Lost Republic Read online

  Sunflyer whooshed on toward the eastern harbor exit, between the old forts de Chavagnac and de l’Ouest. The news blimp and drones followed, but the sightseers in small boats fell back. A few approached the wake of the steamer, wallowing in the mist raised by the sunship. François saluted the nearest ones, but no one waved back. On the pitching foredeck, people struggled with handheld PDDs, looking at the video footage they had just shot of the Sunflyer’s departure.

  The deck diehards gave up and entered the main deck lounge. There were giant screens set up at opposite ends of the long room. Everyone was watching aerial views of the sunship as it skimmed out to sea.

  “Can you imagine?” Julie Morrison was saying. “The view from up there must be gorgeous!”

  “If you could see anything through all that spray,” her brother replied.

  “I heard New Man was on board with his whole band,” said a young woman. “Along with the entire cast of Chances They Take!”

  New Man was a Norwegian pop star, very big in Europe. Chances They Take was an American Your/World show about a team of professional daredevils who traveled the world trying every kind of dangerous challenge.

  “The only danger on board Sunflyer will be overeating,” said a tall Asian girl in impeccable Parisian French.

  François smiled. “And papercuts from their napkins,” he said in the same language. The girl smiled a little.

  Many passengers filed out of the lounge after Sunflyer disappeared out to sea. Eurochannel switched to commentary about what the maiden voyage of the sunship meant, further thinning the crowd.

  François decided to find his cabin. It was below deck, a shared berth. For what his father was paying for luxury on the sunship, François could have had the most deluxe cabin on the Carleton. It suited his mood to choose the cheapest accommodation he could get. He wondered who he would be with. Not the weird kid in black, oh please . . .

  He found a guy about his age unpacking an antique leather suitcase. He was neatly stowing his socks and underwear in drawers under his bunk.

  The guy stood up and smiled. “Ah, hello!” he said in English, but he wasn’t English or American. His clothes were quite old-fashioned, with many buttons and strips of leather here and there.

  “Hello,” François said. “François Martin.”

  The guy took his hand and shook it firmly. “Johann Sebastian Bachmann—but call me Hans.”

  Chapter 3

  The ship rolled slowly through the Atlantic swell. Early morning rays of sunlight pierced the low clouds that veiled the French coast. Leigh Morrison walked out of the Carleton’s lounge (now serving as the dining room) onto the boat deck. The sea air was cool but damp. He sipped coffee and gazed at the northern horizon, still gray from dawn.

  A soft thump-thump-thump announced Jenny Hopkins. Clad in electric blue sweats from neck to ankle, she jogged by Leigh, whose head was wrapped in coffee steam.

  “Morning,” he said. “How many laps?”

  “Thirteen, so far,” she replied. Jenny meant to do thirty before breakfast. Forty would have been better, but the deck was hard on her ankles and knees. It was wood planking laid down over steel plates and had no resilience at all. The first evening after they left Cherbourg, she had shin splints from running too long on the hard deck.

  She followed the slow curve of the ship forward, keeping clear of doors, vents, and hatches. Her mother warned about such obstacles. Her mother had trained for the 2032 games on a cruise ship in the Black Sea and knew a Senegalese runner who broke an ankle and wrist by tripping over a hatch coaming.

  Rounding the bow, she started running along the port side. The rising sun was in her eyes. Jenny liked it. Living in Britain for ten years made her appreciate the sun more than she ever had growing up in the Bahamas.

  Some other walkers were out. A lean, dark-eyed man with a white ship’s towel around his neck was earnestly working on his morning 5K. He was trailed by a few plump women, the American teenage girl, and the youngest of the Chinese tourists, without his holographic hat. The American girl—Julie—was wearing her PDD shades and talking to friends via Your/World. On an earlier lap, Jenny asked in passing why she was up so early.

  “I promised my friend Miki in Jakarta I’d be up for her link. She’s having trouble with her boyfriend,” she said. The deck was quieter than the lounge and walking let her talk better, she said.

