Blue Earth
Mar. 22nd, 2009 01:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
purple_penThe government falls in late July, after a year of constant rain, though in the end it’s not the rain that does it, but the hurricane that rips through London and takes the roof of the Houses of Parliament, and the spire of Big Ben. Maggie hears a rumour that someone was selling the authentic clock to the highest bidder, but no-one she knows has actually met the seller.
Of course, by the times the news gets to them, it’s early September. “Good thing we weren’t thinking of buying it, then,” John says with a grin.
“I don’t know.” Maggie picks at a strip of peeling wallpaper. “We could stand to brighten this place up a bit.”
“Everyone’s a critic,” John says, He pours the last of the pan of boiling water into the two remaining mugs and picks up the tray. “You ready?”
Maggie holds the door open for him. “Let’s go.”
*
Every chair around the table is occupied, and Jenny’s sitting in Kate’s lap, her arms round the other woman’s neck. “Right then,” Maggie says, looking round the room with a raised eyebrow as John starts handing out their collection of mismatched mugs. “Nice of you guys to save me a seat.” Her crew laugh, but a couple of the new people make as if they’re going to get up until she waves them back down and boosts herself up to sit on the chest of drawers against the wall.
“All right. Tim, you want to make the introductions on your side?”
She sips her tea and smiles as Tim introduces the six new recruits he’s brought with him and John goes round their own crew. Finding room for new people is getting to be a challenge, even with everyone doubling up. She makes a mental note to radio Osiris and see if Gemma can pick up some hammocks when she’s ashore.
“Nice to have you on board,” she says. “Tim told us what happened in London. I don’t suppose anyone was there?” She’s not expecting a response, but a young, blond woman raises her hand hesitantly. Maggie glances over at Tim, who mouths, ‘Alex,’ with a grin.
“I was,” she says, when Maggie nods at her. “I was supposed to change trains at Euston, but the line was flooded.” She pulls the sleeves of her sweatshirt down over her hands and looks at the table. “It was – I was there last year and it was bad, but it’s chaos now. The hurricane knocked out so many houses, all the radio towers that were left for England….”
“Riots?” Jenny asks, twisting to look at Alex. Kate tightens her arms round Jenny’s waist, reminding Maggie that they only joined Blue Earth and Atlantis six months ago. She hasn’t been on shore in five years, when the riots were only just starting to get really bad.
Alex nods. “Really awful. I got a seat on a bus – they stopped running all the trains – there was a guy saying the Prime Minister was killed, and everyone says the King’s going to declare martial law.”
Mark snorts in disgust. “Like he even cares. Isn’t he up on the royal air ship?”
“People still believe that?” one of Tim’s guys asks, rolling his eyes as he turns to Mark. “How would they even keep it in the air? And it’s not like there’s anywhere really safe to land any more.”
“All right,” Maggie says, before Mark’s face can darken any further. “We’re not worried about the royal family. Has anyone else heard the martial law rumours?”
A few of Tim’s recruits nod, and Tim catches her eye, nods solemnly. Maggie’s not surprised. They’ve been waiting to hear this for a while now. “OK. So that’s what we’ll have to focus on. There’s going to be a lot of people wanting to get out of the country now, and there’s not that many places left for them to go.”
*
Atlantis is meant to sleep two hundred people; Maggie has thirty people doing various jobs in her permanent crew, and somewhere between twenty and sixty passing through for one reason or another. They’ve converted more than half of the space into family rooms and dormitories, and they take as many people as they can ashore to make new homes.
It doesn’t help any more.
Tim’s brought her six new crew members, and forty people who left after the government collapsed; he’s got another hundred on his own boat, he tells her, walking through Atlantis to the reception room, John back in their conference room making plans.
“Have you got somewhere for them to go?” Maggie asks, stepping back against the wall to let a man and two children pass.
Tim shrugs helplessly. “We’re heading for the Spanish coast when we leave you. James is meeting us there, there’s a convoy going inland if we get there before the end of the month. They want to get up into the mountains before winter.”
For all that they run around the boat in t-shirts and shorts for six months of the year – fewer clothes means fewer things to try and get dry – winter is still bitter, rain turned to snow and everywhere treacherous. Maggie knows she’ll be glad for the extra people when winter arrives, generating heat and giving everyone a reason to bunk together for warmth. They’ve had eleven summer babies on the boat so far, and she’s still surprised it’s not more.
“OK. Any chance of you taking a few more, if there’s people wanting to go?”
Some of her refugees – her passengers – have been on the boat for years. She picked up twelve families the last time she was ashore, and only seven of them have left in the five years since; the other five are too scared to go back to land, even in one of the inland havens, and it’s the same every time they make a shore run. Some of the passengers have been there much longer, and Maggie’s given up hope of finding them somewhere else.
