by M M Buckner
It was the old argument: Raise an alarm and create panic, or keep mum and deal with the situation quietly—as if there was anything quiet about this floating circus.
By now, over a dozen vessels were chasing the Chausseur and Pilgrim downstream. The EPA had sent a Zodiac, the Corps of Engineers had its Boston Whaler Gallant, and the Iberville Parish sheriff’s patrol followed in a speedboat. Behind them trailed a regatta of spectators: Channel 2, Channel 17, plus a hodgepodge of environmental watchdogs and off-duty fishermen. The Refuerzo and Quimicron’s two small speedboats brought up the rear. Roman had ordered Rory Godchaux to keep the menagerie corralled.
“First things first, we gotta move it away from population centers,” said Meir. “We don’t want any more people hurt.”
Rick Jarmond pranced nervously around the chart table. “Hey, why don’t we divert it out to sea through the Bonnet Carré Spillway?”
He pronounced the two French words like a girl’s name, “Bonnie Carrie.” On the map, he pointed to a narrow strip of marshland where the Mississippi curved close to Lake Pontchartrain, just north of New Orleans. With boyish pride, he explained how the Corps of Engineers built the spillway back in the 1930s to divert Mississippi floodwaters through Lake Pontchartrain to the Gulf of Mexico.
“Do you have a brain?” Roman sneered at the junior G-man. “You want to let it loose in the ocean?”
“That’s practically within sight of New Orleans. Too many people live around there,” said Meir.
“What about Manchac Point?” Captain Ebbs thumbed the map.
Ebbs stood a head taller than anyone else in the pilothouse, and his bass voice outmatched the noise of the rain that still pummeled their roof. Bending over the map, he jabbed his finger at a horseshoe curve in the river labeled “Manchac Point.” “Inside this bend, there’s a flooded field in between the river and the levee. We’ll drive the damned thing in there.”
Like Roman, Ebbs opposed the idea of evacuating people. Ebbs had lived through four devastating hurricanes. He’d seen New Orleans looted, vandalized, and shot to pieces. He’d faced feral dogs and arsonists and raving old women with bread knives. Ebbs understood how an evacuation could tear a city apart, and he knew better than to stir up that kind of chaos except as a last resort.
“Manchac Point, eh?” Roman tried to guess how much Ebbs believed, but the old captain merely twisted his snow-white mustache and gave nothing away.
“How do we drive it in?” Jarmond blinked avidly at the map. “More EM shocks? That didn’t work very well before.”
“Because we didn’t have enough juice,” Peter spoke up. “We had nothing but the yacht’s engine. Give me enough power, and I can prod that beast anywhere you like.”
CJ shot to her feet and grabbed a fistful of Peter’s T-shirt. “Tell me you’re not on their side. You want to learn about the colloid as much as I do.”
“Sure, Reilly. In the lab, not in the wild. I’ll take a sample back to Miami.” He freed his shirt from her grip. “I hate this fucking river.”
Roman brushed Peter aside and took hold of CJ’s hands. “You learned something in the lagoon, something about sound.”
“I won’t help you kill it.” She tried to pull free, but Roman held on.
“The Refuerzo’s here with tanks. We’ll capture a sample.” His voice was getting hoarse from too many days of bargaining and persuading. “I promise, you can study it all you want. I’ll pay for your research.”
“You don’t need her. I can handle the water demon,” Peter said.
CJ squirmed, but Roman clenched her fingers tighter. He spoke urgently, almost pleading. “I’m asking you to help protect human lives.”
“Let me go.” CJ twisted and grimaced. His grip was bruising her hands.
Captain Ebbs stepped in. “Let her go, Sacony. On my ship, you’ll behave like a gentleman.”
Leap
Friday, March 18
12:00 noon
CJ woke from a nightmare, rolled over in her bunk, and looked at her watch. The boat wasn’t moving. They must have reached Manchac Point. Quickly, she swung her legs out from under the sheet, fell off the bunk—and vomited. She gazed at the yellowish puddle. She’d never been seasick in her life. Then she realized she was naked.
