It all seemed so far away. Pancho followed the winding path toward the seawall, her softboots crunching on the gravel. The Sun was just about touching the horizon, turning the Caribbean reddish gold. Massive clouds were piling up, turning purple and crimson in the underlighting. With the breeze coming off the sea, making the palms bow gracefully, this was as close to a tropical paradise as she could imagine.
But the seawall reminded her of a harsher reality. It was shoulder high, an ugly reinforced concrete barrier against the encroaching waters. It had originally been painted a pastel pink, but the paint had faded in the sun, and the concrete was crumbling here and there where storm tides had pounded against it. The old beaches were all underwater now, except at the very lowest tides. The surf broke out there, long combers tumbling and frothing with a steady, ceaseless growling hiss. And still the sea was rising, a little bit more every year.
“Looks pretty, doesn’t it?”
Startled, she turned to see Randolph standing there, looking glumly out to sea. He was wearing a wrinkled white shirt and dark slacks that had gone baggy from long hours of travel.
“Didn’t see you coming up the path, boss,” said Pancho. “Come to think of it, I didn’t even hear you on the gravel.”
“I walked on the grass,” Randolph said, quite seriously. “Stealth is my middle name.”
Pancho laughed.
But Randolph said gloomily, “When Greenland melts down this will all go under.”
“The whole island?”
“Every damned bit of it. Maybe some of the gantry towers will stick up above the surface. The hilltops. Not much else.”
“Cripes.”
“This used to be part of the mainland, you know. When I first brought the company here, that strait cutting us off from the hills didn’t exist. The sea level’s gone up that much in less than twenty years.”
“And it’s still goin’ up,” Pancho said.
Randolph nodded gloomily, then leaned his arms on the shoulder-high seawall and propped his chin on them.
“How’s the job going?” he asked.
“We’re workin’ at it,” she replied. “It’s a lot to learn, all this fusion stuff.”
With a tired nod, he said, “Yeah, but you’ve got to know every bit of it, Pancho. It anything breaks down out there, you’ve got to be able to diagnose it and fix it.”
“We’ll have an engineer on board,” she said. “Won’t we?”
“Maybe. But whether you do or not, you’ve got to know everything there is to know about the systems.”
“Yeah. I guess.”
“And you’ve got to get the new navigational technique down, too,” he added.
“Point and shoot, yeah. Kinda weird.”
With the thrust and efficiency of the fusion rocket, their spacecraft did not have to travel in an energy-conserving ellipse from Earth orbit to the Belt. Fusion-driven trajectories were almost straight lines: travel times would be days instead of months.
“It’s a lot to learn, I know,” Randolph said.
She saw the weariness in his eyes, and yet there was something else in them, something more. Hope, she thought. Or maybe just plain mulish stubbornness. He wants to make this fusion ship work. And he’s trusting me to drive it. Me and Mandy.
“We could use a weekend off,” she said. “Or even a night on the town.”
The sun had sunk behind the mainland’s mountains. They could see the lights on the mainland beginning to wink on.
“Sorry, kid, no can do,” Randolph said. He started walking along the seawall. “I told you when you agreed to take this assignment, you stay here in the complex.”
“Security, yeah, I know,” Pancho said, following him.
“Your own security, too,” Randolph said. “Not just the company’s. You’re very valuable now. You and Amanda are crucial to this entire operation. I don’t want you running any risks.”
Pancho thought it over. He’s trusting us with this whole operation, right enough. Can’t blame him for being careful. Still…
She looked across the strait again at the lights of the city.
Then a new thought struck her. Does he know I’m supposed to be snooping on him? Is he keeping us bottled up here so’s I can’t get in touch with Humphries?