Lost Republic (3 page)

The strange, insectlike shape of the
Sunflyer
grew larger. Spray and water vapor trailed behind it. François knew the sunship had another system to reduce drag and make it faster and more efficient. The lower hulls were electrically charged to repel seawater. Between this and the hydrofoils,
Sunflyer
's imprint on the water was about the same as a medium-sized yacht.

“Here it comes!”

For the first time, the Belgian boy sounded excited. He and the Chinese fellow grabbed hold of the old lady's chair. François gripped the rail, bracing himself.

In a flash
Sunflyer
was past them. It was so overwhelming, it took longer to remember what it looked and felt like than the actual event. The sunship towered over the
Carleton
many stories, the shining green and blue solar panels tracking the sun even as the vessel moved at high speed. The hulls, half-hidden by spray, looked like knives thrust into a powerful jet of water. In between the hulls and solar panels, the multideck center of the ship was out of place, like a luxury hotel on a pair of giant jet skis. In the days that followed, François often tried to call up any trace of human faces at the portholes, but they were as blank as a row of silver coins. To the people on
Sunflyer,
the
Carleton
was an unremarkable object it passed on its way to North America.

Sunflyer
whooshed on toward the eastern harbor exit, between the old forts de Chavagnac and de l'Ouest. The news blimp and drones followed, but the sightseers in small boats fell back. A few approached the wake of the steamer, wallowing in the mist raised by the sunship. François saluted the nearest ones, but no one waved back. On the pitching foredeck, people struggled with handheld PDDs, looking at the video footage they had just shot of the
Sunflyer
's departure.

The deck diehards gave up and entered the main deck lounge. There were giant screens set up at opposite ends of the long room. Everyone was watching aerial views of the sunship as it skimmed out to sea.

“Can you imagine?” Julie Morrison was saying. “The view from up there must be gorgeous!”

“If you could see anything through all that spray,” her brother replied.

“I heard New Man was on board with his whole band,” said a young woman. “Along with the entire cast of
Chances They Take
!”

New Man was a Norwegian pop star, very big in Europe.
Chances They Take
was an American Your/World show about a team of professional daredevils who traveled the world trying every kind of dangerous challenge.

“The only danger on board
Sunflyer
will be overeating,” said a tall Asian girl in impeccable Parisian French.

François smiled. “And papercuts from their napkins,” he said in the same language. The girl smiled a little.

Many passengers filed out of the lounge after
Sunflyer
disappeared out to sea. Eurochannel switched to commentary about what the maiden voyage of the sunship meant, further thinning the crowd.

François decided to find his cabin. It was below deck, a shared berth. For what his father was paying for luxury on the sunship, François could have had the most deluxe cabin on the
Carleton
. It suited his mood to choose the cheapest accommodation he could get. He wondered who he would be with. Not the weird kid in black, oh please . . .

He found a guy about his age unpacking an antique leather suitcase. He was neatly stowing his socks and underwear in drawers under his bunk.

The guy stood up and smiled. “Ah, hello!” he said in English, but he wasn't English or American. His clothes were quite old-fashioned, with many buttons and strips of leather here and there.

“Hello,” François said. “François Martin.”

The guy took his hand and shook it firmly. “Johann Sebastian Bachmann—but call me Hans.”

The ship rolled slowly through the Atlantic swell. Early morning rays of sunlight pierced the low clouds that veiled the French coast. Leigh Morrison walked out of the
Carleton
's lounge (now serving as the dining room) onto the boat deck. The sea air was cool but damp. He sipped coffee and gazed at the northern horizon, still gray from dawn.

A soft thump-thump-thump announced Jenny Hopkins. Clad in electric blue sweats from neck to ankle, she jogged by Leigh, whose head was wrapped in coffee steam.

“Morning,” he said. “How many laps?”

“Thirteen, so far,” she replied. Jenny meant to do thirty before breakfast. Forty would have been better, but the deck was hard on her ankles and knees. It was wood planking laid down over steel plates and had no resilience at all. The first evening after they left Cherbourg, she had shin splints from running too long on the hard deck.

