His tone implied he had a plan for that, too.
The big man led them through more sewers, his bulky form lit by dancing shadows cast by an LED camping lantern he held before him. They had no other light, nor a functional weapon between them. The gun Skadz picked up during the brawl with the Jacobites was empty, and the prospects of finding more ammo were slim.
Samantha stepped carefully. Every surface was slick with humidity and stank with an intensity that made her eyes water, yet the others didn’t complain, so she kept quiet. Short of flying across the city at altitude, this was undoubtedly the best way to reach their destination without being seen.
Ahead, Prumble gestured at a branch in the tunnel. “That way leads to Nightcliff. Skyler took it when he had to sneak in, and they collapsed it a week later.”
Sam couldn’t see much in the dim light. She tried to imagine Skyler’s trek through this dismal place. He’d somehow saved the Elevator from total failure, though only a few people knew it. Her captain had pulled it off and moved straight on to orbit, seeking to save her and then Dr. Sharma. Never once had he asked for thanks or praise. Few in Darwin knew how close the city had come to total collapse, or who their true savior was.
Prumble walked on, taking the branch that led west. After what seemed like a thousand kilometers the tunnel began to slope upward until it finally, blissfully, ended at a locked gate, bars as thick as her arm. Prumble, of course, had a key. Beyond was a disgusting stagnant pool near the ocean. Sam heard waves lapping against rocks, along with the creaking of hundreds of small boats. She gagged at the addition of rotting seaweed odor to the still-pungent reek of sewage. The big man seemed not to notice. Instead he just clambered up the large gray rocks piled around the mouth of the tunnel and continued on as if out for a morning hike. The rocks soon gave way to a barely visible path through shoulder-high reeds. The sun, though still low behind the city’s skyline, already made the air uncomfortably warm and thick with flies.
The path led up onto an embankment that ran along one side of the artificial cove. Occasionally she spotted ragged camping tents nestled within the reeds, heard the sound of snoring from one. Once high enough on the inlet’s side the ocean came into view. Boats and rafts of every size and condition clogged the waters out to a few hundred meters from shore. Those nearest the open ocean were in the best shape, either coming or going in their effort to catch fish. With no room for livestock in any appreciable quantity, Darwin relied on these boats as much as the farms high above to keep people fed. The placement of the Elevator on Darwin’s coastline, either on purpose or otherwise, left almost half of the protective aura covering open ocean. This left fishing as an option, but the coast was so clogged with the watercraft that swarmed Darwin in their flight from the disease that it had become an ecosystem all its own. Fishermen came back to the edge of the flotilla with their catch, trading the haul for whatever supplies they needed, and so began a byzantine process far too complex for Samantha to comprehend. The net result was that some fish made it to shore, but not much.
Prumble halted their march here, overlooking the cluttered bay. He studied the flotilla for a long time.
“Oy,” Skadz said, “big man. Why’ve we stopped? And isn’t Nightcliff way the hell back that way?”
“Tell me something,” Prumble said, as if he hadn’t heard. “What’s the one thing we possess of value?”
The question left Skadz speechless. Sam as well.
“Knowledge,” Prumble said.
Sam smirked. “Okay …”
“We know, for example, that Darwin is not the only place on Earth people can live. We know there’s another option. That’s valuable.”
Samantha put her hands in her pockets and shrugged. “So what? Hardly anyone could get there.”
“Mate,” Skadz said, “if you’re proposing to sell seats on Skyler’s bird, don’t bother. He said it would barely fit us.”
In response Prumble raised one hand and pointed out to sea. Sam had to stand next to him and sight down his arm to see what he was looking at. Even when she found it, she didn’t understand. “That black square?”
“Indeed.”
“What is it?”
Prumble grinned. “The Vadim Zorich. A Russian submarine, thorium powered. She surfaced here a full six months after SUBS hit. The last refugees, and the only people other than you immunes or the suited scavengers who can leave the aura.”
Squinting in disbelief, Skadz said, “And in all this time the crew didn’t bugger off?”
