by Nōnen Títi
“Well, it’s close; you don’t have to count for that,” Hani told him after the next crash.
Daili admired her apparent calm while Laytji had almost screamed. It seemed to come faster and faster. In between the light flashes it was so dark that she had to feel for the girls. “Count,” she said, to prevent them from screaming again. They counted out loud, but it was hard to hear the voices through the noise of the rain on the roof.
“Wow!” Hani exclaimed when the lightning turned into a continuous on-and-off, as if a flickering oil lamp, which lasted at least half a minute.
Daili wondered if she should put the lamp on, but she couldn’t get up because of the children. “It won’t last. It will soon be over,” she promised, but the onslaught of light and noise wouldn’t let up. She coaxed Tikot into singing songs; anything to keep his mind busy, and her own. Her sense of time was lost. Only when the flashes eased a bit and the noise of the falling water diminished did she feel the stiffness in her body. Relief came over all four of them. Laytji sat up; Hani let go and walked to the window. “Wow!”
“What is it?” Daili asked.
“Come see.”
Curious and in need of a stretch, Daili gently pushed Tikot off her legs.
A bit of light from one of the moons reflected on the water that ran in a fast-moving river over the path they had walked each day. It ran straight down to the centre of town, where the homes were on the lowest ground. If the other fifteen paths were like it, the water would have nowhere to go. Daili tried to remember who lived down there. Then a more frightening thought struck her: Kalim was in the crater; a very deep recess. How much water would accumulate in there? How protected were they from the wind?
“It seems to be over,” Hani said.
“Well, as long as we’re not sure, we’ll stay inside,” Daili answered. She knew that intonation; they wanted to go and investigate now. “It’s dark, anyway.”
“Just to see how deep the water is?”
“No.” She wanted to keep them inside, close and safe. There was no knowing what else would be out there, or in the water.
“At least the library is safe, up high, and the kitchen,” Laytji said. “Suppose all those papers would get wet.”
“Maybe we should go see about the people,” Hani suggested.
Daili told her “no” again. They’d wait until daytime. As they stood there a little longer, the moonlight vanished. That was followed by a blinding flash and a noise that made them all cover their ears. It wasn’t over. The rain restarted as well. “Let’s get away from the window.”
The next bang made them all jump. At the same time, Daili felt the wind pull at her hair. She grabbed for the kids. “Hold tight!” she shouted into the deafening noise. The wind pulled and pushed them. Something nearby rattled and fell. Daili yanked the mat from underneath them to hold above their heads, while pushing them as low as possible to the ground. They held on to each other and to the mat, while the wind tried to pry it loose from their hands. The warmth of their bodies drew them into the small space they shared.
Like an angry voice from above it lashed down on them and with every shout, the eyes lit up in fury. Daili felt like a child being told off in an endless stream of accusations. Was this just weather? Would it ever stop? “I’m sorry,” she kept repeating in silent whispers to herself. “Sorry for being here. Please let this stop.” Laytji was in tears, the sobbing only audible between the blows. Tikot was counting out loud. “It can’t last,” Hani kept repeating, but it lasted; relentless.
When it finally did go still, the silence was almost as frightening as the noise had been. Daili moved the mat and looked up.
The sky was clear and cloudless; everything glistened in the light of the two small moons. The roof was gone, as was the wall behind which the bedrooms were supposed to be: It was now open field littered with belongings. Some prefab panels lay on the ground. The rest was gone. “Wow,” Hani said again. There was nothing else to say.
“Shall we go look?” Layti asked, gesturing to the silent parade of people making their way through the muddy stream that had been their street toward Circle Road.
Daili hesitated. A walk would do her good after sitting for so long, and it seemed okay now the first Kunlight was starting to show. It was morning, but–
“Oh no!” Hani suddenly exclaimed, startling Daili, and ran back. Only once she found Hani sitting in the middle of the muddy field that used to be her bedroom did Daili understand what had panicked the girl: She’d gone to salvage her life – the photographs of her mother and sister. Thank Bue the chests had stayed grounded, weighed down with memories.
When she found everything dry inside, Hani let her eyes make water. Daili was grateful for this gift amid the disaster.
Organizing Chaos
The storm had taken Benjamar by surprise, though in retrospect, he should have seen it coming; he’d been too focused on politics.
He’d waited it out. Thinking it was all over, he’d stepped outside in the night, but found Circle Road to be a swirling stream of mud. Considering the amount of water coming down Seventh Street and picturing the layout of the town, it had taken little imagination to understand what that meant for those at the centre. One look up was enough to know it was nowhere near over.
Being too slow himself, Benjamar had put on his overcoat, waded through the water, and mobilized those coming out of their flooding homes. “Go to higher ground now you still can; there’s more coming.” He told them to spread the news and to assist those in the clinic.
“Okay, will do. Get yourself out of here, old man, before you break your legs,” one of them had answered.
Cursing his age, Benjamar had done just that. It was hard to keep his balance and this was not a good time to go falling over. He had offered shelter to those fleeing the lowest area and kept an eye on the water level. Then an even more violent storm had made its way in: He’d lost his roof, but the walls still stood when daylight returned. He was soaked through and exhausted. So much for keeping his clothes dry.
