“What can I do for you, Dunk?”
He had a way of smiling that made Michael think of a cork in a bottle. “I really should get down here more often. I don’t know what half this stuff is. Take those things over there.” He wagged a meaty finger, thick as a sausage.
“Water jacket pumps.”
“What do they do?”
The day was getting away without much to show for it; now he had to deal with this. “It’s kind of technical. Not really your thing.”
“Why am I here, Michael?”
Guessing games, as if they were five years old. “A sudden interest in marine repair?”
Dunk’s eyes hardened on Michael’s face. “I’m here, Michael, because you’re not meeting your obligation to me. Mystic’s open for settlement. That means demand. I need the new boiler up and running. Not later. Today.”
Michael aimed his voice at the catwalk. “Has anybody found Patch yet?”
“We’re looking!”
He turned toward Dunk again. What an ox the man was. He should’ve been strapped to a plow. “I’m kind of busy at the moment.”
“Allow me to remind you of the terms. You do your magic with the stills, I give you ten percent of the profits. It’s not hard to remember.”
Michael yelled up to the catwalk again. “Sometime today would be nice!”
The next thing Michael knew, he was rammed up against the bulkhead, Dunk’s forearm pressing against his throat.
“Do I have your attention now?”
The man’s broad, pitted nose was inches from Michael’s; his breath was sour as old wine.
“Easy, amigo. We don’t have to do this in front of the kids.”
“You work for
me,
goddamnit.”
“If I could point something out. Breaking my neck might feel good in the moment, but it won’t get you any more lick.”
“Everything okay, Michael?”
Rand was standing behind Dunk with two others, Fastau and Weir. Rand was clutching a long wrench; the other two had lengths of pipe. They were holding these implements in an offhand manner, as if they’d merely picked them up in the course of a day’s work.
“Just a little misunderstanding,” Michael replied. “How about it, Dunk? We don’t need to have a problem here. You’ve got my attention, I promise.”
Dunk’s arm pressed tighter against his throat. “Fuck you.”
Michael glanced over Dunk’s shoulder at Weir and Fastau. “You two, go check on the stills, see what the situation is, then report back to me. Got it?” He returned his attention to Dunk. “Got this covered. I’m hearing you loud and clear.”
“Twenty years. I’ve had it with your bullshit. This … hobby of yours.”
“Totally understand your feelings. I spoke out of turn. New boilers up and running, no problem.”
Dunk kept glowering at him. It was hard to say how things were going to go. Finally, giving Michael a last hard shove against the bunker, Dunk backed away. He turned toward Michael’s men and nailed them with a hard look.
“You three should be more careful.”
Michael withheld his coughing until Dunk was out of sight.
“Jesus, Michael.” Rand was staring at him.
“Oh, he’s just having a bad day. He’ll cool off. You two, back to work. Rand, you’re with me.”
Weir frowned. “You don’t want us to go to the stills?”
“No, I don’t. I’ll look in on them later.”
They walked away.
“You shouldn’t goad him like that,” Rand said.
Michael paused to cough again. He felt a little foolish, though on the other hand, the whole thing had been strangely gratifying. It was nice when people were themselves. “Have you seen Greer anywhere?”
“He took a launch up the channel this morning.”
So, feeding day. Michael always worried—Amy still tried to kill Greer every time—but the man took it in stride. Except for Rand, who’d been with them from the beginning, none of Michael’s men knew about that part of things: Amy, Carter, the
Chevron Mariner,
the jugs of blood that Greer dutifully delivered every sixty days.
Rand glanced around. “How long do you think we have before the virals come back?” he asked quietly. “It’s got to be close by now.”
Michael shrugged.
“It’s not that I’m not grateful. We all are. But people want to be ready.”
“If they do their damn jobs, we’ll be long gone before it happens.” Michael hitched his tool bag onto his shoulder. “And for fucksake, will somebody
please
go find Patch. I don’t want to wait around all morning.”
It was evening when Michael finally emerged from the bowels of the ship. His knees were killing him; he’d done something to his neck, too. He’d never found the leak, either.
