• CRUST

They had come to break up Sea State, and nobody, not even the Swiss navy, put up a fight to stop them.

Not that there was much to fight for anymore, Crat figured. Most citizens of the nation of creaking barges had come here in the first place because there was nowhere else to go and be their own masters. Now, though, there were plenty of places. And somehow most people had stopped worrying so much about mastery anymore.

Crat lingered on deck watching the gradual dismemberment of the town that had until a few weeks ago seemed so gritty and vital. Under the Admiral’s Tower, orderly queues of families boarded zeps that would take them to new homes in the scoured zones … areas stripped of human life during the brief terror of the death angels. Now that the angels had been transformed, there were whole empty cities waiting to be refilled, with room enough for all.

Anyway, it had been made clear by the highest authority that the oceans were just too delicate to tolerate the likes of Sea State. Other territories, like Southern California, seemed to cry out for boisterous noise and other human-generated abuse. Let the refugees head there then, to remake the multilingual melting pot that had bubbled in that place before the crisis, and amaze the world with the results.

That was how one commentator put it, and Crat had liked the image. He’d even been tempted to go along—to have a house in Malibu maybe. To learn to surf. Maybe become a movie star?

But no. He shook his head as sea gulls dived and squawked, competing for the last of what had been a rich trove of Sea State garbage. Crat listened to their raucous chorus and decided he’d heard enough from stupid birds … even smarty-pants dolphins. The ocean wasn’t for him after all.

Nor Patagonia, especially now that volcanic dust threatened a reversal of the greenhouse effect, returning ice to the polar climes.

Nor even Hollywood.

Naw. Space is the place. That’s where the real elbow room is. Where there’ll be big rewards for guys like me. Guys willing to take chances.

First, of course, he’d had to finish taking big official types on tours of the seabed site where the company’s mystery lab had been. Apparently some nasty stuff had gone on down there, but nobody seemed to hold him responsible. In fact, one of the visiting investigators had called him “a steady fellow and a hard worker” and promised a good recommendation. If those tough jobs for miners on the moon ever opened up, that reference might come in handy.

I wonder what Remi and Roland would’ve thought. Me, a steady fellow … maybe even goin’ to melt rocks on the moon.

First he had to get there, though. And that meant working his way across the Pacific, helping haul the remnants of Sea State to reclamation yards now that ocean dumping wasn’t just illegal, but maybe suicidal as well. It would take months, but he’d save up for clothes and living expenses and a new plaque, and tapes to study so they wouldn’t think him a complete ignoramus when he filled out application forms.…

“Hah! Listen to you!” He laughed at himself as he hopped nimbly over narrow gangways to the gunwale where his work team was supposed to meet. “Becomin’ a reet intellectual, are ya?”

To show he wasn’t a complete mama’s boy, he spat over the side. Not that it hurt her nibs a bit to do so. She’d recycle it, like she would his soddy carcass when the time came, and good riddance.

A whistle blew, calling crew to stations. He grinned as the tug’s exec nodded to him. There was still plenty of time, but Crat wanted to be early. It was expected of him.

The others in his team shambled up, one by one and in pairs. He made a point of scowling at the last two, who arrived just before the final blow.

“All right,” he told the gang. “We’re haulin’ hawsers here, not some girly-girl’s drawers. So if you want your pay, put your backs in, hear?”

They grunted, nodded, grimaced in a dozen different dialects and cultural modes. Crat thought them the scum of the Earth. Just like himself.

“Ready, then?” he cried as the bosun called to cast off lines. The men took up the heavy jute rope.

“Okay, let’s show Momma what even scum can do. All together now … pull!”