People Park

I

N THE KITCHEN tiles lay the man in Olpert’s stolen khakis who’d said his name was Sam, though that was all he’d said. When Olpert had arrived home he’d discovered this Sam staring into the microwave, his face pressed to it, the oven hummed, a smell of burning plastic and something wet and hot filled the air. Olpert said, Hi? and Sam wheeled to face him. His eyes were strange. They seemed to be bubbling. With horror Olpert realized he’d been cooking them: they hissed and sizzled while the microwave whirred and light streamed from twin holes bored in its door.

What are you doing, said Olpert, who are you, what are you doing?

I’m Sam, said this man in a hoarse, sick-sounding whisper, and fell to the floor.

Olpert unplugged the microwave, it died, and he knelt over Sam. His pupils were pinpricks, the irises glossed with a milky mucous, the whites raw. Olpert dampened a teatowel and pressed it to Sam’s eyes. Again he asked Sam what he’d been doing, and why. But Sam didn’t make a sound, even of pain.

There’s no ferry till morning, said Olpert. I’ll take you to hospital then. Okay?

He pulled the towel away. Sam’s eyes had the look of scorched jelly. You need to keep this on them, said Olpert, and he wrapped the towel around Sam’s head as a blindfold for a party game of bluff. He swept up the twists of plastic that littered the floor, sat in a chair at the kitchen table, and, with Sam sprawled at his feet, waited for the sun to come up.

Hours passed, the tang of burnt flesh and molten plastic faded, Olpert nodded off, awoke to the rattle and scrape of Sam’s breathing, noticed one of Sam’s hands was wrapped in ducktape — had it always been? — and dozed again. Morning arrived: through the blinds light striped the kitchen gold and grey. Sam sat up, turned his face toward the window, said, I can see it, it’s daytime, I can see the light! Though the hitch in his voice suggested dismay.

There’s a seven-o’clock ferry, said Olpert. We can walk out there now and wait for it.

Sam scratched at a scab on his jaw with his ducktaped mitt.

We have to get you to the hospital. Your eyes —

Shhh, said Sam, an ear cocked at the floor. He might be down there okay.

You need to go to hospital. It’s not my business but if you want me to take you I will. If not I’d like to go to sleep. Okay? I’m very tired. Are you all right?

The fridge came on with a hum.

Sam said, Help me, and extended his arms.

Help you, help you what.

Go to my room. Downstairs.

You’re in the basement? That’s your unit?

Olpert pulled Sam to his feet, his face came close, it smelled of broiled meat. Olpert said, You can’t see anything, can you?

I can see it’s light okay, Sam said.

You need to go to the hospital.

But Sam shook his head. No, my room, he said. The work’s not done. Help me.

OLPERT STEPPED OUT the front door with Sam on his arm. The sky was opening up into a clear and pretty morning, yet the lawn was sodden. Olpert’s first thought was that the septic tank had ruptured again. But this was surface water: at the southern edge of the property little waves rippled up from the lake.

The Islet had flooded once before, when Olpert was nine. He and his grandfather and the other residents had been rescued by ferry. The flood itself hadn’t been frightening. Coming ashore the real terror had begun: a fleet of ambulances screaming out of the city, a storm of flashbulbs and jabbing microphones, a gawking crowd from Lakeview Homes as the Islet’s evacuees were lined up like hostages and tallied.

Why are we standing here, said Sam. What’s happening?

Nothing, said Olpert, and looped his arm around Sam’s neck and helped him around back where steps descended to the basement unit.

Opening the door released a damp and earthy aroma, inside this soured into a yoghurty bouquet of mildew and infrequently washed man. Olpert set Sam down on the couch, a plastic approximation of leather, flaking and lumpy, greasy and stained.

You okay?

Sam said nothing. The compress seeped through in twin damp ovals.

Olpert had never been in one of the other residents’ units. He took a moment to appraise it: bags of garbage positioned into hedgerows, a bed neatly, almost institutionally made, junk strewn everywhere — broken toys, kitchen appliances missing key parts (a bladeless blender, a toaster oven without a door), stripped car stereos, a heap of sawdust, lumber, a toolkit, a saw — and a huge armoire against the far wall, the doors boarded up and chained in what resembled braces against invasion.

From inside this armoire, someone knocked.

Hello? called a faint voice — a child’s. Hello?

Sam tensed.

Let me out, whined the voice.

Who’s in there, said Olpert. You’ve got a kid in there.

Sam said nothing, jaw clenched, teeth gritted.

The child knocked again and called for help, its voice as detached as waking-world sounds to the sleeper slipping into dreams.

I don’t know who you’ve got in there, but I’m going to let them out, said Olpert. Okay?

Sam seemed to be listening to something else. Olpert heard it too: a glubbing sound. Water bumped against the basement’s groundlevel windows. From the bottom of the windowframe a lightning-shaped chute jagged down the wallpaper.

First, the kid in the cupboard.

Do you have the combination to this lock?

There’s a way but I don’t know it okay. The work was not letting him out.

Well we’re letting him out now.

Sam pawed the crust on his jaw.

Olpert stepped to the armoire, spoke to it: Don’t worry, I’m here to help.

Who are you? replied the child’s voice.

He didn’t know what to say to this. In the toolkit he found a hammer and pried the boards off, knocked the bolts from the hinges, the door folded open. A fattish boy drifted out from the shadows. He wore a red cap and matching knapsack and he moved with the sludgy gait of a sleepwalker.

The boy sat on the couch. Where is this? he asked Sam. Did I trunk here?

Did you change into a boy, said Sam, or did you take Raven’s place?

Yes, I’m taking Raven’s place! My name is Gip Poole, said the boy. Don’t forget it!

Gip. . Poole? said Olpert. You were onstage? Not Bode?

Poole, said Gip firmly. Gosh, why does everyone — he looked hard at Sam. Hey, I know you. You’re the one with the lock. Why do you have that thing on your eyes? Are you sick?

People are looking for you, said Olpert.

I trunked! said Gip happily. Didn’t I?

Sam shrugged. If you say so okay.

Olpert peeked into the armoire: yellowing newsprint, a splotchy pillow. What make of kidnapping was this? The boy hadn’t rushed to freedom, Sam seemed only perplexed. There was nothing nefarious or sinister between abductor and abductee, side by side on the couch. They looked like strangers waiting for the same latenight train, bewildered that anyone else might be taking it too.

From upstairs came footsteps — the other residents collecting in the kitchen. The floorboards creaked, voices muttered, water trickled in through the window.

Sam, said Olpert, do you know the other people who live here?

What time is it, he said.

Time? I don’t know what time it is. Morning! Time to leave! Your eyes — and you, Gip, what about your parents?

My parents are Kellogg and Pearl. And I have a sister Elsie-Anne but I call her Dorkus and she calls me Stuppa because she couldn’t say Stupid when she was little and it stuck.

From between the couch cushions Sam dug the TV remote. The set burst into static.

I think it’s broken, said Gip.

Overhead the footsteps moved across the floor to the front door, and through the basement window Olpert watched two men and a woman go highstepping across the flooded lawn. The leak was thickening — tributaries into a forked river, all the way to the carpet — while Sam flicked through fizzing, broken channels.

We need to get out of here, Olpert said.

We do, said Gip. We have to go because I’m the one that’s supposed to finish the illustration. Because he chose me. I’m the chosen one. Raven —

Raven? said Sam. He turned off the set. In the TV’s empty face, bowed and grotesque, hovered his and Gip’s reflections. What do you know about Raven?

What do I know? Only everything! Nobody’s a bigger fan than me, mister, got it? Maybe you didn’t see me trunk here? Now can we go, please? I’ve got work to do!

Work? said Sam.

Quiet, both of you, said Olpert.

The water had submerged the basement window. And now Sam’s front door was leaking too. On the other side Olpert imagined a little tiered waterfall cascading down the steps, pooling at the bottom, seeping greedily under the door.

The water’s coming in, it’s flooding, said Olpert. I’ll take you both. We have to go.

AFTER AN ENDLESS tumble through the darkness, the cart stopped with a judder. The Mayor pitched forward, clutched the sides, somehow didn’t fall. The air was black, it seemed both sprawling and to compress around her. Tilted on an incline, she realized someone or something was holding the cart: a foot against the wheels, a hand upon the edge, inches from her own hands. And even before he spoke, she knew who it was.

Greetings, my queen, said the voice — that creamy, sleepy voice.

The Mayor sighed.

Can you see me?

It’s too dark.

Look at me. Try.

I don’t go in for this sort of craziness. I can’t be party to it.

Nor I, Mrs. Mayor, nor I. But please. Focus your eyes. Allow them to acclimate.

She closed her eyes, opened them: and saw less than when they had been closed.

And now? said Raven.

Is this where you’ve been hiding? A hole in the ground?

Is that where we are? A hole? It seems to me more complicated than that. But what do I know, this is your town —

City. This is a city. My city.

Pardon me, of course. Your city, your splendid metropolis, your great megalopolis. I trust you’re aware what comes next.

Feeling herself easing downward again she grabbed the sides of the cart. The movement halted. Raven rocked her softly, back and forth, like a babe in its cradle.

What are you doing, she said. What have you done.

Done?

Done!

Ah. To tell you the truth, I thought this would be amusing. I didn’t know that it would be — that it would be, well. .

Well what. A disaster?

You think it’s that? May I ask, Mrs. Mayor, what you think existed here before us?

Where does it go, this tunnel.

Oh, don’t worry. For certain, we are totally alone.

Yes, but where are we. Where is here.

Such a question. Have you considered that perhaps this place does not exist even now. Perhaps it never has? Perhaps we never have.

I exist! Aren’t you talking to me?

Yes! Such sagacity, such simple truth. You exist in your words, and I in mine.

The rocking stopped. The stillness and darkness were absolute. Everything pitched outward into oblivion. When Raven spoke next it was in a whisper: We do indeed exist, all alone down here, wherever we are. We’re unique in that, Mrs. Mayor — so dreadfully unique, you and I.

DEBBIE WOKE to cricked pain through her body, a stiff neck, her left leg numb from foot to buttock. All night she’d bounced from dreams into waking panic. She unfolded herself from the beanbag chair and on creaking limbs hobbled to the Room’s rear window and parted the curtains.

Dawn was breaking over the lake. But something was wrong. It took a moment: the breakwater was submerged, waves swept all the way to shore. The water, level with the piers’ edges, was starting to trickle over. From below came a pocking, suctiony sound — surf slopped up against the building’s underside.

She found the Hand sleeping on the floor of her office.

Hey, said Debbie from the doorway, we’ve got to get out of here. There’s flooding.

The girl stretched, yawned, blinked, so innocent and girlish that Debbie looked away with a flash of guilt — it was too cute, nothing she was meant to see, this gentle kittenlike awakening before that hard mask came growling down.

The door slammed: Debbie was left staring at a poster about how to build community. She moved to the main room, where the twins slept head to toe on the couch. Their eyes fluttered open and regarded Debbie, hovering over them, with suspicion.

We have to go, she said. The lake’s flooding.

The office door opened, the Hand padded to the bathroom. A swishing sound — puddles splashed into the Room. She followed behind, kicking water in front of her.

See? It’s flooding, Debbie repeated. We should leave. I want to help you.

With a snort the Hand turned to her friends. You hear that? She’s going to help us. How? Teach us to glue macaroni to a paper plate?

Debbie glanced at the gallery wall, at all that macaroni glued to all those plates.

No, said the Hand. We don’t need help. Let’s go.

She led the twins to the door. But she couldn’t figure out how to unlock it, so Debbie stepped in, the Hand stood by stiffly as she flipped the catch. None of the three youngsters acknowledged Debbie on their way out — but on the sidewalk they stopped short: a Citywagon idled in front of Crupper’s store. A Helper got out, leaned on the roof of the car, called, These kids with you?

Me? said Debbie.

Yeah, they yours? We were getting ready to grab them.

What do you mean, grab them?

We’re doing sweeps. There’ve been. . incidents. So we’re scooping anyone suspicious — nonresidents, whoever, just taking people to the Galleria to ask them some questions.

What sort of incidents? Debbie stepped boldly in front of the Hand and the twins, hands on hips. You don’t have anything better to do?

The guy’s tone remained lethargic: If they’re with you, don’t worry about it. Just doing what we’re told. Then his expression changed. What about you, you local?

Me? said Debbie. She shrank a little, then gestured to the Room: I work here.

Sure. But are you from here.

Of course I’m fuggin from here, said Debbie.

Oh. Well make sure you have your papers ready, we’ll be doing sweeps all day. And we’re still working on the power out, but the trains’ll be up again soon. Good lookin out! He saluted, got in the car, and drove off.

Debbie turned to the Hand. Well, she said, maybe we can help each other after all?

The Hand stared back. Her eyes were savage. From the back of her throat came a gravelly sound, rising up — and she spat. A fat wet glob smacked Debbie in the chest and clung there like a mollusc. Debbie’s arms floated down to her sides, a faint whimper sounded between her lips. One of the twins laughed. The Hand shook her head, gestured to her two friends, and they moved off up F Street at a jog, down an alley, and Debbie was left listening to the swish and plop of waves slapping underneath the Room.

II

FTER PASSING through the phalanx of Helpers that ringed the Galleria, Kellogg, Pearl, and Elsie-Anne found the end of the surnames N — S queue at the south entrance. Noticing the other legal guardians — some alone, some in anxious-looking pairs — eyeing Elsie-Anne covetously, perhaps even in a predatory, kidnappy sort of way, Kellogg sandwiched their daughter tightly between him and Pearl. Watch out now, he whispered.

From their eyes drooped purple sacks, the skins of spoilt plums. As had many of these parents, the Pooles had spent all night dealing with Residents’ Control before being directed downtown just before dawn. For reasons unexplained, a number of young people and nonresidents had been rounded up and detained in the Galleria’s upper floors. There was a chance, the Pooles were told, they’d find their son among them.

I have to pee, said Elsie-Anne.

Soon as we’ve found your brother, Annie, said Kellogg. He’s got to be here.

Real bad, Dad.

This is no one’s fault, okay? Sometimes stuff just happens.

Pearl blew her nose, tucked the tissue into her sleeve. The line edged forward, the Pooles took a half step into the mall.

Day was breaking over the city. Honey-coloured blades of light sliced between the skyscrapers, the streets flushed pink, the pigeons were up and clucking. More people joined the line. The Pooles moved into the Galleria, the doors closed, and everything outside was gone.

Here we go, said Kellogg. Closer and closer. Gip’s going to be so happy to see us!

The mall smelled of nothing. The air was stagnant, the lighting jaundiced. The N — S queue snaked in a slow trudge by Citysports and Bargain Zoom and Horizon Systems and other shops of various merchandise and services, Kellogg whistling tunelessly and Pearl groggy and distant while Elsie-Anne cupped her crotch.

From each quadrant of the mall four such queues (A — G on the north side, H — M to the east, T — Z west) converged in the Galleria’s foodcourt, where a glass ceiling admitted a crosshatched quadrilateral of daylight. Here at four desks sat Helpers, each with a Residents’ Control registry open before him. By the time the Pooles were a dozen spots from the N — S desk, the morning sun gleamed merrily down into the mall and Elsie-Anne had buckled into a pelvic-focused hunch, knees locked, purse dangling off one shoulder, head bobbing to some inaudible, mictural rhythm.

From the middle of the foodcourt, escalators cycled in opposing ellipses, hypnotic to watch. Pearl watched. The foodcourt was a grid of empty tables and chairs. The unattended restaurants wore slatted masks. Security cameras shot the scene from domed bulbs in the ceiling. No one was eating. No one was shopping. The Galleria, normally packed on Super Saver Sundays, had been repurposed into what some agitated parents had started calling the Kiddie Fuggin Jail.

With each set of legal guardians or worried spouses moving to the front of the line to ask after their child or partner the Pooles inched closer. After rummaging through his ledger the N — S clerk might say, Yes, we’ve got him/her, at which point two Helpers took off up the escalator and returned minutes later with an exhausted-looking detainee (sometimes two, even three), who were reunited with their family and ushered from the mall — where? Somewhere, with purpose.

Occasionally the reply was: No, sorry, maybe try again later. At this the searchers would either slink away defeated, or stand unmoving with a look of incredulity, or fly into a rage that prompted NFLM interventions: the upset party was escorted down the hall to a special office from which they’d emerge ten minutes later looking not unlike reprimanded children themselves.

Dad, said Elsie-Anne, tugging on Kellogg’s sleeve, I really have to pee.

Upstairs, said Kellogg, that’s where Gip’ll be. See, Pearly?

From the second-floor mezzanine a pair of Helpers observed the proceedings below.

Check it out, guys, we’re moving again. Only one family before us!

A fax machine propped beside the desk came to life, a sheet of paper curled out, lifted, and flapped down upon a pile of ignored memos. A flustered pair of men stormed past, one muttered, Well where the fug else do you think she’d be then? and the clerk called, Next, and the Pooles were up.

Hiya, said Kellogg, and in his friendliest voice explained who they were looking for.

The Helper leafing through the registry paused, inspected Kellogg, scrubbed at his moustache with a knuckle. Come again? You mean the kid who was onstage?

That’s our boy! As you can probably imagine we can’t wait to see him. Quite a star, must have been flummoxed by all the attention. .

The clerk — Reed, said his nametag — eyed Kellogg, forehead scrunched into a show of deliberation. Hang on, he said, and chair-rolled over to a man in an identical moustache kicking unread faxes into a pile. He whispered in this person’s ear, pointed at Kellogg, and the second man waved the Pooles around the desk.

See, Pearly, said Kellogg. These people are reasonable.

Where are your permits? said the second helper — Walters.

See, that’s the problem, he’s got them, said Kellogg. My son, I mean. They’re in his knapsack. Which he might still have! But if he’s here —

Dad? whined Elsie-Anne, and Kellogg told her, Shush.

This your daughter?

Gip Poole’s our son, Kellogg said. He’s the one we’re looking for. But you might have him as Bode. Or Boole, was it, Pearly?

Goode, said Pearl, I think.

What are you talking about, said Walters, crossing his arms.

Reed crossed his arms too.

You guys messed up the permits, said Pearl, and Kellogg leapt in: An easy mistake!

Walters closed the registry. We don’t have him. If we did, we’d know.

We’re also looking for him, said Reed. Your son.

Kellogg cocked his head. Oh?

I have to pee, said Elsie-Anne. Really bad.

You always have to pee, said Kellogg. She always has to pee, he told the Helpers.

Where do you live? said Walters.

They’re not residents, confirmed Reed.

My wife is! Kellogg nudged Pearl. Tell them.

I was born here, she said.

Walters nodded. And your husband? And your child?

We live out of town now.

We’re making arrangements, said Walters, for nonresidents to leave.

But our son, said Kellogg, is still here. We can’t leave!

Well your wife can stay, said Reed. But you and your daughter, without permits —

Do I have to stay? said Pearl.

Of course, said Walters, grinning nicotine-stained teeth. You’re a resident.

Or were, said Reed. And I’d hardly say have to!

Kellogg swatted his daughter’s hand away. Annie, quit tugging my sleeve, okay? We’ll take you to the bathroom in a minute. Can’t you talk to Familiar? How’s he doing?

He’s gone, said Elsie-Anne, for now. Dad, I have to pee.

Oh, said Kellogg. Did Familiar go back to Viperville?

Elsie-Anne’s face contorted, panicked and pained.

Sir, said Reed, we can’t help you.

Our son needs his meds, said Kellogg weakly.

What kind of meds?

The type that without them he’ll definitely have an Episode!

From Elsie-Anne: a feeble whinny. Then she froze. Wetness bloomed upon the front of her dress. Her expression was conflicted: horror, shame, relief. The stain spread, pee streamed down her legs and puddled around her shoes. No one moved — not her parents, not the Helpers — and the sound was gentle, like distant windchimes, the odour sharp and sour amid the non-smell of the airconditioned mall.

GREGORY ETERNITY and Isabella are busy assembling an army — a lot of work! — from the roof of the Galleria. The streets below are full of people cheering and putting their weapons in the air like they don’t care about anything, except fighting for everything they believe in probably.

