The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Fifth Annual Collection

The Proving Ground ^{ALEC NEVALA-LEE}

Haley Kabua was clinging to the top of a wind tower when she saw the first bird. She had clipped her lanyard, which was attached by a strap to the back of her safety harness, to a strut on the lattice directly beneath the huge fiberglass rotors. As she braced her bare feet on the scaffold, thirty precarious meters above the beach, she knew without looking that the men on the sand below had halted to watch her climb. Only a few hours of daylight remained, but she forced herself not to hurry, knowing that any mistake she made might be her last.

A pair of thick slings had been hitched to separate legs of the tower, about a third of the way down from the top. Each one ran to the closed hook on the boom of the crane behind her, which had raised the tower into place earlier that afternoon. Both of the chokers had to be released by hand. Reaching up, she unhooked the nearest shackle, letting the loosened sling hang down, and she was about to work her way around to the other when she realized that she was not alone.

Haley tilted back her construction worker’s hat to get a better look at the bird, which was perched on the tail of the turbine. It was a tern, about the length of her forearm, with spotless white plumage and a black eye encircled by a ring of dark feathers that made it seem larger. At the moment, it was clinging to the fin of the tail section with its small blue feet, and it seemed to be staring directly at her, as if it had flown up to investigate this unexpected incursion.

She glanced around. Along the eastern end of the island, six other wind towers were spaced about a hundred meters apart, their new blades shining. A seventh tower lay on the sand, where the workers had just finished bolting its sections together. There were no other birds in sight. Haley was perfectly aware that no terns had nested on Enyu in years, and the wind tower was well above the height at which they preferred to fly. And yet here it was.

Haley waved at it. “Hey, get lost. You don’t want to be around when this starts up.”

The bird tilted its head to one side. Haley returned her attention to the remaining choker on the scaffold. “Guess you like to live dangerously. Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

She inched around to the second sling, the retractable strap on her harness automatically unspooling. Now she was facing toward the atoll, which formed a horseshoe, thirty kilometers across, around the central lagoon. From where she stood at the southeast, she could see the full line of the reef, walkable when the tide was low, that stretched to the islet to the north, along with the seastead taking shape five hundred meters to its leeward side.

Haley paused to drink it all in. The atoll provided few natural vantage points, with its highest elevation only ten meters above low tide, so she rarely had a chance to study the entire structure at once. Seeing it now, from as high above the islet as she would ever be, she felt the sight cut through her exhaustion. It was easy to grow obsessed by details while overlooking the larger picture, she thought, and it was that kind of blindness that had led them to this crisis in the first place.

The seastead had not been designed for beauty, but it was beautiful nonetheless, with the kind of elegance that emerged as a logical conclusion of functionality and constraint. It consisted of a modular network of caissons floating on the surface of the water, with each concrete platform measuring fifty meters to a side. The colony had been designed to expand gradually. One day, there would be more, but now there were only five, a quincunx of four squares joined by a grid of covered walkways and flexible connections to the central hub.

Each platform ascended in a series of smaller terraces, stepped like a ziggurat, with the highest level of the hub rising twenty meters above the lagoon. Their roofs had a tessellated look, with photovoltaic panels alternating with surfaces for catching rain. Half of the caisson facing her was devoted to a hydroponic greenhouse, with a floating dock on the adjacent platform, and the water on the sheltered side was covered in a grid of fish pens and bioreactors, which reminded her of the rows of a green quilt that had been flung across the sea.

It was a work in progress, and it always looked to her as if someone had left an unfinished mosaic on the face of the ocean, spare tesserae and all. Haley, who had spent most of the last three years on the atoll trying to solve problems at sea level, was struck by how fragile it seemed from above, and as she gazed at the scattered human figures visible below, she felt shaken back into action. They had only four working hours left, and there was still one more turbine to go.

Haley was reaching for the second choker when something struck the top of her hat. At first, she thought that a piece of the turbine had come loose, but when she looked up, all she saw was that the bird that had been perching on the tail section was no longer there.

She heard the sound of wings. In the corner of her eye, there was a flash of white, and then the tern was beating against the back of her neck. She pivoted around, releasing one hand from the scaffold, and tried to bat it away. Instead, she felt a series of sharp pecks as it attacked her shoulders and arms, its feet scrabbling for purchase on the front of her shirt.

The bird drew blood again and went for her eyes. As she attempted to duck out of its path, her foot slipped. She grabbed for the strut above her head and missed. An instant later, she was toppling back, the impossibly blue sky above the rotors filling her field of vision, and all other thoughts vanished, replaced by the logic of gravity. She tried to correct herself, failed, and fell.

Her lanyard caught her. With a jerk, the strap grew taut, the harness seizing her painfully around the armpits as she smacked against the side of the tower. Her hat came off her head. For an instant, the clip was only thing holding her in place, and as she heard the metal straining, vividly picturing what would happen if it broke, her hand groped back of its own accord and closed around one of the struts.

Haley found a toehold, dimly aware of the shouts coming from below. Ignoring them, she regained her footing, her heart juddering, and saw the tern fly off toward the water. Blood was trickling down her arms from five or six shallow cuts where the bird had broken the skin.

Someone was calling to her. It was Giff, one of the other colonists, his hands cupped around his mouth. “You okay?”

She dared a look down. The men had gathered at the foot of the tower, their dark faces craning upward. As her pulse slowed, she saw two unfamiliar figures standing nearby. They were visitors, members of the research team that had been surveying the atoll from offshore for most of the last three months, and her fear gave way to a sudden irritation that they had witnessed her moment of weakness. She found her voice. “I’m fine. Just give me a minute.”

Haley took another second to collect herself, then turned slowly around until she was facing the tower again. Extending a hand, she undid the final choker, allowing the hoisting line on the crane to hang free. She checked herself to see if she was ready to come down in a dignified fashion, and she found that she was. Then she descended, hand over hand, securing her lanyards alternately as she went. The bird that had attacked her was nowhere in sight.

A second later, she was on the sand. As she unclipped the safety strap, Giff came up with her hat. “I’ve never seen anything like that.”

“It was nothing.” Haley plucked the hat from his outstretched hand. Giff was in his early twenties, a full decade younger than she was, and although they had been working together on this project for many weeks, she had begun to sense only recently that his interest in her was more than strictly professional. She forced herself to speak sharply. “We don’t have to stop. I’ll just be a second. Get over to the last tower and I’ll meet you there.”

Giff looked as if he wanted to say something more, but in the end, he only left along with the others, who had briefly paused to watch as she came down. Haley made sure that they were all on their way, then pulled off her harness, letting it fall to the ground by the tower.

It was a hundred paces to the shore. Haley knelt in the surf to rinse her cuts, the salt stinging, and was about to head back when she heard a voice with a Dutch accent. “You could probably use this.”

Haley turned just in time to catch the nylon pouch of a medical kit. The man who had tossed it was standing a few steps away. It was one of the two visitors who had come over to observe, and when he smiled, the look that he gave her was almost shy. “In case of infection, you know.”

“Thanks,” Haley said. She brought the kit over to the shaded part of the beach where the crew had left its gear. The man followed without speaking, keeping at arm’s length at all times. He was about her age, tall and bearded, with light blue eyes and a hint of sunburn. His companion, a woman in her late forties, maintained her distance, standing at the point where the sand gave way to scrub.

Haley sat down, grateful to see that the visitor did not seem inclined to volunteer further assistance. As she opened the kit, he motioned toward the spot beside her. “Mind if I join you?”

“Be my guest.” She tore open an antiseptic swab with her teeth. “You must be Visser. Or at least that’s what I’ve heard them call you.”

“I’m sure they have other names for me,” Visser said. “My friends call me Stefan. You must be Haley Kabua. I’m surprised it’s taken us this long to meet. My colleagues and I have heard a lot about you.” He nodded at the tower. “You ever have problems with birds before?”

Haley wound a length of gauze around her arm. His full name struck her as familiar, but she wasn’t sure from where. “Not really. The terns don’t nest here. That’s why we chose it for the wind farm.”

“I can see why.” Visser sat on the sand. “What do you think happened up there?”

She taped a dressing in place. “Maybe they don’t like us nosing in their business.”

Haley watched for his reaction. She sensed a spark of attraction here, although she was hardly at her best, her hair sweaty and matted, her jeans cut off below the knees. As for Visser, she recognized the type from the tourists who had come out to the atoll in the years before the dive operation shut down. Everything about him spoke of healthy swims, morning runs, and exercise instead of real labor. She returned the kit. “I have to get back to work. If you’re not too busy, you can come.”

She saw that the offer surprised him, and she wondered if he understood it. All that anyone knew about his research team was that it was connected in some undefined way to the Deventer Group, the corporation that was helping to finance the seastead, and she had learned a long time ago that if you didn’t know what someone else was doing, it was best to keep them close until you did. Visser glanced at his colleague. “Let me talk to Jansen.”

Haley waited as he went over to his companion, who had been visibly sizing her up. Jansen cut a more interesting figure than Visser, with the look of a woman who had spent much of her life outdoors, her blond hair bleached nearly white. After they had conferred, Visser approached again. “You have me for two hours. Our boat is by Romurikku. We’ll take the dinghy back when we’re done.”

Looking over at Jansen, Haley saw that she was studying the turbines, marking something down on a folded map. She indicated the workers. “You can pitch in. Hope you’re good with your hands.”

They headed together for the last tower, which lay on the coral sand near the airstrip a hundred meters away. As she drew closer, Haley saw that the men were connecting the guy cables and unrolling them along the ground. Behind them, a diesel engine roared to life, and the construction crane began to crawl slowly along the beach. It was a chain-driven relic without a cab, leaving the driver exposed on a swivel seat. Visser whistled. “That’s quite the antique.”

