Seabound (Seabound Chronicles Book 1) (4 page)

At the time of the
eruption, Judith had been twenty-two years old, the same age Esther was now.
Esther, a frightened, pigtailed child, had grasped at Judith like she was an
older sister, like she was a flotation device. As Simon helped the survivors
cope, Judith had been his protégé, a natural leader who also found her sense of
purpose in helping to create and guide their little community through the
troubles. But about six years ago, a decade after their escape to the sea,
Judith had started to assert herself more aggressively.

Judith was admired
for her efficiency, her caution, and her willingness to play favorites with
people who supported her. She was cold, but her organization was tight as a
stopper knot. She took on a larger leadership role, undermining the spirit of
the rotating leadership council, and Simon started to withdraw. He became
increasingly reclusive and melancholic. Meanwhile, the faction that supported
him shrank. It was thanks to Simon that the survivors didn’t destroy each other
in the initial terror of the new world, yet somehow Judith had succeeded in
turning public opinion against him, leading people to believe that he was
trying to control and manipulate them. Simon didn’t seem to mind, taking solace
in recording the history of the
Catalina
for posterity, whatever that
was. Esther had born the brunt of the insult. She’d never forgive Judith. She
wished more than anything to be out from under her thumb.

“Judith?”

“Yes? Oh. Esther.”
Judith turned away from Manny and fixed her sharp, gray eyes on Esther. Her
angular face looked even more severe sticking out from a thick navy turtleneck.
Her ash-blond hair, cut in a straight line, brushed high cheekbones. “Here to
discuss your flagrant disregard for my instructions? I told you not to tinker
with—”

“Can I talk to you
about something else first?” Esther interrupted.

“Make it quick.”

Esther nodded,
fighting down a flash of irritation. She had to stay calm.

“I want to submit
a leave application to the council,” she said.

Judith pinched her
lips into a thin line. “I see.”

“Can we talk about
it at the next council meeting?”

“We have a lot to
discuss in the next council meeting. I’m not sure we can squeeze you on to the
agenda.”

Everyone knew that
Judith controlled the council now. She chaired the meetings, ostensibly to
maintain consistency as the members rotated, and she always set the agenda. Too
many of the people aboard the ship had fallen into apathy; they usually just
voted to do what she wanted. Judith had convinced them that she was the one who
would keep them safe through all the storms the sea could throw their way.
Esther would have to go through her to get what she wanted.
Stay calm.

“What about the
one after that?” Esther asked.

Manny was shaking
his head. He leaned back from the table and crossed his arms over his narrow
chest.

“Esther,” Judith
said, her voice slow and exaggerated, “this community functions because
everyone has a role to play. Have you thought about how your abandonment would
affect the community that has kept you safe for almost your entire life?”

“I can train
someone else to do my work,” Esther said.

“Cally?” Judith
gave a nasty smile. “A little fish told me she nearly destroyed the pump system
last night. She’s not ready. It’s bad enough when we’re subjected to your other
. . . experiments.”

“Cally is
learning, and
it
was an honest
mistake,” Esther said, conveniently forgetting the lecture she’d given Cally.
“It’s almost four months until we dock with the
Amsterdam
next. I can get her ready in that time.”

Judith sighed. “We
might not be meeting with the
Amsterdam
Coalition
this year.”

“What? Why?”

That wasn’t what
Esther expected at all.

“We can survive on
our reserves for a while yet,” Judith said, waving her hand dismissively.

“Not for another
year.”

The idea of going
for more than a year without the variation provided by the
Amsterdam
made Esther feel claustrophobic. It was a bright spot she
didn’t think she could do without.

“We’re better off
when we don’t interact with other communities. There have been reports of
increased violence between the mercenary groups. You don’t know who you can
trust in this world.”

Judith had always
hated meeting up with other ships, saying they were dangerous. It was one of
the scare tactics she’d used in her covert campaign against Simon. They’d had
very little contact with anyone since Judith had come to power. But skipping
the
Amsterdam
meeting?

“You want to go it
alone?” Esther asked.

“I’m just saying
we may not meet with the
Amsterdam
on
schedule,” Judith said. “Are you sure you want to continue with your
application? It would be a terrible waste of time.”

Esther felt like
the murals on the dining hall walls were getting closer together, threatening
to suffocate her with their teasing images of wide-open spaces and distant
lands.

“I want a change,
Judith,” she said. “Maybe if you’d let me install my ideas for the desalination
system, I wouldn’t feel so stir-crazy. We could survive for longer without the
Amsterdam
if desal didn’t take so much
energy.”

