Steven Gould - Blind Waves

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BLIND WAVES

Steven Gould

This book is for Gilo.

I had a sister,

Whom the blind waves and surges have devour’d.

—William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night

Table of Contents

1 Beenan: Vomitar debajo del agua

2 Beenan: Jugar al escondite

3 Becket: Centro de interés

4 Beenan: Llegando a casa

5 Becket: De vuelta al fuego

6 Beenan: Encuentros

7 Becket: Testimonio

8 Beenan: Intimidades escasas y grandes

9 Becket: Pasaje oscuro

10 Beenan: Tumulto

11 Becket: Arenque rojo

12 Beenan: Imageries part antes

13 Becket: Brujas y madres

14 Beenan: Los colores

15 Becket: La evidencia de la cantina

16 Beenan: Muertes diminutas

17 Becket: La sanguijuela

18 Beenan: Pillapilla

19 Becket: Diapositivas de tiempo

Acknowledgments

1

Beenan: Vomitar debajo del agua

^ »

Once upon a time in America, Patricia’s father told her, you could say what you

wanted in public, buy cheap land in the mountains, and the Immigration and

Naturalization Service wasn’t the second largest division of the armed forces.

That was before the Antarctic Volcano field. That was before the Ronne-Filchner

ice shelf slid.

That was a hundred feet of water ago.

This is now.

Terminal Lorraine was fifty miles from the Houston dikes, inbound, seventy feet

of water under her keels, passing over Fort Jacinto Military Reservation, the old

northeastern tip of Galveston Island. The sky was mostly clear, blue diamond with

white puffy cumulus clouds scudding northward, and the sun beat down hot enough

to make the deck uncomfortable. A trio of oceangoing shrimp boats were passing to

the north on their way out to the deep water. A giant container ship had passed them

earlier, headed for Houston, and was slowly shrinking in the east.

Patricia could’ve saved time by passing more to the south, but their escort and

client, the hundred-foot-long workboat Amoco Mechanic, drew a lot more water

than Terminal Lorraine did and they didn’t want to risk running into the top of one

of the old Baylor Medical School buildings.

Terminal Lorraine handled rough water pretty well, for a trimaran, but when the

wind and seas aligned on her rear she developed a corkscrewing motion that got

Patricia every time.

Toni, Patricia’s new crew, was telling her a joke, and Patricia was listening

carefully, trying to distract herself from simulcasting lunch.

“So, during the Deluge, the mayor of San Francisco sees the water rise and he

says, ‘Oh, my god!’ The mayor of New York sees the streets filled with water and

he says, ‘Oh, my god!’ The mayor of Miami sees water everywhere and he says,

‘Oh, my god!’ Then the mayor of New Orleans watches the fish swim through his

office and says, ‘I do declare. Humid, today, eh?’ ”

Patricia had heard it before, but she laughed anyway. Toni did a great Cajun

accent and Patricia was still trying to get her to relax.

The fathometer dropped back to 140 feet, meaning they were past the old

shoreline and over Bolivar Roads, the historic mouth of Galveston Bay. The Amoco

boat turned again, following the old Texas City ship channel, and Patricia adjusted

the sails, letting the thick Dacron rope run through her fingers, while Toni brought

the boat around to the new heading, then recleated the sheets. Toni had been aboard

only for the last two days, and Patricia was mostly happy with her, but she wished

her regular crew could’ve come.

Terminal Lorraine’s two outer hulls were elegant forty-foot-long fiberglass

blades, each sporting a single unstayed mast forty feet high. She carried fully

battened “junk” sails, Kevlar-reinforced Mylar with composite ribs that stretched the

width of the sail. They were easy to handle single-handed since they were

self-reefing; in high winds the crew just lowered them a span or two and the bottom

battens stacked neatly.

The pitch was a little better on the new heading, Patricia faced into the wind and

breathed deeply, trying to settle her stomach. She smelled salt water, sunscreen, the

barest hint of diesel exhaust, and her own sweat.

Toni looked sideways at her new boss. “You okay, Patricia? You look a little

green.”

Thanks so much for the reminder. Patricia shook her head, irritated. “Not your

problem. Mind the helm.”

