Flood City

by Daniel José Older

  “Come, come,” twittered Dr. Maceo, a tall, dark-skinned man with a shiny bald head. “Ignore the nonsense.” His chuckle sounded oddly urgent, like he was in a hurry to get the laughter out of his throat. “I’ve been meaning to fix the bugs in that security system for ages. Djinna always gets mad at me for it, of course. How are you, Dr. Sarita? It’s been far too long, you know.”

  Dr. Sarita smiled, panting her way up the last few stairs, and then wrapped Dr. Maceo in a warm embrace. Of course, Max remembered, they had been on the original starship together as kids.

  “And you!” Dr. Maceo directed his terrific smile, apparently a family trait, to Max. “Excited about the performance tonight? Djinna can’t stop talking about it!”

  Max nodded, hoping he wasn’t expected to hug anybody. “Yes, sir.”

  Dr. Maceo led them into a high-ceilinged room with scientific charts and crude sketches covering the stone walls. To Max’s relief, neither Djinna nor Splink were anywhere to be seen.

  Dr. Maceo ushered them onto an old couch and began fiddling with a rusty coffee maker. “What brings you by so suddenly?”

  “Yala’s gone missing,” Dr. Sarita said. Dr. Maceo stopped what he was doing and looked up. “She was with Max this morning, and they got separated somewhere near the Tumbled Together Towers.”

  “That’s awful, Dr. Sarita.”

  “I was wondering about the holomap …”

  “Ah! The holomap!” Dr. Maceo said, and then he looked puzzled. “Hmmmm.” His hands went back to fiddling with the coffeepot, but his gaze was elsewhere. “Interesting. I’ve never tried it for such a thing, Dr. Sarita. You know it’s only in the very early stages and all that.”

  “Of course.”

  “But I wonder … The Star Guard’s holoscope coverage is by no means comprehensive, nor is it quite up to date yet. That is, there’d be a time lapse, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  “And our pirating systems are only rudimentary. We’ve just been able to hack their account recently. Still …” As he spoke, Dr. Maceo filled the little metal pot with Star Guard ration coffee grounds and poured water into the basin. Then he screwed the upper canister on and set it to boil on a portable burner. “It’s worth a try,” he said very slowly. “Yes! It’s worth a try!”

  Dr. Sarita stood up in excitement and Max jumped up beside her. “Indeed it is!” she said.

  “Max,” Dr. Maceo said, “would you kindly go upstairs and ask Djinna to power up the holomap?”

  Max nodded and headed up the spiral staircase. He poked his head up into the loft area, trying not to hold his breath. Well, they weren’t kissing at least: They sat across from each other at a table, each immersed in a different book.

  “Hey, Max!” Djinna said, standing.

  “Hey, Djinna.” Max managed to find a smile for her, but he was sure it looked contrived. “You excited about tonight?”

  Ugh, small talk! Why did he bother?

  Djinna nodded enthusiastically. “Can’t wait.” She was never this animated at rehearsals. Maybe it’s because her true love is here, Max thought. But Splink seemed so corny compared to her; it didn’t make sense. “We were about to go up on the roof to see what Krestlefax has to say, you wanna come?”

  That sounded horribly awkward and Max would definitely be a super-extra third wheel. “Sure.” He shrugged. “Oh, and your dad told me to tell you to power up the holomap.”

  Djinna looked surprised and then walked quickly over to a long, shiny table in the middle of the room and flicked on a switch.

  “You never showed me the holomap!” Splink moaned. The table hummed to life, sending a blue glow toward the ceiling.

  “Cuz it’s not really done. Dad’s still tinkering with it. Something really serious must be going on for him to show it to your mom. Everything okay, Max?”

  “Yala’s gone missing,” Max said.

  “Oh, that’s terrible!” Djinna put a hand on Max’s shoulder.

  “She’s probably okay though,” he added quickly. “But you know … things being what they are”—he was pretty sure none of his words made any sense, but he kept talking anyway—“and all that. Just being sure.”

  “Of course.” Djinna nodded, frowning.

