Stephen Baxter - Flood

From Kristie Caistor’s scrapbook:

Nathan’s Ark Three project was supported by a global organization of like-minded individuals that had evolved out of the old LaRei rich man’s club into a survivors’ network of resource flows and shared information. And, just as Nathan was supported by his colleagues, so he supported other initiatives. Kristie, curious about this and the other LaRei projects underway around the world, tried to hack into Nathan’s systems, and scoured his in-house news channels for snippets of information.

She was intrigued by a feed from an astronomy camp on a peak in the Chilean Andes called Cerro Pachon. In the clear air up here, no fewer than three great telescopes had been operating since the beginning of the century, known as Gemini South, SOAR, and the immense Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, which was capable of taking a survey of the entire sky several times a week. As the site was a relatively near neighbor of Nathan’s, he undertook to maintain support chains to the astronomers, adapting and improvising as the flood washed out lowland roads, airports and rail links.

Kristie, more interested in other arks, didn’t linger long over her images of bundled-up astronomers, laboring under spectacular skies framed by glacier-topped peaks. She did wonder briefly why a community of the rich in a time of global flood should devote resources to searching the sky.

July 2035

“My name is Gary Boyle.”

“Sorry, buddy. You’re not on any list I got.”

“I know Nathan Lammockson. He helped me-I was a hostage in Barcelona-he sprung us out, vowed to support us…”

But this coca-chewing guard, his face hidden by his immense sunglasses, looked too young to have heard of Gary, or even Barcelona.

And the fence he and his companions defended was a good three meters tall, concrete panels topped by barbed wire and studded by machine gun towers. It stretched from horizon to glass-clear Andean horizon. This was the boundary of Project City, of Lammockson’s empire. And it was sealed shut against Gary Boyle.

They were alone in a vast empty landscape, Walker City’s advance party led by Gary and Grace and Domingo, the AxysCorp guards who had come out from behind their fence to deal with them, and a handful of locals, young Andean men, standing idly by in colorful wool ponchos, watching. Gary, dizzy with the altitude, felt desperate. His phone had been dead for months. If the guards wouldn’t let him pass, he had no way to contact Lily.

“I’m Gary Boyle! I know Lily Brooke! And this is Grace, Grace Gray! We walked down two continents to get here. The walk consumed my life. I’m forty-three years old. My whole damn life. But now we’re here, now we need help.” He felt absurdly like crying.

“Look, guy, you can see how we’re fixed.” Gary wondered how he had managed to pick up a Brooklyn accent, since he couldn’t have been more than five years old when New York drowned. “We ain’t got room for no more. We ain’t got room for you. Just because you can throw a few names around makes no difference to that. Mr. Lammockson is famous all over the world, anybody can say they know him, right?” He leaned closer to Gary. “And let me tell you something else. Even supposing you and your lady friend here are buddies of Mr. Lammockson, even supposing you could prove it, there’s still no way you would be allowed in with your army of bums.”

“If you’d just take a message to Lily Brooke-”

“No.” The guard started shouting now, exerting his authority. “I’m not some runner for you. You take a message. You take a message back to your “mayor.” You tell her that if you don’t shift your thousand asses, they’ll be shifted for you.” He looked Gary up and down, contemptuously staring through his sunglasses. “You been warned. You got forty-eight hours. You got that straight?” And he turned and walked back to the gate in the wall, held open for him by more AxysCorp goons.

Suddenly Gary was exhausted. The world yellowed. He bent, felt the blood pound in his ears, retched.

Grace rubbed his back. Domingo squatted down beside him.

“Well, you tried,” Grace said.

“This damn altitude,” Gary said.“I can’t think straight.” He sat on the grassy ground, and gazed up at the wall that excluded him.

“Nobody’s going to blame you, my friend,” Domingo said.

“Nathan’s breaking his promise to me,” Gary said. “And that means I’m breaking my promise to you all, the mayor, the thousand people who walked all this way with me.”

Grace looked at the blank wall, her expression empty. “It makes no difference,” she said. “If we keep walking. Not to me. I spent my life walking. I don’t believe I ever thought it would end.”

“But listen,” Domingo said more urgently, leaning close to Gary. “Never mind broken promises. You heard what the fool with the gun said. Suppose there were a way to get in, to make contact with this Lily, or Lammockson. If we persist we might find a way. Suppose they allowed you in-you, and Grace, a handful of others. Suppose it was as the guard said. If they let you in, but you had to leave the others behind-”

It was just the kind of deal Nathan Lammockson might ask him to make, Gary thought. But he had made his choice long ago, when, even as times became so hard, he found he was unable to abandon Walker City. “No. It’s all of us, or none.”

Grace shrugged. “Then I guess it’s none of us. We’re a thousand strong, but we’re no army.”

“But armies do exist in this world.”

Gary turned, still sitting. He saw woolen trousers, boots, a figure standing over him. One of the locals, a Quechua, had spoken to him. Gary tried to stand, but staggered, and Grace had to help him.

The Quechua must have been in his thirties. Not tall, but a strong face-no, arrogant more than strong. He wore a woolen tunic, brightly dyed. Huge golden studs stretched his earlobes. Behind him were more young men, similarly dressed, watching cautiously. They wore ponchos though the day was warm, and Gary wondered if they carried concealed weapons.

“So who are you?”

“My name is Ollantay.” He smiled. “The name means nothing to you. That’s fine. But your name means something to me, Gary Boyle.” He turned to Grace. “And you are Helen Gray’s girl, yes?”

Reflexively, Domingo stood between Ollantay and Grace. “You know about us? How? Are you from Project City, from Lammockson’s people?”

“Quite the opposite. I’ve never met Nathan Lammockson. But I have met your fellow hostages, Piers Michaelmas, Lily Brooke.”

“Oh? How so?”

“Kristie Caistor is my wife.”

Gary gaped at him.“Kristie-” Lily’s niece, whom he had last seen as a kid in London-who must now, he reminded himself, be in her thirties herself.

Domingo said, “And what was it you said about armies?”

Ollantay’s eyes narrowed. “You have been excluded by Lammockson. So have we, we Quechua. And we have been exploited by him for a generation now, as he huddles in his palaces, and builds his absurd mountain-stranded boat. Here, on a land that used to be ours, we suffer the final spasm of western colonialism. But times are changing. A final battle approaches, a final reckoning, before the sea closes over us all.”

Gary was bewildered by this exotic young man, and his head spun with his mentions of Lily and Kristie. “What the hell are you talking about? What boat?”

Ollantay gestured at the fence. “There is no room for barriers like this, not any more. Now is the time to right wrongs. It will not be vengeance. Simply justice.”

Domingo looked him up and down. “And how are you going to fight this battle, mountain boy? Will you ride llamas and throw spears?”