Toni shrugged and her face closed up a little.

Patricia was pleased Toni didn’t get seasick—the topside hand needed to ride

out rough weather sometimes—but she could keep it to herself. Toni’d learn,

hopefully.

Toni was sixteen years younger than Patricia, a sun-browned blonde with big

breasts and a small nose, unlined face, and a long and lean body that was a head

taller than Patricia—hell, Toni was everything Patricia wasn’t. She seemed to live in

Speedo suits and T-shirts. Her parents were from peninsular Florida, but she’d been

born during the Deluge and, as a cash-poor Displaced American, she really didn’t

have a chance of getting land outside the wet-foot ghettos or a homestead in the

Nevada “Displaced Citizen” projects.

Toni’s sailing experience was extensive, since she’d lived all her life on a

forty-five-foot ketch, and, though she didn’t have any experience with multi-hulls,

she was doing all right.

“We gonna hit them in the ass,” Toni said.

Patricia looked forward again. They’d picked up a knot of speed on the new

heading, and the distance between them and the workboat was dropping. “Pass them

to port.”

“Passing to port, aye, Moth—Captain.”

Patricia laughed. “Do I really remind you of your mother?” Toni’s mother was in

her early fifties, twenty years older than Patricia. Patricia had met the woman briefly

the week before and thought she looked a lot like Toni—the same build, and the

same face if you accounted for the difference in mileage. Certainly she looked

nothing like Patricia. “You’ll make me feel my age, child.”

Toni shook her head. “No. It’s habit. Mom would skipper. Dad did maintenance.

I was crew. Our boat was already forty years old before the Deluge, so it’s over

sixty, now. Everything was jury-rigged.” She shrugged. “Keeping it afloat was a

full-time job for Dad. Parts.”

She didn’t need to say anything more. Most yacht and marine supply warehouses

and manufacturers went underwater that year.

“That’s pretty cool about your mom,” Patricia said. “My mother gets seasick

driving across bridges.”

“She does? How does she handle the storm surge on the Strand?”

“She doesn’t. She lives in Austin. Won’t go near water.” The old familiar guilt

rose up inside Patricia. “We used to call her the ‘Ruler of the Queen’s Navy.’ ”

“I don’t get it,” Toni said.

“HMS Pinafore.” Toni still looked blank, so Patricia explained further. “The

song is about the Lord High Admiral who is appointed to the post after an extremely

successful legal and political career landside. He sings, ‘Stick close to your desks

and never go to sea, And you all may be rulers of the Queen’s Navee.’ ”

“Oh, they said you spouted Shakespeare.”

Patricia froze and counted to ten before saying calmly, “Well, yes, but that

wasn’t William Shakespeare—that was William Gilbert. Anyway, when my parents

divorced, my mother stayed in Austin, and I came out here with my dad.”

“How old were you?” She looked wistful.

“Fourteen.”

“Wow. And she let you go?”

“Let me go? It wasn’t that simple.” Patricia shook her head. “She was very busy.

She was a full partner in a firm and in her first race for Congress. She didn’t want a

messy and public custody fight.”

“I wish I could get my mother out of my hair.”

“Would you have your parents divorce?”

“No, they’re happy. Did your dad remarry?”

“No.” He just slept around a lot. “Uh, he dated. He could recite Shakespearean

verse for hours. It was his shtick. He was very popular.” Patricia could recall a host

of “aunts” who came and went like candles.

The VHF crackled. “Hey, Beenan?”

Patricia picked up the mike. “I hear you, Mateo.” Mateo was the tool pusher on

the Amoco boat.

“We’ll be on station in ten minutes.”

“Right—we’ll power up.”

Patricia went forward, bare feet quickstepping over sun-heated white textured

fiberglass, following the deck above the middle hull of the Lorraine. The middle hull

was slightly less than thirty-five feet long, a big titanium pipe four feet in diameter,

with stubby wings in the middle, a big ducted fan with vertical and horizontal

stabilizers at the rear, and a transparent acrylic nose. It was a stupid design for a

sailboat hull, but a darn good submarine.

