Flood f-1

by Stephen Baxter

  “Enough,” Lily said, putting a hand on Piers’s arm.

  “I won’t go,” Kristie said.

  “Oh yes you will,” Lily snapped, and she hauled her niece to her feet by main force.

  “Lily…”

  She turned. It was Gary Boyle, standing there in plastic cuffs like Ollantay. Beside him was an older woman, short, tough-looking, likewise cuffed.

  Despite the bedlam around her, Lily ran to Gary and embraced him. He smelled of dirt, cordite, blood. “Jesus, it’s good to see you. Even in circumstances like this. When the spotters warned us Walker Okies were coming-I didn’t know if you were still with them. They wouldn’t let me try to contact you.”

  “Lily, this is Mayor Thorson. Of Walker City.”

  Lily eyed the woman, who met her gaze proudly. “I’m ashamed we didn’t welcome you here.”

  “It wasn’t your fault,” Thorson said dismissively. “You don’t call the shots, do you? Besides, the game’s up for you.”

  “That it is,” Piers said. He ordered the AxysCorp troopers to remove the cuffs from Thorson and Gary. “Look, Lammockson is abandoning Project City. I think he always intended to if, when, the sea reached his Ark. The city served its purpose in building the Ark for him. I don’t know what kind of order will emerge here now. Lammockson doesn’t care anymore, I suspect. But we know about you people, Walker City. I believe you would make a responsible contribution to-”

  “You don’t know anything about us,” Thorson sneered at him. “Go on. Run away with your feudal master. We’ll sort this mess out.”

  Piers’s face worked, but he backed off. “Whatever you say. Lily, we must go. We have Hammond. That chopper’s going to lift in a few minutes whether we’re there or not. Gary-”

  Gary shook his head. “These are my people now. The walkers. I’ll stay. But take Grace.” He glanced around.

  Lily said, “Who? Grace?”

  A young woman emerged from a crowd of rebel prisoners, cuffed as the others had been. She was the image of Helen Gray. She stared at Lily, wide-eyed. Lily’s heart melted. She had had no idea Grace was here.

  Gary said, “She’ll be safe with you-safer, anyhow, if she’s close to Lammockson. He’s a bastard, but a smart, surviving sort of bastard.”

  “Gary-”

  “Just go.”

  “Come on,” Piers said. He raised his weapon and led the way to Nathan and the helicopter.

  Lily took Grace’s arm. She was reluctant, but, numbed, she followed. Kristie was more resistant, but Lily didn’t give her the choice; she simply dragged her away.

  The AxysCorp troops followed, making a fighting withdrawal, pushing Ollantay and Hammond along with them. As they ran Kristie sheltered her son’s head with her arm. Lily reminded herself that Kristie still didn’t know about her mother.

  Lily looked back. Gary was already lost in the confusion. She’d spent only minutes in his presence, the first time she’d seen him in years and years.

  They were almost back at the chopper, its clattering rotors adding to the roar of noise in the stadium, when Sanjay came blundering up to Lily.

  “Lily! I have to tell you-Nathan didn’t give me a chance-”

  “What is it, Sanj?”

  “When Thandie called-she spoke about the sea levels-and about the Ark.”

  “What Ark? Ark Three, Nathan’s ship?”

  “No-listen to me- Ark One. The Ark they’re building in Colorado. In the end, Thandie says, that’s the only chance. In the end… She said you needed to know. She tried to tell Gary-”

  There was shouting. Lily turned.

  Ollantay shook himself free of his guards and whirled around. Lily saw that he had a weapon held behind his back, in his cuffed hands, a revolver that must have been hidden under his tunic. He shot blindly, aiming for Piers.

  And Sanjay screamed and fell; he lay twitching, his breast laid open to the bone, bloody masses bubbling within.

  Piers raised a revolver and shot Ollantay point blank in the head. The Quechua fell. Kristie hid her son’s eyes. Piers lowered his gun. “Should have done that a long time ago.”

  Lily yelled, “Sanjay!” She tried to get to him; he was still alive, it seemed, still struggling to breathe.

