Flood (37 page)

“No.” Lily had an impulse to go over to her, to comfort her. But Amanda looked away.

Lily stood up, setting down her drink.“I need to get ready for my trip to Lima. I’ll call you when I get back. And we’ll go see Kristie together, yes?”

“Whatever.” Amanda sipped her drink and waved her hand, making the voices of the soap opera characters swell and boom so they filled the empty room.

56

W
ith a bit of arm-twisting by Piers, Lily got a seat on a supply chopper flying out to Lima.

The coast was draped in the low, clinging fog the inhabitants of Lima had once called the
garua
, so the chopper descended into a white-out. And then the complicated, boxy superstructure of an oil rig came looming out of the fog. Lammockson had established this old rig
over
the heart of the drowned city as a base for his continuing salvage operations.

The chopper landed on the rig’s upper deck, and Lily scrambled down.

She found she could walk to the edge of the platform, which was fenced off by a rail and sheets of Plexiglas. The sea, gray and rolling, stretched off to a horizon blanked out by the
garua
. She might have been in the middle of the ocean. In fact she was standing directly over the heart of a megacity, of which there was no sign at all.

An AxysCorp flunky came running to meet her, an earnest young man prompted with instructions from Piers. Sanjay was on the rig, but was supervising a deep-dive submersible descent into Lima, and she had some time to spare, maybe an hour. The flunky tried to persuade her to go down below where it was safe, to have some food, a beer even, watch some TV. She refused. She needed the air. She was given a thick coat to pull on over her coverall, and a cup of coffee, and she got away from Piers’s nanny and went walking around the rig platform.

She passed among outcroppings of machinery, like open-air sculptures, attended by engineers in hard hats and coveralls. She recognized some of the operations going on here. Most of the salvaging operations were run remotely, with cranes lowering robot machinery with manipulator arms and cutting gear down among the drowned buildings. Even after years of systematic plunder, Lima, like all the world’s lost cities, was still a tremendous lode.

But Lammockson always thought ahead, and more advanced technologies were being trialed on the rig. His surveyors told him there was gold, zinc, copper, silver and lead to be found under the ocean floor, raw materials for the long-term survival of civilization. The scientists even knew where to look, around big volcanic deposits called “sea floor massive sulphides” built up by hydrothermal vents, places where water circulated through deep cracks in the sea-floor rock, dissolving metals as it moved through the rock and precipitating them out in conical black chimneys. So Lammockson was creating an ocean-floor mining capability. He had other teams of experts working on locating undersea oil deposits. Sea mining had been frowned on in the past because of the damage the noise, sediment plumes and turbulence might do to fragile seafloor ecologies. Nobody cared about that anymore—or at least nobody was in a position to police it.

Lily was watching a fresh robot salvage machine being lowered over the side when Sanjay came up to her. “Lily! What’s a landlubber like you doing on a rust bucket like this?”

As usual when she met a face from her past, Lily felt overwhelmed by a spasm of emotion, a peculiar kind of longing. She grabbed Sanjay and hugged him. “It’s good to see you.”

He submitted gracefully enough, and hugged her back. Sanjay, short, compact, dressed in a standard-issue AxysCorp coverall, didn’t show his forty-five years save for the gray in his beard. He said, “You want to go down into the rig? There are lounges, bars. Get you out of this breeze if you feel like it.”

“Would you like that?”

“Well, I’ve been in that control room for hours, sniffing up cigarette smoke and stale beer and coca-plant halitosis. I’d rather stay out in the fresh air if you can stand it.”

“Then let’s walk.”

They continued Lily’s slow perambulation of the deck. Sanjay asked about Amanda, and he spoke of his children and their mothers in the Scottish archipelago, where an extraordinary new amphibious society was emerging among the clans.

Sanjay said the DSV dive just completed had gone well enough. “Though these days I rarely have to make them myself, thank Ganesh for that. Look, you can see the boat.” He pointed to an ungainly craft that dangled from a crane, dripping; it looked oddly like a conventional submarine cut in half, with manipulator arms, cameras and windows cluttering the cut-through cross-section.“That’s a COMRA. Developed by the China Ocean Mineral Resources R&D Association.”

“A Chinese design?”

