Clade

by James Bradley

  At the exit from the station they turn left along the floating duckboard connecting it to the jetty. Before the sea rose this place was a suburb, now it is part of the Floodline, a watery graveyard of partly submerged streets and buildings sprawling half a kilometre inland along much of the city’s fringe. Where the apartments rise above the water people can be seen on balconies or moving about indoors, their voices raised in Bengali and Kerala, Chinese and English. From some music can be heard, or laughter; in others people sit staring out, fanning themselves or drinking.

  As they reach the jetty Nam and Malla take Izzie by the arm and pull her after them, laughing and shouting. Aware that Bo sometimes finds the pair’s giddiness irritating she glances back, but he only whoops and chases after her, and in a moment they are all running, racing each other on and out.

  At the jetty’s end a small crowd has gathered, waiting for the boats that will bear them to the island. As the four of them come sprinting in several people turn and greet them, eyes alight.

  Weaving his way to the front Nam calls out to one of the boats, beckoning it towards him, but the young woman steering it tells him he has to wait in line. He darts back and grabs Izzie by the arm, dragging her forward. ‘Can’t you make an exception?’ he says. ‘It’s my friend’s birthday.’

  Izzie pulls away, lifting a hand to dismiss Nam’s suggestion, but the woman sculls the boat in closer.

  ‘Really?’ she says.

  ‘Would I lie to you?’ Nam asks, assuming a pose of teasing disbelief.

  The woman in the boat laughs. ‘I don’t know. What do the other people waiting think?’

  Several of them pat Izzie on the shoulder, urging her to take the boat. Embarrassed she steps back, shaking her head, but they push her forward again, and so, relenting, she lets Nam take her hand and conduct her and Malla and finally Bo into the boat.

  Out on the water voices and laughter are audible, drifting across from the island; occasionally somebody shouts, or there is a shriek as people stumble into the water. The party tonight is nominally for the solstice, although the collectives that organise these Floodline parties throw them for the full moon and the equinox, and any of a dozen other reasons as well. Yet as the boat slips across the dark water there does seem something oddly perfect about tonight, the soft warmth and stillness of the air. Where the prow cuts the water it peels back, luminescent plankton flaring blue and green within it. It is magical, yet watching, Izzie remembers reading somewhere that the light is only released as the plankton die, its beauty really the snuffing out of a million tiny lives.

  From the front of the boat Malla calls out to her. Moving carefully so as not to overbalance the craft Izzie crawls forward and Malla points down into the water, where glowing fish dart and turn like stars beneath the surface.

  Izzie gasps, and behind her the woman steering the boat laughs. ‘They’re gengineered,’ she says. ‘Somebody released them a few years ago and they seem to have survived in the wild. You’re lucky – we don’t see them every night.’

  ‘They must be here for your birthday, Iz,’ Malla says with a grin; reaching down, Izzie flicks a handful of water up at her. Malla squeals and twists away, the boat rocking beneath them, ripples of phosphor spreading away from it.

  And then they are on the shore, scrambling out of the boat and onto the beach. The island is tidal, a patch of sand gathered around a line of submerged buildings, but at its highest point low trees grow, dark against the pale sand, and in front of them a crowd is already gathered, dancing and talking.

  ‘Come on,’ Malla says, and they head off along the beach towards the voices.

  As they draw closer their lenses and aural receptors interface with the party, the ecstatic beat of the music filling their heads and the virtual environment dropping into their overlays, enveloping them. Izzie gasps, delighted: although she has been to a few of these parties she is always amazed by what the collectives do for them. Now temple walls rise up, lit by Chinese lanterns; in the space overhead dragons swoop and turn, their paths criss-crossed by birds and other magical creatures.

  Whooping, Nam throws his arms up in the air and twirls around, his street clothes disappearing, replaced in her overlays by one of his virtual creations, gorgeous feathered wings sprouting from his back, ribbons of light trailing from his hands and feet. Catching Izzie’s eye he grabs her hands and spins her across to Bo, who pulls her close, pressing his lips to hers until Malla appears and drags her into the crowd.

  She is not sure how long they dance – an hour, maybe two – looping and twining themselves around others, all of them lost in the music, the lights, the sweaty press of their bodies. She dances with Malla and Nam, later with Bo, then with a group of girls wearing shimmering masks. Eventually she notices a call from her mother flash up in her overlays. At first she ignores it, but then, realising how late it is, she pushes her way to the edge of the crowd and accepts the call.

  ‘Hey, Mum,’ she says. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Noah called,’ says Lijuan. ‘It’s Adam.’

  She falters. ‘What about him?’ she asks, although in the moment it takes her mother to reply she already knows.

