Нил Стивенсон - Termination Shock

“The obvious reason. Climate change.”

“Very important in this part of America,” Bo said agreeably. “Louisiana. Texas too.” He was watching Willem carefully. “Its relevance to Houston, for example, could hardly be more obvious. Waco, on the other hand—I don’t see the connection.”

“I’ve heard of the place,” Willem allowed.

“You’ve rented a truck there!” Bo nodded at this rather large and undeniable piece of evidence. “Dodge Ram, license plate ZGL-4737.” He raised his tablet and snapped a picture.

“This tea is excellent. You brew it at eighty degrees Celsius, if I’m not mistaken.”

“It is the only proper way,” Bo said, and enjoyed a sip. “Why do you think we were not invited to this thing in Texas?”

“‘We’ meaning China?”

“Yes.”

“You’re asking me to read the mind of T.R. McHooligan?”

“As a mere social secretary I thought you might have some exceptional powers in that area.”

“You must have been a teenager once.”

“Of course.”

“When you didn’t invite a girl on a date, what was she to conclude?”

Bo shrugged. “That I didn’t fancy her?”

“Or that you didn’t know whether she would accept the invitation. She might turn you down—with the attendant loss of face.”

“So if China wishes to be invited to such events in the future, she needs to flirt with T.R. McHooligan? To make him feel more confident?”

“I am merely speculating as to the man’s possible motives. I have never even met him.”

“Perhaps he knows in advance that we will decline his invitation.”

“Perhaps.”

“And that we will do so because his plan will be bad for China, and he knows as much—so why bother inviting us in that case?”

“It means nothing to me either way if you consider T.R. to be an enemy of China, or if he feels the same way about you. Even if I were in the habit of supplying your government with intelligence, I would simply have nothing to offer in this case.”

“Well said. I see why the queen likes you. She too is perhaps underemployed.”

“She has a job.”

“Well, I’m sure that your next few days will be extremely fascinating. I envy you that and will try not to have my feelings hurt in the manner of the jilted teenager you alluded to.”

“Somehow I think that China will endure.”

“Oh, yes,” Bo said. “It will.”

During the latter part of this conversation, Willem’s phone had been vibrating with increasing frequency. Only a few people had the power to make this happen. When he had at last extricated himself from the conversation, retrieved the ERDD vest, and emptied his tea-laden bladder in a stifling portable toilet redolent of industrial perfume, he sat down in his truck, A/C blasting, and found a string of increasingly testy messages from the queen.

> What are you doing in the Gulf of Mexico?

> Your map is out of date. Where I am it is now dry land.

> The question remains.

> Another feeler from Chinese intelligence. Will write up a report.

> Do they know where I am?

> Maybe. They know something happened in Waco.

> Are you going to drive back tonight?

> Yes, immediately.

> The Cajuns have a favor to ask of you. Can you find Port Sulphur?

> LOL that sounds relevant! Hang on . . .

Willem used the truck’s nav screen to find Port Sulphur. It was on the main channel of the Mississippi, about thirty miles downstream.

> Found it. Would you like for me to go there and pick up a truckload of sulfur?

> Sulfur is T.R.’s department. You’re to pick up a diver.

Half an hour later, Willem was there. He was a little crestfallen to find that there was no sulfur anywhere. In fact, there was hardly anything: no port facilities at all, just a fire station and two convenience stores facing off at the base of the levee. A couple of hundred yards in back of them was a faint swelling in the land, detectable only by a Dutchman, that must be what remained of the sulfur dome where they’d established the mine.

Jules (“as in Verne”) Fontaine awaited him, the only human in view. He was perched halfway up the levee on the pile of equipment cases and duffel bags that was the lot in life of a professional diver. He respectfully stood up when the white pickup truck pulled in beneath him. Debris of beer cans, Subway wrappers, and chip bags attested to the fact that Jules, by dint of youth, good genes, and an active lifestyle, could consume as many calories as he pleased with zero impact on the eminently fuckable physique on display through his tie-dyed tank top and his voluminous cargo shorts. He was neither gay nor, it seemed, particularly aware of his own fuckability—a common trait of the young. Willem had already been made aware that Jules was ex-navy. He’d been out of the service long enough to grow a shoulder-length mane of wavy strawberry-blond hair. Sun exposure had endowed this with highlights that would have cost five hundred euros to obtain in an Amsterdam salon. PanScan, unsurprisingly, pronounced him the healthiest man on the planet. Once Jules had heaved all his gear into the back of the truck, he offered to buy Willem anything— anything —for sale in the convenience store. Only because he did not wish to cause offense, Willem allowed as how some jerky would go down well. Jerky was a safe bet; it was hard to screw that up, and it seemed paleo.

After Jules had made his jerky run and settled into the position known hereabouts as “shotgun,” Willem said, “Say, Jules, I’m as eager to get to Houston as you are, but if you don’t mind I’m going to drive around town for a minute and sightsee.”

Jules was politely taken aback. “It’s not going to take a whole minute, sir.”

“I know. Just satisfying my curiosity.”

“Suit yourself!” Jules said cheerfully. “Your truck, your rules!”

So Willem drove a short distance inland from the levee and circled the former site of the mine. This was nothing but vacant land, overgrown with scrubby trees where it wasn’t scarred by traces of roads. On its south side there was a tumbledown building, scarcely more than a shack, covered in unpainted plywood gone dark with age and mold. Above its front door was a sign, hand-painted on sheet metal that was now 90 percent rust. But he could make out the letters AZOS MIN. The last vestige in Port Sulphur of Brazos Mining. Recalling the queen’s interest in the name, he pulled in close enough to take a snapshot of the sign.

“Okay then! Let’s get this show on the road, Jules!” Willem proclaimed and gunned the pickup out onto the river road, headed back up toward the Big Easy. Jules cracked open an energy drink, leaned his seat back, and regaled Willem with the tale of how he’d washed up in Port Sulphur. Willem was paying a certain amount of attention to the nav, trying to work out the best place to rendezvous with the rest of the caravan in Texas. So he didn’t catch every last detail. An ex-girlfriend was involved, naturally. An ownership dispute over a truck. A job on an oil rig that hadn’t gone as planned. It all might have worked out but for the element of random misfortune embodied in the hurricane.

“What do you know about the sulfur industry?” Willem inquired, interrupting Jules’s stream of consciousness about half an hour in. This story had overspilled the bounds of being a mere country song and was well on its way to becoming an album.

“Oh, there ain’t no sulfur in Port Sulphur.”

“I know ,” Willem said. “Hence my question.”

“Used to be a mine nearby. They would dig it up. Freeze it. Sell the, what do you call ’em, huge, like, ice cubes.”

“Did you say freeze it?”