Flood f-1

by Stephen Baxter

  But not before he left Helen with his child. Her pregnancy in captivity, aided by her fellow captives with their bits of first aid and field medicine, and then a delivery by a scared drafted-in medical student, had been terrifying. But at the end of it there was a baby, Grace, whom Helen had loved immediately, and cherished every day of her imprisonment.

  “And Helen never knew she’d given birth to a Saudi royal,” said Gary. “A princess!”

  Helen had become convinced this was why her baby hadn’t been returned to her, since the first moment of their rescue five days ago under La Seu. The baby must be at the center of some enormous diplomatic row.

  Gary said, “So you think that’s why Helen called us, why she’s so adamant we should go to the AxysCorp reception?”

  “I guess so. If Lammockson can get us out of Barcelona, maybe he can get the baby back from Riyadh, or wherever the hell she is. So we go, I guess.”

  “Sure,” Gary said. “We said we’d stick by each other, didn’t we, the four of us? But, Lily, your mom-”

  “There’s nothing I can do for Mum,” Lily said firmly,“but Helen and the baby I can help. In the meantime we’re going to my sister’s for dinner. You’ll love the kids. Come on.”

  They set off back, plodding out of the park and over sodden pavements.

  At the roundabout where the High Street joined the Fulham Road a drain had blocked, and a lake had formed. The cars were pushing through it, raising great rooster-tails of water, and Lily and Gary had to detour. By the time they made it to the Fulham Road they both had wet feet. This was life in London now, it seemed, rain and wet shoes and road blockages.

  But by now the schools were emptying, and the roads filled up with yellow school buses, American style, another innovation since Lily had been away. On the Fulham Road they merged into a growing crowd of parents and children, noisy, laughing, hurrying along the pavement between gushing gutters and lines of sandbags. Lily wondered how many of the world’s nations were represented in the exhilarating rainbow of faces around her. This was an old village long overwhelmed by the growth of London, a place you just drove through, but people still lived here just as they had when Lily was a kid, still worked and went shopping and took their kids to school, still were born and grew old and died in this place.

  And then the rain lightened, and a shaft of sunlight broke through the scattering clouds and glimmered from the water that stood on the roads and in the gutters, on lawns and playgrounds. Unaccountably, on this day she had learned her mother had died, Lily felt optimistic. She was free, and here was the sun trying to shine. On impulse she grabbed Gary’s hand, and he squeezed back.

  7

  The next day George Camden phoned Lily early at her hotel. Camden was the smooth ex-military oppo who had retrieved them from Barcelona. Camden said that the summons to lunch with Nathan Lammockson that day was confirmed. Lammockson’s “hydrometropole,” as Camden put it, was in Southend, some fifty kilometers east of central London at the mouth of the Thames Estuary. A chopper would pick up Lily and Gary from London City Airport at eleven that morning.

  Gary met Lily outside the hotel, in the rain. He was gazing into his handheld.“You followed the news? Remember that North Sea storm on the car radio? Well, it’s on its way south.”

  The rain was already lashing down, and now a storm was on the way. “Great.”

  “Overnight flooding all down the east coast…”

  He showed her the handheld. The BBC news was all about the weather, with images of the Tyne breaking its banks and forcing its way into the fancy restaurants along Newcastle’s Quayside. The island of Lindisfarne, only ever connected to the mainland by a tidal causeway, was cut off, stranding pissed-off holidaymakers. Beaches in Lincolnshire had been damaged. There were flood alerts out for East Anglia, for Boston and King’s Lynn, where the sea was challenging new flood barriers around the Wash. And so on. The weather girl’s animated map showed the storm as a milky swirl of cloud that was still heading south.

  Lily asked,“Is this unusually bad? If it keeps coming south, is London threatened?”

  “They haven’t said so. I don’t think this is even a particularly powerful storm. If it combines with all the fluvial runoff or a high tide it could become a difficult event. But I don’t know. Things seem to have changed.”

  “Kristie, my niece, you know, said sea levels have risen by a meter.”

  His eyebrows rose. “A meter? Where the hell did that come from? A meter rise wasn’t in the old climate-change forecast models until the end of the century, even in the worst case.”