“It’s tougher than it looks,” Haley said. “There’s a lot of stuff in the supply outbuildings. Trucks, milling machines, backhoes, forklifts. Most of it isn’t usable. The salt water wastes the steel. But we were able to refit some of it. This is a shoestring operation, so it came in handy. We have to make do with what we have. When I first got here, it was a real mess.”

Visser appeared to latch onto this last detail. “You weren’t born on the islands?”

“Springdale, Arkansas. Ever been there?” When he shook his head, she gestured for him to follow. “You aren’t missing much. A lot of Marshallese live there. My parents worked at the poultry plant. Here, help me with this.”

Haley showed him the armored electrical cable. Visser took up position beside her as she fed it through the center of the lattices, pacing down the length of the tower. “What brought you all the way out here?”

“I didn’t feel like killing chickens,” Haley said. “At least with wind turbines, you get to slaughter the birds one at a time.”

Visser cracked a smile. As she hooked the cable to the disconnect switch at the tower’s base, he assisted as necessary, listening to her instructions and coming forward only when asked. Haley had positioned herself to keep an eye on Jansen, who was taking photographs of the row of turbines. “Your friend can come over if she likes. She seems interested.”

“We’re doing a survey of the atoll. Infrastructure plays a big role, especially this close to the reef.” Visser watched as the crane inched into place. “I wanted to ask about that. These wind towers weren’t part of the original proposal. Someone took money out of the budget to pay for them. Why put them up at all?”

Haley noticed that Giff was doing a bad job of pretending not to eavesdrop. “Are you asking for yourself, or as an employee of Deventer?”

“I’m not an employee. Deventer pays me as a consultant. It’s just us two talking.”

Looking at his handsome, privileged face, Haley saw that he had no idea of what she had sacrificed to get the towers, or what they really represented. “We need power. Wind happens to be a good way to generate it.”

“But the islanders did fine without wind power before. Even over on Majuro.”

“I know. It’s silly, right?” Haley watched as the crane eased itself into line with the concrete base on which the tower would be fixed. “We could just run everything on generators. Ship in the diesel. It’s not like we don’t have the money. That’s why we’re here in the first place. It qualifies us for reparations. A trust fund. They could probably spare some of it to keep the lights on.” She continued to study the crane. “I’ve told you where I’m from. What about you?”

“You probably haven’t heard of it,” Visser said. “A charming city called Leiden.”

“That’s where Rembrandt was born, isn’t it?” Haley deflected his curious look. “You have dikes there?”

Visser seemed to sense where she was going with this. “Of course. Otherwise—”

“—the sea would swallow you up,” Haley finished. “But why not just pack it in? Pull up stakes and join the Germans. It would be easier.”

Visser silently acknowledged her point. Haley turned back to the tower. “Well, that’s my answer, too. You care about your independence. So do we. I didn’t come here for a handout. Relying on the outside is the kind of thinking that got us into this predicament. You, me, and everyone.”

“I can’t argue with that,” Visser said. “Whoever arranged to put up these towers must have wanted to make a statement.”

“You may be onto something there.” Haley turned away. “The towers were my idea.”

Leaving him on that line, she went to the crane, which had parked itself downwind from the tower. Visser watched as the work crew cinched a strap a third of the way down the scaffold, then lifted one end until it was the height of a man’s chest. As the workers brought timbers to prop it up, Haley signaled to Visser. “You can give them a hand, if you like.”

Visser pitched in as they raised the top of the tower, then stood back as the crane was unhooked and rigged to the powerhead. They hoisted it up, the men guiding it into position and bolting it into place. Haley had wanted to show Visser how professional they were, and she was gratified by how efficient the process had become, with most of the work carried out without speaking.

Once the electrical connections had been made, she waited as the men mounted the fiberglass blades one at a time. When they were finished, she waved at the driver of the crane, a younger colonist named Amata. “Ready?”

Amata grinned. As the crane engaged, lifting the tower upright, the men took up places on all sides, using the guy wires as tethers as they maneuvered it to the base pad. Haley ended up standing next to Giff. Grasping the base section to align it with the pier, Giff shot a look at Visser, who was watching from a safe distance, and spoke in Marshallese. “What did he want?”

Haley detected a hint of jealousy. She held the legs of the tower as the crane lowered it onto its pin. “You know the type. He can’t believe we can do anything on our own. So keep your mind on your work.”

Giff only turned back to the scaffold. As soon as it was in place, the workers ran the guy lines to turnbuckles that had been anchored deep in the sand. Haley locked each one with clips as the men pulled the wires taut. Using a rusted transit level on a tripod, Giff checked to make sure that the tower was as close to vertical as possible, signaling to the others to tighten or loosen the guys accordingly. When they were done, all that remained was for someone to climb the scaffold and release the rigging. Haley saw the others looking at her. “I’ll do it.”

Haley put on the safety harness. For a second, she paused at the base of the tower, aware that the men were watching, and then she reached up to clip a lanyard onto the first strut.

She climbed carefully, as always, going up one rung at a time. Whenever she reached the lanyard, she unclipped it and attached a second one higher up, so that she always had at least one line in place. It was very quiet, with no sign of birds, and the solitude gave her time to think.

As she ascended the tower, she thought back to what Visser had said, along with the assumptions behind it. None of this, he had implied, was necessary. The seastead didn’t need wind power or fish farms. All it needed was a handful of caretakers, far fewer than the hundred colonists who currently resided here. The islanders had relied on imports for their food and fuel for years. And if the reparations paid off as they all hoped they would, there would be plenty of money.

Yet she wanted to give them more. They had a chance to make something here that could sustain itself, and while it might not matter to the rest of the world, it mattered a hell of a lot to her. She knew that this sense of urgency had alienated her from many of those around her, even the ones most inclined to take her seriously. But she could never shake the feeling that they were running out of time.

She made it to the level of the tower where the sling was attached. Clipping her lanyard to the strut above her head, she looked around. She did not see any birds on the islet, although a mingled flock of terns and noddies was feeding offshore, a kilometer away from the reef.

Haley took in the view again, the wind blowing in her hair, knowing that it would be for the last time in a while. Looking past the seastead at the open ocean, she forced herself to see how it would look in a hundred years. Water levels across the globe were projected to rise one full meter by the end of the century, but it would not be evenly distributed. It would be highest here, in the equatorial Pacific, and it would erase whatever was left of the Marshall Islands.

But not entirely. The atoll had an average elevation of two meters, and the estimated increase in sea level meant that the high tide would sweep over the few spots of land that survived. If they wanted to remain a country, at least in the eyes of the courts that would award reparations from developed nations to regions destroyed by climate change, they had to make some new real estate of their own. Seen in the right light, it was almost comical. A country could be compensated for the loss of its territory, but without any land, it would not be considered a country.

Hence the artificial island. Turning back to the seastead, Haley reminded herself that it was only a beginning. They had a few decades to set up wave turbines, to make the bases of the wind towers watertight, to build up fish farms and bioreactors until they could live here indefinitely on their own, no matter what happened elsewhere. It had all been born of trial and error, and they had made big mistakes already. But as she looked out at the lagoon, reflecting on what else lay sunk below its surface, she knew that she could not trust anyone except for herself.

Haley detached the chokers without any trouble and climbed down again. Looking around at the others, she knew that the rest could wait until tomorrow, or even later. But when she saw that Jansen had joined them to observe, standing silently alongside Visser, she found that she wanted to do it when the visitors would see it. “Let’s turn them on now.”

There was a murmur of excitement. As the workers grounded the last tower, driving the copper rods deep into the ground, Haley went to the shed that had been erected at the center of the wind farm. The inverters were already in place, and once the system checks were done, she gave the order to proceed.

Giff ran down the beach, darting from one tower to another to turn on the switches, as a second worker did the same with the turbines on the other end. Haley kept her eye on the bank of inverters. As the rotors high above began to turn, the screens blinked to life one by one.

A cheer went up from the work crew. As the men slapped one another’s backs, Haley continued to watch the towers. When they caught the trade winds, the displays on the inverters began to update rapidly as the output wattage increased. She allowed herself a flicker of pride, and when she looked at Visser, she saw that he got the message. They had done all this themselves. Deventer might have provided some of the resources, in exchange for a showpiece project and a percentage of the reparations to come, but it had played no part where it counted.

An instant later, Visser’s expression darkened. Turning to follow his eyes, Haley saw a single white tern circling far overhead.

She did not know if it was the same one she had seen before. All she knew was that it was heading directly toward one of the turbines, and before she could react, it had flown straight into the rotors.

Haley heard a thud as the bird collided with a blade. She watched, unbelieving, as it fell to the ground in a tight spiral, like a maple seed, and struck the sand at the base of the tower.

She ran to it, vaguely aware of Visser at her side, and looked down at its broken body. It had died at once. Haley was still staring at it, feeling as if she were dreaming, when she heard more shouts.

Looking up, she saw a flock of at least thirty birds coming their way. They were flying unusually high, at the level of the turbines, and they were moving in a line that would bring them directly into the path of the towers.

Haley watched, rooted to the spot, as the flock hit the wind farm. It missed the first turbine entirely, but when it reached the second, there was another series of thumps as more terns hit the rotors. If it hadn’t been so awful, she would have laughed. As the bodies of the dead birds plummeted, the rest flew on, and before she could say a word, they had flown along the entire line. At every turbine, more terns fell. A few survivors made it to the end, but within seconds, she had lost sight of them in the trees at the heart of the islet.

“Turn it off,” Haley said. Giff sprinted away without being asked twice, hitting the disconnect switch at the nearest tower before racing along to the next. The others joined him, leaving her alone with Visser. Haley watched as the rotor slowed to a stop overhead, its blades speckled with fresh blood. Then she turned to the north, looking along the row of towers as each one came to a halt, stretching from where she stood to the reef that led to Bikini.

