[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

pale reflection of the original party to end all parties.
And the food . . .
It wasn't like you wouldn't ever eat jambalaya or gumbo or po'boys again. But
only theCafé du Monde made beignets and café au lait that people came from all
over the world to taste. Nobody had a stand up oyster bar likeFelix's . You
couldn't get better muffulettas anywhere than atCentral Grocery . There was
the chicken Clemenceau atFeelings , the Bananas Foster atBrennen's , the
crawfish pie atMichaul's on St. Charles , the bread puddings at theBon Ton ,
the quenelles of goat crème fraîche atLilette , and fried green tomatoes,
grillades, and grits atCafé Atchafalaya .Arnaud's shrimp remoulade would never
be duplicated. Oh, and the pompano en papillote, Eggs Sardou, andouille, maque
choux, tasso, and courtbouillon of redfish! The pralines, king cakes, sweet
potato pie, calas, and pain perdu!
I shook myself, the memories of cafés and restaurants, bars and music halls,
Page 209
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
buildings and landmarks fading. Yes, those places were gone and I mourned them
because I knew them.
But a half million people that I didn't know had just become a lesser
statistic to me. And that was just the city's population. One and a half
million in the greater New Orleans area and, with water stretching in every
direction to the horizon, who knew how far inland the sea had struck?
Or how many coastal cities had suffered similar fates between Pensacola and
Galveston?
We were afloat on an alien sea and I just couldn't wrap my mind around the
scope of the catastrophe.
Never mind.
I couldn't do anything for them now.
I was beginning to see the emotional advantages to becoming a monster.
My mind would be less cluttered with unhelpful emotion when I needed my wits
about me. To revisit Joe Stalin, my family was the tragedy; everyone and
everything else were just statistics . . .
For now I would concentrate on the task at hand. I would . . .
I slid down the ladder to the lower deck and promptly began throwing up over
the side. Mostly dry heaving as I hadn't put anything solid in my stomach for
days.
There had to have been time,I told myself as small dollops of stomach bile
plinked into the grey green waves.Time for most of the people to have gotten
out, gotten to higher ground . . .
But high enough ground?
And how far away?
This was flooding beyond the anticipated disaster of a failed levee system.
The sea had been out there, hungrily nibbling its way through the tidal lands
and barrier islands that had provided a natural barrier for millennia.
Unfortunately, ninety percent of that protection had disappeared in the last
fifty years thanks to pipeline channels for oil development and wetland
mismanagement. The weight of an increasing population along an unstable
coastline added subsidence at the rate of three feet a century to the mix: the
whole gulf coast from Mississippi to Texas was sinking at an unprecedented
rate. And, every hurricane, every storm surge returned a portion of the sea to
its rightful place in defiance of man's best efforts at architecture and pump
technology.
"The future of New Orleans tourism is glass-bottom boats," the more
enlightened used to boast only half-jestingly.
But even the worst-case scenarios put the anticipated flood stage at no more
than eighteen feet.
This . . . I gazed in stupefaction out over the vast expanse of water broken
only by the snaggle-toothed under bite of high-rise buildings this was far
worse! The water had to be more than three times as deep as anything dreamed
by the Cassandras of modern misfortunes. This flood was no mere meeting of the
Page 210
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
Mississippi River with Lake Pontchartrain, the city of New Orleans caught
between their overrun banks. The Gulf of Mexico had redrawn its boundary
lines, bringing the coastline a lot closer to Baton Rouge.
And, peering at the invisible horizon, there was no way to know whether Baton
Rouge had been subsumed, as well.
How could any storm even a supernatural one flood hundreds of miles of land,
as far as the eye could see?
As if in answer to my question, the surface of the water began to pattern in
miniature ripples, like a coarsely woven fabric, flatting out the grosser
waves and wind patterns. Bubbles, ranging from delicate strands of pearl-sized
hisses to Volkswagen-sized blasts of trapped air broke the surface, turning
the ocean around us into a boiling cauldron. The New Moon pitched and turned
and the sound of rumbling grew from a sub-harmonic vibration to a
full-throated growl: earthquake!
Or, more correctly, a seaquake!
As I looked up in horror, the Greek cross shaped World Trade Center building
canted to the left presumably toward the submerged channel of the Mississippi
River and sank another eight stories beneath the waters.
New Orleans was gone. Gone deep. The dozen or so remaining buildings still
showing above the waves were nothing more than tombstones marking her watery
grave. Their glass windows shattered, dark, and empty. Devoid of light,
motion, life. Based on the number of stories still showing I figured the
French Quarter had to be under ninety feet of water easy, even though it
traditionally stood on higher ground.
The Orpheum,I thought. Whatif Lupé and the others had stayed ? Tried to ride
out the storm like Mooncloud said? Even if the sealed entrance under the
theatre was airtight, was the rest of the underground complex once the sea
rolled in? If that last temblor was an aftershock, wouldn't one of the
previous sea-quakes have cracked their subterranean bunker like an egg? And,
even if they were still alive, courtesy of an enormous amount of luck and a
large enough air pocket, how was I going to get to them without drowning them
in the process?
I slammed my fist against the railing as Zotz called out from above: "Lady in
the water! Two points off the starboard beam!"
I didn't know two points off the starboard beam from "Jesus Wants Me for a
Sunbeam" but Zotz could point from the upper deck and that was all I needed to
know. I kicked off my shoes as I rounded the New Moon to the other side,
stepped up on the rail, and launched myself outward, punching off so
powerfully that I angled down a good thirty feet through the water before I
could stop my descent.
My eyes re-lensed and filtered the available light giving me an astonishing
glimpse at the remains of the city down below.
I was suspended above section of the riverfront and, as I turned, I could see
the Spanish Plaza off to my right. To my left was Woldenberg Riverfront Park,
its sculpture gardens befouled with clots of overturned automobiles and
seaweed-like clumps of drowned bodies half-emergent from windows and snagged
on the stainless steel hoops and pillars of theOcean Song monument. More
disturbing were the bloated faces pressed to the glass ceiling of the Amazon
Rainforest, now flooded like the rest of the Aquarium of the Americas, a giant
Page 211
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
fishbowl turned upside down with human and animal floaters providing food for
the fish who had found their way inward.
A street car was on its side, blocking Canal Street adjacent to the Ferry
landing. An inconvenience to none, now. But, as I began my stroke and kick to
return to the surface, movement caught my eye. I glanced back. Then looked
again.
My head broke the surface and I had to reorient everything: direction, light,
sound, target. Liban. As I swam toward her I tried to reconcile what I thought
I had seen.
A crew of Deep Ones, laboring with ropes and jacks, to move the trolley as if
it were needed elsewhere.
* * *
Rescuing this elven sea goddess was a little more complicated than I expected.
First of all, she was unconscious so I had to swim for the both of us though [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]