“You ready for this, Toni?” Patricia called back.

Toni shrugged. “No prob, boss.”

“Okay. Just remember she’s a lot more lively without the sub attached,” Patricia

said. “And if that INS Fastship drops back by, just show them your papers and

cooperate. Mateo will back you up.”

There was an Immigration and Naturalization Service patrol boat, a 110-foot

ex-Coast Guard Fastship, about six miles northwest of them. The INS Fastship had

already queried Mateo’s people by VHF, but they were used to Amoco Mechanic

working this area, and Amoco still had a lot of clout, even if its largest refinery was

underwater.

It was the INS that made Patricia leave her regular crew back home. They were

floaters—displaced aliens—and the INS had a mandate to keep them out of the U.S.

Exclusive Economic Zone. They were fair game anywhere within two hundred miles

of the coast. Toni, as a mere wetfoot, was legal here.

“You told me a hundred times already,” Toni said, but smiled. “Besides, why

would they mess with Assemblywoman Beenan?”

Patricia felt her face twist like she’d bitten into something intensely sour. “First,

I’m just an alternate on the assembly, and second, why should the INS care? New

Galveston is only vaguely associated with the U.S. What the INS should care about

is that we have the legal right to be here.”

Toni looked skeptical. “Yeah, they should.”

“The youth today.” Patricia shook her head and lifted the fiberglass hatch on the

personnel tube. “Christ, I remember when my dad used to say that to me!”

“When do I meet your dad?” Toni asked.

Patricia froze in the mouth of the personnel tube, silent for a moment. Then she

said, “You don’t, Toni. Full fathom five my father lies; of his bones are coral

made. He went down four years ago, in the Cobia, our second submarine.”

“Uh, I didn’t mean—” Toni’s mouth was open, searching for words.

“Of course you didn’t. How could you know?” Patricia flashed her a grin she

didn’t feel and pulled the hatch shut, muttering to herself, “Those are pearls that

were his eyes: Nothing of him that doth fade, but suffer a sea-change into

something rich and strange. Sea nymphs hourly ring his knell, the son-of-a-bitch.”

Patricia was still pissed at Dad.

He was into act four of Comedy of Errors, calling back and forth on the

underwater telephone. She took the part of Angelo and left him with Antipholus of

Ephesus arguing over just who had the golden chain. That’s the trouble with identical

twins (and there are a lot of them in Shakespeare and two sets in Comedy of Errors).

It’s never clear whom you’re dealing with.

Dad had just said, As all the metal in your shop will— And she hung there,

waiting, waiting, waiting. It’s “answer.” As all the metal in your shop will answer.

But he never completed the sentence. He did not “answer.”

The personnel tube was a short fiberglass shaft that protected the pilot hatch of

the submarine from flooding while it was on the surface. It ended with a pneumatic

gasket snuggled tight to the titanium hull of the sub. With her feet still on the bottom

rung, Patricia contorted in the narrow tube, reached down, and snaked the

transparent acrylic hatch open. The thing was two inches thick, and getting it open in

the narrow space was always awkward, even with years of practice.

Patricia’s dad had never seemed to have trouble with it. Longer reach.

She dropped through the hatch and latched it shut above her. She was in the back

of the pilot’s station, a space reminiscent of a sewer culvert, stuffy, barely three and

a half feet across on the inside diameter, and lots of that was taken up with boxes,

plastic conduit, canisters, and oxygen tanks, all mounted to the walls. Carefully, she

eased forward and sat in the backward-facing chair, tucked her knees up, and spun it

until it faced forward. It locked with a loud click that reverberated in the confined

space.

The front half of the chair stuck out into the acrylic nose of SubLorraine.

Patricia’s feet were bare, so she pulled on a pair of socks before lowering them to

the plastic surface to avoid smudges. Surface water foamed greenish white along the

top of the nose and green below. She could make out the outer hulls through the

water.

It was on the warm side of comfortable, and Patricia could smell her own

armpits, a whiff of ozone, the vinyl chair cover, and something like blue cheese. Her

stomach gave one minor heave, then settled. It was time to pull the charcoal filters

and bake the volatiles out of them again.