  As she passed the clump of walkers, the dark-eyed man sped up to a race-walk. As Jenny was only jogging, he kept pace a few steps behind until she quickened her stride. He did the same, breaking into a jog.

  Ah, she thought. You want to try me, do you?

  Without looking back, she upped her pace slowly until she hit her 1500-meter stride. Jenny circled the stern and started up the starboard side. To her surprise, the dark-eyed man was still in sight, though a dozen paces behind. She watched how and where he held his hands. He moved like an athlete all right.

  Grinning, she kept up her speed past the American guy leaning on the rail with his coffee. Leigh was startled to see Jenny pass at such a clip. Then her pursuer whisked by, and he smiled, too. The Carleton’s Olympic hopeful had a rival.

  He watched the two runners pass out of sight forward. The little group of walkers appeared, chattering among themselves. Julie was with them, waving her hands and declaiming something to the world about stupid boyfriends who were too cheap to buy a girl a decent graduation present . . .

  The lounge door slid back and the French guy emerged with a softly steaming mug in both hands. It was one of those heavy, handleless ship’s mugs that were weighty yet satisfying to hold.

  The walkers trampled by. Julie cocked her head and said brightly, “Hi, France!”

  François crossed to the rail after the morning exercisers went by. Leigh nodded a greeting and said, “‘France?’”

  “She finds it easier to say than ‘François.’”

  “Julie doesn’t need people to make things easier for her,” her brother remarked.

  “I don’t mind. It sounds friendly.”

  Leigh told him a story about Julie when she was fourteen and decided she wanted to be called Nova. She wrote Nova on all her possessions and signed everything Nova for months. She even managed to get her teachers and friends to call her Nova, though her family resisted.

  “What made her stop using it?” France asked.

  “Our grandmother left us a trust fund, which we could draw on starting at age fifteen,” Leigh said. He blew steam off his coffee and sipped it. “Not a fortune, but it was legally assigned to Julia Diana Morrison and Leigh Ellis Morrison. The bank would not issue payments to anyone named Nova.”

  “So, given the choice, she chose money over her special name?” Leigh nodded.

  Jenny rounded the deck again, still in medium-distance stride. Her rival kept up, though he was a full two paces behind. Leigh saluted with his cup and urged them on.

  “Do you know who that is?” France said.

  “Jenny Hopkins, she told me her name was—”

  “No, I mean the man.” Leigh had no idea. “That’s Kiran Trevedi, the cricketer.” Leigh knew next to nothing about cricket. France knew about cricket from his school friend Sanjay. Trevedi was not an Olympic class runner, but he was a considerable athlete.

  “Do you think he’ll catch her?”

  France drained his mug and said, “I don’t think he means to.” He watched Trevedi’s steady lope. “Looks to me like he’s just having fun.”

  On the port side, Julie slowly dropped out of the walkers’ group. Her connection to Jakarta was going bad. Noise bars broke up the image, and the sound blipped in and out like a rhythm-buster video.

  “Hello? Miki, hello?” she shouted. The view in her Your/World glasses went blue—the Blue Screen of Death. “Lower your rez,” she pleaded. “I’m losing you!”

  She kept to the
rail and walked slowly. Maybe if she was clear of the ship’s superstructure, her signal would come back.

  There was a girl there, a little younger than Julie, sitting on a piece of deck equipment, looking out to sea at the Carleton’s wake. She had too much tan but nice clothes. Julie stopped a few steps from her, shaking her contrary PDD glasses.

  “Broken?” said the girl.

  “I hope not!” Julie said. “I’ve only had these a couple months. I got ’em before I left the States.”

  “American?”

  “Yeah.” She put the glasses on and pulled her eyes open as wide as possible. The gesture was supposed to reset the PDD to Your/World specs. Julie saw a few color bars, heard static, and that was all.

  “Damn it!”

  “Maybe there’s a satellite problem,” the tanned girl suggested.

  “Can’t be that. The feed would just switch to the next satellite in orbit.” Julie wasn’t a techie, but she knew about Your/World. She looked up at the sky. It was wide and blue, with only a few stringy clouds clinging to the horizon. She whipped off the PDD.

