Pacifica Page 3

  “Hardly,” he said.

  “Ms. Teller has had the extraordinary task of heading the relocation committee,” explained his mother. “We have her to thank for Pacifica.”

  She smiled, and didn’t disagree, which Ross found a little bold.

  “Have you been there?” asked Ross, realizing he’d recognized her voice from the Relocation Act ad.

  “Of course.”

  “Is it really that green?” He smiled.

  The grin stayed fixed on her face. “The photos may have been touched up, but only a little. There are still beautiful places left in this world, I assure you.”

  Ross had the sudden desire to see it in person.

  “My son has a keen interest in public welfare,” bragged his mother. “I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if he followed in his father’s footsteps.”

  He wilted.

  “Ah.” Roan’s brows raised, impressed. “Then I suppose one day we’ll be discussing a great many things.”

  The way she said this made the smile fade completely from Ross’s mouth. He wasn’t sure what it was about the woman that gave him a bad feeling, but as she sipped her flute of champagne, he felt his teeth pressing together.

  “Ms. Teller, I see you’ve met my bosses.” The seas parted as the guest of honor approached. A man with Ross’s dark, glossy hair and a suit that gleamed a little, as if he’d been standing out in the rain.

  They all laughed. Because that was what they did when Ross’s father made a joke.

  “Mr. President,” said Ms. Teller. “Your family is lovely.”

  “I’m a lucky man.” He placed his arm over Ross’s shoulders. They were nearly the same height now, but Ross hunched a little, to make his father seem taller.

  “I was hoping I might get the chance to talk with you,” Roan said, and though the president opened his mouth to object, she continued on. “With relocation happening next week, my investors see no need to delay phase two of the project. We could begin as early as next month with your approval.”

  Ross glanced toward his father, feeling the sudden tenseness in his grip. He was never included in business discussions, not at home, and especially not at public dinners.

  “Ah, Ms. Teller,” he said, a trademark, billboard smile lighting his face. “Keep up this pace and they’ll be giving you my seat.”

  They all laughed again.

  “There’d be no slowing progress then, would there?” Roan kept laughing. Ross choked, and then glanced to his father, whose chuckle ground to a painful halt.

  “My dry humor.” The woman waved a hand, as if to erase her earlier comment. “There’s no rush, is there?” Her pointed gaze said differently.

  “Why don’t we leave business at the office, yes?” Ross’s mother said, touching her glittering necklace. “Have you tried the pastries, Ms. Teller? They’re exquisite.”

  Roan leaned in, effectively cutting her out of the circle. “We could always bring phase two back into consideration after the next election.”

  At this, his mother inhaled sharply and looked over her shoulders to see if anyone was listening. Ross’s thumb began to tap against his thigh. It was one thing for him not to take his mother seriously. It was entirely something else for a stranger to do so.

  The president’s arm fell from Ross’s shoulder.

  “Or, we could remain self-sufficient and begin next week,” Roan said, sipping from her drink, impervious to the strain between them. “Campaign season begins again soon, doesn’t it? I imagine my investors would be very interested in supporting the candidate who assured our continued independence.” The words were sharp from her mouth, cutting through any remaining layers of social nicety.

  Mention of campaign season made Ross’s stomach sour. It was always an insanely busy time for his family, and since there was no term limit, and hadn’t been since the Melt, they were always gearing up for the next run.

  Ross’s father hummed, then placed a hand on Roan’s shoulder.

  “Let’s talk after dinner,” he said after a moment, and even though Ross didn’t know half of what was going on, or what his father might say, he somehow felt heavier than before.

  Politics was a game. He’d been around it his entire life. His father knew what he was doing.

  “Very good,” said Roan. “Enjoy your night, Mr. President.” She nodded to Ross’s mother. “I think I’ll have a pastry. I hear they’re exquisite.”

  “Relentless,” his father said through his teeth as she turned away. Then he was gone, shaking hands with the next group and tilting back another drink.