Tim makes an unhappy face. “Maybe. It’s pretty crowded though. James isn’t even sure he’ll find places for everyone I’m already taking.”
“I’ll talk to them,” Maggie says. “See how they’d feel about fending for themselves.” She adds it to her mental to do list and wishes, again, for a notebook. She hasn’t had one in years, since they ran out of paper and couldn’t afford more, but she still finds herself reaching for one sometimes.
Tim nods. “You ready?” he asks, and opens the door to the reception room.
It’s crowded with forty people and their belongings, even though for most of them this means one or two hastily packed bags. Everyone knows about the Blue Earth boats, but Maggie and the rest of the captains keep their arrival dates secret up to the last minute. Most of the people they pick up are there through luck more than anything else; they can’t afford to lose another boat.
“All right.” Maggie raises her voice and forty faces turn to her expectantly. She hates this part. “Welcome on board Atlantis, my name’s Maggie and I’m your captain. If you’ve got any questions, come and see me. If I don’t know the answers, I’ve been told I can fake it pretty convincingly.” A few people laugh; most of them don’t react at all. “We’ll be assigning beds shortly, and some of the crew will be along to take you to your rooms – it’s not hard to find your way round the boat, but we don’t want anyone getting lost yet. I’m afraid most of you will be in dormitories with some of our existing passengers, but I promise you everyone’s friendly.”
She goes through the boat’s rules, written on the wall of every room, and the daily timetable for meals, answers questions about laundry and security and charges and what happens next, and when the crew arrive with bed assignments, most of the passengers look a little less uncomfortable. Those that don’t, the crew will make sure Sean spends extra time with when he’s doing their check-ups.
She leaves Tim over-seeing the confusion and wanders through the ship. The door to the conference room is still closed, John locked in there with the intelligence crew making plans for a trip to London, and most of the current passengers are doing as asked and staying in their rooms. Up on deck, both winches are out over the side of the boat, one hauling up crates of supplies, the other canisters of fuel for the bio-engine, all of it being passed off and stowed inside before it has chance to get more than slightly damp.
Maggie pulls her hood tighter – nothing she can do about her boots, but at least they’re mostly waterproof – and leans on the side of Atlantis, peering through the rain to the deck of Aurora. It takes her a few minutes, squinting across the gap, but she finally makes out the familiar polka dot patterned rain coat and waves. The figure waves back, and a moment later, her radio crackles to life.
“You coming over?” Beni’s voice asks.
Maggie looks round the boat, and down at the busy rowboats. “I don’t think so,” she says, leaning over slightly to avoid getting water in the speaker. Just because Mel *can* fix it, doesn’t mean she should have to. “Any news?”
“Not the kind you’re hoping for,” Beni says apologetically. “But some. Can I come to you?”
There’s a rope slung between the two boats, as always, for sending across anything that can’t be easily winched. “As long as you don’t fall in,” Maggie says, and listens to Beni’s disembodied laugh through the radio.
She hates watching anyone on the ropes, but Beni’s raincoat is purple with white polka dots, hard to miss in the corner of her eye, especially when Beni swings herself onto the dock, landing in a puddle, and pulls Maggie close to kiss her.
Maggie untangles herself from Beni’s embrace to wolf whistles from her crew. “You always like to make an entrance,” she says.
“Illegal smuggling’s all creep-in, creep-out, don’t-let-anyone-see-you,” Beni mock-grumbles. “A little drama never hurt anyone.”
“I suppose. Come inside. John’s with the crew, we’ll grab him and go in the kitchen.”
“Sure.” Beni unfastens her coat and hangs it on one of the hooks behind the door, shakes her dark curls loose.
It’s odd, seeing her in the flesh, following her through Atlantis’ corridors, when there’s been nothing but a voice and a rain-blurred coat for two years – ships passing in the night, literally. John looks up gratefully when Maggie sticks her head round the conference room door and interrupts the loud debate going on across the chalk-covered table. “You need me?” he asks.
“Please,” Maggie says, and John jumps up quickly, nodding at Jenny. “Take over?”
“No problem,” Jenny says with a grin, shoving herself off Kate’s lap, her eyes gleaming. Maggie resolves not to think about Jenny’s tendency to bat people round the head when they start annoying her. Mark deserves it anyway.
“So,” John says, when they’re sitting at the kitchen table with mugs of tea. “What do you know?”
Beni makes an apologetic face to Maggie. “Still no word about Cathy. I thought – one of my new guys said he thought he’d seen her get arrested, at the separation protests in Newcastle, but…” She trails off, and Maggie fills in the rest for her: Cathy and Hamunaptra went missing five years ago, right around the time that Scotland announced they were following Wales’ example and removing themselves from the United Kingdom. Everyone who went missing in the north then is rumoured to have been arrested for being involved in the protests, and Maggie has no idea if she hopes this is true for Cathy or not. On the one hand, jail’s somewhere people don’t often walk out of; on the other hand, it’s better than most of the alternatives.
