Allie's War Season Three (139 page)

Despite their unusual closure, or maybe because of it, the Red Flag staff seemed to be cleaning and setting up tables with a lot of energy, as if preparing to get slammed. I looked around in some puzzlement, but since everything otherwise appeared to be business-as-usual, I decided to let it go.

"There is no 'fail,' husband," I told Revik belatedly. "...But I'm glad you really are okay. Happy even," I added as we reached the front of the restaurant. “Although that could mean you’re bat-shit crazy, too, under the circumstances...”

He laughed, but didn’t answer me, other than to shake his head, clicking.

The freestanding 'Please Wait to be Seated' sign still faced the outside door, which was closed. One of the waitresses hastened up to unlock it for us, smiling nervously and making the honorific hand signs for both the Sword and the Bridge as she kept her face carefully below both of ours. I noticed her looking at me more than Revik, especially my body, but decided to ignore that, too, especially when Revik didn't seem to notice.

Nodding politely to her and smiling, Revik waited for me to pass in front of him, his eyes still on my face.

"...And polite," I added, making him laugh again. "...And old-fashioned. But then, you
are
going to be one-hundred and thirty-two in five days."

"More old man cracks," he said, clicking at me in mock disapproval. "You know I'm still considered young for a seer, don't you? It's you who's indecently immature. We seers don't even hit middle age until three or four-hundred. And Elaerian are commonly believed to have average longer lifespans than Sarks..."

"Is it my fault you're a pervert?" I said, grinning at him.

He followed me through the door, shoving lightly at the middle of my back. "You're one to talk. Should I remind you of the last time we were in this hotel, wife...?"

"Yeah, but I don't go looking for young seers to..."

Losing my train of thought, I barely noticed when I stopped talking altogether.

In fact, I nearly stopped thinking once we entered the sixty-story atrium.

6

COLONY

THE FIRST THING I noticed was the line of people waiting outside the Red Flag's doors.

It wasn't a short line.

In fact, it was probably five persons’ thick at the thinnest point, which also happened to be closest to the entrance to the Red Flag itself. The line widened and densified and wrapped around obstacles on the atrium floor, extending back in a solid mass towards the sliding glass doors that fed into the walkway and ultimately, the hotel’s main lobby.

Most who stood there looked human to me.

Few wore the kind of clothes I'd grown to expect of your average guest staying at the high-end hotel. Meaning, instead of business suits or expensive blazers with designer jeans and slacks and hand-made jewelry and other accessories, most wore knock-off jeans and t-shirts, hoodies, department store blouses, beat up trainers and dingy-looking pullover sweaters.

I even saw a few wearing flannels and work-boots, as if they'd just been yanked off a construction site. Only a handful of women wore skirts, and all but a few of those were definitely not of the high-end variety. Even more strangely, most of those standing in line were young, maybe teens to late twenties. A few might have been as high as mid-thirties, but I didn't see more than one or two who could have been much older than that. The expressions on their faces looked stuck somewhere between boredom and impatience.

Whatever this ritual was, it was already familiar to most of them.

I saw a few of those bored expressions change to surprise, even shock, once their eyes settled on me and Revik.

Most of them gaped openly at us then, like we were celebrities, or mass murderers, or maybe both. Surprise might have worked to our advantage, though, because I quickly became concerned by the sheer number of them. Glancing behind me reflexively, I felt some part of me gearing up for either a fight or flight. After all, if my old friends from San Francisco thought me capable of mass-genocide, why wouldn't a mob of total strangers?

No one said anything to us directly, though.

In fact, the muttered conversations I’d heard as we left the restaurant abruptly stopped.

I found I couldn't focus on any one of them for long, despite my paranoid shock at seeing them there in the first place. My peripheral vision eventually made sense of the remainder of the glass-enclosed space, well enough that I felt compelled to turn. Then I was staring at the atrium itself, almost forgetting the people despite the tension still coursing through my light.

I'd expected things to be different, sure.

We'd only been gone a few weeks, but I’d figured they would have secured the hotel in the wake of the quarantine, perhaps even in the days leading up to the lockdown itself. Even so, in those first few seconds, the sheer extent of those changes completely overwhelmed me.

The waterfall remained in the middle of the atrium floor, pouring gallons of clear and clean-looking water onto the rocks situated just above a sculpted pond.

Water crashed on smooth-worn boulders in echoing waves just as I remembered, almost dead center under the skylight itself, which hung at the very top of perspective-boggling walls that led up all of the stories of the hotel. In that one, relatively unchanged thing, even the sound didn't echo up those walls at the same volume as before.

I had to figure that was mostly because the room's layout had been altered such that a good chunk of that sound got muted from the lack of empty space.

That thought led my eyes back to the rest of the room.

The tropical trees and planter-boxes I remembered from before, filled with colorful flowers and climbing vines and palm trees and big-leafed jungle plants, had been removed. So had the tables, the padded, low-sitting chairs, the coffee bar and the semi-tropical alcohol bar that had once sat on opposite ends of the atrium's main doors.

