Lost Republic (5 page)

Julie Morrison kicked the footstool away. It was heavy, chrome steel and fell over with a loud thump. If she could, she would have thrown it as far as she could.

It was the sixth day out from Cherbourg. Overnight the air- conditioning had failed, leaving everyone belowdecks sweltering in their sleep. Julie, who usually slept in an oversize man's T-shirt, woke before dawn with her shirt stuck to her and her sheets damp with sweat. She went to the bathroom and flicked on the light. She looked like a girl in one of those nasty frat-boy movies her brother used to like before he was old enough to go to college.

The LEDs around the rim of the light were dim and red. Even Julie knew that meant not enough electricity.

She had a tepid shower and put on some dry clothes. There was a porthole in her cabin, but opening it didn't improve anything. A strong ocean smell crept in. It reminded Julie of trips to Kure Beach in North Carolina when she was a kid, when everything smelled moldy and faintly rotten, but you didn't care because it was the beach. Funny. She thought it only smelled this way at the coast, not hundreds of miles at sea.

Her cabin mate slept on, sprawled out with her arms and legs splayed wide, seeking coolness even in the depths of sleep. Julie looked over the useless hardware on her dressing table: PDD, Your/World glasses, pocket phone, Info-Coach. She hadn't gotten a peep or gleam out of any of them in three days, so she kicked the footstool and decided to go up on deck.

The overhead light in the passage flickered and buzzed. All else was quiet. What an ugly old tub this ship was. Why couldn't her parents have booked her on
Sunflyer
? She could be going to New Man concerts every night and enjoying carbon-free air- conditioning . . .

It was then Julie realized the usual constant vibration of the engines was missing. Nor was the
Carleton
bobbing up and down in the waves. The ship was so still, it was like being in a not-so nice hotel, one with riveted steel walls and no piped in music.

Wind, warm and damp, wafted down the open stairwell. The light above was gray and colorless. Julie emerged on deck and saw the Atlantic was dead calm, like a lake of glass. Where sea and sky met was an indistinct gray zone. Whether there was mist the color of the sea rising, or the sea had gone pale as the sky, Julie couldn't tell. It gave the horizon a strangely flat look, like a painted backdrop. Julie felt like if she could lean out far enough, she could touch the featureless place where sky and sea met.

She went aft and found other passengers leaning on the rail or talking in small groups on the
Carleton
's quarterdeck. Julie looked for someone she knew. The German guy, Hans What's-his-name, was standing at the far end of the ship, writing in a notebook—actually writing with an ink pen in a paper notebook, something Julie had only seen her grandmother do.

She walked up, hands clasped behind her back.

“Hey,” she said. Something about the situation made her keep her voice low.

“Hello.”

Hans didn't look up from his writing. Julie peeked over the top of the notebook and saw columns of figures.

“What are you doing?”

“Trying to estimate our position, based on our speed, elapsed time, and our location yesterday,” he said.

“Oh. Where are we?”

He met her eyes. Hans' hair was mussed, and he looked like he'd slept in his clothes.

“I can't tell! It would be easier if the sun was out—”

Julie smiled. “It should be up soon.”

Hans shook his head. “It was supposed to have risen ninety minutes ago.”

That didn't make sense. The sky was uniformly light, but in a soft, diffuse way. Gray horizon slowly melded into blue sky overhead, with no distinct clouds anywhere—and no sun.

“That's just weird!” Julie went to the curved stern rail and looked down. The usual turbulence of the ship's screws was little more than a swirl. “We're hardly moving!”

“Yes, power is out to many of the ship's systems,” Hans said. He came to the rail beside her. “The captain has not told us why.”

He was good looking, in a clueless sort of way. His constant lost-in-thought manner was not Julie's favorite look in guys, but his enthusiasm was rather cute. She noticed Hans chewed the end of his pen when he was thinking and had long, expressive fingers. Musician fingers, Julie thought.

The purser, Mr. Brock, walked briskly 'round the stern, greeting each passenger by name. When he came near, Julie didn't wait for pleasantries.

“What happened to the air-conditioning?” she demanded.