But he would; he always did. He would find it, and every other leak and rusty rivet and frayed wire in the
Bergensfjord
’s miles of cables and wires and pipes, and soon, in a matter of months, they would charge the batteries and test-fire the engines, and if all went as it should, they’d be ready. Michael liked to imagine that day. The pumps engaging, water pouring into the dock, the retaining wall opening, and the
Bergensfjord,
all twenty thousand tons of her, sliding gracefully from her braces into the sea.
For two decades, Michael had thought of little else. The trade had been Greer’s idea—a stroke of genius, really. They needed money, a lot of it. What did they have to sell? A month after he’d shown Lucius the newspaper from the
Bergensfjord,
Michael had found himself in the back room of the gambling hall known as Cousin’s Place, sitting across a table from Dunk Withers. Michael knew him to be a man of extraordinary temper, lacking all conscience, driven by only the most utilitarian concerns; Michael’s life meant nothing to him, because no one’s did. But Michael’s reputation had preceded him, and he’d done his homework. The gates were about to open; people would be flooding into the townships. The opportunities were many, Michael pointed out, but did the trade possess the capacity to meet a rapidly growing demand? What would Dunk say if Michael told him that he could triple—no,
quadruple—
his output? That he could also guarantee an uninterrupted flow of ammunition? And furthermore, what if Michael knew about a place where the trade could operate in complete safety, beyond the reach of the military or the domestic authority but with quick access to Kerrville and the townships? That, in sum, he could make Dunk Withers richer than he could imagine?
Thus was the isthmus born.
A great deal of time was wasted at the start. Before Michael could so much as tighten a single bolt on the
Bergensfjord,
he had to win the man’s confidence. For three years he had overseen the construction of the massive stills that would make Dunk Withers a legend. Michael was not unaware of the costs. How many fistfights would leave a man bloodied and toothless, how many bodies would be dumped into alleyways, how many wives and children would be beaten or even killed all because of the mental poison he provided? He tried not to think about it. The
Bergensfjord
was all the mattered; it was a price she demanded, paid in blood.
Along the way, he laid the groundwork for his true enterprise. He began with the refinery. Cautious inquiries: Who seemed bored? Dissatisfied? Restless? Rand Horgan was the first; he and Michael had worked the cookers together for years. Others followed, recruited from every corner. Greer would leave for a few days, then return with a man in a jeep with nothing but a duffel bag and his promise to stay on the isthmus for five years in exchange for wages so outrageous they would set him up for life. The numbers accumulated; soon they had fifty-four stout souls with nothing to lose. Michael noticed a pattern. The money was an inducement, but what these men really sought was something intangible. A great many people drifted through their lives without a feeling of purpose. Each day felt indistinguishable from the last, devoid of meaning. When he unveiled the
Bergensfjord
to each new recruit, Michael could see a change in the man’s eyes. Here was something beyond the scope of ordinary days, something from before the time of mankind’s diminishment. It was the past Michael was giving these men and, with it, the future.
We’re actually going to fix it?
they always asked.
Not “it,”
Michael corrected
. “Her.” And no, we’re not going to fix her. We’re going to wake her up.
It didn’t always take. Michael’s rule was this: At the three-year mark, once Michael was certain of a man’s loyalty, he took him to an isolated hut, sat him in a chair, and gave him the bad news. Most took it well: a moment of disbelief, a brief period of bargaining with the cosmos, requests for evidence Michael declined to provide, resistance eventually yielding to acceptance and, finally, a melancholy gratitude. They would be among the living, after all. As for those who didn’t last three years, or failed the test of the hut, well, that was unfortunate. Greer was the one to take care of this; Michael kept his distance. They were surrounded by water, into which a man could quietly vanish. Afterward, his name was never mentioned.
