Flood (47 page)

Lily was left in an absurd situation. After all the bloodshed and loss of Project City, the abrupt termination of years of her life and her work, suddenly she found herself blundering around a crowded, half-finished cruise liner in search of a staircase. But she held Grace and Kristie firmly by the hand, and Kristie in turn hung onto Manco, and hauled them through the ship’s tangle of corridors.

The Ark was clamorous, crowded, confusing. The crew in their snug AxysCorp uniforms, mostly young, mostly Quechua, were loading stores, sacks of grain, haunches of butchered animals, anonymous pieces of equipment wrapped in plastic foam. Some of these items were so heavy they formed human chains, passing the loads from one to the next, chains which snaked deep into the ship’s interior. And then there were the passengers, the final evacuees from Project City and the rest of Nathan’s collapsing Andean communities, pushing through the corridors with children and bundles of belongings. Everybody was grimy, sweating, some bloodied from the battles in Cusco and the scramble in Chosica. To add to the confusion dogs and cats were being brought aboard; the dogs’ barking was a clamor. And the ship bucked and rolled, groaning, responding to the sea that was already drowning Chosica and floating the Ark loose from her mooring.

Grace and Kristie gave Lily no trouble; they just followed where she led. They had both spent the last few years in tents and shacks; they were disoriented too in the guts of this restless steel whale, and that suited Lily fine.

At last Lily found a staircase, and they clambered up to the main deck. It was quieter here, an area Nathan had reserved for those closest to him; it had the feel of a hotel. When Lily read the designations on the doors it wasn’t hard to figure out the layout. She hurried her charges along the corridors. The doors were a long way apart; these rooms, or suites, must be big. The finishing was better here, the carpets more complete, hidden electric lamps casting a soft uplight on the ceiling. But still the ship surged and creaked; you couldn’t forget your situation, not for a second.

She came to their rooms, and took out the pass keys Piers had given her. She showed them to Kristie and Grace. “These are just temporary. Later the locks will be configured to your DNA markers and other personal indicators. Look, I’ll be in the room just down the corridor.” She pointed to the door, a room she hadn’t even seen herself yet. She swiped the doors open, and pushed Grace inside her room.“I’ll come see you in a minute.” She pulled the door closed, and swiped the card again to lock it from the outside.

Then, trying to be gentle, she put her arms around Kristie and her son, and shepherded them into their room. She kicked the door closed behind them, and subtly swiped it locked. The noise was shut out. Suddenly they were in silence, calm. Perhaps the walls were soundproofed.

They were in a kind of sitting room, wood panels on the walls, soft uplights casting a glow over a plastered ceiling, a carpet thick under her feet. The furniture was modern-looking, a sofa and armchairs before a big wall-mounted TV screen. Connecting doors revealed a bedroom with a big double bed and a smaller child’s cot, and a bathroom where halogen light gleamed from polished tiles. There was a real feeling of luxury, Lily thought, like the homes of the very rich in Cusco. In the bedroom there was a net sack of plastic toys, soldiers and animals, footballs and puzzles, brightly colored stuff probably salvaged from Lima or Arequipa.

In the middle of all this Manco stood holding his mother’s hand. They still wore their Inca costumes, the colorful wool with the heraldic designs, now splashed with blood and stinking faintly of cordite. They left dusty footprints on the new carpet. They looked utterly alien here, a surreal displacement.

Lily said,“Piers said there are clothes for you in the cupboards. They thought of everything, I guess. Look, toys.” She tried to smile for the boy’s sake. Manco just looked at her, eyes wide. Lily reminded herself that this poor little boy had just seen his own father gunned down, right before him.

Kristie still had her small pink backpack. She slipped this off now, rummaged, and drew out her battered old teddy bear. She handed it to Manco, who grabbed it, and stuck his thumb in his mouth.

Lily asked, “Do you think you’re going to be OK?”

“OK?” Kristie looked at her blankly. “It’s all gone. My whole life. Everything I built up with Ollantay at Titicaca. Everything we planned and dreamed about. All just cut off. My husband gunned down in front of his child’s eyes.” Absently she placed a hand on Manco’s forehead. “My mother, shot dead too. OK? No, Lily, I don’t think I’m going to be OK.”

