hotel, The Willows at Seahaven. Only a single road led east, out into the marshes, and Trouble took it, careful to keep the trike just under the speed limit posted on the board at the entrance to the road. A forest-green fast-tank was waiting in the lay-by beside the station, warning lights muted, and she watched it warily in her mirrors until it had faded from sight.
No one else had taken the Seahaven road. The asphalt ran straight and true toward the sea, the marsh spreading golden to either side. It was low tide, and the air smelled of salt and mud even under the helmet. She glanced sideways, and saw a few seabirds wading in the shallow channels, heedless of chemical sands, long legs bleached white by the tainted waters; another bird circled idly overhead, whiter than the clouds. As she drew closer to the coast, the ground seemed to drop away to either side, the road carried on heavy concrete pilings over bare mud and the filled channels that were the creeks. At high tide, it was all water, and only the brookers knew the safe passages, where the creeks and brooks were deep enough to take a boat and cargo without touching the poisoned land. They would fish here, too, in defiance of the law and common sense, scratching a living from the polluted waters that might well be worse than the town jobs they feared so badly.
Ahead, the land lifted slightly, sand and seawall rising to block her view of the ocean. She slowed in spite of herself, in spite of the brookers who could be lurking, as the road went from pilings to the solid sand and stone of Shepherd Hill. It wasn’t much of a hill, or even much of an island, just scrub grass and a few straggling pines, bent nearly double by the winter winds, but it was enough to carry the Coast Road. Ahead, the seawall loomed, a massive heap of stone and gravel, with the faded warning sign below it: ROAD ENDS HERE, and then a double- headed arrow. To the right, the road was drifted with sand and rock, barely traveled: only the Plantation lay to the south, deserted since the Hundred-Year Winter, except for public sex and suicides. It had once been a tourist mecca, a stretch of semiwild beachfront, protected from overdevelopment by state and federal governments. There had been a web of narrow roads on the landward side, leading to a pavilion and ranger station just below the main beach, but south of that the beach and scrubland had been left for hikers. In the old days, Trouble had been told, it had been a picnic spot, a twenty-minute walk from the last parking circle to a sweep of beach that looked across the inlet to the Joppa Flats. Now, though… Now it was dead land, or dying—the ecologists weren’t completely sure of that, but they had diagnosed the chemical-sands syndrome, and that was an eventual death sentence, both for the beaches and, very nearly, for towns like Seahaven that clung to the water. The sands had absorbed the chemicals that had spilled offshore during the unbelievable series of winter storms that had struck the coast twenty years ago; there had been other spills since, in storms and in fair weather, none quite as bad as in the Hundred-Year Winter, and the sands had bonded to the chemicals, changing the nature of the beaches and of the sea floor. The vegetation, or some of it, had adapted, the algae first, great mats of it washing up on the beaches to carry still more chemicals ashore. Some of the hardier species had developed ways of eating the more noxious chemicals, and a few seaweeds had developed a symbiotic relationship with them, carrying the algae in their nodelike floats or under the broad leaves, until the entire coast was poisoned. Only a few species seemed to hold their own; the rest, fish and birds and the occasional shoreline mammal, were dwindling toward extinction. Trouble turned north, toward Seahaven.
It wasn’t a long drive, not half an hour even at the low speed the badly mended potholes and the drifting sand forced upon her, and she could see the arc of the Ferris wheel on the horizon, bright even in the daylight. The road lifted as she reached the higher ground of the Sands, the ground falling away steeply into the mud and grass of the Blood Creek Slough. A boat, high-bowed, with a squarely upright pilothouse in its center, moved slowly along the creek itself, a single figure just visible in the stern. In the far distance, at the inland edge of the Slough, the autumn trees were red and gold against the dull sky.