  Splink said, “That sucks, kid, I’m sorry.”

  Max shrugged, ’cause what do you say back to that?

  “I’m powering up the holomap, Daddy,” Djinna called into the trapdoor. “We’re going up to the cupola while it charges.”

  One by one they climbed a ladder into the dark rafters and then through a metal gate and out into the chilly fresh air. They stood on a walkway that circled the pointy, shingled roof of the tower. It was a cloudy day with sprinkles of rain splattering here and there. Flood City lay concealed mostly in mist. A few taller buildings poked out of the fog; there was the ocean liner marking Barge Alley and the apartment complex Max and Yala lived in, partially hidden behind the great rock wall. The sea spread all around them, those gray waves stretching out into the white sky.

  “You know I’m leaving tomorrow,” Splink said.

  Max had never seen him look so serious. “No. Where you going?”

  “Star Guard Academy, obviously. Our transport leaves at sunrise.”

  Max was at a loss for words. “Wow.”

  “Kinda awesome, right? Gonna fight the Barons. Blow up some spaceships.”

  It sounded horrible. Plus, Max seriously doubted that’s what he’d be doing. Scrubbing some toilets and getting blown to bits was more like it. “Awesome.”

  “I think it’s horrible,” Djinna volunteered. “I hate the Star Guard.”

  Max felt a surge of excitement. He put away the big smile that was trying to come out and instead nodded solemnly. Most people in Flood City couldn’t stand the Star Guard, but it wasn’t the kind of thing you spoke about openly.

  “I mean, I’m not crazy about them either, to be honest,” Splink said. Max thought he sounded like he was trying a little too hard, or maybe he just wasn’t used to speaking earnestly. “But I wanna get rid of the Barons and that’s the only way I know to do it.”

  Djinna shrugged. That wasn’t the response Splink was looking for, and he went in for a kiss. Max quickly turned his head away and then gave a shout. The last bird left on the planet flew out of a cloud directly toward him. It was enormous and covered in brown and gray tattered feathers.

  “Krestlefax!” Djinna yelled. “You made it back!”

  The old bird circled the tower once, regarding them with its sharp eyes and long beak, and then alighted on the old weather vane at the top of the cupola. Djinna started climbing the slanted rooftop.

  “Be careful,” Max said, but hoped she hadn’t heard him. Splink leapt after Djinna and then Max climbed up carefully, trying hard not to think about what would happen if he slid and flopped over the railing and off into the empty sky …

  “You’ve been far this time, Krestlefax,” Djinna was cooing as she ran her hand along the huge bird’s wing feathers. Krestlefax nodded. “You have learned about the future?”

  Another nod. The bird sat proudly, his back erect like a military general, eyes set and stern.

  “What can you tell us, old one?”

  “WAR!” cawed the ancient bird. “WAR!”

  Ato closed his eyes and tried to block out the stench of dead iguanagull. His bio tutor, an old vapor named Kistle, had always said: When you want to unravel a mystery, you follow it right to the roots. Otherwise don’t bother. He’d say it and then sip thoughtfully at his coffee, his eyes elsewhere, and the words would send Ato into an excited reverie about all the mysteries he could unravel as an interstellar zoologist. He imagined himself spelunking through craters, diving to the bottom of gelatinous moon oceans, discovering new species of space worms on asteroids. It didn’t matter that Kistle was ancient and had most of his other pupils snoring; his lectures always had Ato riveted.

  Ato looked at the strange substance he’d scraped from the iguanagull’s t
alon. Soil. It couldn’t be … but if it was … He squinted at it, his mind reeling at the implications. It wasn’t just grime or grease. This was a for real clump of brown soil. The kind you used to be able to plant things in, back when there was land on Earth. This meant that somewhere out there, somehow, there was again!

  If only he had a …

  Someone pounded on the metal door.

  “Ato!” Get yelled. “Open up, man!”

  Ato dropped the soil in a tiny plastic tube he kept for his little bio samples and pocketed it. Then he scrambled to bag up the iguanagull. “Coming! Hang on!”

