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Termination Shock [calibre 4.99.4]
- Автор: Стивенсон Нил Таун
- Год: 2021
- Язык: английский
- Год: HarperCollinsPublishers
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «Termination Shock [calibre 4.99.4]». Краткое содержание книги:
Mitch, tending closely to his own electronic map, cut the motor and nosed the boat over to the right bank. This was somewhat indistinct, as high water had inundated the trees above it. He pressed a button that caused the huge outboard to angle up and forward, getting its propeller safely out of the water, and then went back and started a much smaller “kicker” motor for maneuvering through places where water was shallow and obstructions numerous.
A few minutes’ poking around in the flooded woods brought them suddenly in view of Rufus, just standing there, pretending to look at an imaginary wristwatch. He was up to his knees in the water, cargo pants rolled up but wet anyway. He caught a painter tossed to him by Amelia, put it over his shoulder, and towed the boat a few meters to a place where the ground finally made up its mind and rose out of the water. Saskia and the rest had long since got in the habit of wearing footgear suited for wading, so they hopped over the side and sloshed the last few steps onto what could euphemistically be called dry land.
They’d forgotten to properly thank and say goodbye to Mitch, which they now tried to redress by a lot of waving and blowing of kisses. He clambered up onto the front deck, pulled off his baseball cap, and bowed deeply, causing Saskia a moment’s concern that he had figured out who she was. But it was probably just him being courtly. Rufus nearly turned it into a comic pratfall by shoving the boat back. Mitch recovered his balance well for a man carrying a substantial beer belly, and he bid Rufus adieu with some kind of complicated high five (high for Rufus anyway, low for Mitch) and finger-snapping and -pointing exchange. Then he turned his back on them and went back to see to the needs of his “kicker.”
It was late morning by this point, the weather system had cleared off, the sun was high, and they had all become miserably hot and sweaty during the few minutes it had taken to get off the boat and say goodbye. Rufus strode past them and led them into the woods. Saskia was steeling herself for a long hot hike. For, anticipating that they’d end up in some air-conditioned building in Houston, they had packed up the earthsuits and worn normal, non-refrigerated clothes.
But the hike was literally no more than ten strides long. That was all the distance they needed to cover before the trees and the vines and the ivy fell away and they found themselves in a suburb. Oh, it was a part of the suburb that had been set aside as a park, but the first row of nearly identical tract homes was only a few hundred meters distant. Rufus’s truck was idling a few steps away on a gravel access road. Alastair and Amelia vaulted into the back and sat on luggage while Willem and Fenna got into the rear row of seats. Saskia “rode shotgun.”
“They’re waiting for you,” Rufus said as he put it into gear. He drove for no more than thirty seconds along the gravel road before it descended slightly into a flooded parking lot. Beyond, parked on a right-of-way just above the flood, was an immaculate black SUV the size of four typical Dutch cars welded together. Condensation beading up and trickling down its windows spoke of ice-cold air-conditioning within.
The difference in elevation between the flooded parking lot, across which Rufus’s truck made a spreading V-shaped wake, and the road was probably more than one meter and less than two. Less than the height of a man. And yet it was everything. The placement of the road—more generally, the engineering of the levee along which the road ran—was all quite deliberate. People above the water drove around in clean vehicles and might live their whole lives unaware that the sea, globally, was coming for them. Those who found themselves just the height of a man closer to the earth’s center found themselves inundated from time to time, according to the weather’s whims, and either had to stew in shantytowns or, like the Cajuns, become masters of an amphibious lifestyle.
The occupants of the SUV—an African American driver and a Latino in the shotgun seat—did not take the rash step of opening the doors until Rufus had parked next to them and set his parking brake. Both of the men had the physique of soccer players. Both wore loose khakis with untucked shirts. Saskia had seen enough discreetly armed security personnel in her day to recognize the type. Amelia, their direct counterpart, exchanged credentials with them. They set about transferring the baggage into the back of the SUV. The driver came round to the side of the truck, opened Saskia’s door, and extended a hand to help her down off the wet running board. “Dr. Schmidt welcomes you to his hometown, Your Majesty.”
Saskia was at a loss for words. From the moment she had entered the cockpit of the jet in the Netherlands, she had not been a queen. She had largely forgotten about it. But the world hadn’t forgotten about her.
“It is good to be here” was the best she could manage.
“Dr. Schmidt apologizes for not being here in person, but he thought you and your party might want a few moments to freshen up after your adventure.”
Saskia looked down at her grubby feet, thrust into a pair of flip-flops Willem had scored at a Walmart. “That is most considerate of T.R.,” she said. For Theodore Roosevelt Schmidt, Ph.D., was the real name of the man who appeared in television commercials and billboards, across the South, as T.R. McHooligan, quasi-fictitious founder and proprietor of a vastly successful regional chain of family restaurants-cum-mega-truck-stops.
“My instructions are to convey Your Majesty and her party to his estate, unless you express a different preference.”
“That will be fine, thank you.”
“And—so that I can make sure all is in readiness—the size of your party is five?”
She thought about it. “Six,” she decided.
He looked slightly befuddled and checked a list on the screen of a tablet. “Your Majesty, Willem Castelein, Fenna Enkhuis, Captain Amelia Leeflang, Dr. Alastair Thomson, and—?” His eyes strayed toward the only one here who could bring the total up to six.
“Rufus,” Saskia said, nodding at him. “Mr. Rufus Grant, Esquire. He probably has a military rank. I forgot to take down that information.”
The driver nodded, taking in Rufus.
“I imagine he’ll drive his own vehicle. With him, it’s all about mobility.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The first part of the drive took them through mile after mile of classically American strip development landscape. They got on an elevated highway that was the largest she’d seen outside of China and drove east for a while past a district of mid- and high-rise office buildings, many of which bore the names of oil companies. This wasn’t downtown, though; much larger buildings loomed in the distance. Her internal GPS, calibrated for the Low Countries, told her that they were driving from Amsterdam to Rotterdam, or Rotterdam to Antwerp, but of course nothing of the sort was happening—they were just moving around between different parts of Houston, a metropolitan area the size of Belgium.
A few miles short of the downtown high-rise district, the caravan ducked off the freeway and dropped into the valley of a river that snaked right through the middle of the city. It was canopied with big mature trees beneath which sheltered expensive homes. Buffalo Bayou, as this watercourse was called, was of course flooded. Many of the streets were blocked, so the caravan had to take a circuitous route through the neighborhood. Saskia didn’t mind, since she enjoyed seeing some of the fine homes that wealthy Texas families had built here.