Something’s coming, bawls Gregory Eternity in a voice that echoes the fire burning inside the spirit of every man, woman, child, and cat in the whole city.

Something alien, supplements Isabella additionally. Something that thinks it’s going to take our city!

Boo, boos the crowd.

Are you with me? To stop it? inquisitively howls Gregory Eternity.

Also me, adds Isabella moreover, thrusting her gun outward in a display of it.

Yeah! enthusiastically shrieks the crowd, drunk with the taste of the attackers’ blood in their collective, gaping, and toothy mouth. And though they can only imagine how this blood might taste, the taste is quite visceral, as though they’ve once before torn open some invader’s throat to feast on the clots of putrid gore that froth forth like the carbonated eruptions from a thousand shaken-up bottles of cider.

It’s really obvious that the people are willing to do anything they can to stop the evil force from taking away everything they believe in. Even risk their lives. Even kill. That is just how much the city means to them.

That is. How much. It means.

Are we all in together now? questioningly bellow Gregory Eternity and Isabella in stereophonic dual tonality.

Yeah, deafeningly responds the crowd in kind.

Then to the shores, thunders Gregory Eternity, for that is where we shall meet them!

OLPERT COULD NOT recall the last time he’d held hands with anyone, let alone a grown man, let alone a strange boy. A classmate’s maybe, buddied up on a fieldtrip as a kid. Had his grandfather ever held his hand? No, it seemed impossible — in fact up sprung a memory of trying to take the old man’s hand in the crowd flooding out of a Maroons game. He’d recoiled and growled, What are we, going steady?

Thirty-some years later, here Olpert was hand in hand with Gip and Sam wading across the Islet. The water had quickly reached halfway up the ground floor of every permanent residence and summerhome and cottage and cabin and beach house. In the deepest spots Olpert wrapped an arm around Gip’s waist and heaved him out of the water, placidly the boy allowed himself to be moved. From the ticket booth to the ferrydock arched a little bridge, now each end disappeared into lakewater, the docks were submerged. Olpert led Sam and Gip up to the walkway’s midpoint, let go of their hands, and said, We’re okay, it’s dry here, we’ll just wait for the ferry across.

We’ll wait here, said Sam. The towel frothed over his eyes, and from the breastpocket of his stolen NFLM shirt protruded the TV remote.

Olpert looked across the Cove: islandside the Ferryport was empty, no one lined up, there was no ferry in sight. Bay Junction seemed closed. Beneath the walkway flowed a river, household items floated past: a wicker trashcan, an empty pack of Redapples, some sort of manuscript, all those pages ant-trailed with type, plastic bags by the dozens — most from Bargain Zoom.

Hey, look, said Gip, pointing. People.

Around the Islet’s eastern promontory appeared a strange convoy of watercraft. Roped to a central rowboat heaped with boxes and furniture were four canoes, two paddlers in each, a passenger hunkered amidships. Bongos harmonized each paddlestroke as the flotilla progressed into Perint’s Cove.

Hello, hello! Olpert shouted. Help, help!

Gip echoed him: Hello, help!

The southerly wind caught and swept their voices back over the Islet. None of the canoeists broke rhythm, the drums kept time. Shrill clear instructions came across the water: Stay together, everyone stay together!

The woman in the yellow bandana sterned the lead boat. In the bow, digging into the water as though trying to tunnel out the other side, was her grizzly partner. Between them someone’s child knocked bongos. In another boat were the two men and the woman who’d fled the roominghouse that morning. Twelve people in all: the entire Islet community, save Olpert and Sam.

Face pointed toward the Cove, Sam was shouting, his words garbled.

Save us please, called Gip, his voice reedy as a blade of grass and just as effortlessly rebuffed by the wind.

They can’t hear you, said Olpert.

A pillow floated past.

Across Perint’s Cove the silver miracle of the city gleamed against a cerulean backdrop of sky. The drums were fading. A seagull screeched by overhead, two sharp cries of despair or mockery, and swooped out over the lake.

What do we do? said Gip. I’ve got to get back, I told you. I’m the one!

Sam said, I don’t know how to swim okay.

Olpert stared at all that water. I don’t know if I know how to swim.

Sam said, We need a boat.

Do you have a boat? Where can we find a boat?

I could build a boat.

What? You could?

If there was time.

Olpert looked back over the Islet. All that remained were treetops and the second storeys of the taller houses. He imagined the roominghouse on the far shore, waves nudging the upstairs windows, begging to be let in. Maybe even pouring in.

Oh no, he said. Jessica.

Jessica? said Gip.

She’s trapped. We’ve abandoned her. I —

Olpert pictured her terrarium churned to mud, a little mole-nose valiantly sniffing for air — and water smothering it. He reached for the bridge’s railing for support. And, steadied, discovered something bright and brave shining through his despair. It took him a moment to identify: courage.

I have to rescue her, said Olpert.

You can’t leave me! wailed Gip. I have to get over there and finish Raven’s illustration because I’m the one, he told me so.

But Olpert was already wading back into the water. I’ll be two minutes, he said, just wait here. And, in a voice he hoped was not ridiculous, but the brassy baritone of a hero, he added, And then I’ll take us across!

LET ME GO, said the Mayor.

You’re certain? If that’s what you wish, Mrs. Mayor, of course, I’m happy to set you loose. You’re aware what’s below, I assume?

Wait.

Yes?

Where does it end.

This? Oh, you know. I’m not sure it exactly ends. Though I can’t say for sure.

What does that mean. Can you say something that’s an actual thing, please. Everything’s just words with you.

Words are things. Words aren’t things?

Answer my question: if you let me go what will happen.

Oh, I don’t know. Who can say? Doesn’t what happens just happen?

The Mayor was silent. Raven rocked her gently, almost lovingly — with a hand? a foot? Or might this just be some telekinetic capacity he had? With a tremor of horror, she wondered if, beyond a voice, he was even there at all.

Ventriloquist, spectre — whatever he might be, he was speaking again: It’s hard enough to just be somebody, let alone try to make everyone else a little bit more of themselves. What do people want? How can one know when they don’t even know?

What are you talking about. I want my body back. I want to get out of here. I didn’t want any of this. I just wanted everyone to have a nice weekend. I even thought it might be fun. Make it normal. You need to fix what you’ve done. That’s what I want!

What’s normal? Isn’t normal what I’ve been trying to show you? And by normal I mean the truth — the normal, quiet truth beneath the clatter of your busy city lives. Though did I achieve such truth this time? I have my doubts. I can’t judge it myself, as I’m within it, you see? Who knows, I say what I do aren’t illusions, but maybe they are. Maybe they’re just lies. Don’t truths which no longer entertain become lies?

You’ve put an entire city in chaos. That’s what I think. That’s the truth.

Surely it is the acts of people that destroy them? At most I merely provide the means.

This is pointless.

I wonder, the people — are they at least afraid? Are they truly afraid?

You need to put right what you’ve done.

No. Mrs. Mayor, I shan’t. Not yet. It’s so delightful down here, away from it all, and it’s good to chat with you. I’m in no hurry to go anywhere. Are you? To what?

The Mayor sighed.

Ah, life, Raven said.

What will happen if you let me go.

I told you, he said, I never know. I just don’t know.

III

N BLACKACRES STATION sat train 2306. The platform was empty, the movator immobile, the escalator — stairs. The station held the air with the sterile expectation of an empty operating room. Debbie ducked inside the first car, where, in the gloom at the far end, were that same mother and son, food wrappers and empty drink containers heaped at their feet.

She was just in time: the lights came on, the train began to hum, the woman reclined and drew the boy’s head into her lap. You see, Rupe? she said softly. Here we go.

As the train wobbled out of Blackacres Station Debbie moved wide-legged, as though wading, down the car. Yet when she reached the mother and son she had nothing for them, nothing to say. Instead it was the PA that spoke: Next stop, Upper Olde Towne. Upper Olde Towne Station, next stop.

Debbie sat. The train moved at a deliberate, measured speed. Sixty feet below, the blight of Blackacres yielded to the gentrifications of Upper Olde Towne. UOT Station slipped by: the tarped platform, wires in capillary bundles bursting from holes in stripped cement walls, a sense of desertion, and then they were through and the PA claimed Knock Street Station would be next.

A toxic odour rose up as they lumbered over Lowell Canal, Debbie gagged. The woman across the aisle seemed unperturbed, just stroked her son’s face, the same hand that had smacked the same cheek only the day before, now so loving and gentle. Each caress made Debbie feel lonely and extraneous. She looked away.

On the streets below appeared the Citywagon Depot, the Temple, and IFC. The previous night’s events felt so profoundly in the past — such revelations! Debbie thought of the snitches Havoc and Tragedy and laughed bitterly to herself. Though what might they have done with Pop? Possible NFLM vendettas wheeled in her mind, and with them came guilt — she had to do something. But the train moved through Knock Street Station and out the other side.

We’re not stopping, said Debbie. I need to get off.

Next stop, Budai Beach, said the PA — it sounded chiding now, somehow. Budai Beach Station, next stop.

How absurd, thought Debbie, to imagine the prerecorded announcements were mocking her. Yet, really, was it? Though the ICTS claimed full automation, things had to be somehow run by people: someone had once spoken these words, as someone now decreed a straight shot through — to where? She pictured a phantom behind a vast, flashing circuitboard, taunting them with each station stop, steadily hauling them in.

Out in Kidd’s Harbour flashed squares of silver: the roofs of Citywagons in the Budai Depot. The flooding spilled over Lakeside Drive to the base of the bluffs. Debbie turned to share this with her co-passengers, but they seemed to exist in a separate reality, the woman stroked her son’s face, eyes vacant and forlorn.

The train entered Budai Beach Station, a bubble of concrete and glass, hawk decals deterred the kamikaze of muddled gulls off the lake. Again the train slid through. 72 Steps Station, they were told, would allegedly be next.

The woman was asking her something.

Sorry? Debbie said.

I asked where you’re going.

Oh.

Downtown to look for someone too?

I’m — yes.

Who?

Someone, she said, but her throat was tight and the word came out strained.

Us too, said the woman, and went back to petting her son.

The tracks skirted the bluffs into Mount Mustela, where hundreds of people crowded the boulevard. As the PA announced 72 Steps Station a banner unfurled from Bookland’s roof: FINISH THE TRICK! Placards were lofted — WHERE’S RAVEN? and GIVE US BACK OUR BRIDGE. And a chant began, less reverent now than incantatory: Ra-ven, Ra-ven, Ra-ven.

A protest. Debbie smiled ruefully and thought, So here’s what it takes.

We’re stopping, said the woman.

The train heaved as it braked, the lights went out, the engines died. And sat unmoving in the station, while down on the street khaki uniforms infiltrated the crowd — Helpers handing out sparklers and streamers to help soften people’s ire into cheer.

They’re trying to make it a parade, said Debbie.

That’s nice, said the woman. Hear that, Rupe? That’ll be nice for everyone, she said.

AROUND ANOTHER corner of the Galleria’s back corridors Pearl crept, into the service elevator, she pressed the TWO button, winced as the doors banged closed.

The elevator seemed to conspire against subterfuge, grating and groaning as it cranked its way up. Yet no Helpers were waiting for her on the second floor. The hallway was identical to the one downstairs: a storeroom of cardboard, staff washrooms, the same lifeless quiet all the way to double doors with windows laced with wire. Lit with blue emergency halogens, the mall’s upper level had the ambience of a bunker or submarine. The shops were shuttered and dark.

She chanced cracking the door. Clothing racks and shelving blockaded the mouth of the northern quadrant, guarded by a single Helper, arms crossed and staring into the middle distance with a look of dutiful vacancy. Two men rose out of the foodcourt on the escalator. Good lookin outs were traded, the watchman ushered his comrades past, resumed his post.

A scream pierced the air — followed by chuckling, then silence.

Was it Gip? No, the voice had sounded older, thicker. Pearl held her breath, listened. The escalator droned and ticked. Her throat felt dry, her nose ran, her eyes itched — Kellogg had packed the antihistamines in Gip’s knapsack, wherever it might be. .

The lookout adjusted himself, resumed his stoic watch. Pearl considered various strategies of how to make her approach: with authority — They told me to come up here myself and find my son — or cutely, with fluttering eyelashes, or a sad trudge that suggested distress, she’d beg, Help me, please, my son. Or she could just dash at him shrieking, knock him down, and hurdle the barricade. .

Something settled on her shoulder: a hand.

It belonged to the Residents’ Control guy, Reed, from downstairs, offering his best expression of rebuke, halfway between a hammy scowl and pained constipation. Behind him Kellogg stood looking sheepish with Elsie-Anne. The pee-soaked dress discarded, Pearl had bundled her daughter in Kellogg’s Islandwear sweatshirt, toga-style.

Hi, Pearly, said Kellogg. He found us hiding in the garbage room.

You can’t be up here, said Reed.

Pearl sighed. So now what?

Well, said Kellogg. He says Annie and I have to go home.

All nonresidents are being — Reed struggled for the right word — extradited.

But not me, said Pearl.

No, you’re from here. Reed brightened. Which means you can go watch the movie!

ORGIES AREN’T PLANNED. Everyone knows they just happen, as with the endless turn of the seasons or getting pooped on by a bird. So when the orgy on the city streets begins it’s a surprise to Gregory Eternity, if he’s honest with himself he kind of suspected something like this might happen, especially with bloodlust as thick in the air as homicidal pollen. But it isn’t just bloodlust. It’s sexlust too, apparently.

While people on the street begin to seductively disrobe, Isabella turns to Gregory Eternity, standing beside her on the roof of the Galleria, and demandingly queries, Do we have time for this?

A light shines in Gregory Eternity’s eyes not unlike the sort of light that might shine on a porch if you are inside waiting for someone to come home to have sex with them. Why don’t you tell me, he slurs suggestively, and then comes at Isabella with his tongue protruding beneath his moustaches.

She takes him, right there on the roof. First she’s on top, then underneath, then they’re doing it in a sideways fashion with their limbs sticking out like the blades of a multipurpose knife splayed for cleaning in the dishwasher. Below the streets roil with body fluids and desire. People incorporate all the positions they know, and when those run out they make up new ones: Up-from-Under, Dirty Squab, the Bonnet & the Bee.

Where are the children?

Anyway, more urgently the attackers are steadily and stealthily approaching in their craft from the lake, so at some point Gregory Eternity dismounts and screams, Okay, everybody finish up, and he starts counting and at, One hundred! everyone climaxes at the same time. It’s indubitably the most beautiful moment many people in attendance have ever seen or heard or smelled or in which they’ve partaken, even former members of the glory-days-era Lady Y’s, Back-2-Back Champs.

Okay, say Gregory Eternity and Isabella, together and all at once. Now let’s go show these invaders what tough meat we’re made of.

WITH JESSICA RESCUED and tucked inside a Y’s cap pulled down to his ears, in the roominghouse’s flooded yard Olpert discovered the armoire’s doors bumping against a tree. He pulled the boards off, split them in two halves, and, repressing pained memories of forced swimming lessons, lay upon the less damaged side and tried a few flutterkicks: the door held.

Upon this dubious watercraft he paddled back toward the ferryport. Jessica’s initial panicked scrabble had subsided, all he could feel was the rapid stammer of a heartbeat against his forehead. It’s okay, Jess, he whispered as he swam, pushing off on ground gone mucky and soft.

This was not what a hero looked like: a skinny man in too-big clothes and a rodent tiara drifting atop cheap timber. And what hero would abandon a corpse, the one-eyed teen, had Crocker Pond melted, had he gone down? The sunlight soaked the water’s dark surface in an oily sheen. He imagined it sucking him under, he could taste the tar.

He’d left Gip with the strange man, Olpert’s housemate, was he a kidnapper? A terrible, dangerous mistake: it reminded him of a riddle from his childhood, how to cross a river with a boat that fit two and not three among a falcon, chickadee, and sack of seed, the goal was to have nothing eaten, he’d been first in his class to solve it, Katie Sharpe had been impressed — where now were those smarts? He’d spent too much time browsing magazines and living indoors and going pale, everything about him had paled.

But here he was at the Ferryport, and Sam and Gip were waiting. The water made suckling noises against the walkway’s underside. The boy waved.

He keeps saying he has to finish his work, Gip said, but I’m the one. Raven chose me.

Great, said Olpert. Listen, Sam, I’ve got the door from your wardrobe, we’ll use it as a raft to get across the Cove. We’ll just hold on and kick. And, Gip, you’ll ride it, okay?

But I’m the one, right? said Gip. Can you tell him?

Sure, said Olpert. Sam, he’s the one.

I just want to finish the work okay, said Sam, and patted the TV remote in his pocket.

Okay, said Olpert, and slid into the water.

Perint’s Cove was the colour of steel. Across it the Islet flotilla reached Lakeview Campground, the lake so high they boated right into the trees.

I can’t really swim, said Gip.

You don’t need to swim, you’re going on this raft.

That’s not a raft. It’s a door.

It used to be a door. Now it’s a raft.

Olpert stood nipple-deep in the flood. He realized his Citypass lanyard had come off at some point and disappeared into all that water. Past him flowed debris, each cluster telling a little story. Here was a ruined party: balloons, streamers, a slice of cake topping a paper plate — and plastic bags by the dozens.

Gip, said Olpert, climb down, get on the door.

The boy swung over the railing and dangled a hesitant foot. Just step down, Olpert said, steadying the door, I’m right here. Gip said, Sure? and Olpert said, Sure, and the boy dropped, landed on his knees on the door, which wobbled but didn’t tip, then flattened onto his stomach, knapsack riding his back. I’m on it, he said.

Sam, come down, said Olpert. This is the only way across. If you stay you’ll drown.

I can’t swim, he said.

It’s not swimming, you just have to kick.

Sam picked at his facial wound, sniffed what smeared his ducktaped fingers. A pause. And with a shrug folded over the railing and flopped into the water below. The door nearly capsized, Gip clung to its edges, and when Sam surfaced his blindfold had gone askew.

Olpert pulled the wet rag over those dead pink eyes and placed Sam’s hand on the door’s handle. Next he whisked a Bargain Zoom bag through the air, tied it swiftly: an inflated bladder. Hold this with your other hand, he said, passing it to Sam, then made a similar float for himself and moved to the door’s opposite side.

We’re going to cross now, said Olpert. Sam, kick. Gip, lie there and hold on. Okay?

The current carried them briskly into the Cove. Gip sprawled facedown, white-knuckling the door’s edges, while Sam and Olpert paddled. The temperature of the water plummeted. Sam, yelled Olpert, keep kicking! We’ll stay warm if we keep moving. And though with every swell and dip the raft pitched and icy water washed over the sides, the waves felt to Olpert like hands, passing them shoreward all the way to the city.

IV

HE FATHER-DAUGHTER Poole duo was escorted first to Lakeside Campground to gather their luggage (the minivan could be collected, they were told, upon the bridge’s. . rematerialization), then down into People Park. The previous day’s snowfall had melted into a brown gravy, Kellogg and Elsie-Anne found a dry knoll behind the gazebo where they sat upon their bags. But as more evacuees arrived they were forced to stand, penned in by Helpers stalking the periphery like bored shepherds.

A man with a camera asked to take Kellogg and Elsie-Anne’s picture, they complied, he furnished a business card: Ruben Martinez, Photographer. He’d come here solo, he told them — Kellogg pulled his daughter a little closer — and had been staying at the Grand Saloon until getting tossed that morning. Two of those guys in khaki came to my room and were all, You’re going home, and I was all, But I’ve paid for tonight, and they were all, All nonresidents are going home, get your stuff together, and that was it, and here I am, said Martinez brightly, as though being interviewed for TV.

My son went missing, my wife’s looking for him, Kellogg said, and held up his wedding band as some sort of proof.

Martinez nodded. I mean, as far as a refund goes I don’t really care. I can afford it. But this is supposed to be my vacation, know what I mean? Those permits were a hassle!

This was supposed to be our vacation too, said Kellogg. And then my kid goes missing! I mean, he’s got to be somewhere, right? My wife’s from here, she’ll find him. I’m not worried about it. Though we did have to abandon our car too. .

