Robin arrived partway through a conversation between a tall, fine-boned woman in a white coat who looked like an Aztec princess and the major, who looked more like a Spanish conquistador. ‘… When the power went out we switched over to our backup generators on the roof,’ she was saying. ‘But they’re not working properly so they only give us emergency power. And we started moving all the patients we could downstairs to wait for transport out. But then the cellar flooded and that’s where the main generator is. We’ve been without heat, light or power since. Luckily there was no one in the lift when the generator went down but we still have patients trapped on the upper floors. And, needless to say, you and your men are the first people we’ve seen.’ She looked closely at his ID badge and glanced across to Miguel-Angel, who had wandered away and was looking around. ‘One of our patients may be a relation. Señor Guerrero who runs the ship chandlery down on the Malecón. He broke his leg trying to help a friend whose boat was being carried away by the flood. He is on level three.’
‘Miguel-Angel, our father is in one of the beds upstairs. See if you can find him. Tell him we’ve come to rescue him,’ said the major. ‘Don’t worry,’ he continued, turning back to the woman and pulling one of the ship’s walkie-talkies from his belt, ‘we’ll get a generator up here and restore power. Then we’ll see about moving your staff and patients out.’ He turned away and spoke into the walkie-talkie. ‘Richard? When Biddy gets back, tell her the next load has to include the biggest generator Lieutenant Harding can find — that Biddy can lift in the Bell — and people to run it.’
‘But where will we go?’ asked the woman in the white coat. ‘There is nowhere nearer than Vallarta!’
Her words were more a spoken thought than a question directed to anyone, but Robin answered. ‘To my husband’s ship. It’s a bit like Noah’s ark from the Bible …’ Then she started to explain about Sulu Queen and Richard’s plans for her.
Some of the hospital’s maintenance staff had stayed along with some of the medical staff and, by the time Biddy returned, they had shown two of Guerrero’s engineers the best place to patch in a generator — at the major’s insistence up on the second floor just in case. ‘Then I’ll get men up on the roof to see what we can do with your back-up generators up there,’ said Guerrero. ‘But if we target at least one lift shaft with this one then we can get you moving. And maybe we can get light and heat running with the ones on the roof.’
The engineers promised that the generators would be working in a very short time and with luck would have the lifts serviceable within the hour. Robin watched work on the first begin at a fuse box on the second floor then went down and found the striking-looking white-coated administrator. She explained her qualifications and offered her help. As she did so, she finally got a look at the woman’s ID badge, which identified her as Dr Citali Potosi. Ten minutes later she was three storeys up, looking for Miguel-Angel with orders to check on his father’s leg. The moment she saw the boy she knew his father must have been badly hurt. She had expected to find Guerrero senior on crutches or in a wheelchair. But no. Miguel-Angel, framed against a window at the end of the ward that overlooked the jungle slopes and the low grey sky, was sitting beside a bed whose covers had been tented from halfway down. As she walked swiftly up the ward, Robin glanced at the other three occupants. They were all bed-ridden for one reason or another. Two were asleep. One, like the boy’s father, was sitting up. Señor Guerrero was propped on a pile of pillows, grey-faced with discomfort, his pallor emphasised by the darkness of his thick hair, heavy eyebrows and deep chocolate eyes. He was the major in twenty years’ time. Miguel-Angel clearly favoured a finer-featured mother resembling Dr Potosi. ‘How are you feeling, señor?’ she asked solicitously. ‘May I take a look at your leg?’
Miguel-Angel excitedly introduced her and explained how they had met as she folded the blanket back to reveal a leg that had been secure by old-fashioned splints. It was a good job but it was not really good enough. His foot was black with bruising and — more worryingly — his hip looked out of shape. She began to wonder at once whether there might be damage to the pelvis and hip joint as well as to the leg, but without removing the man’s hospital gown it would be impossible to be certain. And, thinking of recent examinations she had done — and not done — for reasons of gender, she realized all too clearly that she was not the person to remove Señor Guerrero’s gown. ‘Miguel-Angel,’ she said. ‘Would you run and find a doctor, please. A male doctor.’
‘Si,’ said the boy and ran off, clearly pleased to get away.
‘Señor Guerrero,’ said Robin, ‘can you tell me exactly what happened?’ As the ships’ chandler began to explain, Robin pulled up the chair the boy had been sitting in. She half turned it so she could see the rest of the ward. But she had only just sat down to listen to his story when a strange flicker in the light from the window behind her made her turn. She caught her breath with a mixture of surprise and wonder. She stood, leaving her patient stammering into silence, and went to the window. And there, seemingly immediately outside, apparently just above the hospital’s flat roof another ten stories up, the three hundred foot body of the Aeroscraft dirigible Dragon Dream was sailing steadily and silently down towards the docks, looking like a space ship made of mercury, the rain exploding off its skin, giving it a kind of silver halo.
Looking straight ahead out of the bridge windows, Richard could see nothing but the concrete wall of the bridge’s side, even though he was more than sixty feet above the dockside. He could see little more from the port-bridge wing which overhung the concrete sixty feet below and was hard up against the concrete of the road bridge, which was close enough to touch. The starboard wing, however, gave a view beneath the rising span, and from here it was possible to see the bustle of the foredeck as, under the ship’s deck lights, men and women from Guerrero’s command were working on the relief containers. They were sheltered from the rain by a combination of the bridge’s broad span and Sulu Queen’s tall bridge house. In spite of the fact that the underside of the span rose over one hundred feet above the deck at its highest point, only the most occasional gust came anywhere near pushing the precipitation past the six-deck-high white wall of Sulu Queen’s accommodation and command areas or in from the far side of the road bridge, in spite of the fact that the span was high above — especially near the centre of the arch. But in fact, things beneath the span of the bridge were relatively calm as well as being warm and dry. The wind was coming out of the west, in from the ocean. And between Sulu Queen and the main force of the storm stood wall after wall. Tall, strong-sided warehouses standing along the western dockside. Wide, solid, skyscraper hotels beyond them that lined the land-side of the beach. Richard was just stepping back in from this vantage point, thoroughly satisfied with the way things were progressing, when the radio operator called to him. ‘I have someone on the radio who wants to speak to you.’ And that was how he learned that Dragon Dream had arrived.