by Kat Falls
Jaw clenched, Revas peeled her eyes from me like I was a bucket of fish guts and turned to her trooper. “Get this backwater brat out of my sight.”
My neighbors, Shurl and Lars Peavey, came as soon as I called them and agreed to take Zoe while I searched for my parents. Zoe had to be forced, kicking and screaming, into their sub.
“What if she shocks one of them?” Gemma asked worriedly.
“She won’t,” I said, as their sub disappeared under the waves. “She’s too scared to shock people she hates. She sure isn’t going to shoot electricity at someone she loves.”
“So what do we do now?” Gemma asked.
After everything she’d been through that day, the fact that she could still say “we” amazed me. “I can’t rely on three skimmers to find my parents. I’m going to Rip Tide,” I told her.
“Where the boxing match is?”
“Yeah. It’s about half a day’s sail south of here. The townships pick up their rations there. I know the chance of Drift showing up is slim, but I want to talk to the surfeit agent. Maybe he’s heard something—knows what Drift’s sachem wants with my parents. Or what it will take to get them back. And if he doesn’t, maybe he can tell me the coordinates of Drift’s fishing grounds. At least that would give me somewhere to start looking.”
“I’ll go with you.”
“Thanks. But I’ve put you in enough danger for one day.”
“I don’t care about that. I care about getting your parents back.” Her attention jumped to someone behind me. “Hey, that’s my stuff!”
I turned to see a Seaguard trooper emerging from the lounge with a duffel bag in his arms.
“Good. You can take it with you.” He dropped the duffel at Gemma’s feet. “I think I got everything. But take a final look-see.”
“Final look?”
“You have to clear out. Captain’s orders.”
“But—” Gemma stopped herself. “Who’s your captain?”
“Don’t waste your breath,” I told her.
Ignoring me, she looked expectantly at the trooper.
“The kid’s right. No way Captain Revas is going to let a teenage girl hang around a Seaguard fort.”
“Since when is our Trade Station a fort?” I demanded.
“Since the Assembly said so,” he replied evenly. “It’s a good central location.”
“For what?” I asked.
“To bring stability and justice to the ocean frontier,” he said, clearly quoting someone. A superior probably. Or an Assembly representative.
Just what the settlers needed—a garrison right in the middle of the territory so the ’wealth could keep tabs on us and meddle in our business. Already the Trade Station felt different. Like all the life had been sucked out of it.
Looking close to tears, Gemma picked up her duffel bag and hugged it to her body. “So,” she said, clearing her throat. “Do you want to ask Jibby for his tickets to the boxing match or should I?”
“Of course they took your storage closet,” I told Gemma. “The ’wealth doesn’t care about people’s families or homes. And the Seaguard is nothing but the government’s fist.”
Shoving the Slicky’s joystick forward, I laid on the speed even though the boxing match didn’t start for hours. Jibby had handed over his tickets willingly once he’d heard why I wanted to go to Rip Tide.
Next to me on the pilot bench, Gemma remained silent. She’d changed out of her diveskin before we’d left the Trade Station. No surprise there. But I was taken aback when she’d returned to the docking-ring in a sheer turquoise sari. I’d seen her in Topsider dresses before, but never anything so fancy. Maybe it was an everyday outfit by stack-city standards, but out on the ocean, only rich tourists wore such frippery. The sort of people who dropped by the Trade Station to gawk at the crazy pioneers who’d settled on the ocean floor. And when those tourists spotted me, out came the cameras, accompanied by stares and exclamations over my skin. Or worse, they’d comment on what reckless parents I must have to raise me in the subsea wilderness.
Pretty much all my experiences with Topsiders had left me feeling wary and embarrassed, which had to be why unease slid through me when Gemma had stepped from the lounge in a fluttery piece of nothing. Or maybe it was because wrapped in a sari she seemed older. More sophisticated. And that unsettling combination made me want to dive into the ocean and get lost in a school of silversides. Instead, I’d busied myself unhitching the Slicky while hoping that she didn’t expect a compliment. Anything out of my mouth would’ve sounded insincere since really I wanted her back in a diveskin or at least a nondescript dress from her boarding-home days.
