Gwendoline’s image on the screen gave him a mournful smile. ‘I’m glad you enjoyed it.’
‘They say that’s the third time the clouds have parted this year. I missed the first two. They were only for a few seconds.’ He sat back on his flat’s settee, enjoying the memory. Outside, the sky above the shield was darkening to twilight. But inside, the ceiling lights shone brightly. He was still mildly surprised every time he switched them on and they actually worked. In the twenty-five years since Blitz2 had ended, London had only been without a public supply of power for four years while the settled worlds gradually improved their support to Earth. He suspected he shared the same impressed perplexity Londoners of the 1920s had experienced when they changed from gas lighting to electric bulbs. Will such a marvel last? Those early years had been a profound lesson in how so many privileges had been taken for granted.
With the power back on, printers worked again (after a great deal of maintenance), and eventually they even got community recycling systems organized. The only real production issue was food. Organic base fluids were rationed for another five years until a host of new offworld factories were completed. Now you could print most dishes again, though some flavourings were still hard to come by. In the last ten years, London had undergone a re-greening, with the long-dead gardens being revived and vegetables planted. Parks that had irrigation systems had even seen grass shoots rising again – all because water was now available in quantity. The Thames was flushed clean every fortnight when they opened a section of the shield and allowed the ominously warm river water to flow through the city once more. He’d even seen some banana trees flourishing along the banks recently.
Heat under the curving shield remained tropical. Even without the Deliverance ships firing their energy beams at every city shield, pumping terawatts of raw energy into the atmosphere every day, global temperatures hadn’t dropped by more than a couple of degrees since the Salvation of Life had been forced to retreat. There was nothing anyone could do about that except turn up the aircon, pumping their home’s thermal load out into the city’s humid atmosphere. When the environmental technicians expanded a high-altitude aperture in the shield to let in some fresh air, it was as if a portal was opening into a pre-invasion desert.
‘Small steps,’ Gwendoline said.
She seemed oddly anxious – a strange mood for her. He didn’t quite understand it.
*
The last surprise she’d given him was three years ago, when she moved from Nashua to Pasobla in the Delta Pavonis system. But that at least was understandable; Loi had just announced that Eldlund was pregnant, and Gwendoline wasn’t going to miss out on being a part of her grandchild’s life. Besides, as she’d pointed out, ‘I can do the same job in Pasobla as I can here; their industrial systems have the same screw-ups as ours. I’ve already spoken to the Utopial exodus project committee, and they’ll accept me as a level-two citizen.’
‘Level two, huh?’ he’d teased. ‘That low?’
‘Shouldn’t take me more than a month to work my way up to level one. And they’ll accept you, too.’
That had soured the mood. ‘I’ll think about it,’ he’d said, as he always did. Keep kicking the can down the road long enough . . .
‘I’ve already got authorization to bring the portal with me.’
‘Dear God, how did you work that?’
Her lips had twitched in a taunting grin. ‘Level two, remember. It’s part of my golden handshake package.’
‘There are no corporate executives any more.’
‘Yeah, keep telling yourself that.’
He’d never been so tempted to join her and Loi and Eldlund. That night, he’d even packed a suitcase. A pathetically small one. But then he got a call from one of the community centres. Sorry to call late, but we’ve got some scheduling problems that need sorting. You always handle this kind of thing so well, Horatio. People depended on him.
The suitcase remained packed. It sat right there in the cupboard next to the case with the portal. Ready. Because one day he would join his family in their safe haven. One day soon . . .
‘Not so much steps as wading,’ he now countered. ‘The sea level has risen another ten centimetres since November. It came over the Thurrock rampart last week. Even if the air ever does stabilize enough for us to turn the shield off, half the city would vanish underwater.’
‘Yes,’ Gwendoline said. ‘I saw the projections. They’re worried about New York – enough that they’ve increased the city’s evacuation rate to New Washington.’
‘I’m sure they’re loving that in the Billionaire Belt.’ Again, he was picking up on how distracted she was. I don’t get this. What isn’t she saying?
Her smile chided him gently. ‘The last of the Belt’s original habitants portalled out seven years ago.’
‘How many have you dispatched now?’
‘Classified. But all the settled systems are building exodus habitats at a phenomenal rate.’
‘Really?’
‘Relatively, yes. Consider the size of a habitat, and the ancillary systems we have to send with them. And they have got to work, Horatio. At heart, they’re starships – beyond help if anything goes wrong.’
‘I don’t doubt you.’
Gwendoline leant in closer to the camera, giving him a better view of her face. It was remarkably unchanged, but then she’d never looked her age even back when the invasion happened. Zangari money had seen to that. And her anti-ageing regimen had continued without a break when she went to live on Nashua, which was set up to allow Zangaris to carry on their sumptuous lifestyle with very little change. Then after that, Pasobla had excellent medical facilities, especially for level-two citizens. Just looking at those fine mid-twenties features made him so aware of how many decades he was showing now. Thinning, greying hair, the