“Look, Kris, it’s just us now. All that’s left of the family. You and me and Manco. We’ve had our differences—”

Kristie laughed in her face. “Differences! We were on opposite sides in a war!”

“Not a war of my making.”

“No. Well, it wouldn’t be, would it? You’ve always been the same, haven’t you, Aunt Lily? Always off to one side. Never taking a stand, never taking responsibility. But always meddling in other people’s lives. You abducted me—”

“I saved you.”

“That isn’t how I see it. If you didn’t notice, my side
won
. Even without Ollantay I could have gone back to his family. They’re Manco’s relatives too. Gone back to my own life.”

Gone back to drown, Lily thought bleakly. “Kris, we’ll have to talk.”

“Just go away,” Kristie said dismissively. She was the image of her mother, Amanda in one of her stubborn moments, the set of her lips, the angle of her head, the unyielding eyes.

Lily’s heart broke. She turned to the door.

“Lily. One thing.”

“Yes?”

“Keep him away from me.”

“Who?”

“Piers. I don’t care how big or small Nathan’s damn boat is. Just keep him away.”

Lily withdrew without saying any more.

Outside, she paused in the corridor, leaning against a wall. She hadn’t stopped moving since spilling out of the chopper in Chosica. She felt breathless, exhausted, the muscles in her legs trembling, her head stuffy and full, the blood in her ears singing. She was coming crashing down from the exertions of the day, the combat, the shock of the deaths. I’m too old for this, she thought.

She hadn’t even had time to think of Amanda, of her random, unlucky gunning-down. Her sister was dead, a vivid, complex, different,
unfinished
life terminated in a second by a scrap of lead. Lily felt as if something had been removed from herself, an amputation. She was going to pay for this later, when she stopped moving at last. But she had one more duty first.

She knocked on Grace’s door, then let herself in with the swipe card.

Grace’s suite was similar to Kristie’s. Grace was sitting on an upright chair, perched right on the edge, as if she was afraid of dirtying it. She hadn’t changed; she was as dusty as Kristie. But she had kicked off her boots and put them by the door.

Cautiously Lily sat down opposite her.“This must be very strange for you, after Walker City.”

“I haven’t been in a room like this since I was five years old. And I don’t remember much about that.” She was shut in on herself, her hands bunched into fists and pressed into her lap. Her accent was strange, a mixture.

“There’s no need to be frightened.”

Grace just looked at her, and Lily wondered how often in her life she had heard such assurances. “I took off my boots,” Grace said.

“I noticed.”

“They always made me do that. My father’s family, in the palaces. If I came in from playing, from the gardens . . . I do remember that.”

“Well, you can wear your boots as much as you like in here.” Lily gestured. “This place is yours. There are clothes to change into in the cupboards. And if you don’t like them—”

“Gary passed me to you like he was handing over a parcel.”

“I’m sure he didn’t mean it like that.”

“I was with him fifteen years. He just passed me over to you, to this.” She looked at Lily, not angry, wondering.“I know about Barcelona. How you and Gary and my mother were hostages.”

“Yes. Well, so were you. You were born into it.”

“I know.
You
were passed around from one group to another, a token, a trophy. That’s what you’ve done to me today.”

“We only wanted the best for you,” Lily said desolately.“We’re trying to save you. That’s all we’ve ever wanted. No harm will be done to you here. You’re safe now, Grace. I swear it.”

But Grace’s gaze became unfocused, as if she was looking inward.

Lily got up. At the door she looked back. Grace had not moved from her chair, sitting alone in the silent, pointlessly opulent room.

73

L
ily took a walk around the ship, alone, avoiding people.

There was a pervasive stink of sawdust, lacquer, paint and fresh carpets. The floors were covered with synthetic rubber or linoleum or rush matting. Some of the walls were painted or paneled with wood, decorated with geometric designs and murals, clumsily executed. But, years after the keel had been laid down halfway up an Andean hillside, the ship was not finished, and as she walked past bare steel walls Lily estimated maybe fifty percent of the internal fitting-out was yet to be done.