“Purchased by Lammockson for AxysCorp for a huge price—along with luxury villas in Project City for its crew and engineers. One of the most modern designs from the preflood days. The dive into Lima went well. We went down to the cultural center around the Plaza Mayor, and the shops at Miraflores. San Isidro, the business district, is pretty accessible. And we got some good science data. Actually the dive was paid for by a Quechua community, up in the Andes somewhere. They had salvage targets of their own.”

That pricked her curiosity, and she wondered if it had something to do with Ollantay, but she wasn’t much interested in the mining of Lima.

He said now, “I heard from Gary Boyle.”

“Via Thandie Jones, I guess? I haven’t heard from him for years.”

“Well, he isn’t in a place it’s easy to send postcards from.”

“Where is he?”

“That’s just it. Nowhere . . .” He told her how Gary was now part of an itinerant community, thousands of people wandering through the crowded western states. “They’ve been on the road for years, Lily. After they were forced out of their camp at Amarillo, they have failed to find anywhere permanent to stay.” Sanjay shrugged. “It’s happening all over, from what I hear. Tremendous populations on the move, washing back and forth in search of room to live.”

“Gary still has Grace with him?”

“Oh, yes, according to Thandie. Michael Thurley too.”

“Grace must be sixteen now.”

“Yes. And a stroppy teenager, according to Thandie.”

“That’s healthy,” Lily said firmly.“I wish there was something I could do for them.”

“There’s still a bond between you all, you survivors of Barcelona, isn’t there? Gary’s OK. He’s probably wishing he could find a way to help
you
.”

They agreed to talk this over more later. And Lily told him she was going to visit Lammockson’s Ark Three to meet Kristie. She offered Sanjay a ride.

“I’d like that. Ark Three? I wonder what Nathan is up to now.”

“You’ll see what there is to see. Not that he tells us anything.”

He glanced at her. “You seem uncomfortable about it.”

She thought it over.“I keep away from Nathan’s more baroque efforts. There’s something
unbalanced
about his super-tech projects. Obsessive, you know? Here he is trying to master the world through technology. While all around us . . .” She gestured at the gray ocean that rolled over the drowned remains of Lima.

“I understand,” Sanjay said, thoughtful. “But maybe at such times as these we need big thinkers like Nathan Lammockson. Because for sure we need big solutions.” He grinned. “The insane as a last-resort evolutionary resource. But don’t tell Nathan I said that. I’d better go sign out with the COMRA crew. I’ll meet you at the helipad.”

“Sure.” But as he turned away she called,“Incidentally, you said a Quechua group put some funding into the dive. What were they after?”

“They guided a robot into the cathedral.” He grinned.“They brought up a coffin. Pizarro’s bones!”

57

C
hosica, a thousand meters above the old sea-level datum, had once been an inland resort town for the residents of Lima. The Rimac river ran through it, but the landscape away from an irrigated valley floor was desert, the mountain slopes bare sun-bleached rock. To put up Nathan’s workers, a rough community of shacks had grown up around the heart of the old town. Lily and Sanjay walked through the shantytown, guided by a sat-nav patch sewn into Lily’s jumpsuit, seeking the hut Kristie shared with Ollantay. It was late afternoon now.

This was just another slum in a world of slums, where, in the roughly built shacks, pots boiled, children played, and dogs slept in the heat. There was a persistent stink of sewage. But above all this loomed the outline of a ship, the slim lines of a vessel big enough to be an ocean-going liner, covered in a bristle of scaffolding.

“I don’t believe it,” Sanjay said. “That thing must be three hundred meters long! I know you called this project ‘Ark Three’ but that could have meant anything—something metaphorical—a seed bank, maybe, a vault of frozen zygotes. I didn’t think it would be an actual damn ship. We’re a kilometer above the old sea-level datum! How’s Nathan planning to launch the thing?”

Lily had no idea. “Whether the ship goes to the sea or the sea comes to the ship, it’s going to be a spectacular sight, isn’t it?”

“There’s something about the lines of that tub that remind me of something. I’m no marine engineer. Maybe I’ll think of it.” He took out his old phone and paged through its memory.

“Actually Nathan is building it in conjunction with a consortium.”

“A consortium of who? People like him?”

“Nathan isn’t saying,” she admitted.“But I think that’s the idea. Even the super-rich have run out of places to build Green Zones. So they’re looking for other solutions.”

“I guess if this is number three, there must be other arks.”

“I wouldn’t know.”