“Let me see if I understand,” Ruben DeBrum said. “The birds were flying far above their customary altitude. They hit the first turbine and kept going. And they flew in a line that took them across the whole wind farm. As if they were doing it deliberately. Or as if they were being drawn to it.”

Haley reminded herself to remain calm. “It’s too soon to jump to conclusions. Birds can be attracted to wind towers as a place to perch or scan for prey, but that doesn’t seem to be the case here. Bugs can swarm around turbines, which draws birds that eat insects, but that doesn’t include terns. And I’ve found studies of how electromagnetic or auditory fields generated by wind power can attract bats. But not birds. At least not that I’ve seen so far.”

Ruben shifted in his chair. It was early the following morning. The councilman for the Bikini district had the girth and the easy grin of a born politician, but he was not smiling now. He had played no role in the construction of the seastead, living back on Majuro with what remained of the government of the Marshall Islands, and he had moved here only a few months ago, once it had become clear that the colonists were serious. “In other words, we have no idea. I’m sorry to say it, but we have to halt the project until we can evaluate the situation. Or find a more qualified expert.”

Haley bit back what she wanted to say. They were seated in the common area on the uppermost level of the central caisson, along with twenty other colonists. Haley had asked for the meeting to be public, hoping that it would work in her favor, but when she looked at the crowd, it struck her as a mixed bag. Some of the men and women here believed in everything that the seastead represented, but others had wound up at the colony because they had nowhere else to go, and she did not think that she could count on their support.

The common room stood twenty meters above the base of the platform, high enough to be safe from the largest of rogue waves. On Sundays, it doubled as a chapel, with its windows of safety glass affording a pleasant view of the atoll. It had been one of the first areas to be furnished, in part with an eye on renting the space to wealthy vacationers, and the result had the look of an anonymous resort lounge. She saw that the councilman was waiting for her response. “We checked the turbines. There’s no damage. If anything, I’m more concerned about the birds.”

“So are we.” Ruben glanced at Visser. “Deventer is sensitive to perceptions of environmental impact. If we’re killing birds here, it looks bad. This is all starting to look like a mistake. We rushed to build the towers too quickly.”

Haley saw that he was showing off for the two visitors, who had taken up position at the rear of the room. Going forward, she unrolled a map on the conference table, holding its edges down with the shells that had been left there as a centerpiece. Across from her hung a traditional stick chart, with coconut fibers knotted together to represent ocean well patterns. On the opposite wall, where Visser and Jansen were standing, there was a framed artist’s rendition of the finished seastead, a dream on paper with no sense of the work required to make it a reality.

She pointed to the map. “These are the nesting grounds. There are big bird rookeries on the uninhabited islets to the north and southeast. You see thousands of terns and noddies there, along with herons and frigatebirds. But there aren’t any birds on Bikini or Enyu. They’ve steered clear ever since the islets were built up for the nuclear tests in the fifties. Even after the people left, the cats and the rats stayed behind. And we checked the nesting sites and flight patterns before we began to build. There are fewer birds here than anywhere else on the atoll.”

“But you haven’t checked again recently. Birds can move, I imagine. A colony might have arisen since you last surveyed it. Or maybe you overlooked it the first time around.” Ruben leaned back in his seat. “But it might be for the best. A wind farm could be put to better use elsewhere, like Majuro. They still have a population of fifty thousand. I’m not alone in thinking that wind power might be more valuable there, rather than for a handful of colonists. Doesn’t that seem reasonable?”

“Yes. All too reasonable.” Haley removed the shells from the map, which sprang shut. “I’d like to survey the island one more time before we come to a decision. Giff and I can cover most of it in a day, and I’ve already asked for a drone to do a flyover. If there’s a nesting ground, we can evaluate our options. We could always move the towers to Bikini. The equipment is already here. I just want to find a solution that makes sense for us and the birds.”

“The birds will be gone in a hundred years, no matter what we do,” Ruben said mildly. “We won’t. If we’re lucky.”

Haley glanced around and saw that the meeting was over. Rolling up her map, she made her way to the door, not looking at Visser or Jansen, and headed stonily outside before anyone else could speak. When Giff caught up with her in the corridor, she told him to meet her at the boat in twenty minutes. She waited until he had left, wanting to be alone, and then moved on.

After emerging into the sunshine of the terrace, she descended the open stairs to the lowest level of the caisson. As always, it felt like exactly walking on land, although the platform was floating on the surface, tethered to the bed of the lagoon at twelve separate anchor points.

Haley often found herself thinking of the early days, when the first set of platforms was assembled on Bikini. The initial crew had consisted of only twelve volunteers, residing in the decaying resort rooms on the beach, along with a supervisor from the Deventer Group. The interlocking slabs that made up the caissons, with their alternating layers of concrete and polystyrene, were based on the company’s patents, and early on, it had been assumed that Deventer would also oversee the construction. In fact, the islanders had been determined to do everything on their own, and before long, the company man had been safely back on a plane to the Netherlands.

There was no question that they had made mistakes. They had tried mixing their own concrete with local coral sand, only to find that it was too coarse for binding, and setting up the molding plant for the polystyrene had taken months. Once finished, the slabs had to be slid into the water, fitted together, and towed into position, and several had been damaged or lost in the process. But the result was a growing seastead that could survive a hurricane or rise with the worst of the waves, even if the real threat, as Haley had come to understand, lay in the human factor.

She moved along the encircling walkway and headed for a covered bridge that led to an outer platform. Going to her quarters, which were bare except for a bed, a laptop, and a shelf of books, she retrieved the equipment she needed. Then she continued on to the next caisson, moving counterclockwise around the seastead until she reached the greenhouse.

Manita Jacklick was checking the hydroponic tanks in which the colonists were learning to grow cucumbers, chives, and watercress. As Haley entered, Manita glanced up. “How did it go?”

“I’m glad you weren’t there,” Haley said. “Ruben sawed me off at the knees.”

“He needs you more than you’ll ever need him.” Manita set down her tablet. The biologist was another transplant from the outside world, training the colonists to establish pilot systems for hydroponics, aquaculture, and bioreactors. Like the wind turbines, they were less a matter of practical necessity than part of a larger vision, a strategy for the seastead to sustain itself with greater independence than the islanders here had known in decades. “Let’s take a walk.”

Haley followed her outside. She had often sensed that Manita was driven as much by aesthetic concerns as by more pragmatic considerations. The bioreactors had been designed to grow spirulina and other algae for food and biodiesel, but they had also a peculiar beauty, the plastic membranes of wastewater floating on the water like a line of pearls, lined on the inside with bluish paste. Even the pens of seaweed, shellfish, and tilapia, crossbred for resistance to ocean acidification, were lovely in their way, and it was this combination of attention to detail and concern for the whole that made Manita such a valuable ally.

As they crossed over to the dock, Haley told her about the meeting. “I can’t go back to Ruben without an explanation. Maybe there’s a lack of food offshore, and the birds are moving inland—”

“That’s not what I’m seeing,” Manita said. “If anything, there are more fish in the water than ever. The birds aren’t starving. But I can take a look after I check the sampling stations. Did you keep any snarge for me?”

“It’s in a fridge in the central galley. Twelve birds in all. I bagged them separately.”

“Hope you labeled them, too. I’d rather not see them get served up for lunch.” They arrived at the floating dock at the edge of the adjoining platform, at which five boats were moored. Giff was there already, waiting for her in the nearest dinghy. As the women approached, he rose, and Haley was about to speak when she saw something pass across his face.

She turned to see Visser coming in her direction. Halting a few steps away, he pointed to a boat with an electric motor berthed at a distance from the rest. “That one’s ours. She’s fast. You can use her. I’m sorry about what I said yesterday. And if it’s not a problem, I’d like to join you.”

Haley studied his expression, which revealed nothing but a genuine desire to help, as well as an assumption that they were united by concerns that the others could not understand. “Why?”

“I’ll be honest,” Visser said. “I want to know what’s happening here, too. We’re surveying the atoll. If the geography is changing, the birds can be the first to sense it. And if they’re resettling for a reason, it matters to me.”

Haley took a moment to respond. She sensed again that there was an unspoken aspect to Visser’s interest in her, and it had nothing to do with her more obvious charms. Last night, she had spent the better part of an hour looking into him online, and what she had found only raised additional questions. Glancing at Giff, she observed that he did not seem particularly happy about the arrangement, but she could think of no good reason to decline. “Come on, then.”

A few minutes later, after transferring their gear to Visser’s boat, they were heading out into the lagoon. Giff had remained silent, and Haley hoped that there wouldn’t be trouble between the men. To head off any further tension, she had volunteered to take the helm herself, and now she was steering away from the seastead, heading south toward Enyu.

Halfway there, she decided to change course, departing from the most direct line to follow a long curve toward the islet. Up ahead, an orange mooring ball bobbed like a bath toy. She had brought them here deliberately, wondering if Visser would make the connection, which he did. “Is that what I think it is?”

“It’s the Sakawa,” Haley said, speaking loudly above the motor. “It’s right below us.”

Visser leaned over the edge of the cockpit, then raised his eyes toward the islet to the east. In the sky overhead, the drone that she had asked to do a flyover was winging its way toward Enyu. “It’s hard to imagine.”

“You can still see the signs, if you know where to look.” Haley pointed to the south. “They used explosives to blow up a channel in the reef. One of the islands was vaporized by Ivy Mike. If you head west, you can see the crater from Castle Bravo. They called it the proving ground. It was chosen because it was in the middle of nowhere. But there were people here. When they were relocated, they were told that they could come back in a few months. Know what really happened?”

Visser did not look away from Bikini. “I expect that it wasn’t anything good.”

