‘But there are no buildings?’
‘No buildings. Other than culverts, there’s nothing.’
‘It’s terrible,’ I said, ‘it’s so, utterly terrible.’
I pushed away grit and small bits of rubble with my boots and managed to clear enough smooth and relatively flat concrete to sit down on. I could feel the brutal heat of the sun on my back as I finally relaxed. Even though the suit was made of some highly reflective material, the heat still made its way through.
Shading my forehead with my hands, I stared at the ground between my legs and a tiny bit of movement caught my eye. It was an ant, a tiny little ant clambering over some bits of rock. Then I saw another and another.
‘Wow,’ I said, ‘look at that, there’s still things living out here.’
I glanced up at Noshi, who seemed to be very happy standing in the blazing sun just looking at the flat view before us.
‘Sorry, did you say something?’ he said eventually.
‘I was just commenting that there is something living out here. Look. Ants.’
Noshi squatted down and stared at the ground. ‘Oh, yes. Well, there are still insects. They live deep down. Cute little critters. I’ve seen cockroaches too, but nothing that flies.’
‘What about birds?’
‘You mean like birds that fly?’
‘Yes.’
‘No, not outside a culvert, we don’t have any birds.’
‘Wow. What about, like, rabbits and furry things that live underground?’
‘No, nothing, there’s nothing for them to eat,’ said Noshi waving his arms around.
‘So there are no animals or birds anywhere?’
‘The Topeka Culvert has a big animal sanctuary. They’ve got a big laboratory and holding pens, they’ve got many animals there. I’ve never been but I’m sure you could go visit.’
There was another long silence. It was eerie being outside and hearing nothing. Not even a light breeze. The Earth was still and effectively dead.
‘Everything I’ve learned since being here is really hard to deal with,’ I said eventually, almost to myself. Noshi sat down beside me and I turned to face him. By this time I’d gotten used to the fact that 99 per cent of his body was covered with a silvery blue bodysuit and a pair of bug-eyed goggles. He pulled the suit down from his mouth and I could see he was smiling.
‘I’m amazed that you seem so happy,’ I said.
‘I have a good life,’ said Noshi. ‘I don’t know much about what it was like in history, I found history made me sad so I didn’t learn much. Things are getting better, the really big storms don’t come so much, we get more days like this when we can recharge and dry out, when we can mend things and build new things. It’s not so bad.’
‘So you don’t know much about what happened in the past?’ I suggested.
‘We were taught it when I was young, about the smoke and the flames and the destruction, the wars and the cruelty and how stupid everyone was. I don’t really understand why people were so stupid with each other. It seems crazy. It made me sad to think about it so I didn’t pay much heed. Did you like history over in your world?’
‘I think it’s important to know about what people did in the past, you know, so we hopefully won’t repeat the bad stuff but also so we can learn from the good stuff.’
‘I think it may be a bit late for that now,’ said Noshi. He looked at me and smiled, his face, what I could see of it, was so calm and peaceful. I was also wearing a one-piece suit although very different to the dull cream flight suit I’d been wearing. Mine was a kind of translucent blue colour, complete with built-in gloves and tight-fitting hood. There was a backpack which reminded me of some of the clothing tech I’d worn in the Squares of London, you just picked it up and it sort of wrapped itself around you.
We looked like two blue mime artists lost in the desert, but I was very grateful to wear it. Clearly to have been out there in shorts and a T-shirt would have resulted in serious heat stroke and sunburn.
‘When you were on the cloud that picked you up from Vietnam, what was that like?’ I asked. I wanted to find out more about that period of Noshi’s life but had never had the chance to ask before.
‘Cloud Four, it was frightening at first. That’s where I learned a lot about history. No one had explained anything to me before that.’
‘Why was it frightening?’
‘Oh, the early clouds are very simple, you could fall off them if you weren’t careful. Only a small central part is pressurised so they can’t go very high. If they get caught in a storm it can be very bad.’