“We’ll find her eventually,” John says, with a grin. “She’s probably out there somewhere, trying to find us.”
“Sure,” Maggie agrees. “So what *do* you know?”
Beni pulls her knees up, wraps her arms round her legs and talks, while Maggie scribbles notes in synthetic chalk across the table top, about groups like Blue Earth, but on land, picking people up when they lose their homes to the endless floods and finding them somewhere to go, linking them up with Blue Earth crews still in England; about the riots and the rumours that the Prime Minister and half the cabinet were killed in the hurricane, and the growing movement to leave England for somewhere safer.
By the time she walks Beni back up to the deck, they’ve covered the table in names and radio codes, and John’s heading back to the conference room to draw up a plan.
“You going to go ashore this time?” Beni asks, pulling her coat on and fastening it carefully.
“Maybe,” Maggie says. She’s not sure she even remembers how to walk without the floor moving under her feet, or how to sleep without the sound of the waves against the boat. “Mark’s crew are good at the pick-ups.”
“That’s because they do all of them,” Beni points out. “When you do them.”
“We’re not a pick up ship, we’re a staging post,” Maggie reminds her. “That’s what we keep you guys around for,” she adds with a grin to encompass Tim, who’s making his way along the corridor, and just close enough to hear her.
He grins back, rubbing at his eyes. “I talked to your passengers. No-one’s interested in risking being left on the coast for the winter.”
“That’s what I figured,” Maggie says with a sigh. “Ah well, maybe the crew won’t mind tripling up.”
“Just encourage them to start sleeping together,” Beni says. “Or having threesomes.”
“Thanks for that,” Maggie says, laughing, and waves the two of them back across the rope to Aurora.
*
Dinner that evening is chicken and pasta, with actual vegetables in it, and Tania’s kitchen crew practically have to fight off the passengers and crew to make sure everyone gets their fair share. Maggie eats as quickly as she can, and leaves John chatting with the crew, to make her way round the dining room.
It’s easy to pick out the new passengers, huddled together with the people they were picked up with, looking nervously at everyone else. Maggie pours herself another mug of tea, the one thing they never run short of, and grabs a bowl of cherries that are still mostly ripe, or only just beginning to turn.
She takes a seat opposite a family – mum, dad, and a girl who’s maybe five years old – and offers the bowl to the girl. “Hi,” she says with a smile. “Would you like one? They’ll all be gone tomorrow.”
The girl waits for her mum’s nod before taking two and nibbling round the stone. Maggie offers the bowl her parents as well, then takes her own. “I’m Maggie, the captain,” she says. Over the years, she’s found it’s best to assume the new passengers will forget everything she tells them in the first couple of days. Atlantis is twice the size of the rest of the boats in the Blue Earth fleet, so it always takes people a little while to make the transition. “I’m sorry, I don’t know your names.”
Pam and Samuel and their daughter Tina are from London, like the rest of the new passengers, and they happened to run into one of the Blue Earth crew members in a coffee shop. “That happens a lot,” Maggie says wryly. “Do you have any idea where you want to go?”
Pam and Samuel shrug at each other, then at her as well. “No problem,” Maggie says lightly. “We won’t throw you off for not making a decision. You’re welcome to stay as long as you need to.”
“My sister lives in Germany,” Tina pipes up, stealing another cherry from Maggie’s bowl.
“Tina!” Pam says sharply, then flushes. “What have I said about that?”
“You’ve got another daughter?” Maggie asks. “Is she grown up?”
“Twenty,” Samuel says quietly. “She went to Germany when Tina was born.”
“Samuel,” Pam says helplessly.
“It’s fine.” Maggie pats her arm and offers the cherry bowl again. “We’re not involved with the police or the military. I don’t think they really approve of us.” Pam and Samuel both laugh. “Do you want to go there? I don’t know of any boats heading that way, but we can keep an ear out for you.”
She chats for a few more minutes, then calls over an older lady who’s been on the boat for nearly three months, who’s also looking to get to Germany, and leaves the three adults chatting.
She’s lost count of the number of times she’s heard similar stories, since the one child policy was introduced in England, just in time to meet with the drop in availability of contraception as warehouses and factories were flooded out or destroyed by the violent weather. People are usually so hesitant about sharing, but they’re her favourite kind of passengers, the ones who already have somewhere in mind to go, because the ones who don’t tend to be even less eager to leave the ship than the rest.
Maggie spends the evening talking to her new passengers, answering the same questions she answered that afternoon, finding people to take them back to their rooms again, and then helping the kitchen staff clear up. When she finally makes it back to the tiny room she shares with Simone, she’s only just awake enough to splash her face with water and fall into bed. She’s nearly asleep when she remembers she hasn’t told the navigation room that they need to change direction, and decides it can wait until morning. They’re not moving that fast.