  “Open up!”

  Some yellowish fluid puddled on the desk, but otherwise there was no sign of the creature. It would have to do. Ato braced himself and then in one quick motion pushed the open button and bustled past his brother into the corridor, holding the plastic bag low against his body.

  “Hey!” Get yelled after him. “What’s the deal, bro?”

  “Nothing,” Ato called.

  “Ugh! What’s that smell? What were you doing in here?”

  Ato kept moving around the corner and then threw himself against the wall, his heart pounding. Why was everything so tense all of a sudden? He hadn’t been thrilled to go on this mission, but he’d accepted it as part of his duties as a young Baron. Everything had seemed fine, at least manageable, until the iguanagull attack this morning, and then Mephim had lost his temper, shown a side of himself few people had ever seen, and the whole ship seemed to be anxious and out of sorts. Maybe they were just worried about the attack tonight, what with the depleted shields and all.

  Or maybe something else was going on. Ato headed quickly down the corridor. He’d have to get rid of the iguanagull body, much as he hated to. There was simply no way to keep it without being found out. He headed back to the engine room, fast-walking around a series of corners, and then stopped suddenly at the door. There were hushed voices coming from inside, and one of them was definitely Mephim.

  “Almost, my lord, almost,” Tog Apix was saying.

  “How much longer?”

  Ato slipped soundlessly inside, clutching the plastic bag close to his body so it wouldn’t rustle, and ducked behind a clacking furnace.

  “Should be ready by tonight.”

  “Should be?” Mephim hissed.

  Ato could just make out the two figures huddled over something in the far corner. Whatever it was, it had a strong enough glow to light up the otherwise dim engine room.

  “Will be, ArchBaron. Will be.”

  “It better be, Tog. Or I will find a new engineer. Are we clear?”

  “Yes, ArchBaron.”

  “Come, let us prepare.”

  With a whir and a click, the room returned to its normal gloominess. Ato held his breath as Mephim swept past with Tog stumbling along in his wake. He waited till their footsteps faded and then crept out, dropped the iguanagull in the waste basin, and made for the corner of the room where the two men had been standing.

  There was a mechanical compartment built into the wall. It was so drab and unimportant looking, Ato would never have thought twice about it if he hadn’t just seen the light that had burst out. He punched the base fleet security code into a little keypad, and the compartment swung open easily. The room filled with that strange glow once more. Ato had to shield his eyes at first. He pulled a pair of goggles from the wall and put them on. Inside the compartment, a round metallic capsule sat on a pedestal. It had a little window in the center, which the light poured out of. Ato peered a little closer and could just make out a white gem the size of a fist. A skull-faced hazardous materials sign was printed on the container over some numbers and symbols. He recognized it immediately from chem class: weaponized uranium.

  There were rumors the Baron leaders had salvaged some as they fled the flooding on Earth, but Ato had figured it was just chatter. Here it was, though, real and glowing.

  Mephim was getting ready to nuke Flood City.

  “Let me ask you this,” Biaque said.

  Yala looked at the vapor floating beside her as she buzzed slowly along the edge of the half-sunken ocean liner. She nodded.

  “Why?”

  It was such a simple question. Just one word! But it’d kept Yala up nights on end with no answer. There was the easy explanation of course: Once she finished Star Guard Academy, the soldier’s stipend would guarantee her mom and Max a life of relative comfort. But there was something else too. Something deeper. She knew it was the right choice. There was no question of that. And therefore, she also knew she would do it, because once she knew something was right, it was as good as done. The problem was, she had no idea why it made any sense at all. She made a show of thinking it over, knowing she wouldn’t come up with any new answers, and then shrugged. “I dunno really.”

  To her surprise, Biaque nodded, arching his eyebrows in thought. “Hmm. Do you want to protect the noble alien overlords?”

  She couldn’t stifle her laughter in time, and it burst out in an awkward guffaw. “No! Never … Not that. I hate the … I don’t like that they … are here.” Words didn’t seem to be doing it. And explaining herself had never been Yala’s strong point. “I just feel like I need some purpose. Something bigger than this.” She gestured to the crumbling ruins around her.

