Stephen Baxter - Flood

“You don’t know anything about us,” Thorson sneered at him. “Go on. Run away with your feudal master. We’ll sort this mess out.”

Piers’s face worked, but he backed off. “Whatever you say. Lily, we must go. We have Hammond. That chopper’s going to lift in a few minutes whether we’re there or not. Gary-”

Gary shook his head. “These are my people now. The walkers. I’ll stay. But take Grace.” He glanced around.

Lily said, “Who? Grace?”

A young woman emerged from a crowd of rebel prisoners, cuffed as the others had been. She was the image of Helen Gray. She stared at Lily, wide-eyed. Lily’s heart melted. She had had no idea Grace was here.

Gary said, “She’ll be safe with you-safer, anyhow, if she’s close to Lammockson. He’s a bastard, but a smart, surviving sort of bastard.”

“Gary-”

“Just go.”

“Come on,” Piers said. He raised his weapon and led the way to Nathan and the helicopter.

Lily took Grace’s arm. She was reluctant, but, numbed, she followed. Kristie was more resistant, but Lily didn’t give her the choice; she simply dragged her away.

The AxysCorp troops followed, making a fighting withdrawal, pushing Ollantay and Hammond along with them. As they ran Kristie sheltered her son’s head with her arm. Lily reminded herself that Kristie still didn’t know about her mother.

Lily looked back. Gary was already lost in the confusion. She’d spent only minutes in his presence, the first time she’d seen him in years and years.

They were almost back at the chopper, its clattering rotors adding to the roar of noise in the stadium, when Sanjay came blundering up to Lily.

“Lily! I have to tell you-Nathan didn’t give me a chance-”

“What is it, Sanj?”

“When Thandie called-she spoke about the sea levels-and about the Ark.”

“What Ark? Ark Three, Nathan’s ship?”

“No-listen to me- Ark One. The Ark they’re building in Colorado. In the end, Thandie says, that’s the only chance. In the end… She said you needed to know. She tried to tell Gary-”

There was shouting. Lily turned.

Ollantay shook himself free of his guards and whirled around. Lily saw that he had a weapon held behind his back, in his cuffed hands, a revolver that must have been hidden under his tunic. He shot blindly, aiming for Piers.

And Sanjay screamed and fell; he lay twitching, his breast laid open to the bone, bloody masses bubbling within.

Piers raised a revolver and shot Ollantay point blank in the head. The Quechua fell. Kristie hid her son’s eyes. Piers lowered his gun. “Should have done that a long time ago.”

Lily yelled, “Sanjay!” She tried to get to him; he was still alive, it seemed, still struggling to breathe.

But Piers grabbed her. “No more time!” He pushed her into the chopper’s open hatch, where AxysCorp goons grabbed her and hauled her in. Kristie and the kid were bundled in after her, and Grace, Hammond, Piers, a few others.

The chopper lifted with a surge that sent Lily tumbling to the floor. She wasn’t strapped in, wasn’t even in a seat. She found herself looking out of the open hatch at the receding ground. There was Sanjay, sprawled in blood like a fallen fledgling. She swore to herself that she would get word of this to his family in Scotland, his children. And further out the ring of AxysCorp troops were still fighting to defend the scrap of land from which their employer had already ascended.

As she rose the bowl of the stadium opened up. Everywhere people fought and died in a cloud of toxic dust and gunsmoke, fighting for the right to exist on this dwindling scrap of ground. And still the chopper rose until the stadium shrank into the detail of Cusco, a carpet of red-tiled roofs where more battles continued in the squares and in the streets, a whole city abandoned by Lammockson now that it had served its purpose. Higher still Lily ascended, until Cusco was lost in its bowl in a spine of water-lapped mountains.

Grace sat, still cuffed, bewildered. Ark One, Lily thought, looking at Grace. That’s it. Whatever it is, Grace has to be aboard. Sanjay gave his life to tell me about it. And I have to get her there.

Kristie was coming out of her shock. She looked around wildly. “Where’s my mother? Is she on this chopper? Where’s my mother?”

Mean sea-level rise above 2010 datum: 800-1800m

August 2035

In the chaos of the boarding of Ark Three, Piers put Lily in charge of Grace Gray, Kristie and Manco. They had been assigned numbered cabins on what was called the main deck, three levels down from the bridge. After they were hurried through Chosica’s riots and flooding and rushed over a gangway onto the ship, they were dumped into a kind of foyer on A Deck, which was, Piers said, one level lower than the main deck. Then, having delivered them, Piers handed Lily pass keys and ran off to help with the embarkation.

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.