Haley asked Giff to take the helm. Opening her bag, she checked the wildlife transmitters that she had activated before their departure, which she would use to tag any nests they found. “They almost starved at the first relocation site. When radioactive ashes fell from the sky, nobody told them what it was. Finally, they were informed it was safe to go home. A few years later, somebody noticed that cesium levels were off the charts. There were stillbirths, miscarriages. They all had to leave again. So you can see why we don’t trust what other people tell us.”

She anticipated his next question. “The radiation fell to normal levels years ago. They put potassium in the soil, just to be safe. That’s why we built the seastead here. Nobody has lived here for decades, but it’s clean. We can use the infrastructure they left behind, and the atoll is a natural breakwater. It was like a house with the keys in the front door. When we arrived, it was just us and the birds.”

As they drew closer to Enyu, Giff brought the boat around to the construction dock at the lee of the islet, where they tied up. To the south, a flock of shearwaters was feeding on the open ocean, dipping from side to side on their stiff wings as they flew, the tips nearly touching the water. She saw that Visser had noticed it. “Migrants. They stay for a while, then move on. Like everyone else.”

They descended from the dock, walking along the sand toward the trees. Giff inclined his head southward. “I’ll take this end. You two go north. We can meet up again in the middle.”

“Fine.” Haley waited as he headed off, knowing that he had wanted to leave her alone with Visser. Whatever his reasons, she was glad for it. The two of them, she suspected, would have a lot to talk about.

Visser was looking at the wind turbines, which were motionless and bare. “No birds.”

“They can be hard to find. So I could use a second pair of eyes.” Haley knelt to draw on the sand, which was light gray, with flecks of coral. “This is the island. I want to focus on the scrub and forest here, north of the airstrip. We have to be systematic. Terns don’t build nests. The eggs get laid in bare branches, forks in trees, sometimes just depressions on the ground or in the shingle. If there’s a colony, it’s going to be somewhere that isn’t obvious. Let’s go.”

They headed north. Beyond the beach, the ground turned into short grass and soldierbush, followed by a sparse forest of pisonia and manjack. Near the airstrip, coconuts had been planted in neat rows, replacing the trees that had been blown away by the nuclear blasts.

As they picked their way forward over the next hour, focusing on sheltered areas that might reveal signs of birds, Haley realized that she wasn’t sure what she was hoping to find. Visser remained silent. She had been wondering if he would open up about what he was really doing here, but with every passing minute, it became increasingly clear that she would have to pry it out of him herself.

Her first opportunity came as they circled back toward their starting point. They had found nothing, and Haley was trying to decide what to do next when Visser spoke up beside her. “You’ve said that you don’t trust anyone from the outside. But you still cut a deal with Deventer.”

“It wasn’t my deal.” Haley headed toward the airstrip. “But if they want to use us, I’ll use them back. They need a proof of concept. If Deventer wants to build islands for countries that are going to vanish underwater, they have to prove that it works on a large scale. We need land and a permanent presence to stay on the list of nations. So they made us an offer. The details don’t matter. I just want to get the seastead up and running before anyone has second thoughts. That’s why I’m in a hurry. It isn’t about the seas rising. I know how quickly the politics can change.”

They looked toward the ocean, where a mixed flock was feeding on the water, the white terns and black noddies flying low to pick up squid and fish. In the old days, she knew, the islanders had followed birds to find promising fishing grounds, but that way of life was long over. Watching Visser, she saw her chance. “Let me tell you another story. Back in the nineties, the Marshall Islands made a deal with a private company to conduct iron fertilization. You know what that is?”

Visser kept his eye on the flock. “You seed the oceans with iron. The iron supply is the essential limiting factor in plankton growth.”

“Right. The idea was that if you can get more plankton to grow, they suck up carbon dioxide, and when they die, it sinks to the ocean floor. Marine snow. On a large enough scale, it could offset carbon production. We could solve climate change without anyone lifting a finger. If you’re lucky, you get more fish, too. It sounded good to our politicians, so we leased our offshore waters. You can look it up.”

She regarded the birds. “It was supposed to be a trial run, but it never happened. Before they could even start, iron fertilization was outlawed as a form of illegal dumping. But maybe it’s better that way. Science isn’t going to save us. We like to think that we can invent our way out of this. It lets us avoid the hard choices. And I figured out a long time ago that we have to depend on ourselves.”

Glancing toward the airstrip, she saw that Giff had emerged from the coconut grove. When she raised her arms in a silent question, he only shook his head. As they went closer, she lowered her voice. “And I’ll tell you one last story. After the islanders were relocated from Bikini, they were given a trust fund to compensate them for the loss of their land. They had nothing else, so they couldn’t live without those handouts. I don’t want that to happen again. Deventer can have their cut. If we can sign over a piece of our future to make a home for ourselves, we will. I just want to get it done now, because I don’t trust the system. It doesn’t have any interest in what we’re building here. But you know that already, don’t you?”

Visser turned. Something was gathering behind his blue eyes. “What do you mean?”

“You aren’t a scientist,” Haley said. “You’re a lawyer. And I want to know why you really came.”

Before Visser could respond, Giff had joined them at the edge of the airstrip, his face glistening with sweat. He pointed. “Look.”

Following his gesture, Haley felt a sudden chill. When she had last looked at the wind towers, they had stood empty against the sky. Now, at some point in the last few minutes, they had become covered in birds. Clusters of white terns were perching on the struts of the latticework and on the tail sections of the turbines, hundreds, perhaps thousands looking calmly inland, as if they had all descended simply to watch and wait. “Where did they come from?”

Giff shook his head. “Don’t know. I didn’t find anything on my end. A few heron’s nests in the bunker on the southern tip of the island. That’s all. But I haven’t checked anything here.”

Haley knew that he was referring to the supply outbuildings and the communications bunker by the airstrip, which were the only places they had yet to search. As they headed in that direction, with Giff casting a nervous look back at the ranks of terns, she felt Visser’s eyes on her face.

Giff went ahead to the nearest storage building, signaling that she and Visser should check the other. Visser followed as she went to pry open the door, which had been all but swallowed up by undergrowth. Inside, hulks of construction equipment and rusting generators were visible in the shadows. Haley switched on her flashlight, casting its beam around the interior, and heard the low scurrying of rats. “Now you can tell me what you’re doing here.”

Visser faced her in the darkness. “First, I never said I was a scientist. You only assumed that I was. I studied biology and law at Leiden University. But it sounds like you already figured that out.”

“I figured out a few other things,” Haley said. “I looked you up online. Your name sounded familiar, and I finally remembered why. You wrote one of the first papers about us. I read it last night. It was hard to get past the legal language, but I think I got the point. You wanted to define what a country was. For a nation to collect reparations, it has to legally exist, but places affected by climate change might vanish from the map. It’s quite a paradox. But you came up with a good solution.”

Visser’s expression was difficult to read. “I wanted to understand the situation. That doesn’t mean I liked it.”

“No. But you didn’t have any trouble coming up with ways to profit.” Haley retraced her steps to the door. “‘It isn’t enough to define a nation by its geographical coordinates. You need land and a permanent presence. A few caretakers would be enough, but let’s call it a hundred. A minimum viable population. You can rotate them in and out, as long as somebody is always there. If you like, you can even make the whole thing sustainable. It humors the colonists. Or it allows them to think that they’re something more than a fiction.’”

Haley emerged into the sunlight. “I was impressed. That paper was written years ago, but you laid out the whole operation. A government in exile in Springdale. A trusteeship to distribute reparations to refugees. To get start-up capital, you treat the reparations like any future income stream. You package it like an annuity and use it to raise money. Deventer agrees to sponsor the construction in exchange for a cut of what we expect to earn from lawsuits against developed countries. It’ll take years to work its way through the courts, but you’re willing to risk it—”

Visser broke in. “The courts are the only tools you have left. I was giving you a way to use them. Both of us want to make a difference. For me, it just happened to be on the legal side.”

“And I should thank you,” Haley replied. “Deventer gave us the patents at a discount. We did the rest. No matter what happens, we’ll have the seastead. They can’t exactly repossess it. And we have an eye on the long game. In a thousand years, sea levels will fall again, and the rest of us can go home. But that still doesn’t explain what you’re doing here.”

Visser’s voice was flat. “I’m doing exactly what I said. We’re conducting a survey of the atoll, both of its current state and of how it might look over the next century. And this affects you today. Because not everyone is convinced that these islands are going to disappear at all.”

Haley had an uneasy sense of what was coming. “What are you talking about?”

“It isn’t just a question of sea levels,” Visser said patiently, as if explaining a difficult concept to a child. “Reef islands change shape. They move around. Even if they erode on the ocean side, sediment can accumulate where they face the lagoon. If the coral dies, it makes more sand available. These islets might actually grow as the seas rise. Most of them formed when sea levels were even higher. Climate change just reactivates the process. Increased storm action could build them up. We simply don’t know. I’m just here to gather information.”

A flood of anger spread through her body. “If you’re saying we have nothing to worry about, I’ve heard that story before.”

“That’s not what I said. Parts of the islands probably can’t be saved. Urban areas, industrial sites, places where the reefs have been affected by infrastructure, like your turbines. But if it looks like any of it will survive, it makes it harder for a judge to award damages. I’m not saying you won’t lose your country. But people are bound to wonder if the claims will hold up. And this isn’t something you worry about in a century. You worry about it now.”

Haley felt as if she had been struck in the gut. “So there may never be reparations.”

“You have to prepare for that possibility. And if that’s the case, what you have now is all you’re ever going to have.” Visser paused. “I’m sorry. But you knew from the beginning that it might not last, and that you had to be open to other options. I want you to remember this. No matter what else happens.”

