by Jordan Rivet
“Don’t you think it’s time to cut him some slack?” Esther asked when they reached the gangway. “Tell him how you feel about him?”
“That’s rich coming from you, Esther,” Zoe said. “You’re the queen of pretending your feelings don’t exist.”
“I’m turning a new gear.”
“I just can’t stand the whole seal pup act. He’s trying way too hard.”
“You’d be happier if you’re honest with him about it,” Esther said. “I should know.”
“When the time’s right,” Zoe said lightly. “Speaking of being honest with people, when are you going to tell me your big secret?”
“What secret?”
“Whatever has kept you so preoccupied lately,” Zoe said. “Tell me. You’re pregnant, aren’t you?”
“What? No, of course not.”
“Are you sure? You two have been doing a lot of—”
“It’s not that.”
“Then what?”
They made their way through the ship toward the bridge and the broadcast tower. The Catalina bustled with activity as everyone wrapped up their work for the day or prepared to trade shifts. A group of children darted through the corridor, one little boy chasing the others with a slimy piece of kelp. Esther waited until she and Zoe stood at the bottom of the ladder to Neal’s Tower before she answered.
“I’m not sure I should go.”
Zoe’s eyebrows threatened to climb into her headscarf. “Say again?”
Esther frowned and picked at the white paint flaking off the ladder. “This expedition to land is important,” she said, “but my role in it isn’t. What can I add to the crew that a dozen others couldn’t? I should keep helping the other ships with their biofuel systems. No one can do that as well as I can. I’d be leaving people high and dry here.”
“They can call you on the Lucinda every bit as easily as on the Catalina.”
“But not on land. The spotty communications there are why we have to make this trip in the first place.”
“I just assumed that because David—”
“That’s the problem,” Esther said. “He has to go with the Lucinda. He wants it more than anything. I wouldn’t ask him to stay behind with me, obviously, but I can’t justify going with him.”
“I can see why you don’t fancy talking about it,” Zoe said slowly. “Esther, I thought you wanted to see land. It’s not like you were only going because of David.”
“I do want to, but the timing is wrong. It would be selfish to go off on an adventure when people need me here. Judith might be right after all about doing what’s best for the community. I’ll go in a later expedition, or if we end up moving back. But right now . . .”
“Esther, you know I love ya, but I can’t believe you’d miss this.”
“That’s not making me feel any better.”
“All right, no guilt tripping,” Zoe said, “but I don’t think this’ll go down well with the elegant Mr. Hawthorne.”
Esther sighed and began to climb the ladder. Of course it wouldn’t. That’s why she didn’t want to talk to him until she had made her decision. Still, she thought it might be the right thing to do. It had been reckless of her to run off to save David from the Calderon Group. She couldn’t keep taking senseless risks when she was doing something so valuable here. David was important to her, but this time he wasn’t being kidnapped by pirates.
Red sunlight filled Neal’s Tower when Esther and Zoe pulled themselves up through the hatch. The sun was sinking through the clouds, washing the sea with scarlet and gold. A large chart taped to one of the windows glowed pink in the sunset.
Neal sat with his feet up on the computer console and a pen in his mouth, headphones hanging around his neck. He leaned backwards in his swivel chair when they entered.
“Hey Es, Zee.”
“What’s up, Neal? You called?”
“You got three more help requests today. We’ve been busy with the Lucinda’s stuff, so I didn’t get a chance to let you know.” He waved at a jumble of instruments spread out on the floor. “You should keep a handheld on you.”
“I’d never get anything done then. Who were the requests from?”
“Two new ones, and then another message from that Harvester—you know, the one who’s been calling almost every day?”
“Ugh, yeah. The guy really doesn’t know what he’s doing. It’d probably be faster if we just sailed over there and I did the installation for him.” Plenty of people who worked on the sea did jobs they weren’t suited for out of necessity, but Esther almost wished that particular ship hadn’t figured out how to use the satellite network.
“I’m starting to feel like your secretary,” Neal said. “You get more calls than I do.”
“Oh come on, you love talking to all these people.”
Neal managed one of the main communications hubs on the new satellite network. Zoe worked with him now, but most of the ship’s news still came through Neal. Only Marianna, his former love on the Galaxy Flotilla, had better connections. She had been the first to regain contact with a handful of people broadcasting from land. Now she oversaw the primary communications hub from the Galaxy, despite the reservations of the Galaxy captains.
Neal nodded sagely. “True. True. Speaking of which, check out that map.” He gestured toward the large diagram taped to the window. It was a hand-drawn approximation of most of the western hemisphere. Neal had placed a dozen markers seemingly at random on the map. There was something strange about the placement of the markers, but Esther couldn’t put a finger on it.
“What am I looking at?”
“Those are the locations of the land-based communities that have tapped into the satellite network,” Neal said.
“There are so many!”
Esther realized why the map looked odd to her. She was used to maps of the sea, but all those markers were places on land. For sixteen and a half years they’d only been in contact with other ships that had escaped the eruption of Yellowstone and had chosen to stay at sea to avoid the famine and unrest on land. Now, everything was changing.
