Flood

89

The Ark anchored a few kilometers to the east of the drowned cities of Colorado Springs and Pueblo. It was standard operating procedure to stand so far offshore. This far out, few of the dismal throng of boats, junks and rafts that haunted every shoreline were able to reach the Ark.

A day after the Ark arrived, the conning tower of the New Jersey rose smoothly above the water. A flagpole was thrust into the air, and a brave Stars and Stripes unfurled. An inflatable launch was set in the water and came pushing toward the Ark. The launch was manned by officers and ratings in crisp white uniforms and peaked caps. Lily wasn’t surprised to see Thandie in there, in an orange life jacket.

As the launch neared Nathan stood on the promenade deck with Captain Suarez, and Piers and Lily, Grace and Hammond, all dressed in coveralls as smart as the Ark’s one remaining laundry could turn out. Lily glanced over at Grace. She felt like warning her to take one last look at the Ark, to say goodbye. She knew she must not say anything about what was to come today.

It was three years since Thandie had fished Lily and Manco out of the water in the Gyre, and nearly two years since the New Jersey had made its rendezvous to disembark Lily and Manco back aboard the Ark. Lily had kept in touch with Thandie about the tentative scheme that the two of them had been developing ever since. It was a scheme that none of the others, not Nathan, not even Grace herself, yet knew anything about. But by the end of today, Lily thought with a faint tremor of excitement, if all went well, it might be all over. And she could rest at last.

The launch drew nearer. The Navy crew stared up at Suarez and her men. The sense of challenge in the air was palpable.

“Look at those shirts,” Nathan grumbled.“Christ, they’re ironed.” He sniffed his own armpit, his fleshy nostrils twitching.“This better be worth it, Lily, whatever deal it is you’re cooking up with these arseholes.”

“Oh, it will be,” Lily promised.

“I can’t believe they’re still flying that damn flag. I mean, how many American states have even a scrap of land above the waterline? They ought to cut out all but half a dozen of those stars. And what kind of navy is reduced to one boat?”

“We all cling to the past,” Piers said. Where Nathan, over seventy, was melting with age into a wrinkled, grouchy slob, a kind of Walter Matthau stereotype, Piers, in his mid-sixties, was going the other way, Lily thought, ever more upright, his voice ever more clipped. “If we don’t have the past, what else is there?”

Grace wrinkled her freckled nose. “The future?”

The launch pulled up alongside the Ark, and Nathan led the way down rope ladders to meet it. Captain Suarez and Piers stayed aboard, watching as the others descended. A couple of kids came paddling around the boat, having somehow found their way off the Ark and into the water. The navy crew watched them cautiously. The children looked like otters gliding through the water, aquatic creatures naked and brown, a species entirely distinct from the stiff uniformed humans in the launch.

Nathan and Hammond shook hands with the senior officer aboard. And Lily embraced Thandie. Unlike Lily, who felt her years weighed heavily, Thandie didn’t seem to have aged a day, as if she had reached some kind of plateau.

The crew handed out life jackets, and the launch put about and headed for the shore, off to the west. Lily saw they were to be escorted by a couple more launches from the submarine. She could see why; the inshore waters were black with shipping.

Thandie glanced back at the Ark, at Captain Suarez. “I can’t believe Nathan hired that damn woman. That he made her captain! She tried to sink him out at the Gyre, and she might have managed it if the New Jersey hadn’t shown up.”

“That’s Nathan for you,” Lily said.“When he beats you he assimilates you. I’ve seen him do it again and again.” She glanced at Hammond, thirty-five years old and sullen, sitting stiffly beside Grace. “Even to his own son.”

“Hell of a management strategy, to surround yourself with people who’ve got a grudge against you.”

“It’s kind of Darwinian, I think. You have to be strong to survive being close to him.”

Thandie nodded. “Well, you’ve all survived this far.”

“Yeah. But Nathan’s not going to last forever, and neither is his Ark. Which is why-”

Thandie covered Lily’s hand with her own. “I know. Look, I’ve done my best to set this up. There’s at least a chance it will work, with luck and a bit of goodwill, and imagination on all sides. We’ll just have to see how it plays out…”

They fell silent, for they were approaching the shore.

