Seabound (Seabound Chronicles Book 1) (11 page)

The man smiled
with all his teeth and extended his hand. “I am Captain Ryan, of the
Galaxy
Crown
. It’s an honor.”

Judith offered her
hand in return, and he snatched it up and planted a kiss on the back. Judith
actually blushed.

“I will be so
pleased to have you join us for dinner tonight,” Captain Ryan said. “If you
will accept, of course. Your constituents will be fed and entertained on the
Emerald
, but we would so appreciate the
company of another captain on the
Crown
.”

“Um, that’s fine,
thanks,” Judith said.

“Excellent!”
Captain Ryan glanced at Esther as if seeing her for the first time. His
magnificent white eyebrows pulled together. “Why doesn’t your mechanic go down
to greet the others I hear are arriving on the ferry? I will take you personally
to meet the other captains.” Captain Ryan put both hands over his heart,
revealing a thick golden ring on his finger.

Judith shot a
quick look at Esther. “Esther should stay with me,” she said.

If Esther didn’t
know better, she’d have thought Judith looked nervous. No, she probably just
didn’t like Captain Ryan dictating the terms of their meeting.

“Nonsense,” David
said, shifting his weight slightly, as if to separate the two women. “I’m sure
Esther will be able to find her way back down to the lobby, won’t you, Esther?”
His voice was smooth, like a panel of glass.

“I—” she
began.

“Excellent. It’s
settled,” Captain Ryan said. “This way please, Ms. Stone.” He gestured toward
the opposite side of the deck.

Esther watched the
three of them walk away. She had a nagging feeling that David Hawthorne and
Captain Ryan wanted to separate Judith from the rest of them. It didn’t sound
like there would be any trade discussions that day. She wanted to locate the
elderly Eugene and get him to answer some questions about the
Galaxy
’s
trading policies. But she had no idea how to find one person amongst
twenty-five thousand.

Chapter 12—The Floating City

The lobby with the
polished reception desk was slowly filling with people from the
Catalina.
Cally
bounded up to Esther. She gripped her arm, gesturing wildly around the lobby,
opening and closing her mouth silently, like a fish. The others walked slowly,
staring at the elegant details, the signs of excess and comfort.

“And I thought we
had it good,” Reggie muttered.

A willowy woman
materialized from behind the long reception counter, her high-heeled shoes
putting her over six feet tall. She swept her straight blond hair back from her
shoulders and addressed the milling crowd.

“Good afternoon
and welcome to the
Emerald Galaxy.
My name is Adele. I’ll be your
hostess for the duration of your stay. The
Galaxy Flotilla
is a new hope
for civilization, a new world at sea. We have rebuilt the most beautiful aspects
of human society for a new generation on the New Pacific. We welcome you here
and hope you will share in our vision for a brighter future for all of humanity.”

“She’s so
beautiful,” Cally whispered. “Look at how clean her hands are!”

The rest of the
Catalinans seemed similarly impressed. Gracie Cordova was smoothing her hair,
tugging absently on the tattered edge of her sweater.

Esther looked
around for her father, but he hadn’t come aboard. There were over two hundred
people crammed into the reception lobby. Penelope wasn’t there either. At least
her dad would have company if she decided to join the
Galaxy
after this
was all over, Esther thought grumpily.

Adele spoke again,
her voice like a light breeze singing through a wind chime. “During your visit,
we here at Guest Services will introduce you to a world of leisure and comfort
unparalleled in any other floating settlement. It is our greatest pleasure to
help you find your way. Please sign in here and then divide into groups of
twenty so that we can guide you most efficiently as we help you get acquainted
with the
Galaxy Flotilla
. We will host a welcome dinner this evening as
well.”

A group of young
men and women appeared as she spoke. None were as beautiful as Adele, but they
all looked refined and sophisticated, especially compared to the people of the
Catalina
.
Their clothes showed a greater variety of cuts and styles than the sturdy
garments from Constance Gordon’s shop. Most of the women wore skirts and high
heels. The men wore matching blue ties.

Esther joined
Cally, Bernadette, and Reggie in a group forming near the entrance to the great
hall. The latter two seemed to have forgiven her in light of the recent excitement.
A young man with black hair sticking out like the spines of a sea urchin took
charge of their group. He handed out mismatched plastic cards to everyone.
Esther’s had a name (Jennifer L. Williamson), a series of random numbers, and
the word “
Visa”
written
on the front.