I glanced at her, sitting so close to me on the pilot bench, yet seeming so far away. She stared out the viewport with a faint pucker between her brows.
“You’re not homeless,” I said, guessing at her thoughts. “You can always live with us.”
She shot me a pained look. “Stay inside your house all day while you and your family work outside? I can’t.”
“Why not? None of us mind.”
“Because I’d feel useless and trapped.”
“What are your other options, though? It’s not like you can move in with Shade.”
Her lips tightened and she went back to looking at the passing ocean.
“You’re not seriously considering it?” But she was. I could tell she was.
“He’s going to be at Rip Tide while we’re there. I may as well talk to him,” she said as if it was no big deal.
“If you think Shade has changed his mind about letting you live with outlaws, you are crazy.” When her brother had told her no last time, he’d been firm to the point of cruelty. And I sincerely hoped he’d stick to his guns.
She threw up a hand in frustration. “Fine. I’ll move to a township.”
How could she even joke about it, knowing that a bunch of crust-skinned savages had just kidnapped my parents? “You’d become a surf?”
“I already am. Surfeit population. May as well admit it.”
“No, you’re not. Not to us.” Not to me. “You’d be better off moving back to the mainland.”
“And live where? Stack-cities are restricted communities. Even the really awful ones—so dirty and old, you’d never want to visit—even they will only let you in if you have an access pass.” She folded her arms across her body as if trying to stay warm. “Before, I dreamed about finding a home. Now I’ll be lucky to find a place to live.”
“I don’t see how living on the Specter would be any different than living with us. You—”
“Can we concentrate on rescuing your parents? That’s going to be hard enough. We can worry about me later,” she said firmly. “After we’ve put your family back together.”
Being a pioneer, I knew stubborn could be a useful trait. Most of the settlers in the territory were stubborn to the point of being intractable. But Gemma dove into stubborn the way I slipped into the deep, as a way to escape tension and noise. At least my way came with a view.
I knew we were nearing Rip Tide when we passed under a township that had dropped anchor off the rocky coast.
“Townships aren’t allowed to come this close to the mainland anywhere but by Rip Tide,” I told Gemma.
“Why not?”
“They’re big and don’t maneuver well. The coastal states passed laws to keep them away from the marinas and smaller vehicles.”
We spotted more townships bobbing above us. I’d never seen so many gathered in one place. I scanned the bunch, looking for Drift. But judging from their undersides, none resembled an enormous Portuguese man-of-war.
“Let’s surface,” Gemma said. “I want to see what they look like.” The moment we broke through the waves, her interest evaporated. “They’re just mountains of metal and flexiglass.”
“The older ones, yeah. It took awhile for the government to realize that the surfs would be better off if they had some way to support themselves. That’s when they started designing towns
hips for specific trades. Like Nomad, which was built to be a salt farm.”
“Look, an airship.” Gemma pointed at a brightly striped dirigible hovering far off in the sky. “It’s tethered,” she said with some surprise, “like they are on top of stack-cities.”
“It’s probably hitched to Rip Tide. We’re getting close.”
I took the Slicky subsea, where we could speed along much faster, until the town’s steel legs popped onto the sonar screen. I got us as close to the hulking structure as I dared and headed for the surface to crash through ten-foot swells.
The ancient offshore drilling platform towered over us—seven stories tall. Before the Rising, the oil rig would have hovered above the water with room for boats to cruise underneath. Now the waves lapped at the town’s underside, which probably meant that come high tide the first level would flood completely.
These derelict platforms off the Commonwealth’s coasts had been converted into lots of things, like prisons. And wind and tide turbine islands, all with thick cables on the seafloor for sending the produced energy back to the mainland. But most became ramshackle towns, offering shelter to thousands of displaced people. Frankly, I would have preferred living on a converted drilling platform to being shut up in a stack-city. At least the platform was surrounded by sea and sky, not hemmed in by other concrete towers.