For the first time, Haley found herself at a loss for words. Hearing the sound of footsteps, she turned to see Giff coming their way. He shook his head, indicating that he had found nothing, and headed for the concrete communications bunker, which was the only structure that they had not yet inspected. Haley made for it, walking rapidly ahead of the others. She did not want to look at Visser, even as his words continued to resound in her brain.

The bunker, built decades ago for the bomb tests, was a short distance away from the supply buildings, with a huge sloping roof nearly engulfed by the trees. Tufts of grass and moss had sprouted in minute cracks in the concrete. Haley went to the doors, which were ajar, and stepped inside without pausing, wanting nothing more than to be done. She no longer cared about what they might discover.

Going in, she took stock of the interior, which was strewn with debris and the remains of equipment that its former tenants had left behind. As Giff and Visser came up behind her, she switched on her flashlight, and she was moving its beam along the floor when she halted. “Giff—”

In the illuminated circle before her, there was a single heron. It was gray, with short yellow legs, a strip of pure white going down its throat. When it was struck by the light, it turned in her direction, and in the instant before it flew toward the ceiling, it seemed to her that it had almost been dancing in place.

She cast her flashlight up to follow it. Dozens of golden eyes were staring down.

There was a sound like the pages of an enormous book being riffled as the herons in the loft took flight. Haley fell back as the birds descended, coming at them in waves, their wings beating the air in the confined space. Otherwise, they were utterly silent, and within seconds, they had surrounded the three of them, jabbing down with their sharp brown beaks.

Giff cursed and beat away the birds with his hands. Haley felt the flashlight slip from her fingers to the ground, and when it went out, it left nothing but a darkness filled with dense feathered bodies. A heron flung itself at her head. It was like being punched by a fist in a padded glove. The bird came again and she shrieked, reaching up wildly to drive it away, only to feel its claws groping for a foothold. Another blow opened a gash on her cheek.

Beside her, Visser had taken hold of one of the herons as it strained forward, trying to get at his eyes. He managed to fling it away, but its place was immediately taken by two more, one going for his face, the other attacking him below the waist. As she watched, he stumbled and went down hard. Haley broke free of the bird that was flailing against her and reached for Visser’s wrist. He returned her grip and made it to his feet, but the birds above were still coming, row after row, bearing a nauseating smell of the sea and vomited fish.

The door of the bunker was still open. Haley turned and ran for that rectangle of sunlight, feeling another set of wings beating at the back of her neck, and tumbled outside. Her bag slipped from her shoulders. Leaving it where it had fallen, she ran for the boat. Giff had already emerged and was shouting for her to follow, blood streaming from cuts on his head. Visser was somewhere behind her.

Haley sprinted as fast as she could through the scrub, ignoring the angry scratches it left on her ankles and calves. She did not stop until she felt sand beneath her feet and saw the construction dock up ahead, and even then, she kept going until she was at the edge of the water, lungs aching, and her mind had finally caught up to the fact that the sound of wings had ceased.

She looked back. The herons were gone. Whatever had caused them to attack had not carried them past the airstrip. The only noise was that of her own pulse, ringing high up in her ears.

Giff was beside her, breathing hard. Visser was standing alone on the beach. He was looking directly at her, but his eyes did not seem to be registering his surroundings, and then he collapsed on the sand.

Haley scrambled back to him. When she was close enough to smell blood, she looked down and saw that the right leg of his khakis was all but soaked through to the knee with red.

She reached down, tearing away the fabric, as a warm jet rose in an arc from Visser’s inner thigh. The sharp beak of one of the herons had sliced open his femoral artery. She spun toward Giff. “Give me your belt.”

Giff complied, staring down at the man on the sand. Haley looped the end of the web belt through its buckle and ran it up Visser’s leg, as high as she could, and cinched it. She caught his eye. “It’s going to be okay.”

Visser said nothing. He was very pale. Looking up the beach, Haley saw a long trail of blood leading back to where they had emerged from the scrub. A gash to the femoral artery could cause death in less than two minutes, and despite the tourniquet, the blood was still flowing.

It seemed that Visser was trying to speak. In the end, whatever he wanted to say was lost as unconsciousness took hold, and before she could do anything more, he had grown still. He was dead.

Her hands were sticky, and the high sweet smell of copper filled her nose. She was about to rise, not knowing what to say or do, when she felt a light touch on her arm. Giff was pointing. “Look.”

She lifted her eyes. In the distance, the terns that had been perched on the lattices of the wind towers were taking off one row at a time. As she watched, the entire flock took flight, hundreds of birds ascending in unison, and before long, the scaffolds were empty again. Even before she saw where they were flying, she knew it in her heart. The flock was moving west, toward the lagoon, and then turning north in a single body. It was heading for the seastead.

Haley laid Visser in the bottom of the boat, covering the body with a tarp from the port seat locker. A cell amplifier had been hooked up to the boat’s external antenna. Dialing the communications center in the seastead, she put the phone to her ear. As it rang with no answer, she kept her eyes fixed on the colony in the distance. The birds were still heading toward the nearest caisson, and at their current speed, they would be there in less than five minutes.

“We have to go.” Haley returned the phone to its cradle. As Giff got the motor running, she knelt by the locker that had held the tarp. Rooting around, she yanked out the remaining equipment, tossing aside a kedge line and an ensign flag before her hands finally closed on a canvas cockpit cover. She snapped it on, beginning with the fiberglass frame around the windshield, as Giff guided them away from the dock. The cover wasn’t thick, but it was something.

As soon as she had sealed up the cockpit, they headed into the lagoon. Haley was about to stow the equipment again when she saw one more item that had been concealed beneath the rest. It was a shotgun. Fishing it out to check the magazine, she found that it was loaded with six rounds. Haley stuck it beneath the seat, then went back to try the phone again.

On her second attempt, she raised someone in the communications center. To her relief, it was Amata, the colonist who had driven the crane the day before, and she knew that he was someone she could trust. She tried to speak calmly. “It’s Haley. We’re on our way back from Enyu. Listen carefully. You need to get everyone inside the seastead right now.”

Amata’s voice crackled across the poor connection. “What’s going on, Haley?”

She looked through the windshield, trying to describe what she was seeing without sounding insane. “There’s a mixed flock of terns and noddies heading your way. A thousand birds, maybe more. They’re not acting normally. If they intersect with you, there’s going to be damage. Maybe injuries. Or worse. You need to sound the alarm. If you can stow anything fragile, like the antennas, do it, but don’t waste any time. Pull the hurricane shutters if you can. The birds can’t break through the windows, but maybe we can reduce the harm.”

Amata evidently sensed the urgency in her voice. “I’ll take care of it. See you soon.”

He signed off. Haley hung up the phone and looked across the bow. “Take us as close as you can.”

Giff gave her a sideward glance. “You don’t want to hold back to see how it looks?”

“We can’t stay here,” Haley said. “I’m the reason half of these people are there in the first place. If it goes bad, I need to see it.”

Giff did not seem entirely persuaded, but he pushed the throttle forward, taking them faster across the lagoon, the water rising in a needlelike spray. The electric motor’s cruising speed seemed to be about fifty kilometers per hour. Haley didn’t know how fast terns could fly, probably around the same or more, but she doubted she would make it to the seastead before the birds did.

She focused on the flock up ahead, which had not deviated from its course. Along with the terns and noddies that she had noticed earlier, there were a few larger herons and frigatebirds. The flock seemed more populous than before, and when she looked to the west, she saw that it had been joined by another group from the outer islets. The sight sent a chill reverberating up her spine. She had seen plenty of birds by the turbines, but there were thousands more on the uninhabited parts of the atoll, and it looked like they were all coming at once.

When she looked forward again, she saw that the leading edge of the flock had reached the seastead. Within the overall group, they were moving in smaller clusters of five to ten, the masses breaking apart as they reached the outer platforms. Some were flying in single file, others in tight formations, in the kind of mobbing behavior she had seen before only in shearwaters. They were approaching very low across the ocean surface, their flight direct and level, but as they neared the caissons, they began to mount higher into the air.

Then they dove. The first set of birds met the solar array at the nearest platform, smashing into the panels at full speed. Many died at once, spiraling down to the roofs of the concrete terraces, while others continued to flop around on broken wings, squawking and defecating in their death throes. Dark gouts of blood began to appear at the places where the birds had struck, the panels clouded with fractures, and this was only the first wave.

Glancing at Giff, she could see the tendons standing out on his neck, but he steered the boat around to the caisson that bordered the aquaculture pens. Looking overhead, she saw the drone that had been conducting an aerial survey of Enyu. As she watched, it was mobbed by a dozen birds, which dipped and swerved in its path as if driving away a predator. The drone took a series of blows to its nacelle, toppled sideways, and plummeted toward the water, where it vanished with a splash. Several of the birds followed it all the way down.

They neared the aquaculture farm. The birds had been as drawn to it as much as to everything else, diving toward the nets on the surface of the water and becoming entangled in the mesh. Even from here, she could see dozens, maybe hundreds, of birds already caught in the pens, a living carpet of bodies that seemed to undulate in counterpoint to the movement of the waves. More continued to come, descending in one sortie after another, their screeching filling every inch of the air like thunder keyed to a higher pitch.

Looking toward the bioreactors, she saw the birds attacking them as well, swooping down over the plastic containers to slash them with their beaks or claw at them with their small feet. Enormous holes had opened up in the sides of several of the tubes, on which electronic sensors for transmitting data about the system had been strung like beads. Haley saw clouds of bluish green spilling out into the water as the algae inside oozed out, the weight of the birds piled on top squeezing the membranes flat like packages of toothpaste.