He couldn’t take his eyes off the boat. “I can’t believe what I’m seeing. A ship, halfway up the Andes! The man has to be crazy after all.”

Lily’s GPS patch bleeped. They came upon the shack Kristie shared with Ollantay. Amanda must have been here already, for, remarkably, Jorge, Amanda’s butler, was standing outside in a suit and tie; he looked entirely unaffected by the dirt around him.

Lily glanced at Sanjay. “This might be bloody.”

“Families.”

“Yes. Come on, let’s get it over with.”

The shack was a box, with plastic sheets for walls and roof, cluttered with junk, heaps of clothes, a bed, a table, cupboards. There were vents and windows, and a fan was running from some power source, but it was ferociously hot. The teddy bear stuck on top of a cupboard was a small reminder of a lost past.

In this tiny one-room hut, four people were pressed into the corners, sitting as far from each other as they could get: Piers,Amanda, Ollantay and Kristie. Amanda was wearing her black trouser suit, and Kristie a grubby but colorful dress of woven wool. Piers and Ollantay wore AxysCorp coveralls, and looked oddly alike as they faced each other, separated by the diagonal of the room. Nobody spoke as Lily and Sanjay walked in.

“So,” Lily said. “You remember Sanjay McDonald, from London?”

Nobody responded.

Sanjay seemed unperturbed. He nodded at them all, and sat on an upturned plastic crate in a corner, flicking through images of classic ships on his phone.

Lily said, “I have the feeling we walked into the middle of a row.”

“You could say that,” Amanda snapped. “Or a joke.”

“Oh, Mum—” Kristie said.

“Of course you missed the punchline,” Amanda said. “Why don’t you tell Lily what you just told me?”

Uncertain, distressed, stubborn, Kristie glanced at Lily. “We’re getting married,” she said. “According to the traditions of Ollantay’s people—”

“She’s pregnant,” Piers said. “That’s what she’s told us.
Pregnant
. By this man.” He couldn’t bear to look at Ollantay, evidently, or even to speak his name. Stiff, immobile, Piers looked more brittle than ever, Lily thought, desiccated and fragile. And now she saw how heavy Kristie looked, gravid beneath her loose woolen clothes.

Ollantay was thirty now; his neck was thicker, his skin heavier, his boyish looks gone, but he was as cocky as he had ever been. He smiled.

Lily blew her cheeks out, and sat down herself. “So that’s why you called us here, Kris.”

“You’re family,” Kristie said. “You’re my aunt.” She took a breath. “
She’s
my mother. I wanted to tell you in person. I hoped you might be happy for me.”

“Happy!” Amanda snapped. “Oh, you bloody little fool.”

“Ollantay’s family are happy. His mother—”

“For God’s sake, Kristie, I couldn’t care less about a pack of flea-ridden alpaca herders.”

Ollantay glared at Amanda. “In my culture,” he said, “lovers live together before the wedding. It is a period we call
sirvinakuy
, which means ‘to serve each other.’ We marry only when we conceive, and have demonstrated we will bear strong children. Everything about our relationship has been honorable, in my tradition.”

Piers stood up. “Oh, this is all—it’s not to be tolerated.” He stalked out, ducking to get through the low doorway.

Amanda glared at Kristie. “What’s it going to take to make you give this up? Shall I speak to Juan, or Nathan? Shall I have this clown who’s knocked you up arrested?”

“Oh, Mum—”

Amanda stood and closed on her daughter. “How about a forcible abortion? I could do it, you know.”

“Mum, I’m seven months gone!”

“You think that matters? I’m not talking about an NHS hospital. It would only take a word to Nathan. Is that what you want?”

Kristie turned her face away. Ollantay stood up to protect her. Lily got up quickly, trying to get between them before it turned to violence.

And Sanjay, in his corner, peering into his phone’s screen, was laughing. “I knew I’d seen that profile before. It’s the
Queen Mary
. Nathan Lammockson is rebuilding the
Queen Mary
halfway up the bloody Andes! Oh, thank you, Ganesh, for keeping me alive long enough to see this!”

58

September 2031

G
ary set one foot after another on the cracked, dusty blacktop. Grace walked at his side, sixteen years old, slim, erect, almost feral. Between them they pushed the shopping cart that contained the inert form of Michael Thurley. Michael slept uneasily under a plastic tarp, curled up in the big wire mesh basket.