Judith scowled,
unmoved by Esther’s plea. “Frank’s system is invaluable, and I won’t have you
disturbing it.”

“I wouldn’t mess
anything up,” Esther insisted.
I’d only
take it apart completely and . . .

“As I recall, the
last time I ordered you not to tinker with the system, we ended up going on
emergency rations for a week,” Judith said.

Leave it to her to bring
that
up again
.
It had been a tiny mistake, and now Esther knew what not to do.

“You didn’t have a
council vote,” she said. “You can’t tell me what I can and can’t do in my own
time—and I fixed the leak.”

Truthfully, she
hadn’t been sure that particular experiment would work, but she’d been frustrated
with Judith for ordering her around. The council members were supposed to be in
charge equally. That’s how her father designed it.

“You are not as
good as you think you are, Esther. It’s time you learned to take criticism.”
Esther began to protest, but Judith held up a thin hand. “I’ll have no trouble
convincing the council to order you to stop experimenting altogether, now that
you mention it.”

Judith smiled,
turned back to the cod on her plate, and dismissed Esther with a wave of her
fork.

Esther stood her
ground. “If you’re not going to let me try anything new, then I’ll leave.”

“Despite what
happened last month, Esther, we need you to keep everything in working order.
That’s your role. Let me be blunt. If you apply for leave, you will be denied.
I’m sure you have better things to do with your time.” Judith turned back to
Manny, jutting her narrow shoulder toward him, cutting Esther off.

“You can’t force
me to stay,” Esther said to the back of Judith’s head.

Judith didn’t turn
around. “You won’t abandon your father. Especially as he’s been suffering from
a bit of depression, I hear.” Judith’s voice was like broken glass. “You
shouldn’t put him at risk because you have cabin fever.”

“Rust and salt,
Judith!” It was a low blow, and Esther lost her last shred of control. “How
dare you talk about him like that! It’s your fault he’s been—”

“Now, now,
Esther,” Manny said, standing up. The scar on his brow tensed. Judith kept her
face turned away. “Calm down. You don’t want to say something you’ll regret.”

Manny was only an
inch or two taller than Esther, but he was well muscled. Plus the very next
table contained a group of Judith’s supporters. A few looked up.

Esther stared a
tempest at Manny (and at the back of Judith’s head), then turned on her heel
and stomped out of the dining hall. She couldn’t believe Judith would bring her
father into it like that! This had to be a new low. Esther would be off the
Catalina
that very moment if there was
so much as a rowboat within swimming distance.

Her steps pounded in
the hallway. She stomped straight to the engine room, where she pulled out a
wrench and calmed herself by tightening bolts on the silent machines.

Chapter 5—Desalination

The familiar sound of
pumps and running water greeted Esther in the
desalination room the following morning. She had stayed up late the night
before, grumbling to herself about Judith and thinking about how to improve the
system. As long as Judith didn’t notice what she was doing, damned if she was
going to feel bad about it.

Originally, the
Catalina
had a flash evaporating system that desalinated water using excess energy from
the ship’s engines. It had provided the ship’s water while it carried passengers
from California down the coast of Mexico. Whenever they weren’t using their
engines in ports from Cabo to Puerto Vallarta, they could pump clean water in
from the port city. Now that they barely had enough energy to run the engines
in true emergencies, they needed some other way to remove salt from their
water. That was where Frank Fordham came in.

Esther ducked
beneath the pipes crossing the room and joined Frank at one of the freshwater
tanks. “Hey, Frank. How was the storm?”

“Made it through
just fine. Felt it coming in my joints.”

Frank had once
been a tall man, but his back had developed a hump over the years. With his
mustache and sad eyes he would have looked like a walrus were it not for his
foam-white hair.

“Can your joints
tell the difference between a runner and a rider?”

“There isn’t that
much difference,” Frank said. “I imagine we survived some runners in the early
days. We’d bash up a few things and be on our way.” Frank patted the water tank
affectionately.

The desalination
system Frank designed had been set up in the old bowling alley. The walls bore
a faded mural of bowling pins that looked like palm trees arrayed on a tropical
beach. The old racks and other equipment had been used elsewhere on the ship.
The bowling balls made good weights for deep-sea crabbing and fishing. Esther
and the other children had grown through a succession of bowling shoes. She
still had a pair she used when her work boots became waterlogged.

Now, the
desalination system filled the room with pipes and tanks, which marched down
the old lanes. It was a beautiful system, incorporating technologies that Frank
had studied as an engineer, along with his own innovations. It had taken time
to collect enough pipes, heat coils, filters, and reverse-osmosis membranes to
create this masterpiece. They were lucky that plastic floated so well. They’d
been able to skim it off the sea like leaves. It still took an incredible
amount of energy to remove all the salt from the water, but it was better than
using the evaporation system they’d relied on until they could get enough
material to build the specialized RO filters. The entire system was a
pressurized bundle of old parts, and it needed regular care.