  But Piers grabbed her. “No more time!” He pushed her into the chopper’s open hatch, where AxysCorp goons grabbed her and hauled her in. Kristie and the kid were bundled in after her, and Grace, Hammond, Piers, a few others.

  The chopper lifted with a surge that sent Lily tumbling to the floor. She wasn’t strapped in, wasn’t even in a seat. She found herself looking out of the open hatch at the receding ground. There was Sanjay, sprawled in blood like a fallen fledgling. She swore to herself that she would get word of this to his family in Scotland, his children. And further out the ring of AxysCorp troops were still fighting to defend the scrap of land from which their employer had already ascended.

  As she rose the bowl of the stadium opened up. Everywhere people fought and died in a cloud of toxic dust and gunsmoke, fighting for the right to exist on this dwindling scrap of ground. And still the chopper rose until the stadium shrank into the detail of Cusco, a carpet of red-tiled roofs where more battles continued in the squares and in the streets, a whole city abandoned by Lammockson now that it had served its purpose. Higher still Lily ascended, until Cusco was lost in its bowl in a spine of water-lapped mountains.

  Grace sat, still cuffed, bewildered. Ark One, Lily thought, looking at Grace. That’s it. Whatever it is, Grace has to be aboard. Sanjay gave his life to tell me about it. And I have to get her there.

  Kristie was coming out of her shock. She looked around wildly. “Where’s my mother? Is she on this chopper? Where’s my mother?”

  Four

  2035–2041

  Mean sea-level rise above 2010 datum: 800-1800m

  72

  August 2035

  In the chaos of the boarding of Ark Three, Piers put Lily in charge of Grace Gray, Kristie and Manco. They had been assigned numbered cabins on what was called the main deck, three levels down from the bridge. After they were hurried through Chosica’s riots and flooding and rushed over a gangway onto the ship, they were dumped into a kind of foyer on A Deck, which was, Piers said, one level lower than the main deck. Then, having delivered them, Piers handed Lily pass keys and ran off to help with the embarkation.

  Lily was left in an absurd situation. After all the bloodshed and loss of Project City, the abrupt termination of years of her life and her work, suddenly she found herself blundering around a crowded, half-finished cruise liner in search of a staircase. But she held Grace and Kristie firmly by the hand, and Kristie in turn hung onto Manco, and hauled them through the ship’s tangle of corridors.

  The Ark was clamorous, crowded, confusing. The crew in their snug AxysCorp uniforms, mostly young, mostly Quechua, were loading stores, sacks of grain, haunches of butchered animals, anonymous pieces of equipment wrapped in plastic foam. Some of these items were so heavy they formed human chains, passing the loads from one to the next, chains which snaked deep into the ship’s interior. And then there were the passengers, the final evacuees from Project City and the rest of Nathan’s collapsing Andean communities, pushing through the corridors with children and bundles of belongings. Everybody was grimy, sweating, some bloodied from the battles in Cusco and the scramble in Chosica. To add to the confusion dogs and cats were being brought aboard; the dogs’ barking was a clamor. And the ship bucked and rolled, groaning, responding to the sea that was already drowning Chosica and floating the Ark loose from her mooring.

  Grace and Kristie gave Lily no trouble; they just followed where she led. They had both spent the last few years in tents and shacks; they were disoriented too in the guts of this restless steel whale, and that suited Lily fine.

  At last Lily found a staircase, and they clambered up to the main deck. It was quieter here, an area Nathan had reserved for those closest to him; it had the feel of a hotel. When Lily read the designati
ons on the doors it wasn’t hard to figure out the layout. She hurried her charges along the corridors. The doors were a long way apart; these rooms, or suites, must be big. The finishing was better here, the carpets more complete, hidden electric lamps casting a soft uplight on the ceiling. But still the ship surged and creaked; you couldn’t forget your situation, not for a second.

  She came to their rooms, and took out the pass keys Piers had given her. She showed them to Kristie and Grace. “These are just temporary. Later the locks will be configured to your DNA markers and other personal indicators. Look, I’ll be in the room just down the corridor.” She pointed to the door, a room she hadn’t even seen herself yet. She swiped the doors open, and pushed Grace inside her room.“I’ll come see you in a minute.” She pulled the door closed, and swiped the card again to lock it from the outside.