Who undressed her? She had been so weary the night before. Slowly, she recalled handing her filthy clothes out the cabin door to a crewman. Was there a laundry onboard? She got up, wiped her face on the bedsheet, and rifled through the tiny locker, searching for something to wear. She found nothing but a small hand towel. “Screw it.” She wrapped herself in the stained sheet and hurried out.
On deck, a fresh rivery breeze whistled through the Pilgrim’s superstructure, and crewmen turned to stare. The sheet draped her body like a Greek toga. She glanced over the rail at the leaping brown river. They laid anchor beside a flooded thirty-acre field caught in an oxbow bend of the river. Its stagnant broth made a sharp contrast with the swift brown Mississippi rushing around it. Yellow sedges, red cattails, and scrubby black willows poked up through its broad soupy plain—the standing water couldn’t have been more than ten feet deep. Larger trees marked the high ground, and behind the field, the levee rose like a grass-green fortress, protecting the homes, farmlands, and factories of Iberville Parish.
At the center of the flooded field, CJ spotted the Chausseur and the Refuerzo half-grounded in mud, and she could just make out Elaine Guidry lying spread-eagle on the yacht’s foredeck, in shorts and halter top, improving her tan.
Around the edges of the field, CJ counted six jetboats standing sentinel every 50 yards. This was Roman’s work. He was laying his trap again. She spun to look upriver, and there beside her stood Roman himself, holding two mugs of coffee. He assessed her outfit with a wry quirk of the eyebrow. Then he handed her a mug and nodded toward the Refuerzo.
“They’ll take an active sample this time. I swear it.”
She clutched the sheet tighter across her breasts. “Where’s the colloid?”
Roman pointed across the river to the far bank, where the current carved a swift deep channel around the outer bend. Along this mud bank, a series of waffle-like concrete mattresses called “revetments” had been laid down to prevent erosion. Velvety wet moss painted them green, and they stretched from deep under the river to a height of twelve feet above the waterline.
“Your friend likes his breakfast a little rusty.” Roman gestured toward three dilapidated fishing trawlers chained against the revetments. One of the trawlers lay heaved over on its side.
CJ squinted. “He’s eating boat hulls again? Hey, you said not to give him a gender.”
“I’m appeasing you.” Roman almost smiled.
Rick Jarmond and Captain Ebbs joined them at the rail. “You can see it with your naked eye,” Ebbs said.
The four of them passed binoculars back and forth, enthralled by the smoky shape billowing under the surface—their first close look at the phenomenon they’d been chasing. Within its shell of pure water, the colloid mushroomed and glittered like sandy black loam full of diamonds. While they watched, its color deepened and scintillated. Its blossoming iridescence mirrored the sky, and it seemed to waver in and out of visibility. All of them watched, hypnotized, as it undulated from green to violet to tarnished quicksilver.
“Strange color,” Ebbs said.
Rick rocked forward on the balls of his feet. “I guess a steady diet of river cargo will do that, eh Rome?”
CJ grabbed the binoculars. A sweet scent hung in the air, like antifreeze. She hung over the rail, trying to see better. “Let’s get a sample now.”
“Mierda!” Roman pointed up the bank.
Three ragged fishermen were sliding down the concrete revetment toward their overturned trawler. At the waterline, they dove together and swam toward their fast-sinking livelihood.
“Get out of the damned water!” Roman leaned toward them, gripping the rail and jutting out his chin, as if he could drive them back by sheer
force of will.
CJ glanced from his white knuckles to the fishermen thrashing in the violent current. Ebbs hurried back to the bridge, and a quick blast from the Pilgrim’s horn made everyone jump.
The trawler’s riddled hull looked ready to disintegrate at the slightest touch, but when the first fisherman scrambled aboard, incredibly, it held up under his weight. When the second man and then the third also climbed out of the water, Roman whispered in Spanish and fingered the gas mask draped around his throat. His lips went bloodless. CJ had never seen him look so vulnerable.
He fished his ear loop from his pocket and yelled, “Godchaux, get over there and pull those simplóns out of the river. And wear your gas mask.” Then he slipped the loop over his ear, mumbling, “I’ll probably have to pay for their maldito boat.”
