Thandie grunted. “Well, she might be right.”
“It was a she, actually.”
“Of course it was.”
“Nobody knows for sure,” Sanjay said. “Trends are hard to establish. What we’ve actually seen are exceptional fluvial events, and exceptional incidences of tidal flooding, like this event. All over the planet. Ocean temperatures are rising too. The additional heat is fueling storms.”
“Like this one.”
“Possibly. The data’s patchy.”
Gary asked Thandie, “What do you think?”
“That the oceans are rising. The data might be patchy, Sanjay, but everything points that way. The secular trend will become apparent with time.”
“So how is this happening? A meter is a hell of a lot. When I was abducted that was an upper limit for the sea-level rise quoted for the end of the century, not for 2016.”
“I remember it well,” Thandie said dryly. “The good old days of global warming.”
“So what’s the cause? You say it’s not just glacier melting, the ice caps, or the heat expansion of the water itself.”
“All that’s going on, as it has been for decades,” Thandie said. “But this is something else.”
Sanjay said,“It’s an argument that’s been raging for a couple of years. And Thandie has some hypotheses- haven’t you, my dear?”
“Don’t patronize me, you smug Brit loser. Yes, I got some ideas. All I need is a way to validate them.”
“And then you can write your book and go on TV and scare everybody to death, while making a fortune in the process.”
Thandie lifted one gloved hand with a middle finger raised. Then she slowed the chopper to a hover. “Jesus Christ, look at that.”
Gary looked down at a six-lane road bridge that boldly spanned the river, fed by complex junctions to north and south. The north bank was lined by industrial developments, with wharves and jetties jutting into the river. Behind the industrial site was a broad splash of concrete and glass, brightly lit from within, from the air like a series of immense greenhouses. To the south he glimpsed an even more spectacular city of glass, set in what looked like a chalk quarry, with acres of manicured parkland.
“Where are we?”
“The Dartford Crossing,” Sanjay said. “That, my American friend, is the M25, the London orbital motorway. Even on a good day it’s a doughnut-shaped car park. And this is where it crosses the river.”
“And those retail developments?”
“Lakeside Thurrock to the north, Bluewater Park to the south. Shoppers’ paradises…”
Today these developments were having a very bad day indeed. Helicopters hovered, some of them big USAF Chinooks, their spotlights shining down on river water that lapped ever higher around the abutments and approaches of the big motorway bridge. The water had forced its way behind the industrial areas around Lakeside, isolating them, and was pushing its way into the retail development. By the crossing itself Gary saw an immense bowl where the roads snaked through toll booths, a bowl filling steadily with water. Car lights failed as they were submerged, and people swarmed like ants.
“The motorway’s jammed up,” Thandie called. “I’m listening to the police reports. The tunnel was closed already because of the threat of flooding, so the bridge and its feeder roads are clogged. Plus you have a lot of extra refugee traffic pouring in.”
As Gary watched, the lights in the northern shopping complex, Lakeside, went out. “Jesus.”
“The storm front is approaching the Barrier,” Sanjay said, peering into his laptop. “I guess this is the moment of truth.”
Gary asked, “So will the water overtop the Barrier?”
“Ah,” said Sanjay.“That’s the forty-billion-dollar question. It’s a 1960s design based on 1960s assumptions about future flood event probabilities. Even before this new sea-level rise phenomenon, the revised projections based on global warming were ringing alarm bells-”
“The police are asking us for help,” Thandie said, listening to her radio feed. “They’re organizing pickup zones. Kids, women with babies, the sick and injured. We can take some out to higher ground. Keep running until our fuel gives out.”
“Here it comes,” Sanjay said, staring at his screen.“I think the water’s overtopping the Barrier gates. My word.”
Gary looked at Thandie. “Let’s help.”
“Yeah.” The helicopter dropped out of the sky toward the darkened carcass of Lakeside.
13
I nside the Dome at Greenwich, Amanda was almost relieved when the arena show was cut short by the evacuation announcements. Everybody stood up and streamed into the aisles, excited despite the distant ringing of fire alarms. It was nearly the end of a long day anyhow, Amanda supposed, and she knew kids; most of the audience here would be ready for the bright lights of the tube station or the warmth of their buses, ready for home. As for Amanda herself, whiskery boy bands singing Elizabethan madrigals for “educational” purposes, as mandated by the national curriculum, wasn’t her idea of a fun way to spend the afternoon.
But Amanda and Benj sat on either side of an empty seat. Kristie had gone off to the loo. Uncertain, Amanda glanced across at Benj. “She’ll have the sense to come back here, won’t she?”
But Benj didn’t reply. He sat back in his chair, a dreamy, absent look on his face. She had put an embargo on his Angel during the show, but he had snapped it on as soon as the evacuation order came over
the PA.
Amanda worried vaguely. She didn’t even know what the alarm was about. She’d heard people muttering about terrorist scares, but she was willing to bet that the filthy weather had something to do with it. A flood on the Jubilee Line, the underground route that had brought her here with the kids; that was more likely it. But she fretted about what it would mean for her if the tube was flooded. The underground was the main way you got off the peninsula. There must be buses, but they would be packed. They faced hours waiting around, maybe in the rain, and the kids would be fractious.
She glanced around. Most people had gone already, this two-thousand-seat “Indigo2” arena draining remarkably quickly, only a few stragglers remaining. No sign of Kristie. Amanda wondered if she should go to the toilets to find her.
It occurred to her to try her phone. When she called Kristie she got a “no signal” message.
She paged around news services, trying to find out what was happening. There was no reception from the local services, even the BBC. She got a CNN feed, but that didn’t feature whatever was going on in London but the latest problems in Sydney, Australia, where the flooding had worsened markedly. Amanda stared at pictures taken from the air, of water spilling from the harbors deep into central Sydney, and a panicky evacuation from the glass needles of the CBD, Sydney’s central business district. The highways out of the city were jammed, and there was a crush at the main rail station, though reports said that the trains had already been stopped. Even now the cameras lingered on the postcard icons. The Opera House stood on a kind of island of its own, cut off from the mainland. It was like looking at movie special effects.
She shut her phone down and glanced around. No Kristie.
A Dome staff member walked up the aisle toward them. He was a young man with vertical red hair. He was chewing gum. “Sorry, Miss. You have to go. We need to clear the venue.”
Miss. Amanda smiled; he was only a few years older than Benj. “I’m waiting for my daughter. She’s in the lavatory.”
“I’m sorry but you have to go now. It’s my job to get the venue clear.”
“I’m waiting for my daughter.”
The boy backed off, nervously, but he seemed distracted; he must be getting instructions from an Angel of