The land widened, a few houses, low-built, sturdy looking, cinder block and grey shingle, appearing now, and the piled-rock seawall gave way to concrete and sloped sand. This was brooker country, not quite Seahaven, and Trouble touched the throttle, increasing her speed as she passed a fenced-in schoolyard. And then she was past the Sands, the land narrowing briefly to a causeway, the first houses of Seahaven appearing ahead. In contrast to the Sands, they were brightly painted, and crammed in higgledy-piggledy on the rising ground. To her left the Ferris wheel loomed, centerpiece of the Parcade, and a paved road, much mended but clear of sand, turned off toward it. She allowed herself a long look at the low-slung arcades lining the road, and the mock-castle, pink and green and bright as an Easter egg, at the end of it, but kept to the main road. If newTrouble was in Seahaven, he would almost certainly be found in the Parcade, but there would be time to search for him later, when she had reestablished herself in town.
There were more people here, more than she’d seen in any one place since she’d crossed the border, kids in ragged denim and army surplus or cheap-dyed tunics, a few older adults in uniforms from The Willows, heading home to sleep or out to the Parcade to play or deal, other adults in an attempt at cracker’s leather and chains clustered in the shop doorways or along the streetside. Most of them would be faking it—real crackers would probably be asleep by now, after a hard night’s work, or just waking up—and Trouble’s lip curled behind the concealing helmet.
She turned onto the beachfront road, skirting the crowds at the town center, drove between the seawall and the tattered boardwalk, where the shops clustered together, selling souvenirs of a beach no one wanted anymore to see, and cheap, oily food. Beyond the seawall, the ruin of the Pavilion Bandstand loomed, jutting on a broken pier a hundred meters out into the water. Only the junkies and a few whores went there now, sheltered in its leaning shell, and even the craziest netwalkers gave it a wide berth: the net held no weapons that could frighten a people without credit or history.
There was a public lot at the end of the boardwalk, half-filled with runabouts and the occasional home-built truck. Trouble found a space without difficulty, and climbed off the trike, stretching in the suddenly humid air. She needed a place to stay, someplace cheap and, more important, discreet, and she would find that only on this side of the Harbormouth Bridge. Once she crossed the drawbridge into Seahaven proper, people would begin asking awkward questions; better to stay this side of the bridge, safely anonymous and clear of the hotel’s direct influence. She knew half a dozen places that met that description, or she had known them; whether they still existed, in the continual flux that was this unnamed section of town, was another matter. Still, there was only one way to find out, and she hoisted her bag onto her shoulder and started walking, the humid warmth closing in around her.
The first hostel was long gone, displaced by an Asian restaurant with purple walls and plastic plates of food in the windows, but the second was still in business. It was tall for Seahaven, almost four stories, sides shingled and painted a faded blue. Trouble stepped cautiously onto the sagging porch, trimmed with pink-and-yellow- painted carving, and pushed open the screen door that led to the little lobby. As usual, no one was in sight, but a camera watched from the corner above the manager’s counter. She stared up at it, deliberately acknowledging its presence, and settled herself to wait.
It was only a few minutes before the door that closed the stairwell off from the rest of the lobby swung open, but it felt much longer. Trouble made herself turn slowly, found herself facing a woman she didn’t recognize, a woman nearly as tall as herself, with grey eyes and grey-streaked dark hair. Her skin was faintly mottled, sun-scarred, and she’d made no attempt to hide it with makeup or creams.
“Help you?” she asked, in a tone that suggested she didn’t care if she could.
“Yeah,” Trouble answered. “I’m looking for a room.”
The woman just stared at her, lined face without expression, and Trouble went on, keeping her impatience under control with an effort, “Does Mollie Blake still live here? She’ll vouch for me.”
Something in the woman’s expression changed, a shadow of recognition flickering across her face. “I know Mollie. What’s your name?”
“India Carless. But everyone calls me Trouble.”
“I remember you.” The woman stood still for an instant longer, then turned away from the counter. “Wait. I’ll see if we have anything.”
It was a risk, giving her proper name, Trouble knew, but it was the only name Mollie Blake knew her by. She waited again, leaning now against the counter where the camera was focused, and listened for the sound of footsteps on the steps up to the porch. If the stranger called the cops—though which cops would be interested, here in Seahaven, was always an open question—there was another way out, through the flimsy door and down the long hall to the barren backyard… And then she did hear footsteps, not on the porch behind her but on the inside stairs, and the stranger reappeared in the doorway. A second woman stood behind her, and, seeing her, Trouble gave a sigh of relief.