“We got lucky this
time,” Esther said. “Neal told me the old
Queen Anne
sank in a storm a
few months ago. He says we’d have called it a runner, but they didn’t have
enough fuel left to get away in time.”

“It’s a shame. I
sailed on the
Queen Anne
when I was a young man.”

“Did you?” Esther
laid a hand on one of the pipes to judge the temperature and pressure of the
unit.

“She was a
beautiful ship, but her parts were old then. I’m surprised she survived this
long,” Frank said.

“Did you ever wish
you lived on a cruise ship?”

Frank smiled,
stretching his mustache out to the sides. “I spent too much time eating from
the buffet and chasing a beautiful girl through the disco to think about the
future. I was young then. Thought I could do anything.”

“Must have been
nice.” Esther thought of the future before her: a six-hundred-foot ship held
together with pins, and the endless ocean.

Frank drew his
eyebrows together and nodded. “Yes. Yes, we had many options in those days. I’m
sorry your youth doesn’t allow for the same freedom.”

“Not your fault,”
Esther said briskly. But Frank’s eyes were far away. Esther had noticed that
happen more often lately. Her father’s eyes did the same thing. She cleared her
throat.

Frank looked at
her and scratched his mustache. “Oh, hello, Esther. When did you get here?”

 
“I’ve been here for a few minutes. Are
you okay, Frank?”

Esther studied
him. The left side of his face was slightly slack, like a piece of tarp that
hadn’t been tied down properly.

“I’m sorry,
Esther. Of course you’ve been here. Don’t know what I was thinking.”

“It’s okay.”
Esther turned to inspect the gauges on the nearest tank, keeping one eye on her
mentor. He didn’t look well. She wanted to keep him talking. “Frank, did you
know Judith wants to skip our next docking with the
Amsterdam Coalition
?”

“Does she?”

“She’s getting
suspicious of them. Thinks it’s safer to keep to ourselves.”

“The
Amsterdam
always has been rather
mercenary. Still, I think we need them,” Frank said.

“We
have
become more self-sufficient than we
used to be,” Esther said. “I have a few ideas for alternate energy sources. I
want to build a new generator if I can get the right equipment. Someday we
might not need to rely on fuel, even for big moves. And your system will keep
us in freshwater forever.”

Frank frowned.
“I’m concerned about our filters, actually. They work hard. We will need to
replace them soon.”

“What about the
backups?”

Esther moved to
the next gauge. Frank had always been careful to have backup materials. He’d
collected for years after the original constructions were complete, in case anything
went wrong.

“I’m afraid I’ve
let a few things slide lately.” Frank’s eyes wandered through the tanks, dull
like an ash-filled sky. “It doesn’t seem worth it sometimes. I checked on our
backups, and they weren’t sealed properly. A large percentage of the RO
membranes have decayed in storage . . .” His voice trailed off.

Esther’s head shot
up. Frank was supposed to rotate the filters regularly to make them last as
long as possible. It wasn’t like him to be careless about something like this.
“What do you mean, decayed?”

“They are
worthless,” Frank said, shrugging. “Our current filters will have to hold until
we next dock with the
Amsterdam
, I expect.”

“How long have you
known about this?”

“I checked on them
after the storm yesterday, to see if they’d shifted around too much. It’s a
wonder I thought to do it at all.”

Frank didn’t sound
concerned. The same sense of slackness, of vacancy, Esther had noticed earlier
had replaced the curiosity and industry she had first admired about him.

“How long do you
think we have?” Esther asked.

“Oh, the current
filters have a good six months left in them, but we’ll need to restock our
supply. I can speak to Judith about it.”

Esther nodded,
feeling a surge of hope despite this worrying news. “She’ll listen to you.
Maybe she’ll reconsider going to meet the
Amsterdam
this year after all!”

Her brain was
already churning as she thought about how she could convince the council to let
her leave, despite Judith’s objections. Her buddy Reggie’s turn was coming
soon. That was helpful. It was a shame Gracie Cordova had another few months
left on the council. She was firmly in Judith’s camp. At worst, Esther would
sneak away. Her father’s face swam before her for a moment, but she pushed it
down.

“All right. Well,
be careful today, Esther. I’ll be back to check in on you after I’ve had a
nap.”

Frank turned, and
the joints in his knees popped.