I nodded as he spoke, getting images of ancient sailing ships on the high seas.
‘And did you meet Ebrikke?’
‘Ahh, yes, Miss Karensdottir, I know her. She is an amazing woman,’ said Noshi. ‘She is also a very angry woman. You know, she is the one with the many enhancements?’
‘Yes, I’ve been told about it. She’s a bit frightening isn’t she?’
‘No, not frightening, she knows a lot about why we live like this, and she is very angry about it. She is right but I always said to her, being angry doesn’t help.’
‘That’s very wise,’ I said with a smile.
‘She didn’t listen. You see, many of the people on the Original Five think she’s right, they agree with everything she says and because I didn’t, they considered me a renegade and dropped me off here. And then when I came here everyone in Chicago Culvert thought I was a renegade, they decided I was one of the Original Five so they don’t trust me. I am just the original Noshi.’
I laughed again. He was so sweet, how could anyone be scared of this person?
Suddenly my vision was lost, everything went a sort of sandy-brown colour as some kind of explosion happened somewhere near. I jumped in shock as I had no idea what it was. As the dust dropped away I saw Noshi once again. Both our suits were covered in brown grit, not sand, it was coarser than sand which meant it dropped off without difficulty. I sat low on the lump of concrete and stared about in terror.
‘What the hell was that?’ I whispered.
‘A twirly tail. It’s nothing to worry about, they happen all the time, I could see it coming.’
Noshi was pointing off into the distance and I couldn’t quite believe what I was seeing. A sort of tall stick of brown dirt skittering across the plane like a mini whirlwind.
‘That’s a twirly tail?’ I said, as it seemed to disperse and fade before my eyes.
‘Yes. It’s the heat, it creates a lot of strange effects like that.’
‘But you saw it coming?’
‘Yes, well, my sensors did, yours would have too, a little yellow mark at the top of your goggles, didn’t you see it?’
‘Um, no I didn’t, I just got a face full of dirt,’ I said. ‘But thanks for telling me.’
I tried to see anything resembling a little yellow mark on my goggles, but I couldn’t see anything.
‘Where is the culvert from here?’ I asked. I had no way of judging my bearings, no idea where I might be on an old map of the world.
Noshi pointed to my left. I turned and looked, right on the horizon was a vague shadow, a kind of smudge.
‘Can you see it?’ he asked.
I nodded. ‘So we’ve come quite a way.’
Noshi glanced at his sleeve, ‘Fourteen kilometres,’ he said. ‘But I’d like to press on, I want you to see the lake.’
‘The lake?’
‘Lake Michigan, there is still some of it left and walking on the lake bed is very easy.’
So we set off again, me always lagging behind as I carefully negotiated my way through the rubble.
After another hour of walking I could make something out on the flat horizon. A different colour, something in the distant h
aze that could have been water.
Soon the ground became oddly smooth and we moved much faster. It was such a relief after the rough ground we’d been walking on.
‘This is the lake bed,’ said Noshi. I could finally keep up with him and we walked on at a good pace.
‘Where we stopped on the hill, that was once downtown Chicago. The culvert is in what would have been Arlington Heights. Have you heard of that?’
‘Yes, I think so,’ I said. ‘It was a suburb of Chicago.’
‘Correct, and this was once Lake Michigan, but the water level has dropped a great deal. Sometimes it comes back, sometimes it’s very empty.’
‘How can the level drop so much?’
Noshi pointed up. ‘The sun dries it out. Sometimes when we get a heavy rainstorm it fills up, but if there’s a strong wind the water is spread over a very wide area. We have sometimes had floods right up to the culvert abutments.’
After a few more minutes of walking we reached the edge of a large body of water. It was flat and smooth, dazzling to look at because of the brutal sun but nonetheless delightful.
‘Wow, Lake Michigan,’ I said. I squatted down at the water’s edge and looked at the muddy liquid lying still and motionless at my feet. ‘Amazing.’