  Then, trying to be gentle, she put her arms around Kristie and her son, and shepherded them into their room. She kicked the door closed behind them, and subtly swiped it locked. The noise was shut out. Suddenly they were in silence, calm. Perhaps the walls were soundproofed.

  They were in a kind of sitting room, wood panels on the walls, soft uplights casting a glow over a plastered ceiling, a carpet thick under her feet. The furniture was modern-looking, a sofa and armchairs before a big wall-mounted TV screen. Connecting doors revealed a bedroom with a big double bed and a smaller child’s cot, and a bathroom where halogen light gleamed from polished tiles. There was a real feeling of luxury, Lily thought, like the homes of the very rich in Cusco. In the bedroom there was a net sack of plastic toys, soldiers and animals, footballs and puzzles, brightly colored stuff probably salvaged from Lima or Arequipa.

  In the middle of all this Manco stood holding his mother’s hand. They still wore their Inca costumes, the colorful wool with the heraldic designs, now splashed with blood and stinking faintly of cordite. They left dusty footprints on the new carpet. They looked utterly alien here, a surreal displacement.

  Lily said,“Piers said there are clothes for you in the cupboards. They thought of everything, I guess. Look, toys.” She tried to smile for the boy’s sake. Manco just looked at her, eyes wide. Lily reminded herself that this poor little boy had just seen his own father gunned down, right before him.

  Kristie still had her small pink backpack. She slipped this off now, rummaged, and drew out her battered old teddy bear. She handed it to Manco, who grabbed it, and stuck his thumb in his mouth.

  Lily asked, “Do you think you’re going to be OK?”

  “OK?” Kristie looked at her blankly. “It’s all gone. My whole life. Everything I built up with Ollantay at Titicaca. Everything we planned and dreamed about. All just cut off. My husband gunned down in front of his child’s eyes.” Absently she placed a hand on Manco’s forehead. “My mother, shot dead too. OK? No, Lily, I don’t think I’m going to be OK.”

  “Look, Kris, it’s just us now. All that’s left of the family. You and me and Manco. We’ve had our differences-”

  Kristie laughed in her face. “Differences! We were on opposite sides in a war!”

  “Not a war of my making.”

  “No. Well, it wouldn’t be, would it? You’ve always been the same, haven’t you, Aunt Lily? Always off to one side. Never taking a stand, never taking responsibility. But always meddling in other people’s lives. You abducted me-”

  “I saved you.”

  “That isn’t how I see it. If you didn’t notice, my side won. Even without Ollantay I could have gone back to his family. They’re Manco’s relatives too. Gone back to my own life.”

  Gone back to drown, Lily thought bleakly. “Kris, we’ll have to talk.”

  “Just go away,” Kristie said dismissively. She was the image of her mother, Amanda in one of her stubborn moments, the set of her lips, the angle of her head, the unyielding eyes.

  Lily’s heart broke. She turned to the door.

  “Lily. One thing.”

  “Yes?”

  “Keep him away from me.”

  “Who?”

  “Piers. I don’t care how big or small Nathan’s damn boat is. Just keep him away.”

  Lily withdrew without saying any more.

  Outside, she paused in the corridor, leaning against a wall. She hadn’t stopped moving since spilling out of the chopper in Chosica. She felt breathless, exhausted, the muscles in her legs trembling, her head stuffy and full, the blood in her ears singing. She was coming crashing down from the exertions of the day, the combat, the shock of the deaths. I’m too old for this, she thought.

  She hadn’t even had time to think of Amanda, of her random, unlucky gunning-down. Her sister was dead, a vivid, complex, different, unfinished life terminated in a second by a scrap of lead. Lily felt as if something had been removed from herself, an amputation. She was going to pay for this later, when she stopped moving at last. But she had one more duty first.

  She knocked on Grace’s door, then let herself in with the swipe card.