  “I ought to throw ’em in the ocean!”

  “Don’t do that.”

  Both girls turned to see who spoke. It was the kid in black. Two days at sea and he was still dressed like the star of some vampire flick. The tanned girl frowned and resumed her study of the ship’s swirling wake.

  “It’s under warranty, isn’t it?” he said. His English was accented, more than the French guy’s. Julie sighed and admitted it was.

  “Bring it by my cabin and I’ll check it for you.”

  “Check it? How?”

  “The TV in my cabin has jacks for plugging in PDDs. Do that and you can use the TV controls to test your glasses.”

  Julie liked the idea, but she said warily, “Your cabin? Who are you, anyway?”

  “Emile Becquerel,” the tanned girl said. “Weird rich boy.” Julie stared at her and then at Emile.

  “How rich?” she said bluntly.

  “His family owns the largest chocolate company in Belgium,” the girl said. “Isn’t that right?”

  “The largest in Europe devoted only to chocolate. Nestle is bigger, but they are more diversified,” Emile said. He looked unhappy saying so.

  “How weird?” was Julie’s next question.

  “Don’t ask me, ask him.”

  “Miss Quarrel resents me. I’m not sure why. I helped her and her mother in Cherbourg, and she has resented me ever since.”

  “My name is Eleanor!” she snapped, jumping to her feet. “If you helped so much, where’s my mother?”

  Julie learned of Mrs. Quarrel’s visa problems and how Emile loaned her a credit card so she could charter a helicopter and rejoin her daughter at sea. Eleanor had been watching for two days. No helicopter had come.

  “That’s not my fault,” Emile said mildly.

  “Maybe it is, and maybe it isn’t.” Eleanor turned first one way, then another. Fists clenched, she said, “It’s all too weird!”

  She stalked away, almost blundering into the path of the runner. Now blotched with sweat, Jenny was beginning to open up. Trevedi, her shadow, was only a pace behind.

  “Hey, uh, Emile? Can we check my PDD now?”

  Wind got under the boy’s black jacket, and it billowed around his thin frame.

  “Are you afraid I’ll be weird?”

  Julie laughed. “Nah, I’ll kick you in the balls if you mess with me!”

  Emile watched her go. He wasn’t sure if she’d made a threat or a promise.

  In the dining room, the wall screens were banded with black lines. The forward screen, tuned to the BBC, had its sound go in and out. The screen at the rear of the room had better sound, but the picture kept breaking up into stray pixel patterns. Passengers complained over their breakfast until the stewards went to fetch an officer. The purser returned, dressed in a navy blue blazer and baseball cap.

  “I’m sorry, ladies and gentlemen. We seem to be experiencing communications difficulties,” he said. Someone asked if the ship’s systems were being affected, too. Brow furrowed, the purser admitted they were.

  “What could it be? The weather’s fine,” said the old woman in the lifter chair.

  “Solar flare, perhaps, or a magnetic storm in the upper atmosphere,” suggested the man in the tweed cap.

  “There’s no danger to ship’s operations,” the purser said. “It’s just an inconvenience.”

  One of the Irish ballplayers said, “At this rate, we’ll have to break out the shuffleboard gear!”

  Some of the passengers laughed. Others did not. And as the day went on, more and more PDDs failed. By nightfall, there was no Your/World access at all.

  Chapter 4

  Dinner was subdued. Without the constant background chatter of the lounge TVs and people’s personal data devices, the dining room was remarkably quiet. To France Martin it was like the quiet that fills a room after someone had died.

  Hans Bachmann, for one, did not mind it at all. He was one of only four passengers who took the offered tour of the Carleton’s engine spaces. He admired the turbines, the diesel auxiliary motors, pumps, injectors, and Gorgonian mass of pipes, large and small. The chief engineer, a Panamanian named Pascal, knew his engines and plainly loved them.

  “After this trip, it’s no more,” he said, speaking loudly over the deep hum of the turbines. “No more steam.”