  “Well,” said his mother, shifting her gaze away from his adoring fans. “I guess you’ll want to spend time with your friends. Felipe and Jonas Gomez are here. Maybe Marcus is around somewhere too. I saw his mother earlier. So exciting that she made captain of the City Patrol.”

  A tightness formed in his jaw. Despite the fact that he’d quit running, his mother continued to ask about his teammates, almost too hopefully. He didn’t tell her the truth, which was that there were few people he wanted to see less than the three of them.

  “All right,” he said. “We might go do something. See you at home later?”

  “Take Tersley with you,” she said, glancing toward the main entrance, where the security staff waited, Ross’s bodyguard among them.

  “Of course,” he said. He kissed his mom on the cheek, and when he pulled away she smiled.

  The antique clock at the top of the glass staircase showed 7:14 as Ross made his way down the hallway toward the coat closet. He meandered slowly so as not to arouse attention. Guests, likely needing a break from the main room, admired the exhibits in silence, and as Ross came upon the three-dimensional floor-to-ceiling images of Earth from space, he paused, reminded of school trips here as a child.

  “Twenty fifty A.D.” A woman’s sweet, almost childlike voice came from above him as he stepped into the exhibit’s sensor. “The Earth’s average temperature has risen by six degrees Fahrenheit over the last century. As a result, melting ice from the North and South Poles have caused the oceans to rise more than seven feet, changing the landscape of this ecosystem for the plant and animal life within.” He looked at the shape of the continents, how different they all seemed then, how much bigger they were, while the voice went on to talk about the Midwest heat wave that destroyed the natural production of wheat, barley, and soybeans.

  He moved to the next model of the planet. The shorelines here were tighter. There was a gap between North and South America, and much of the old U.K. was underwater.

  “Twenty seventy-five,” the woman’s voice said as he stepped into the middle of the picture. “The elimination of the Winter Olympics due to the lack of snow- and ice-producing venues becomes one of the lead topics at the Global Climate Change summit, held in London. In the upper Northern Hemisphere, permafrost begins to melt, releasing carbon toxins into the air from trapped fossil fuels. This leads to an increase in methane gas, which expedites the greenhouse effect beyond scientific prediction.”

  Ross turned to a video clip of snow, something he’d never seen in real life, burning like paper.

  “In the United States, Midwestern and Southern cities are evacuated due to continued heat waves and mega-storm cells which destroy the power grids and fresh water supplies. Despite this, humanity prevails. Scientists work to create artificial pollination systems as a result of the changing growing seasons brought on by the rise in worldwide temperatures and the extinction of honey bees.” A buzzing filled Ross’s ears, and he moved on, aware of how people looked at him and whispered to each other.

  He passed pictures and glass-encased skeletons of animals he couldn’t remember the names of—black-and-white snow birds that couldn’t fly, large jungle cats, different species of whales, and hundreds of kinds of fish. Things from the past that no longer existed because they couldn’t adapt, or migrate, or whatever. There was a picture of an old theme park with a cartoon mouse on the entrance, taken from underwa
ter.

  This place was so damn depressing.

  He passed by the next two displays, stopping again when a group ahead blocked the entrance to the coat closet.

  “Twenty-one hundred. Africa and Australia become entirely uninhabitable due to heat. Japan and the majority of Asia are abandoned as a result of radioactive contamination from two and a half centuries prior. The first outbreak of malaria VI is recorded in South America in 2102, with devastating consequences. The following outbreaks become impossible to halt. The Earth’s human population, once projected at 11.5 billion people, drops to 6.2 billion in eight years.” He cringed at the oversized photograph of a mosquito to his left. In the back of his mind he heard his grandfather’s voice, saying the words he always used when describing the Shorelings—survival of the fittest. It was usually accompanied by words like “uncivilized,” and “dangerous,” and followed by Ross’s mother telling him he could never say those kinds of things in public.