*
A week after Aurora’s visit, Maggie goes begging round her new passengers and finds someone with an actual biro. It’s even biodegradable, so she doesn’t feel too bad about using it. Her memory’s got better over the years, but she’s desperate, trying to plan a pick up, track their supplies and find homes for the new passengers, as well as keep Atlantis running.
Jenny finds her leaning against the edge of the stairwell, her feet tucked up so no-one will fall over her, scribbling down the length of her left arm. “You know, Owen does tattoos that last past than the next time you’re caught in the rain,” she says, smiling down at Maggie.
“I know,” Maggie assures her. “But I’m not sure I want ‘clean toilets, radio Gemma for hammocks’ permanently engraved on my skin.”
Jenny tilts her head from one side to the other, considering. “Fair point,” she says finally. “Can I sit here?”
“Go for it.” Maggie caps the pen and rests her hand carefully on her knee so she won’t smudge the ink before it dries. “Everything OK?”
“It’s fine.” Jenny tips her head to rest on Maggie’s shoulder and Maggie strokes her hair automatically. Jenny, like most of her crew, thinks of herself as an independent adult, but Maggie’s used to them coming to her for mothering, even though there’s not that much of an age gap. “I wanted to ask – could Kate and I go ashore when we get to London?”
“You don’t have to ask my permission,” Maggie tells her, forcing her voice not to betray her feelings. “Why do you want to go?”
“John was talking about the group Beni knows – that finds places for people in England, not just pick up people they run into the boats?” She looks up at Maggie from under her fringe and Maggie nods. “We want to see if we can join them. I was – before I met Kate, before we came here, I was with a campaigning group, against the reduction in civil rights. If the rumours about martial law are true…” She trails off and sighs.
“We’ll miss having you here. Both of you.” Maggie strokes her damp hair again. “But you should do what you want to.”
“I’ll miss you too,” Jenny says, leaning over to hug her.
*
Maggie’s up on deck when land comes into view, vague and distorted through the mist, weirdly lit by the boat’s lights, turned on in deference to the increased number of boats as they get closer to the coast. It looks like she remembers it, like she thinks she’d remember it if she did, tower blocks in every direction, rebuilt every time the weather takes them.
Five years, she thinks, leaning on the edge of the deck and trying not to look like someone who illegally smuggles people to continental Europe as her day job. She’s been running the Blue Earth network for more than twice that, and she’s never been happier than the day she had enough crew on Atlantis to say that she wouldn’t be doing any more of the land runs.
It’s the curse of being older than her crew, she thinks: it’s not by all that much, but it’s by enough that she can still remember, just, what it was like when things turned from climate change problems that could be solved to climate change problems that were an excuse for everything the government had been wanting to change for years. She’s the only person on her crew who’s ever seen a real passport; there’s no-one who ever actually had one in their own name.
Atlantis eases closer to the coast. They’re only docking long enough to let the collection team go ashore, then they’re retreating back into open water again; no-one feels safe tied up where the navy can find them. Maggie thinks of Cathy, again, before they had enough people to work it that way. She likes to think that Cathy’s crew got away in Hamunaptra but she knows that if they had they would have contacted her, or one of the other boats. She knows Cathy would have.
“Hey,” John says, leaning next to her and squinting into the mist. “Think you can see Big Ben from here?”
“Headless Ben,” Maggie corrects. “Doubt it.” Now she’s listening, she can hear people moving about behind them. “You’re not supervising?”
“Nope,” John says. “Mark knows what he’s doing, and it keeps him away from Danny.”
“They’re still arguing?” Maggie asks. It’s been a month since Danny came over from Aurora and got into it with Mark over the existence of a royal air ship.
“Mostly,” John says with a sly grin, and Maggie decides not to ask, leaning next to him in companionable silence as Mark gets the team together on deck, and hooks the ladder over the side of the boat.
They bump, gently, twice as Charlie brings them against the abandoned dock, and the team come over to say their goodbyes and get their good luck wishes. Maggie hugs Jenny and Kate for a long time. “Take care,” she says. “Don’t forget, you’re always welcome here.”
Jenny hugs her again. “We know. Hey, maybe we’ll run into Cathy.”
“Maybe,” Maggie agrees, even though Cathy’s nothing for them but a five year old picture on the missing wall, and lets her go.
She and John watch the team scramble down the rope, and disappear amongst the buildings around the dock. The engine struggles for a minute, then catches, and they start to slip away from the shore.
John pats her arm reassuringly. “They’ll be back in a week,” he says. “Come on, Miranda’s supposed to radio this afternoon about taking some of our passengers.”