Thing is I can’t even say for sure if they credited my account. I mean, not that I care. Money’s just paper. But it’s annoying, know what I mean?

Yeah, said Kellogg, fanning himself. Getting hot out here, huh?

I got some great snaps on Friday night. Pretty spectacular, that stuff with the bridge.

That was my son up there.

Where?

Onstage. With Raven? Gip Poole, our little guy! He’s the one missing though.

So was he in on it?

No, no.

But you said he disappeared too.

What?

Like the magician, like the bridge.

Wait. A bead of sweat scurried down Kellogg’s spine. No, wait.

From the gazebo came a siren: a Helper stood atop Raven’s trunk with a megaphone. You’re all going home soon, he shouted, the amplification tinny and weird. We’ve got water for everyone, we — his words were lost in a honk of feedback.

Six people clapped wanly.

The morning’s placid obedience was souring, the air prickled and itched.

Martinez knelt to shoot a pair of Helpers, was bumped from behind mid-photo, and, teeth bared, wheeled at his aggressor — a young mum wearing a baby in a sling. To Kellogg he said, Soon as people get a little stressed they start acting like animals. Though what’s the order here? There’s no line! When it’s time to leave, who goes first?

Kellogg didn’t know.

Helpers moved through the crowd handing out bottled water. Kellogg took two and said, Hiya, any idea what’s going on? You’ll be going home soon, recited the Helper, and turned away. Kellogg gave Elsie-Anne one bottle, the other he splashed onto his face, the water was lukewarm and brackish, bloodlike. Martinez sipped his gloomily. No point holding a spot if there’s no line, he said, hoisting his camera, gonna go get some snaps.

He disappeared into the crowd.

The air had thickened into a clammy goo, in it limbs jellied and even breathing took effort. Kellogg looked around: every face shared the same droopy look. Across the pond he recognized the young couple from the campground. Annie, look, there’s shade with those folks by the boathouse, I know them, Kellogg said. He took his daughter’s hand, shouldered her bag, and wheeled his suitcase at the closest thing he had to friends.

Hi, we met yesterday? At the campground? We were the next site over.

We’re not even supposed to be here, said the boy.

It’s because we were camping with tourists, no offence. And we’re not residents, is what they’re saying, even though we fuggin live here.

But all we have is Institute ID. And since we’re not from here originally —

They consider us nonresidents, the fuggin appleheads.

They’ll make us leave and once things’re back to normal we’ll just come back.

It’s so senseless.

Fuggin senseless is what it is.

Kellogg nodded.

You heard about the flooding?

We were just at the Campground, said Kellogg, to get our bags, the beach is underwater but —

Not just there, said the girl. At the Institute too. The lake’s coming up.

Also they’re saying there are riots in the Zone, said the boy. His eyes glinted with — what? arousal? People are attacking people and looting. So we hear.

The megaphone wailed: Hi, okay, listen up, we’re about set to begin this. . evacuation, or I mean extradition — the Helper lowered the megaphone. The crowd waited. Finally he spoke: Your free trip home.

Since the Slipway would be the evacuees’ route out of the park, those assembled at its base were deemed the front of the line. Complaints — But I’ve been here since dawn, etc. — petered into subdued grumbling, it was too muggy to put up much of a fight. From the Slipway the crowd wrapped around the gazebo, across the common to the far side of Crocker Pond, where Kellogg and Elsie-Anne found themselves at the end of the line.

Kellogg folded a sweat-sodden braid behind his daughter’s ear. His own clothes had gone heavy and damp. The air felt tenser, somehow jagged, now that the dull throb of waiting had sharpened into anticipation.

Soon, Annie, said Kellogg, taking her hand. Mummy’ll find Gip and we’ll all be home.

Elsie-Anne blinked. In Viperville only the baby eels survived. All the grown-ups died.

Is that what Familiar says? Is he back?

Not yet, she said. But he’s coming.

From behind them rose a sudden commotion.

The photographer, Ruben Martinez, had been pulled aside by two Helpers, one muttonchopped and grim, the other smiling amiably. While his sideburned partner exhaled hot oxen snorts and smeared a fist into his palm, the friendly one told Martinez, No photos allowed, sorry, we’re going to have to take that!

As if disqualifying a recent medallist, the Helper de-garlanded him of his camera. Then he was escorted up the Slipway, to streetlevel, out of sight. A family of four assumed the free spot in line.

Where are they taking that man? Kellogg asked the students.

Fuggin appleheads, said the girl. Shame!

Shame, agreed the boy.

Kellogg gazed out over the crowd marshalled into rows. The sun pounded the common. He felt dizzy and delirious, and at first thought he was hallucinating when, high above everything on the northeastern corner of the park, the Thunder Wheel began to turn. He couldn’t see from that distance, of course, but packed snug into a Thundercloud was the foursome of Griggs, Noodles, Magurk, and Wagstaffe.

The former three men sat buttoned into pockets of silence, while Wagstaffe videoed the scene and in his narrator’s brogue announced what he saw: Flooding on all sides of the city! Water really coming up! Nonresident evacuation’s underway —

Wagstaffe, said Magurk, shut the fug up, will you?

No need to get all dooshy, said Wagstaffe, just because you’re scared of heights.

Reaching the Wheel’s apex the Thundercloud wobbled to a stop.

Griggs’ walkie-talkie fizzed: It’s Bean. First trains arriving into Parkside West.

Good lookin out, said Griggs. He surveyed the island’s northern shore: the Narrows swelled halfway up the cliffs. Westward along Topside Drive, where the land dipped to meet the water, waves spilled into the opening of Lowell Canal. The torpid olive-coloured strip cut south alongside the Zone and jagged west between Upper and Lower Olde Towne to dump its sludgy effluent into Kidd’s Harbour. And with the Narrows flooding one end and the lake the other, the Canal was rising.

If it overflows it will go downhill, said Griggs. Mount Mustela and the Mews will be fine. The Zone though — not so much.

Is that our problem? said Magurk, glanced down, and retreated, yellowing.

Well, said Griggs, do we have any idea what’s in that water?

Actually, said Wagstaffe, lowering his camera, we do. Isa did a special on it.

And?

Oh, awful things. Lots of awful things.

I’m going to barf, said Magurk.

Well for Gregory’s sake do it over the side, said Griggs.

Noodles seemed oblivious to all this. With a blank expression, he watched the sky.

Wagstaffe shot the park, the crowd a patchwork quilt fringed with khaki. And so the crowd readies, he said, and the evacuation begins!

Don’t call it that, said Griggs, and struck up his walkie-talkie: Bean, start moving the nonresidents to Parkside West. Then he switched channels: Is the ferry in Whitehall?

Ferry’s on its way, came a reply.

Everything’s proceeding according to plan, narrated Wagstaffe.

Except finding fuggin Raven, said Magurk, his head between his knees.

Noodles gestured at the horizon, above which floated a handful of black specks.

Your people? said Griggs.

From across the water, said Noodles softly.

Choppers, bellowed Wagstaffe, zooming in. Exciting!

Here to help? said Griggs.

Noodles didn’t nod.

Then?

To watch, said Noodles, with a twitch of his lips just short of a smile.

SOPPING AND SHIVERING, Olpert and Sam bumped the door up against the bottom of the 72 Steps. Waist-deep in the encroaching lake, Olpert lifted Gip onto the bottom stair, guided Sam alongside, and there the three of them huddled, the lakebreeze a swarm of prickling insects, waves slopping at their feet.

The lake had swallowed Budai Beach, Lakeside Drive was three feet underwater: out in Perint’s Cove the Islet, reduced to peaked roofs and scraggly treetops, resembled some strange forested tanker run aground on its way to port.

Despite the sun Gip’s teeth chattered, Olpert tucked him under an arm. With a purple, trembling finger he pointed to the top of the bluffs. Let’s go, he said.

Up they went, slowly. Halfway Sam stopped, palms pressed to his eyes.

Hey, said Olpert, come on, we’re taking you to hospital. Get up. You can’t stay here.

Sam knelt, tucked his head into his chest. This is as far as I can go okay, he said.

Down below waves slung the armoire’s door against the bluffs. The water was rising.

Go, said Sam. I’ll be okay.

You’ll be okay?

I’ll be okay. But this isn’t the work. The work’s different.

Right, said Olpert, and tucking Gip against him they left Sam behind. Each step stung, his bare feet were swollen and the colour of veins.

I’m so cold, said Gip.

We’ll get out of these clothes, said Olpert, and get furs, they’ll keep us warm —

Fur: his stomach dropped. He felt for his hat — miracle, it was there. Within its folds he found Jessica, an icy nugget, little jaws frozen in a cry of anguish. She’d chewed holes in the wool, evacuated her bowels in a greenish dribble.

Gip said, What’s that.

Jessica.

Is she dead?

Olpert pocketed the hat. Twenty steps down, Sam had gone foetal.

Hey, Olpert yelled, the lake’s coming up, you can’t just lie there. Sam?

Sam didn’t move.

Gip tugged his sleeve. Should we help him?

No, said Olpert, turning. We have to go.

At the top step, Olpert looked back a final time: no sign of anyone. The water sliced the stairs in half, steadily rising.

TRAIN 2306 had the look of something discarded or forgotten, sitting there inertly in 72 Steps Station. Below in Mount Mustela things were bustling, the NFLM ensured order and joy, while other Helpers performed random citizenship checks and marched those without papers off to the park. Along with placards (RAVEN, RETURN! and WE NEED CLOSURE and THIS ISN’T MY TRUTH, I WORK AT THE AIRPORT, etc.) people lofted glowsticks and sparklers, a jaunty music played.

Debbie searched the crowd for familiar faces — Pop maybe, safe and sound and back to his old tricks. Instead, climbing atop a Citywagon appeared Loopy, instantly recognizable in her beret and caftan. With rhythm, perhaps trying to provoke a corresponding chant, she pumped a sign demanding, WHERE’S MY ART? But she was ignored, the parade headed up Mustela Boulevard, steered by Helpers across Paper Street toward People Park.

There they go, Debbie said, and sat down again across from the mother and son.

The woman nodded — not quite an affirmation, her chin dipped robotically. There was nothing agreeable in her eyes, nor even camaraderie, just resignation. She seemed accustomed to being abandoned: at the mercy of forces beyond her, as always she waited patiently for the world to have its way.

Debbie wanted to say something to either breach or access this, such faith seemed both admirable and sad. She said, Maybe we’re being held here for a reason?

Maybe.

Sorry, said Debbie, leaning in, I don’t even know your name.

The woman blinked.

I’m Debbie. This is Rupe, so I’ve heard. Hi there, Rupe. And you’re?

Me? Cora.

Cora. Hi. I’m Debbie.

Yes.

Hi. And you’re looking for —

Look, said Rupe, someone’s coming up the bluffs.

Debbie joined him at the window. Directly beneath the station two people, a man and a boy, both barefoot, were summiting the 72 Steps. The man took the boy’s hand and led him up Mustela, behind the last few stragglers trailing the parade.

Where’d they come from, said Debbie. A boat?

No boats, said Rupe. But look.

Perint’s Cove extended emptily to the horizon. It took Debbie a moment to realize what was missing.

The Islet, said Debbie, did it flood? It just seems. . gone.

Maybe it sank, said Rupe.

I have a friend who lives there, said Debbie.

Maybe they sank too, said Rupe, and grinned.

But those people, said Debbie, they would have been taken to safety, right?

You’d hope, Cora said.

A chirp, the vents whooshed, the lights came on. The train hummed and shuddered and began to move.

There, said Cora, patting Rupe’s knee, see? We’re off.

The PA announced: Next stop, Bay Junction. Bay Junction Station, next stop.

And Debbie, rocked gently down into a seat, watched the swollen lake slide by, with no place to go but wherever the train was taking her.

THE PEOPLE EMERGING from the poplars were a shabby, shaggy crew that didn’t seem cityfolkish to Kellogg, nor the sort of countryfolk he was used to back home. They seemed wild, the children had a feral affect, the sight of them felt anthropological somehow, ten of them standing atop the park’s southern hillock with the look of captured prisoners of war. Last to appear were a bearded man and a headscarfed woman dragging a rowboat jacked up on axles that bumbled over the roots and rocks. At the slope’s edge they halted, but the boat kept coming, the mooring lines tautened and dragged them a few steps before they let go and the boat crested the hill — down it came, ropes flailing like tentacles.

Safely on the far side of the pond, Kellogg and Elsie-Anne watched: the crowd on the common’s southside scattered, the wheels hit an exposed gnarl of treeroots, the boat lurched free, out spilled cardboard boxes, a TV, which smashed, a suitcase that split and gushed clothes, a pair of chairs, a tricycle, machines, boots, sheaves of paper, food in tins and boxes and jars. The axles bounced off in opposite directions, the boat kept coming, sliding down the hill on its keel and across the mud-slicked common, hit the concrete banks of Crocker Pond with a ripping sound, pitched on end, cartwheeled twice, and came crashing into the water, where, remarkably, it righted itself and glided out over the surface with almost defiant serenity.

A miracle — or something like it. Everyone save the hilltoppers broke into applause. Wowee, yipped Kellogg, Annie, did you see that? A handful of Helpers dispatched to the poplars ordered the boat people into a tidy line to be counted or ID’d — but the man who’d been hauling the boat refused to line up. He shook his head, indicated all their ruined things strewn down the slope. His partner took off her yellow bandana and wagged it in the Helper’s face.

Let’s not worry about that, Annie, said Kellogg, and he lowered his daughter and pointed at the boat, sailing calmly into the middle of the pond. Hey, he said, wasn’t that amazing? And turning to confirm this with the student couple Kellogg discovered that he and his daughter had lost their spot in line.

In front of them was a huge man in a too-tight T-shirt (Back-2-Back Champs, it bragged) and coveralls meant for labour but, flopping from his waist, possibly misworn for style. Where’d he come from? And how could the NFLM ignore such recklessness? This sort of behaviour might ignite chaos, this was all it took: one instance of defiance and another person saw it and thought it was okay, and then another, and that was how order became anarchy, how a peaceful gathering degenerated into a frenzied mob.

Kellogg stared at the back of this interloper’s neckless head: the man feigned an ornithologically nonchalant gaze toward the treeline, where sparrows twittered and chirped. Did this bullish renegade assume he could do as he pleased unpunished? Was he brainless or bold? His presence was like a massive flaming boil bloomed suddenly upon clear smooth skin. He was immense and strange, smelled of mildew and sawdust. He had, Kellogg noticed, for his size, alarmingly tiny hands — and this was emboldening.

Clearing his throat, Kellogg tapped the man’s mountainous shoulder and said, in a voice of authority, Hey. The guy didn’t even turn. And the young couple offered no solidarity: their position hadn’t been compromised, they watched Helpers wrestle the bearded man and bandana’d woman to the ground and kneel upon their backs.

And so Kellogg was alone — but no, he had Elsie-Anne! He set her down in an illustrative way, as per the humanity-eliciting properties of small girls, or as though she were a bomb. Hey there, excuse me, Kellogg said, my daughter and I —

The big guy muttered something about it being no fuggin cataclysm, though he addressed Kellogg over his shoulder, as one might a drunk begging for change. How wrong! What about the protocol of women and children first, and if not women then certainly children, and alongside them their guardians? Such as Elsie-Anne and Kellogg, for example. But wait, was the big guy singing now? He was, gently, under his breath: Drag you down, drag you down, drag you something-something down. .

Rage simmered through Kellogg’s body. And yet it was a trapped rage, a rage without outlet, an impotent rage that festered and fed upon itself, and now Kellogg was shaking. The line advanced. Kellogg rolled their luggage forward and enthused, Here we go, Annie! Though it came out choked. He stared at the point where the interloper’s weirdly bullet-shaped cranium sloped down into his shirt, imagined striking the top vertebrae, the spine snapping, the man crumpling, dead. . But he couldn’t. This was how life went: in exchange for his dignity Kellogg was so often handed something putrid and fecal, he grinned and offered thanks while the mess of it oozed over his fist. I’m a good dad and husband, I’m taking my daughter home, he wanted to scream — to whom? Who would listen or care? No one was even looking.

And then with a nod to a nearby Helper — acknowledged, Mr. Summoner, good lookin out — the big man insinuated himself between an elderly couple stooped over matching walkers. Who, aside from a brief flutter of disconcertion, said nothing, did nothing. What could they do?

A gust of wind scuffled the Jubilee banners hanging from a nearby lamppost. The birds sang, the sun shone down, the weather was a mildewed blanket draped over People Park. Overhead, a helicopter made a pass, the air thrummed. Kellogg looked up: with his feet dangling from the cabin, a cameraman filmed the scene.

OUTFITTED IN A knee-length fur coat and shearling chaps and mohair slippers, wet clothes discarded in the alley out back of the Mount Mustela Fur Concern, Olpert Bailie told Gip, Wait here, and edged back out to survey the street. He slid behind the rack from which he’d stolen the furs, and flinched at a sudden burst of gunfire — no, only an ineffectual dappling of fireworks shot into the daylight. The tailend of the parade at last moved off along Tangent 10, vacuuming sound with it.

Two Helpers lingered in the Citywagon Depot, packing up pyrotechnics. Otherwise Mustela Boulevard, from its bottom end, where the lake was beginning to spill over the bluffs, all the way up to the iron gates of the Necropolis, was desolate. A light wind stirred the parade’s detritus of cardboard platters and softdrink cups, paper streamers, Redapple butts, dead sparklers and confetti, then settled, and everything was still.

Olpert ducked back into the alley. Gip wore his knapsack overtop a stole and fleece bodysuit. For headwear he’d insisted on a pillbox hat, cocked jauntily.

Warmer? said Olpert.

What about that other man?

He’s off on his own now. He’ll be okay. We’ve got to get you to your parents.

But —

No buts. There are bad people looking for you, and two of them are out there. I can drive us, but I need to get a pass first and it’s a bit of a walk from here. Can you make it?

And then? You’ll take me to the bridge so I can finish the illustration?

I’ll take you to your parents, said Olpert, and they’ll take you home.

Oh, said Gip. I’m hot.

Keep the furs on until you warm up.

But I’m already hot!

From the sidewalk came footsteps. Olpert whisked Gip down the alley, out into the Courts and Paths and Crescents and Ways of Mount Mustela, west toward the Temple, abandoned save the Hand and the twins, loading tools into a great canvas sack, and, locked in his basement cell, Pop Street, who moaned, I can hear you, please help me, I’m subterrained below. Please help me. Please.

V

RS. MAYOR, perhaps I too have failed at the task of living.

You. . too? Are you suggesting I’ve failed? I haven’t failed. You cut me in half, that’s not failure — other than failing to stop you. No, I’ve not failed. What are you talking about.

If I put you back together it’s just so predictable.

But it’s the right thing to do!

The right thing. Who decides what is right and wrong? It’s just tradition, that’s all.

Tradition — what are you talking about. It’s my body.

It’s my body too.

No. No it is absolutely not.

No?

You can’t come here and perform these tricks —

Tricks? I beg your pardon? What a rude suggestion. My illustrations are the honey of adventure with which I sweeten life’s bitterness! Whomever they do not please doesn’t deserve the status of human being. People —

People? You don’t care about people. All you want is to be looked at, to be watched, to hear them chant your name.

But Mrs. Mayor, up there onstage, I was actually watching them.

Why?

To observe, to. . see. To witness their wonder. For my goal, as ever, was not merely exhibiting wonder, as some hawker or showman, but the revelation of a truth that, when one turns away, provokes more profound wonder. Did I do that, Mrs. Mayor?

I don’t know. I didn’t watch.

She who believes the world’s secrets should remain hidden, Mrs. Mayor, lives in mystery and fear.

But you said this was about fear. You said you wanted people to feel afraid!

Well perhaps I was misguided.

I would say so.

I almost feel bad about it now.

You should.

I said almost.

