Termination Shock

Very near, the river plunged into woods. At the edge of those woods a boat had been hauled up onto formerly dry ground and made fast to a tree. Saskia identified it as a RHIB, or rigid hull inflatable boat. Its aft part, sporting a big outboard motor as well as a backup motor to one side, was awash and waggling in the flow. Rufus drove the truck as close as he could get without bogging down in the sodden ground, ten meters or so away, and they formed a line between it and the boat to transfer the luggage: Alastair in the back handing bags down to Fenna who tossed them down the line to Amelia, Saskia, and finally Rufus who made decisions about where to stow each item in the RHIB. There was not a lot of room, but there was not a lot of luggage. Two of the blue earthsuit bags made it in. Rufus locked two more inside the truck’s cab and parked it up on higher ground. Then he jogged down, hopped in, and started the outboard. Saskia handled the painter, untying it from the tree and clambering in over the prow as the river’s current took the boat. Amelia and Alastair grabbed her arms and made sure she was belly flopped into the middle before she was allowed to press herself up and assume a more queenly position on the prow. “Figurehead” was a mildly pejorative English word sometimes applied to modern royalty; now she was one.

They found themselves making excellent time down the Bosque. It was not a raging torrent but it was in full spate and they would have moved at a good clip even if Rufus hadn’t been running the outboard at high power. The river was narrow enough that the woods on either bank nearly arched together above to form a tunnel. Looking straight up they could see the sky, combed by branches, and lowering their gaze they could glimpse bits of houses constructed up on the banks. Those banks got higher, steeper, and rockier as they went, until they were sluicing down the bottom of a gorge: a surprise to Saskia who had assessed the landscape as flat shortly before crashing the jet into it. Then suddenly the stream cornered right and emptied into a much larger and calmer river. Saskia exchanged a look with Rufus, who nodded, confirming that they were now in the Arms of God.

Saskia and her staff used a secure messaging app for all communications. Sometimes they viewed it on old-school smartphones. Other times they piped the output to glasses. Saskia had lost her sunglasses and her phone during the crash but Alastair was still online—she could tell as much by watching the movements of his eyes, which were focused on nonexistent minutiae at arm’s length.

“Any news of the others?” Saskia asked him.

He nodded. “Willem has been sending updates. The woman in the alligator truck—”

“Mary,” Rufus told him.

“Mary drove Lennert and Johan to an emergency department. Baylor Medical Center. Not far from the airport apparently. They took Lennert back to surgery straightaway. Giving him blood transfusions. Johan is in a waiting room. Willem is handling details.”

Alastair was a Scotsman of the ultra-dry and understated style and so it could be guessed that “details” encompassed much relating not just to the medical aftermath but how to pay in 500 euro notes for medical services rendered on patients who had just mysteriously entered the country, if not quite illegally, then certainly without passing through the customary formalities. But the whole point of having Willem was to make it so that Saskia did not have to concern herself with that sort of thing.

Fenna’s role similarly was to make it so that Saskia didn’t have to think about how she looked. The stylist had been terribly imbalanced by the plane crash, but the wild ride through the woods had appealed to her, and being on a boat had then calmed her down and got her mind back on her business. She had been appraising Saskia. She unzipped one of the earthsuit bags. Without opening it all the way—there was no room for that—she thrust in her hand and pulled out the first thing she found, which was the under-layer. This was a white, long-sleeved spandex top with a built-in hood. It was meant to be worn under the bulkier suit that contained the plumbing. It reduced chafing and it could be separately laundered. Worn by itself it protected from sunburn and, if you had some way to keep it wet, cooled the body without the need for the full earthsuit apparatus. “Put this on,” Fenna said, “quick, before we get out of this park.” This was how she talked to Saskia when she was doing her job. It was more efficient than “If you please, Your Majesty, I recommend the white spandex.”