Cruising the Slicky alongside Rip Tide, I looked for a place to hitch her but couldn’t find a single boat cleat or even an entryway. The rusting metal walls bore only a thick crust of barnacles, mussels, limpets, and snails. Rip Tide might have been an impressive drilling platform in its day, with its seven decks and enormous center tower, but it sure didn’t make for a very welcoming town. Giving up, I rounded a corner and steered for the rocky coast.
“There,” Gemma said, pointing up. “That’s how we get on.”
Thick cables swung overhead, stretched between Rip Tide and the cliff, with two steel towers in between. The cliff was quite a ways off. But then a cable car came into view, and I realized it covered the distance fast. Packed with people, the car zipped over us and banged through an opening on a middle deck.
“Did that look safe to you?” Gemma asked. “That didn’t look safe.”
“See another way to get aboard?”
“No,” she said, sounding grumpy.
I sped the Slicky toward the coast, where I spotted clusters of vehicles moored at the base of the cliff. The docks were no more than long iron girders jutting into the waves. After locking down the Slicky’s control panel, I cracked the hatch in her side and winced. All of Rip Tide probably felt like this—like the inside of a space heater cranked to the max. I hitched the Slicky to a cleat, put on a low-brim hat for coverage, and tied a bandana around my neck like the people who lived on houseboats did. Of course, the floaters were trying to block the UV rays. Me, I just wanted to keep people from staring at my skin.
Gemma hiked up her sari and we walked the length of the narrow girder with our arms out for balance. We passed a wide assortment of vehicles: a sub with a chain of living-pods bobbing behind it, houseboats piled high with the floaters’ possessions, and plenty of multilevel barges. The odd part was that people were sitting atop the glass-domed living-pods and flopped on the jerry-rigged barges as if staking out claims, all vying for the best view of the oil rig. Clearly settling in for a chunk of time, which I didn’t understand since it had to be 110 degrees out.
From behind us came the rolling whip of an unfurling sail. I turned to see men on a trimaran tie off the center sail so that it faced the crowd. Then the crew dropped not one but three anchors—serious overkill for such a lightweight racer. They must’ve really wanted the boat to hold its position.
“They’re going to broadcast the match,” Gemma guessed, pointing at the sail where a glowing square appeared, projected from the trimaran’s deck. Applause erupted from the crowd lounging on the docked boats. “I hope that doesn’t mean there’s no more room on the town.”
I didn’t know what it meant because I’d never seen anything like it. But now that we were onshore I spotted the airship again, pulling at its mooring line at the top of old drilling tower. A banner hung from its passenger compartment, advertising the boxing match.
Ahead of me, Gemma mounted the stairs cut into the cliff, maneuvering past the often ripe-smelling people sprawled on the steps. More floaters, I guessed, going by their faded plain tunics and loose-fitting pants. A few glanced up as I passed and did double takes upon spotting my shine. But considering how many people were packed onto the steps, I was getting off easy. The bandana and hat were working.
At the top of the cliff, we joined the long line of people waiting to board the cable car. They were mostly Topsiders from the stack-cities wearing windblown layers of gauze. Had I thought Gemma’s sari was fancy? Clearly I hadn’t grasped the heights to which fancy could soar. Every item on their bodies was embroidered with silver and gold or decorated with doodads such as tassels, crystals, mirrors, and metal studs. All the sparkling and glinting reminded me of the light shows put on by deep-sea creatures, though those were far more beautiful.
I met Gemma’s gaze and saw how the turquoise fabric draped over her shoulder, unadorned, turned her blue eyes into tide pools.
“You look nice.”
The words were out before I’d thought them through. I tensed. “Nice” was bland. I should have come up with something better. But then the smile she gave me in return was so dazzling that I couldn’t remember why I hadn’t told her she looked nice back at the docking-ring.