  “Receding shorelines around the remainder of the world force residents to move inland, uniting with the common goal of survival.” To his right, a picture lit up of the Lincoln Memorial, half submerged in water. “President Kiara Williams declares Washington, D.C., a national disaster area due to broken levees and floods, and the capitol is moved to higher elevation, in West Virginia. Two years later it is moved again, to the western seaboard in the Sierra Nevada, and named Noram, a title to celebrate the union of Canada, the United States, and sections of Mexico as one, North American Alliance.” Another photograph of the Lincoln Memorial, this one after its relocation to the Monument Park in the political district near his home.

  The group moved on as he passed the last image of a watery world, giving it barely a look.

  “Twenty-one twelve. The last of the polar glaciers melt. The re-created United Nations restarts the global clock…”

  He passed out of the sensor for the exhibit, but knew what it would say. Every teacher he’d ever had made them stop there when they came on field trips. “… restarts the global clock at 0 post-Melt, and joins hand in hand, in celebrating a new future.”

  That was eighty-one years ago. And if they were celebrating, someone forgot to tell the Shorelings.

  The coat closet finally came into view at the end of the hall. The room looked full through the open door—a sea of black and shades of gray, all fashionable and useless, considering it was still a hundred degrees outside. Standing at the front beside a wooden podium was an attendant, an elderly man with a dignified chin and bushy eyebrows.

  Ross was nearly to him when he heard a man clear his throat behind him.

  He turned, coming face-to-face with his bodyguard, a bald, bulky man in a beige suit, who was ignored by practically everyone despite the ferocious scar running down his jaw.

  “Tersley,” Ross said, failing to hide his annoyance. “Thought you were comparing chest measurements with the other security guards.”

  “I won. Where are you going?” He sighed, and Ross wondered, not for the first time, how much Tersley hated his job.

  There were few people Ross encountered who were taller than him, his father included, but Tersley had him by several inches. The shirt beneath his jacket was stretched to the point of button-popping over his chest, and his head was shining, as though he’d greased it up just for tonight.

  “To the coat closet,” Ross said honestly.

  “You have an affinity for closets.”

  Ross huffed out a breath, recalling a certain brief, but enlightening, episode in the east wing storage closet three days ago involving Alia Bastet, the security advisor’s daughter, and the smooth feel of her stomach beneath his hand. He’d been this close to figuring out the ridiculous fasteners on her bra when Tersley had wrenched open the supply room door.

  “What can I say?” he grumbled. “Security’s a pain in the ass. It’s impossible to find a few minutes’ privacy around here.”

  He hadn’t really been alone since before his father’s election, when he was ten. There were others before, but Tersley was the only security officer he’d ever talked to. It was impossible not to. For the last two years, he’d come to every track practice, wading through the locker room steam in his suit. He’d accompanied Ross every time he went out, which was rarely off the compound, and run background checks on all his dates. He was always lurking.

  Tersley rolled his enormous shoulders back. “I know.”

  Ross paused.

  “I was seventeen once too,” Tersley said. “I’m not that old.”

  Ross side-eyed him, for some reason trying to picture his dad saying the same thing. He couldn’t. His mother, either. They’d never have reason to. They only saw who they wanted him to be—a smart, athletic, younger version of his father—and he reflected that back because it was better to be something to somebody than no one to anybody.

  “You’re pretty old,” he said.

  An eruption of applause filled the main room.

  “The first five hundred,” said Tersley, as excited as he might have been over choosing a pair of socks.

  The event was being televised. His father would make a speech—probably with that Roan woman. Pacifica, blah blah blah, relocation, blah blah blah, future, blah blah blah. His father’s tie would spark just as much gossip as the names of those who’d won the random lottery.

  “There’s a lot going on out there,” Ross said.

  Tersley’s brows flattened.

  “I doubt anyone would notice if I disappeared for a little while.”

  Tersley sighed again.

  “You do kind of owe me after the way things went down in the supply room.”

  Ross waited.

