Stephen Baxter: Flood

And in the middle of it Nathan stunned everybody by getting up on the stage and announcing that his son Hammond had become engaged to Grace Gray.

Kristie, amazed at this herself, recorded people’s reactions: smug satisfaction for Hammond, a kind of resigned bewilderment clouding Grace’s pale, freckled face-and a look of ice-cold satisfaction in Lily’s eyes.

August 2041

Ark Three pushed cautiously toward the turbid, debris-strewn waters that covered the western coastal strip of the continental US.

Captain Suarez guided her ship over the submerged coastline somewhere above the position of long-drowned San Diego, and made eastward, tracing the valley of the Gila River and roughly paralleling the US-Mexico border. She was making for narrows that ran between the Colorado plateau in the north and the Sierra Madre to the south, a new seaway between the US and Mexico. It was a gap the mariners were calling the El Paso strait. Once through, somewhere over Texas, the Ark would turn north, sailing up the east coast of the Rockies archipelago, heading for Colorado and a rendezvous with the New Jersey.

The flood now approached eighteen hundred meters. That was more than a mile above the old sea level. There wasn’t much of North America left save islands and plateaus that were remnants of the Rocky Mountain states, from Idaho to Arizona, from Nevada to Colorado. The progress was slow, watchful. Lily knew that Nathan was well aware of how dangerous the shallow waters of the North American archipelago had become, especially since the city of Denver had at last gone under, and the rump of the federal government, relocated once again, had started to lose control of the masses who thronged the surviving higher ground.

As for Captain Suarez, she had cut her teeth out in the open sea. She had actually captained the pirate convoy that had attacked the Ark in the Gyre before being recruited by Nathan in a typical Lammockson stunt of absorbing his enemy. Suarez didn’t like coming too close in to shore, which was always fringed by boats and rafts or whole floating cities. She didn’t like sailing through the muck that still came bubbling up from the drowned cities hundreds of meters below her keel. And, as a former pirate, she definitely didn’t like the idea of making another rendezvous with the New Jersey. But that was the plan and like all Nathan’s followers, in the end she did pretty much as she was told.

The ship no longer much resembled the brilliantly painted liner that had been launched from its montane dockyard in the Andes six years ago, scarred, much patched, its interior gutted and its hull and decks bristling with weapons. But Lily had managed to keep her cabin on the promenade deck. Long before noon each day she was usually exhausted by the heat. So she would sit in her cabin’s shade-no air-conditioning now-and follow the ship’s progress on the flatscreen on her wall, courtesy of Nathan’s onboard narrowcast system.

And, as the ship made its slow traverse, Grace got in the habit of joining her.

Grace was three months pregnant with Hammond’s baby, and worn out by morning sickness. It was obvious that all she wanted was somewhere to sit, somewhere comparatively cool where she wouldn’t be hassled. Lily made Grace welcome, and kept her supplied with water, fruit and dried fish. She didn’t expect friendship from Grace, still less forgiveness for engineering her marriage to Hammond Lammockson, an act that must have felt like an immense betrayal by a woman who had, after all, promised to keep Grace from any harm. Lily took anything she could get. Silent company was enough.

There were the same kind of relationships all over this decaying boat. You got along with the next guy, or you got rid of him; there wasn’t enough room to escape your enemies.

Grace was looking at her. “What did you say?”

“Nothing.” Lily wasn’t aware she had spoken out loud. “Sorry.” She was sixty-five years old, no great age before the flood had come, but after a quarter of a century as a refugee she looked and felt a lot older. Everything was softening for her, she sometimes thought, the border between thought and speech blurring. “Just maundering.”

“The map is fritzing again.”

Lily looked at the screen. The main display showed a composite view of the archipelago of the western US, assembled from satellite images, with an outline map of the old continental coastline projected onto it and the position of the Ark shown as a bright green dot. The system was still pretty smart, and if you pointed at the screen little labels would pop up to tell you what you were looking at. Lily learned to recognize the complex inland sea that had formed over the Great Salt Lake Desert, covering Salt Lake City and much of Utah, and the convoluted tangle of inlets and bays that had resulted from the flooding of the Colorado river valley, Grand Canyon and all. The surviving dry land as seen from space was a gray-green hue, the color of crowded humanity and its shanty cities and scratch farms. It was strange to think that aside from this mass of islands there was nothing left of the western hemisphere save the Sierra Madre, stretching south, and some of the Andean plateau down the spine of South America, the mountain ranges north and south like shadows of the vanished continents.

The map projection flickered again as the processors went offline and limped back on, balky after years of heat and salty sea air.

Grace sighed.“I don’t know why we’re watching this. Maps are really for people like you who remember how it used to be. But they don’t matter to the children.” She stroked her bump idly.

“They may have maps of their own someday,” Lily said. “Of ocean currents, maybe. Gyres.”

“You don’t need a map of the sea…”

Their tentative conversation broke down.

It was like this a lot these days, Lily had observed. As if it was too hot to think, to speak, as if everybody was exhausted the whole time. You spoke a bit, and then you just gave up. Her thoughts dissolved again, wandering.

The map recovered. The two of them sat and watched in silence as the Ark’s brave green pinpoint edged its way eastwards through the treacherous waters of the El Paso strait.

The Ark anchored a few kilometers to the east of the drowned cities of Colorado Springs and Pueblo. It was standard operating procedure to stand so far offshore. This far out, few of the dismal throng of boats, junks and rafts that haunted every shoreline were able to reach the Ark.

A day after the Ark arrived, the conning tower of the New Jersey rose smoothly above the water. A flagpole was thrust into the air, and a brave Stars and Stripes unfurled. An inflatable launch was set in the water and came pushing toward the Ark. The launch was manned by officers and ratings in crisp white uniforms and peaked caps. Lily wasn’t surprised to see Thandie in there, in an orange life jacket.

As the launch neared Nathan stood on the promenade deck with Captain Suarez, and Piers and Lily, Grace and Hammond, all dressed in coveralls as smart as the Ark’s one remaining laundry could turn out. Lily glanced over at Grace. She felt like warning her to take one last look at the Ark, to say goodbye. She knew she must not say anything about what was to come today.

It was three years since Thandie had fished Lily and Manco out of the water in the Gyre, and nearly two years since the New Jersey had made its rendezvous to disembark Lily and Manco back aboard the Ark. Lily had kept in touch with Thandie about the tentative scheme that the two of them had been developing ever since. It was a scheme that none of the others, not Nathan, not even Grace herself, yet knew anything about. But by the end of today, Lily thought with a faint tremor of excitement, if all went well, it might be all over. And she could rest at last.