“You can show
these anytime you want to take a water taxi or have a meal. They identify you
as honored guests.”

He spoke as if
every sentence were directed at Cally. She preened under the attention.

The young guide,
who told them to call him Dax, took the group straight through the center of
the grand hall. The atrium opened to the sky, and the sun pouring in reflected
off polished sculptures in a thousand beads of light. The sweeping staircase at
one end was painted in shades of pastel blue and pale yellow. White and gold
cornices trimmed the edges of the room. Shopping arcades lined the space, full
of colorful bolts of fabric and a multitude of garments. Where the
Catalina
’s
arcades had long had a wartime look, the
Emerald
’s shops were
peaceful—and open for business. People browsed the wares, assisted by
uniformed saleswomen.

“Do you have a currency
here?” Reggie inquired, looking at a row of boots in one window and then down
at his Guest Services card.

The boots looked
handmade. Esther was almost positive a few of them used real leather.

“Yes, of course,”
Dax said. “We use old casino chips because national currencies are useless now
and the chips are more durable than bills. The chips can only be used on
Galaxy
ships, but we have a central bank where people can exchange their wages for
metals or oil if they ever want to leave the
Galaxy
.”

“Wages?” The word
sent a shock wave through the older people in the group. “People work for wages
on these ships?”

“Of course. What
else would they work for?” Dax tugged at his hair, as if he were trying to pull
out the spikes.

The nervous
gesture gave Esther the distinct impression that he was younger than she had
originally guessed.

“On the
Catalina
we just work, and everyone gets whatever they need,” Cally told him.

“How do you get
people to work if they’re not getting paid?” Dax asked.

“They just do it because
it’s for everyone’s good, I guess.”

“But what about
the people who do more difficult or technical jobs? Do they get more fish or
something?” Dax asked.

“No, that’d be
silly,” Cally said. “Why? Do you pay people different amounts based on what
their job is?” She laughed.

“Well . . . yeah.”

“Really?”

Cally stared at
Dax with wide eyes. He blushed.

“You know that’s
how it used to be on land?” Reggie said dryly. “We all worked for different
wages. Didn’t matter whose job was the toughest either. It was more about how
lucky you were.”

“It wasn’t just
luck,” said another man in their group. He worked on the rationing crew on the
Catalina
.
“You got paid more for working hard at it and achieving something in your
life.”

“Maybe
you
did,” Reggie said. “Weren’t you a lawyer back in the good old days, Horace?”

“Actually I was.
And I spent a lot of years working hard to become a lawyer too.” Horace’s voice
had a hostile edge.

Reggie pulled up
his shoulders and took a step forward. “Yeah? Well I spent a lotta years
working hard on a ship’s crew, but I didn’t have a rich daddy to pay for my
education.”

Bernadette cut in.
“And this, gentlemen, is why we don’t have a wage system on the
Catalina
.
It’s not worth getting into this old stuff again. Makes me nervous just being
around proper currency.” She eyed Dax. “Please continue your tour, young man.
I’m dying to know about this beautiful creation.”

Dax rushed on,
first describing the sculpture in the center of the atrium in great detail,
though they could see it quite easily themselves. “It used to be a fountain,
apparently,” he said, looking for Cally’s reaction again. “I don’t remember it,
but they would actually pipe water into the middle of the ship, just ’cause it
looked nice!”

Next, Dax took
them down a spiral staircase at the far end of the grand hall and pushed open a
pair of double doors. A dozen rows of plush chairs filled the cool, dark room.
On the wall a blank movie screen loomed over the seats. The
Catalina
once had a movie theater too, but the projection equipment had been damaged
long ago. The
Emerald
’s
cinema still functioned.

“We have movie
theaters on two of the other ships that still work,” Dax explained, “so we
rotate the film collections around them. You can go for a long time without
seeing the same movie twice. If you’d like to watch one, the full schedule is
posted here. For the popular ones, you need to put your name down in advance to
make sure you get a seat. I usually go to the cinema on the
Crystal
,
where I live.”

“Do you live with
your family?” Cally asked.

“Not anymore. Got
my own cabin last year,” Dax said.

“I’d like to see
that,” Cally said.

Esther tried to
shift around so she could nudge Cally’s foot. While Esther was no expert on
men, she was pretty sure that suggesting a visit to this young man’s cabin
wasn’t wise. But Dax just blushed furiously until Bernadette rescued him with
another question.