WHAT WAS THIS place, thought Pearl, moving west through downtown, and where might her son be in it? After so many years away, the city’s connective tissue — every corner that meant nothing to her, every neighbourhood in which she’d never known anyone — dissolved to nothing. In her mind the island had shrunk into a few neighbourhoods enjambed one to the next, condensed and imaginary, a shrunk-down dreamscape inhabited by a distant past version of herself. And Pearl ruled every inch of it.

That was not the case as she pushed along Trappe against the crowds flooding toward the park. A parade, she realized, but solemn, almost funereal. There were no floats. Just bodies trudging through the tropical heat. As they passed she searched for someone she knew, someone to help her find her son. But the faces were faceless. The crowd treated Pearl as a stream treats a stone, oblivious and flowing resolutely on its way.

There’d been a time when Pearl’s picture regularly graced the front page of The Island Word, she was interviewed or discussed on IBCTV, kids felt bigger having met her — adults, a little small. Now she was no one, ignored and irrelevant, foreign and strange. .

The skyscrapers less scraped than hung from the sky. The city made her long for home, her real home, what kind of way to live was this, everything cement/steel/glass. The spindly trees wavering out of the sidewalk were cruel jokes on nature, leafless and bare, summer’s sad ghosts. And all these people! How could humanity exist in a place where a person was just another piece of the scenery?

Where was Gip, where had he gone, had he been taken. He could be behind her now, swept along on that tide of bodies, Pearl couldn’t look everywhere at once, only drift and hope that chance would carry her son into her arms. But the city was too huge. Faith in a place like this was stupid and vain. She needed a strategy, something firm and real. If he thought Raven had chosen him for something, what would he do? Where would he go?

Into Mount Mustela the crowd thinned. From a sidestreet a couple about Pearl’s age appeared rolling a wagon loaded with bags and boxes — and kids. She watched them, pressed together in a tight little bundle — father, mother, offspring — as they crossed the street and hustled past. Pearl headed north up the Boulevard, past Inkerman’s, a tailor, a rug merchant, a travel agent. And then, just before the fur concerns began, here was Bookland: a squat hovel, ramshackle and ancient.

In the front window, atop a velvety black cloth and eponymously topping a pyramid of copies was Raven’s Illustrations: A Grammar. Pearl tried the door — locked. The lights were off, the shelves cast in a dusty grey pallor. Yet deep within the store was movement. A woman poked her head out between the stacks, and disappeared.

Please, said Pearl, knocking again. Please, I know you’re in there, I’ll just be a minute. The woman moved in a cautious hunch out of the shadows, fiftyish, in a cardigan, skirt, and slippers. She stood behind the window display assessing Pearl, a hand at her neck, possibly taking her own pulse.

I’ll be quick, said Pearl. This was met with a stony look. She took a different tack: My son’s missing, she said, loud enough to be heard through the glass, yet with softened eyes, hands clasped in an imploring gesture.

The door cracked. I’m only open by appointment, she said through the gap.

I just need that book, Pearl said gently, gesturing at the window.

Oh?

Please, Pearl said, producing her wallet, peeling off bills. I’ll buy it. I can pay. See?

And the door opened a little more.

WITH THEIR GLORIOUS hearts blazing in their eyes Gregory Eternity and Isabella lead the bloodthirstily heroic and still somewhat aroused mob through the streets of the city toward Budai Beach. Under all those thousands of stampeding feet the earth shakes like a weeping child who stops crying for a moment when offered candy but then has the candy whisked away and eaten, right in front of his/her face, and so erupts into a fit of such violent, wracking sobs that his/her body shudders like an earthquake. Or else is just shaken for being obnoxious.

Halt, cries Isabella, and takes up the binoculars she has procured from Gregory Eternity and through which now she peers.

They’re closer, she imparts. The invaders, she clarifies.

Gregory Eternity nods sagely, armed with the knife of this knowledge. Send in the airstrike! he screams with the authority of a man without a drop of fear in his 100 percent brave and fearless blood. Then he pulls out his actual knife, which he knows how to hold properly so as to punch and cut, and does so, examplarily. (This fugger’s ready for anything.)

Overhead some helicopters lope chopping along and hover above the gathered mob like hovercrafts except in the sky. The lead pilot leans out the window and jabs a thumb-is-up gesture to the crowd, which (crowd) cheers with the mania of a hundred thousand people who are really, really excited about something: vengeance.

Go get ’em, screams Gregory Eternity, stroking his moustaches pensively.

The helicopters sweep out over the Lake like a flock of bees through a hole in a window screen that someone has punched there in blind rage, probably because her daughter is journalling about her, and here now the bees come, hungry for the succulently spoiling contents of the fruitbowl. Only this time the fruit is going to be blown to smithereens.

Let’s keep going, screams Isabella.

While the helicopters go out over the Lake to bomb the invaders, the mob moves down Parkside West toward the shores of the very same Lake. Their weapons are poised. Their readiness to fight for everything they believe in has not abated, nor been replaced with mutinous laziness, which in this particular case would amount to sedition.

Out over Perint’s Cove the helicopters’ machine guns start blazing a rat-a-tatting chorus. One of the invading boats explodes in a ball of orange, hot flames, then sinks. The crowd explodes in exultant eruptions that spray everywhere in a scorching lava of joy. But when that lava cools it becomes the hard and uncompromising bedrock of stick-to-itiveness. Eyes narrow. Fists clench. Resolve is up-plucked.

They’re at the beach now. As the helicopters dodge retaliatory fire from the evildoers, Isabella licks the barrel of her gun, as is so often her wont.

Gregory Eternity flexes his considerable pectoral muscles, one then the other, as though they’re in conversation. In fact he’s having an imaginary conversation in his brain between them: Let’s do this, says the left one. Okay, replies the right, let’s. And so forth. Then he twirls the ends of his moustaches into points sharp enough to impale cubed squab, kebab-style (squababs, his favourite food). Then he dons shades that match Isabella’s, and staring at her reflection in his lenses, she says, Do we have time? He knows exactly what she means. Do we have time not to? he replies, coolly unzipping.

While Isabella and Gregory Eternity are taking each other the rest of the crowd strip and follow their masters as guides. Yet no one can quite achieve the same range of positions or heights of ecstasy. If ecstasy is a ladder Isabella and Gregory Eternity are balanced way, way up on the top rung and whoever’s holding the bottom better not let go, because the lovers will come hurtling down and crack their skulls open and splatter their brains like cerebral cortical stew all over the pavement.

THE OVERALLED line-jumper had wheedled to the front of the line at the base of the Slipway, a few hundred spots ahead of Kellogg and Elsie-Anne on the far side of Crocker Pond. Kellogg’s wishes upon this man for a lonely death were interrupted with a honk from the NFLM megaphone. All right, people, shouted its operator, we’re ready for the first wave!

Helpers ushered a hundred-strong contingent up to Parkside West Station, the big guy leading the way, clapping his tiny hands, whistling and jolly as could be.

The queue shuffled forward. Four helicopters now circled the park, each bearing the insignias, Kellogg noted, of mainland TV networks. A train slid into the station, loaded, headed off south, another group was led up the slope. The sun beat down. Kellogg sweated through his shirt in abstract patterns, Elsie-Anne drooped at his side.

The boyfriend half of the student couple returned from some reconnaissance mission. The riots in the Zone are coming this way, he said. Gangs trashing the city as they go.

It’s those people who live in Whitehall, said the girl.

It’s finally happening, said the boy.

It is, she said.

It: the pronoun lodged in Kellogg’s brain. Whatever was happening was becoming an it, an it that history would later name more specifically. For now it was it, and the careful order of the people, their submission to the uniformed authorities, suggested that everyone recognized they were living an it, helpless and servile to it, whatever it might be.

Exciting, said Kellogg, and the students’ expressions wilted into disgust.

Another train arrived, collected passengers, the line moved forward.

We’re next, Annie, said Kellogg, and Elsie-Anne said, Yes, it’ll all be over soon.

They were relieved of their luggage — You’ll get it on the ferry, explained a Helper — and directed up the hill. The air felt tight, the heat stifling, their ordered march regimental.

At streetlevel the group collided with an incoming mob. The rioters, Kellogg assumed, and braced for confrontation. But no, this was a parade, subdued and behaved and NFLM-sanctioned. Still, there were suddenly people everywhere, and amid the confusion, as Helpers struggled to segregate the evacuees, the student couple slipped into the procession north to the Narrows without a word to Kellogg, who watched them go feeling abandoned, though he’d never gotten their names.

A Helper hollered, Nonresidents, keep going, take the escalators, and Kellogg and Elsie-Anne went where they were directed, rode the escalator in silence, waited at the turnstiles for further instructions.

As the movator began conveying people out to the platform, Kellogg thought enviously of the students. If this was an it, he reasoned, shouldn’t he be more of a participant in the drama? Like those young folks, stealing off to a new adventure. But what about Ruben Martinez, the photographer, whose defiance had only gotten him punished. .

Maybe action was too dangerous. Instead Kellogg entertained fantasies:

Sir, he imagined a Helper saying, we’re not letting you leave.

But, Kellogg would scream, my wife’s from here!

Only people who have gone through the proper channels, sir, are getting priority clearance now. And if your wife, as you say, is a resident —

Former resident. She used to live here, and doesn’t now, because we live elsewhere, and her name like mine is Poole but you’ve got it as Pode!

Sir, if your papers aren’t in order there’s nothing I can do.

Our child disappears and no one will help us, and look at my little girl — Kellogg would gesture at Elsie-Anne, an ammonial scent sifting from beneath the Islandwear sweatshirt.

But the Helper would be heartless: You’re not boarding this train.

Pushed to the brink, Kellogg would grab the guy by the throat, Helpers would collapse upon him, he would shatter windpipes and sternums and storm off into the city with his daughter in his arms to find his missing son. . What drama! That was more like it.

He felt a hand on his back. Θir, said a lean, whiskery Helper, let’θ go, move ahead.

Way down the tracks, a train was rounding the bend from Bay Junction. Kellogg apologized, took his daughter’s hand, did as he was told.

When Familiar comes back we’ll go to Viperville, she told him.

We will?

Not you. Just me and Familiar. Then we’ll be together forever, she said.

Kellogg stroked her cheek. Shush now, the train’s coming.

Forever, Dad. Forever and ever and ever.

VI

HE TEMPLE DOOR was open, Olpert stepped inside, called hello, sensed the word drift through the Chambers like a loopily thrown paperplane, skidding uncaught onto the dais of the Great Hall.

A flick of the lightswitch achieved nothing. Slowly the foyer came into view. Shards of the smashed Hair Jar gleamed within its furry contents, Olpert’s own orange leg hair would be somewhere among them. Solid black rectangles had been painted over the foyer’s twin windows — from inside. Cast in shadows, the place had that amplified stillness that prevails after destruction, phantasmal, absence so palpable it becomes present. Olpert ushered Gip in from the chortling floodwaters and closed the door.

The library was trashed. One of the recliners had been sliced open, foam frothed from the wound. The shelves had been emptied, strewn everywhere were dozens of defaced (pages torn out, covers ripped to strips) editions of How We Do. Olpert picked one up, flipped through. The pages were blank. He tried another. Empty. He’d seen men writing and reading feverishly in here, had they been faking? But then he shivered: the words might somehow, amid everything, have been erased.

Gip called, Someone made a mess in here.

Olpert discovered the boy in the kitchen. The cupboards had been dumped out, a split tin of corn-in-a-can dribbled mucous all over the counter. Various other foodstuffs littered the room: a confetti of cereal and rice, various energy-drink powders in neon trails and sprinklings, anthills of coffee grounds, what Olpert hoped was chocolate pudding piled beside the upended trashbin.

In their furs Olpert and Gip moved into the Great Hall. The pews were upturned, the Original Gregories’ portraits hauled from the walls or spraypainted black, or both, and the faintly marine odour of urine hung stale and salty in the air. By the Citycard cache Olpert discovered his grandfather’s picture torn in two, the old man’s halved visage seemed to glare at him even now with disappointment: Where were you to save me, boy?

But of course he’d never been able to save him.

During its innocuous initial stages, his grandfather’s illness had been a relief. Instead of attending that week’s NFLM meeting, they’d watched a Y’s game on TV. The old man shivered under blankets and turned his head occasionally to hawk clots of black guck into a shopping bag. Something viral in the chest, a break from routine and nothing more. Two weeks later, Olpert was visiting Gregory in hospital, and then two months after that interring him in the Mustela Necropolis, the headstone emblazoned with the NFLM crest and the title GRANDMASTER AND CO-FOUNDER in a reverential-looking font. After the funeral, Favours had laid a claw of a hand on Olpert’s shoulder and wheezed, You’ve got a lot to live up to, carrothead.

From the recesses of the Temple came a weak voice: Is someone there? Please, aidance, please, I’m subterrained, please.

The portal was open, the ramp sloped down into shadows.

Olpert took a Citycard from one of the hooks. Listened.

Gip appeared. There’s someone downstairs, he said.

I know, said Olpert.

Well we can’t just leave him, how we did the other man, the one with the thing on his eyes.

No, said Olpert. You’re right. We can’t.

They descended into blackness. As the ramp levelled off the basement trembled with brownish light. The conference table was underwater, chairs afloat. Deeper in the Chambers the generator hummed faintly.

Hello? cried the voice. Is someone there?

Wait here, Olpert told Gip, rolled up his fur pants, and waded in. Around the corner, cell lit with a guttering yellow lamp, there he was. Pop surveyed Olpert with ambivalence.

So you’ve retailed for me, said Pop. Was it guilt? I envisaged as such.

I didn’t, said Olpert. I’m not really one of them.

A likewise story. And what now, evil one?

Now I’m going to let you out.

With the Citycard Olpert swiped the security box. The door slid open.

At last, justification, said Pop. Yet how estranged it feels to be rescued by an evil one! I’m aligned onto the side of the behooded revolutionaires. Still they left me. You all left me. And only now you enfeign restribution.

Olpert said nothing, led Pop to the ramp, collected Gip, and headed up into the Temple, past his grandfather’s halved portrait, and outside. Water, seeping in blackly from the west, hid the cobblestones of Knock Street.

We can’t drive in this, said Olpert.

Ah, but evil one, said Pop, if only you’d not abscondered my watercraft!

Your houseboat, said Olpert. They took it to the dump.

They? Pop eyed him. Are you, evil one, not one of them? Or not?

No. I’m not. It’s complicated but I’m not. It’s just me and the boy —

Not?

No.

How do you know?

That I’m not one of them?

Where I might find my boat.

Olpert gestured at Gip. I want to get this boy to his parents.

If we get to my boat, I can transpose him to safety.

You can.

I can, said Pop, puffing out his chest. With absolutesimal certainty, yes.

THE MORE I talk to you, Mrs. Mayor, the more convinced I am that you are very intelligent.

Oh, well gee. How kind.

I’ve made a decision, with your help: from this time on, I’ll. . I’ll. . what? What will I do? I’ll try to look at people differently. With more kindness. Maybe. But after all I still have my illustrations to do. So I’ll do them, but with a little more kindness.

What about my people.

Do you mean the people, Mrs. Mayor?

Yes, of course, the people. The people of this city.

I’d say they’re all going under save me and you.

What do you mean, going under.

What do I mean? What does one ever mean?

This is hell. I’m in hell.

Hell, Mrs. Mayor?

What was the point of all this? This — this show?

Oh, nothing, Mrs. Mayor, but to delight the mind. And to let everyone see what magic can perform. But you say you find yourself in hell? Where hell is, I’d suggest, is where you’ll ever be. Aren’t all places not heaven in some way hell? Doesn’t knowing there is some other paradise make this a hellish reality? But don’t little glimpses — illustrations — of that paradise give us hope?

What do you mean?

That question again! I mean perhaps, Mrs. Mayor, only when you cease to be will you find yourself anywhere else. And yet can you not find glimpses of heaven here on earth? What’s happening up there on your city’s streets, say. Is there any other truth than that?

The Mayor looked into the dark, squinted. Nothing. She spoke carefully: And what is this then? Where are we now?

Why, under the heavens! Under everything.

I thought it was everyone else who was going under?

Yes, he said, I do think that’s the truth, Mrs. Mayor. Though there is some joy to be found in where we are. Perhaps this is the kindness I offer. Speaking with you here and now, at least does, I believe, feel a truer truth. So you ask me where we are, yet you’ve answered your own question. You know the truth yourself. Hell, stated Raven simply. Truthfully, we are in hell — with glimpses of the other side.

ONE OF THE helicopters explodes terrifically. It just pops in the air like a piece of popcorn with a very, very small stick of dynamite inside. Gregory Eternity rises to his feet, erectly. Isabella pulls her legs from behind her head, climbs down from the tree around which’s low-lying branches she’d been coiled, and, smoothing her bulletbelts, assumes her rightful place beside him. Slowly everyone else withdraws or untucks, as flaming debris hurtles down to the Lake like bits of chopper-shaped meteor.

Another helicopter explodes, then another. Mayday, utters the lead pilot as his flying, propellered steed bursts into a ball of flames and he’s flung down insolently to a watery grave, in the water. One by one all the helicopters explode, until there is none left, not even a single one. The pinballs of hope bouncing around everyone’s stomachs vaporize and through the principles of evaporation become gasps of disaster that go wheezing up their cardboard-lined, dry throats, and out into the world between parted lips in brown, thin clouds of sadness.

With nothing stopping them now, the boats sweep fast toward the island. But how utterly weird, they aren’t coming to Budai Beach at all! They’re turning left!

They’re aiming to half-circumnavigate the island, as though it’s a halved apple lying facedown on a plate in the fridge and some bees, right before they die of frostbite, are climbing over its peel. Except upside down. They’re heading to the north shore!

They’re going to try to destroy the bridge! screams Isabella.

Oh shet, responds Gregory Eternity, though his moustaches turn upward at each corner, revealing impeccably bleached teeth, into a smile. Truth is, he’s impressed with Isabella’s prescience, though beneath that smile, or entering his smile and tunnelling down inside Gregory Eternity’s pulsing innards to someplace that we can only call his soul, we might find a dark, viscous blob of something called jealousy. We’ve got to get over there first to defend it, he manages to spew forth from his mouth.

Isabella steps in front of him. The crowd goes quiet. She holds her arms up in a V that could stand for Victory or Vengeance, take your pick. Are we all in together now? she bellows in the voice of a thousand war trumpets played by a cyclone massively. And the crowd bellows back just as loud times however many they are (thousands).

Now the citizen’s army (because that’s what they’re calling it) has to run all the way back across the island. There’s no time to dress! Will the naked army get there in time to meet the invaders’ boats/bees half-circumnavigating the island’s upside-down apple peel? Only time will tell. But how much time? (Same answer.) These are the questions asking themselves of each person as they run north with the hunched-over trot of old people with bowel obstructions, inside each of their own, private minds.

Let’s save the city! screams Isabella. It’s as clear as a freshly unclogged drain that, between the two of them, she’s the one in charge now.

Running along beside her, Gregory Eternity’s moustaches droop shamefully. But he’s not ashamed. It’s hard accepting his position in the reformed hierarchy of authority between him and Isabella, which now posits him beneath her, and her on top. But Gregory Eternity is a modern, accepting man. It will just take time.

The sound of the boats churning their way up the western shore of the island fills the air. Though it might sound improbable, this is how the crowd intuits that whoever is invading them represents an especially despicable breed of evil, one they’ve not encountered here before, even when rival fans come to town for Y’s games and do appleheaded things like litter all over Cathedral Circus, the fuggin dooshes.

At the northern shore the mob arrives just as the boats are coming around the corner by the Whitehall Piers. Their engines rape the air.

Everyone in position, screams Isabella. (She’s explained everyone’s positions along the way through a system of pass-it-along. Simple.)

Maybe a third of the people march out to the clifftops and stand there in a nude line with their guns trained on the Narrows to the west and the approaching invasion, another third scamper up behind them as reinforcements, and a third contingent gambol onto the bridge like a train of ants wandering out onto an island flat that has been folded and laid over a small stream in the manner of a bridge.

Isabella and Gregory Eternity climb to the top of the Thunder Wheel. She starts screaming at everyone through a megaphone. He abides at her side, trying to look proud.

