04. Birth of Flux and Anchor (25 page)

The sound of several explosions, perhaps of major proportions, came to them through the thick walls. At once, they all rushed down to the entrance and joined a mob of curious headquarters workers going to investigate the same sounds. Haller cursed the fact that the building had no windows, but knew that this was because the outer walls provided shielding for the masts and antennae that allowed him to do his job, among other things. All sorts of horrible ideas came to mind as he made for one of the street-level doors, including a rioting mob or a military coup.

What they saw was almost as fearsome, but even more awesome. The whole sky to the south, where they'd been working, was filled with dark clouds. These weren't just normal clouds; they were thick and black and in constant rapid motion, as if a single great beast, alive and constantly changing and whirling about. It seemed they were suddenly lit from within every second or two, and two or three times a minute they saw lightning stab out of them and strike the ground in a brilliant display of pyrotechnics followed by ground-shaking thunder.

The entire camp had stopped and seemed to be pouring out of tents and temporary buildings, then stopping to watch the sight. The air was deathly still and so thick, it seemed like a woolen blanket over them, but now, quite suddenly, a tremendous wind came up from the south, almost blowing people down and actually collapsing tents and blowing over signs and anything else not held tight.

Connie grabbed his arm. "Is it raining? Is it raining in the south sectors?" she shouted above the wind and thunder.

"How the hell can
I
know?" he shouted back. "Want to go in and radio the amp crew? If they're still alive?"

"You go. I can't take my eyes from this. It's—
unearthly
."

That, in fact, was exactly what it was, and everyone felt it. Even those from the most arid regions of Earth had seen great storms at least once or twice in their adult lives, but this was different. The clouds were
alive
and multicolored, and the internal flashes were exposing a colored light show. It was almost as if some god had poured buckets of various colored paints into an enormous drum of water and then shaken and stirred the whole mess while they watched from beneath.

And then it began to rain. It was quickly almost as dark as night, and the size and force of the drops stung bare skin, but nobody seemed to mind either the tremendous wind or sting of rain. The entire crowd was deafened by the thunder, disoriented by the wind, and soaked to the skin in a matter of seconds, but they did not move. For a moment, Haller thought, it was like being in the midst of the end of the world.

Within a minute, though, something seemed to ripple through the huge throng as they suddenly realized that they were still alive, still breathing, and probably going to live. The streets of the core became raging rivers, and the construction sites flanking the core and the huge unfinished area to the east that contained the tent city became a network of lakes and streams and a quagmire of dense mud.

The lightning struck the power grids repeatedly, causing sizzling sounds, fountains of stream, and a smell like a frying pan left on the burner too long. Some trees and machinery not grounded were also struck, and lightning repeatedly struck the headquarters masts. There was no evident effect there, but the whole building seemed to take on an eerie greenish glow, and green and white fireballs seemed to dance around the square, up and down light poles, and throughout the entire complex.

It continued to rain, and Haller and Connie and others they didn't know made their way through to the side and out toward the tent city, some of which was in evident shambles. People had begun to get over their fear and started slipping and sliding in the mud and the runoff, and before long they did likewise. Anyone who ventured outside the paved core, in fact, was soon completely covered in sticky brown mud.

The electrical activity slackened and died, but the rain continued at a more normal rate. The clouds were hitting the edge of the bubble and turning back inward, creating a lower-level fog through which steady rain fell. Even the parched ground could not absorb this much rainfall in so short a period, and while the drainage had been effective around the headquarters area, this additional runoff, over paved channels, kept sending floodlike waters back toward the south. It seemed as if there were no place eventually not covered by ten to fifteen centimeters of muddy brown water.

Most people rejoiced and played in the mud and water. Later, of course, they were able to take the toll and it showed some of their flaws.

The master program had not really taken the extreme delay in getting localized rainfall into consideration. It couldn't— each Anchor and Anchor plan was different and there were just too many variables involved. In the extra week between where their best guess estimate of when rain should form and when it actually occurred, a massive amount of additional and previously unplanned-for water had had to be created to keep the people alive and everything going smoothly. The result had been a storm of vastly more power and fury than anyone had anticipated, dumping out a measure of excess water vapor beyond the original calculations. Initial drainage had simply not been adequate, and sewage and drain lines would have to be run the hard way.

In the south, the catch basins worked, but two thirds of them were inadequate to contain the volume fed into them by the storm. They overflowed, creating whole new networks of streams and rivers not in the plan, but such was the initial force of the runoff that there was a great deal of rapid erosion, creating channels and basins where none had been planned.

Almost a third of the tents had been collapsed or washed away, and most people lost what little personal items they had. A few, mostly small children, had been drowned, and at least thirty people had been killed by the lightning. The masts and headquarters building had been properly grounded and so escaped any real damage, but the exterior-exposed power grids had shorted out and had been cut loose by Seventeen to protect itself. They were a total loss.

Orbiting satellites mapped the entire area quickly, allowing a drenched and mud-caked Landscape staff to gather and quickly assess the changes, as well as give Seventeen immediate information. Many of them used the company showers to get clean, but most didn't know if their tents even existed anymore. Most slept right there on the floor or in chairs, and the staff meeting, when it resumed in the morning, reminded Toby Haller more of a nudists' convention. Some of the staff had been initially a bit put off, but when there was no alternative and nothing else to wear, they adapted. A lot of people with no place to sleep to get protection needed help far more than they did, and when order was restored and logistics could take stock and get what was needed, they'd get something.

Toby Haller knew he should have mixed emotions, but he couldn't help feeling downright euphoric. For all the suffering and the tragedies out there, the thing had worked and they'd gotten what they needed to have. If he could simply move faster on this, he could prevent a repetition. His journal, which he kept in his office desk, got an entry, but it reflected only his joy.