Lily had never been aboard this ship of Nathan’s, the most stupendous of his many projects. Was this great beached vessel really the best use of all the resources he had commandeered? Lily had just avoided the controversy and stayed away. Well, she had been wrong, as she had been wrong about Nathan before. Now she wished she had taken up his offers of tours and training; today it would have been useful.

With difficulty she found her way back to her room.

She stripped off her filthy coveralls and took a shower. The faucet had an option she’d never seen before, for salt water. Figuring that must put less stress on the ship’s systems, she chose it. The water was hot but oddly sharp, and the briny smell made her think of seaside days as a child. She stayed under the shower for a long time. Then she rinsed off the salt with a quick flush of cold fresh water.

As she dried off, she found she couldn’t bear the thought of facing anybody else, not Piers, not Grace or Kristie, certainly not Nathan. Today had been long enough already. Though it was early, she locked her door.

She explored the room. It had a little alcove with a kettle and coffee and a miniature microwave oven, almost a tiny kitchen. Unbelievably, there was a mini-bar. She really was in a floating hotel at the end of the world. She wondered how long this kind of thing could possibly last.

She tried the TV system. It showed a patchy US government news channel, broadcast from Denver. Behind the live feed was an on-demand movie service, including some titles that went back to the 1930s, when this boat’s original was launched. She glanced at
King Kong
and
Things to Come
; their monochrome images were digitally enhanced. But she had lost interest in movies when they stopped being made, when every movie ever made became an old movie, set in an unreal world that didn’t matter anymore. She snapped the system off.

She made a dinner of a chocolate bar and then worked her way through the little bottles of gin from the mini-bar. By the time she fell asleep, she wasn’t sure if she was crying or not.

The next morning Piers came for her. He said they had an hour to spare before some kind of maiden-voyage ceremony to be hosted by Nathan. “Attendance compulsory, of course.” In the meantime he offered to take her on a tour of the ship. “Welcome to your new home.”

“Welcome to the madhouse, more like,” she snapped, hungover, grieving.

“We must each make our judgment about that.” He put a hand on her shoulder. “Are you all right?”

“I’m functioning.”

“Most of the time, that is all one can hope for,” Piers said dryly. “Come on. The VIP experience . . .”

They found their way to a grand staircase that punched through the upper decks like an elevator shaft in a mine. They climbed up to the very top deck. This was the smallest in area; the boat’s upper levels were tiered in a stepped effect.

The bridge was up here, a roomy pillbox with tinted picture windows. Around the feet of three towering red funnels utilitarian buildings clustered, like a small industrial facility. Radar dishes turned silently. Over their heads were big solar panels that could be tipped and tilted independently, like the slats of a Venetian blind; their upper surfaces sparkled in the sun.

Lily walked to the edge of the deck and looked toward the shore. They were only half a kilometer, less, from where the water lapped around the rooftops of Chosica. She could hear gunfire, but the battle that had accompanied the Ark’s impromptu departure was already over. Some of the offshore rafts drifted close to the Ark, and a few small powerboats buzzed back and forth on the water, probing, but, deterred no doubt by the Ark’s armory, none came near the ship.

Piers saw her looking. “Nathan has an impressive arsenal on board. We shouldn’t be bothered by that shower.”

“Those people built the ship for Nathan, and now they’re to be abandoned.”

Piers shrugged. “They were paid. Fed and housed, for years. You know there’s little point debating the ethics of such things. These are ruthless times, Lily.” They walked on.

Piers looked as if he belonged here, oddly, on this reincarnated 1930s cruise liner. He had always had a David Niven look about him, like a relic from a more elegant age. He showed no sign of the traumas of yesterday, the battle that might so easily have ended in his own death, the fact that he had killed a man. She wondered how much of it showed in her own face.

Piers said this level was called the sports deck. “Once you actually would have found chaps playing sports here, deck tennis and so forth. Not now, though. The space is too useful for other things.

“However Nathan has made every effort to build a ship that emulates the Cunard
Queen Mary
as closely as possible—that is, the ship as she was launched in 1936. She served as a troop carrier during the Second World War and was gutted; the restoration after the war differed in some details. But this is obviously a modern vessel—really a facsimile of the old
Queen Mary
, built with modern methods and materials, features like a self-healing coating on the hull and propellers to minimize the need for dry dock.”