Out on the bridge the people are ready. Yet one weird woman is apart from everyone else. She climbs down under the bridge. She walks out on a trestle. She has no gun. She just stands there, facing west, pale and naked, and the wind tussles her hair like a drunk uncle’s hand, though benign, into a mess of black scraggles.

The boats are fast approaching. The air fills with the clacking clamour of a bunch of guns cocked fast. But the woman apart from everyone doesn’t move. She seems oblivious to everything: to the invaders, to Gregory Eternity trying to get a U-nique! chant going, clapping his hands like someone’s too-keen, embarrassing dad, oblivious to her fellow citizens poised to kill, to the world and all that is in it.

GOOD LOOKIN OUT, Bean, said Griggs, and clicked his radio off.

From the top of the Thunder Wheel the view was astounding. The lake nibbled its way inland. The streets in the eastend’s farthest reaches had become a grid of black water from which houses and trees struggled, and upon these impromptu canals residents of Fort Stone and Bebrog and Li’l Browntown and Greenwood Gardens boated and swam and waded inland toward People Park.

The westend too was a swamp. From Lowell Canal ribbons of green sludge threaded into LOT and UOT. Residents who hadn’t joined the exodus surveyed this warily from upper-storey windows and roofs and the top of the Dredge Niteclub. Only the Mews, swelling bubblelike from the island’s southeast corner, remained, for now, dry.

As from the east so from the west, people were escaping to People Park — great convoys of them on foot, grimly splashing through the water, in and upon various watercraft (rowboats, surfboards, planks) they fled the Zone. Meanwhile, the protest/parade had reached Topside Drive, discovered it flooded, and disbanded — some people had relocated to the common, others milled aimlessly around downtown.

Yikes, said Wagstaffe, lowering his camera.

Too late to sandbag it, said Griggs. Once people are downtown it should be fine but —

Wait, said Magurk, what do you mean should?

Look at the water, said Wagstaffe. It’s still coming up. Look!

I’ll take your word for it. . Lucal.

Whoa, who are you calling Lucal? I’m sorry, things go a little wonky and suddenly we forget protocol? What is this, How We DON’T Do? What if — he swung the camera at Magurk — we were actually broadcasting?

But Magurk had gone quiet: all this commotion had got the Thundercloud rocking and creaking, he gripped his harness, face as pale as paper.

Griggs spoke into his radio: Walters and Reed, any word on Favours?

No sign of him.

Good lookin out, sighed Griggs. He eyed Magurk, then Wagstaffe. Guys, he sighed, please, remember the fourth pillar. Try to maintain decorum.

Wagstaffe trained the camera west, zoomed in on Laing Towers, where a few dozen residents congregated, safe for now, the water six floors below.

They’re spelling something, he said. With the letters from the building sign.

What does it say? said Griggs.

WE. . ARE — but just a letter R. . wait. . wait. Oh.

Oh, what? said Magurk. WE R O?

No, that’s it. Just WE R. They don’t have the letters to spell anything else.

Laing Towers, Laing Towers, said Magurk. They could write: WE R LOST.

They’re not lost, sighed Griggs. They’re on their own roof.

How about: WE R LOST AGIN? said Wagstaffe. Misspelled, but still.

But if all they’re after is help, said Magurk, what the fug does it matter what their sign says? Don’t they just need to be noticed? I mean, they could write WE R — he paused, his lips moved, the other men waited. The wind blew gently. At last he spoke: GOAT SIN if they thought it was going to get them rescued.

Goat sin, yucked Wagstaffe. Is that what you’re up to at the Friendly Farm afterhours?

I swear, once we’re off this ride —

Enough! bellowed Griggs. Please. Would everyone just shut up. I’m sure Noodles too would appreciate a little silence.

But Noodles’ attention was turned skyward: a newscopter went puttering past, off to the westend, to video the helpless folks stranded atop their tenements.

AT LAST TRAIN 2306 entered Parkside West. After riding through so many vacated stations Debbie was stunned by the waiting crowds. Even at rush hour such a crush was rare. The doors opened, a Helper stepped into the far end of the car to instruct everyone how to board.

Debbie called, Can we get off first?

He looked at her in disbelief. How the fug did you get on here?

And then he was demanding to see her papers, so Debbie slid into the crowd and, with Rupe and Cora trailing her, carved a path across the platform, singsonging, Excuse me, excuse me, feeling like an enemy of the world. Quickly, she lost sight of her co-passengers amid the bodies closing in and pushing past and draining into the train. Who were these people, she wondered, where were they all going?

At streetlevel she waited for Cora and her son. No one came down. The parade had dwindled, stragglers drifted about, with nowhere better to go they descended the Slipway into the park. Up top, the train heaved out of the station. And still no sign of Rupe and Cora. Debbie climbed the escalator: the platform was empty. South along the tracks, the evacuation passed through City Centre Station, picked up speed around the bend toward Bay Junction and the drowned south shore, and disappeared. Debbie was deserted trackside. Across the street, the lights of Cinecity’s marquee flashed and twirled.

FROM THE FLOOD beneath Upper Olde Towne Station the Hand and the twins scrambled up the scaffolding into the half-renovated platform, climbed over great coils of cable and stacked girders onto the tracks, swung underneath and hung there digging drills and electric screwdrivers from pilfered toolbelts. Motors whirred and the process began of grinding out screws and rivets, each one crusted with rust and hardened paint. They worked in purposeful silence and only when the first of the huge lugnuts wriggled loose and tumbled down to the flooded street, landing with a plop in the black water, was there a hoot of triumph, before they went back to work.

WITH RAVEN’S Grammar tucked under an arm Pearl waded down to the bottom of Mustela Boulevard, followed people hopping the turnstiles, climbed the dead escalator to the platform, and joined the waiting crowd at 72 Steps Station. The atmosphere was tense, the air clammy and thick. Everyone seemed to exist inside a column of solitude, even family members seemed somehow estranged from one another, the lakewater slapped at the station’s struts below.

Eking out elbow room, Pearl opened the Grammar and examined its Table of Situations. The chapters were titled arcanely — Supplication, Daring Enterprise, The Enigma. Where to begin? Only Disaster seemed relevant, but all she wanted was to find Gip, not solve the whole city’s problems. Even if she could.

Train, called a voice from the far end of the platform — echoed, Train! — and the mood lightened, hope bloomed. The platform rumbled, a galloping sound came from the east. Someone hollered, We’re saved! and everyone cheered.

Turning to face her, an old man shot Pearl a gaptoothed grin. Been waiting here forever, he said. Didn’t think we were ever going to get out. I’ve got the ground floor at E and 9, totally underwater when I left it. But as you can see — gently he knocked his cane against Pearl’s leg — I’m not exactly fit to walk all the way across town.

The whole westend is flooded? said Pearl.

Flooded? Missy, I’ve seen flooding! This isn’t flooding. Sinking’s what we’re doing. The man winked. Get out while you can!

Sinking? What’s sinking? The island is sinking?

Look, he smiled, twirling his cane, here’s the train!

A clatter as it neared. When the movator didn’t come to life, people stepped into the bevelled warning area. But the lead car reached the end of the platform and failed to stop. One by one, each car flashed by, close enough to touch, packed with people, the faces of men and women and children inside mirrored Pearl’s astonishment — What are you doing there? — until finally the train slipped off to Budai Beach.

Not again, said someone.

What now?

I’ve been here twenty minutes! Nothing’s stopping either way!

It’s not like the trains aren’t running.

I mean, was that a train?

That was a train. So was the last one. And the one before that!

So what are we supposed to do? Wait here to drown?

No one’s going to let us drown.

What the fug is going on?

Pearl hugged the Grammar. The old man leaned on his cane. And somewhere nearby two angry voices clashed like blades.

What about the riots? What if they come here?

There’s no riots! Our houses are underwater!

There’s riots, people are looting, there’s —

There’s no riots! Understand me?

The crowd surged, Pearl was pressed against the wall.

Get your hands off of me, said the first voice.

Hey now, break it up — a new voice, booming and paternal.

There’s riots, there’s riots! Everyone knows! Admit it!

You touch me again the only riot’ll be my fist through the back of your fuggin head.

Silence. Expectation. A general, tingling excitement at possible violence.

Tell me this, said the second voice, why riot when the whole city is drowning?

Or sinking, the old man whispered to Pearl, winked, and twirled his cane.

THIS WAS NOT an illustration, said the Mayor, not a trick, not even a spell. It was a curse.

A curse?

You put a curse on this city.

Ah. Oh.

You must put it right.

Put it right. If only, Mrs. Mayor.

What. Why not.

Oh, you know. I have only certain powers and only those at certain times. So, this is to say, that even if I wanted to —

You don’t want to.

I’m not saying that. What I’m trying to express is the fear — yes, my fear — that I’ve brought things to a point beyond my control. I can’t fix anything now. They must just go, they must just happen. Whatever happens, happens.

For a reason.

For a reason? No! For what reason? What reason could there possibly be?

You don’t believe in anything.

Not true. I believe that nothing is what it seems. It’s always something else. Or at least we must understand it in terms of something else. The thing itself, Mrs. Mayor, is never quite enough. We must always examine it sideways. We must —

Please, just stop it.

Oh, Mrs. Mayor, are you the duck who cannot imagine herself a hunter?

What.

At any rate, I won’t be around here for a while.

And I —

And you, Mrs. Mayor, you should join me. Let me be your gateway.

Gateway? To what?

To your own past, if you wish.

The Mayor’s throat hitched. She bit her lip.

Well, said Raven, I do believe it’s time for me to go. Will you join me?

Will I? Go with you? No. No, I can’t.

Ah. No?

No.

As you wish, said Raven.

Whispering, rustling. A sucking sound of water sucked down the drain.

Then silence.

A breeze gusted over her.

And the Mayor was released.

The cart began rolling down the slope, that sudden urgent tug of gravity. She picked up speed, was soon hurtling down, the wind whipped her face and whistled in her ears. As she plummeted the blackness filled with shrieking. This grew: louder, hysterical, she felt it inside her bones, her teeth, her arteries and veins — and then it stopped, she was lifted, or dropped, the cart tumbled as if into a void. The Mayor felt disembodied, light. She was floating, drifting, like a rogue planet through a galaxy without stars.

And then a voice spoke and broke the spell: Goodbye, sweet queen. I’ll see you in your dreams.

VII

DINE STOOD UP. Ignoring the crowd’s scolding — Sit down! — What the fug! — You’d make a better flat than a window! — she was hypnotized by the image onscreen: the naked woman at the edge of the trestle, black hair dancing around that gaunt, haunted face. A hand grabbed Adine’s arm, tried to tug her back down into her seat, but those huge and tragic eyes onscreen were too much: they released something from Adine. She felt released.

But then with a great upward sweep of black hair the face was gone. For a moment empty space consumed the screen, then the film cut promptly to Gregory Eternity and Isabella and the remaining unkilled members of their entourage being driven back from Topside Drive into People Park, where the treetops are ablaze with flaming fires like tall, skinny, brown and bark-skinned people with their hair on fire, except not running around but just standing there stupidly, because they’re trees, and amid a crackle of gunfire the invaders advance, dozens of shadowy figures like the somehow cloned shadows of something evil’s melena-black shadow —

Enough. Adine squeezed out along the aisle between knees and chairbacks. Heads craned, voices hissed: Hey! — Get out of the way! — We’re missing our fuggin movie here!

In the lobby sunshine came streaming in, garish and disorienting, the first daylight she’d seen in months. Through it Adine stumbled to the bathroom, splashed water on her face, her vision adjusted, shapes defined, the pain faded. She observed herself in the mirror, hair a limp greasy mophead, colour had deserted her face as light from a waning day.

The only sound in the bathroom was the dripping tap. Adine tightened it. The dripping continued. And the sink to her left started dripping, and so did the one to her right, and all the faucets were leaking thin streams, then torrents, cranked open by unseen hands.

She stepped back, her feet encountered more water: the toilets were overflowing, a slimy puddle crept from the stalls. Adine tracked sneaker-prints to the bathroom’s exit and out into the foyer. From the men’s room water was oozing too, the same dark water, the sickly whiff of sewage beneath it.

The box office was empty, no ushers were about, no one worked the candyapple counter. Adine stuck her head back into the theatre: It’s flooding, she warned them, is there someone who works here, the bathrooms are flooding. A few scattered shhhs replied, no one turned from the drama onscreen: bombs explode like detonating broken hearts and Gregory Eternity rages alongside Isabella, the love of his life. .

Back in the lobby Adine tried the payphone: dead. She left the receiver dangling and headed for the exit, the rug squelched underfoot in a buttery frogspawn, a bubble lifted, and as she pushed out into the crowds on Parkside West it burst and released a little waft of yellow gas as if hatching a ghost.

AS IT CAREENED around the bluffs the train’s doors bulged, the NFLM had packed in too many passengers. Kellogg could feel that odd alien hum of a stranger’s flesh upon his own, he offered the woman beside him a tired smile, she returned it reluctantly and looked away. The air was warm jelly, skin stuck and peeled off skin with a tacky, ripping sound.

Kellogg’s shirt was drenched, Elsie-Anne’s hair sopping, the sweatshirt slathered to her as wet leaves over a rock. The speaker system announced the next stop, Budai Beach Station, but the Helper assigned to this car, a rasping character behind Kellogg (nametag: Bean) corrected it: No stops, folks, just straight around the Yellowline to Whitehall, a ferry’ll take all you mainlanders home.

This failed to raise morale. The human cargo rocked silently in a steady, sloshing rhythm as the train travelled alongside the lake. Kellogg hooked his daughter into a gentle headlock. This is it, he said. They’re taking us home, Annie. Home.

OVERTOP OF WHAT had once been Lakeside Drive Sam paddled the door, naked. The pain in his face had dispersed into a dull throb through his body. He’d wedged the remote in the dry spot between his chest and raft. He saw only light, the microwave’s blazing, the last thing he’d seen was all he’d ever see. Yet within this were shades: the view to his left darkened where the bluffs blocked the sun, to his right was the greyish wash of the lake.

The light to his left brightened, what he saw now looked bleached. Bay Junction, Sam figured, the bluffs flattening. Were he to cut north he’d be heading into downtown. He was close. Sam felt tired — tired of this work, which was over. He’d not known how it would end. But so this was it, time’s machine sucking everything under.

Soon he’d be home. He could smell the earthy potatoey rot of the dug-up ground, the sour gasoline odour of the diggers and bulldozers, the dust of crushed and ruined buildings scratched his throat. Up he’d go, enter the A-Blocks and swim north along the Throughline, and at home in H-Block, Unit 53, he’d find Adine, watching TV, and together they’d wait for time to wheel all the way back to the beginning, to the end.

THE CROWDS COLLECTING on Parkside West had begun to tip into People Park. Debbie considered joining the convoy down the Slipway, but Helpers were among them, randomly checking papers. Instead she fled to the Galleria, where an anxious-seeming woman in a postalcarrier’s uniform held the door open and asked, You looking for someone? Debbie nodded. Friend or family? She stared. Well whoever you’re looking for, said the postwoman, they aren’t here. No one you’d know is in here. And she joined the procession descending into the park.

The Galleria offered a reprieve from the crowds and heat, yet suggested the choked stillness of an aftermath. The storefronts had been smashed, goods rooted through and taken. Debbie hoped pillaging had at least remained practical — food, water, emergency supplies. Though as she was thinking this a young man trotted past shouldering a TV.

In Bargain Zoom a woman was dumping tins of corn-in-a-can into a shopping cart also shared by two children. Debbie called, Is it upstairs they’re holding people? The woman spun, eyes narrowed, and screamed, You can’t stop me, what’s to stop me, her kids kneeling wide-eyed amid a clutter of tins. It’s everyone for themself, she hollered, and wheeled down the aisle.

Each store bore evidence of looting, shelves upended, racks overturned, cash registers hung open like skulls with their tongues lolling out. For some reason a small fire smouldered on the reception desk of Horizon Systems, and the lottery booth had been relieved of all its tickets — to which lottery now? As Debbie reached the foodcourt a group of four middle-aged people went racing past, arms full of boxes of cider powder, followed by a friend wearing eight pairs of sunglasses and lugging a bulging knapsack.

Debbie walked the out-of-service escalator, climbed over spilled clothing racks up top. The first store was Baldini & Vogl’s Music. She peered through the lock-down grate into the gloom. At first all she could make out were the coffinlike shapes of pianos. But something stirred: the murky lumps lining the aisles were people. They sat on the floor in rows, dozens of them, faces indistinguishable. No one spoke. The only sound was the whisper of a ventilation duct.

I’ll get you out, she said. Don’t worry, she said, I’ll get you out.

No response. Not a word, not a flinch. Did they even see her? And then one of them stood and came lurching out of the dim. Shirtless, wearing a welding mask, he stood unspeaking on the other side of the grating. . staring at her? In the visor Debbie saw only herself. A chill slithered through her body, as a ghost through a wall.

I’ll get you out, she said weakly, backing away, and ran down the escalator and into the northern quadrant, where water was flowing in from Topside Drive, deepening as she went. From Citysports emerged the four-legged beetle of a portaged canoe. The canoe was lowered, flipped with a splash onto the shallow water, its liberators stood over it wielding paddles. And Debbie was relieved to see familiar faces: the most recent additions to the Restribution Movement, the student couple whose names she’d yet to learn.

Guys!

They looked at her blankly. And, with recognition, impatience.

There’s people upstairs, Debbie said. We need to save them.

The only person to save is yourself, said the girl. No one else will.

Not the NFLM, not Raven, said the boy. They were trying to deport us!

This boat’s only big enough for us though, said the girl. Sorry.

I mean, we’re sorry, said the boy, steadying the canoe as his girlfriend climbed aboard.

It’s okay, said Debbie.

Water gushed into the Galleria from the north. From their seats, bow and stern, the students looked up at her. Give us a push? said the boy. Please, said the girl.

Debbie swivelled them north. Straight across the Narrows, she said. Good luck.

We’ll see you on the other side, said the girl.

For sure, said the boy.

They went paddling out the doors and out of sight. Water rippled up Debbie’s shins. She thought for a moment to just lie down, let it wash over and take her wherever it might run. But there were people to help. She procured boltcutters and a flashlight from Citysports, went back upstairs — and discovered Baldini & Vogl’s empty.

Empty, yet without any indication of forced entry or escape. The flashlight danced up and down the vacant aisles. The store’s austere duskiness suggested a widow’s parlour. Debbie squinted, maybe they’d made their getaway through an air vent. But the ducts were bolted closed from inside the store. Had she imagined the captives? Had the gloom played tricks on her eyes? But what of the shirtless guy who’d come to the grate? He’d been real. Debbie had seen her own reflection in his mask.

She sensed someone behind her, tensed, turned. Only the woman from Bargain Zoom, the one with the shopping cart, though she’d ditched it, and seemingly also her children. She pointed at the boltcutters. You using those?

They were eased from Debbie’s hands. The woman grinned wildly into B&V’s, at all that stock for the free-and-easy taking. I’m not a musician, she explained, as she set to shearing the lock, but this shet’s worth its weight in schnapps.

THE DECISION was sudden and collective: people started climbing down onto the tracks, hands were offered, children were passed below into strangers’ arms and reunited swiftly with their parents, the exodus downtown began. A contingent chained up to block the electrified rail. Just keep going, someone advised, stay calm, stay together, we’ll get there together.

The old man couldn’t get down. Blocking Pearl’s way, he wagged his cane into the empty space, crouched, extended a foot, retracted it again. Someone pushed past Pearl muttering, Enjoying the show? This person took the fellow under his armpits, two other people supported his legs, together they lowered him down.

The first person asked him, You okay to walk? and the old man laughed, twirled his cane, said, You go on, don’t worry about me, I got here fine, I’ll get out at my own speed. But they wouldn’t, instead yoked his arms over their shoulders. Am I a wounded soldier? the man laughed, embarrassed, yet allowed himself to be carried.