21
It’s not as if I’d never been walking outside on a summer’s day and spotted a distant rain cloud before. It’s a common sight and especially in the jolly old UK back in the day.
When Noshi pointed to a distant cloud on the horizon above the flat wasteland that had once been a vibrant city, it was a rather different experience.
We’d been walking back toward the Chicago Culvert for over two hours. The sun was beginning to cool a little as it approached the western horizon and a very slight breeze had built up, which was a blessed relief as by this time I was utterly exhausted.
‘Is that dangerous?’ I asked, feeling slightly exposed in the middle of the rubble field. Although we could see the ramparts of the Chicago Culvert I could sense there would still be a couple of hours of stumbling to get to safety.
‘No, not dangerous, we don’t want to miss it,’ said Noshi. ‘I had hoped we’d see it, it was one of the reasons I wanted to get you out here today.’
‘Is that, wait, it’s not a storm?’ I stuttered. The cloud on the horizon was huge, a white fluffy upper area catching the light of the sun, the lower parts dark grey and slightly ominous.
‘Cloud Eleven,’ said Noshi, ‘the biggest, ever.’
I tripped over at that point. My own fault – I was staring over at Cloud Eleven to my right and didn’t see a massive lump of rock sticking up out of the ground.
Noshi helped me to my feet.
‘You okay?’ he asked kindly as he held my arms.
‘Yeah, I’m fine.’ I was fine, just feeling slightly awkward at the sudden intimacy.
Noshi glanced at his sleeve. ‘We need to move fast, I’ll steady you and don’t worry about getting too hot, we’ll soon cool down when the cloud is overhead.’
From that point on we almost ran over the endless rubble. Noshi held my left arm with a vice-like grip and pulled me along.
I kept looking around at the approaching storm cloud. It soon filled the northern horizon and for some reason I found it terrifying. Although I knew this was a man-made behemoth and wasn’t designed to crush all that came before it, it was so huge and I felt so vulnerable it was hard not to slip into a bit of a panic.
I also had no idea how it was in the vicinity. I’d heard they were trying to launch it but was sure they had said it was built in China. How had it got to Chicago?
I wanted to ask so many questions but there was no chance, I was out of breath and concentrating hard on not falling over and breaking my leg. Grunting and panting were the only noises coming from my mouth.
As we finally got near the door in the culvert abutments, the cloud was directly overhead and it had become ominously dark. However, my terror started to dissipate as we joined a large crowd of people who had emerged from the culvert entrance and were standing around looking up at the slow-moving monster above us.
Then it started raining.
Not just a bit of drizzle, this was a full-on torrential tropical downpour and it started instantly.
‘Just made it!’ said Noshi. He pulled up his goggles and pulled back the hood of his suit. I did likewise as the cool water pummeling our heads was an incredible relief.
We mingled with the large crowd of people standing around the entrance, everyone staring up, their mouths open in what I took to be a moment of awe. I spotted a teenage girl holding a plant in a small pot. She was laughing as the rain drenched her and the plant.
The grey mass floating maybe 500 metres above our heads was dispensing millions of gallons of water; I saw torrents falling from outlets placed at regular intervals along the underside of the cloud.
‘Don’t worry, it’s all been filtered,’ said Noshi, who by this time was also standing with his mouth open and his tongue out.
‘What?’ I said. ‘It’s waste water?’
‘Sure,’ said Noshi, ‘they rain onto the culvert to top up our tanks.’
I opened my mouth and stuck out my tongue like everyone else. If I was going to get typhoid, malaria, cholera or guinea worm disease I would not be alone and what’s more, the cooling effect of the artificial rain was heaven-sent.
I had been sweltering all day under the brutal sun. I’m sure the body suit had protected me from harmful rays and it certainly kept me cooler than any twenty-first-century clothing I could have worn, but I’d walked for miles and had sweated like a spit roast pig all day.
