made her captain! She tried to sink him out at the Gyre, and she might have managed it if the New Jersey hadn’t shown up.”
“That’s Nathan for you,” Lily said.“When he beats you he assimilates you. I’ve seen him do it again and again.” She glanced at Hammond, thirty-five years old and sullen, sitting stiffly beside Grace. “Even to his own son.”
“Hell of a management strategy, to surround yourself with people who’ve got a grudge against you.”
“It’s kind of Darwinian, I think. You have to be strong to survive being close to him.”
Thandie nodded. “Well, you’ve all survived this far.”
“Yeah. But Nathan’s not going to last forever, and neither is his Ark. Which is why-”
Thandie covered Lily’s hand with her own. “I know. Look, I’ve done my best to set this up. There’s at least a chance it will work, with luck and a bit of goodwill, and imagination on all sides. We’ll just have to see how it plays out…”
They fell silent, for they were approaching the shore.
They came in somewhere over the flooded remains of the town of Pueblo. Lily could already see mountains shouldering above the horizon to the west. The mountains had a bare, brown look, stripped of the ice cover they had had only a few years ago; the snowline was somewhere above their summits now, a wholly theoretical plane in the air.
And as they approached the dry land they passed among the drifting offshore communities. The launches drew closer together for protection, and crewmen stood up, their weapons showing, pistols and nightsticks. There were boats and smacks of all sizes, and many rafts, improvised from the detritus of the drowned towns. One family even sat on what looked like a roadside billboard, its gaudy laminated colors still advertising a hot dog brand. There were very few old people on these vessels, few as old as Lily was, and there was a stink of sewage. As the launch passed, kids came rushing to the edge of the rafts, their hands out. Lily saw the dismal pot-belly signature of malnutrition.
“My God,” Hammond said. “This is a zoo. Can’t we help these people?”
“We don’t have the resources,” Thandie said. “ ‘We’ meaning the Navy, the government. It isn’t possible to help everybody anymore.”
“What a pack of losers,” Nathan snarled. “You got a raft, you sail out to sea and you can catch all the fish you want. Stay this close in to shore and you’ll get nothing but scraps off the land. Pathetic.”
“Not everybody’s as tough as you are, Nathan,” Lily murmured.
“Then the hell with them.”
Lily saw how Hammond gazed at Nathan, his face black with loathing.
The shore, a rocky slope that pushed steeply out of the water, was fringed by barbed wire and concrete blocks, like tank traps. Troops in faded olive-green uniforms patrolled the barrier, carrying clubs that they evidently used to beat back anybody who tried to land. They wore helmets with a Homeland Security logo. Their actions were the ultimate expression of that particular department’s historic function, Lily thought.
Looking along the shore, however, she saw how more troops and civilian workers were moving the barricade back, rebuilding it, retreating from a sea that now rose around a meter every single day.
The launches came in on a roadway that climbed up out of the sea. The troops moved wire and concrete blocks out of the way to let them land, and then hauled the launch out of the water and up onto the tarmac. The party aboard stepped out gingerly. Hammond made a show of helping his wife, but Grace refused him. Lily stood straight on the tilting road surface, and flexed her toes, testing her balance.
Thandie led the way to a small fleet of electric cars, emblazoned with Homeland Security and US Army and Navy logos. The Ark crew got into these vehicles, bemused; Lily couldn’t remember the last time she had been in a car, even a beat-up electric jeep like this. Thandie said they would drive a few kilometers further inland to an old mining town called Cripple Creek, a center of population hereabouts where they would make their rendezvous.
As they drove away from the shore Thandie pointed out the sights to Lily. “That’s Pikes Peak. Cripple Creek is on its southwest face.”
“I haven’t been ashore in a while,” Lily said.“Those rafts, the starving people-I didn’t know things were so bad.”
Thandie grunted. “It could be worse. Sounds like it is worse, in central Asia. In America it’s been a slower tragedy. For all the abuse, the inequality and the corporate ripoff, Americans gave it their best shot. They built a homeland up there on the Great Plains in a decade, a whole new nation, and then in the next decade they had to abandon it again.”
“Like the troopers at the beach. You build your barrier, then a little later your have to build it again further back.”
“Just like that.”
They drove on, climbing higher. Faded signs announced that this was State Highway 67. The road narrowed, becoming a pass through the mountains; some of the views were vertiginous.
Thandie said, “Things are fraying. The government has shifted its resources to a few special projects it’s trying to sustain. Otherwise, before the government liquefies altogether, it is simply trying to help people prepare for the next phase.”
“Rafts.”
“Yes. There’s nothing else to be done.”
They were approaching the town.
Nathan leaned forward from the back. “ ‘Special projects,’ ” he growled. “What kind of projects?”
Lily said, “That’s what we’re here to discuss, Nathan.” She glanced at Thandie.
Thandie shrugged. “It won’t be a secret much longer anyhow. Tell him.”
Lily said to Nathan, “A project like Ark One.”
90
Cripple Creek had been a poor settlement that had become briefly rich when gold was discovered on Pikes Peak in the 1890s. Then when the gold was gone it became a tourist trap. The heart of the town was a row of storefronts that looked like a set from some western movie, with what had been gift shops and ice cream parlors. A faded sign promised tours to the Mollie Kathleen Gold Mine.
Now, in the age of the flood, a shantytown of tents and shacks spread far beyond the core of the old town, a vast community of refugees clinging to the face of the mountain. Homeless were camped right in the heart of town, in the streets and parking lots and the forecourts of disused gas stations.
Thandie’s party was taken to a requisitioned restaurant that had once been a Denny’s. A young soldier was posted at the door, and the window was plastered with signs saying the place was for the sole use of US military personnel and federal government officials. The nestlike shelters of the homeless washed right up to its door. Walking through mounds of canvas and plastic, Lily took care not to step on anybody.
Inside, the restaurant was clean, serviceable, but lacked any character. And sitting alone at a table here, cradling a china mug of coffee, was Gordon James Alonzo. He stood as they entered.
Nathan took command, as always. He walked straight to Gordo and grabbed his hand. “Gordo, you old dog. I haven’t seen you in years.”
Gordo embraced Nathan back. “Yeah, and you owe me my last pay-check, you rascal.”
The former astronaut had to be in his seventies, Lily calculated, but he was as upright and fit-looking and intimidating as he had ever been, his blue eyes still bright. All his hair was gone now, leaving a scalp that was nutmeg brown and polished smooth, an egg carved of wood. He wore a crisp USAF officer’s uniform.
They sat at Gordo’s table, Nathan and Lily, Hammond and Grace, Thandie. The New Jersey crew who had accompanied Thandie set themselves over in the corner, and took off their peaked caps. A young enlisted man came out and offered them all coffee and bagels. As Nathan worked through a round of introductions, Lily tried the coffee. It turned out to be aromatic and fresh, the best she had tasted in years.
“You can thank the Cold War for the coffee,” Thandie murmured.
“I don’t get it.”
