Нил Стивенсон - Termination Shock

That astonishment was over and above the natural feelings of grief that anyone would experience upon seeing so many lives lost. Only for a few minutes did Willem remain in that catatonic state. Then Princess Charlotte became very emotional as it became obvious to her that one or more of her friends might be lying dead on this beach somewhere. She ran off in the direction of a cluster of aid workers who were pulling body bags out of crates that had begun to arrive in police vans. The princess got a few meters’ head start before Queen Frederika lit out after her.

Amelia, who’d been on duty continuously for the last week, had a well-earned day off. But other members of the security team had swapped in for her. They jogged along roughly parallel to the royals. These people dressed specifically to blend in and not seem like armed goons, so they just seemed like extraordinarily fit and clean-cut citizens moving in a strangely intentional and coordinated fashion around two women, a mother pursuing a distraught teenager toward a row of wet-suited corpses.

So Willem’s job—again—was not to do as normal human emotion might dictate (plenty of people were doing that) or to see to the immediate physical security of the royals (that was already sorted) but to look a few hours or days ahead.

Obviously, today’s planned slate of activities was toast. He saw to that with a quick message thumbed out on his phone.

He did not follow the others but remained at the high vantage point on the dune, trying to assemble a picture of what was happening.

It was now obvious that they had arrived quite early to an event that was only starting to ramp up, and that would go on doing so for much of the day. This was Sunday morning and few people would be at work. As word spread, they would flock here to gawk or volunteer. Random circumstances—the extreme proximity to Huis ten Bosch, the messages on Lotte’s friend network—had caused the royals to arrive only minutes after the event (or during it? For he had the horrible thought that people might be down there now struggling for air).

Anyway, traffic to the beach was building rapidly. Twice as many were here now as had been when they arrived, and police were turning their attention to the problem of crowd control—since all who came here would have the same instinct to get up to the top of the dune. Some would inevitably blunder down into the foam as the result of clumsiness, curiosity, or ill-advised rescue attempts. So police vehicles were now arriving in numbers and they were setting up a cordon along the dune-top bicycle path.

The yellow search and rescue helicopter came in closer and settled low, trying to use its rotor wash to dispel the foam. A good idea on someone’s part. The down blast began to dig a bowl in the foam, exposing a circle of beach sand. The excavated foam flew outward in a myriad of small flecks that caught in the wind and filled the air like a blizzard.

All well and good but Willem still wasn’t doing his job. He turned his back on the sea and looked down the back slope of the dune to the little cluster of emergency vehicles where Princess Charlotte and Queen Frederika had stopped. The two of them were together. Charlotte was holding on to Frederika’s arm and resting her head on her mother’s shoulder—sweet, but awkward now that she was a few centimeters taller! The queen stood there stolidly and with perfect posture nodding as she was briefed by a young woman wearing a reflective vest. Everything about the body language told him with certainty that their brief spell of anonymity had come to an end. The queen had been recognized. Those around her had changed their behavior accordingly. She was getting a little status report from an emergency worker. Not because she’d asked for one. She would never do that. But because when you were a first responder at a disaster and suddenly you noticed the queen was standing right there, you delivered a status report.

A police officer was headed right toward him unreeling a roll of yellow crowd control tape and giving him the stink eye. Willem dodged out of his way. Then he reached into the breast pocket of his suit jacket—he was no longer dressing like a random Texan—and pulled out a laminated security credential with an orange lanyard, which he slipped around his neck. No one was actually going to inspect it, but merely being a man of a certain age in a suit and an overcoat with a badge on a lanyard would afford him respect and access in whatever order was going to be imposed upon this chaos.

Press, as such, were only beginning to arrive. At first they would focus on documenting the tragedy and the efforts of the first responders. Inevitably there would be photographs of the queen and the princess. Random people on social media would post pictures of their own. What would those pictures show? A self-absorbed, out-of-touch monarch getting in the way of rescue operations? Or a woman of the people doing what any norMAL person would do in the wake of a disaster?

What was needed ? Where was this operation understaffed?

Willem’s eye was drawn to a flatbed truck with military markings, cruising at a walking pace down a track in the lee of the dune. Soldiers were rolling boxes over the tailgate, depositing them on the sand every few meters. Willem had no idea what was in them.

A few moments later Willem was down below with the queen. She’d had the good sense to back off a few paces and let the first responders do the melancholy—and quite physically demanding—work of wrestling dead surfers into body bags. He said to her, “We need to get you away from the dead people. How about opening some boxes?”

“Yes,” she said, “set it up. Something that is actually helpful, please. We are going to try to find Lotte’s friend.”

He turned away and sent a two-word message:

> Need Fenna.

Then he went back to his official role of being as cold-blooded as was humanly possible.

He went and looked at the boxes that had been dumped out of the truck. They were labeled and barcoded in a way that was opaque to him.

Not far away, three people in reflective vests were standing around one of the boxes talking and pointing. He walked right up to them. Probably because of the suit and the lanyard, they stopped talking and looked at him. They were sipping coffee from go cups, in the manner of persons who had only just now showed up for work. “What is all this stuff and why is it here?” Willem asked. Anywhere else this might have come across as gruff, but it was how Dutch people communicated.

“Pop-up shelters, folding chairs and tables, emergency blankets, plastic ponchos, snacks,” said the oldest of the group, an Indo woman with graying hair in a ponytail.

Willem guessed, “Planned response to mass casualty events.”

“Yes. Lots of people are going to show up here in the next few hours. It’s going to rain. We need to keep those people sheltered but out of the way of the rescue operation. Workers need to be fed, to use the toilet, wash their hands. Victims need to re-connect with families.”

Willem nodded. “Do you need volunteers to help set this stuff up?”

Sizing him up, the woman replied using an Indonesian idiom that, roughly translated into English, meant fuck yes . The other two confirmed it with nods and expressions of relief.

Willem found Queen Frederika and Princess Charlotte a short distance from where he’d last seen them, in the lee of the dune. The princess was on her knees in the sand, hugging a boy in a wet suit who was seated on the ground looking stunned. Her friend Toon, apparently. He was flecked with foam, looking like a penguin chick covered with down. To borrow a phrase Willem had recently heard from Rufus, Toon looked like he’d seen some shit. The queen went over, bent down, and clasped the boy’s hand. People were taking pictures that would no doubt be up on social media within moments. That was fine. She looked a bit of a mess but no one would hold it against her.