As another group of people packed into the cable car, I recognized Benton Tupper at the front of the line. I pointed him out to Gemma. “He’s Benthic Territory’s representative,” I said, noting that he was not wearing his official blue Assembly robes but some sort of striped muumuu, which made him look like a market stall. “He should be too busy for boxing matches—busy getting us statehood. Or at least a vote in the Assembly.”
Gemma was less interested in Tupper than the cable car itself. On our side of the barrier rope, a guy with a padlocked box sold tickets. On the other, a man with an iron hook at the end of a pole had snagged the cable car by its doorframe and was now struggling to hold it steady.
“Do you think inspectors come out regularly to test this setup?” She eyed the open cable car warily. “Because it looks like it was built by a monkey with heatstroke.”
“Oh, chum,” I muttered—not because of the unsafe cable car. Now that we’d made it to the front of the line, I recognized the burly, snub-nosed man selling tickets. Ratter—still in his purple frock coat and goggles with the lenses flipped up. The man who’d offended Captain Revas with his chewing-weed. I hadn’t forgotten his reaction when I’d announced that Nomad was my salvage: He’d glared at me with bloodshot eyes. But in case I needed reminding, he gave me a repeat performance now with extra malice—enough to make my skin crawl.
CHAPTER
NINE
With his beady eyes fixed on me, Ratter spat out a hunk of chewing-weed, leaving a line of green spittle down his unshaven chin. “You’re that pioneer kid that thinks he’s got a claim to Nomad.”
“Good to see you, too.” I held up the tickets. No way was I going to let him intimidate me. Nor would I take the time to set him straight about salvage rights.
Ignoring the tickets, he looked me over. “What’s wrong with you?”
“What?”
“Your skin don’t look right,” he pronounced. “We don’t let sick folk on Rip Tide. Mayor Fife’s orders.” With that, he pulled a hunk of dried seaweed from a pocket of his frock coat.
“He’s fine.” Gemma snatched the tickets from my hand and shoved them at Ratter. “Healthier than you by a long shot.”
After picking off the lint, Ratter popped the weed into his mouth and chewed like he was thinking hard. Finally he said, “No minors allowed without an adult.” He must have really taxed his brain to come up with that one.
“We’re with tw
o adults,” Gemma countered. She hooked her thumb at the two men behind us in line. Bare chested and streaked with orange zinc-paste from their faces on down, they could only be fishermen off the same boat. “We’re even taking them to lunch before the match.”
It sounded like a fair trade to me, but one of the fishermen said, “Don’t know ’em from a codfish.”
“What’s the holdup, Ratter?” yelled the guy with the gaff hook as he slipped a few feet toward the edge of the cliff. “I can take two more!”
“I got Dark Life here that’s giving me trouble.”
Well, that sure clarified the issue. “You have a problem with pioneers?” I demanded.
“I have a problem with you,” he spat. “Now step outta line. ’Cause you’re not getting onto Rip Tide.”
I started to argue, but Gemma dragged me to one side.
“Girl, you can go if you want,” he offered with a smile that showed off his moldy-looking teeth.
“Maybe,” she told him, and then turned to me. “What’s your representative’s name?”
“Benton Tupper.” Guessing her plan, I looked for him. At the Trade Station, Tupper’s yellow and purple striped muumuu would have stood out like a beacon among the settlers’ sleek diveskins and the simply clothed floaters, but not on a cable car filled with Topsiders. “There,” I said, finally spying Tupper’s wispy head above the rest.
“Representative Benton Tupper!” she shouted at the top of her lungs.
He whirled, spotted us, and ducked behind a large woman trailing about twenty veils.
Gemma cupped her hands around her mouth. “We have important Assembly business to discuss with you!”
Tupper stayed down, and I couldn’t blame him since I found myself backing away from her as people turned to look.
“Benton Tupper,” she hollered, “Commonwealth of States representative for Benthic Territory, please show yourself! “
That did the trick. Tupper popped up, making shushing gestures at her. Then he saw that absolutely everyone in line and on the cable car was staring at him. Realizing that it was a lost cause, he waved feebly at us.