Ignoring a woman asking for help with her stroller — why’d she bring a stroller? — Pearl hopped down, she had to find her son. As she walked she leafed through the Grammar, though this was dicey, she had to keep checking her footing from one tie to the next, and the text was a mash of arcane language — An Object of Whose Possession He Is Jealous, A Victim of the Mistake, A Cause or Author of the Mistake. .

Gip’s face hovered in her thoughts, a pleading look in his eyes, but she couldn’t picture the rest of him — bodiless, an apparition. She returned to the Table of Situations, and there it was, the book’s final chapter: Recovery of a Lost One. Pearl flipped to it greedily. But the section was blank, all the way to the end, page after page wiped clean.

Pearl stumbled, nearly fell, someone seized her arm, told her, I gotcha — probably best to save the book for later, to which Pearl replied feebly, I’m trying to find my son. Someone passing heard this and laughed: She’s trying to find her son! and someone else said, You’re the only one, lady! And the person who’d helped her, a woman in a Y’s cap, suggested, We’re all trying to find someone, hey?

Shaded by the cap’s brim the woman’s eyes were kind: she’d spoken not from scorn, but solidarity, and her grip was gentle. People streamed past, giving them room. If you’re all right, said the woman, we should get going. Looping arms she and Pearl, as teammates in a three-legged marathon, rejoined the march.

Y’s fan? Pearl asked. The woman said, You bet. I used to play for them, Pearl said shyly, and her arm was squeezed and she was told, I know, I know who you are. . Pearl, right? This was dizzying — her own name, spoken aloud, amid all this! Like being kissed. Yes, she said, with the grace of a prayer: Pearl. That’s me, yes.

They spoke of their families — the woman was searching for her two girls, they’d stayed over at friends’ places in Bebrog. While she’d dispatched herself to find them her husband, an NFLM Helper, was rescuing stranded westenders in a catamaran. People Park’s where everyone’s going, she said, that’s where I’ll find my daughters. What conviction, Pearl thought, tightened her grip on the Grammar, leaned close, and said, What about my son? Don’t worry, the woman said, he’ll be there too. Everyone will.

Pearl’s spirits warmed: such faith! And all of these people, together, how could they be wrong? But after a few minutes of walking in silence the woman tensed. Up ahead, where the tracks curled inland, more walkers joined the procession at Bay Junction Station. So many, whispered the woman. Her grip loosened, her pace slowed. And here they were, hundreds of refugees, from both sides of the platform, pouring onto the tracks.

Keep talking, Pearl wanted to say, tell me it’s going to be all right. But the crowd had become oppressive, each person’s mouth pressed to the back of some stranger’s neck. No one could speak, the tracks were so full of people, all those people, still more people. . With a sudden heave from behind, Pearl’s arm was knocked free. She reached for her friend, but the crowd enfolded her, the Y’s cap slipped away.

Stopping was impossible. People were wedged in so tightly Pearl couldn’t even turn to look back. Already she struggled to recall the woman’s face, her voice, the hope shining in it, the warmth of her body against Pearl’s — gone, all of it gone. Except the cap, the logo, that last image of it sucked into the mob. And now she was trapped alone inside this mechanical push toward People Park, the site of the crime, and the only place her son might be.

AS A GUNSLINGER with a pair of pistols, Noodles pointed two fingers, thumbs extended, at the sky. One of the newscopters was swooping down toward the Thunder Wheel.

What’s happening? said Wagstaffe, videoing. Are they going to take us out?

What do you mean, take us out, said Magurk, glancing around for a weapon.

Rescue us.

Oh. Are they?

Griggs said, Noodles?

Noodles nodded, nodded.

Wait, are you just nodding, or is that a yes?

He nodded some more. The newscopter hovered, gusts from its propellers flattened the men’s khaki jackets. Griggs’ crusty hairdo twitched as if electrified.

A rope ladder flipped out of the chopper’s cabin, unfurled, and hung.

We can’t get out, said Wagstaffe, because of these fuggin harnesses.

Noodles stopped nodding. He frowned.

Isn’t this what Helpers are for? said Magurk, snatched Griggs’ walkie-talkie, shouted into it, Hey, who’s there, who’s this?

It’s Walters. And Reed. Is that the Special Professor? Good lookin out.

Right, right, good lookin out, said Magurk. Silentium too, and all that.

Sorry, we still haven’t found Favours. We’re hoping someone scooped him up —

No, no, this isn’t about that. Though, hey, keep trying. Listen, we’re stuck on top of the T-Wheel. We need someone to let us out.

We?

The HG’s.

Oh. All of you?

The rope ladder dangled. Griggs strained for it, couldn’t reach.

Walters, said Magurk. Do you have a boat?

Yeah. Reed’s skiff. That’s how we’re looking for Favours —

Listen, forget Favours. Get over here. Bring a saw.

But what about —

This is an order, growled Magurk. Favours will be fine. You need to let us out.

Good lettin out, said Walters with a sad laugh.

Hurry up. People are starting to notice us.

THE TRAIN ROUNDED the island’s southwest corner and dry land appeared: high on a hilltop a cluster of huge houses sat untouched by the floodwaters, beneath it the neighbourhood was lost under a leaden swamp laced with emerald veins. The smell was sour, it flooded Kellogg’s nostrils and made his eyes weep.

I’m not actually crying, he assured Elsie-Anne.

The PA announced Knock Street Station.

Ignore the announcements, gasped Bean, between pulls on his inhaler. We’re not stopping anywhere, it’s just straight through to Whitehall, and the ferry —

And then we’ll go home, cracked someone behind Kellogg, and grim laughter flitted batlike through the car.

Well of course, said Bean. That’s the plan: then we’ll ferry you home.

The train whisked through Knock Street Station. Below a trio observed this from the roof of a house. Their faces were invisible inside pulled-up hoods, they seemed relaxed despite the water rising all around. They seemed, Kellogg thought, to be waiting for the train, watching it expectantly — almost hungrily — as it headed into the Zone.

Next stop, Upper Olde Towne, said the PA. Upper Olde Towne Station, next stop.

Nope! screamed Bean.

On they went, clacking and swaying. We’ll be there soon, Kellogg told Elsie-Anne.

Very soon, Dad, she said, and closed her eyes.

From the tracks came a thunderclap. The train lurched, skidded, all the riders were pitched forward and cried out in one voice. Kellogg turtled over Elsie-Anne to shelter her from the pile-on, bodies heaped upon his back, a foot connected with his face, his mouth filled with a tinny taste. And then they lurched to a violent, screeching stop.

Everything was still. Resting at a crooked slant, the train hissed. A few yards ahead and above was the half-built dome of UOT Station. Gingerly, people disentangled themselves from one another.

Is everyone okay? screamed Bean, and fell into a fit of coughing.

There was a streak of blood on the floor beside Kellogg’s head, was it his own, he couldn’t tell. Annie, he said, you okay?

We’re okay, Dad, she said. But —

A savage groan of metal, the struts buckled, the tracks fell away. As a child released into its bath, the train slid into the flooded street. Riders scrambled away from the bottom end as it went under, water swam up blackly around the windows, the car filled with screams.

Kellogg grabbed his daughter. Annie!

The train eased to rest: half-submerged, half in the open air.

The water’s coming in! — Help! — Everyone stay calm!

A mad scramble. The sounds were primal, shrieks and yelps and groans, panicked babbling. And the water gurgling in.

With Elsie-Anne in his arms, Kellogg climbed to the top of the car, someone grabbed him and pulled him up, he was being helped! He huddled among strangers on his knees, someone climbed over him, someone else was sitting on his back. Beneath his body he shielded his daughter.

Please! — Holy fug someone open the doors! — Don’t do that! You’ll flood the car! — Not at this end, we’re out of the water here! — Let me out before we sink!

Kellogg dabbed blood from his teeth. Annie, he whispered, it’s okay, we’re going to be okay. But his daughter didn’t respond, she’d gone limp in his arms.

The doors were pried open. In came a stench of sewage and rot. Everyone out, someone cried. In pairs people jumped. With grim purpose Kellogg crawled toward escape, Elsie-Anne held close, two by two people went tumbling from the train, vanished — where? And then he was next.

A tepid breeze. Hundreds of people splashed around below, the train drooped from the tracks like a vine from a slack wire. A voice yelled, Go! Kellogg was pushed. The slap of the water was sharp and quick. It knocked Elsie-Anne from his hands. Kellogg sank, reaching blindly for his daughter, he screamed a torrent of bubbles, the sour dark water filled his mouth, somewhere in this abyss was a city, drowned and pulling him down.

VIII

WALL: the cart struck it hard and the Mayor tumbled free, arms scrabbling to break her fall — and found herself landing soundly on two feet. She kicked her left leg, then the right, wiggled her toes, sidestepped, shuffled back, did a little jump. And then, restraining her happiness, she narrowed her eyes and declared, As well it should be, touch green.

An overhead light came on. She was in an elevator. The doors closed, the cables cranked into motion, and up it took her. There was no gauge of floors, but the little tin box accelerated, faster and faster, lifting her higher. The lights flicked off, then on again: the elevator, now glass, rose out of Municipal Works and climbed the Podesta Tower with views of the city all around, most of it submerged under black lacquer.

They’re all going under save me and you.

To the west, yachts and various pleasurecraft had formed a leisurely armada, abandoning Kidd’s Harbour on strips of white wake. Upon the roof of Old Mustela Hospital patients and staff waved vainly at the media helicopters making passes above, but they just swooped away, onlookers only, not here to intervene. Farther north, at Upper Olde Towne Station something had gone wrong, the Yellowline had collapsed, a train was upended into the swamped street.

There was movement out there too, a cluster of multicoloured dots, people spilling from the train. Some climbed up to tracklevel, others dropped into the flood. And as she reached the viewing deck, with a shudder the Mayor thought of the bottomless alleyway at F Street and Tangent 10: underwater now, while chaos raged on the surface.

She walked out onto the deck, still hesitant, stockings torn. Though she felt hungry. Or not hungry, but hollow. She touched her midsection. Nothing there. She patted, passed a hand through: just space — no torso at all. She was two arms, two legs, and a head, her jacket drooped emptily.

The deck turned. Gloomily the Mayor surveyed the eastend. The incoming water had almost reached Orchard Parkway, chasing residents inland. Cars, their roofs loaded with suitcases and boxes, had been abandoned amid thousands of pedestrians, some pushed shopping carts or pulled wagons loaded with parcels and bags and boxes, others floated rafts buoyed with dumped-out bleach bottles, all of them converged on People Park.

IFC Stadium’s parking lot resembled a beach at high tide. The rides at Island Amusements seemed to struggle out of the water, gasping for air. The deck rotated west, toward the setting sun: the Necropolis evoked a kneecap jutting from a filling tub. Nothing looked like itself, everything looked like something else. Though maybe it was just easier to make sense of things that way.

Some of the Mews escapees doubled back to help with the UOT Station rescue. One lavish pleasurecraft stopped to collect folks stranded on the Dredge’s roof. But instead of bringing them to People Park, it shuttled them off to the mainland. Rats, thought the Mayor, abandoning a sinking ship.

The elevator whirred to life, zipped down to the lobby, collected someone, brought them back up. The Mayor tensed. The doors opened. Standing there was Diamond-Wood, heaped over his crutches. He grinned sheepishly. Draped over his shoulders was her mayoral sash. You’re okay, he said. Good.

IN SINGLE FILE Gip and Olpert followed Pop from Mustela Boulevard through the gates of the Necropolis, Olpert had shed his chaps, they’d gone sodden and heavy, he traipsed along shyly in his skivvies and the shaggy coat. Pop lectured as to why, historiographically speaking, the squabs were flying home to roast.

Speaking of aviants, you are savvy to the birds that used to impersonate these here tombs? An urbane legend, prehaps, though valid.

I don’t, said Olpert.

Not you. It was the boy upon whom I requisitioned.

Gip blinked.

Young man, said Pop. Bend me your ear! And you too, evil one, whom might learn a thing or two things.

But Olpert’s thoughts were elsewhere: his grandfather’s grave was nearby — where? He looked around, felt disoriented, it’d been so long since he’d last visited. .

Well these birds, said Pop, they had gotten lost on their way enmigrating somewhere else, or had been someone’s pet, or came over on a ship, a stow-in. But on any rate, it was very colourful, a parrot of some sort, to actualize there were in fact two: a male and a female. Now the male only had one wing, on the right side, and the female only one wing, on the left, and where the missing wings should have been, you see, the male had a bit of bone in the shape of a key. And the female, do you see whence I’m getting toward, young man? The female of course had the enmatching lock.

Gip’s eyes filled with light. Wow.

Shall I continue, said Pop.

Yes!

Well, said Pop, how do you think they flew?

They locked together, said Gip.

And then?

And then the one with the right wing —

The man.

He did the flying for them on the right side.

And the woman?

She did the flying on the left.

And thus way they flew. Betrothal’d.

Gip nodded.

Should we go? said Olpert, with a glance at the darkening sky. Night’s coming, he said.

Pop glared at him. I say when we sully firth — he paused — and hence? It is now.

But wait, said Gip, what happened if one of the birds died?

Well, said Pop, that’s exactly what transposed. One of them died, and so the other couldn’t fly, and so he was, I believe the anecdote finalizes, forewhence the ban on such animals in our fair city, plucked from his nest and eaten by a dog.

ARMS AND LEGS thrashing, Kellogg scanned the water for Elsie-Anne. All around him people scaled fences and lampposts, others grasped at anything floating by — planks, water jugs, other people. Across the street, a woman atop a schoolbus stared with astonishment at the jagged bone poking through a hole in her forearm. Beside her five people in a huddle formation were either scheming or praying.

The names of missing loved ones rang out, Kellogg joined the chorus: Elsie-Anne! Annie! But there were too many people, he couldn’t see anything, the water roiled, the world reeled, the reek of the flood so thick in his mouth it seemed a dead and festering thing had been laid on his tongue to rot.

Though maybe she’d never jumped. At tracklevel two cars remained railbound, from which the other four hung. Up top people gazed dazedly across the chasm that separated the severed section and where the tracks resumed on the far side of UOT Station, there was no way to Whitehall except by water. Helpers began pulling them away, steering an exodus back downtown. Might Elsie-Anne be among them somehow?

An aristocratic-looking couple breaststroked past as if out for a leisurely dip at the beach. In Kellogg’s periphery someone floundered in the water, a gargly voice choked, Help me, help me, was sucked under, came up sputtering —

Kellogg swept his arms over his head and dove, saw nothing but murk, veered in another direction. The water had the odour and consistency of that foul brown juice that collects in the bottom of trashbins. It tingled on his skin, stung his eyes. It was too much. He surfaced, gasping, Annie, Annie!

An eerie hush closed around his voice. All around people slopped and splashed through the water, calls for help, yelps and shrieks and sobs, but nothing lingered, the air seemed incapable of sustaining sound.

Annie! he cried again, but the word was vacuumed up and lost.

Then: Dad.

There she was, on the balcony of a Laing Towers apartment. Kellogg swam toward her, climbed up, took his daughter’s face in his hands, and kissed her, long and hard.

Annie, I’m sorry, he blubbered, hugging her. I’m sorry, honey. I’m so sorry.

Familiar saved me, she said. He carried me on his back.

You’re such a good swimmer. I forgot. I’m sorry I forgot, Annie.

Kellogg let her go — she was bone-dry. The sweatshirt was slightly askew, her left nipple winked at him, he adjusted it for modesty. But otherwise Elsie-Anne appeared unscathed, in fact she seemed to have never entered the water at all.

Her eyes were distant, those of a war orphan in some televised campaign. Who was this girl, this ghost of a child who drifted through the life her parents laid out for her? A stranger. She gazed through him, past him. Kellogg shivered.

People were climbing up from the flood to join them on the balcony and those of the adjacent apartments, a Helper — Dack, his beard wilty and dripping — among them. Dack knocked, then shouldered the apartment door open and ushered everyone inside.

Let’θ go, Dack lisped. Water’θ riθing. Get to the roof. We’ll radio a pickup.

While people squeezed past, Elsie-Anne stared dreamily into the floodwaters.

Annie, said Kellogg, come on, it’s flooding, we’ve got to go.

Not flooding, Dad, she said with a canny smile. It’s sinking. The city’s sinking.

Θome kid you got there, fella, Dack told Kellogg, and disappeared into the building.

SAM WAS AMONG the poplars, branches scrabbled the underside of his door-raft. The light was deepening. Soon it would be night, soon he’d enter the south side of Lakeview Homes, and as he paddled he thought of Adine, waiting for him in the living room, there’d be no one home but the two of them and whatever was on TV. Okay Adine, he said aloud, I’m coming, the work’s almost over and we’ll be together soon okay.

IGNORING THE WATER seeping now up to its edges, still more people headed down into the park. From the top of the Slipway Debbie surveyed the thousands gathered before the gazebo, assembling as they had for Raven’s arrival and illustration. A tepid Ra-ven chant rose and died listlessly. Gone was the anticipation, a muted dread hung heavy in the air, when they called his name it was only in vain and despairing attempts to summon him.

Up the Slipway a couple was dragging a paddleboat purloined from the boathouse, two kids in tow. They reached Parkside West, pushed it into the water, the kids got inside, while the man and woman rolled their pants to their knees. They looked like people Debbie might know, friends of friends, maybe they’d met at a potluck or some such thing. Her mind riffled through a catalogue of names and faces: nothing, they were no one she knew. Right now, it seemed she’d never known anyone.

Look at them, said the woman to her husband. Don’t they know he’s not coming?

He’s not coming! he hollered.

Another family turned and regarded this man bitterly, then kept heading down.

Fuggin appleheads, said the husband. As if this is magic, as if some clown in a sweatsuit can fix it with a wave of his whip. No one’s going to save you! This is real.

Hey, we can make room, said his wife, if you want to come across with us.

Debbie realized she was being spoken to. I’m sorry, she said. Across?

To the mainland.

The strangers’ faces were tired but kind.

You can’t stay here, said the husband. You’ve got to get out while you can.

This — while you can — was chilling: it inferred a time when Debbie, or anyone else, wouldn’t be able to. .

Thanks, she said, but I need to find someone first.

Godspeed, said the wife, and her family joined the brigade crossing the Narrows.

Though dusk was descending the streetlamps remained blankfaced — no power, no power anywhere in the city. The NFLM no longer seemed to be checking ID, in fact no Helpers were visible down in the park at all. Meanwhile the flood had discovered fissures in the Slipway and descended in thin dark gunnels, fed Crocker Pond, Debbie watched it bloat and threaten its banks. .

A hand settled on her shoulder, her heart skipped: such timing, it had to be Adine. But this woman looked haggard and shabby, grey wilted hair like the fronds of a dying plant. Debbie, said this person.

It was Pearl. Or some phantom of her, wild-eyed and waving a book. I have to get down there, I figured it out, it’s called trunking. Situation Ten: Abduction, Deb. That’s where Gip is. He trunked. That’s why he’s gone and —

Pearly? Sorry, I’m not following you. What’s going on?

I need to get down there, she said, gesturing anxiously at the gazebo.

Hey, I don’t know, it might make sense to try to leave —

No, not without Gip. I have to find him. She tapped the book’s cover. It’s all in here, Deb. It’s called trunking, I know how to do it now, I can find him. . Her voice faded. My daughter’s gone, my husband’s gone, said Pearl. Gip’s all I’ve got left. I need to find him. What about you, Deb? Who are you looking for?

Debbie looked around wildly. All those nameless faces spilled grimly past. Wait, she said, focusing again on Pearl. What do you mean, gone?

Gone, gone, gone. She stepped into the water streaming heartily down the Slipway. Bye, Deb.

Dragging her bum leg along like a dead branch, Pearl disappeared into the swarm tumbling into the common from all sides, some with boxes and bags of belongings, most empty-handed, each face pasted with dazed grief that had yet to sink soulward. High above People Park circled a dozen newscopters shooting footage. Did their viewers wonder who all these people were? Debbie doubted it: this was likely only thrilling, a good show on TV.

IX

ROM MIDWAY up the rope ladder Wagstaffe pointed his camera down at Griggs, who lingered stubbornly in the Thundercloud, flouting his harness sheared in half, walkie-talkie in hand. High above, Noodles was pulled aboard, then Magurk.