“Great,” Maggie says, turning away from the view. “Did she say how many…”
She follows John down into Atlantis, and thinks about the wide blue ocean, laid out beneath them, free and clear and endless.
Of course, by the times the news gets to them, it’s early September. “Good thing we weren’t thinking of buying it, then,” John says with a grin.
“I don’t know.” Maggie picks at a strip of peeling wallpaper. “We could stand to brighten this place up a bit.”
“Everyone’s a critic,” John says, He pours the last of the pan of boiling water into the two remaining mugs and picks up the tray. “You ready?”
Maggie holds the door open for him. “Let’s go.”
*
Every chair around the table is occupied, and Jenny’s sitting in Kate’s lap, her arms round the other woman’s neck. “Right then,” Maggie says, looking round the room with a raised eyebrow as John starts handing out their collection of mismatched mugs. “Nice of you guys to save me a seat.” Her crew laugh, but a couple of the new people make as if they’re going to get up until she waves them back down and boosts herself up to sit on the chest of drawers against the wall.
“All right. Tim, you want to make the introductions on your side?”
She sips her tea and smiles as Tim introduces the six new recruits he’s brought with him and John goes round their own crew. Finding room for new people is getting to be a challenge, even with everyone doubling up. She makes a mental note to radio Osiris and see if Gemma can pick up some hammocks when she’s ashore.
“Nice to have you on board,” she says. “Tim told us what happened in London. I don’t suppose anyone was there?” She’s not expecting a response, but a young, blond woman raises her hand hesitantly. Maggie glances over at Tim, who mouths, ‘Alex,’ with a grin.
“I was,” she says, when Maggie nods at her. “I was supposed to change trains at Euston, but the line was flooded.” She pulls the sleeves of her sweatshirt down over her hands and looks at the table. “It was – I was there last year and it was bad, but it’s chaos now. The hurricane knocked out so many houses, all the radio towers that were left for England….”
“Riots?” Jenny asks, twisting to look at Alex. Kate tightens her arms round Jenny’s waist, reminding Maggie that they only joined Blue Earth and Atlantis six months ago. She hasn’t been on shore in five years, when the riots were only just starting to get really bad.
Alex nods. “Really awful. I got a seat on a bus – they stopped running all the trains – there was a guy saying the Prime Minister was killed, and everyone says the King’s going to declare martial law.”
Mark snorts in disgust. “Like he even cares. Isn’t he up on the royal air ship?”
“People still believe that?” one of Tim’s guys asks, rolling his eyes as he turns to Mark. “How would they even keep it in the air? And it’s not like there’s anywhere really safe to land any more.”
“All right,” Maggie says, before Mark’s face can darken any further. “We’re not worried about the royal family. Has anyone else heard the martial law rumours?”
A few of Tim’s recruits nod, and Tim catches her eye, nods solemnly. Maggie’s not surprised. They’ve been waiting to hear this for a while now. “OK. So that’s what we’ll have to focus on. There’s going to be a lot of people wanting to get out of the country now, and there’s not that many places left for them to go.”
*
Atlantis is meant to sleep two hundred people; Maggie has thirty people doing various jobs in her permanent crew, and somewhere between twenty and sixty passing through for one reason or another. They’ve converted more than half of the space into family rooms and dormitories, and they take as many people as they can ashore to make new homes.
It doesn’t help any more.
Tim’s brought her six new crew members, and forty people who left after the government collapsed; he’s got another hundred on his own boat, he tells her, walking through Atlantis to the reception room, John back in their conference room making plans.
“Have you got somewhere for them to go?” Maggie asks, stepping back against the wall to let a man and two children pass.
Tim shrugs helplessly. “We’re heading for the Spanish coast when we leave you. James is meeting us there, there’s a convoy going inland if we get there before the end of the month. They want to get up into the mountains before winter.”
For all that they run around the boat in t-shirts and shorts for six months of the year – fewer clothes means fewer things to try and get dry – winter is still bitter, rain turned to snow and everywhere treacherous. Maggie knows she’ll be glad for the extra people when winter arrives, generating heat and giving everyone a reason to bunk together for warmth. They’ve had eleven summer babies on the boat so far, and she’s still surprised it’s not more.
“OK. Any chance of you taking a few more, if there’s people wanting to go?”
Some of her refugees – her passengers – have been on the boat for years. She picked up twelve families the last time she was ashore, and only seven of them have left in the five years since; the other five are too scared to go back to land, even in one of the inland havens, and it’s the same every time they make a shore run. Some of the passengers have been there much longer, and Maggie’s given up hope of finding them somewhere else.
Tim makes an unhappy face. “Maybe. It’s pretty crowded though. James isn’t even sure he’ll find places for everyone I’m already taking.”