“Some of the settlements are just a handful of people holed up in the wilderness,” Neal said. “That pin in Alaska represents only one guy. He was some sort of mountain man before, and he had a lot of supplies stored away. He said it’s freakishly cold there. I’m surprised he hasn’t tried to leave by now.” Neal swiveled back and forth in his chair as he talked. He had been in high spirits lately. It was nice to have him back to normal after his mournful infatuation with Marianna had ended.
“How much do you know about these communities?”
“Not much. The connections still aren’t great, and some folks only check in every once in a while. Two of those marks are just guesses, because the people on the other end are paranoid about revealing their actual locations.”
“One woman I talked to,” Zoe added, “thought we wanted to eat her children. She told me to ‘freeze off’ and never call her again. Makes you wonder what other kinds of people have contacted her.” Zoe shifted aside the spare headset and took a seat at the next console.
“It’s crazy,” Neal said. “For the first time in years we’re reaching people really far away, and they don’t want to talk.”
Esther studied the map. The mark for Kansas City was the largest. As far as they knew, it was now the main settlement for survivors. There had been no word yet of any survivors in a large portion of the West. The volcano must have wiped out everyone and everything within hundreds of miles. The ash and famine would have done the rest.
“There’s not much near the coasts,” Esther said, scanning the jagged borders of the continents. The Lucinda would need to find a safe harbor before the expedition inland.
“Yeah, like we’ve suspected for a while, it hasn’t been safe there, because of the storm surges. The group that’s closest to the sea—at least the closest of the ones that have managed to reach the satellites—is way down in Mexico, on a lake. There.” Nea
l pointed to a dot on the map.
Esther leaned closer and read the label in Neal’s scratchy handwriting. “Lake Aguamilpa?”
“They’re about two hundred miles from the coast up the Santiago River. I gather they’re mostly English speakers, and they traveled down from the US after the volcano.”
“They’re bonkers, though,” Zoe said. “There’s only one guy who will talk to us, and they’ve got this weird religious cult thing going.”
“Yeah?”
“Our contact there told us about it when we asked him about the List.”
“What list?”
“Oh right, that’s our new project. It was my idea,” Zoe said. “Show her, Neal.”
“Sure thing. This is still a work in progress, so we’re not ready to announce it to everyone yet.” Neal fired up the computer in his console. A rudimentary window loaded slowly, filling the screen with names and locations. Esther recognized most of them as people who lived on the Catalina.
“It’s a survivors database!” Zoe said proudly. “See, we only sent out the request for names a few days ago, and it’ll take some time to compile all the responses, but anyone who can access the satellite network will be able to read it. We’re working on getting a record of everyone who’s still alive out there so that family members can find each other.”
“This is amazing,” Esther said. “Do you have a space for missing people, too?” She thought about her sister, Naomi, and her mother, Nina. They had been lost in the destruction of San Diego when she and her father, Simon, had escaped on the Catalina. There was no way they had survived the avalanche of volcanic ash, but she couldn’t help looking for their names as the List scrolled past.
Neal grimaced and shifted in his seat. “There would be too many to count,” he said. “We’re optimistic about the number of survivors we’ve been able to reach now that the comms are better, but really there are far more people who didn’t make it through the famines. We don’t have the capacity to list all of them. We figured it’d be more practical to start with the names of the people we know are still alive.”
“Makes sense.”
“So we got in touch with all the ships and all the land-based communities,” Zoe said, “and asked them for their rosters. The results are trickling in.”
“When are you going to announce it?”
“After we have ten or twelve groups. People will have to come up here to look at the names, and it would be good to have more of them before then. Plus we’ll add in a search function so the database will be easier to use.”
“This is great.”
“Yup. Anyway,” Neal said, “do you want me to connect you with the ships that had questions, or do you want to deal with it tomorrow?”
“Let’s get it wrapped up before dinner,” Esther said.
“Sure. You still have a lot to do before the trip?” Neal asked as he turned back to the computer.
Esther glanced at Zoe, who raised an eyebrow.
“There’s always a lot to do,” Esther said. She thought about asking Neal for advice, but she was afraid of what he would tell her. He knew better than anyone how much people needed her help. She hoisted herself onto an unused console next to Neal’s computer. “Okay, who do I need to call first?”
Chapter 2—Cod Night
ESTHER, ZOE, AND NEAL walked down to the Atlantis Dining Hall together. It was a large space, somewhat the worse for wear after their sixteen and a half years at sea. Many of the windows had broken and were now patched with salvaged fiberglass from a dozen wrecks. The people of the Catalina filled the tables with their usual babble.
Cally, Esther’s engine room apprentice, had been born on the ship the day they fled the disaster. Now she sat beside a solemn ten-year-old girl named Thera, trying to get her to laugh. Cally’s boyfriend, Dax, hovered behind her chair, pulling faces for the little girl. Thera’s parents, Byron and Sylvia, who had come to the Catalina from the Galaxy Flotilla earlier in the year, sat on the other side of the table with Cally’s mother.
