Termination Shock

T

he next morning’s race to Sugar Land ended up being the most benign sort of competition in that everyone had a good time and came away somewhat vindicated. In the early going it seemed to those on the boat that they were going to destroy Rufus. The Brazos was wide open—even wider, today, than normal—all the way down to Sugar Land. Their skipper, one Mitch, was uxoriously proud of his boat and the speed at which it could travel and completely unconcerned about the rate at which he was consuming gasoline. Even in these hot and humid conditions the wind blast was more than sufficient to keep them cool, and on the long straightaways between meanders, they all had to retreat behind the shelter of the windscreen—all, that is, except Alastair, who seemed fully alive for the first time since the jet crash. His hairstyle—tawny stubble with sparks of gray and scalp gleaming through—had nothing to fear from wind, and bugs could easily be picked out of it before gaining purchase and tapping into a vein. With the exception of those rare places where the river was bridged, it looked like a subtropical stream rambling free across a landscape that had never been visited or altered by humans.

This above all was the hardest thing for Saskia to grasp about Texas. She knew perfectly well that just beyond the screen of vegetation flanking both banks existed a modern landscape of farms, roads, oil refineries, and power plants. Willem could prove as much by showing her their current position on the map, which, other than the river itself, was farmland and small towns giving way, as the ride went on, to suburbs. But all they could actually see was the same general ecosystem that had hemmed them in since Waco: trees that had become trellises for climbing vines and then been overwhelmed by mats of ivy so thick that from a distance it looked like emerald felt draped over furniture. That was the case everywhere except on the steepest and most exposed parts of the banks, which were bare adobe-red clay. As they rounded one bend followed by another and the little arrowhead on Willem’s map crept closer to Sugar Land, the queen kept waiting for the moment when this foliage would peel back from the river and they would find themselves in an urban environment. But it never happened.

Mitch, tending closely to his own electronic map, cut the motor and nosed the boat over to the right bank. This was somewhat indistinct, as high water had inundated the trees above it. He pressed a button that caused the huge outboard to angle up and forward, getting its propeller safely out of the water, and then went back and started a much smaller “kicker” motor for maneuvering through places where water was shallow and obstructions numerous.

A few minutes’ poking around in the flooded woods brought them suddenly in view of Rufus, just standing there, pretending to look at an imaginary wristwatch. He was up to his knees in the water, cargo pants rolled up but wet anyway. He caught a painter tossed to him by Amelia, put it over his shoulder, and towed the boat a few meters to a place where the ground finally made up its mind and rose out of the water. Saskia and the rest had long since got in the habit of wearing footgear suited for wading, so they hopped over the side and sloshed the last few steps onto what could euphemistically be called dry land.

They’d forgotten to properly thank and say goodbye to Mitch, which they now tried to redress by a lot of waving and blowing of kisses. He clambered up onto the front deck, pulled off his baseball cap, and bowed deeply, causing Saskia a moment’s concern that he had figured out who she was. But it was probably just him being courtly. Rufus nearly turned it into a comic pratfall by shoving the boat back. Mitch recovered his balance well for a man carrying a substantial beer belly, and he bid Rufus adieu with some kind of complicated high five (high for Rufus anyway, low for Mitch) and finger-snapping and -pointing exchange. Then he turned his back on them and went back to see to the needs of his “kicker.”

It was late morning by this point, the weather system had cleared off, the sun was high, and they had all become miserably hot and sweaty during the few minutes it had taken to get off the boat and say goodbye. Rufus strode past them and led them into the woods. Saskia was steeling herself for a long hot hike. For, anticipating that they’d end up in some air-conditioned building in Houston, they had packed up the earthsuits and worn normal, non-refrigerated clothes.