They came in somewhere over the flooded remains of the town of Pueblo. Lily could already see mountains shouldering above the horizon to the west. The mountains had a bare, brown look, stripped of the ice cover they had had only a few years ago; the snowline was somewhere above their summits now, a wholly theoretical plane in the air.

And as they approached the dry land they passed among the drifting offshore communities. The launches drew closer together for protection, and crewmen stood up, their weapons showing, pistols and nightsticks. There were boats and smacks of all sizes, and many rafts, improvised from the detritus of the drowned towns. One family even sat on what looked like a roadside billboard, its gaudy laminated colors still advertising a hot dog brand. There were very few old people on these vessels, few as old as Lily was, and there was a stink of sewage. As the launch passed, kids came rushing to the edge of the rafts, their hands out. Lily saw the dismal pot-belly signature of malnutrition.

“My God,” Hammond said. “This is a zoo. Can’t we help these people?”

“We don’t have the resources,” Thandie said. “ ‘We’ meaning the Navy, the government. It isn’t possible to help everybody anymore.”

“What a pack of losers,” Nathan snarled. “You got a raft, you sail out to sea and you can catch all the fish you want. Stay this close in to shore and you’ll get nothing but scraps off the land. Pathetic.”

“Not everybody’s as tough as you are, Nathan,” Lily murmured.

“Then the hell with them.”

Lily saw how Hammond gazed at Nathan, his face black with loathing.

The shore, a rocky slope that pushed steeply out of the water, was fringed by barbed wire and concrete blocks, like tank traps. Troops in faded olive-green uniforms patrolled the barrier, carrying clubs that they evidently used to beat back anybody who tried to land. They wore helmets with a Homeland Security logo. Their actions were the ultimate expression of that particular department’s historic function, Lily thought.

Looking along the shore, however, she saw how more troops and civilian workers were moving the barricade back, rebuilding it, retreating from a sea that now rose around a meter every single day.

The launches came in on a roadway that climbed up out of the sea. The troops moved wire and concrete blocks out of the way to let them land, and then hauled the launch out of the water and up onto the tarmac. The party aboard stepped out gingerly. Hammond made a show of helping his wife, but Grace refused him. Lily stood straight on the tilting road surface, and flexed her toes, testing her balance.

Thandie led the way to a small fleet of electric cars, emblazoned with Homeland Security and US Army and Navy logos. The Ark crew got into these vehicles, bemused; Lily couldn’t remember the last time she had been in a car, even a beat-up electric jeep like this. Thandie said they would drive a few kilometers further inland to an old mining town called Cripple Creek, a center of population hereabouts where they would make their rendezvous.

As they drove away from the shore Thandie pointed out the sights to Lily. “That’s Pikes Peak. Cripple Creek is on its southwest face.”

“I haven’t been ashore in a while,” Lily said.“Those rafts, the starving people-I didn’t know things were so bad.”

Thandie grunted. “It could be worse. Sounds like it is worse, in central Asia. In America it’s been a slower tragedy. For all the abuse, the inequality and the corporate ripoff, Americans gave it their best shot. They built a homeland up there on the Great Plains in a decade, a whole new nation, and then in the next decade they had to abandon it again.”

“Like the troopers at the beach. You build your barrier, then a little later your have to build it again further back.”

“Just like that.”

They drove on, climbing higher. Faded signs announced that this was State Highway 67. The road narrowed, becoming a pass through the mountains; some of the views were vertiginous.

Thandie said, “Things are fraying. The government has shifted its resources to a few special projects it’s trying to sustain. Otherwise, before the government liquefies altogether, it is simply trying to help people prepare for the next phase.”

“Rafts.”

“Yes. There’s nothing else to be done.”

They were approaching the town.

Nathan leaned forward from the back. “ ‘Special projects,’ ” he growled. “What kind of projects?”

Lily said, “That’s what we’re here to discuss, Nathan.” She glanced at Thandie.

Thandie shrugged. “It won’t be a secret much longer anyhow. Tell him.”

Lily said to Nathan, “A project like Ark One.”