  ‘He’s dead, sweetie,’ Lijuan says.

  ‘When?’ she asks stupidly. Although they were not related by blood, Adam is the closest thing she has ever had to a grandparent.

  ‘Earlier tonight. They think it was a heart attack.’

  ‘Was Noah there?’

  ‘At the end he was.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘No, we only just found out.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she says numbly. ‘Is Dad with you?’

  Lijuan tells her he is.

  ‘Do you want me to come home?’

  ‘No,’ Lijuan says. ‘But I wanted you to hear it from me before you heard it somewhere else.’

  Thanking her mother Izzie hangs up and turns back to the crowd spread across the sand behind her. A little way in she can see Malla, swaying with her head thrown back; beside her Bo is entwined with the girl the two of them were dancing with a moment before, motes of virtual light swirling around them.

  Suddenly wanting to be rid of it all she switches off her overlays, the temples and swooping dragons and floating lanterns vanishing to reveal several hundred people moving in synch to music nobody but they can hear.

  It is not the first time she has watched this sort of event without overlays, but as always it makes the pleasure of the hours before seem trivial, absurd, so taking a step back she turns and follows the line of the beach out towards the point. It is quieter here, and lowering herself to the sand she sits and looks up to see there is colour in the sky, sheets and twisting skeins of green and blue and violet shifting and flowing against the darkness.

  Lying back, she spreads her arms out at her side and stares up, trying to lose herself in the flickering dance of the lights, their constantly changing hue.

  They have a proper name, of course, but most people call them the Shimmer. Nobody knows what is causing them: the best guess of most scientists is that they’re related to a new instability in the Earth’s magnetic fields, an instability that may presage the poles flipping from north to south, as they have occasionally in the distant past, although why that should be happening now is unclear. Some argue that it is a natural phenomenon. But there are also those who believe the process has been hastened by the events of the last century, claiming that the incremental changes to the Earth’s rotation caused by the melting of the ice and the shifting of the crust as it adapted to its loss have destabilised the fields in new and unpredictable ways.

  As Izzie lies there it is not these questions that concern her, but the lights themselves, and the fact of Adam’s death. It seems difficult to comprehend that the man she has known since she was a child could be gone.

  He is only one of many, of course, just as she is, just as they all are, part of a movement in time, a river flowing ever on, bearing them away from the past. They have lost so much: Shangha
i and Venice, Bangladesh, all those millions of lives.

  Yet looking up, all of that seems to fall away, lost to the soundless dance of the Shimmer, the swirling shift and flare of its motion. She has seen footage of satellites moving through the aurora, the way it breaks across them like water, rolling on and over, and as she watches the waves of light she can feel herself moving with them, lifted up and on into a future that may be wonderful or terrible or a thousand things in between. And she realises that whatever else happens, this is not an end but a beginning.

  It is always a beginning.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I am extremely grateful to the many people who helped create the book you are holding in your hand. My particular thanks to Neil Ballard for his assistance with various medical matters; Nigel Beebe, Ashley Hay and Stefan Keller for their input on some of the scientific material; and to Chris Flynn, Simon Ings, Pam Newton, Cat Sparks, Jonathan Strahan and Kirsten Tranter for their generosity in reading and responding to various drafts. I also owe a special debt of gratitude to my friends Kathryn Heyman, Garth Nix and Sean Williams, who helped me see the project for what it was at a difficult moment; my agent, David Miller; and Ben Ball, Meredith Rose and the rest of the team at Penguin for their enthusiasm and care in guiding the book to completion. And finally, and perhaps most importantly, my partner, Mardi McConnochie. This book would not have been possible without her love and support, and that of my daughters, Annabelle and Lila: I hope it repays their trust.

  The quote on page 15 is from ‘Human Moments in World War III’ by Don DeLillo, reprinted in The Angel Esmeralda: Nine Stories (Picador).

  HAMISH HAMILTON

  UK | USA | Canada | Ireland | Australia

  India | New Zealand | South Africa | China

  Penguin Books is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies

  whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.

  First published by Penguin Group (Australia), 2015

  Copyright © James Bradley, 2015

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  Cover Design by Adam Laszczuk © Penguin Group (Australia)

  Cover photographs; Bees: Deyan Georgiev/500px; Hive: Getty Images; Sky: Shutterstock

  penguin.com.au

  ISBN: 9780857978721

  THE BEGINNING

  Let the conversation begin...

  Follow the Penguin Twitter

  Keep up-to-date with all our stories YouTube

  Pin ‘Penguin Books’ to your Pinterest

  Like ‘Penguin Books’ on Facebook

  Find out more about the author and

  discover more stories like this at penguin.com.au