California had become a ghost state, a waterlogged equivalent of the Dead Roads inhabited by few but the truly degenerate and insane. Large swathes of it were a shallow sea, the water broken only by the rubble of pre-FHC civilisation.
Mudge told us the story around the campfire. Growing up, we’d all heard versions of it but he had the education to know it properly, I guess. Pagan probably knew it too but he remained quiet and looked solemn, even sad. I tried to imagine what that night had been like. It must have felt like the end of the world. I wondered if they’d had time to realise something was wrong. Would they have been able to understand the magnitude of the disaster that was killing them? I could only think of it in the most abstract terms. I hoped that they had died quickly, but I knew many of them would not have.
The same night the corporations hit the faults they had also hit every single dam on the Colorado River. This, along with the general rise in the water table, led to partial flooding of the Grand Canyon and surrounding areas. While it paled in significance compared to the destruction of California, it was another blow against America’s infrastructure. The lights went out in Vegas just before the aftershocks hit it. It also led to the Grand Canyon and environs becoming euphemistically known as the Arizona or Nevada — depending on what side you were on — Coast.
Vicious, often artificially augmented, tidal bore waves forced down narrow canyons gave birth to the dangerous sport of canyon surfing and turned the Arizona/Nevada Coast into a the number-one surf spot in North America. Though the truly hard core sometimes risked the dangers of California to surf the ruins of its destroyed cities. The area had been developed by an alliance of mob money and the local Hulapai Native Americans, who had ensured that the land was not further abused too much. Fortunately, as the target market was surfers, not too much development was needed. They liked to rough it. The development alliance used surf tribes to police the coast. Some of the tribes were borderline feral people from the ruins of California.
The free and easy approach to law enforcement coupled with a love of cash meant a burgeoning grey market. We were hoping to find what we’d need in the arms and tech markets of New Venice.
I felt overdressed in my raincoat. Everyone else looked much more at home, particularly Pagan with his staff and ritual accoutrements back on show, although our pale and soon-to-be-red skin marked us out as Europeans.
Much of New Venice clung to the canyon walls or made use of caves in the side of the canyons, though the Hulapai council had forbidden any excavation. The streets were often rope bridges out over the water, or platforms linking buildings that clung to the cliff. Most of the people were tanned, muscular and heavily tattooed. There was a lot of scar tissue on show, some of it ritual, most of it the result of meeting a canyon wall at speed. Many were heavily pierced and/or had their hair cut, braided or deadlocked into elaborate patterns. They wore shorts, cut-offs or wetsuits. The women wore bikini tops and the men were mainly stripped to the waist. Most carried knives but only the tribal police seemed to wear guns.
After we’d found people who seemed trustworthy enough to bribe to look after our vehicles, we asked God where she was, knowing that she would have asked God to alert her if anyone made enquiries about her. Then we made our way through New Venice down into the main canyon. As we took the bridges over the smaller canyons we began to see the surfing. The surfers would watch one of the tidal bores approaching and jump off bridges into deep-water rapids. Then they had to sort themselves out and get ready to catch the wave. If/when they caught the wave it shot them down the canyon like a bullet. The canyon walls were smeared with sun-baked blood.
‘I want a go!’ Mudge shouted as we watched three surfers jump from the bridge we were on. Two of them almost immediately wiped out. One of them didn’t come back up as we crossed.
‘Focus,’ I told him.
I was trying to decide if it was any more dangerous or stupid than scheme racing. Probably not, but then I’d done that for money. Or at least I’d thought I had.
‘Me too,’ Morag said. I could hear the excitement in her voice.
We found her in another, narrower canyon. She was on a bridge, board ready, about to jump. We tried to approach her but armed surf tribespeople stopped us. The fact that they were carrying guns suggested they were police.
I opened my mouth to shout to her but Pagan put his hand on my shoulder. Mudge was shaking his head as well.
She looked much as she had, except instead of exo-armour she was wearing a shorty wetsuit. I could see a lot more of her now. She had the sort of body that looked like it had worked hard all her life, all hard muscle and very little fat. Her head was still completely shorn of hair. Her skin looked a darker shade of brown, almost black, but that may have been the shadow down here away from the sun.
If she knew we were here then she gave absolutely no indication of it. She glanced behind her at the bore wave. To me it looked like a near-solid wall of water. Gripping her board, she jumped.
As one we moved to the edge of the ledge we were standing on. She surfaced momentarily, lying flat on her board, carried along by the fast-moving water, then disappeared again as the wave reached her. Cameras on remotes followed her progress. There was a thinscreen stuck to a smooth part of the canyon wall showing the footage. She rode the wave. There was no look of joy or pleasure on her face like I’d seen on some of the others, but instead a look of intense concentration. She was working at it.
It was going well until she tried to climb the wave. To me it looked like she just didn’t have enough room for the manoeuvre she was attempting. The tip of the board hit the canyon wall, snapping off, and the force of the wave catapulted her into the air. She hit the rock with enough force to make all of us flinch.
‘Oh well, that was a waste of time,’ Mudge said.
‘Shut up, Mudge,’ Morag told him.
We found her sunning herself on a rock outcrop higher up and further along the canyon. The impact had cut her head open and split her subcutaneous armour. I was pretty sure I could see the bone-white of skull. Most of her skin was missing down her right side, scraped away down to the armour. She may have cleaned her wounds but she hadn’t dressed them yet.
There were a few other people around. I was supposed to be checking all around us but found myself polarising my lenses and looking up the rock walls at the sliver of blue sky above.
‘Hello, Cat,’ Morag said to her. Cat Sommerjay, ex-C-SWAT commander from the Atlantis Spoke, opened one of her eyes. She cast a black lens over us.
‘I’m not interested,’ she said.
‘We’re paying,’ Morag said.
‘I had a job.’
Through no real fault of her own, concrete-eating microbes had been used twice on the Atlantis Spoke on her watch. This had resulted in the most amount of damage done to a spoke since the fall of the Brazilian Spoke during the FHC.
‘Look, we’re sorry about-’ Morag started.
‘Sorry?’ Cat sat up, opening both eyes to look at us. ‘Sorry! I’m fucking unemployable thanks to you people. Two major terrorist incidents on my watch, in a spoke. Have you any idea how fucking hard I worked to get to the head of that team?’
‘That why you’re down here trying to kill yourself?’ Mudge, the diplomat, asked. Cat turned to give him a proper NCO glare. He didn’t flinch.
‘No, asshole. I had some back pay due and I always fancied giving it a go.’
‘So why aren’t you dressing your wounds?’ I asked despite my better judgement. She turned to look at me. ‘No, you’re not trying to kill yourself, are you? Just enjoying a little pain.’