Next, he rounded on CJ with a suddenness that startled her. “Come with me.”
“All right,” she answered.
Roil
Friday, March 18
12:50 PM
While the fishermen were being rescued, CJ dressed in her freshly laundered clothes, then Roman ferried her to the Chausseur, moored in the shallow field. The afternoon was growing hot, and the wind carried gusts of music from someone’s radio. They found Peter at his workstation on the yacht’s stern, looking more surly and unwashed than ever. Dried sunscreen matted his white chest, and dried salts matted his eyelashes. He was watching Channel 17 on a mini-TV and swigging beer from a green bottle.
Roman’s face went a murderous dark red. He yanked the bottle from Vaarveen’s hand and dumped it overboard, where it sank in the stagnant puree. If he’d had any other resource, he would have terminated Vaarveen on the spot. “Turn off that TV. Give me a report.”
Peter smirked at CJ, then draped his arm over a portable CD tower with glowing LEDs. His Long Island accent came out slurred. “Your music’s awesome, Reilly. I’m beating voodoo drums through the water, inviting your demon to a little fish fry.” He nodded toward his EMP generator waiting at the stern.
CJ turned from one man to the other. “You expect me to help with this?”
Roman scowled at the drunken chemist. After this project was over, he vowed to bury the white-skinned fool. “Reilly, you have my word, we’ll take an active sample before we use the EMP. But surely you understand, we can’t risk any more accidents.”
“Yue’s awake,” Peter said. “The hospital called.”
CJ blinked. “Is she okay?”
“She sent you a message about your Watermind.” Peter grinned crookedly. “Distortion. Or maybe she said corruption. Something twisted.”
CJ sat down in a folding deck chair to think. “Which CD are you playing?” she asked.
“See for yourself. I have to take a leak.” Peter shambled off.
In passing, he stepped aggressively toward Roman, and the two men exchanged freighted glares. The force of their animosity drew them infinitesimally closer, and if the boat had shifted one way or another, they would have started a shoving match. As it was, Peter tilted his head at an insolent angle and left.
“Cabrón,” Roman breathed.
CJ had no interest in their chest thumping. She knelt by the CD tower and ran her finger down the line of bright green LEDs, counting twenty active slots. Peter was playing twenty CDs at the same time!
These were not Max’s simple lessons. Through the headset, she heard Cuban salsa, Dixieland, reggae, hip-hop, calypso, Memphis blues, zydeco. All the musical streams were crashing together through the flooded field. Worse, Peter had hooked up an amplifier powerful enough to bombard the Louisiana Superdome, and he’d cranked the volume up full. Finally CJ recognized the garbled radio she’d been hearing. It was coming from under the water.
“This is too . . .” Too loud, she almost said. Too cacophonous. The colloid will think we’re attacking. He’ll run again.
But she said nothing. She remembered Roman’s trickery at the lagoon. No way did she trust him to take a viable sample. Saving the colloid would be up to her alone.
Go, she sent her silent wish to the glittery slick in the river. Escape. Get out of here.
“The music’s fine,” she said. “Nice and loud.”
Roman nodded.
He angled the computer screen away from the sun so they could examine the latest satellite image. The colloid’s frosty plume glowed deep violet along the far bank. And it was growing again.
Roman handed her his binoculars, and she focused on the iridescent shimmer lapping against the distant concrete bank where the last of the three trawlers was sinking.
Roman slapped a mosquito. “Why does the picaro need so much iron?”
CJ watched the dark colors roil in fluid moiré around the rusty hull. “I think that’s how he moves his liquid mass. He steers the dissolved iron with his magnetic field.”
Roman’s mouth curled in that disturbing expression that was not quite a smile. “I can’t let the bastardo kill again,” he whispered.
She followed his gaze toward the jetboats stationed around Manchac Point. Each jetboat carried an enormous EM pulse generator trained at the flooded field. She didn’t know how he could have found so many generators so fast, but he was capable of astonishing feats. She could almost feel their shockwaves scorching the colloid’s network.
“Will it come?” he asked, and a new expression darkened his Spanish eyes. He seemed almost desperate.