  “And no more pollution,” said one of the tourists, a Canadian woman in her forties.

  Pascal shrugged. “With our modern stack scrubbers, my engines’ emissions meet current UN levels,” he said. “We’re not carbon-free like Sunflyer, but we impact but little the air.”

  “Then why are they shutting you down?” Hans asked.

  A bitter smile creased the old engineer’s face. “Don’t you know? The company, they sold the ship to the Sunflyer people, to take us out when the sunship sailed.”

  “You mean, this whole last voyage business was arranged?” asked the Chinese man. His name was Chen. He and his brothers were from a shipping company in Shanghai. Hans wondered if they were on board because they were interested in buying the old Carleton.

  “Por supuesto!”

  The Canadian woman said there was nothing wrong with that. Why shouldn’t the Sunflyer’s owners hail their success by arranging the retirement of the last polluting vessel at sea?

  Engineer Pascal’s face darkened. “Polluting?”

  “Burning is death,” she said.

  Hans interrupted a budding fight. “Are the boilers gas-fired or oil burning?”

  Pascal said something in his native tongue. It did not sound nice. Turning to Hans, he said, “As built, they burned fuel oil, but we converted to natural gas in 2029.”

  Later, at dinner, Hans sat alone in the corner of the lounge reading about Parsons turbines on his PDD. Like everyone else, he had lost his Your/World connection, but he had over two hundred terabytes of print on his device, more than enough for ten trips across the Atlantic.

  A shadow fell across the screen. Hans looked up and saw the American, Leigh Morrison, standing over him.

  “Excuse me, my sister wanted me to ask if you had an outside connection.” Hans’s eyes flicked back to the screen, where Parsons’ experimental speedboat, Turbinia, slashed through a slow-moving line of British warships in 1897.

  “No. This is stored data.”

  Leigh sat down. His voice dropped. “I knew you didn’t, but she made me ask.” In a room full of bored, nervous people, Hans seemed to be the only one with something interesting to do.

  “What are you watching?”

  “Reading.”

  “Oh. What are you reading?”

  “About the history of the nautical turbine.” He spun his notebook PDD around so Leigh could see the screen. Seeing all
the lines of printed text made his eyes quickly glaze over.

  “Are you into machinery?”

  “‘Into—?’ I am not inside machinery.” Leigh laughed and explained his expression. “Yes,” Hans said, “I like anything old.”

  He held up a piece of tableware. “This is from the Queen Mary 2, the last of the ocean liners. My parents are dealers in antiques. Since the Carleton did not have plates, forks, and things for so many passengers, the company rented these relics from my family.”

  Suddenly the ship’s horn blared a deep bass blast that rattled Bachmann’s antique plates on every table in the room. Half the passengers present stood up, twisting this way and that to spot the cause of the alarm.

  Someone shouted, “Out there! Look!”

  There was a rush to the starboard side. Sliding doors slammed open, and the passengers surged out.

  It was fully dark and easy to see the lights of the other ship, a big one, and close. Leigh felt Julie slip in close beside him.

  “What’s up? What’s happening?”

  He didn’t know. It was just another ship cruising through the calm sea. Patchy clouds allowed stars to shine through. The moon had set, so it was not easy to see any detail on the other vessel, just a lot of navigation lights and the black outline of the hull.

  The horn blasted again. The passengers shrank from the punishing wail.

  An officer—not the captain or purser, but a woman with gold stripes on her sleeve—hurried by. Some of the more agitated passengers blocked her path.

  They bombarded her in several languages, but they were all saying, “What’s going on?”

  “It’s all right! We’re sounding the horn to warn off the other ship,” she said. She tried to get by, but some men refused to budge.

  “Why use the horn? Can’t you radio them?” one asked.

  Another said, “Is their radar out?”

  “How close are we?”

  “Ladies and gentlemen!” Captain Viega appeared, hatless, in his shirtsleeves. “There is no problem. Please return to the dining room. Allow Ms. Señales to go about her duties!”