All of the staff was present except for four marrieds who were told to go off and hunt up their relations and kids.

"All right," he said, "now we can stop giggling and take stock. The good news is that we've got our rainfall. The bad news is that we don't have sufficient area for slow containment and measured runoff, and every indication I have from the reports and from the instruments indicates both to me and to Seventeen that we have to move fast to capitalize on this or it'll continue. Once switched on like this, it's in a state of almost permanent turbulence. Evaporation is way above normal, and general heating which is required for our work is hastening it. It's going to rain again. And again. Maybe not as severe, but maybe almost all the time. Unless we want that and a steambath to boot, we're going to have to triple our area with greatly reduced vapor content to compensate and we're going to have to do it in seven days."

They were aghast. "We can't do it!" one after another protested. "It's impossible! It's too risky!"

"I've ordered out all five of the big amps," he told them. "We didn't lose anybody on the crews out there because they were already out of the finished areas and got only some backlash, but I've diverted them and sent the other two packing as of this morning. I've run the problem through Seventeen and he agrees, although with great reservations the same as I have. It's risky. We don't know if even five of these amps are enough to marshal the power we need over this kind of area, and since we're improvising on the original plan, we're really guessing at the right landscape and proportions to compensate, but it has to be done. We'll try to adjust any gross errors when we do the north, but if we don't move on this, we're all going to drown and lose everything we've built so far."

"Uh—how beeg we make zis new land, boss?" Lolita asked him.

"About four thousand square kilometers."

Somebody whistled. "All at once?"

"I certainly hope so. Billy'll take the south point, Connie the west. Lo, you take the east, Jody the north, and I'll be right smack in the middle of it all. Mickey will ride Guard and coordinate."

"Uh, boss," Connie said hesitantly, "you're the one that's gonna be in the crosshairs on this and you'll pay the price if anything slips. Don't you think you should ride Guard on this?"

"No, and I'm not being heroic. If anything goes really wrong, I want to be where I can do a quick fix in a hurry. If anything goes
radically
wrong, then I'd rather be dead out there than have to face the powers that be here and explain the situation."

"Thanks a lot," Mickey commented sourly. "So I'm standing there with the apple on my head instead. Look, at least Connie should be Guard."

"No, I want the most experience with these monsters in the field, and she's worked hard enough that if all fails she'll have a convenient getaway. You're just riding Guard, Mickey. They won't want your scalp, only ours."

"We're gonna have to travel between sixty and a hundred kilometers from here just to get into position," Connie noted. "There's no roads, and there are gullies and canyons all over the place and lots of standing water. Even if they can get a few of those waterlogged electric cars going and charged enough for a full hundred, it's unlikely that we can make it over that terrain just in the preformed areas. How are we supposed to get there? We've got nothing around that flies, and even if we did, I'm not sure we could trust it in this turbulence."

"I know. Even moving at their maximum speed of five kilometers an hour, sixteen hours a day, it's going to take the big amps two to three days to get there and get into position. I've already talked to Logistics and they don't have enough charged and operating cars for local needs right now and it'd take me days to get authority over their heads. The only solution we've been able to come up with is that Security's been using horses to patrol the area."

"I know," Mickey remarked with an upturned nose. "I've stepped in enough of it. Uh, oh—you don't mean—"

"Yep. Now you know another reason why I picked the people I did. All of you Overriders have some experience in horseback riding, as I do."

"But I haven't been on a horse in seven years or more!" Billy protested, and several others nodded agreement.

"I haven't been on in longer than that, and my muscles already ache at the thought of a long ride without strengthening, but it must be done. Somehow I will beg, borrow, or steal five horses and saddlebags and enough rations for a week, even if I have to get Seventeen to make them for me."

"Nix, boss, it ain't gonna work," Connie told him. "As soon as you get sixteen and a half kilometers in, you're gonna be on the basic form—almost no water at the start, no water at all farther in, and no grass or anything else for the horse to eat or drink. Horses can't go that far without both, and I don't think they digitized any ready, willing, and able camels, even if we knew how to ride them."

He sighed, knowing she was right but hating to see his idea go up in smoke. "O.K., then—I guess I go see Colonel Singh."

But Colonel Singh was not in, and as much involved with the problems the rains caused as everyone else. One of the Security sergeants suggested that he see the local commander of Signals, and he headed down there.

Major Irene Craig was a tough, no-nonsense military type, the daughter of two officers and granddaughter of one more. She looked and sounded like the kind of person who could get things done, but Haller preferred to work with her rather than for her. He quickly explained the problem and the urgency to both her and her top sergeant, who listened attentively.

"We've got a lot of experience working in this kind of environment." she told him when he'd finished. "The problem here is unique, but every one of the Anchors has had emergencies of one kind or another, some worse than this.

Two possibilities come to mind. First, is there any way that your crawlers could stop periodically and the operators use the big amp, coordinated with you here by radio, to create water and hay stations as they go? They can't have gotten too far as yet."

He shook his head from side to side. "No, I thought about that. There's at least one assistant on each team to aid in setup, but they're not rated for Overrider status, and the equipment's pretty specialized."

Major Craig sat back in her chair and thought for a moment, chewing on a large unlit cigar. Finally, she said, "Then the only other efficient way would be to exit the bubble and ride down entirely in the void. Your north point can make it overland O.K., but east, west, and south will have to ride the void, if they're willing to do it."

"Huh? Why wouldn't they? They're good people."

"The void does some funny things to folks who aren't conditioned to it. It can—change you. Some people have gone nuts in it."

"Your own troopers go through it all the time," he noted. "We can't get any supplies in from the Gate except overland."