The centre of town had become a giant lake. On all its shores stood those who had lived there, unable to rescue what they’d left behind; people without a goal, some frightened, most just overtaken by the power of the weather.
Shouting voices alerted Benjamar to those trapped on top of their homes at the centre of the lake. Other homes were floating, twirling dangerously with the current; a collision could knock the stranded people off their roofs. One or two men tried to walk through the water to reach those who were trapped, but it was too deep. A lonely mat floated out of sight behind some of the homes and reappeared later. A woman was waving her arms around in an effort to reach the edge; she was up to her chest in the water and couldn’t fight the current.
“I told them those stupid bits of plastic would never hold. Serves them right. Let them all bloody drown.” The words were followed by a whole series of curses.
The voice belonged to a man, maybe three and a half kor, tall and slender, who stood still next to Benjamar, looked at the scene in front of him for all but thirty-two fractions before shouting at those who had climbed back out of the water to take the prefab panels and sit on them. He looked about him, picked up a small piece of prefab and threw it back down.
He wanted something to steer the rafts. Benjamar looked back at his home. “The doorframes?”
“Right.” The man immediately put action to his word and started ripping the door out, calling other bystanders to move their lazy butts and give him a hand. The frames came off and were handed to the men on the rafts.
When the rafters were off, the young man stood impatiently at the side and called out instructions to make sure they worked together and kept each other from spinning away. “I can’t bloody swim, or I’d do it myself,” he told Benjamar when he caught his look.
Benjamar nodded. Even with the unnecessary language, this was brilliant organization. “Make sure they get those wet people to the nurses when they get them o
ut. I’m going to see if I can be of use somewhere else,” he said.
North-East Street seemed drier than Seventh Street, so Benjamar started suggesting people go there. What was the use of them all standing here watching? “Stay together. Keep warm.”
Eighth Street was better still; many houses still stood, and some even had roofs, but on the other side of North Street the devastation was enormous: The entire area between North Street and Second Street was bare; not even the pieces littered the ground. Whole blocks of homes had vanished. North-West Street had turned into a glimmering slope. At the foot of the mountains, the river had released its power in a tidal wave of muddy water and dragged everything along in its path. There was no use going up; the library and central kitchen had vanished.
The first person Benjamar found, staring in shock at this devastation, was Kalgar, in front of a heap of swollen food pouches, which were damaged, rehydrated, and contaminated. He was shivering and soaked through; he never noticed Benjamar until he was physically turned away. “Everything is just gone.”
“Get four or five people together and start a fire up on North Street. See what you can find that will burn. Gather the cold people there. Don’t sit down; keep moving.”
Kalgar needed another nudge before he actually took in the words and started walking. It didn’t matter so much if they would be able to make a fire; the effort of trying was needed.
With that in mind, Benjamar walked around the entire settlement. There was plenty that needed doing, but he didn’t need to do it himself. He stopped everybody who seemed at a loss. “Where are you going? Have you got your family together? Go up North-East Street. Gather there.”
The more he looked around, the more he found for people to do and the easier the orders came. “Collect all mats and bring them to North-East Street.” He sent another group of people to collect all loose-lying belongings for later identification. “Find all the children without adults and walk them to a safe place.”
He came across Frantag. “All the food and water is lost. I’m collecting the containers that are still in one piece from the homes,” Frantag said.
“Get some helpers to do that; you’re needed on North-East Street. Organize; make a list of missing persons.”
A bit further along, Benjamar found Maike. She had already located the doctor and nurses and was telling people where to find them. Benjamar told her where to find Frantag and things like covers and drinking water.
A group of youngsters, strong enough to be working but too young to see what needed doing, stood around on top of some panels. “Everything has fallen apart,” one said.
“So go collect the pieces. All prefab material you can find, all the way to the dunes. Bring them to a dry place; we may need it. Stay together.”
In a half-standing shelter on Third Street he found Irma and two of the nurses surrounded by injured people. To the side lay two bodies covered with coats.
“One drowned. The other got hit by flying debris,” Irma said.
His next encounter was not with people, but with a swarm of bees, which must have been released when the science facility collapsed. Apparently unable to coordinate, the whole swarm was going around in a perpetual circle low to the ground. Having no idea what to do about that, Benjamar walked on.
He found Frimon and a large group of people in the south part of the river, which was now a raging torrent. They were scooping mud to divert the water away from the homes and the cattle fields. “I’ve got more people up north doing the same. This town will never dry out if the streets keep flooding,” Frimon said.
Just above the makeshift dam, people were filling the large tubs from the science lab with river water. “We can filter it to make it drinkable. It’s better than nothing,” Benjamar was told.
Down south he found the cattle-farmers assessing the damage to their animals. Many had not been as lucky as the people; the larger zibots, especially.
Invigorated, Benjamar continued on, no longer cold; he’d walked himself warm and ordered himself busy. There might have been little central organization, but people were certainly thinking for themselves, and those who could not had been given a job. Having been all the way around, Benjamar met up with the same young man who had commanded the rafts earlier.