“Thanks, Frank.
Get some rest. And don’t forget to talk to Judith.”

“About what?”

“The filters. And
the
Amsterdam
?” Esther prompted.

“Ah yes.”

Frank walked
slowly down the bowling lane, bending to duck under the pipes as he went.
Esther watched him sadly. He really should have been paying better attention to
the condition of the extra filters. They’d lost a few members of the community
to this insidious absentmindedness. This melancholy. But a life endlessly at
sea did not inspire hope in most people. You had to stay busy to survive.

Esther swung
underneath the intake pipes and started a complete check of the desalination
system, her mind on the next few months. She would finish training Cally to
take over her duties. The council would agree they had to meet the
Amsterdam
this year to get more filters
for their water system. It was nonnegotiable. No matter what, they needed
freshwater.

They usually
didn’t run the water through the system at full capacity because it took so
much energy. Whenever a storm replenished their power supply, they’d do a major
batch to refill the freshwater reserve, most of which was pumped down to the
extra tanks in the old casino on the fourth deck. Frank was supposed to send
the extra water through that morning, but the quiet hum of the machines told
her he’d forgotten. She flipped a few switches to increase the flow. It would
probably be better for her to monitor the process herself, since Frank seemed
to be having trouble remembering things. Soon, triple the normal water intake
was rushing through the bay of RO membranes, slowly filling the tanks with precious
pure water. It would take time; she might as well tinker a bit.

At the back of the
room, near what had once been the automated pinsetter, Esther had assembled a
workspace. Technically, Judith had banned her from doing this, but she’d had an
idea last night that she wanted to record. Judith hadn’t yet followed through
on her promise to get the council to officially restrict Esther’s work. If she
succeeded, they’d forgive her. They’d see she wasn’t just messing around. She
scratched calculations into the wood of the floor with her pocketknife,
planning what she’d try next time she had new materials to work with. But her
mind strayed off the
Catalina
.

She wouldn’t have
to stay on the
Amsterdam
. Other floating
villages docked there all the time, according to a trader friend she’d spoken
to last year. Some were on cruise ships. Others made their ark on cargo vessels
and oil tankers. A few people even survived on yachts and sailing ships, but
they didn’t last long, often finding bigger ships to support them. If she could
demonstrate her skills as a mechanic, she should have her pick of seabound
communities. But Esther, like most of them, dreamed of land.

She scratched out
her latest diagram with the knife, listening to the music of the water in the
pipes, and began again. She remembered when her family had driven across the
country to visit her grandmother back east for Hanukkah. The land had seemed
empty then. She’d spent hours with her face pressed to the window of the little
blue car, gazing at the rolling fields interrupted with wandering cows and bungalows
like gingerbread houses. Was any of that still there? She didn’t know what use
her seafaring and engineering skills would be on land. Maybe they still needed
to filter water to get rid of the lingering poisons from the volcano. She could
find work replicating Frank’s water system—with her own improvements, of
course.

Esther sat back
and looked over the diagram freshly etched into the wood floor. She was missing
something. If only she could communicate with other mechanics. She’d love to
pick the brain of someone with proper training. Esther leaned back against a
water tank. She hadn’t caught up on sleep since the night of the storm. She
probably shouldn’t have spent so long working last night either, but Judith had
made her too angry to sleep. The gentle vibration of the water tank was
soothing. She was confident in Frank’s system. It had been running itself for
years. All she had to do was keep an eye on the pressure gauges. Her head
tipped sideways, coming to rest on an intake pipe . . .

Esther awoke to the acrid
smell of burning plastic. She jumped up and rubbed the sleep out of her eyes.
Her vision was hazy. It took a second to realize the room was filling with
steam. Where was it coming from? She needed the fire extinguisher. She dodged
tanks and ducked under pipes, making her way toward the wall. Smoke billowed
toward her from a filter panel in the second lane. As Esther reached the fire
extinguisher, the tank attached to the filter emitted a high-pitched scream and
a jet of steam.

She grabbed the
heavy extinguisher off the wall and leapt through the maze toward the source of
the scream. She couldn’t see any flames, but as she neared she saw plastic
melting. Heat came off the tank in waves. The pressure gauge on its side was
going haywire.

She looked at the
other tanks, zeroing in on the gauges—the gauges she should have been
watching. She had a split second to register how bad the pressure was before
the tank she’d been sleeping against ten seconds earlier exploded. Steam and
scalding water burst across the room. The shriek of metal scraping metal tore
through the air. Esther hit the floor as a red-hot coil flew over her head. The
fire extinguisher rolled out of her grasp. A second tank exploded. A deafening
riot filled the air.