camp, and a dangerous one. Fort Beacon, on the other hand, was a prison where the boys were kept locked down twenty-three hours a day.

  Will gulped, reminding himself to stay tough. “Prove it,” he said.

  “That won’t be difficult,” Beckett said. He smiled, letting the idea of prison sink in for a moment. “But you can still make all this go away. You can save yourself and your sister. You just have to tell us where your father is.”

  “I don’t know where he is,” Will said. “And that’s the truth.”

  Beckett studied him thoughtfully. “Well, that’s not really very helpful, is it?”

  “It’s true. He could be anywhere—he didn’t tell us where he was going. We were just looking for somewhere to take the boat and lie low,” Will said.

  Beckett considered this for a moment. “I guess it’s the kind of thing a couple of kids might do,” he conceded. “Sail off into the wild south with no plan at all.” He paused. “Once I give the story of your capture and arrest to the newsfeeds, I hope, for your sake, it’ll flush your father out of hiding. If he takes the bait, all the better for you. If he doesn’t, I’ve already told you what’s going to happen. And I’ll let you think about what kind of loving father would stand by and let all that happen to his kids.”

  Beckett waited for a moment longer to see if Will would crack, then pushed his chair back and got to his feet. “I’m going to go and find your boat and arrest your sister now.” He went to the door and smiled at Will. “Do have a think about all I’ve said.”

  He tapped on the door, and was let out. The door was locked again behind him.

  Left alone, Will looked openly around the room as he hadn’t quite dared to before. There was a window, but it had bars on it. He examined it anyway, in case there was some chance of squeezing out, or jiggling the bars loose. But they were set quite firmly in the wall, and there was no chance of squeezing out between them. Plus he still had his hands
zip-tied behind his back.

  He went to the harbormaster’s desk and found some scissors. Rather awkwardly, (it was hard to use scissors with your hands behind your back) he managed to cut himself free. He looked around the room again, rubbing his wrists.

  One window, barred.

  One door, locked and guarded.

  No other way out.

  Then he glanced up. There was an access hatch in the ceiling.

  Excitement bubbled up inside him. The hatch was at one end of the room, above some filing cabinets. He crept over to it and climbed up very carefully, trying not to make a sound. From the top of the cabinet he could push the hatch—it lifted—but he wasn’t tall enough to pull himself inside it.

  Cautiously he hopped down again and picked up the visitor’s chair. He placed this on top of the filing cabinet, then climbed up beside it and stepped ever so carefully onto it. The legs slipped slightly under him, and the metal gave a boom. Will froze, waiting to see what would happen, but no one came in. Hurrying now, he stepped up onto the chair, lifted the hatch and wriggled through the narrow space into the ceiling.

  It was almost dark under the roof, and hot, and full of grit and dust. But there were cracks of light visible here and there: the roof above him was tiled. He planted his feet carefully on the beams, and pushed at a roof tile. It lifted easily; he slipped it out, placing it carefully down beside him, then lifted out another and another, until he’d made a gap big enough to climb through. He poked his head out into brilliant daylight and looked around at a landscape of rooftops and chimneys, satellite dishes, solar panels and humming turbines. He let himself out onto the tiles, then skidded down the roof. He managed to stop himself just in time and clung to the gutter, his heart thumping, as he looked for a way down. There was another, slightly lower roof nearby—he stretched out a foot and stepped down onto that, hoping for a drainpipe he might climb down. The one he found looked rickety, as if his weight might rip it from the wall with a horrendous noise that would bring everyone running. Eventually, he decided to let himself down over the side, hang and drop.