Mr. Brock smiled, not showing any teeth. “Utilities are out on B and C deck,” he said. “There's been a loss of power from the generators. Repairs are being made.”

“This old ship is falling apart,” Julie went on. “No Your/World, no TV, now no A/C? What's next, no toilets?”

Purser Brock eyed other passengers nearby who heard the American girl's complaints. He said, “The
Carleton
was never intended to carry so many passengers. Too many demands have been made on the ship's systems. As for the loss of communications, that is hardly our fault.”

“I bet they have Your/World on the
Sunflyer
!”

“I'm sure they have many amenities on the sunship,” Brock said carefully. To Hans he said, “Captain Viega wanted me to thank you again for the use of your sextant, Mr. Bachmann. It's a magnificent instrument.”

“It was made in Wetzlar in 1899,” Hans replied. “They made the best lenses in the world.”

“I wish they made our air-conditioning,” Julie grumbled.

Breakfast was cold that morning—fruit, yogurt, cheese, and cereal. The bread was leftover from the night before. The chief steward apologized. The electrical stoves in the galley were not working. So far, the ship's refrigerators were still cold, but power was slowly failing throughout the ship.

“Why?” France Martin asked. “The engines are still running, aren't they?”

The chief steward said, “Yes, but I am told the dynamos are down and storage batteries are barely holding any charge.” Mr. Chen wanted to know his source of this information. “I have this from Engineer Pascal.”

Sullen silence fell. One of the young kids started to cry about the tasteless breakfast and got a sharp reply from his mother. France didn't care much about the food, but he wondered where all the power generated by the
Carleton'
s engines was going. They were turning, but the dynamos weren't putting out electricity. Even the batteries, which ought to have lasted for days, were malfunctioning. But why?

His question went unanswered. In that moment, the
Carleton
shuddered violently from end to end. A loud, crushing, crashing sound filled the air.

Leigh had a stale biscuit in hand, about to bite, when the deck flew wildly to the right, throwing him right over in his chair. An empty chair fell on top of him, which hurt, followed by the Belgian kid, Emile. That really hurt. The back of the chair rapped Leigh across the nose. Emile's weight drove the fallen furniture into him.

Jenny Hopkins was frowning at the breakfast buffet. There were too many carbs on the menu and not enough protein. Then the deck lurched under her. She caught the edge of the buffet in both hands, and tray after tray of canned peaches, muesli, biscuits, and jam packets hit her. She held on through the barrage until a pitcher of orange juice started to slide at her face. Jenny let go one hand and swung out of the way. The pitcher smashed to juicy bits against the starboard wall.

Eleanor was standing, too. She was tired and feeling ill from a sweaty night in her cabin. All she wanted for breakfast was yogurt and a little coffee. The
Carleton
always served good coffee (the Panamanian crew demanded it), but she had hardly filled her heavy mug before the ship creaked over on its side. Hot coffee poured over her hand and bare leg.

Linh Prudhomme was in her suite when the
Carleton
suddenly keeled over. She was thrown against the couch. Her case of poker chips hit the floor and burst open, spilling red, black, and gold disks everywhere.

On the boat deck, Hans had been trying to find the sun. He'd gotten the
Preussen
sextant from the navigator and was quartering likely parts of the sky for a glimmer of sunlight. He was so wrapped up in his task, he had no chance to brace himself. The impact half-flipped Hans over the rail. His feet went up and his head went down. His first act was to try to grab the thickly painted rail, but he misjudged the distance, and his hand closed on air. Hans's chin hit something hard, and his PDD, now useless, slipped from his shirt pocket and vanished over the side.

The ship lurched again, not as hard as the first time. Hans jammed a foot between the rails. Steadied, he finally managed to avoid being thrown thirty feet into the sea. The antique sextant was not so lucky. Hans saved his own life, but the 150-year-old instrument splashed in the water far below after his personal date device. Both sank without a trace.