Wagstaffe hollered something lost in the helicopter’s roaring.

Griggs shook his head dolefully. Far below the Institute’s swimteam, in matching bathing caps and trunks, converged upon Reed’s skiff. Walters yanked the ripcord, the motor coughed but wouldn’t start, Reed took up the chainsaw with which he’d freed the HG’s and wielded it at the students closing in.

Wagstaffe gestured frantically: Come on! Come on!

Again Griggs shook his head.

The chopper dipped, the ladder swung, Wagstaffe scrambled, caught himself but dropped the camera. It tumbled past Griggs, three hundred feet down, knocked the chainsaw from Reed’s hands, plopped into the water and sank. Reed cast an incredulous look at the sky, Griggs followed it: Wagstaffe and the ladder were pulled aboard, the hatch closed, and the helicopter lifted and wheeled away over the lake.

Back down below, the swimteam, emboldened, were once again on the offensive. Just as they seized upon the skiff its motor whined to life and the two men absconded into the Narrows. The swimmers treaded water in a sharky shoal. And their attention shifted to the top of the Wheel, at the lone figure sitting up there, safe and dry.

Griggs spoke into his radio: How are things going, Dack?

Lotθ of people up top of Laing Towerθ. Θomeone’θ coming? We heard the ferry θank —

Sit tight, Dack, have faith. Someone will come. Remember: Silentium. Logica. Securitatem. Prudentia. Griggs switched frequencies. Pea?

Pea here. Still waiting on the roof, water’s coming up. . What’s this about the ferry?

Griggs repeated his advice, changed channels, checked in with Bean — no signal. The common was an inky muck seething with people, from all sides the water chugged steadily in. He changed channels, repeating the four pillars to himself, while the angry swimmers collected at the Thunder Wheel’s base.

Diamond-Wood answered: Yes?

And where are you?

With the Mayor.

And how’s she?

Diamond-Wood tapped the Mayor’s shoulder. How are you?

Fine, fine, she said, absently stroking her sash. Just watching everything go under.

It might be time to get out of there, said Griggs.

Yeah, said Diamond-Wood. What about you?

I’m the Head Scientist! I can’t leave. . Griggs sighed. Besides, where would I go?

Diamond-Wood waited.

You’re young, Recruit. Save yourself.

And the Mayor?

Does she want to be saved?

Diamond-Wood looked at the Mayor, the sagging shape of her silhouetted in the light of the viewing deck, the sash an empty bandolier, the sunset streaming through her midsection as a bulb through a lampshade. Maybe not, he said.

I can understand that, said Griggs.

Want me to ask her?

No. No, that’s okay. And D-W? Tell her one thing, will you? Tell her we’re sorry.

AS THE SUN SET the air cooled, Olpert was glad for his jacket, though his bare legs were goosefleshed. He and Gip followed Pop Street out the gates of the Necropolis and down into the boggy dump. The smell here was sour and yellow, the water oily, silky mats of gas floated atop its surface. Gulls watched and squawked mockingly as the threesome waded down a channel between mounds of trash.

Pop shrieked, Lark! and gestured grandly before him: his houseboat was lodged between the rusted-out shell of an old Municipal Works snowplow and the dump’s back fence. Thar she goes, he declared, wading toward it. My home!

Overhead a helicopter peeled off toward People Park, where Olpert watched it join dozens of choppers tracing interweaving loops in the dusky sky.

Hey, mister, said Gip, it’s okay, that chopper’s not Raven’s.

Raven?

The illustrationist! He’s gone, I think.

Oh.

I thought maybe? Since I was the chosen one? I could do something? But —

Hurry! Pop called, heaving himself up the ladder. Restribution awaits!

Gip was pulled aboard and ushered inside the cabin. Olpert went to follow him — but Pop stepped to the gunwales with an oar and blocked his way.

Not you, evil one, he said. You’re one of them. An esquivalient.

What?

Not with us, said Pop. Not here. Not this time.

Olpert stared.

Ah, and now at last he sips the cruel cider of justification! Pop seemed to address an imaginary audience that might not have included Olpert. No, we shan’t save those whom propetuate the substantiation of a people’s past. You don’t care about history? Well now, Pop snarled, you’re the one whom is history.

He beat the water with his oar. For a moment, delight twinkled in his eyes, then a stony facade slid overtop. Expunge yourself, he growled.

Please, said Olpert, come on, I’m not the enemy here, I’m not with those people —

Expunge!

But I helped you. I helped the boy, and I freed you. I’m not one of them.

Pop raised the oar above his head, menacing a deathblow. Bygone, be bygone!

Olpert sank back into the water. The highest dry land was a mountain of junked appliances — rust-scabbed fridges and stoves and washer-dryers missing doors and dials. He climbed atop a dishwasher, his own wake slurped at the pile, and sat there, quietly.

A fine place for you, evil one, said Pop, amid the city’s refutations. Then he joined Gip inside the cabin, slamming the door behind him.

Olpert’s heart skipped beats. Though, wait — something actually twitched and jumped around inside his jacket. Jessica! But in the pocket was not a mole, but a bird. He set it down, it toggled from one foot to the other, shuddered with a sort of mute sneeze, and took to the air: an m-shaped silhouette, then a speck, then vanished. Another newscopter passed above, from it a spotlight searched for — what? Bodies, survivors, stories.

Pop came out of the cabin, went to push off, and discovered that, despite the rising water, the houseboat was stuck fast on a reef of trash. He dug his oar into a pile of softened cardboard, tried to dislodge the boat. Grunts, groans, splashing. . failure. He knelt, catching his breath. Olpert watched. And Pop met his eyes. Help me, he gasped.

Olpert didn’t move.

Evil one! I am immobilized without another helmsman, it seems. Hence you may come onboard, yet don’t envisage yourself anything but enemary. For you are only such.

Sure, said Olpert.

As Olpert climbed the ladder Gip’s face appeared in the cabin’s porthole: he observed the action on deck with the aloof interest of a gossipy neighbour.

All right, evil one, said Pop, handing him an oar. If you’re with us be at least aidful.

From either side of the houseboat they heaved at the sludge, the boat creaked in protest, or encouragement. At last with a scraping sound they dislodged, coasted out into the floodwaters, and Pop swung them round toward Topside Drive.

Where to? said Olpert. Should we try to find the boy’s parents first or —

Neigh! Initially — Pop adopted a preacher’s cadence — one last trip home. For though the day enduskens, still the blazing sun of restribution beckons beaconlike my soul.

THE WATER POOLING in the Museum of Prosperity lent it the look of a marble-pillared bathhouse. Debbie sloshed through the rotunda, climbed the stairs out of the water to the second floor. Footsteps echoing with the promise of a secret knock, she passed through Loopy’s retrospective — busts of the island’s rich and famous, dozens of self-portraits, the Faces of Us: had been transplanted here too — to the room that housed the IAD’s modest collection of Mr. Ademus’s work: four rusty sculptures on plinths.

And here she discovered the island’s artist laureate, slumped against a wall. Debbie stopped. Loopy regarded her idly, beret twisted in her hands.

Hi, said Debbie.

No, said Loopy, low. I’m feeling very low.

Oh yeah?

All my work, said Loopy, with a sweeping gesture toward the adjoining galleries, is going to be destroyed. And then what will I have? What’s an artist robbed of her work?

I’m actually looking for someone, said Debbie, inching past.

Wait.

Debbie froze.

Listen to me, said Loopy. All of you, you thought I was serious. The whole time, you never knew. This, all of this — none of you ever saw what it was.

What was that? said Debbie.

You think I didn’t know how absurd I seemed? I mean, Loopy? This ridiculous outfit? Paintings of people on TV? Not that it matters now. It’s all amounted to nothing, anyway.

Yeah, said Debbie, edging up the spiral staircase, that sucks, good luck.

Nothing. Nothing! NO-THING. .

Debbie climbed, Loopy’s squawking faded as she curled up and up, the tap of her sneakers, the swish of the banister under her hand, spiralling all the way to the towertop gallery. She tried the handle: locked. Her legs weakened, her spirits felt punctured —

A voice called, Who is it?

And Debbie said, It’s me.

Silence. A whispering of feet. A pause.

The catch clattered, the door opened, and standing there was Adine.

It’s you, she said.

Hi, said Debbie.

They stared at each other for a moment.

You’re not wearing the goggles, said Debbie.

No, said Adine. I took them off.

From somewhere in the Museum came a feeble, plaintive keening.

I guess you saw Loopy? said Adine.

Debbie grinned. Nothing, nothing.

No-thing! laughed Adine. And they kissed.

You found me, Adine said, pulling away. You came.

Of course, said Debbie. Of course I did. I’m sorry.

It’s good to see you, Deb.

Yeah. It’s good to see you too.

Check it out, said Adine, Sand City’s finally getting its due.

The model had melted into sludge inside the glass cabinet. The city’s topography endured in two lumps — the Mews and Mount Mustela — and a divot where People Park had been. Everything else was mud.

Magic, said Debbie.

Oh well, said Adine. I suppose it was always meant to be like this, wasn’t it? Before you stopped me, I mean.

Yeah. Debbie watched her. I knew you’d be here.

Adine moved to the window. Not much sense making up stories now, with all that’s happening. Was it him, all this ridiculousness, do you think? Or just nature?

Whose nature? said Debbie.

Adine laughed thinly.

Hey, we should probably go, said Debbie. The water’s coming up.

Go? Go where?

Onto the roof?

And then?

And then, I don’t know, wait to be rescued.

By?

By whoever! Why does it matter?

Where will this whoever take us? To wherever, right?

Adine’s hair drooped, gone was its usual ecstatic frizz. The sunset highlighted the puckered flesh across her forehead and around her eyes, those scars from a lifetime ago, her half-buried life, preserved in wounds.

Debbie said, Are you worried about Sam?

A pause. A slow blink. A swift sharp dip of her chin.

You shouldn’t, I’m sure he’s fine. They got all the people off the Islet, I heard. And over on the mainland I’m sure they’ll reunite people with one another —

Who’s this they? The NFLM?

No, not just them. The rescue people. Other people. Everyone.

That’s this mysterious whoever, right? They is just whoever, to take us wherever. Well they might as well take us nowhere. We might as well stay.

Hey, no, come on. Debbie moved beside her. But Adine pointed her face at the setting sun, which lowered blithely, almost obstinately, into the swollen lake.

Come on, said Debbie again. We’ll find Sam on the other side.

Deb, can we just not, for a second? Can we just wait here? I’ll go, I’ll go. I’ll go when we have to. But for now can we stay, just for a minute? And watch the sun go down?

Okay.

Will you stay with me?

Yes.

Say it.

I’ll stay with you.

They stood together at the window and watched the last dim shreds of daylight wane. People Park was gone. Cinecity was gone. A few buildingtops resisted the water, boats whizzed among them collecting survivors, and Podesta Tower rose defiantly above it all, a fist holding aloft a single finger — exultant maybe, or a last act of dissent before the end.

The dipping sun striated the sky: a pink ribbon upon the lake, up to deeper reds, then blues, before everything dissolved in blackness.

They waited.

The colours drained.

Everything darkened.

The sun was a wound replicated in the lake — then a slice, then a nick. At last its final sliver and reflected double swallowed each other. But before darkness fell completely, a vein of green light flashed across the horizon, sudden and blazing, then instantly gone. Did you see that, said Debbie, and Adine said, Yeah, a comet or something, and they pressed close and peered hard at the skyline. But the miracle was over: a brilliant, ethereal shiver, vanished, and all it left behind was night.

WAVES SWILLED into the tenement’s upper floors, Kellogg and Elsie-Anne were pushed to a corner of the roof of Laing Tower South. He held his daughter, she let herself be held, though her eyes fixed upon the IFC billboard ten blocks north, the top of a mainsail lifting from the shipwreck of the Golden Barrel Taverne. Walkie-talkie held high, Dack strode all over the roof, flipping through static to find a signal, while the lake came up and up and the crowd waited, hushed and helpless.

WATER CASCADED into People Park in syrupy chutes. Crocker Pond topped its banks, gushed into the common, sending the empty rowboat, floating there since midday, out with it. Screams were silenced as it bowled three people under, they came up spluttering and bloodied, the park’s basin filled rapidly, there was nowhere to go. Helpers in rubber dinghies and canoes and kayaks offered rescue at the hilltops. But how could anyone swim up waterfalls?

The only high ground was the gazebo, toward it the crowd moved through the churning current, Pearl among them. A girl struggled along beside her — and a sudden swell took her out at the knees in a flailing of limbs. The Grammar was swept away too, but Pearl kept going, reached the stage, climbed up.

A man was trying vainly to open, dislodge, or destroy Raven’s trunk. He hammered his fists on the lid, kicked its sides, the metal dented but the thing didn’t budge. Fug you, fug this, he screamed, a hopeless character with HOPE tattooed on his knuckles, then flung himself into the water and started swimming — where? Pearl took his place upon the ducktaped X. She tried the lid. No luck, shut tight.

Past everything, up the northern hillock, the Thunder Wheel arced out of the flood. From its highest seat Griggs watched the Institute swimteam coming for him, one Thundercloud to the next, teeth gritted. They’d formed a human ladder, leapfrogging their way up. And now others were chasing them: a middle-aged woman in workout attire reached the lowest student and savaged him with a chop to the kidneys, he dropped into the water. Resurfacing he clambered after the woman, grabbed her by the ankles, her face smacked a rung as she fell, and when her body hit the water it didn’t come back up.

Meanwhile escapees fled to the mainland by the dozens. The haphazard armada included bodyboards and buoyed shopping carts and a group of fours in a racing shell (the coxswain’s chants — S-troke! S-troke! — variously interpreted by his rowers), inflatable rafts with the Municipal Works logo on their helms, some brave swimmers plowed into the Narrows, frontcrawl devolved to breaststroke, then to doggypaddle.

Above it all the sky seemed indifferent, the night’s first stars perversely sublime in the face of the chaos below. For a moment Griggs allowed himself to enjoy the evening: up there things were vast and beautiful, perfect and serene — and shattered by newscopters training spotlights on scenes of drama: a heroic windsurfer rescue of an infant from the branches of a poplar, a half-dozen families trapped in a rooftop garden, with their own clothes they’d spelled out HELP and waited shivering and half-naked to be saved.

And still People Park filled with water, pouring down from the surrounding streets in torrents. From the gazebo Pearl watched Helpers lower ropes, but even the heartiest citizens couldn’t traverse the churning currents. Out on the common surfaced the girl who’d been knocked off her feet, slogging toward the gazebo. Pearl lay on her stomach, extended a hand, hauled her onto the stage. Before Pearl could ask if she was okay, the girl cried, You’re alive! and rushed into the arms of another girl who was weeping.

The water came in, the water came up. When it began to wash onto the gazebo people shrank to the middle of the stage, from the shadows they cursed the airborne newscasters. They’re just watching us drown, someone said, and someone else suggested, You think it’s just them watching us? and a third person said, Wouldn’t you?

Yet Pearl, sitting amid puddles by Raven’s trunk, felt a sudden calm.

Water swam warmly up to her hips, stroked her kneecap through the hole in her jeans. Some people threw themselves past her, screaming, Save yourself! and frontcrawled to the bottoms of the hills, rebuffed by whirlpools like mismatched magnets. Helpers up top threw down lifevests — not donned but shared, two people to each one.

The gazebo had become a trap, people climbed onto the roof only to find themselves marooned, while Pearl rubbed her knee and waited, as Griggs, watching the dozen-strong crowd scale the Wheel, waited: she for magic, he with the defenceless surrender of a web-trapped fly, and here come the spiders, scrambling and famished.

FROM AHEAD, murmuring. The current tugged, the door slipped over the water, Sam didn’t need to paddle, it carried him along. The noise amplified, a hundred voices begging one another for quiet. Sam’s breath came easy. He was close, he knew it. With his ducktaped hand he held the remote ready. The door slid toward that rushing, shushing sound, a television on channel 0, the surf of static, a screen sparkling with a nonsense of nothing. This became rumbling, his ears filled with thunder. And Sam was lifted, he seemed to hover for a moment, everything stopped, a clear cool wind hit his face. And then the door angled down sharply and was falling. With his thumb he hit POWER, and held it, and the raft was gone and the water hurtled him down, and he was inside the roaring, and all he could see was white, and he fell and fell and at last Sam crashed grinning into —

THE YACHT POWERED through the Zone, The Know calligraphied on its hull, engines trailing yellow froth. Its single headlight illuminated the hundreds of people stranded atop Laing Towers, they responded with cheers of joy and relief.

Iθa Lanyeθθ, cried Dack, and a chant went up: Lan-yess, Lan-yess, Lan-yess!

Kellogg squeezed Elsie-Anne’s shoulders. There, Annie, you see? Just in time. We’ll be okay. They’ll take us to Mummy and Gibbles, don’t worry.

Edie Lanyess stood at the boat’s prow, hands on her hips, looking every part her mother’s daughter. She spoke in a matronly singsong: We’ve got room for everyone, don’t worry, just stay calm. We’re here! We’re going to get you all out safely!

This inspired a reprise of the Lan-yess chant.

Kellogg went to join the movement shipward, but was held back.

Elsie-Anne pointed in the direction of the IFC billboard, a ridge in the water swallowed even as they watched. There, she said.

Annie, he said, no, the boat’s here. They’re here to rescue us. We’re going to be okay.

But she wouldn’t look.

The first few people were helped onto the yacht’s deck. Boisterous cheers!

Annie, said Kellogg, look, everyone’s leaving, we have to go.

Plenty of room, called the girl, joined now by her mother, beaming, whose beauty, despite the chaos, remained undisturbed. Listen to Edie, whinnied Isa Lanyess, no need to push! Helpers too, Mr. Dack, easy now, there’s room for everyone.

Kellogg reached for Elsie-Anne, caught her arm. Come on, Annie, he said.

But the girl stood fixedly in place. She seemed apart from everything, facing north, almost hypnotized.

What’s out there, Annie? said Kellogg. If you’re looking for Mummy —

With a surprising burst of strength she squirmed from his grasp, stepped into the eavestroughs, and dove off the roof. A frothy channel furrowed the water as she zipped away into the flood.

Annie! Help! Someone, help!

Heads turned, Kellogg was regarded with mild confusion, but the line pressed forward as more folks were rescued. Kellogg peered into the dark. His daughter’s trail was fading. What could he do? He jumped in after her, swallowed a great gulp of bitter water, came up gargling.

His daughter’s purse appeared with a plop.

He splashed toward it. Behind him the yacht’s engines chugged, the stranded became passengers, celebrations abounded. The purse bobbed just beyond reach, the flood’s oily sheen pocked with reflected stars.

A ripple, a pause — and the purse was sucked under.

Annie?

Something brushed his feet. Down in the depths the purse whisked by. Sucking in a lungful of air he dove, swam, saw nothing, surfaced, wheezed, dove again. A shaft of light from the rising moon illuminated the IFC billboard: the screen in some subaquatic drive-in. Beyond it the water was bottomless.

Kellogg swam deeper down, lungs tightening. Far below something wriggled in the gloom, thick and serpentine, and released — what? A jellyfish maybe, which fluttered past. No: an Islandwear sweatshirt. Kellogg snatched it — empty — screamed his daughter’s name, three syllables the water muddied to bubbles. His face and throat had gone taut, his lungs burned. He looked down and up and around and everywhere was the same vast void.

And now the snakish thing appeared again, uncoiling. Was it summoning him? Kellogg’s head tingled, the blood fizzed through his veins, he felt limp and not quite there. Something ropy and thick tightened around his ankle and began almost tenderly towing him down, and the blackness opened up, it was ravenous, he had nothing left, he’d forgotten everything, why was he here, for whom, his vision blurred, and the last thing Kellogg saw, hauled down toward it, were parallel white bands aglow in the darkness. The lights of a bridge maybe. Or were they teeth.

ONE OF THE newscopters flew low over the Museum’s roof, nosing down for a spotlit shot of the two women waving at whoever might be watching, so whoever was watching might wish them saved. The water slavered between the turrets in a black skim, wetting their feet. The camera rolled. One of the women flipped an obscene gesture and the chopper whirled away into the milky night.