“Many did, yes, but there’s still enough of them left to operate the craft. They go out for months at a time, just because they can, I suppose. Luckily for us, they’re here now.”
“Prumble,” Sam said, “we’ve already got a ride. What’s the point?”
“We have a ride, yes. People who can assist us in entering Nightcliff do not, and I’ll bet they’d like one very much.”
With that he turned and continued his march, his pace reinvigorated. They crested the embankment and left the stench of the shore behind. Prumble guided them through a junkyard of abandoned, crushed vehicles, through two chain-link fences, and finally out onto the strip of land that led to their goal.
“Best to conceal that rifle now,” Prumble said to Skadz without looking back.
Ahead, perched on the shore of East Point, were the six functioning desalination plants. From a distance the huge buildings blended together into one massive industrial complex. A confusing array of pipes and storage tanks.
People, kids mostly, trudged along the crumbling road that led out to the facilities from homes nearer the coastline proper. They carried buckets, bottles, even mixing bowls—whatever would carry water. Empty going out, full going back. Their path took them through a gauntlet of street vendors hawking everything from fresh fish to reasonably clean undergarments. Plant workers weaved through the throng as well. Those carrying water parted for them, and the peddlers treated them as if invisible. They were something akin to an upper class in Darwin, though not quite on the same level as the roof dwellers. Payment being a rather dubious reward in the city, Sam had heard these people kept the water plants running mostly out of a sense of duty, not for the rewards they received. They were a small and dwindling brain trust, something Platz, Blackfield, and now Grillo all realized. So they had choice living conditions within the safety of the peninsula, food provided, and of course all the fresh water they required.
Prumble moved quickly through the crowds. At the far end of the narrow road, in front of the industrial buildings, were guards in both Nightcliff and Jacobite garb. They were checking paperwork as the workers shuffled in.
“Used to be all Platz people out here,” Prumble said. “A lot of the bits and bobs you fetched over the years came this way.”
“I recall,” said Skadz. “Paid handsomely, too.”
“It did at that.” He hunched a bit as he weaved his way past a pair of merchants selling some kind of ground-fish cakes, and then kept going down the embankment on the other side.
The reeds here were taller. Dry, tough things that snagged on any piece of loose clothing available. Unlike the side of the peninsula they’d entered from, there was no worn path here. The going was slow, and the day grew hotter with each step. All signs of the previous night’s storm were gone, leaving nothing but a brilliant blue sky and a blaring heat lamp of a sun.
“On occasion,” Prumble said in a low yet conversational tone, “I used this route when the items I needed to fence were, um, personal in nature.” He came to a chain-link fence topped with razor wire. The barrier ran well out into the ocean. Multiple signs warned against trespassing. Prumble moved to a spot in the fence under one such sign and pulled a section aside. He waved Skadz through first, then Samantha.
Beyond, he took the lead again as the landscape turned from reeds to rocks once more. Sam could see the tips of giant exhaust stacks above the lip of the embankment, though no visible steam or other emission came from the towers just now. A steady noise began to build, a sound she assumed was the by-product of superheating ocean water over a nuclear furnace.
She was sweating profusely and her throat felt dry as paper when they came to a meter-high pipe that ran half buried down the rocky slope and out into the ocean. Sam placed her hand on the cool metal and felt the vibration of water flowing within. Prumble followed the pipe from there, surprisingly steady in his pace despite the distance they’d come in such heat. His trademark leather duster flapped behind him, snapping in the stiff ocean breeze.
When the main building of the desalination plant came into view, Prumble stopped. He leaned against the pipe, and sighed in relief as the cold metal chilled the back of his neck. Skadz mimicked the posture and so Sam did, too.
“Have the next bit figured out yet?” Skadz asked.
Prumble didn’t look back. Instead he just raised one hand and waggled his fingers, urging quiet.
Skadz turned to Samantha instead. “Holding up, love?”
“Nothing like a brisk stroll to start the morning.”
He smirked. “Wish we had some weapons.”
Prumble did a half turn and hissed at them. “Silence.”
“They can’t hear us over these pipes, man,” Skadz shot back.
“I don’t care if they can hear us. I’m trying to listen.”