Over the last few months the divisions between the original Catalinans and the former Galaxians had diminished, and there were more newcomers now too. In addition to Luke and Cody from the Harvesters, the Catalina had picked up a few residents at the Amsterdam and from the other ships they had encountered with their newfound mobility. Esther’s invention and subsequent regular contact with other ships had opened the floodgates, ending the policy of isolation that had ruled the Catalina for over a decade. Some of their number had moved on too, including Adele from the Galaxy, who had joined the Calderon Group, but it didn’t feel like an irreversible decision anymore. The barriers that had kept the floating communities apart became more permeable every day. It was a source of regular frustration for Judith, but she wasn’t the only person in charge anymore.
Esther, Zoe, and Neal helped themselves at the buffet and then went over to what had become their usual table next to the boarded-up windows. They’d removed a panel to reveal a bit of the sky outside and even a handful of stars. Luke and Cody were already there when they arrived, but there was no sign of David.
“How’s the food?” Zoe asked, plopping down beside Luke.
“The cod gets better every day,” Luke said. His curly hair had grown out in the past few months, and he kept sweeping it back out of his eyes.
“Did you guys hear about Dirk and Judith?” Cody said, leaning forward eagerly. He had round shoulders and dark hair, and his face was still babyish. “Reggie just told me.”
“What about ’em? Did she finally snap and drive a stake through his head?” Luke asked.
“You stab a vampire through the heart, not head,” Zoe said, “and I’m pretty sure it would be the other way around.”
Cody shook his head. “Gracie Cordova overheard them talking,” he said, “and she’s been spreading it around. They were arguing over council business as usual, and Judith said something about Dirk’s sea-blasted incompetence. Then Dirk goes, ‘You didn’t think I was so incompetent last night when you were screaming my name.’”
“No!” Zoe said. She looked like her coffee ration had come early.
“I totally saw it coming,” Luke said immediately. “Those too have way too much friction. And Judith ain’t bad looking for a mature lady.”
“Judith isn’t even that old,” Neal said. “She’s under forty.”
“I don’t buy it,” Esther said. “This is Gracie Cordova we’re talking about. You can’t trust anything she says.”
“I can’t believe you’re defending Herr Judith,” Zoe said. “Don’t you still hate each other?”
“I don’t hate Judith.” Esther took a bite of her cod and looked around the dining hall. Judith was nowhere to be seen. Neither was Dirk, the oilman from the Galaxy who had challenged Judith’s reign, nor most of the other council members for that matter. Esther felt like she was slowly coming to understand Judith. She had a single-minded devotion to doing what was best for the community. That was a model Esther was starting to think she should follow. “I do hate Gracie Cordova, though, and I won’t participate in her games.” Gracie was the conniving eldest daughter of Rosa, the matriarch of the Cordova clan and one of Judith’s longtime supporters.
“I thought Gracie was on Judith’s side. Why would she spread rumors about her?” Cody said. “Reggie believed it.”
“Has to be some other play,” Zoe said. “Maybe Gracie’s trying to take down Dirk, or maybe she wants to undermine both of them for some reason.” Most people on the ship liked Dirk. He was gruff but less abrasive than Judith, and he wanted to make changes to the Catalina. He had urged them to officially end Judith’s long-established isolation policy and to stay in closer contact with other ships. Dirk and Judith were rarely separated these days, primarily so they could prevent each other from scheming behind each other’s backs.
“It’s not worth getting into it, trust me,” Esther said. “I don’t think it’s true.”
“You’re no fun, Esther,”
Zoe said. “Anyway, if Dirk and Judith are secret lovers, my chips are on that making their fights worse. People don’t start getting along just because they’re sleeping together. Look at Toni and Anita.”
Cody choked on his water. Luke slapped him on the back, while Zoe grinned slyly.
“What, you didn’t know?” she said.
Esther laughed and stood up. David had just entered the dining hall. He shook hands with a few of the newer Catalinans as he made his way toward the buffet, greeting them by name. Esther went over to join him in the fish line, and he dropped a kiss on her forehead.
“How’s your baby?” she asked.
“Almost ready to go. Got the charts here to show your dad.” He gestured to the rolled-up paper under his arm. He’d used the reverse side for another sketch of the Lucinda. He was quite good at drawing, as far as Esther could tell. She’d heard the Catalina’s resident artist, Bernadette, praising his work before. She’d even talked about getting David to help her redo the murals on the dining hall walls. Slowly but surely David was becoming integrated in Catalina life.
“My dad’s not here yet. You should check out Neal’s map up in the Tower. He’s got the locations of everyone with a satellite link.”
“I was up there this morning. Has he told you about the List, by the way?”
“Just now, yeah.”
“That’s going to be an important record. We should encourage any survivors we come across to transmit their names as soon as possible.” David smiled as he piled his plate high with a double helping of cod. Now that they didn’t have to worry as much about conserving energy, they could take the speedboat further out and had even rigged up a vastly superior trawling apparatus. They had more than enough food these days. Her system had already improved their lives exponentially. It was yet another thing reminding Esther that she needed to help all of the ships get her technology set up too.
“Hey, can I talk to you for a sec?” she said, pulling David aside as he finished filling his plate.