  “I wouldn’t believe everything Kristie says. She’s quite liable to have mixed up her meters with her centimeters.”

  “Well, if she’s right it would make a mess of everything… I just don’t know, Lily. I’m three years out of the loop, and Britain’s not my area anyhow.” He glanced at her. “Kind of stressy, your sis.”

  “Always was. She’s not dumb, though. She took a law degree. But she ended up in events, handling people rather than dealing with cases. She has that kind of personality, I guess. Bright, bubbly, engaging. A bit fragile. But on the other hand, neither you or I are raising two kids.”

  “That’s true enough,” he conceded.

  After their years together he knew the rest: that Lily had never married, and it was many years since she had had a relationship that lasted much beyond six months. At one point she had sworn off men entirely. A base commander had hit on her, and when she didn’t come over he threatened to put her on sentry duty: a pilot qualified on three different birds, stuck on the wire. The guy was later drummed out of the service for “command rape,” in the jargon. But the damage to Lily’s capacity for relationships was permanent. She’d never meant to end up alone at age forty, but that was the way it worked out.

  The handheld flashed up a new projection by the BBC, showing how the storm might curve into the Thames estuary later in the day.

  And then the news channel cut away to a breaking story from Sydney, Australia. Picture-postcard images of the landmarks, the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House, were interspersed with scenes of rising waters in Darling Harbour and Sydney Cove and Farm Cove. The water was already splashing over the bank walls around the Opera House and spilling onto the curving cobbled pedestrian footway. For now it was a novelty; tourists filmed the incident with their phones and leapt back squealing from the water, an adventure that made their holiday memorable. But in the Royal Botanic Gardens to the south of the Opera House water was gushing from broken drains and ponding over the grass. And out of town at Bondi, would-be surfers looked down on a beach entirely hidden by breaking waves.

  Lily found it hard to take in this news, as if it was crowded out by the images she’d seen of Britain. Flooding in Sydney? How was that possible?

  Gary looked thoughtful, puzzled.

  Another headline flashed for their attention. The Test match at the Oval, between England and India, had been abandoned for another day.

  The car arrived.

  8

  City Airport was east of Greenwich and the Isle of Dogs. They endured another slow jerking ride, driving north of the river along the A13. They peered out at the towers around Canary Wharf, glimpsed through the rain. By the time they reached the airport, according to the news on Gary’s handheld, people had died in the flooding at King’s Lynn and Hunstanton, around the Wash, and the storm had pushed down the east coast as far as Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft.

  The airport was small, the runways sheeted by rainwater and battered by winds, but planes were taking off and landing, leaping up like salmon from alarmingly short runs.

  The AxysCorp chopper was the same lightweight new model that had picked them up from Barcelona. They boarded quickly and the chopper soared into the air. The pilot seemed to have total confidence in his machine, despite the buffeting wind. Lily felt confident, too, now that she was in the bird, more so than in a car squeezing its way through the crammed and troubled streets of Lond
on, for here she was in her element.

  East London opened up beneath her. The Thames was a band of ugly gray. The neat line of the Thames Barrier, just a kilometer from the airport, was stitched across the water, its steel cowls shining in the rain. Gary pointed out that the Barrier was closed, the massive yellow rocking beams lifted beside each pier, and foam was thrown up as white-crested waves slammed against the raised gates.

  The bird rose higher, dipped its nose, and soared east down the Thames estuary and over lorry parks and storage sites and defunct factories, the gray-brown industrial zone that surrounded London. Lily was struck by how heavily developed the flood plain was, with new housing estates and shopping precincts in Barking, Woolwich and Thamesmead sparkling in the rain like architects’ models. She made out the soaring bridge at Dartford where the M25 orbital motorway crossed the river, the last crossing before the sea. Streams of cars and freight from the docks at Tilbury and Grays queued at the toll gates for the bridge and the tunnels. A little further east both riverbanks were more or less walled with glass, huge retail developments summoned into existence by the motorway.

