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.I saw something that could have been a road, but it was decomposed and swallowed up on either side.The remains of a truck or a tank were scattered like bones nearby.In the copter it was drier even than on land, and I couldn’t lick my lips quick enough to keep them moist.I knew if we could climb higher, I would see the silver pearls that dotted the planet’s surface and were all that remained of the great lakes and rivers.Enormous reservoirs, they held all the fresh water left on the planet.Canals, aqueducts, pipes, and pumping stations funneled every drop into their well-guarded steel and concrete basins.Humans had finally made the world to suit their purposes.Even the weather was under their control, and the sun, moon, and stars were sure to follow.A chill made my bones ache and muscles shudder.“There’s another blanket in the rear,” said Ulysses.Will reached for it and handed it to me.I let it fall to my lap.“How do you know he’s there?” I asked.“Don’t know for certain,” said Ulysses.The PELA mercenary who had told the pirates Kai was a prisoner of Bluewater had traded the information for his life.To him, Kai was just a boy and well worth the trade.PELA did the dirty work and asked no questions.“So what’s your plan?” asked Will.“The plan?” Ulysses chuckled.For the first time, I noticed that his clothes were ragged and torn.His unwashed hair and unshaved beard made him look like the older men in the gaming center.When he grinned, his crazed and cracked smile framed a handful of battered yellow teeth.But his brown eyes glittered like a promise.“Save the kid.Find the water.Get rich.”“Seriously.Don’t you have a plan?” I asked.Ulysses tried to look serious for a minute.“I thought you were the smart one,” he said.“Don’t you have a plan?”“You can’t just fly into the Great Coast, shoot your way into Bluewater, and take Kai and his father,” I told him.“Why not?”“’Cause you can’t.They’ll kill you, for one thing.”Ulysses scratched his beard.“Hmm.Need a better plan.”The pilot interrupted with a question about their route, and he and Ulysses reviewed our position against a crinkled and torn map.We were flying low, and now there were the unmistakable signs of habitation: broken roads, scavenged vehicles, the ruins of concrete buildings, smashed and flat as if they had been crushed by a giant foot.But no people, and no other signs of life.“The cities were the first to go,” said Ulysses, noticing that I was staring out the window.“Why?”“Most of them have no water.They piped it in from the country.There were riots and war.”“The Great Panic.”“Before that, even.The Panic came later.When the Canadians dammed the rivers and the last great polar cap melted.”“They melted it for water,” said Will, who pushed himself forward so that he was practically sitting on my seat.“It was already melting.The ice caps were retreating, and the sea did the rest.”“Why didn’t anyone stop it?”“They couldn’t.It happened too quickly, and it was too warm.Countries took what they could.But when the ice caps melted, all that water was wasted—it spilled into the sea and turned to salt.The aquifers had already dried up.The lakes had been drained or poisoned.All that was left were the rivers, and most of those were already dammed.”“What about the rain?” I asked.“The sky.”Ulysses nodded slowly.“There should be enough rain for everyone.But there isn’t.We’ve dammed the clouds too.”Now I could see something gray off in the distance.At first I thought it was a landing strip, but as we got closer, it spread to the horizon, and flecks of white appeared on its surface.It was water, I realized, as far as the eye could see, to the edge of the earth and beyond.We had seen pictures of the ocean in school, of course, but the photos couldn’t capture the vastness of the unbroken plain, or its emptiness.Earth was mostly water, yet nearly all of it was undrinkable.During the Great Panic, the coastal cities suffered most.Looking at the unbroken stretch of grayish-green, it seemed as if all of man’s problems could be solved if only we could drink from the ocean.But we couldn’t.Then I saw something else: a blue octagon resting on the sea.It appeared first like an indistinguishable point on a darkened background, but as we got closer, it resolved into eight sides, like a giant blue spider, each with an oversized silver pipe that stretched into the ocean.I could see as well that it wasn’t actually on the ocean.It sat above the water on steel stilts that the waves could not touch.“What is that building?” I asked, though I suspected I knew the answer.“Bluewater,” confirmed Ulysses.“That’s where they do their magic.”The global desalination company’s magic came with a price.Desalination was more expensive than most countries could afford, and large-scale desalination poisoned the oceans with minerals, chemicals, and sludge.Yet just as humans might turn to cannibalism if they were hungry enough, governments turned to the sea for their water.Soon companies like Bluewater were more wealthy and powerful than any nation, and anyone who could afford the price lived with a steady source of water.“It’s more taking without giving,” Ulysses concluded.“Someday they’ll pay.”The helicopter dipped left, and my stomach dropped.But what I saw next made me sick with worry.A jet in the near distance, close enough that I could see the Bluewater emblem—a black spigot superimposed over a blue wave.It rocketed low in the sky, then banked toward us.“Ulysses,” I whispered.But he had already seen the jet, and he barked quick instructions to the pilot.The helicopter swooped back to the right, but there was no way to outrun a jet [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]