Then she poured herself a cup of coffee anyway and stepped into the Farm. This was crowded. Most of the Situational Awareness Monitors were showing status displays relating to the functions of the Cloud Ark. The big one at the head of the room was just showing a view of Earth through a camera aimed in that direction. But the video image had nothing like the impact of seeing it directly through the windows of the Woo-Woo Pod. The arc-light intensity of the streaking bolides was reduced to a blurry flare of maxed-out pixels. Out of habit she wondered why they didn’t change the channel to CNN, or Al Jazeera, or one of the other full-time news networks. Then she remembered what was happening.
She proceeded to the door that led into the Tank.
Flanking it was a pair of people who were doing nothing—just standing there. Odd.
She noticed that both of them had unfamiliar devices slung from their belts.
She realized that they were Tasers.
Before she could fully adjust to that, one of them—she recognized him now as Tom Van Meter, an engineer and sort of a jock—nodded politely and opened the door for her.
The Tank was a quarter the size of the Farm, just a medium-sized conference room with, at the moment, six people seated around the table working on tablets or laptops. At its far end was the door leading to Markus’s office. This was ajar. Ivy went through it, and for the first time since coming to Izzy three years earlier, she felt ill at ease doing so, as if someone might jump out and Tase her. But Markus was sitting there talking to Doob.
“Have you been watching Parambulator?” Markus asked her.
“Yes. After we made that course change, a few minutes ago.”
“The performance of the cloud was not everything we could have hoped for.”
“There were some stragglers.”
“Still are,” Doob said, and drew her attention to a projection screen on the wall.
“It looked like they were all new arrivals,” Ivy said. “Cargo modules, passenger carriers from the Splurge. I’m assuming they haven’t logged on to the cloud yet, are not with the program.”
“That is all true but it is dangerous nonetheless,” Markus said.
“Of course it is.”
“It is distracting me.”
“I’ll take care of it.”
“As far as bolides are concerned, the systems are working okay and Doob is keeping an eye out for anomalies. But I need to delegate to you, Ivy, this problem of the stragglers.”
“Consider it done.”
“We will destroy them if we have to.”
“How would you even do that, Markus? We don’t have photon torpedoes.”
“We have a module full of freeze-dried dead people,” Markus reminded her, “that we need to jettison anyway. And I would be happy to jettison it in the direction of any straggler that is threatening the Cloud Ark.”
“I will keep that in mind,” Ivy said, “as a bargaining chip.”
Luisa entered, looking a little wild, her face wet with tears.
“Luisa?” Markus said politely. “Did you find out what was going on in the Vu-Vu Pod?”
“A few people getting very emotional,” Luisa said, “as you would expect. Nothing dangerous. Whoever called that in as a disturbance was being a little paranoid.”
“Thank you for investigating it.”
“Speaking of which—you have armed guards posted outside the door to the Tank!”
“I will speak briefly to that, because I am busy,” Markus said. “My feelings about it are basically the same as yours. But I am not here to express my personal feelings but to carry out certain operations to the best of my ability. I didn’t want to be the king of the universe. Nevertheless, now I am. Everything I have ever seen in the history of human civilization, disagreeable as it might seem, says that someone in my position needs to have security.”
Luisa’s face suggested that she could make all kinds of objections to that. But she got the better of it, and just let out a sigh. “We will talk about it later,” she said.
“Good.”
“Do you know what is happening down there?”
“I can guess what is happening. It is none of my concern.”
“Understood. But I think that the king of the universe needs to make an announcement pretty soon.”
“I have one prepared,” Markus said.
“Oh, yes, of course you would have one prepared. When were you thinking of delivering it? Because there are a lot of people who need to be calmed down.”
“Is one of those people you, Luisa?” Markus asked the question clinically, but not unkindly.
Luisa drew herself up. Ivy braced herself for a sharp reaction, but then a change came over Luisa’s face as she saw that Markus was merely asking for information. Not being snide.
“Yes,” she answered. “A few minutes ago, Manhattan was struck by a hundred-foot wall of water. I presume that the same is true of most of the East Coast. I was listening to the service from St. Patrick’s Cathedral when it went off the air.”
Markus nodded and changed the display on the projection screen to a live view of Earth.
Ivy was shocked by how far the fire had spread during the few minutes she’d been in here.
She pulled her phone out of her pocket and discovered a series of messages from Cal, sent during the last several minutes.
Hey
You busy?
OK I guess you got pulled away
In case we get cut off I love you
Will look for a mermaid like you said but no substitute 4 u
Lost contact with Norfolk. No chain above me
Holy crap it is getting hot
Diving
Bye
And the last message in the series was a photograph snapped on his cell phone’s camera. It took Ivy a minute of panning and zooming to figure out what she was seeing. Cal had taken the photo while standing in the conning tower of his boat, looking straight up the ladder at the open hatch above him. This provided a tunnel-vision view of a disk of sky.
The sky was on fire.
In his other hand he was holding up his engagement ring—a simple band of polished titanium. He was holding it between his thumb and index finger, shooting the picture through the ring, making it concentric with the disk of the burning sky.
She looked up. Someone had spoken her name.
“Mine just faded away,” Doob told her.
“I beg your pardon, Dr. Harris?” Ivy said, the Morg’s manners triumphing over all circumstances.
“I had been gearing up for these final goodbyes with Amelia, with my kids,” Doob said. He spoke quietly, without marked emotion, as if relating a mildly surprising anecdote. “But, you know, the communications just broke down slowly over a couple of days, and there was never really a goodbye.”
“Very well,” Markus said, “I will make the announcement.”
HOT ENOUGH TO BAKE TATERS ON HOOD OF THIS TRUCK
GO INSIDE DAD
NOT KIDDING ABOUT THERMAL EFFECTS. PAINT BUBBLING
I AM NOT KIDDING EITHER YOU HAVE TO GET INSIDE
GOT A SPACE BLANKET TO PROTECT ME WHEN I MAKE A RUN FOR IT
THEN FOR GODS SAKE USE IT DAD
AH BUT THEN I CAN’T CHEW THE RAG WITH YOU ANY LONGER DINAH
WHAT IF YOUR GAS TANK EXPLODES
HA HA WE DRAINED IT FOR GENERATOR FUEL. WAY AHEAD OF YOU KID
GOD U R A SMARTASS
Dinah was keying this in, thankful that Morse code still worked when your vision was blurred by tears and your voice choked by sobs, when a voice came out of a speaker. It was Markus’s voice: “This is Markus Leuker.”
“I know who you are,” she answered. But then she understood that Markus was speaking on the all-Ark PA system, which supposedly reached into every corner of Izzy as well as to all of the arklets. They had tested it a few times with prerecorded messages, but never actually used it. Markus considered the thing a relic of the twentieth century, and detested it; communications ought to be targeted, busy people ought not to be interrupted by disembodied voices barking from speakers.