  Grace’s suite was similar to Kristie’s. Grace was sitting on an upright chair, perched right on the edge, as if she was afraid of dirtying it. She hadn’t changed; she was as dusty as Kristie. But she had kicked off her boots and put them by the door.

  Cautiously Lily sat down opposite her.“This must be very strange for you, after Walker City.”

  “I haven’t been in a room like this since I was five years old. And I don’t remember much about that.” She was shut in on herself, her hands bunched into fists and pressed into her lap. Her accent was strange, a mixture.

  “There’s no need to be frightened.”

  Grace just looked at her, and Lily wondered how often in her life she had heard such assurances. “I took off my boots,” Grace said.

  “I noticed.”

  “They always made me do that. My father’s family, in the palaces. If I came in from playing, from the gardens… I do remember that.”

  “Well, you can wear your boots as much as you like in here.” Lily gestured. “This place is yours. There are clothes to change into in the cupboards. And if you don’t like them-”

  “Gary passed me to you like he was handing over a parcel.”

  “I’m sure he didn’t mean it like that.”

  “I was with him fifteen years. He just passed me over to you, to this.” She looked at Lily, not angry, wondering.“I know about Barcelona. How you and Gary and my mother were hostages.”

  “Yes. Well, so were you. You were born into it.”

  “I know. You were passed around from one group to another, a token, a trophy. That’s what you’ve done to me today.”

  “We only wanted the best for you,” Lily said desolately.“We’re trying to save you. That’s all we’ve ever wanted. No harm will be done to you here. You’re safe now, Grace. I swear it.”

  But Grace’s gaze became unfocused, as if she was looking inward.

  Lily got up. At the door she looked back. Grace had not moved from her chair, sitting alone in the silent, pointlessly opulent room.

  73

  Lily took a walk around the ship, alone, avoiding people.

  There was a pervasive stink of sawdust, lacquer, paint and fresh carpets. The floors were covered with synthetic rubber or linoleum or rush matting. Some of the walls were painted or paneled with wood, decorated with geometric designs and murals, clumsily executed. But, years after the keel had been laid down halfway up an Andean hillside, the ship was not finished, and as she walked past bare steel walls Lily estimated maybe fifty percent of the internal fitting-out was yet to be done.

  Lily had never been aboard this ship of Nathan’s, the most stupendous of his many projects. Was this great beached vessel really the best use of all the resources he had commandeered? Lily had just avoided the controversy and stayed away. Well, she had been wrong, as she had been wrong about Nathan before. Now she wished she had taken up his offers of tours and training; today it would have been useful.

  With difficulty she found her way back to her
room.

  She stripped off her filthy coveralls and took a shower. The faucet had an option she’d never seen before, for salt water. Figuring that must put less stress on the ship’s systems, she chose it. The water was hot but oddly sharp, and the briny smell made her think of seaside days as a child. She stayed under the shower for a long time. Then she rinsed off the salt with a quick flush of cold fresh water.

  As she dried off, she found she couldn’t bear the thought of facing anybody else, not Piers, not Grace or Kristie, certainly not Nathan. Today had been long enough already. Though it was early, she locked her door.

  She explored the room. It had a little alcove with a kettle and coffee and a miniature microwave oven, almost a tiny kitchen. Unbelievably, there was a mini-bar. She really was in a floating hotel at the end of the world. She wondered how long this kind of thing could possibly last.

  She tried the TV system. It showed a patchy US government news channel, broadcast from Denver. Behind the live feed was an on-demand movie service, including some titles that went back to the 1930s, when this boat’s original was launched. She glanced at King Kong and Things to Come; their monochrome images were digitally enhanced. But she had lost interest in movies when they stopped being made, when every movie ever made became an old movie, set in an unreal world that didn’t matter anymore. She snapped the system off.

  She made a dinner of a chocolate bar and then worked her way through the little bottles of gin from the mini-bar. By the time she fell asleep, she wasn’t sure if she was crying or not.

  The next morning Piers came for her. He said they had an hour to spare before some kind of maiden-voyage ceremony to be hosted by Nathan. “Attendance compulsory, of course.” In the meantime he offered to take her on a tour of the ship. “Welcome to your new home.”