“For what?”
Prumble held up one meaty finger, his eyes darting upward toward the sky. “Aha. Here we are, like the Tranz on a Friday afternoon at beer-thirty. Right on time.”
“The hell are you on about?”
Sam gripped Skadz by the arm to quiet him. She heard the noise now, too, and nodded at Prumble. The wail of vertical thrusters grew from a whisper to a rushing gale as the water hauler came in from Nightcliff. The aircraft, shaped like an inverted U, flew low on a curved approach that kept it roughly along Aura’s Edge, though well within the safe zone, a route likely chosen to minimize any chance of being shot at. Darwin was a desperate place full of people with little hope of improving their lives. They snapped all the time, and just as easily as Sam could imagine a swagman plugging himself through the roof of the mouth to end things, she could imagine them taking a potshot at the aircraft busily delivering water to the “bloody Orbitals.”
“Get ready,” Prumble said.
As the aircraft slowed and descended to its landing pad, the engines began to howl in their battle against gravity. The noise became painful. Just before it peaked, Prumble moved. He went with laserlike focus, never bothering to pause or even look around at the bevy of guards stationed around the complex. His focus lay squarely on a carefully chosen path, one he’d probably perfected over the years. Or, Sam thought, perhaps it was a path he’d stumbled upon on his first visit and never wavered from. Whatever the case, she followed. First he led them along the pipe as it crested an earthen berm and began to descend into a depression behind the complex. At one point Prumble seemed to duck low, then Skadz did the same a second later, and she realized they’d dropped into a shallow pit. Who’d dug it, or when, she couldn’t know, but soon she found herself hunched over and moving under the big pipe. The metal dripped with condensation. Cold drops that splattered on her head and down the back of her sweat-soaked shirt. It felt wonderful, and ended all too fast. The “tunnel” ran only three meters before exiting on the other side of the pipe. She had to haul herself up on the other side, with help from Skadz’s outstretched hand.
Now they were between two identical pipes. These converged until parallel, with just a meter separating them. Prumble squeezed between and surged forward. When Sam took a second to look up, she saw a few guards standing on a loading dock at the building’s rear. They’d stopped patrolling to watch the aircraft land. She could see their contorted expressions as the noise and wind generated by the plane buffeted them.
And then they were out of sight. The sky became obscured by a network of smaller pipes overhead, and then blotted out entirely. Her eyes struggled to adjust to the sudden darkness. Behind and above, the aircraft’s engines began to power down, and their noise was replaced by the now-amplified drone of water rushing through the pipes to either side of her. From the volume Sam suspected there were dozens of such pipes converging here.
Prumble stopped at a metal door with a submarine-style circular handle. He gripped it with both hands and wheeled it easily until a wet ripping sound like almost-dry glue came from within. The thick hinges squealed when he yanked the door open. Soft yellow light spilled out from within. The big man climbed inside.
When Sam stepped in the big man wheeled his index finger around, his gaze on the door behind her. She closed it and wheeled the handle back into the sealed position. The cramped room went totally silent, save for the labored sounds of her breathing. An aroma hit her—salt and metal and stagnant water. The dimpled steel floor was grimy and dotted with pockets of damp, dark sand.
“We’re inside,” Prumble said, an expression of satisfaction on his face. Sam realized he’d been expecting some kind of confrontation or alarm.
Skadz laughed. “Sorta noticed that. The question is, how do we get on that water hauler for the return trip into Nightcliff? That is your plan, right? Can’t fight our way on. Even if we succeeded, they’d be waiting for us at the other end.”
“Agreed,” Prumble replied. “I had something more subtle in mind.”
“We’re going to sneak aboard?” Sam asked.
“No. We’re going to ask.”
He stepped through another junction, the shape of which again reminded Samantha of a submarine. Oval, a good five centimeters off the floor, and thick. The entire basement was riddled with the odd things, and every third had the same wheel-handle door. Sam realized it must be some kind of spillway, the rooms meant to baffle rushing water. She imagined the doors could be opened remotely, probably by computer if the equipment still worked.
