North of California, the waves had done relatively little damage on the steep, thinly populated coast. A ham operator relayed a report from Oregon that several fishing ports had been seriously hit. No news had come from Washington, British Columbia or Alaska.
“Pretty goddamned depressing,” said Owen. “It’ll be even worse when we get in and people start looking for their families.”
“Yes.” Don knew that Owen was divorced; his wife and two daughters lived in Chicago now.
“Kirstie should be okay.”
“God, Owen, I hope so. She was supposed to be in the city today, at a conference of climatologists. She could be fine or she could be dead.”
“She’ll be fine. I’m certain of it. But I’m worried as hell about all the people at PIO, right on the waterfront.”
“I’ll bet they got out in time,” said Don. “They’re plugged right into the Hilo tsunami alert system, so they’d have known as soon as anyone. They would have moved fast.”
Owen nodded.
“Even if the Institute is wrecked,” Don went on, “we’ll be back in business right away. There’ll be a hell of a lot to do.”
“I know. But we may be way down the priorities list. Think about the economic impact of all this, coming on top of a depression. The government will be scraping around for money just to pay its own people, let alone us. The insurance companies will be wrecked, the banks will start failing — can you imagine how many mortgaged houses must have been smashed into kindling today?”
“And all the computers have been haywire for months,” Don added. “Still, they’ll have to do something. They can’t just let everything fall apart.”
Ultramarine hove to a few kilometres northwest of the Golden Gate and waited for sunrise. Don slept for a few hours and woke gritty-eyed and sluggish. His head hurt. The air smelled sour and strange.
The lights were on in the wardroom, but he found no one there. Don got a cup of coffee and took it with him to the bridge.
Bill Murphy was there, red-eyed and hoarse from staying up all night. Owen, by contrast, was freshly showered and shaved, and seemed relaxed and casual. On deck below, most of the rest of the crew and scientists were lined up along the port rail, looking at the Marin coast.
“My God,” said Don.
The sea was strewn with wreckage: lumber, trees, an almost-intact shingle roof, a capsized fishing boat, tangled masses of yellow nylon rope, carcasses of cows and sheep, a man’s naked body caught in the branches of a floating oak. Here and there, the flotsam was thick enough to form islets. Oil slicks gleamed in long streaks across the choppy grey water. Despite the westerly wind, the air was sour and heavy.
The Marin shore, five kilometres to the west, showed the scars of the tsunamis. All the lower slopes had been scoured clean of life; bedrock gleamed wetly. Above the scars, houses stood undamaged along tree-lined roads.
“They haven’t had a big wave since midnight,” Bill rasped, “and the seiches in the bay have died down. But the slick is all over the northeast corner, and across to Marin, and up into San Pablo Bay. Lot of fires in the city.”
“Anything from PIO?” Don asked.
“Uh-uh.”
The ship picked its way inshore, steering around islands of debris; a lookout in the bow used the ship’s phone to guide Bill through clear water.
Don went outside as Ultramarine entered the Golden Gate. Grey sky hung low over the sea. The two peninsulas faded into mist not far to the north and south; over San Francisco, smoke coiled up into the overcast. It was fairly quiet, except for the drone and thump of the engines, the susurration of water against the hull, and the distant white noise of the city.
Just to the right of the ship’s course, the south tower of the Golden Gate Bridge rose above the incoming tide. The roadway it supported ran out from the steep bluffs of the Presidio, between the twin orange pillars, and ended in ragged steel and concrete. Support cables trailed into the water. Steel had twisted, concrete had shattered, but somehow the structure held together.
A line of surf showed where the north tower lay beneath the surface. On the gouged bedrock of the Marin Headlands, the northern end of the roadway lay twisted and shattered.
Straight ahead, Alcatraz stood out clearly against the smoke cloud of the burning slick; the hills behind Berkeley were just visible through the tattered edges of the cloud.
Don turned to look at the San Francisco shoreline again. The old bastion on Fort Point was gone; on the muddy slopes of the Presidio, soldiers and civilians wandered without obvious purpose. Beyond the trees and red-tile roofs of the Presidio itself, more smoke rose in streaks of black and grey, white and yellow. Don saw a helicopter rise from somewhere inside the army base and vanish into the smoke.
The surface of the water was a matted mass of uprooted trees, capsized sailboats, oil drums, furniture, tires and corpses. Despite the lookout, Ultramarine kept striking debris. The smell in the air thickened into a smoggy stink.
Now they were within the bay, and keeping well offshore. Although he had the harbour to himself, Bill Murphy kept Ultramarine moving dead slow. The ship crept south along the ruined docks; apart from the broken concrete pillars of the Embarcadero Freeway, Don could see little of the city through the thickening haze of smoke. Beyond where the Ferry Building had been, the smoke was a solid black wall, blotting out everything on the far side of the bay. Coughing, Don went back up to the bridge.
“Looks really bad,” Bill said. “I don’t think we’ll find much left of PIO.” He picked up a microphone.
“This is Bill.” His voice echoed from loud-speakers all over the ship. “I want everyone below decks. Everyone. Secure all portholes and ventilation.” He put the mike back on its hook and tugged his baseball cap lower over his eyes. He crossed himself.
Darkness fell over the ship. Smoke swirled in grey cones in front of the spotlights, and the foghorn blatted every few seconds. Bill watched the radar and sonar screens; their green lights were reflected in his eyes.
One of the Bay Bridge’s huge concrete footings loomed through black haze; the roadway above was only a darker smudge. Don went to the starboard windows.
The footing was pitted and scarred for almost ten metres above the surface of the water. Deep cracks ran through the concrete; fragments of wood and plastic had been forced into them, and hung like moss.
“That high — this far inside the bay—” Don shook his head. “There won’t be a thing left of the Institute.”
PIO’S buildings had stood on China Basin Road, near Pier 48. Dozens of pilings still jutted from the water, but the Institute’s converted warehouses were gone. Where they had been, oily water reflected the orange glare of the burning city.
“Well, well,” Bill muttered. Owen stared out the windows, expressionless.
A low, dark peninsula stood beyond the ship’s bow: the naval shipyards at Hunter’s Point.
“Maybe the navy will take us in,” Owen said quietly.
While flotsam thumped against the hull, the ship crept south. It was still several hundred metres from the north side of the shipyards when everyone on the bridge could see that the docks were wrecked here as well. The seiches had swept back and forth across the low peninsula of Hunter’s Point, turning the machine shops and dry docks into rubble.
Bill and Owen spoke together for a few minutes, quietly and gravely. Then Bill ordered the anchors dropped. He picked up the mike.