Stephen Baxter - Flood

She tried the TV system. It showed a patchy US government news channel, broadcast from Denver. Behind the live feed was an on-demand movie service, including some titles that went back to the 1930s, when this boat’s original was launched. She glanced at King Kong and Things to Come; their monochrome images were digitally enhanced. But she had lost interest in movies when they stopped being made, when every movie ever made became an old movie, set in an unreal world that didn’t matter anymore. She snapped the system off.

She made a dinner of a chocolate bar and then worked her way through the little bottles of gin from the mini-bar. By the time she fell asleep, she wasn’t sure if she was crying or not.

The next morning Piers came for her. He said they had an hour to spare before some kind of maiden-voyage ceremony to be hosted by Nathan. “Attendance compulsory, of course.” In the meantime he offered to take her on a tour of the ship. “Welcome to your new home.”

“Welcome to the madhouse, more like,” she snapped, hungover, grieving.

“We must each make our judgment about that.” He put a hand on her shoulder. “Are you all right?”

“I’m functioning.”

“Most of the time, that is all one can hope for,” Piers said dryly. “Come on. The VIP experience…”

They found their way to a grand staircase that punched through the upper decks like an elevator shaft in a mine. They climbed up to the very top deck. This was the smallest in area; the boat’s upper levels were tiered in a stepped effect.

The bridge was up here, a roomy pillbox with tinted picture windows. Around the feet of three towering red funnels utilitarian buildings clustered, like a small industrial facility. Radar dishes turned silently. Over their heads were big solar panels that could be tipped and tilted independently, like the slats of a Venetian blind; their upper surfaces sparkled in the sun.

Lily walked to the edge of the deck and looked toward the shore. They were only half a kilometer, less, from where the water lapped around the rooftops of Chosica. She could hear gunfire, but the battle that had accompanied the Ark’s impromptu departure was already over. Some of the offshore rafts drifted close to the Ark, and a few small powerboats buzzed back and forth on the water, probing, but, deterred no doubt by the Ark’s armory, none came near the ship.

Piers saw her looking. “Nathan has an impressive arsenal on board. We shouldn’t be bothered by that shower.”

“Those people built the ship for Nathan, and now they’re to be abandoned.”

Piers shrugged. “They were paid. Fed and housed, for years. You know there’s little point debating the ethics of such things. These are ruthless times, Lily.” They walked on.

Piers looked as if he belonged here, oddly, on this reincarnated 1930s cruise liner. He had always had a David Niven look about him, like a relic from a more elegant age. He showed no sign of the traumas of yesterday, the battle that might so easily have ended in his own death, the fact that he had killed a man. She wondered how much of it showed in her own face.

Piers said this level was called the sports deck. “Once you actually would have found chaps playing sports here, deck tennis and so forth. Not now, though. The space is too useful for other things.

“However Nathan has made every effort to build a ship that emulates the Cunard Queen Mary as closely as possible-that is, the ship as she was launched in 1936. She served as a troop carrier during the Second World War and was gutted; the restoration after the war differed in some details. But this is obviously a modern vessel-really a facsimile of the old Queen Mary, built with modern methods and materials, features like a self-healing coating on the hull and propellers to minimize the need for dry dock.”

“And a nuclear power plant in the engine room,” she said. “Or so I’ve heard.”

“Well, quite. Scavenged by Nathan from a nuclear submarine.” He gazed up at the three red funnels, his hands shielding his eyes. “Even those beauties are just for show.”

“And the solar panels?”

“Designed to fold away neatly in the event of a storm. Nathan is planning to stick mostly to tropical waters, so there will be plenty of sun. Should enable us to eke out our uranium supplies that much longer, always assuming resupply will be difficult.”

“Resupply? What kind of world does Nathan think he’s living in, that he’s going to be sailing around in a cruise liner buying up uranium stocks? And why build a mock-up of the damn Queen Mary in the first place? This is all unreal, Piers.”

He eyed her. “Is it?”

They went down a staircase to the sun deck. Here they followed a broad walkway around the edge of the deck. Lifeboats were suspended over their heads. The boats’ keels were white, but they were a thoroughly modern design, with bright orange Kevlar superstructures, first-aid boxes and robust-looking electric motors. They passed a gymnasium, and a squash court.

“A squash court! Jesus Christ, Piers.”

“Well, we’re going to need exercise. Nathan has been careful to restrict the numbers on board. Three thousand in total, two thousand passengers, a thousand crew. You’ll get a chance to use the court. We’ll figure out a booking system.”

“You’re laughable, you know that, Piers? After all that’s happened to us you’re talking about squash. Laughable.”

“Maybe we could run a squash ladder,” he said mildly.

At the stern of the ship, on this deck, was a restaurant. It was elegantly styled, its exterior wall a white-painted sweep, and glancing inside she saw an array of tables and a dance floor, all curves and wood panels and chrome. But it was only half-finished, the tables covered in dust sheets, the floor unpolished, a mural of dancing figures on the wall incomplete.

“This is the verandah grill,” Piers said. “A feature of the old ship, a place to see and be seen. Nathan put a lot of effort into re-creating it.”

“I don’t think I packed my fucking ball gown.”

“Gowns will be provided. You know Nathan. He likes to realize his dreams in every detail.”

“Nathan was born in the Thames estuary. What does he know about 1930s cruise liners?”

“He’s allowed to dream, I suppose,” Piers said. “Cats looking at kings and so forth.”

They descended a flight of stairs to the promenade deck. Another wooden walkway ran around the circumference of this deck, Piers said, a half-kilometer in length. Lily eyed it up as a running track. They went indoors and wandered through huge chambers. The “cabin-class lounge” was a vast, ornate room with the feel of a hotel lobby. It was dominated by a giant frieze showing two unicorns locked in elegant combat. Doors led off to a ballroom, all gilt and silver and a parquet floor, a bar, and a “smoking room,” as Piers called it, a kind of fantasia of a London club, with wood paneling, a domed ceiling-and a fireplace.

“Unbelievable,” Lily said. “I mean, where are we going to get the wood to burn in that fireplace?”

“Ah, but that’s hardly the point. Even the fire will be a facsimile.”

They passed on through an observation lounge and a drawing room, half-finished shells but nonetheless crammed with detail. The observation lounge seemed attractive to Lily, a room whose curving design fitted its function. The drawing room was overwhelmed by a portrait of a Madonna and Child, a simulacrum of a work commissioned for the original ship; the Virgin was haloed by compass points, and stood amid navigational instruments.

The ship was big enough, but you couldn’t walk far before coming to a wall or a rail, and it was already starting to feel stuffy to Lily, enclosing, static. And its unfinished opulence seemed unreal after her bloody experiences of yesterday. And yet for all the surreality here they were, aboard Nathan’s extraordinary ship, once more living inside his dreams, just as in the Andes.