She followed the slow curve of the ship forward, keeping clear of doors, vents, and hatches. Her mother warned about such obstacles. Her mother had trained for the 2032 games on a cruise ship in the Black Sea and knew a Senegalese runner who broke an ankle and wrist by tripping over a hatch coaming.

Rounding the bow, she started running along the port side. The rising sun was in her eyes. Jenny liked it. Living in Britain for ten years made her appreciate the sun more than she ever had growing up in the Bahamas.

Some other walkers were out. A lean, dark-eyed man with a white ship's towel around his neck was earnestly working on his morning 5K. He was trailed by a few plump women, the American teenage girl, and the youngest of the Chinese tourists, without his holographic hat. The American girl—Julie—was wearing her PDD shades and talking to friends via Your/World. On an earlier lap, Jenny asked in passing why she was up so early.

“I promised my friend Miki in Jakarta I'd be up for her link. She's having trouble with her boyfriend,” she said. The deck was quieter than the lounge and walking let her talk better, she said.

As she passed the clump of walkers, the dark-eyed man sped up to a race-walk. As Jenny was only jogging, he kept pace a few steps behind until she quickened her stride. He did the same, breaking into a jog.

Ah, she thought. You want to try me, do you?

Without looking back, she upped her pace slowly until she hit her 1500-meter stride. Jenny circled the stern and started up the starboard side. To her surprise, the dark-eyed man was still in sight, though a dozen paces behind. She watched how and where he held his hands. He moved like an athlete all right.

Grinning, she kept up her speed past the American guy leaning on the rail with his coffee. Leigh was startled to see Jenny pass at such a clip. Then her pursuer whisked by, and he smiled, too. The
Carleton
's Olympic hopeful had a rival.

He watched the two runners pass out of sight forward. The little group of walkers appeared, chattering among themselves. Julie was with them, waving her hands and declaiming something to the world about stupid boyfriends who were too cheap to buy a girl a decent graduation present . . .

The lounge door slid back and the French guy emerged with a softly steaming mug in both hands. It was one of those heavy, handleless ship's mugs that were weighty yet satisfying to hold.

The walkers trampled by. Julie cocked her head and said brightly, “Hi, France!”

François crossed to the rail after the morning exercisers went by. Leigh nodded a greeting and said, “‘France?'”

“She finds it easier to say than ‘François.'”

“Julie doesn't need people to make things easier for her,” her brother remarked.

“I don't mind. It sounds friendly.”

Leigh told him a story about Julie when she was fourteen and decided she wanted to be called Nova. She wrote Nova on all her possessions and signed everything Nova for months. She even managed to get her teachers and friends to call her Nova, though her family resisted.

“What made her stop using it?” France asked.

“Our grandmother left us a trust fund, which we could draw on starting at age fifteen,” Leigh said. He blew steam off his coffee and sipped it. “Not a fortune, but it was legally assigned to Julia Diana Morrison and Leigh Ellis Morrison. The bank would not issue payments to anyone named Nova.”

“So, given the choice, she chose money over her special name?” Leigh nodded.

Jenny rounded the deck again, still in medium-distance stride. Her rival kept up, though he was a full two paces behind. Leigh saluted with his cup and urged them on.

“Do you know who that is?” France said.

“Jenny Hopkins, she told me her name was—”

“No, I mean the man.” Leigh had no idea. “That's Kiran Trevedi, the cricketer.” Leigh knew next to nothing about cricket. France knew about cricket from his school friend Sanjay. Trevedi was not an Olympic class runner, but he was a considerable athlete.

“Do you think he'll catch her?”

France drained his mug and said, “I don't think he means to.” He watched Trevedi's steady lope. “Looks to me like he's just having fun.”

On the port side, Julie slowly dropped out of the walkers' group. Her connection to Jakarta was going bad. Noise bars broke up the image, and the sound blipped in and out like a rhythm-buster video.

“Hello? Miki, hello?” she shouted. The view in her Your/World glasses went blue—the Blue Screen of Death. “Lower your rez,” she pleaded. “I'm losing you!”