  Biaque hmmed. They’d sailed above the gigantic boat and could see down into all the debris-filled crevices and shattered building tops surrounding it. Folks darted back and forth through the alleys and into windows carrying their daily provisions, chatting in small circles about the celebrations later. “I love it here,” Yala said, letting herself down on the tip of the ocean liner. Tinibu zipped up past her, did a loop-de-loop in the air, and then disappeared into the ship. “I really do. It’s my home. And I wouldn’t trade it for any other. Even with all the mess and trouble and everything else.”

  Biaque nodded. Yala found him to be a shockingly good listener, considering that fifteen minutes ago she thought he was coming for her life. There was something undeniably genuine about how those oh-so-human eyes regarded her. She’d never felt so comfortable confiding in someone.

  “The thing is,” she went on. “I know … I feel like … there’s many challenges ahead. Beyond even the daily struggle, making sure Max doesn’t dash himself against the rocks or get lost in the Electric Ghost Yard … something else. Something much worse. I don’t know why. Just feels like clouds are gathering. That feeling right before a storm and I …” Her voice trailed off. She’d felt this way for a long time, she realized, but never put words to it. “I want to be ready.”

  Biaque’s eyes narrowed like he was trying to see something far, far away. “And joining the Star Guard is the best way you know how.” His voice was quiet, almost a whisper.

  “Yes.”

  “Even though it seems to go against everything you believe.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Well …” He shook his head thoughtfully. “You know that we vapors are gifted with a certain amount of … shall we say, foresight?”

  “People say you can see the future. It’s true?”

  He shrugged. “In a way, yes. It’s not precise as all that, more like snippets. I don’t know everything that will happen, and anyway, our choices do matter. Nothing is set in stone …”

  “But?”

  “But, yes. War is coming to Flood City, and you must be prepared, Yala. I’ve known your family for a long, long time, you know.”

  “I didn’t … Wait.” Something seemed to click into place in Yala’s mind. “You were the vapor on the Gallant, weren’t you?” The Gallant was the lumbering transport ship meant to ferry schoolkids out into the far reaches of the universe for field trips.

  Biaque nodded. “Indeed.”

  Yala had so many questions, she didn’t know where to begin. They must’ve shown on her face, because Biaque shook his head and said, “There’ll be time for all that later. For now, I will just say this: You’re right.”

  “About what?�
�

  “Everything,” Biaque said. He smiled, but his eyes were full of sadness. “Everything.”

  They were quiet for a long time.

  “Max!” Dr. Sarita’s voice called from below. “Come down, the holomap is ready!”

  Djinna, Max, and Splink exchanged nervous glances. “Comin’!” Max yelled.

  “Is that all you can tell us, Krestlefax?” Djinna urged. “Nothing more?”

  The bird sat motionless, staring out into the gray sky. Max started making his way down the roof. Above him, Djinna and Splink spoke quietly to each other.

  “The feeds from the Star Guard’s holocams are normally fuzzy, and wildly inaccurate,” Dr. Maceo was saying as Max let himself down from the ladder. “But still, it’s not bad.” A miniature Flood City sprawled across the holodeck. Besides being blue and staticky, it was a startlingly perfect 3-D map.

  “But they can’t have holocams everywhere,” Max said, walking a circle around it. “How can it be so complete?”

  “Well, it cheats some of course,” Dr. Maceo said with another chuckle. “But you’d be amazed how thoroughly watched even the backstreets of Flood City are. Plus, there are several hovering holocams making rounds through the air at any given time. You’ve seen them, I’m sure. They look like metal globes about the size of a basketball with little lenses all over them.”

  “Right!” Max said. “I hate those things.”

  Flickering images skittered around the alleyways and plazas of Flood City, and if you looked at them real close, you could make out features, sometimes recognize people. Max was impressed that his mom had thought to come here rather than scour the streets all night looking for Yala. “You think we’ll see her?”