“I’ll talk to them,” Maggie says. “See how they’d feel about fending for themselves.” She adds it to her mental to do list and wishes, again, for a notebook. She hasn’t had one in years, since they ran out of paper and couldn’t afford more, but she still finds herself reaching for one sometimes.
Tim nods. “You ready?” he asks, and opens the door to the reception room.
It’s crowded with forty people and their belongings, even though for most of them this means one or two hastily packed bags. Everyone knows about the Blue Earth boats, but Maggie and the rest of the captains keep their arrival dates secret up to the last minute. Most of the people they pick up are there through luck more than anything else; they can’t afford to lose another boat.
“All right.” Maggie raises her voice and forty faces turn to her expectantly. She hates this part. “Welcome on board Atlantis, my name’s Maggie and I’m your captain. If you’ve got any questions, come and see me. If I don’t know the answers, I’ve been told I can fake it pretty convincingly.” A few people laugh; most of them don’t react at all. “We’ll be assigning beds shortly, and some of the crew will be along to take you to your rooms – it’s not hard to find your way round the boat, but we don’t want anyone getting lost yet. I’m afraid most of you will be in dormitories with some of our existing passengers, but I promise you everyone’s friendly.”
She goes through the boat’s rules, written on the wall of every room, and the daily timetable for meals, answers questions about laundry and security and charges and what happens next, and when the crew arrive with bed assignments, most of the passengers look a little less uncomfortable. Those that don’t, the crew will make sure Sean spends extra time with when he’s doing their check-ups.
She leaves Tim over-seeing the confusion and wanders through the ship. The door to the conference room is still closed, John locked in there with the intelligence crew making plans for a trip to London, and most of the current passengers are doing as asked and staying in their rooms. Up on deck, both winches are out over the side of the boat, one hauling up crates of supplies, the other canisters of fuel for the bio-engine, all of it being passed off and stowed inside before it has chance to get more than slightly damp.
Maggie pulls her hood tighter – nothing she can do about her boots, but at least they’re mostly waterproof – and leans on the side of Atlantis, peering through the rain to the deck of Aurora. It takes her a few minutes, squinting across the gap, but she finally makes out the familiar polka dot patterned rain coat and waves. The figure waves back, and a moment later, her radio crackles to life.
“You coming over?” Beni’s voice asks.
Maggie looks round the boat, and down at the busy rowboats. “I don’t think so,” she says, leaning over slightly to avoid getting water in the speaker. Just because Mel *can* fix it, doesn’t mean she should have to. “Any news?”
“Not the kind you’re hoping for,” Beni says apologetically. “But some. Can I come to you?”
There’s a rope slung between the two boats, as always, for sending across anything that can’t be easily winched. “As long as you don’t fall in,” Maggie says, and listens to Beni’s disembodied laugh through the radio.
She hates watching anyone on the ropes, but Beni’s raincoat is purple with white polka dots, hard to miss in the corner of her eye, especially when Beni swings herself onto the dock, landing in a puddle, and pulls Maggie close to kiss her.
Maggie untangles herself from Beni’s embrace to wolf whistles from her crew. “You always like to make an entrance,” she says.
“Illegal smuggling’s all creep-in, creep-out, don’t-let-anyone-see-you,” Beni mock-grumbles. “A little drama never hurt anyone.”
“I suppose. Come inside. John’s with the crew, we’ll grab him and go in the kitchen.”
“Sure.” Beni unfastens her coat and hangs it on one of the hooks behind the door, shakes her dark curls loose.
It’s odd, seeing her in the flesh, following her through Atlantis’ corridors, when there’s been nothing but a voice and a rain-blurred coat for two years – ships passing in the night, literally. John looks up gratefully when Maggie sticks her head round the conference room door and interrupts the loud debate going on across the chalk-covered table. “You need me?” he asks.
“Please,” Maggie says, and John jumps up quickly, nodding at Jenny. “Take over?”
“No problem,” Jenny says with a grin, shoving herself off Kate’s lap, her eyes gleaming. Maggie resolves not to think about Jenny’s tendency to bat people round the head when they start annoying her. Mark deserves it anyway.
“So,” John says, when they’re sitting at the kitchen table with mugs of tea. “What do you know?”
Beni makes an apologetic face to Maggie. “Still no word about Cathy. I thought – one of my new guys said he thought he’d seen her get arrested, at the separation protests in Newcastle, but…” She trails off, and Maggie fills in the rest for her: Cathy and Hamunaptra went missing five years ago, right around the time that Scotland announced they were following Wales’ example and removing themselves from the United Kingdom. Everyone who went missing in the north then is rumoured to have been arrested for being involved in the protests, and Maggie has no idea if she hopes this is true for Cathy or not. On the one hand, jail’s somewhere people don’t often walk out of; on the other hand, it’s better than most of the alternatives.