She kept to the rail and walked slowly. Maybe if she was clear of the ship's superstructure, her signal would come back.

There was a girl there, a little younger than Julie, sitting on a piece of deck equipment, looking out to sea at the
Carleton
's wake. She had too much tan but nice clothes. Julie stopped a few steps from her, shaking her contrary PDD glasses.

“Broken?” said the girl.

“I hope not!” Julie said. “I've only had these a couple months. I got 'em before I left the States.”

“American?”

“Yeah.” She put the glasses on and pulled her eyes open as wide as possible. The gesture was supposed to reset the PDD to Your/World specs. Julie saw a few color bars, heard static, and that was all.

“Damn it!”

“Maybe there's a satellite problem,” the tanned girl suggested.

“Can't be that. The feed would just switch to the next satellite in orbit.” Julie wasn't a techie, but she knew about Your/World. She looked up at the sky. It was wide and blue, with only a few stringy clouds clinging to the horizon. She whipped off the PDD.

“I ought to throw 'em in the ocean!”

“Don't do that.”

Both girls turned to see who spoke. It was the kid in black. Two days at sea and he was still dressed like the star of some vampire flick. The tanned girl frowned and resumed her study of the ship's swirling wake.

“It's under warranty, isn't it?” he said. His English was accented, more than the French guy's. Julie sighed and admitted it was.

“Bring it by my cabin and I'll check it for you.”

“Check it? How?”

“The TV in my cabin has jacks for plugging in PDDs. Do that and you can use the TV controls to test your glasses.”

Julie liked the idea, but she said warily, “Your cabin? Who are you, anyway?”

“Emile Becquerel,” the tanned girl said. “Weird rich boy.” Julie stared at her and then at Emile.

“How rich?” she said bluntly.

“His family owns the largest chocolate company in Belgium,” the girl said. “Isn't that right?”

“The largest in Europe devoted only to chocolate. Nestle is bigger, but they are more diversified,” Emile said. He looked unhappy saying so.

“How weird?” was Julie's next question.

“Don't ask me, ask him.”

“Miss Quarrel resents me. I'm not sure why. I helped her and her mother in Cherbourg, and she has resented me ever since.”

“My name is Eleanor!” she snapped, jumping to her feet. “If you helped so much, where's my mother?”

Julie learned of Mrs. Quarrel's visa problems and how Emile loaned her a credit card so she could charter a helicopter and rejoin her daughter at sea. Eleanor had been watching for two days. No helicopter had come.

“That's not my fault,” Emile said mildly.

“Maybe it is, and maybe it isn't.” Eleanor turned first one way, then another. Fists clenched, she said, “It's all too weird!”

She stalked away, almost blundering into the path of the runner. Now blotched with sweat, Jenny was beginning to open up. Trevedi, her shadow, was only a pace behind.

“Hey, uh, Emile? Can we check my PDD now?”

Wind got under the boy's black jacket, and it billowed around his thin frame.

“Are you afraid I'll be weird?”

Julie laughed. “Nah, I'll kick you in the balls if you mess with me!”

Emile watched her go. He wasn't sure if she'd made a threat or a promise.

In the dining room, the wall screens were banded with black lines. The forward screen, tuned to the BBC, had its sound go in and out. The screen at the rear of the room had better sound, but the picture kept breaking up into stray pixel patterns. Passengers complained over their breakfast until the stewards went to fetch an officer. The purser returned, dressed in a navy blue blazer and baseball cap.

“I'm sorry, ladies and gentlemen. We seem to be experiencing communications difficulties,” he said. Someone asked if the ship's systems were being affected, too. Brow furrowed, the purser admitted they were.

“What could it be? The weather's fine,” said the old woman in the lifter chair.

“Solar flare, perhaps, or a magnetic storm in the upper atmosphere,” suggested the man in the tweed cap.

“There's no danger to ship's operations,” the purser said. “It's just an inconvenience.”

One of the Irish ballplayers said, “At this rate, we'll have to break out the shuffleboard gear!”

Some of the passengers laughed. Others did not. And as the day went on, more and more PDDs failed. By nightfall, there was no Your/World access at all.