She turned to the greenhouse. Most of the panels had already been smashed. Through the panes, she could make out the nervous shadows of birds that had either broken their way through and survived or entered after others had cleared the way in, flitting from side to side within the confined space and rebounding off the walls. Everywhere she turned, she seemed to see her own dreams being annihilated with the seastead, the work of years lying in ruins.

There was a thump on the roof of the cockpit cover. Haley looked up. “Hold on—”

Her words were cut off by another series of collisions as the birds began to rain down on the boat, their wings battering wildly against the fabric. The canvas rippled inward with beaks and claws seeking a way through. An instant later, a bird crashed against the windshield, followed by two more, their bodies glancing off to one side as the boat plowed its way forward. One of them ricocheted off the glass at just the right angle and lay convulsing on the bow of the boat for a few seconds before sliding into the water with the rest.

Haley was about to tell Giff to pull back when she noticed something else. Near the net pens, an open boat was drifting freely, already covered in birds. There was no one inside, but when she looked more closely at the area of the lagoon beside it, she saw a lone human figure, still alive, treading water beneath the nets above the aquaculture farm. “It’s Manita.”

Without being asked, Giff steered the boat in that direction. “Can we pick her up?”

“Leave that to me.” Haley saw Manita turn toward the sound of the motor. The net afforded less than half a meter of headspace above the water, and it was being compressed even further by the weight of the dead or dying birds tangled up in the mesh. More terns and noddies were still diving onto the pens, and Haley saw that some of the birds trapped in the net were straining to reach the woman beneath with their beaks even as they struggled to escape.

Waving through the windshield, she caught Manita’s eye. Haley pointed at the water on the boat’s starboard side, and the biologist seemed to get the message. Giff steered the boat toward the aquaculture farm, bringing it around perpendicular to the net pens. Haley scooped up the shotgun from the floor of the boat and loosened a corner of the cockpit cover by the transom. The birds were still coming, the knocks redoubling against the canvas roof.

When Haley gave the nod, Manita dived down out of sight and began to swim underwater to the boat. Haley forced herself to wait until the other woman was nearly there, then tore away the cover. Sticking out her head and shoulders, she racked the shotgun and fired into the air, aiming away from the birds. At the sound of the blast, the terns around the boat scattered, veering off in all directions.

A second later, Manita surfaced behind the boat. As Haley set down the shotgun, Giff left the wheel and helped her haul the biologist onboard. Once Manita was safely inside, Haley snapped the cover down again, the birds hammering against the fabric as they regrouped and fought to get through.

Manita was dripping wet, her hair plastered to her face. Haley took her by the hand. She was shaking. “Are you okay?”

“I think so.” Manita looked down at the body on the floor. “Jesus. Is that Visser?”

“Yeah.” Haley turned to Giff, who had taken the helm again. “Bring us around to the floating dock and cut the engine.”

Giff obliged in silence. Beside her, Manita was looking out at what remained of the fish farm and bioreactors. Haley noticed that the biologist had several bloody scratches on her arms and legs, and that she was clutching a knife with a sheepsfoot blade. “What happened?”

Manita tried to collect herself. “I was checking the bioreactors when they came. It was an open boat. No cover. A few of them got at me. It didn’t give me more than a few seconds. I dove overboard and swam over to the fish farm. It was the only thing I could think of. I cut a pen open and squeezed inside. But they wouldn’t stop coming. What the hell is going on?”

Haley only recounted what had taken place on Enyu. When they were twenty meters from the floating dock, Giff killed the engine, and they waited there, not speaking, as the attack continued. Manita recoiled as a bird hit their boat and landed on the bow, still convulsing. There were no human faces in sight, and Haley hoped that most of the colonists had taken cover. She tried to see through the safety glass of the upper terraces, but was unable to make out anything inside. Some of the hurricane shutters had been lowered, but most of the windows were still exposed.

When she tried to raise the communications center again, no one answered, so all that remained was to watch as the seastead was obliterated. The fish farm and bioreactors were clearly lost, and the greenhouse had been severely damaged. Haley knew that nothing could undermine the caissons themselves, but as the birds hurled themselves headlong into any reflective surface, it seemed that they were determined to erase everything else.

It was several endless minutes before Haley noticed that the intervals between blows to the canvas were lengthening. In time, they ceased altogether. Looking up through the windshield, she saw that the sky was clear, and there no longer seemed to be any birds attacking the seastead itself.

Haley rose and peeled away one edge of the cockpit cover. Everything was quiet.

She pulled away the rest of the canvas, the snaps popping one by one. Turning to the east, she saw that the surviving birds had regathered into a single flock. As far as she could tell, they were heading toward Bikini, and as she watched, they continued inland, where they were lost almost at once in the trees.

Haley sank down again. Up ahead, the seastead was covered with tiny white clumps of dead terns, mingled with the darker noddies, like peppercorns strewn on ground that had been sown with salt.

Without speaking, Haley slid behind the wheel and started the engine. After she had guided the motorboat into the nearest berth on the floating dock, Manita went to tie them up, while Haley and Giff hauled Visser’s body out onto the platform. A few splotches of blood, like cartographic outlines, had soaked through the fabric of the tarp. Manita joined them a second later, the shotgun in her hands.

Dozens of dead birds lay at their feet. The air was thick with the stench of fish, and when Haley looked more carefully, she saw that many of the terns had regurgitated bits of food, the concrete soiled by fragments of shrimp and squid. A few of the birds were still alive, some flopping with their backs broken, others seizing or convulsing in place in a kind of pathetic dance.

Ignoring them for now, Haley approached the remaining boats that were moored at the dock. None seemed seriously damaged, although two had shattered windshields, and all were speckled with starbursts of blood and black marks from the beaks of the birds. As she was examining the final dinghy, a tern burst suddenly from the inside, its wings beating madly. Haley fell back, startled, and watched as it took off and headed away with the rest.

They entered the boat deck, where they lowered the door, stowed Visser’s body, and headed toward the covered walkway leading to the central caisson. In the silence, Haley gradually became aware of another set of sounds, which grew louder as they neared the hub of the seastead. They were human voices, most of them hushed, a few shouting or screaming.

As they moved along the causeway, there was a whine of static, and the public address system came to life. It was Ruben, who ordered all colonists to report to the common area. They filed into the hub along with the others, a few of whom were bleeding. Looking into their faces, Haley saw fear there, but also a veiled reproach, although she wasn’t sure whether or not it was directed at her.

Upstairs, the common area was already packed. In one corner, the seastead’s resident medic had set up a station to dress cuts and bruises. Haley gathered that some of the colonists had been injured directly by the birds, while others had been hit by debris or broken glass. Underlying everything was a palpable sense of panic, and Haley sensed that it would break out into an unpredictable form if they failed to get it immediately under control.

Ruben was at the center of the room, speaking with an agitated group in Marshallese. When he saw Haley, he took a step forward. He seemed to be trying his best to keep a handle on the crowd. “What do you know?”

Haley gave him a short account of what had taken place on Enyu. When he heard that Visser was dead, Ruben glanced to one side. Following his gaze, Haley saw that Jansen was standing in the corner, and she remembered that the older woman didn’t know what had happened to her colleague.

As a tally was taken of the room, it emerged that there was another casualty, a female colonist who had been alone in the greenhouse when the birds descended. One of the men claimed to have seen her body as he was coming back to the hub. According to him, her eyes had been pecked out.

At a look from Ruben, Haley repeated her story. Upon hearing of Visser’s death, Jansen grew pale and turned away, fumbling out her satellite phone. Haley wanted to approach her, but before she could, the conversation had turned to the prospect of evacuation.

Giff was the first to speak. “Even if we decide to go, we’re hundreds of kilometers from the nearest inhabited island. It could be days before a plane can get here. And it wouldn’t be able to take everyone.”

Haley looked at Jansen, who was talking into her phone in a lowered voice. “There’s a research ship at Romurikku. Can it come for us?”

Jansen seemed visibly shaken, but she nodded. “I’ll tell them. They’ll have to come around to the channel. It may be a few hours.”

Ruben addressed the group. “Then we’ll vote. A show of hands in favor of staying.”

Giff lifted his hand high. After a moment, so did a few other colonists. The rest only sat in silence, and when the vote was called in favor of evacuating, almost everyone else, including Manita, assented. Haley did not cast a vote either way. When they were done, she looked around the room. “If there’s a chance of another attack, we don’t want to bring the ship here. These birds seem drawn to structures or movement. The ship can hold station at the channel near Enyu. We’ll head over in any boats that can be covered. How many do we have?”

After a quick inventory, it became clear that five usable boats remained, including the electric dinghy that Visser had provided. Four were moored on the floating dock, while the fifth, which Manita had used while checking the bioreactors, was still drifting near the aquaculture pens, where it could be retrieved. A sixth was at Bikini, and although a few of the colonists offered to go for it, it was decided that the five boats they had would be enough.

Haley ended up at the center of the evacuation effort, rounding up volunteers to get the covers on the boats and to put up the hurricane shutters. Without being conscious of it, she had accepted that she was leaving the seastead for a long time, perhaps forever, and she found herself ticking off its vulnerabilities, wondering how best to prepare it for being abandoned.

As she was heading downstairs, Ruben pulled her aside. “I know you don’t want this. But an evacuation is going to happen whether we like it or not. Better to handle it in a form we can control.”

She saw that he was acting as bravely as he knew how. “What if they attack again?”

Ruben held her gaze. “We keep going. If we turn back, this becomes a panic. And I don’t know how that will end.”

As the councilman was called away, Haley continued down to the galley. Earlier, she had been struck by an idea, and now she gathered up an armful of cans, a roll of tape, a pair of tin snips, and a propane torch.

On her way out, she ran into Manita. The biologist still seemed shocked by the loss of the bioreactors and the death of the woman in the greenhouse, whom she had seen less than an hour before the attack, but her voice was steady. “There’s something I need to show you.”