  Further east yet, as the estuary slowly widened, she saw the sprawling docks of Tilbury to the north, and to the south the matching development of Gravesend, beyond river-lashed mud flats. All this was downstream of the Barrier, outside its putative protection. The Barrier was designed to protect central London from tidal surges heading upstream. Further on and the river swung around to the north, widening rapidly. Even out here there was extensive development, with acres of refineries and oil stores and gas tanks at Coryton and Canvey Island, an ugly industrial sprawl. And then the estuary opened out to embrace the sea.

  Southend-on-Sea was a tangled old town that hugged the coast inside the line of an A-road to the north, a trace across the landscape. Lily made out a remarkably long pier, a narrow, delicate-looking line scratched across the surface of the sea. Waves broke against the town’s sea wall, sending up silent sprays of white, and water pooled on the promenades.

  The chopper took them over Southend itself to a small helipad a little further to the east, close to Shoeburyness. A pier roofed by Plexiglas led off over a stretch of sandy beach to what looked like a small marina, a row of blocky buildings with boats tethered alongside. But the “buildings” were afloat, Lily saw, sitting on fat pontoons.

  Despite the gathering wind, the pilot dropped them down with scarcely a bump. A couple of AxysCorp flunkies in blue coveralls, hoods up, came running out to the chopper towing a kind of extensible tunnel. Lily and Gary were barely exposed to the wind and rain before hurrying through the tunnel and into the pier. Looking along the covered pier, with the rain pouring down the glass walls, Lily saw a party in full swing, laughter and lights and glittering people.

  Another flunky took their outer coats, and they were given towels to wipe the rain off their faces; there was even a small bathroom. In a discreet black suit, the man was perhaps twenty-five, unreasonably good-looking, and spoke a soft Sean Connery well-educated Scottish.

  When they were ready the flunky led them onward. At the end of the passageway they were met by a waiter with a tray of champagne, and they took a glass each. Then they walked into a cavern of a room, with square walls and a high ceiling. A tremendous chandelier, a stalactite of glass and light, was suspended over a wide doughnut-shaped table on which drink and food were stacked up. The walls, painted in pastel colors, were underlit, and expensive-looking works of art hung in rows. The paintings seemed oddly dark, glowering, relics of antiquity in this modern opulence.

  People moved through this space, easy and confident, the men mostly suited, the women in long dresses. Their brittle conversation was crashingly loud as they ate the food and drank the drink, marveled at the chandelier and inspected the artwork. News crews followed them, teams of cameramen and interviewers with microphones. In one corner a string quartet played, their music inaudible under the babble of talk.

  And all this was afloat. Lily could feel the sea surge, just gently, and that great chandelier tinkled and glittered. The rocking wasn’t unpleasant, in fact; it went with the buzz of the champagne-but Lily reminded herself she had had five years of detox, and wasn’t yet used to drink.

  “This,” said Gary thickly, “is the fucking Titanic.”

  George Camden approached them, looking dapper in a tuxedo and bow tie. “Ah, Mr. Boyle,” he said. “I’ve missed your wit these last couple of days. This isn’t a ship at all-I think Mr. Lammockson would be offended to hear you say that-it’s part of a hydrometropole, a floating city. If a small one.”

  “It’s a what-now?”

  “And Captain Brooke.” Camden smiled at Lily. “You’re very welcome. You are the guests of honor this afternoon, the four of you.”

  She glanced around. “Helen and Piers are here?”

  “Oh, yes. Mr. Lammockson apologizes he’s not here to greet you in person; he has some calls to make.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me,” Gary said. He had drained his champagne and was reaching for another. “Guys like that always have calls to make.” He pointed at the left-hand wall. “Isn’t that a Gauguin?”

  “Never had you down as an art lover, Boyle.” A couple approached them. It was Piers Michaelmas, in a crisp new British army uniform, with Helen Gray on his arm. “But of course you’re quite right. And Gauguin is exactly the sort of obvious choice this gang of hedgies and market players would splash their money on. Hello, you two.” Piers stood straight. His dark hair was cut short, military style. Only the lines around his eyes might have been a clue that here was a man who had spent much of the last few years in utter silence, his face hidden under a filthy towel from captors he could not bear to have look at him.

