Distress

I thought I felt the ground shudder—a tremor so slight that I doubted it immediately. Was there still shelling going on? I'd imagined everyone leaving the city to the mercenaries—but maybe a few dissenters had ignored the evacuation plan… or maybe the militia had remained, in hiding, and the real confrontation had finally begun. That was a dismal prospect; they didn't stand a chance.

It happened again. I couldn't judge the direction of the blast—I'd heard no sound at all, just felt the vibration. I turned a full circle, scanning the horizon for smoke. Maybe they were shelling the camps, now. The white plumes over the city in the morning had been visible for kilometers—but shells meant for tents on bare rock would carry different charges, with different effects.

I kept walking south, hoping that the city would come into view along with some sign that the pyrotechnic action was still confined there. And I tried to imagine myself living through the war, emerging unscathed, but cozily familiar with all the myriad technologies of death… offering—to the nets who didn't care what I'd faked—footage complete with my own now—expert commentary on "the characteristic sound of a Chinese-made Vigilance missile meeting its target," or "the unmistakable visual signature of a Peacetech forty-millimeter shell exploding over open ground."

I felt a wave of resignation sweep over me. I'd swallowed too many dreams in the last three days: technoliberation, an end to the gene patent laws… personal happiness, asexual bliss. It was time to wake up. The ordinary madness of the world had finally reached Stateless—so why not stand back, regain some perspective, and try to scrape some kind of a living out of it? The invasion was no greater tragedy than ten thousand other bloody conquests before it—and it had always been inevitable. War had come, one way or another, to every known human culture.

I whispered aloud, without much conviction, "Screw every known human culture."

The ground roared, and threw me.

The reef-rock was soft, but I hit it face-down, bloodying my nose, maybe breaking it. Winded and astonished, I raised myself onto my hands and knees, but the ground still hadn't stopped shaking, I didn't trust myself to stand. I looked around for some evidence of a nearby impact—but there was no glow, no smoke, no crater, nothing.

Was this the new terror? After invisible robots—invisible bombs?

I knelt, waited, then climbed to my feet unsteadily. The reef-rock was still reverberating; I paced in a drunken circle, searching the horizon, still refusing to believe that there could be no other sign of the blast.

The air had been silent, though. It was the rock which had carried the noise. An underground detonation?

Or undersea, beneath the island?

And no detonation at all—

The ground convulsed again. I landed badly, twisting one arm, but panic washed out everything, dulling the pain into insignificance. I clawed at the ground, trying to find the strength to deny every instinct which screamed at me to stay down, not to risk moving—when I knew that if I didn't stand—and then sprint faster across the shuddering dead coral than I'd ever moved in my life—I was lost.

The mercenaries had killed off the lithophiles which gave the reef-rock its buoyancy. That was why they'd driven us out of the city: only the center of the island would hold. Beyond the support of the guyot, the overhang was sinking.

I turned to try to see what had happened to the camp. Blue and orange squares gazed back at me blankly; most of the tents were still standing. I could see no one moving out across the desert yet—it was too soon—but there was no question of going back to warn them. Not even Akili. Inland divers would surely understand what was happening, faster than I had. There was nothing I could do now but try to save myself.

I climbed to my feet and broke into a run. I covered about ten meters before the ground shifted, slamming me down. I got up, took three steps, twisted an ankle, fell again. There was a constant tortured cracking sound filling my head now, conducted through my body from reef-rock to bone, resonating from living mineral to living mineral—the underworld reaching up to me, sharing its disintegration.

I started crawling forward on my hands and knees, screaming wordlessly, almost paralyzed by a vision of the ocean rushing over the sinking reefs, sweeping up bodies, propelling them inland, dashing them against the splintering ground. I glanced back and saw nothing but the placid tent village, still uselessly intact—but the whole island was roaring in my skull, the deluge could only be minutes away.