She pulled her sunglasses off and put them in the baseball cap, then stared at her

distorted reflection in the acrylic dome: spiky red hair matted from the hat, oversized

blue eyes, pronounced cheekbones, small breasts under a worn green tank top,

bicycle shorts, and a long nose with perpetual sunburn. She straightened in the seat

and tried the confident look—the grown-up woman of business. Christ—you’re

starting to get crow’s-feet, and you still look like a kid!

It was hard for her to climb into SubLorraine without thinking about Dad. They

never found Cobia, so she didn’t know what had gone wrong. It made her very

careful.

First things first: life support. Carbon dioxide scrubber fan on. Oxygen tank at

full, valve on auto. Emergency tank full. Now if she’d just changed out the charcoal

filters. Ah, well. At least it was only her own farts—not somebody else’s.

She didn’t notice that her motion sickness had vanished, dropped like last night’s

pajamas the instant she stopped waiting and began to work.

She took the computer off standby and called up the diagnostics on the electrical

system. Green lights all around. She’d spun the flywheels up two days before, when

they’d powered out of the Strand, and they were still spinning at eighty percent

capacity, about forty-eight thousand revolutions per minute. The reserve kinetic

energy was probably enough for everything they’d be doing today, but still she

wanted them at full capacity; just in case.

Dad always did.

She flipped the snorkel switch, opening the intake and exhaust doors for the

turbogenerator, and then hit the start button. There was a slight shudder after the

turbine sped up, when it ignited. It was a forty-five-kilowatt natural gas-burning jet

turbine generator, spinning on compressed air bearings and self-cooling from intake

air. It could run only on the surface since it pulled in several hundred cubic feet of air

every minute, and the exhaust temperature was over 550 degrees Fahrenheit, but it

could spin up all three storage flywheels from a dead stop to full speed ahead in less

than five minutes.

While the flywheels were spinning up, Patricia flipped on the rest of the

subsystems. GPS, sonar, pressure depth gauges, CO2 monitor, VHF, acoustic

telephone, external strobe lights.

“You there, Toni?” she asked over the VHF, speaking loudly over the roaring

hum of the generator.

“Yes, Patricia.”

“Try the Gertrude.”

The speaker from the acoustic telephone said, “How’s this?”

“Radical,” Patricia said, over the same system. “Receiving?”

“Loud and clear, assemblywoman.”

“Wiseass,” Patricia said aloud in the chamber, but didn’t transmit. “Try this.”

She switched the acoustic phone back on. “Hang on for a minute.”

“You mean wait?”

“No, silly woman—I mean hang on to something.”

Patricia kicked in the big ducted thruster at ninety percent, and Terminal

Lorraine jumped forward. She tested the control surfaces, first shaking the boat side

to side, then porpoising it up and down.

“My, how refreshing!” Toni’s voice sounded like she was talking from between

clenched teeth. In a more relaxed tone she said, “We passed Amoco Mechanic, and

you put enough water into the cockpit to soak me.”

Patricia grinned and shut the thruster down. “You’re dressed for it. Drive check

complete. Flywheels fully charged. Shutting down generator. Securing snorkel

doors.”

Five minutes later the VHF crackled, and Mateo’s voice said, “This looks like it,

Beenan. We were about here when we picked up the diesel plume, but we haven’t

been able to trace it any further topside—between surface contaminants and wind

dispersion, it hasn’t worked.”

“Gotcha, Mateo. I’m switching on the HCD now.” One didn’t so much turn on

the hydrocarbon detector as access it through the instrumentation bus. Patricia

tapped through a menu on the touch screen, and a small readout window appeared.

“It’s running from zero to two point three parts per million, Mateo. You have any

sense of the normal contamination here? I mean, we are talking about Texas City.”

“That’s pretty much background for here, sweetie.”

“Gross. Any higher and you guys wouldn’t have to drill for oil. You could just

filter this stuff.” She dragged the HCD display window to the corner of the display,

where it wouldn’t obscure the flywheel readouts. “Okay. What’s the current doing?”

There was a pause; then he came back. “Tide is on its way in, maybe one and a

half knots, but other than that, who knows? There’s so many structures down there

that the currents are all over the place.”