“We’ll find her eventually,” John says, with a grin. “She’s probably out there somewhere, trying to find us.”
“Sure,” Maggie agrees. “So what *do* you know?”
Beni pulls her knees up, wraps her arms round her legs and talks, while Maggie scribbles notes in synthetic chalk across the table top, about groups like Blue Earth, but on land, picking people up when they lose their homes to the endless floods and finding them somewhere to go, linking them up with Blue Earth crews still in England; about the riots and the rumours that the Prime Minister and half the cabinet were killed in the hurricane, and the growing movement to leave England for somewhere safer.
By the time she walks Beni back up to the deck, they’ve covered the table in names and radio codes, and John’s heading back to the conference room to draw up a plan.
“You going to go ashore this time?” Beni asks, pulling her coat on and fastening it carefully.
“Maybe,” Maggie says. She’s not sure she even remembers how to walk without the floor moving under her feet, or how to sleep without the sound of the waves against the boat. “Mark’s crew are good at the pick-ups.”
“That’s because they do all of them,” Beni points out. “When you do them.”
“We’re not a pick up ship, we’re a staging post,” Maggie reminds her. “That’s what we keep you guys around for,” she adds with a grin to encompass Tim, who’s making his way along the corridor, and just close enough to hear her.
He grins back, rubbing at his eyes. “I talked to your passengers. No-one’s interested in risking being left on the coast for the winter.”
“That’s what I figured,” Maggie says with a sigh. “Ah well, maybe the crew won’t mind tripling up.”
“Just encourage them to start sleeping together,” Beni says. “Or having threesomes.”
“Thanks for that,” Maggie says, laughing, and waves the two of them back across the rope to Aurora.
*
Dinner that evening is chicken and pasta, with actual vegetables in it, and Tania’s kitchen crew practically have to fight off the passengers and crew to make sure everyone gets their fair share. Maggie eats as quickly as she can, and leaves John chatting with the crew, to make her way round the dining room.
It’s easy to pick out the new passengers, huddled together with the people they were picked up with, looking nervously at everyone else. Maggie pours herself another mug of tea, the one thing they never run short of, and grabs a bowl of cherries that are still mostly ripe, or only just beginning to turn.
She takes a seat opposite a family – mum, dad, and a girl who’s maybe five years old – and offers the bowl to the girl. “Hi,” she says with a smile. “Would you like one? They’ll all be gone tomorrow.”
The girl waits for her mum’s nod before taking two and nibbling round the stone. Maggie offers the bowl her parents as well, then takes her own. “I’m Maggie, the captain,” she says. Over the years, she’s found it’s best to assume the new passengers will forget everything she tells them in the first couple of days. Atlantis is twice the size of the rest of the boats in the Blue Earth fleet, so it always takes people a little while to make the transition. “I’m sorry, I don’t know your names.”
Pam and Samuel and their daughter Tina are from London, like the rest of the new passengers, and they happened to run into one of the Blue Earth crew members in a coffee shop. “That happens a lot,” Maggie says wryly. “Do you have any idea where you want to go?”
Pam and Samuel shrug at each other, then at her as well. “No problem,” Maggie says lightly. “We won’t throw you off for not making a decision. You’re welcome to stay as long as you need to.”
“My sister lives in Germany,” Tina pipes up, stealing another cherry from Maggie’s bowl.
“Tina!” Pam says sharply, then flushes. “What have I said about that?”
“You’ve got another daughter?” Maggie asks. “Is she grown up?”
“Twenty,” Samuel says quietly. “She went to Germany when Tina was born.”
“Samuel,” Pam says helplessly.
“It’s fine.” Maggie pats her arm and offers the cherry bowl again. “We’re not involved with the police or the military. I don’t think they really approve of us.” Pam and Samuel both laugh. “Do you want to go there? I don’t know of any boats heading that way, but we can keep an ear out for you.”
She chats for a few more minutes, then calls over an older lady who’s been on the boat for nearly three months, who’s also looking to get to Germany, and leaves the three adults chatting.
She’s lost count of the number of times she’s heard similar stories, since the one child policy was introduced in England, just in time to meet with the drop in availability of contraception as warehouses and factories were flooded out or destroyed by the violent weather. People are usually so hesitant about sharing, but they’re her favourite kind of passengers, the ones who already have somewhere in mind to go, because the ones who don’t tend to be even less eager to leave the ship than the rest.
Maggie spends the evening talking to her new passengers, answering the same questions she answered that afternoon, finding people to take them back to their rooms again, and then helping the kitchen staff clear up. When she finally makes it back to the tiny room she shares with Simone, she’s only just awake enough to splash her face with water and fall into bed. She’s nearly asleep when she remembers she hasn’t told the navigation room that they need to change direction, and decides it can wait until morning. They’re not moving that fast.