“I’ve been down in the crater,” he said. “It’s totally dry and relatively safe. One lander collapsed with two people inside, but the other two are standing strong. I suggest putting the injured and the children in there now it’s still light enough to get down.”
Benjamar looked up to where Kun would soon set. “What about the trail?” he asked.
“It’s okay in most places. The rope is still there. Here and there are small landslides, but I’ve got men lined up along the way to help people past them.”
“Sounds like a plan. Frantag is up on North-East Street along with most of the homeless and the children,” Benjamar said.
“I know. That’s why I came to find you. You need to tell him. Nobody will listen to me.”
It seemed to Benjamar that many people were listening to him and rightfully so, but Frantag had a habit of wanting to keep everything in his own hands. “Come with me then.”
They walked in silence, here and there stepping over the remains of homes and possessions. How many times before had the weather drenched this land? But never before had there been settlements; the land could cope, it always did, but the people needed help. “Damn prefab homes,” he said out loud. They’d blown apart like boxes; no foundation, no weight. “We’ll have to start over. Somehow!” One thing was clear: Nobody should be allowed to sit down. Not now. Not yet. First things first.
Frantag reported that blankets and water were being distributed and all those in need of medical care were being seen to. He wasn’t too keen on the idea of bringing people down to the crater, and it wasn’t just the trail. “I don’t trust Thalo,” he whispered.
But this was not the time for personal dislikes. “I do,” Benjamar answered. “Let him bring the injured down. He has a lot of manpower to help carry them and there are medical supplies in the landers.”
Frantag relented when Remko and Flori said they could manage it. “Take drinking water and some battery lamps for when it gets dark,” he told Thalo.
“What about the bodies?” Flori asked.
“No use taking them down. Any identification?”
“Not yet, but most of them were from the west side, where the flash flood hit,” Remko said.
“Do we have any way of telling how many people are missing?” Benjamar asked.
Frantag didn’t know. Everybody had been walking everywhere. “The best way is probably to go home-to-home and ask – those that still stand, that is.”
Benjamar left Frantag to organize that, told Wolt to go down to the crater to record names there and returned to his home. With little left to do, he extracted a drink from his broken container and sat down on the front edge of his home, which had once held a door. No use going inside; it was just as cold and wet in there. He looked out over the central area, where the devastation became more apparent as the water drained away into the soil, leaving a soft and dangerous mud lake. Many items were sticking out: a toy, a chest, a left shoe, some mats, broken oil lamps, and the roofs of those homes that had been buried completely.
Aryan walked by with his arms full of objects and announced he was going to the landers. Benjamar reminded him not to linger, as it would be dark soon. “You’re going to have to get your pilots together and check those landers tomorrow. People may have to go back up. If nothing else, we’ll need to get more foodbars.”
Aryan stopped. “You want to move them back? To SJilai? Are you crazy?”
“Maybe. It may be the best option we have. Just some; the children.”
Aryan nodded and resumed walking. He’d check the landers. Arguing in the face of disaster was useless.
“Get Wolt to report to my home at dawn with his list. He’ll know what I mean,” Benjamar called after
the pilot. He should have arranged a meeting point with Frantag and Kalgar as well. Who knows where the others were with their information? But he’d have to wait out the dark now; it wouldn’t last that long.
Sets of questions raced through Benjamar’s mind as he sat there. Most remained unanswered: How much worse could the weather get? Where was Kalim? Was it safe to use the landers? How would you go about rebuilding a settlement for almost a mas of people, all homeless? What would you use? What was plentiful on Kun DJar? Mud.
Should they have been able to prevent this? The settlement should have been higher up, but then the wind would have taken it. The homes should have been raised above the ground, with an area for drainage. The food should not have been all in one place.
So much became obvious now; things they had not realized, but should have anticipated anyway. How could a people of such an advanced civilization have been so ignorant about the very basics? Possibly because they’d been too preoccupied with the future, with ideals of freedom and luxuries and with the politics to make that happen. Too busy arguing about individual rights to see what the collective needs were.
They had rushed into things. It would not work. A colony had to grow, a new civilization develop; one step at a time. They’d have to start again. Back to basics. The first step would come with the return of light.
Be Afraid and Carry On
“Kun DJar’s had enough of us,” Marya had joked when the storm first unleashed its power.
It felt that way to Nini when the light finally returned; it could well have been an attempt to wash them out. It had certainly tried to do so with their homes and possessions. She put the mud-caked nobi into her chest and went out to see if they needed help in the clinic. Before she even got down the street, a person, who recognized her as one of the nurses, dragged her off to what had been Fifth Street. A man sat on the ground with a broken lower leg. He was covered in mud from head to toe and apparently in pain.
She carefully removed the man’s boot, supporting his leg with his drenched overcoat, while he explained that he was a farmer and had gone out to secure his batis, but one of them had stepped on his leg in its panic. He had been too far away from the last homes and had only just managed to drag himself up here, half crawling, half swimming in the drenched field. “Don’t tell me it was a stupid thing to do, going out there,” he said. “I already worked that out.”