Julie sat down so hard when the ship tilted that the shock ran right up her spine. It was like a jolt of electricity, and for a moment she was paralyzed. Plates and flatware rained on her. Mrs. Ellis glided past in her lifter chair, eyes wide with terror. She smacked into the wall just behind where Leigh and Emile Bequerel struggled under a pile of tumbled chairs.

The ship's whistle shrieked, followed closely by the bellow of the steam horn. Everyone was yelling, screaming, or crying. After a long, deafening concert, the ship stopped screaming first. The passengers quit when it slowly became clear they weren't all going to die in the next two seconds.

The chief steward, the cook, and the cook's assistants went through the slanted lounge, helping people stand. Eleanor's burns were painful, but not serious. Leigh had a black eye. Emile was untouched.

“Of course he is,” Leigh snarled. “He had a cushion to land on!”

Hans used his foot hooked in the railing to lever himself back on deck. Looking at the slanted superstructure, he estimated the ship's list at ten degrees. When the horn fell silent, he groped his way forward to the steps up to the bridge. Other passengers felt their way out of the lounge and started that way, too. On the walkway just past the signals room, Hans heard Captain Viega shouting in Spanish. He didn't sound frightened, just mad as hell.

He emerged from the wheelhouse, red-faced. Seeing Hans, he cried, “What are you doing here? Passengers are not allowed on the bridge!”

“What's happened, Captain?”

“Can't you see? We've run aground!”

“Aground? In the middle of the North Atlantic?”

“It's insane, I know, but what can I tell you? Now get below!” To the crowd climbing toward him, he shouted, “All of you, return to your cabins or the lounge! There is nothing for you to do! The crew and I will deal with this emergency!”

Hans backed down the steps. He leaned out far enough to see the ship's stack. A ribbon of gray smoke from it rose straight up in the still air. The engines were still running, it seemed. Some of the ship's masts had been damaged by the collision. One of the aft stacks had broken off and was only held up by its wires. The spinning radome atop the wheelhouse had stopped. There was the sharp smell of ozone in the air.

Carleton
's crew crawled all over the ship, inspecting every nook and cranny. The captain, Purser Brock, Signals Officer Señales, and the chief steward took up positions on deck and received breathless reports on the ship's condition. Gradually, some facts emerged. They didn't make much sense.

Carleton
had experienced a slow loss of propulsive power over the previous twenty-four hours. Her speed had been down to about three knots when she ran into—whatever she had run into. Several compartments at the point of collision were slowly filling with water. Those compartments had been sealed off.

“We're not sinking, are we?” asked Kiran Trevedi.

“We are not,” Captain Viega said gravely. “That is the good news—”

“What is the bad news?” Emile called out.

“We can't get off this—this obstruction.”

The passengers took this news with puzzled calm. Mrs. Ellis, the only person not affected by the list, asked if they had hit an underwater object, like a submerged wreck.

“We are dead in the water,” said the captain. “Apparently we've struck something solid.”

Hans ran a hand through his sweat-damp hair. “But there's no dry land in the open sea!”

The closest land, as of their last-known position, was still the south coast of Ireland. Greenland was still a long way off, and Canada even farther away.

“Maybe there's been an earthquake,” Mr. Chen said. “This bar could have risen from the bottom of the sea.”

France didn't believe this. The North Atlantic was very deep. Even the closest undersea mountains, the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, were hundreds of miles away. How could an earthquake, even a monumental one, raise the sea bottom hundreds of yards?

Chen's earthquake idea caught on. The woman from the engine room tour said a big quake could explain the loss of communications.

“How?” said Julie.

“Ground stations and power plants are wrecked,” she said.

With an air of growing understanding, Leigh said, “And that's why we can't see the sun—dust raised by a quake is blotting it out!”

Everyone began talking at once, loudly. Some people thought the whole world must have been destroyed, and they, the crew and passengers of the
Sir Guy Carleton,
were the last people on earth. Others, more skeptical, believed only Europe or North America was damaged. Disgusted by the growing hysteria, France worked his way to the low side of the room and tried to get out of the lounge. Emile followed him.

On deck, they peered over the side at the turbulent water below. They couldn't see any rocks or sand, but the ship was stuck hard on whatever was down there.