*
A week after Aurora’s visit, Maggie goes begging round her new passengers and finds someone with an actual biro. It’s even biodegradable, so she doesn’t feel too bad about using it. Her memory’s got better over the years, but she’s desperate, trying to plan a pick up, track their supplies and find homes for the new passengers, as well as keep Atlantis running.
Jenny finds her leaning against the edge of the stairwell, her feet tucked up so no-one will fall over her, scribbling down the length of her left arm. “You know, Owen does tattoos that last past than the next time you’re caught in the rain,” she says, smiling down at Maggie.
“I know,” Maggie assures her. “But I’m not sure I want ‘clean toilets, radio Gemma for hammocks’ permanently engraved on my skin.”
Jenny tilts her head from one side to the other, considering. “Fair point,” she says finally. “Can I sit here?”
“Go for it.” Maggie caps the pen and rests her hand carefully on her knee so she won’t smudge the ink before it dries. “Everything OK?”
“It’s fine.” Jenny tips her head to rest on Maggie’s shoulder and Maggie strokes her hair automatically. Jenny, like most of her crew, thinks of herself as an independent adult, but Maggie’s used to them coming to her for mothering, even though there’s not that much of an age gap. “I wanted to ask – could Kate and I go ashore when we get to London?”
“You don’t have to ask my permission,” Maggie tells her, forcing her voice not to betray her feelings. “Why do you want to go?”
“John was talking about the group Beni knows – that finds places for people in England, not just pick up people they run into the boats?” She looks up at Maggie from under her fringe and Maggie nods. “We want to see if we can join them. I was – before I met Kate, before we came here, I was with a campaigning group, against the reduction in civil rights. If the rumours about martial law are true…” She trails off and sighs.
“We’ll miss having you here. Both of you.” Maggie strokes her damp hair again. “But you should do what you want to.”
“I’ll miss you too,” Jenny says, leaning over to hug her.
*
Maggie’s up on deck when land comes into view, vague and distorted through the mist, weirdly lit by the boat’s lights, turned on in deference to the increased number of boats as they get closer to the coast. It looks like she remembers it, like she thinks she’d remember it if she did, tower blocks in every direction, rebuilt every time the weather takes them.
Five years, she thinks, leaning on the edge of the deck and trying not to look like someone who illegally smuggles people to continental Europe as her day job. She’s been running the Blue Earth network for more than twice that, and she’s never been happier than the day she had enough crew on Atlantis to say that she wouldn’t be doing any more of the land runs.
It’s the curse of being older than her crew, she thinks: it’s not by all that much, but it’s by enough that she can still remember, just, what it was like when things turned from climate change problems that could be solved to climate change problems that were an excuse for everything the government had been wanting to change for years. She’s the only person on her crew who’s ever seen a real passport; there’s no-one who ever actually had one in their own name.
Atlantis eases closer to the coast. They’re only docking long enough to let the collection team go ashore, then they’re retreating back into open water again; no-one feels safe tied up where the navy can find them. Maggie thinks of Cathy, again, before they had enough people to work it that way. She likes to think that Cathy’s crew got away in Hamunaptra but she knows that if they had they would have contacted her, or one of the other boats. She knows Cathy would have.
“Hey,” John says, leaning next to her and squinting into the mist. “Think you can see Big Ben from here?”
“Headless Ben,” Maggie corrects. “Doubt it.” Now she’s listening, she can hear people moving about behind them. “You’re not supervising?”
“Nope,” John says. “Mark knows what he’s doing, and it keeps him away from Danny.”
“They’re still arguing?” Maggie asks. It’s been a month since Danny came over from Aurora and got into it with Mark over the existence of a royal air ship.
“Mostly,” John says with a sly grin, and Maggie decides not to ask, leaning next to him in companionable silence as Mark gets the team together on deck, and hooks the ladder over the side of the boat.
They bump, gently, twice as Charlie brings them against the abandoned dock, and the team come over to say their goodbyes and get their good luck wishes. Maggie hugs Jenny and Kate for a long time. “Take care,” she says. “Don’t forget, you’re always welcome here.”
Jenny hugs her again. “We know. Hey, maybe we’ll run into Cathy.”
“Maybe,” Maggie agrees, even though Cathy’s nothing for them but a five year old picture on the missing wall, and lets her go.
She and John watch the team scramble down the rope, and disappear amongst the buildings around the dock. The engine struggles for a minute, then catches, and they start to slip away from the shore.
John pats her arm reassuringly. “They’ll be back in a week,” he says. “Come on, Miranda’s supposed to radio this afternoon about taking some of our passengers.”
“Great,” Maggie says, turning away from the view. “Did she say how many…”
She follows John down into Atlantis, and thinks about the wide blue ocean, laid out beneath them, free and clear and endless.