Haley was about to say that it could wait, but something in Manita’s eyes convinced her. “What is it?”

Manita drew her into a storage room off the corridor and closed the door behind them. “I didn’t have time to tell you earlier. You remember how I said that the levels of fish here have been increasing?”

Haley felt another prickle. “I was wondering if the birds were running out of food.”

“They aren’t. It’s the opposite. I haven’t seen fish in these numbers for years. But that isn’t what bothered me. Once a month, I run a comparison of water samples, one from the area by the bioreactors, the other from our sampling station offshore. This morning, after we talked, I found these.”

She opened her hand. Cupped in her palm were a few small gray pellets. Haley stared. “What are they?”

Manita told her. Haley listened, and for a long moment afterward, she could do nothing but stand in silence. Finally, she told Manita what to do. The biologist gave her a nod and left.

On the lowest level of the hub, there was a room for the seastead’s battery bank, lined with rack after rack of vanadium cells, which would have to be shut down as part of the evacuation. Haley descended the companionway alone, and she was going from one disconnect switch to the next when Jansen entered behind her. “I was told that you wanted to talk to me.”

Haley switched off the last rack and closed the door. “The ship is on its way?”

“They’ll be at the channel in forty minutes. I told them to cover up anything reflective on the outside, in case the birds are being drawn to it. What exactly is it that you wanted?”

“I won’t waste your time,” Haley said. “I was hoping you could explain something. We can talk about it here, in private, or we can go upstairs and you can tell the entire colony. It’s up to you.”

Reaching into her pocket, she set the pellets on the surface of the rack between them. Jansen took them in for a second. Finally, she appeared to reach a decision, and her hard features grew fractionally wearier. “We’re conducting iron fertilization. It’s been ongoing for the last three months. We do it mostly at night.”

“I’ve already gathered that much,” Haley said. “Did Ruben know about this?”

Jansen shook her head. “Nobody at the colony was aware of it. It had to be done in secret. Technically, it’s still illegal. But the only way to convince anyone of its merits is to conduct a test on a large scale.”

“So it was a proof of concept. Like the seastead. And you chose a place where no one who mattered would notice until you were done—”

“It wasn’t my decision to keep it from you. We wouldn’t have conducted these tests if it hadn’t been approved on a higher level. You sold the rights to your offshore waters a long time ago. Those rights never lapsed. They’ve just changed hands a few times. It was part of the arrangement with Deventer. Whatever reparations you hope to get are decades away. We needed something now. And you have it to thank for all of this. Otherwise, the colony wouldn’t even exist.”

“I’d say it doesn’t have much of a chance of existing anyway. What did you do?”

Jansen glanced away. “It was the largest test we’ve ever conducted. Previous studies were restricted to a few hundred square kilometers, and they would just dump iron sulfate in the ocean, where it sinks right away. We bind the iron with lignin and compress it into pellets. It allows it to persist for longer.”

“And what happened?” Haley asked. “You saw an increase in sea life offshore?”

Jansen gave a quick nod. “There have been huge algal blooms. Most of it is a few kilometers past the reef, so you wouldn’t have seen the effects here. The blooms have been heaviest over the last few months. We noticed an increase in the biomass of phytoplankton right away. Then it worked its way up the food chain. More shrimp, more squid, more fish.”

“But it changed the ecosystem in ways you didn’t predict. Including the birds. Did Visser know?”

“None of us did. Not until today. We thought that whatever negative effects it had would be containable. We were wrong.”

Haley looked into Jansen’s eyes, which had grown fixed and glassy. “I still don’t understand the point. When you told the world, what did you expect? We’re not going to turn back climate change.”

“No,” Jansen said. “That ship has sailed. Politically, if not scientifically. But we can do what we can with the time we have. Deventer ran the numbers. Iron fertilization is the cheapest way to sequester large amounts of carbon. We could sell the credits to polluters. Let factories and power plants keep operating if we sink enough carbon into the sea here. It won’t make anything worse, and in the meantime, it’s an income stream. It’s more realistic than the hope of reparations. You can’t trust any one solution. There always has to be a safety line.”

Haley did not look away. “Unless the safety line snaps first. But that’s the only reason you agreed to fund this. You don’t think the reparations will pay off. It was all just to humor us.”

Jansen’s air of control began to crumble. “If it matters, I’m sorry. It hurts me as much as it does you. And if I could take it back, I would.”

Haley turned toward the battery bank. “Just make sure the ship gets here on time.”

She did not look at Jansen again. After a pause, the older woman left the room. Haley remained there for another minute, checking to make sure that the switches were off, and then she headed back to the upper level. She felt as if she had been hollowed out on the inside.

A half hour later, word came that the research ship was holding station at the mouth of the channel. There were no birds in sight.

On the top level of the hub, the colonists had been divided into five groups. At a nod from Ruben, Haley motioned for the first cohort of twenty to follow her downstairs. In her hands, she was carrying the object she had built earlier. It consisted of five empty cans taped in a row, their tops and bottoms partially removed, with the propane torch inserted through a hole in the base of the first cylinder.

They entered the lowest level of the outer caisson and continued on to the boat deck. All was silent. Visser was still there, wrapped up like an offering, along with the body of the woman from the greenhouse, which two other colonists had retrieved. On closer examination, it had been determined that her eyes had not been pecked out after all, and that she most likely had died of a heart attack.

Haley saw the colonists casting nervous glances at the bodies as they filed toward the door to the dock, which was lowered. She gave a signal to Giff, who had volunteered to remain until the last boat was gone. He went to the door, pulled the manual release, and slid it up its rails.

They stood looking out at the dock. Four meters of exposed space lay between them and the boats. It was covered with the bodies of terns, dead noddies, and regurgitated gobbets of fish and squid. Aside from the sound of the water lapping against the framework of the caisson, it was utterly quiet.

Giff waved forward the colonists, who began to move toward the nearest dinghy. Haley remained inside the boat deck, her eyes riveted to the sky. There was no sign of life anywhere between here and Bikini.

One by one, the colonists lowered themselves into the boat, packed as closely together as possible. The last to come out was Jansen, who had been asked to depart with the first group to coordinate the boarding process. Before leaving, she went to Visser’s body and lifted it by the shoulders, with Giff picking it up by the legs. The other colonists made as much room as they could as the body was lowered into the boat, followed by the second victim.

When they were done, Giff gave three pulls to the starter rope, and the engine began to rumble. As two other men pulled the cover into place, he climbed onto the dock and uncleated the lines. Then he came back to watch as one of the colonists took the tiller and steered the boat away from the slip. Haley spoke softly. “Tell Ruben to send the next group down.”

Giff went to the handset mounted by the door of the boat deck and made the call. The first dinghy was already a hundred meters out. Haley continued to watch the skies, and as the next group arrived, she saw a number of white and black specks appear over the trees on Bikini. It was a flock of terns and noddies, and from here, it was hard to tell whether or not they were heading this way. Giff saw them a second after she did. “What do you think?”

Haley raised the metal tube in her hands. “We keep going. If we stop, we may not get a second chance.”

Giff gestured for the others to move as Haley kept her eyes on the birds. There was no doubt now that they were coming. She estimated that they had several minutes before the flock arrived, and she was about to tell the second boat to leave when another mass of birds, which had approached unseen over the top of the caisson, descended without any warning.

Within seconds, the birds were everywhere. As they began to dive toward the boats and the platform, the colonists screamed, but before panic could take hold, Haley raised the tube in her hands. Switching on the propane torch, she counted to five, and then she pulled the trigger.

A blue fireball erupted from the mouth of the outermost can, accompanied by a deafening blast. The sound was what counted, not the flame, and as soon as the birds heard it, they scattered. Haley shouted at Giff to get the last of the colonists on board. He herded the rest onto the boat, and then it was off, the men inside struggling to pull the cover into place as they sped off into the lagoon.

The birds were throwing themselves against the sides of the boat deck. As the sound of wings rose, Giff looked at Haley for approval, then went to the handset. “Send the last three groups now.”

A deckwash pump stood to one side of the deck. Giff switched it on and took up the washdown hose. When one bird, followed by another, appeared at the door, he squeezed the sprayer, and a pressurized burst of water swept the birds out of sight. He caught her eye again. “I’m going out.”

Haley knew better than to tell him otherwise. As the remaining evacuees began to appear, Giff ducked down and went out to the exposed part of the dock, the hose unspooling behind him. Haley followed him outside, where the birds were descending in huge sorties, with more colliding with the platform and tumbling down to the surface of the caisson.

Giff aimed the hose toward the boats, sweeping the spray from side to side, as if laying down cover fire. Haley waited. As soon as the first half of the group had emerged, she squeezed the trigger of the propane canister. Another fireball exploded from the poofer, sending birds wheeling away, and in the brief respite it granted, the next set of colonists was able to board.

They did it two more times. Whenever the birds gathered, Giff drove them away with the hose, and when their numbers increased past the point where he could handle it, Haley fired the poofer again. A few managed to break through, diving to strike with their claws and beaks, leaving only a few scratches and cuts. The third boat was halfway to the channel, followed closely by the fourth.

Ruben was on the final boat. As he lowered himself into the dinghy, Haley could tell that he was wondering if she would leave. “This isn’t the end. I’ll see you on the ship. We need you there.”

“I’m right behind you,” Haley said shortly. “Hurry up. I don’t know how much longer we can hold them off.”

Ruben sat down with the last group. As he did, Giff exchanged a look with Haley. He sprayed one more jet from the hose, clearing the deck, and jumped down into the boat. Haley fired the poofer, driving away the remaining birds. She could tell from the weight of the canister that it was close to empty.

Giff took the tiller. He kept his eyes on her until the cover was snapped into place and the boat was on its way.

