Нил Стивенсон - Termination Shock

In the corner of her eye Saskia could now sense Rufus giving her a look that said, What’s it going to be, Your Majesty? He did not strike her as impatient or restive, just curious and . . . available . It was the first moment since the crash when she’d not simply been reacting to events.

“This is not such a bad situation overall, yes?” she said. She said it in Dutch, which meant that she was only saying it to Amelia and Fenna.

Both of them laughed in her face.

Saskia now perceived the humor but felt a need to patiently explain. “No one died. No one identified us. Lennert and Johan are getting the best care they can. We are here on this boat with this man who seems helpful.”

Amelia thought it over and shrugged. “With Lennert gone, I’m in charge of keeping you safe. This is not what we expected. For the moment, this is no more dangerous than any other random place in America. But we are not supposed to be in a random place in America. We are supposed to be at T.R. McHooligan’s guesthouse in Houston.”

“You should get in the habit of calling him Dr. Schmidt,” Saskia pointed out.

“Yes, mevrouw .”

“Would that really be safer, though?” Saskia asked. “Houston is about to be hit by a hurricane. Then it will flood.”

Amelia considered it and checked the screen of her watch, which was showing a little weather map.

“What do y’all want to do?” Rufus inquired.

“Eventually we have to meet someone in Houston.”

“Y’all’re gonna have to kill two or three days then. Hurricane’s coming. Can’t go in there now.”

“What do you suggest? Where is a good place to ‘kill’ two or three days?”

“You could do worse than Beau Boskey’s pontoon boat.”

Of course that was what a man such as Rufus would suggest given that that was what he had access to and was used to. But try as they might, Saskia and Amelia couldn’t find any reason why it was a bad idea.

Above all, they had to sleep. This was a biological reality. They could backtrack up the river, beach the RHIB at the suspension bridge, run across the street, and check in at the Hilton. But Willem was at the hospital at the other end of town with the documents and the cash. There would be a lot of details having to do with passports, payment, and so on that would be sticky given the way they had just entered the country. There would be surveillance cameras. Not that the secret police were, as a general practice, staking out the lobby of the Waco Hilton for stray European royalty. But you could never tell where those things were networked and what humans or AIs might licitly or illicitly have access to their feeds. And from the looks of things she was pretty sure that once they put another kilometer of Brazos behind them, there were not a lot of cameras.

They had entered the country illegally, yes. But there was nothing they could do about that now. Getting all that sorted in Houston—a vast international metropolis—in a couple of days would be just as good as, and maybe better than, doubling back into Waco and trying to track down the relevant officials—assuming there even were any in Waco—to stamp their passports.

The more they went on pondering these things, the farther downriver they got. The stadium and the big structures on the Baylor campus receded. They found themselves in open country. Communications from Willem suggested he had things well in hand. Not just on the medical front but also in the sense of linking up with staff back home. Last week they had prepared a cover story to explain why Saskia would not be making any public appearances this week, and it was as good now as it had been before the jet had hit the pigs.

Rufus for his part was talking to his friends. They had retrieved his truck from where he’d left it and they were said to be “mobilizing,” which sounded like it involved getting “Beau’s pontoon” on a trailer and other such logistics. After dark they could all meet up at a “put-in” downriver. At that point some decisions would have to be made. The first being: Where could they sleep? Because more and more that was the only thing Saskia could think about.

She sent a secure text to T.R.:

> We have been delayed in the Waco area.

He responded:

> Willem informed me.

> Are you staying in Houston, or going to the site?

> Riding the storm out here. The whole program has been pushed back.

> So we are not going to miss the event if we wait?

> Correct. Stay safe and we’ll sort it out after the hurricane.

> Thank you T.R.

> Godspeed Y.M.

They ate, and then they slept, at what Rufus had called the put-in, by which he meant an earthen boat ramp accessible from a farm road. The degree of personal warmth and hospitality exhibited by the Boskeys was nearly overwhelming. The sheer quantity of food that they were able to produce on short notice had an almost slapstick effect on the Dutch guests. Anticipating Saskia’s only concern, Mary assured her that what was sizzling on the grill was by no means “swamp meat” harvested from feral swine and alligators, but had been purchased at a local grocery store “with expiration dates and everything.” The Boskeys were able on short notice to carpet an expanse of riverbank with pop-up canopies and other temporary structures that they produced like magicians from all their trucks and trailers. Most of those were neither bugproof nor air-conditioned. When it was time to sleep, they packed as many people as they could into the trailers and ran the air conditioners off portable generators. Rufus and Beau slept in the cabs of their trucks with the seats leaned back.

Saskia went to sleep almost instantly. She and Amelia were sharing the large bed in the back of Rufus’s trailer. She then woke up at three in the morning and knew right away that getting back to sleep was out of the question. It was a combination of jet lag and vivid visual memories of things that had happened at Waco. She got up, used the tiny but clean toilet in the middle of the trailer, then stepped over Fenna, who was sleeping in the living/dining area. Alastair had gone missing. She went out the side door, closing it quietly behind her, and stepped down to the sandy ground. She had foolishly expected that it would be cool at this time of night, but it wasn’t. She had also expected quiet, but in addition to the drone of the generators, some kind of creatures, evidently quite numerous, were making a pulsating racket in the scrub that came up to the river’s edge everywhere but here. Some kind of insect, she assumed. Here, insects seemed a good default explanation for just about anything that might require explaining.

Fat orange and yellow extension cords coursed over the sand, obliging her to pick her feet up as she walked. One of them ran up over the tailgate of the Boskeys’ pickup truck and connected to a backpack-sized unit perched atop the cab, which was humming and aglow with status lights. Saskia went over and looked down into the bed of the truck. Lying there, deeply asleep, was Alastair. Only the oval of his face was showing, and he’d veiled that under a mosquito net. The rest of him was covered by a bulky and yet form-fitting garment: stretchy fabric shot through with little tubes. These converged on an umbilical connection at his left hip, whence a bigger hose snaked up to the purring backpack. He’d put that up on the top of the cab, the better for it to blow hot exhaust into the slightly less hot atmosphere. Evidently he’d found it impossible to sleep in the confines of the trailer and so he’d gotten up at some point in the night, stolen outside, and broken out this earthsuit. It could run off its built-in battery pack, but if you were remaining in one place for any length of time it made sense to plug it in, as he’d done. Saskia envied his cool deep slumber. But it was perfectly obvious that she’d not be going back to sleep and so she did not follow his example.