  They compared notes. Their lives the last few days had been similar, a round of medical checks and debriefings and family visits and media events.

  Only Piers seemed itching to get back to work. “All this ruddy climate stuff,” he confided to Lily. “It’s really kicked off while we’ve been banged up, quicker than the boffins ever expected. Something new going on, so I’ve heard, though nobody knows quite what

  …” He didn’t have a word to say about their captivity or its aftermath.

  Behind his back, Gary mouthed to Lily:“Denial. That guy is a walking case conference.”

  “Hush,” she hissed back. She turned to Helen, who wore a simple black dress; she was beautiful, Lily thought, her blond hair cut short and expensively teased. But the dress, the hairstyle, just brought out her thinness and pallor, and a haunted look in her blue eyes.“So any news about Grace?”

  “Nothing but dead ends,” Helen said. “He was an AxysCorp employee, that doctor who took hold of Grace in the first place. But since then they’ve passed her around like a live grenade. A US Army medic took her from AxysCorp, and then the British army took her from them, and then the Foreign Office got hold of her, and then… When I call any of them they put me on hold or refer me to a counselor.”

  Gary said, “I’m sure she’s safe. They wouldn’t harm her-”

  “That’s not the point,” she snarled at him. “She’s not with me. I don’t care if she’s the bastard child of a Saudi prince or not, I’m her mother.”

  “We’re all as baffled as you are,” George Camden said.“And we sympathize, Helen. We really do. And we intend to do everything we can to help.”

  “That’s true, that’s very true, I endorse everything George has said on AxysCorp’s behalf.” The new voice was booming, commanding; they turned as one, on a reflex.

  Nathan Lammockson walked toward them.

  9

  Lammockson was a short man, hefty, his suit jacket a fraction on the small side so that his belly pushed out his shirt. He wore his gray-flecked black hair cut short to the scalp, and his double chin and fleshy nose were moist with sweat. He came trailed by a school of news crews. Murmuring inconsequential words, Lammockson shook hands with each of the four of them, the four he had saved from the clu
tches of the Spanish extremists. Lights glared and mike booms hovered. This encounter was clearly the centerpiece of the occasion, for him.

  Lily had researched their rescuer in her free time since returning to England. Forty-five years old, Lammockson was a third-generation immigrant from Uganda. His grandparents had fled Idi Amin. He looked vaguely eastern Mediterranean; he claimed not to know or care what his ethnic origins were. By forty he had become one of the richest men in Britain. As far as Lily understood he had got that way mostly by buying up huge companies, using their own assets to secure the loans he needed to do so, and then selling them on for immense profits.

  When the cameras were done with them Piers Michaelmas stepped away politely, inspecting what looked to Lily like a futuristic pager. “They’re starting to issue flood warnings in London,” he said to Lily.

  “That North Sea storm?”

  “Yes. The Barrier is already raised, but-Hello? Yes, this is Michaelmas…” He wandered away, speaking into the air.

  “So,” Lammockson said expansively. “You’re enjoying the party?”

  Gary, slightly drunk, said, “I always enjoy learning new words.”

  “Such as?”

  “ ‘Hedgie.’ ”

  Lammockson boomed laughter. “A hedge-fund manager. Probably describes twenty percent of the people here.”

  “But not you,” Lily guessed.

  “The Financial Times once called me a ‘private equity magnate.’ I like that word, don’t you? ‘Magnate.’ Sounds like a wealthy Byzantine. Of course there is a whole class of us these days. London, thank God I was born here! It’s so liberal it’s like a tax haven for people like me.”

  Gary asked, “And, ‘hydrometropole’?”

  “Ah. Now that’s more interesting.” Bizarrely, Lammockson jumped up and down, his massive weight thumping into the floor.“We’re afloat,” he said. “The whole of this mansion is. I’m sure you saw that from the air. Afloat, even though I’ve got a swimming pool and a cinema and a gym and kitchens like you wouldn’t believe. I’ve even got a floating greenhouse. I’m the amphibious man! The ultimate floodproofing, yes? You just ride it out.