It took two years to repair the dock, another two to pump and refloat the hull, a fifth to back her in. The day they set her hull in the braces, sealed the doors, and drained the water from the dock was the most anxious of Michael’s life. The braces would hold, or not; the hull would crack, or it wouldn’t. A thousand things could go wrong, and there would be no second chances. As a layer of daylight appeared between the receding water and the bottom of the hull, his men erupted in cheers, but Michael’s emotions were different. He felt not elation but a sense of fate. Alone, he took the stairs to the bottom of the dock. The cheers had quieted; everyone was watching him. With water pooling around his ankles, he stepped toward her cautiously, as if approaching some great, holy relic. Clear of the water, she had become something new. The sheer size of her, her indomitable bulk—it staggered the mind. The curvature of her hull below the waterline possessed an almost feminine softness; from her bow jutted a bulbous shape, like a nose or the front of a bullet. He moved under her; all her weight was above him now, a mountain suspended over his head. He reached up and placed a hand against her hull. She was cold; a humming sensation met the tips of his fingers. It was as if she were breathing, a living thing. A deep certainty flowed into his veins: here was his mission. All other possibilities for his life dropped away; until the day he died, he would have no purpose but this.
Except to sail the
Nautilus,
Michael had not left the isthmus since. A show of solidarity, politically wise, but in his heart he knew the real reason. He belonged nowhere else.
He walked to the bow to look for Greer. A damp March wind was blowing. The isthmus, part of an old shipyard complex, jutted into the channel a quarter mile south of the Channel Bridge. A hundred yards offshore. the
Nautilus
lay at anchor. Her hull was still tight, her canvas crisp. The sight made him feel disloyal; he had not sailed her in months. She was the forerunner; if the
Bergensfjord
was his wife, then the
Nautilus
was the girl who had taught him to love.
He heard the launch before he saw it, churning under the Channel Bridge in the silvery light. Michael descended to the service dock as Greer guided the boat in. He tossed Michael a line.
“How did it go?”
Greer tied off the stern, passed Michael his rifle, and climbed onto the pier. Just past seventy, he had aged the way bulls did: one minute they’d be huffing and snorting, looking to gore you; the next you’d find them lying in a field, covered in flies.
“Well,” Michael offered, “she didn’t kill you—that’s a plus.”
Greer didn’t answer. Michael sensed that the man was troubled; the visit had not gone well.
“Lucius, did she say something?”
“Say? You know how this works.”
“Actually, I’ve never really known.”
He shrugged. “It’s a feeling I have.
She
has. Probably it’s nothing.”
Michael decided not to press. “There was something else I wanted to bring up with you. I had a little run-in with Dunk today.”
Greer was coiling rope. “You know how he gets. This time tomorrow he’ll have forgotten all about it.”
“I don’t think he’s going to let this one go. It was bad.”
Greer looked up.
“It was my fault. I was egging him on.”
“What happened?”
“He came down to the engine room. The usual bullshit about the stills. Rand and a couple of guys practically had to pull him off me.”
Greer’s brow furrowed. “There’s been too much of this.”
“I know. He’s getting to be a problem.” Michael paused, then said, “It may be time.”
Greer was silent, taking this in.
“We’ve talked about it.”
Greer thought for a moment, then nodded. “Under the circumstances, you may be right.”
They went over the names: who they could count on, who they couldn’t, who was somewhere in between and would have to be carefully handled.
“You should lie low for now,” Greer said. “Rand and I will make the arrangements.”
“If you think that’s best.”
The spotlights had come on, drenching the dock with light. Michael would be working most of the night.
“Just get that ship ready,” said Greer.
Sara glanced up from her desk; Jenny was standing in the doorway.
“Sara, you need to see something.”
Sara followed her downstairs to the wards. Jenny pulled back the curtain to show her. “The DS found him in an alley.”
It took Sara a moment to recognize her own son-in-law. His face had been beaten to a pulp. Both of his arms were in casts. They moved back outside.
Jenny said, “I only just saw the chart and realized who it was.”
“Where’s Kate?”
“She’s on the evening shift.”
It was nearly four o’clock. Kate would be walking in the door any second.
“Head her off.”
“What do you want me to say?”
Sara took a moment to think. “Send her to the orphanage. Aren’t they due for a visit?”
“I don’t know.”
“Figure it out. Go.”
Sara entered the ward. As she approached, Bill looked up with the eyes of a man who knew his day was about to get worse.