Haley stood there for a second, alone, as the final group departed. Overhead, the birds were returning. She set the poofer on the floor inside the boat deck, then yanked the door the rest of the way down. Once it was shut, she waited, listening, as the collisions against the outside of the caisson resumed. She was the only human being left in the entire colony.

For a minute, she gathered herself, feeling the empty seastead stretching around her to all sides. The idea of simply staying behind had occurred to her more than once. At last, however, she moved on. Ruben was right. This was not the end. She just had to turn off the lights.

Leaving the boat deck, she continued along the interior walkway until she reached the generator room at the far edge of the platform. She went from one generator to the next, switching them all off, and when the last had been powered down, the overhead lights blinked out.

Haley took a flashlight from the wall and used it to find her way to the hub. Then she paused. The sound of the collisions had ceased, as if an invisible button had been pressed. All the birds had gone silent.

She went up to the common area. Going to the largest window, she opened it and manually cranked back the hurricane shutter.

Birds were perched on every surface of the seastead. Haley saw them clustered on the photovoltaic arrays, on the concrete roofs, on the walkways, on the decks along the platforms. There were hundreds of terns and noddies, maybe thousands, along with the uncounted bodies of birds that had died trying to smash their way inside. But they were not attacking.

A noddy sat on the ledge below the window. She looked into its solemn, lethargic face. As it tilted its head to one side to fix its dim eyes on hers, she sensed that whatever had been happening was over. At the back of her mind, she began to understand why, but she pushed the thought away for now.

She made her way down to the lowest level. In one corner of the boat deck, there was a dive station with scuba gear. Haley heard the birds stirring gently against the sides of the seastead as she pulled on her tank, half mask, and weight belt. She adjusted her straps, feeling as if she were saying farewell to the only chapter of her life that would ever matter, and then went to the door and raised it.

On the deck outside, the birds were standing in silent ranks. She lowered the door behind her, then began to inch past the birds, picking her way to the edge. They continued to watch her, not moving, but when she looked closer, she saw some of them trembling, shifting back and forth on their little feet.

She made it to the side. Taking a seat on the lip of the platform, she pulled on her fins and bit down on her mouthpiece. Then she pushed herself off into the clear waters of the lagoon.

Haley descended, listening to herself breathing, the silver bubbles sliding past her cheek. When she looked up, she saw the floating bodies of birds outlined against the sky. She swam carefully, weaving her way past the anchor cables tethering the caisson to the bed, and was about to head for Bikini, where one boat remained, when something made her pivot and swim in the other direction.

At the bottom of the lagoon lay a shipwreck. Switching on her flashlight, she directed it toward the carcass of the destroyer, a hundred meters long, that sat upright against the white sand of the seabed. The hull was horribly twisted and damaged, with an enormous gash below the superstructure, which had been smashed amidships like a concertina. It had taken the impact squarely on its port side, its hull plates buckling to reveal the girders underneath.

Haley studied the wreck, which looked black and white in the darkness. It was one of ninety ships that had been brought to Bikini for the bomb tests. Some had been painted orange for visibility, while others had been filled with animals, the goats and pigs penned in place like sacrificial victims.

Now it lay here, as if in silent contemplation. The hull was overgrown with whip corals, the big fans sprouting from the end of its forward guns, and schools of glass fish and marbled grouper were weaving among the lavender ropes. Any exposed areas had been coated in a soft red silt. There was a message here, although it seemed too large for her to glimpse it all at once.

Haley regarded the wreck for a long moment. Then she turned and began to swim the half kilometer to where the final boat awaited.

Turning on the pump, Haley picked up the washdown hose. A mask was tied over the lower half of her face, and she had put a dab of mentholated ointment on her upper lip to block out the stench. Directing the jet of water toward the surface of the caisson, she began to wash it free of blood. It was oddly consoling work, and it took her a moment to realize that she was not alone.

Manita spoke from behind her. “I tried to reach you. You haven’t been responding.”

Haley fixed her eyes on the deck as she sprayed away the offal. “I’ve been busy. It took a few days just to dump what was left of the birds into the lagoon. They were pretty rotten. But the sharks will take them.”

She finally looked at Manita. A month had passed since the evacuation. She had spent most of the last week trying to get her way back, hitching a ride on a cargo ship on its way to Guam, then covering the rest of the distance in an inflatable tender. It had not occurred to her to make arrangements for a return journey, but a quick check of the seastead had confirmed that enough of it had survived to keep her alive indefinitely. “How did you get here?”

“Probably the same way you did,” Manita said. “There’s a weekly ship to Honolulu. I managed to convince them to drop me off at Enyu. There are a still few boats out by the construction dock, if you don’t mind swinging an oar. I’m surprised that you didn’t see us.”

“I haven’t looked out to sea in a long time. There’s more than enough to handle here.” Haley studied the other woman. “Any birds?”

“No. Everything’s quiet. According to Deventer, the effects of iron fertilization take just twenty days to disperse. For the impact to last, the process has to be continuous. But it looks like a permanent drop in the bird population.” Manita looked to the west. “Maybe there are some on the outer islets. But I don’t know.”

Haley turned off the hose. Her questions lay like a lump in her chest. “Have they said anything else?”

“A little. I figured you’d want to hear it. And I wanted to ask if you’re coming back.”

“I’ll finish cleaning up first. Then we’ll see.” Haley led her toward the edge of the dock. “So talk to me.”

Manita sat down, looking out at the lagoon. “They’re going to release a report. Iron fertilization creates huge algal blooms, but you don’t know what you’ll get in advance. It alters the community structure to favor certain kinds of phytoplankton. In this case, it was a species called pseudonitzschia. Ever hear of it?”

Haley nodded. “Yeah. I’ve had time to do a lot of reading. And I know that it’s happened before.”

“But not on this scale. Pseudonitzschia is an oceanic species. Under normal conditions, it’s a bit player. But it responds particularly well to iron fertilization. And it’s toxic. It produces domoic acid, which accumulates in fish and squid. When they’re eaten by birds, chronic exposure can cause neurological damage. They become confused, suffer seizures, engage in mobbing behavior. Toxicity is highest in coastal waters. And it can lead to attacks on humans or buildings.”

Haley understood. “Which is why it didn’t affect migrant birds, like the shearwaters. They were just passing through, so they weren’t exposed to enough of it. Only the birds that nested and fed here.”

“That’s how it looks.” Manita paused. “I can’t prove it, but it’s possible that the toxin caused the birds to attack particular structures. The damage from domoic acid is concentrated on the hippocampus. For some species, like terns, it’s the structure they use to navigate. It’s particularly sensitive to electromagnetic interference, like the kind that would be produced by wind turbines, or the electric motors on some of the boats, or radio transmitters, or solar cells. They were drawn to it. It caused them to cyclically attack and regroup—”

“—and it ended when we shut it all down.” Haley felt the sting of tears, but she fought them away. “And Deventer?”

Manita looked down at her reflection. “They’ve stopped the tests. It wasn’t just about the birds. It’s unclear how well the process sequesters carbon at all. When phytoplankton die, they don’t always sink down to the seabed. Sometimes they return to the food chain. Whatever sequestration occurs is probably only temporary. So it doesn’t look like a viable source of carbon credits.”

“Which means that there’s no more money,” Haley said. “No cash flow. Even if the reparations come through a decade from now, we need money today. Nobody is going to want to live here otherwise.”

“Maybe not. But they can’t take away what you have. You were right to put all this together when you could. It exists. Nothing can change that.” Manita turned to her. “So what are you going to do now?”

“Whatever I can repair or salvage, I’ll keep. The rest I’ll close down. I’ve got enough here to keep me alive. As for everybody else—” Haley hesitated. “What are they saying?”

“Ruben is back on Majuro. So are most of the others. Giff keeps talking about coming back, but he’s got his own life to consider. And I need to think it over.” Manita reached out and took her hand. “If you want me to stay for now, I will. At least for long enough to get it running again.”

Haley squeezed back. Then she drew away. “I’d like that. But I want to be alone for a little while. You can get set up in the hub. It’s the cleanest part. I’ll come and find you later.”

Manita headed silently inside. Haley remained where she was for another moment, then stood. Picking up the hose, she finished cleansing the blood from the platform, then removed her mask and stowed the pump. There was one last thing she had to do, and she had been postponing it for days.

The tender she had taken here was moored by the floating dock. She saw that Manita had tied a rowboat beside it. Smiling slightly, she lowered herself down and cast off the lines.

Half an hour later, she was on Enyu. Leaving the tender by the construction dock, she walked up the coral beach, heading through the scrub toward the airstrip. Ranks of replanted coconut trees stood to either side.

Haley walked along the towers, which loomed like sentinels on the eastern edge of the islet, where the trade winds were strongest. When she reached the last one, she began to climb. There were a few signs of damage, but nothing that could not be repaired, if not by her, then by those who might come later.

Reaching the top of the tower, she worked her away around so that she was facing the lagoon. From here, she could see the full extent of the seastead. It was battered, with the shreds and patches of the bioreactors and net pens still drifting freely on the surface of the water. Most of the photovoltaic panels had been smashed, and all the windows were dark. But it was still there.

She raised her eyes toward the west. At the far edge of the lagoon was a bright patch of blue water. Looking at the crater that had been left by the nuclear tests, Haley reminded herself that the best way to make something lasting was to grow it piece by piece, like the reef. She could scale it back. Not as a colonist, but as a caretaker, preparing the way for others to return. Manita was right. Nothing could take away what she already had. She didn’t need their money, their resources, or even their support. All she needed was herself.

A flock of shearwaters was feeding over the water. Haley kept her eyes on it. Then she turned away and descended the tower again, going down just as she had climbed up—alone, and without a harness.