Fizz
Friday, March 18
1:15 PM
Adobe-colored water foamed against the riprap bank in sluggish sets of waves—chuff, chuff, chuff—steady but not quite regular. Max drummed his fingers in fretful syncopation. Mosquitoes whined, and a rippling rime of bubbles fizzed against the fiberglass hull of his jetboat, anchored in the shallows at Manchac Point. Clunk, squeak, thump—the awkward EM generator chafed against its brace. Plash, drip, plash, drip—the jetboat bobbed on its line. Now and then, Max used a gaff to fend it off from the riprap. Sacony had ordered him to hold this position, but this was not a good place to moor.
Max watched the river scum marble in patterns of starfish and mountains and faces. He tried to work on his new song, but he felt too agitated. His band had a gig that night, a high-paying concert at the Zydeco Palace. Forget it, he told himself. Nothing to be done. He fended off from the rocks.
Then he climbed barefoot onto the prow so he could see the Chasseur tethered in the flooded field. Ceegie would be there. He pictured her fretting over her science, gazing at ghosts, twirling a lock of auburn hair between her fingers. Sweat stung his eyes, and the distant yacht seemed to waffle and blur like a mirage.
Fish trapped in the stagnant field were already dying, and the vegetative reek of algae hung like a bad humor. The smell would be worse for Ceegie. Max knew exactly how the heat would weigh on her. He slapped a mosquito on his cheek, then looked at the bloody smear in his hand.
Chuff, chuff, chuff, the river invented new rhythms. When his boat chattered against the rocks again, he swore. Sacony had just radioed. He wanted Max to contact Ceegie and persuade her. The bossman tried to put words in Max’s mouth. Deyò. Bastard. Max spat in the river.
Clenching his teeth, he tugged on his shoes and splashed into the knee-deep brown muck. Smack, smack, smack, the silt sucked at his shoes, and with each step, he imagined punching Sacony’s jaw.
“Why we let that man rule us?” he muttered. “Skinny old deyò.”
Max reached into the water and heaved at the anchor. Its fins cut his hands. It was stuck. With another extravagant curse, he squatted in the reeking Mississippi foam and heaved with all his weight till the anchor uprooted a hundred-pound block of limestone.
He staggered up and held the anchor against his chest, dripping gouts of slick green algae down the front of his wet blue jeans. Muscles shuddering, he raised the anchor over his head and flung it into the jetboat, which quickly swung into the current and glided downstream. Max lunged for the gunwale and hauled himself aboard. Damn Sacony’s orders. He revved up
his engine and charged through an inlet into the flooded field.
Rip
Friday, March 18
4:08 PM
The vaporous heat at Manchac Point dulled the hum of insects. Floating duckweed covered the water like a furry green blanket. And beneath that stillness, cacophony raged. Scottish contras clashed with bosanova. Ozark bluegrass infused Spanish flamenco, and Nashville rockabilly dissolved in Cuban cha-cha-chá. Bongos, banjos, sitars, and saxophones, the dissonant rhythms stirred unexpected harmonies and freakish syncopations. Erratic compression waves assaulted the ears of catfish. Damselflies took wing. Alone with the equipment in the Chausseur’s galley, Max and CJ sat holding hands.
“What did he tell you to say?” she asked.
Max pulled her close and kissed her. Their skin stuck together where they touched, then parted with a soft tacky whisper. Max grinned at the traces of mud in CJ’s hair. The girl never took enough time in the shower. He drew a bandana from his pocket, wetted it in his mouth and dabbed at her dirt-rimmed ear. “Sacony said talk you around so you help catch djab dile. Fool man don’ know yet, nobody talk Ceegie around anything.”
She closed her eyes and let him clean her ear with his spit. His touch relaxed her, and for a moment at least, she felt safe. Her colloid had not approached the flooded field, but neither had it run away as she’d hoped, despite the horrible barrage of music. Perhaps the rushing river current had carried off the worst of the noise. In any case, the glittering emulsion continued to hug the warm concrete revetment on the far bank.
“And what did Roman threaten if you fail?” She tilted her other ear so he could clean it.