In their place, longer, deeper and wider planter boxes filled almost every available inch of space that made up the round atrium floor.

The earth-filled boxes curved around canals like the loops in a Celtic labyrinth. As I stared around, I realized those same boxes had been built to fit precisely within and stand flush against the atrium’s walls, so as to maximize space. Tiny, bright-green plants stood in rows in the rich, red-brown earth already. They stood only inches high, at least right now, but it struck me that if enough of them grew tall enough, the room really would function as a giant labyrinth...like one of those hedge mazes, only with more visibility. The plants were too young to be able to distinguish much about what they were, but I knew the way seers thought. They would have vegetables, definitely. Grains. Probably fruit trees, too. Anything that could be eaten or might be used for some other purpose.

But yeah, most of this had to be food.

Once that much clicked, a few more things grew obvious, too.

The pond below the waterfall’s crashing streams appeared to be darker than before, for one, as did the surrounding canals. Looking down at the nearest of these as we passed over a small footbridge leading to the main platform of the atrium itself, I saw that it had been stocked full of fish. The koi, which had sprinkled the water in colorful clusters prior to our leaving, appeared to have vanished...although, really, there was no way to know, as they might have been buried under their much more plentiful and less dramatically-pigmented new neighbors.

Dark and sometimes iridescent flashes of what looked like trout filled the length of each stream, along with what might have been young salmon and a kind of snapper.

Other fish I couldn't name swam there, too, but all looked like varieties that might be considered game fish, rather than the decorative variety. The entire pond at the base of the waterfall appeared to be teeming with them, reminding me of old movies of spawning grounds they showed us in science class.

"Holy moly," I breathed.

Revik squeezed my hand.

When I glanced up, I saw him looking around us, too, his face serious.

We had gone from living in a pseudo-terrorist camp with survivalist tendencies to being part of a small but clearly aiming-for-self-sustaining colony, complete with fish farm and indoor greenhouse. I had to assume that's what I was seeing, anyway. Everything around me positively screamed 'food supply,' which was both reassuring and more than a little frightening as I realized how small it still looked, proportionately, anyway, given the size of the hotel.

Hell, even given the size of the line of humans behind us, it looked small.

"There are more fish on the roof," said a voice cheerfully to my left.

I turned, jumping a little.

Oli stood there, one of the female infiltrators from Wreg's unit, and one of those left behind when we went to San Francisco. I knew her as a relatively recent addition, recruited from the refugee camp Balidor set up on the lower floors of the hotel.

She'd already earned a good reputation with the other seers, though, and I’d been told she had a decent sight-ranking.

She'd been picked up by Sweeps as an illegal something like eight months ago in Paris, even though she'd been contracted to a human company there. She suspected it happened because of her familial ties to several Myther groups in Europe, but I couldn't help wondering if it was mainly because of her skin color, which was dark enough to make her look African.

I knew from Revik that seers like her could go for a cool million on the black markets, even if they had no infiltration skills whatsoever.

"...They have more plants growing up there, too," she added, the faintest trace of a French accent still showing in her English. "The ones that need more sunlight, with retractable shades for the weather..."

I nodded, but sighed a little. No more pool.

"Yes," Oli agreed, smiling. "The indoor pool has fish, too," she added apologetically. "...and the top two floors, above yours, are mostly filled with plants and animals." She laughed a little, making that exaggerated eye roll and hand wave of seers. "We have six medium-sized suites filled with chickens alone," she smirked. "We are still getting some supplies from outside, of course. Much of this is for later. Storing, drying, preserving. You understand."

"Later," I muttered. I folded my arms as I looked around. "You mean later, after the supply lines from outside dry up, and we really are living in a giant, immovable ark..."

I'd said it sarcastically, but the dark-skinned seer nodded emphatically.

"Yes," she said. "That is exactly it, Esteemed Bridge. We estimate that could happen in as soon as a month, so it is wise to prepare. Our own stores won't last forever, not without replenishment, not with so many new additions, and more all the time..."

I nodded, keeping my expression neutral as I glanced at Revik.

He raised an eyebrow in return.

I didn't read him that time, but I found I knew what he was thinking anyway.

He was pretty much practical to the bone, so of course he would approve of this approach. Knowing him, he would have started it as soon as the disease hit San Francisco, if it had been remotely practical to do so. Back then, New York was still open to the world, however, and the House on the Hill was still a park-side, five-star hotel, even if its overall capacity had been severely reduced due to our having taken up residence with our mini-refugee camp.

Smiling at Oli, I gestured a thank you for the explanation before making my way between the curved planter boxes towards the main lobby. I still had The Third Jewel in my head, and more to the point, my favorite coffee drink, assuming they weren't closed with a line of humans wrapped around the front lobby, as well.