Standing under a cool shower was a near-divine experience. Noshi leant toward me and touched my left sleeve. Suddenly the water penetrated the suit as if it wasn’t there. I felt completely naked.
‘Oh, wow!’ I shouted, as the water started to cool my worryingly overheated body. ‘This is amazing!’
Somehow the material had instantly transformed from a totally impermeable membrane into something that resembled fine linen. The relief was immense.
As I stood there soaking, I noticed that the cloud above me was now hardly moving, in fact it looked totally motionless. It also seemed to be lower than when I’d first seen the rain start to fall, it looked to be just above the ramparts we were standing beside.
I’d been in the Chicago Culvert for so long, hiding away from the brutal elements, working in the garden with Noshi, eating fairly unpleasant food and sleeping in my pod every night. Time had just slipped by, I was surviving but not really living, not until I escaped into the arid terrain with Noshi and saw the devastation.
It was as if I’d just woken up from a long sleep. I felt invigorated and inquisitive again, I wanted to do stuff, go places, see things and understand what the hell was going on and what was in store for me.
‘Gavin!’
I turned and saw Theda standing just outside the doorway into the culvert. She was holding a kind of umbrella device above her head protecting her from the constant deluge.
‘Come, we must prepare to leave!’
22
Walking along with Noshi and holding hands was a little embarrassing, but saying farewell to this exquisitely beautiful person was, well, let’s just say it was quite unsettling for me.
Not altogether in a bad way. I don’t mean I freaked out or found the experience repugnant, it’s just not something I’d ever done before.
‘I am going to miss you, Gavin,’ said Noshi as he embraced me. That was awkward enough, but when he released me he stared right into my eyes, moved forward and kissed me on the lips. I didn’t resist even though I felt very awkward; I knew Theda was watching us.
To paraphrase Katy Perry’s 2008 song: I kissed a man and I liked it. Well, I kisse
d someone I thought was a man, someone who could have been a man.
‘That’s so sweet,’ said Theda when the kiss finally finished.
I feel uncomfortable just recalling this moment, but it happened and there we are. I may as well admit that I felt stirrings when he kissed me. Who knows what would have happened if Noshi and I had more time together.
‘I want you to keep those boots,’ said Noshi, as I started to take them off. ‘You can’t wear them on the cloud, but maybe afterwards, maybe when you get back to your home time.’
I held the boots up and admired them. They were amazing, very supportive and rugged and even after all the trudging and tripping I’d done in them they looked brand new, unscratched, perfect.
‘Thank you, Noshi,’ I said. I wanted to give him another kiss but I couldn’t quite bring myself to do it.
In the meantime, Theda was rushing about collecting her few belongings. She was almost girlish in her excitement, jumping up and down on the spot screaming, ‘Cloud Eleven, I cannot believe we are going to go to Cloud Eleven!’
Noshi was laughing with her, I was grinning but I didn’t really know why.
I wasn’t so convinced that going back onto a cloud was such a good idea even though I understood it was, theoretically at least, the start of my journey home. It was a difficult choice I’ll grant you, but I had grown used to being safe in the Midwestern ditch that was the Chicago Culvert.
I’d also grown used to spending time with Noshi. We’d worked all over the garden together, he’d shown me the many layers of underground areas and intensive crops growing under incredible light panels powered by, according to Brad, a 50-gigawatt geothermal system which powered half the culvert – the other half coming from solar collectors that could be retracted to protect them from the storms.
Although my exploration of the culvert had been fairly limited, it was clearly an enormous place, which safely housed possibly millions of people. The technology in evidence was anything but crude, it was solid and reliable but not in the least attractive. Everything was highly functional and without embellishment, which made prolonged exposure to this environment rather dreary. There was very little natural light, very little music, there was nothing that resembled theatre, dance or entertainment, well, not that I experienced.
News from the Clouds Page 17