Burn The Water – Billy Ray (1)

“They’re as likely to kill us as our enemies!” Rafe shouted. “The weapon hasn’t been sufficiently tested. Today is proof. We cannot carry them into battle.” Shapcott asked, “Maddox, do you agree?” Rafe prayed that his friend would support him. Instead Maddox said, “I think Gillian built hers too quickly and got careless. For that I accept full responsibility. I’d challenged her to see who could go fastest.” Rafe tried not to sag. It was an effort. Shapcott asked, “What do you say to that, Rafe?” Rafe replied steadily, “Sir, I will not ask my troops to carry these weapons tomorrow, even if you order me to do so.”

That was insubordination. Rafe continued, “Battle is hard enough without blowing ourselves up. Especially during a frontal assault on a heavily defended position.” “Captain,” Shapcott replied, “you are testing me.” “Sir, I’m begging you. On behalf of my troops.” Behind him, Gillian’s severed body was hoisted in two parts onto the cart. Shapcott exhaled hard, then went inside … and ordered his captains to halt production. At that moment, in his airless Hab barn, Byron gave his invention its first test, loading five pounds of bark onto a platter, then lowering the press.

It worked. The paste was consistent. He gathered it into a bowl and brought it to five Habs who were suffering with the Yellowing. They found the taste more bitter than usual. He promised to add honey to the next batch. But within hours, something miraculous happened. Their symptoms were gone. Not improved—gone. His remedy was far more effective than any beech bark had been before. And Byron now revealed why: This wasn’t beech bark at all. For three years, he’d been testing a theory, a hunch, that the bark of English sycamores—not beech trees—might provide the long-sought cure for the Yellowing.

Sycamore bark was coarser, denser, harder to mash. But the press had solved that. And now the results had confirmed his fondest hopes. He began to picture a London in which no one—Hab, Rogue, Crown —would ever again suffer from the Yellowing. Grace would have loved that. Tears filled his eyes … That night, Rafe was outside among the bivouac fires and the low murmuring of the Rogue citizenry.

The bad fife and drum played tunelessly. The feral cats roamed. The blast that had liquefied Gillian and injured six others this afternoon was history now—just like the MiG. She’d been mourned with the usual ceremony—blink, tap, reset—and Honus had been forced to take the Mark. Then life had rolled on.

She didn’t know if she’d survive this day, or the next one. Didn’t know that a pax—peace—was possible. Didn’t know that one day Love and Water would finally clash, and that one of those two giants would win. Uncertainty was her lot. But she had courage, and courage matters. It wins wars and builds nations and inspires the doubtful and crosses rivers. And she had so many rivers to cross. So she continued. Bravely. Autumn had come and the air was cold and insects flitted above Shooter’s Hill, darting and humming and feeding and flying.

Their sounds were rebirth; the river couldn’t touch them. Shooter’s Hill was elevated, rising above the swollen Thames, part of London’s “Dry Ten,” the 10 percent of the city that wasn’t underwater, off the A205 road. Once—when pavement had meant promise and progress, and vehicles were a necessity— this hill had been a charming suburb. Little shops, humble homes, a quiet park. Now, in the twenty-fifth year of the twenty-fifth century, it was lush jungle, trees and grasses wildly overgrowing, smothering what had formerly been black asphalt with verdant green, oxygenating the air for all those winged miracles flittering above—while on land, dreams continued to drown.

Rain had fallen that morning, and all that foliage—along with a thin layer of mud—felt slick underfoot. She hobbled over it, grimacing in pain, an empty sack slung over her shoulder. Jule. Her ankle was broken, but her hands were strong and her face was kind, unmarked save for a single small but permanent scar on her chin, its origin known only to her. Like everyone else in England, she wore clothing that had survived centuries of weather, abandonment, theft, and reuse: a leather jacket, denim jeans patched over dozens of times with needle and thread.

Her shirt was made from a version of cotton grown in greenhouses. Her sweater was woolen. Her boots were old and reshod. It was hard for her to walk down this village road without imagining what it had once been, before the Great Soak and that sadly historic British day in the 2100s when the Thames first climbed over its banks and stubbornly refused to retreat.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: 8c744dc95f88e653
• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 9,058,265 bytes (8.639 MB)
• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• Pages: 295
• Language: English (en)

Reading & Word Statistics

• Estimated Reading Time: 387.74 minutes
• Total Words: 77,547
• Total Characters: 443,020
• Average Words per Page: 262.87
• Average Characters per Page: 1501.76

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