  “Is she…” Tersley glanced toward the coat closet.

  Ross nodded slowly, a hint of a smirk lifting his mouth. “I might be a while.”

  Tersley shook his head, but waved at the employee standing behind the wooden podium. They exchanged a few words, and while the old man was distracted, Ross slipped behind them into the rungs of coats. He raced to the back, impressed with himself and high on good luck.

  It was going to be a good night.

  “Adam?” he whispered when he got to the back. Near the left side of the wall was a lit EXIT sign, something he’d learned about from his track days when some of the guys used to brag about sneaking out this way to drink in the alley during events. He’d never done it, of course. Tersley had always been watching. But he’d quietly made sure it was legit two weeks ago when they’d come here for the Noram Healthcare banquet.

  “Here.”

  Adam stood from beneath a row of coats. His hair was messed now, his tie askew.

  “Were you hiding?” asked Ross, mouth cocked in a crooked smile.

  “No.” Adam straightened his tie. “Maybe. I thought it might be the old man running the coat check coming back. How’d you get back here? I heard Tersley.”

  “Doesn’t matter. Anyone see you?” A slow drip of adrenaline warmed Ross’s blood. He was already leading Adam to the far corner, where his coat had been hung beside his parents’ in the VIP section.

  “Are you kidding?” asked Adam. “I have the power of invisibility.”

  He said it like a joke, but Ross wasn’t sure he’d meant it that way.

  “All the guards are out front,” Adam added. “There’s no one in the alley.”

  Because they were more concerned about who was coming in than who was going out.

  Ross removed the sleek silver comm from his wrist and stuck it in his suit jacket, which he hung up beside his father’s overcoat. Then he loosened his black tie and untucked his shirt. They didn’t want to look too formal and stick out.

  “Well,” said Adam. “So much for taking me out to dinner first.”

  Ross smirked, then led them out the door.

  CHAPTER 5

  “THIS DOES not sound like sleeping, niños.”

  Marin spun from the children seated on the blanket before her to face a woman with brown skin and short, dar
k hair tied up in a red scarf around her head. As always, Marin was surprised by the sharpness of her—the deep grooves of her collarbone, her bony wrists. Her age was difficult to place. She looked young enough to be Marin’s mother, but there was a wisdom in her gaze that only came with time.

  “They forced me to tell them stories,” Marin said, thumbs hooking in the straps of her pack. “There were threats. I feared for my life.”

  “Undoubtedly,” said Gloria. She leaned around Marin to face the children. “Eyes closed. The next one of you who makes a peep gives Frankie a foot rub tomorrow.”

  They groaned, and when Gloria snapped her fingers, went silent. Sylvie only chuckled, and turned out the lanterns one by one.

  Gloria left the children’s room, leading Marin down the hallway.

  “You look like him, you know,” Gloria said without looking back. “Your father. It’s the hair. And the eyes, I think.”

  Absently, Marin’s hand went to her dark curls, usually kept back in a tail the way her father had worn his. Sometimes she forgot that Gloria had known him before—that she’d been taking their contraband to trade for years before he’d disappeared. Even though Gloria was probably lying—her eyes were brown and her father’s had been blue—she found herself longing for a mirror, just to see if she could find him in the reflection.

  “Any trouble at the cove?” asked Gloria, using a key to unlock the glass door.

  “All the trouble stays up here, doesn’t it?” They entered another room, equal in size to the first, on the opposite side of the hall. A single lantern lit the space, placed atop a large crate beside a few tech items that were new since she’d been here last. A reader and a couple old comms people had brought in to trade. Marin set her bag beside them and opened it, revealing the first of the six jars of black liquid—a product that had come from nearly a month of gathering, blending, setting, waiting, and finally boiling over low heat for two straight days in an abandoned seafood restaurant in the cove. Gloria took it in her hands, examining it through the glass.

  “It’s darker than before.”

  “It’s better,” said Marin. “Cooked it longer.”