“Okay. I’ll start hunting. Out.”

“Mateo out.”

Patricia switched back to the Gertrude. “Toni, bring her into the wind.”

Toni didn’t answer, but Terminal Lorraine slewed around until she was facing

due south. Patricia buckled her seat belt and shoulder harness.

“Into the wind, Patricia.” Toni’s voice said.

Before Lorraine lost headway and her bows were pushed back around by the

water and wind, Patricia hit the button on the sling control.

The water completely covered the acrylic nose and Patricia counted to five

slowly, then gave a gentle push backward, reverse thruster. The hulls above slid

forward and the sling passed by. She waited until the twin rudders were well ahead,

then killed thrust.

In her usual configuration, SubLorraine was slightly buoyant, though Patricia

could change that in either direction. As she sat there, she was wallowing on the

surface, the waves trying to push her around. She was also slowly rolling over to

starboard.

Patricia could see the sails on Terminal Lorraine cutting hard to port, back

across the wind. “How’s it going, Toni?”

The Gertrude came back. “Whoa, baby! I’m doing thirteen knots.”

“Told ya. Hang with Amoco Mechanic, right?”

“Aye, aye.”

“Starting my run.”

She put the thruster on twenty-five percent, and SubLorraine submerged, her

inverted wings giving her negative lift. Patricia put the stick on its side and did a

quick barrel roll to test the trim, hanging upside down for a moment by her seat

harness. SubLorraine was slightly bottom-heavy but not so much that she needed

adjusting.

The GPS beeped as it lost signal, the water cutting out both the satellite signals

and the VHF. Upright again, Patricia cut northwest and descended to ninety feet,

moving four knots. At this depth the visibility dropped markedly, but the forward

sonar was giving her a pretty good picture of the old ship channel: Five minutes later

she acquired the old breakwater, off to starboard, its top just level with the sub.

Patricia eased over until it loomed out of the murk, big car-sized hunks of rock and

concrete less than fifteen feet away; then she ascended ten feet and edged over it, a

nice visual road into Texas City.

The hydrocarbon count kept flickering up and down, though the peaks began

edging up to three and a half parts per million. Patricia had a pre-Deluge digital video

disc U.S. road atlas in the drive, and she called up the street map of Texas City. She

was too deep for the global positioning system to work, but with the breakwater as a

reference, she hit the old shoreline near the junction of Bay Street and Ninth Avenue.

She’d worked Texas City before, both legally and ill-. The Flood Salvage Bill,

passed seven months after the Deluge, retained property rights to the original owners

for thirty years, which could be extended by ongoing salvage operations or

permanent moored or seabed occupation. That was back when they still thought the

waters might recede.

In its previous life, the titanium hull of SubLorraine was a high-pressure heat

exchanger pulled from the effluent side of a catalytic cracker unit at Marathon

Refinery. That was twelve years ago, at night, and Patricia’s dad towed it home

submerged. The serial numbers were gone now, and the hull’s papers of provenance

pointed to a company well under the Sea of Japan.

The flywheels came out of several Galveston City buses, legally salvaged under

contract. They’d pulled up fifteen, but the containment chambers were flooded in

twelve of them and the interiors were corroded; but the three they still used were

intact. The turbine generator was the auxiliary power unit from a computer firm in

south Houston, but it went astray when the company evacuated its equipment during

the Deluge. It ended up in the gray market out on New Galveston.

Patricia cruised up Ninth Avenue, ten feet off the silty road. This put her above

most of the abandoned vehicles and junk scattered by the first flooding, but under

the existing utility wires. Visibility improved slightly, though current eddies around

the buildings kept her constantly correcting her path to avoid drifting into a

storefront or light pole. The sonar screen made the street look almost normal, like

people should be on the sidewalks and the cars should be moving, but through the

port she could see mullet eating algae off brick walls, and once, after Ninth Street

turned into Palmer Highway, a shark cruised across the intersection at Center Street,

low and smooth on the crosswalk.

The HC gauge spiked up to fifteen parts per million, and when it dropped back

Steven Gould - Blind Waves

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