Fuggers, said Adine. They’re not going to help us. We have to get higher.

The Grand Saloon, Debbie said, pointing across the street. The clocktower.

Do we swim?

Can you make it?

Stay close to me, said Adine.

I will.

The building dropped into the water, reeflike. Somewhere down there was Orchard Parkway. But now it was a river. The flood had reached the terrace of the Grand Saloon Hotel’s penthouse, emptied into the suite. Copper gables sloped into the old cathedral’s spire, and the bare clockface resembled a tired moon lapsing into the sea.

Hurry, said Adine.

They jumped, twin splashes, neither’s head went under.

Okay? said Debbie

Adine said, Okay.

The current swirled. The flood felt unsure of itself, directionless, waves buffeted them from all sides as they doggypaddled across. The only sounds other than the gurgle and plop of their strokes were the newscopters overhead — though these were fading, heading to the mainland to shoot the escapees as they washed up on the pebbly beach.

THE PIG APPEARED just as Pearl was beginning to slip under. Her knee had failed her, the flood had filled the common, she’d been forced into it with everyone else. All around her people struggled to stay afloat, calling to one another, Keep paddling — Head up — Stay with us now. As the water reached streetlevel some swam off, Pearl wasn’t sure where or why, past small boats loading survivors, kids first, which then shuttled off with promises of a swift return.

But they didn’t come back, and treading water among the abandoned hopefuls she felt her soaked clothes grow heavy. She kicked off her shoes, yet still some invisible weight dragged her down. She wouldn’t last, she was weak.

And then bobbing along: the pig.

It was a hollow thing of pink plastic. Pearl caught it, slung an arm around its neck, clung there with closed eyes, opened them to discover animals all around: a matching pig, two sheep, donkeys, cattle, lions, a whole zoo’s worth of creatures swimming up in pairs.

The Friendly Farm! someone cried, wrangling a goat.

They’ve come to save us!

There’s room on my rhino, come on!

Nearby a family climbed aboard an elephant, a kid to each leg and the parents on either side of its trunk. Its mate was mounted and claimed as an explorer might some new planet, a woman knelt upon it, arms raised, howling at the moon. More people found floatables, a fleet of them bobbed in the water. Pearl held on, waves buffeted her from all sides. It’s a miracle, someone cried. A miracle is what it is!

This was all drowned out with a fat band of light and a purr of engines. Out of the dark appeared a mirror-windowed and sleekly aerodynamic yacht. A teenage girl waved from its helm. We’re here, she cried, the Lanyesses are here!

Pearl was pulled aboard, the pig went spinning off. Below decks, dozens of survivors wore matching stunned expressions and housecoats. Many sat with teacups dangling from their fingertips, others drifted in and out of private berths, from the lavatory emerged a bearded man in a white bathrobe monogrammed ISA.

A woman was close, eyes wide and empathic, hand out. Pearl took it to shake, realized it was clenched in a fist and holding a marker.

Hi, said the woman, I’m Isa Lanyess. Now, actually I was just going to number you so we don’t go over capacity. Turn your hand over?

She wrote the number 16 on the inside of Pearl’s wet wrist.

Still room for one-thirty more! We’ve already rescued our full capacity once, just getting everyone safe. Doing our part because we can. The woman turned to address all the newcomers, dazed and dripping. Good luck with the animaltronics, huh? Now, I’m out of robes but towels are coming out of the dryer soon. Anyone care for some hot cider?

Lanyess, said Pearl.

That’s us! We’ve got the yacht so we figured we might as well help —

You used to be a ballplayer. For the Y’s.

Maroons, pre-Y’s. Funny you’d know me that way. . Anyway it’s a small world!

A small world, said Pearl, and this small world responded by tilting vertiginously, swirling into a kaleidoscope of her family’s faces: Kellogg’s, Elsie-Anne’s, Gip’s. Lanyess caught Pearl by the elbows and said, Okay there, I got you, and a sob swelled and burst in Pearl’s throat. There, said Isa Lanyess, yes, let it out, holding her while she wept.

As The Know prowled People Park, scooping survivors from the water, the Podesta Tower’s rotations finally shuddered to a halt.

So that’s it, said the Mayor.

With the solar power exhausted the elevator was out too, Diamond-Wood stabbed vainly at the CALL button, shot the Mayor a look of panic and dismay. She blinked, her eyelids so heavy it was a struggle to raise them again. She’d never felt so tired.

If you want to leave, she said, there’s always the stairs.

The outdoor stairs?

Off the viewing deck was a door marked EMERGENCY EXIT with a diagram of a man fleeing flames. Diamond-Wood pushed it open: an alarm would have normally gone screaming through the building, instead the only sound was the muted putter of helicopters. Gripping the doorframe in a skydiver’s pose, Diamond-Wood gazed down into the floodwaters.

Go, said the Mayor, go if you want to. But do you see how they’ve abandoned you?

A soft wind rumpled his hair.

Go!

He paused. But then where, he said. How will they know where to find me? I get to the bottom and then what? And then I’m stuck there, and then the water keeps coming up. . look, everything’s gone — look!

Into the room drifted chemical vapours churned up from Lowell Canal. A trio in a bathtub paddled past, a shower-curtain sail bulged and hustled them toward the mainland, where the newscopters stroked the beach with fingers of white light.

Mrs. Mayor, I’m scared, what should I do?

She shrugged, turned away, looked out over the city.

Her view was that of a ship captain up in the bridge. Other than Podesta Tower only a few structures broke the flood’s surface: the tallest skyscrapers, the spire of the Grand Saloon, the top of the Thunder Wheel, where bodies swarmed and seethed.

How many hadn’t made it? There was no telling. The Mayor thought of elderly couples entombed in Fort Stone attics as the water crept upstairs, covetous Bebroggers who, retrieving jewellery, had fallen through sodden, wilting floors, or, citywide, the irrevocably lonely who’d spent lifetimes waiting for a chance to end it all — and here it was, dribbling obligingly up to their front doors. The trapped and stubborn, the stupid, the unlucky, the vain. . All those quiet secret deaths, happening unknowably in the night.

After this, she said, we will be even stronger as a city. This is just a test. It’ll pass.

She looked to Diamond-Wood for corroboration, but his back was to her. The smell from outside was ammonia, human waste, spoiled meat.

There’s a boat coming, said Diamond-Wood. I’m going. I’m sorry.

Okay, said the Mayor. Go, ye of little faith. She smiled. Yes, imagine us after this! Just like now, but better, touch green. Imagine it: a place like this one, but everyone’s happier. Or at least they believe themselves to be. What else do people need?

But, turning, the Mayor discovered the boy already gone, helped onto the deck of The Know by Edie Lanyess. The yacht went churning north — leaving Diamond-Wood’s crutches twirling in the water like the hands of a crazed malfunctioning clock.

WHAT ARE YOU doing, why have you sojourneyed from your stroking?

Olpert gestured with his oar: There’s people there, on the spire.

What do you conspire, evil one?

No, the cathedral spire. The Grand Saloon’s. They’re on the top of it.

And?

And we should rescue them.

Pop stared.

What? We shouldn’t? We should just leave them there?

Ah, and so now after a lifetime of esquivalience you wish to play the hero! You pretensualize restribution! Well fine, prehaps this will envisage the airs of your ways!

With an ironic curtsy Pop steered the boat south.

All around them watercraft loaded with people and belongings were crossing the Narrows. A little outboard-fitted junk putted by loaded low with people, sad and weary, eyes wide but unseeing.

Rats, said Pop. Desertioneers!

Olpert paddled. As they closed the distance he could hear the people — there were two — clinging to the spire calling, Help, help us, please.

The boat glided up alongside. Olpert looked at the two strangers, tried to show something firm and authoritative in his face that suggested all was okay. And then seeing who it was, his oar slipped from his hands into the water.

And now this, Pop howled. Some hero, he can’t even get a grip!

Debbie clapped. Pop Street, she said, Pop, you came for us.

The small woman beside her said, Who would have guessed?

Yes, said Pop, whom?

Debbie, said Olpert. I know you. We met. At the Taverne? On Thursday. .

Of course, evil one, we all are recognitive of every each other. This is some great phenomenology? Bah. It is life!

Olpert reached over the gunwales, steadied the houseboat against the spire, extended a trembling hand to Debbie.

Thanks, said Adine. Fiercely she levered herself past Olpert and aboard. Then she turned to help Debbie and Olpert stepped between them. It’s okay, he said. Let me.

Debbie eyed him curiously. She took his hand.

Hi, he said. I’m Olpert.

Olpert knows you, Deb, said Adine. A fan maybe. You sportos get all the love.

As Debbie climbed aboard the boat yawed, she lost her balance, fell into him.

Olpert folded her into his arms. She squirmed, he held her tight. Destiny!

Their mouths were close. He pressed his to hers, the blows upon his back and shoulders had to be of passion, he kissed her harder, everything in the universe had converged in this final moment and here it was, one big yes —

Something sharp and hard stabbed his lower back. Olpert crumpled, released Debbie, he reached for her, clawed only air. What was happening?

Standing above him the small woman and Pop brandished oars like truncheons. He was aware of Debbie shrinking behind them, wiping her mouth with the back of a hand. Olpert rose on shaky legs, offered a pacifying gesture, his spine ached.

Pop and the woman advanced. Her eyes were fierce, his manic, he was whispering, And so we see your truthful colour, evil one. They backed him up against the railing. The small woman was saying something, her lips moved, yet the words were drowned by Olpert’s booming heart.

Debbie went inside the cabin. She watched from a little round window. Olpert implored her with a desperate look. She pulled away.

Animal, the small woman said. You fuggin animal.

An oar came at him. Olpert dodged it, but he lost his balance and tumbled over the side, surfaced, grabbed for the first thing floating past: a grey shoe, the tongue lolled, it had no laces. Olpert looked at the shoe, dumbfounded, and then up at the houseboat, which was pulling away.

Gip, watching from the porthole, told Debbie, He fell overboard, that man fell overboard, and Debbie, sitting on the floor, released her face from her hands. What?

He’s in the water, said Gip, we’re leaving him —

Debbie rushed to the porthole. Adine and Pop rowed at opposite gunwales. She looked around the cabin, snatched up a lifepreserver from the wall, barrelled out onto the deck, and, though in the dark she couldn’t see the man — Olpert — flung it into the water, and watched with desperate hope as it floated off, almost idly, in the houseboat’s wake.

THE MAYOR DOZED shallowly, dreaming of the sky, being inside the sky, not flying but just existing there, with no earth below, all there was was sky. At the slop of water against the windows her eyes opened. At last the flood had reached her.

Gone was any impression of captaining a galleon to port, this was more akin to a periscoped glimpse of open water from a submarine. The lake stretched west, the moon carved a silver tunnel to the horizon, spectral and grand. Yet it was the stars that amazed the Mayor. The night was full of stars and stars.

She’d never seen a sky like this. Evenings thudded down upon the island in a dim curtain, waxy and purplish with the moon throbbing dully behind. But this night was a living thing, it seemed to pulse and breathe. The Mayor was in awe. Awe at the spectacle of it, at that immense luminescent fury, awe that such astronomy had always existed — she’d just never been able to see it.

This view, though, was shrinking. In a trembling line the lake bisected the viewing deck and crept higher up the glass. She was sure of it now: the island was sinking, the tower lowered (or was being lowered), the whole city swallowed into some subterranean layer amid the bottomfeeders and the lakefloor’s churning guck.

The water swelled muddily up the glass, opaque and blotting out the cosmos inch by encroaching inch, there was nothing to look at inside it, not even fish. It seemed to eat the sky. The Mayor had stayed expecting to feel noble and proud, possibly even martyred. Instead, as she watched the water swell up over the stars, she was consumed with longing and melancholy. She was alone, hopelessly alone. And soon there would be nothing left, nothing but water. Still, before it was gone, she relished that last visible band along the top of the window, a final jangling dazzle of that silken miracle of sky.

X

AMERALIGHTS LIT THE beach like intermittent signal fires. In each islanders gave enthusiastic accounts of their escapes for mainland TV. Survival conferred the status of hero, everyone was championed as brave, resilient. You’re an inspiration to our viewers at home, one of the reporters told a humbled family, and passing by Adine couldn’t help herself: Not like those sad fuggers who didn’t make it, and Debbie shushed and manoeuvred her down toward the water.

Hand in hand Debbie and Adine weaved through the crowds, between the medical tents and media and boats along the shoreline, calling, Sam? Sam? But they’d searched the entire beach twice, on each pass enviously eyeing reunited families and friends. Fellow searchers passed them wide-eyed or squinting, in their faces were both camaraderie and estrangement.

As the crowds thinned a figure materialized out of the dark, stumbling up from the water’s edge. They rushed to him: not Sam, this man was in NFLM khaki — and for a moment Debbie blanched that it might the strange man they’d flung from Pop’s boat. But it wasn’t him either, this guy was taller and sad-seeming, in his eyes was the same defeated look in Adine’s.

Sorry to run at you, he said, I thought you might be my daughters. It’s okay, said Debbie, we thought you were someone too.

We’re looking for my brother, said Adine, guy about my size, short hair, probably wearing a suit? The Helper shook his head. Adine continued: We’ve been up and down the whole beach and haven’t found him, so if he isn’t here then where the fug is he? And once again Debbie had to steer her away and on along the beach.

For the third time they reached the edge of the inlet where the pebbles swelled into boulders and still they hadn’t found him. Out here, the tinny smell of the lake drifted ashore with each crashing wave.

Let’s go out on those rocks, said Debbie, we’ll be able to see the whole beach. Yeah?

Pebbles and stones chiming beneath their feet, they moved out on a little promontory that sloped down from the cliffs into the Narrows — misnamed now that the lake sprawled unperturbed to the point it folded into the starry sky in a sort of crease.

From the outcropping Debbie surveyed the shore: the sporadic glow of cameras, TV vans in the parking lot of the airport motel, antennas blinking and jettisoning signals into the ether. It’s dark, she said, there are thousands of people, he could be anywhere, let’s wait for morning. I’m sure they’ll have a station set up to reunite people —

But Adine wasn’t listening. She watched the water. What’s that? she said.

Something floated out there in the moonlight. Debbie’s first instinct again was that it might be the man they’d turfed overboard, and at the sight of it she felt both relief and shame. Though it wasn’t a person, too boxy and bright. A little boat, maybe a raft, carrying the flood’s last survivors? But it wasn’t really boat-shaped, and no one rode aboard — a coffin?

Whatever it was, riding a crest and ducking down, vanishing, then reappearing on the peak of the next wave, it was coming ashore.

What is that? said Debbie.

Adine shook her head, looped her arm through Debbie’s.

The white box lifted on a swell, dipped into the trough, came up again. It was the size of a coffee table and advanced with the resolve of something driven or steered.

The night was cool, the surf hissed. The lakebreeze smelled of pennies. They waited, watching the odd little craft bob and dip. Thirty feet out it caught on a fallen tree, the branches held it fast — as a gift, thought Debbie, dangled tantalizingly before a child.

What do we do? said Adine.

We go see what it is, said Debbie.

She kicked off her shoes, hitched her pants, and waded out, the icy water stinging her shins, sand swirling with each step.

And then she was upon it: a trunk — somehow dry all over, though it swam, fashioned from some material that was not glass, metal, or ceramic, but perhaps an amalgam of all three, sheer to the touch, dented in spots, and which repelled water as if coated in wax.

Debbie took hold of one of the handles and pulled. The tree groaned, the branches scraped the trunk’s sides, before it slowly, almost reluctantly, eased free. She pushed it toward shore, not heavy, though it did drag in the water in a somehow solemn way, and in the shallows the trunk lodged in the sand.

Adine waded out to help. It looks like a treasure chest, she said. Wait, I wonder —

From the trunk came a snapping sound. The latches flew open. Debbie recoiled, Adine crabwalked frantically back up onto the beach. The lid opened, fell, bounced on its hinges. A figure all in white unfolded from the box — and rose to full height, grinning, arms wide to command applause.

When there was none, Raven frowned. Debbie joined Adine on the shore, where they watched the illustrationist remove his whip from the bottom of the trunk and lash the water. The shallows parted into a narrow path to the beach, which he took, then whipped again, and the water collapsed into place with a plop.

There you have it, he said, sweeping his whip over the lake. What do you think?

Adine said, I fuggin don’t —

She was interrupted by a humming, sputtering sound. A helicopter dipped out of the night blinking red lights. This provoked a clamour on the beach, the TV crews wheeled to shoot its sweep to the Scenic Vista eighty feet up the cliffs, where it settled and perched. I believe that’s my lift, he said, pushed between Debbie and Adine, and headed up the slope.

Do we do something? said Debbie.

What?

All eyes and cameras were on the helicopter, it gleamed under all those lights, sitting there insouciantly at the bottom of the boardwalk. They seemed to be waiting for its pilot to appear. Meanwhile Raven skirted the crowd, scaling the cliffs in the shadows.

He’s not in there! cried Debbie. He’s here!

But the crowd was surging toward the helicopter, howling (No! was all Debbie heard — No! No! No!). Some people threw stones, these arced up haplessly and had to be dodged on their way back down. The illustrationist’s helicopter seemed to smirk in defiance.

Look at him, said Adine.

There was nothing magical about his scramble up the cliffs: just the hunched and shaky ascent of someone not used to climbing for anything.

Still the cameras hadn’t found him, their lights focused on the chopper. Some enterprising broadcasters up top were hanging over the cliff’s edge and shooting it from above, others were lugging equipment down from the motel’s lot. Some particularly enraged islanders began scaling the cliffside, though it was sheer, the rocks slick with moss, many missed handholds and fell to the pebbles below.

Listen, said Adine. She cocked an ear.

They’re angry, said Debbie.

No, not them. Something else.

Debbie listened: a windy sound, whistling and whispering in her ears.

It’s coming from up there, said Adine.

Raven had reached a walkway that traversed the cliffs — a path dug out to allow easy maintenance on the drainpipe twenty feet below the Vista. He strolled across, was at last discovered and spotlit, the crowd below howled, he waved and curtsied and flourished his whip, and kept going across, illuminated in cameo.

It’s getting louder, said Adine.

Beneath the crowd’s hysterics the whispering had thickened into the gentle roar of surf. It seemed, Debbie realized, to be coming from inside the cliffs. Adine confirmed it: Something’s in that sewer, she said. Look, his helicopter’s moving.

It was, juddering slightly on its skids. The whole cliffside was shaking.

Raven, a hundred paces away, stopped.

The crowd went quiet.

The drainpipe rumbled and shook, the helicopter jostled to the platform’s edge, nudged against the railing — and the railing tore free and came tumbling down. The crowd at the base of the cliffs bolted. With nothing to secure it, one of the chopper’s skids slipped off the side of the platform, began to tip, and as the rumble within the cliffs swelled into thunder, the helicopter was knocked from the Scenic Vista. It dropped, end over end, in almost exquisite slowmotion, and crumpled at the base of the cliffs.

People dove for cover, expecting an explosion. There was none, just a little plume of smoke. And the drainpipe kept rattling, the roar now deafening, cameras zoomed in, everyone — including Raven — watched and waited, hushed.

The drainpipe hitched. From it poured something thick and dark.

Is that sewage? said Debbie.

No, said Adine. People.

It was: all in black, bursting by the dozen from the end of the pipe. And the sound wasn’t just the thunder of their footfalls. They were screaming.

So many people, said Adine.

The noise intensified as the mob rode little avalanches of sand and rock, hundreds of them tumbled down the banks. Raven fled. Still more and more figures surged out in a great phantasmal mass, the air electric with their screaming. They were like the shadow cast by a sudden violent storm, or an eclipse, or a creature, huge and black and hungry, and they swept down the path after Raven, over Raven, inhaling him — a flash of white and he was gone.

And the mob kept coming, scorching the air with their voices, sweeping down the cliffs in a vast dark wave, out onto the beach, where we could only stand and watch as they fell upon us all.