Stephen Baxter - Flood

They all sat on the floor, cross-legged. Ollantay prepared a kettle to boil over a camping stove.

“So this is your home,” Lily said.

Ollantay said,“Actually it’s my parents’.” In my culture it’s the custom for partners to stay in the home of one set of parents or the other before marriage.”

Kris cast an uncertain smile at Lily. “And it’s not exactly practical to stay with my mother, is it?”

Piers said, “You should bloody well make it practical. That’s why we’re here.”

“Piers,” Lily said gently. She said to Ollantay, “Well, thank you for making us welcome.”

Kris said mildly, “He is being a good host actually. The usual rule is that Quechua is the language spoken here.” The tongue of the Incas.

Ollantay said, “The true language of Peru, before it was Peru.” He poured boiling water into a pot, and set out cups, filling them with a green tea.

Piers snapped, “But you aren’t a full Quechua yourself, are you?”

“Oh, everybody’s mixed up here nowadays,” Kris said with an effort at brightness. “Like everywhere, I suppose. You have the fisher folk who’ve been here generations. But now we have an influx of lowlanders, coming up from the coast. And there are barbaros too.”

These were Amerinds from the Amazon forests, some of whom had managed to keep their distance from western culture through the long centuries of colonialism and industrial exploitation. They had tribal names like Mascho Piro and Awa and Korubo. But now the flood was lapping at the foothills of the Andes, and they were driven out at last, forced to ascend through the cloud forest to this unwelcoming plateau. Along with them came other inhabitants of the forest, birds and snakes and monkeys; few of these were permitted to survive by the human inhabitants, and the mountains witnessed the tip of an extinction event.

“Funny lot, they are,” Kris said. “The barbaros. No idea of money or other languages. They don’t even know what country they’re in.”

Lily nodded.“Nathan sends ethnographers and anthropologists. Even their languages are unknown, in some cases. And there’s a danger of infection; colds can be lethal to them.”

“It’s all a great big flushing out, isn’t it?” Kris said. “Forest Amerinds mixing with people from the cities who might have been lawyers or accountants or computer programmers a year or two ago.. ”

Such stabs of insight, Lily thought, made her sound like her brother-and made her seem wasted up here, by this beautiful, lonely lake.

But Piers was still angry. “None of which,” he said, jabbing a finger, “makes him the genuine article. Ollantay. The name you were born with was Jose Jesus de la Mar.”

Ollantay shrugged. “That’s not the name I choose to die with.”

“But what kind of name is Ollantay? Do you know, Kris?”

“Yes, I-”

“Ollantay was the great general who built the Inca empire for Pachacutec. Not exactly a subtle choice, is it, Jose? And is that what you dream of, taking back the land for the Incas?”

Ollantay smiled. Lily thought he was actually enjoying Piers’s clumsy attacks.“Well, would we not be better off if the Europeans had never come? Or if the Incas had butchered Pizarro and his holy thugs? Would we now be huddled in shantytowns while you grow oil crops to drive your cars, and the world drowns because of centuries of your industrial excess?”

“Enough,” Lily snapped. “For heaven’s sake, Piers, what’s got into you?”

Piers stood. “I am not the problem. He is. This addle-brained boy hero who’s caught Kris like a fish on a line.”

Now Kris blazed at him. “Don’t you speak about us like that, you dried-up old fool. Who do you think you are, my father?”

Piers looked astonishingly hurt. But before he could reply Lily stood, grabbed his shoulder and dragged him away. “Out.”

“I’m not done-”

“Oh yes you are. Look-wait for me outside.”

Still he glared at Ollantay. Then, abruptly, something seemed to break. He turned and pushed his way out of the hut.

Lily sat again and blew out her cheeks. “I’m sorry about that.”

“You shouldn’t have brought him,” Kris said, subdued.

“I could hardly stop him.”

“You shouldn’t have come either.” Kris was visibly angry, the blood flushed in her cheeks, under her black hat. “I’ve had all I can take from my mother about this. Can’t you just accept that this is how I’ve chosen to live my life?”

Well, she had a point. But then Lily looked again at Ollantay, who was regarding her coldly.

She dug a cellphone out of her pocket and gave it to Kristie. “Take this. You’ve not been answering your old phone.”

Kris smiled. “It’s at the bottom of the lake.”

“Please. You don’t need to use it. Just have it. Let Amanda text you… It’s a terribly hard punishment, Kris, to cut her off altogether. And besides, shit happens, love. There will be times when you need to speak to us, believe me.”

Kris hesitated, for long seconds. Then she reached out, took the phone and tucked it inside her pink backpack.

Lily saw Ollantay watching this, and wondered if Kris would be allowed to keep the phone, if it had been he who had thrown the old one into the lake.

Kris said,“Actually I suppose I don’t have a choice. If I don’t take the phone Piers will probably arrest me and haul me back in plastic cuffs. That man is so controlling.” She bunched her fists.“So meddling. I feel as if he’s been there all my life. I wish he’d just leave me alone.”

“Oh, he can’t do that,” Ollantay said. “Not ever. He can’t help what he does.”

Kris looked at him, surprised. “Why do you say that?”

Ollantay smiled. “Because he loves you. Can’t you see that?”

Kris laughed. But the laugh died, and her face softened in astonishment.

And Benj saw it too, Lily realized. That was what he had been hinting at, in P-ville. But Lily had never realized it. She felt a deep, cold, savage surprise, and a sense of betrayal that thrust into her belly.

Piers pushed his way back into the hut, his phone in his hand.

Lily said, “My God, Piers, you pick your moments.”

Piers looked at her blankly, and at Kris who wouldn’t look back at him, and at his phone. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“What for?”

“Nathan is sending the plane back. It will take you home. You too, Kris, if-”

“Leave me alone,” Kris flared.

Lily was growing alarmed. “Piers. Tell me what’s happened.”

“It’s Benj,” Piers said reluctantly. “There was an incident. Another attack on a biofuel crop. The police opened fire-he tried to intervene-”

And Lily understood. She’d managed to save Benj from his conscience at least twice before, in Greenwich and then Dartmoor. But she hadn’t been there for him this time.

“Is he dead?” Kris ran up to Piers. “Is he dead?”

March 2025

From Kristie Caistor’s scrapbook:

The webcam focused on the round face of little John Ojola. He was six years old, but he looked much younger, three perhaps, his growth stunted by lack of food, his limbs like twigs, his belly swollen under a row of ribs. He lay cradled in the arms of a Christian Aid worker who had no food to give him, here in this refugee camp in Teso, Uganda. John’s huge, luminous eyes, unblinking despite the flies that sipped at his tears, seemed to stare through the camera at the viewer.

John was a sight you could have witnessed any time since the 1960s. His brief life was a cliche of pain. Few visitors to this voluntary-agency website lingered for more than a few seconds.

But now John was distracted; his head tipped sideways against the arm of the aid worker. She too was looking away, at something much more remarkable than another hungry child.