“How are rooms
allocated? You have enough space for single people to have their own rooms?”

“Oh, yes.” Dax’s
eyes flitted quickly between Reggie and Horace. He tugged on his hair again.
“We don’t pay rent for the cabins, though. I’ve read about rent in a book. We
get assigned a place to live based on our jobs. You can apply for a change if
you want to. Because I’m a Guest Services guy, I get my own place now that I’m
eighteen. It’s an inner cabin, though, not a big stateroom or anything.”

“Do the hard labor
crews ever get to live in the big staterooms?” Reggie asked. He had been
studying the movie listings on the wall.

“I’m not sure
about that. A lot of the crew guys live on the
Galaxy
Diamond
. I think maybe the ones with
families get the bigger rooms over there.”

Cally nodded.
“That’s how it works for us too,” she chirped. “But we’re packed to the brim.
We have to wait until someone dies to get our own rooms.”

“Cally!”

“Well, it’s true.”

“Judith asked us
not to talk too much about the
Catalina
,” Esther said in a low voice.
They were in unfamiliar territory. She wasn’t ready to trust Dax and the other
Galaxy
people just yet.

“I can show you a
stateroom if you’d like,” Dax offered. “It’s open right now because the couple
who lived there moved up to the
Crown
. Anyone is allowed to go and look
at it in case they want to apply to move. It’s on the way up to the deck, and
that’s the next stop on our tour.”

The
Catalina
ns followed him eagerly down
another passageway. The carpet was threadbare and the light fixtures didn’t
sparkle as brightly here as they did in the main hall. Esther felt a little
better knowing that the
Emerald
also needed to make things last.

Dax showed them
the spacious stateroom, complete with a couch and minigalley. Everything in the
room—from the walls to the bedspread to the towels hanging above the
little sink—was perfectly coordinated shades of blue and pale yellow.
There was even a piece of hotel-style art hanging above the bed: a painting of
a yellow sailboat in a quiet harbor. The group crowded in and out of the room,
careful not to touch anything.

Next, Dax guided
them to the main deck. He promised that if they came here at any time of day
they’d find someone who would happily accompany them to the farther parts of
the
Galaxy Flotilla
, such as the gardening facility on one of the cargo
vessels or the school on the
Galaxy
Luxe
. As the group marveled
at the view, Dax rattled off a litany of facts about the various cruise ships
and the two big oil tankers.

“We’ve had one
tanker all along, but we found the second about five years ago. She makes it a
lot easier to get out of the way of storms.”

“I take it you
have a refinery,” Reggie said.

“Yes, sir.”

“And you use the
fuel mostly for movement?”

“Yeah. We dip into
it sometimes to generate more power for water desalination and that kind of
thing too.”

“And if anyone
wants to leave the
Galaxy
and trade
in their chips, right?” Horace said.

Dax shrugged. “I
guess so. We’ve got plenty.”

Esther tried to
imagine what it would be like to be able to dip into endless oil reserves
anytime they needed some extra water. The luxury of the
Galaxy Flotilla
was tempting, but it was also disconcerting. She’d been in survival mode for almost
her entire life. They reused everything, pulled up any bit of detritus that
floated into their path in case it could plug a leak or hold up a deck or be
burned for fuel. There was never “plenty” of anything. She couldn’t imagine
what it would be like to live without worrying about the day when they would
finally run out of everything.

Dax took them
across one of the bridges to another ship, the
Crystal Galaxy
. There was
a hospital facility on the
Crystal
. Dax took inventory of their
ailments.

“You know we can
do surgery here?” he said. “It’s basic stuff, but if you have something that’s
been bothering you, don’t hesitate to let us fix it.”

“What’s the cost
for treatment?”

“No cost. That’s
another one of the things we do for free, even for visitors.”

“That’s very
generous. Do you do dental work as well?” Bernadette asked.

“Yes, ma’am.”

Esther smiled at
that. Perhaps this was a fortuitous meeting. And if the
Flotilla
was so generous with its services, getting spare parts
should be no trouble at all. Perhaps that was why David Hawthorne had brushed
off her requests. They must have seemed inconsequential in light of all this
excess.

“I’ll just show
you the library, then that’s the end of my tour,” Dax said. “We recommend that
you stick between the
Crystal
and the
Emerald
unless you have a
guide, just so you don’t get lost. You’ll be dining on the
Emerald
tonight and will be reunited with the rest of your crew there. I’ve heard we’ll
get some potatoes today!”