Stephen Baxter - Flood

Nathan Lammockson walked toward them.

Lammockson was a short man, hefty, his suit jacket a fraction on the small side so that his belly pushed out his shirt. He wore his gray-flecked black hair cut short to the scalp, and his double chin and fleshy nose were moist with sweat. He came trailed by a school of news crews. Murmuring inconsequential words, Lammockson shook hands with each of the four of them, the four he had saved from the clutches of the Spanish extremists. Lights glared and mike booms hovered. This encounter was clearly the centerpiece of the occasion, for him.

Lily had researched their rescuer in her free time since returning to England. Forty-five years old, Lammockson was a third-generation immigrant from Uganda. His grandparents had fled Idi Amin. He looked vaguely eastern Mediterranean; he claimed not to know or care what his ethnic origins were. By forty he had become one of the richest men in Britain. As far as Lily understood he had got that way mostly by buying up huge companies, using their own assets to secure the loans he needed to do so, and then selling them on for immense profits.

When the cameras were done with them Piers Michaelmas stepped away politely, inspecting what looked to Lily like a futuristic pager. “They’re starting to issue flood warnings in London,” he said to Lily.

“That North Sea storm?”

“Yes. The Barrier is already raised, but-Hello? Yes, this is Michaelmas…” He wandered away, speaking into the air.

“So,” Lammockson said expansively. “You’re enjoying the party?”

Gary, slightly drunk, said, “I always enjoy learning new words.”

“Such as?”

“ ‘Hedgie.’ ”

Lammockson boomed laughter. “A hedge-fund manager. Probably describes twenty percent of the people here.”

“But not you,” Lily guessed.

“The Financial Times once called me a ‘private equity magnate.’ I like that word, don’t you? ‘Magnate.’ Sounds like a wealthy Byzantine. Of course there is a whole class of us these days. London, thank God I was born here! It’s so liberal it’s like a tax haven for people like me.”

Gary asked, “And, ‘hydrometropole’?”

“Ah. Now that’s more interesting.” Bizarrely, Lammockson jumped up and down, his massive weight thumping into the floor.“We’re afloat,” he said. “The whole of this mansion is. I’m sure you saw that from the air. Afloat, even though I’ve got a swimming pool and a cinema and a gym and kitchens like you wouldn’t believe. I’ve even got a floating greenhouse. I’m the amphibious man! The ultimate floodproofing, yes? You just ride it out.

“This is a floating city, a Dutch design. Now the Dutch have been fighting the sea for centuries-hell, their ancestors have been at it for two thousand years. Let me tell you something. The levees in New Orleans that failed when Katrina hit, they were designed for a once in thirty years extreme event. The Thames Barrier was designed for once in a thousand years. But in the Netherlands they plan for every ten thousand years. You want to guard against a flood, my friend, hire a Dutchman.”

“And this is what you spend your money on,” Gary said, flushed. “This raft.”

Lammockson stared at him. “You’re enjoying the champagne, aren’t you?”

“We’re none of us used to alcohol,” Lily said hastily.

Lammockson laughed. “That’s fine, you deserve it, drink what you like, say what you like. Look-what should I spend my money on? My son Hammond attends the best private school in London. Everything I do, I do for him.” He pointed to a plump, sour-looking boy of about ten, wearing a tuxedo, who hovered near a waiter with a tray of wine. Lammockson said, “Father of my grandchildren someday. But there’s only so much money you can spend on a kid. What else? I’ve climbed in rainforests, and flown around the Moon in a Russian Soyuz ship. Look at my watch.” He brandished his arm before Gary and pulled back his sleeve to expose a heavy bit of jewelry. “You know what this is? A Richard Mille RM004-V7. Cost me a cool quarter million. And I don’t just own a watch. I have a watch wardrobe.”

Gary grinned. “Well, that’s class.”

“But I can only wear one watch at a time, right?” He glanced around at the shining throng drinking his champagne.“You know, most of these guys don’t get it. Even the ones who’ve actually made far more than me, they just don’t get it. But I have a feeling you people do. You who’ve seen the other side of life.”

“Get what?” Lily asked.

“That all this, the way we’ve been living, the way we’ve made our money, is under threat. Everything’s changing.”

“Climate change,” Gary guessed.

“Yeah. Especially this fast new sort, the sea-level rise, climate change on speed. But that’s not to say there isn’t still money to be made. A time of change is a time of opportunity. When Rome fell, you know, there were guys who got richer than ever before. They’d already owned half of Europe. You just got to know when to move out, and how. You have to be a realist.”

“And you’re a realist, are you, Mr. Lammockson?” Lily asked.

“I try to be. Call me Nathan. Listen to me. The old way, the hyper-capitalism behind the private equity game, it was always a bubble and it’s going to burst as soon as the stresses set in. The housing market in London is already going to hell, for example, everybody buying up the high ground, Hampstead and the Chilterns, and that’s distorting the whole of the UK economy.

“But I got out of housing long ago. Now I’m making a fortune from disaster recovery projects. You know the idea? When the computers in some bank’s basement go on the fritz because the floods come, I can switch over their operation straightaway to a dedicated backup suite in Aberdeen. The insurance industry, that’s another open goal right now, the traditional firms are crashing from a new rush of claims.”

“And ‘AxysCorp durables,’” Lily said. “I saw the posters.”

“Right,” he said energetically. “People sense we’re moving out of the old throwaway age. So now they want clothes that will last a decade, washing machines and cars that will run forever without maintenance, like that. And that new niche is precisely what I’m selling to.”

“So while the world goes to hell you get even richer,” Gary said.

“That’s the general idea. But I want to do more than make money. I feel it’s time for somebody to show some leadership, to show we can cope with this fucked-up world of ours.”

“Somebody like you,” Gary said.

Lammockson grinned. “You’re being ironic, my drunken friend, but you’re correct. That’s why I’m going public, it’s a conscious decision and a concerted strategy. Of course a high public profile needs big strokes. Stunts.”

Gary said, “Our rescue was a stunt, was it?”

“It got you out, didn’t it? I don’t see anything wrong in doing good for you while getting something out of it myself. See those guys in the corner?” He pointed to a group of middle-aged men happily feeding on vol-au-vents beneath the great chandelier; dark-skinned, short, they wore their lounge suits with a kind of indifference. “Elders from Tuvalu.”

Lily asked, “Where?”

“Island nation. Threatened by sea-level rise,” Gary said.

“You’re out of date, my friend,” Lammockson said. “No longer threatened-swamped, drowned, vanished. It was abandoned long before the end, when the salt water ruined the crops and killed the coconuts. Oh, nobody died, though a nation did; all ten thousand people were evacuated to New Zealand and elsewhere. And the very last choppers to rescue the weeping elders from the rising waves-”

“Were AxysCorp?” Gary guessed.