‘Your background is in oil,’ I hear Colin pointedly ask Alan. ‘Then you moved into renewables.’
‘That was some time ago,’ says Alan. Most backgrounds are, I think.
Alan suggests, ‘Let’s go up to the roof.’
We look over the city, pleasantly drinking our ice waters. The light bends on the solar glass.
Flowers tumble in the gutters.
I can see, from here, some of the homes that will be bulldozed. Beyond them, the great arena of the Dock.
The colourful patches of the shacks in the emptied canals.
The police baffles positioned on the rooftops that overlook the route of the march. The blue caps of the ‘Peepers’, as we call the marksmen.
The journalist wearing the chaffinch blouse finds herself beside me. I’m staying away from Colin.
‘We give a lot,’ I take the opportunity to tell her, as she takes in the city from this height. ‘That’s hard to see sometimes. From ground level.’
I nod out at the rooftop gardens. One nearby blatant with multi-coloured flowers. ‘It’s great how buildings’ residents have come together to make this happen.’
‘A lot’s got from alittlement.’ The journalist beams as she provides the jingle. Sips.
Just below, a rooftop lush with summer vegetable beds.
Below this, in the square outside the building, a crowd no bigger than my palm from here, protestors now have gathered. To picket the office before they head on to the Dock. It’s clever of Alan to bring us up here. The march looks dull and diminished. Below the gardens, and the space. The placards too small from this distance to read.
Colin the Skinny has buttonholed poor Ms Williams.
‘We’re doing something historic here.’
‘While making a lot of money.’
‘By doing something that will benefit this city for a very long time.’
Clearly he has no sense of wonder.
‘And Government won’t be making any money. Everyone has access to water, rationed as it may be. But there’s only going to be more of us. The icebergs are a ready form of fresh water, and have been very effective in supplying smaller cities on a more modest scale. The current supply is not enough.’
As if in defence of itself, then, far away, and muffled, we hear the Water Train. Its deep boom as it enters the outskirts of the city.
‘It’s easy to paint us as the bad guys,’ I say quietly. Like I’m not trying to make a great big point. To make it clear I am talking more personally to the chaffinch journalist beside me.
‘There’s a lot of grumbling,’ I say. ‘But look.’
The rooftops, bright with colour.
‘People get on with it. People have always got on with it. Dystopia is as ridiculous a concept as Utopia. Ultimately, we’re animals,’ I say, thinking of the nature discs. ‘And animals find ways.’
The light snaps along the drained riverbed. A bolt of silver ribbon.
I am always astonished from this height, to see how fast new buildings come up. To either side, of course, of the great space of the Dock.
I breathe in. Feel something of the settlement the nature programmes bring. Watch the faint shift of the vapournets on the aircon units.
A slight flutter, like the barest movement inside a chrysalis, as it nears its time to hatch.
The march is underway. Penguins on the move. The chants the walkers call out reach us incoherent and delayed, so the mouths of the walkers, opening and closing, look more to gasp than shout.
‘Once you change the idea of what constitutes the ground, we have so much space. You just can’t see it from below.’
The journalist beside me traces the drops of condensation beaded on her glass.
‘I’ve never heard that word, stillicide, before,’ she says.
‘No,’ I say. ‘Nor had I.’
DRAGONFLY
The professor left the failed hive until last.
The bees were dead around it, curled like dropped alder catkins.
He put the samples into the case. At least the majority of the colonies were healthy. Drawing the honey from them he was reassured by the tight pats on his suit as the returners knocked busily into him.
The fiddly work of fitting tracking wires to the bees was paying off. They could analyse the pollen in the honey in each hive and work out what was growing where. The results had been surprising. All very well, the doom and gloom. But the array of flowering species was astonishing. The city might be grey at ground level, but its rooftops were spectacular with bursts of life and colour. Mostly, the bees weren’t even travelling very far.
The failed hive, though, was quiet. The professor took off his hood.
He fingered the dead bees.
The Urbee project was a great success, but there were these troubling random failures.
He knocked the water condensers fitted round the air duct units to check they were working. Watched the bright water work its way along into the vegetable beds.
The courgette plants were celebrant with shameless yellow flowers. He smiled to see the minute pollen beetles in amongst them.
Below, on the streets, he could see the growing crowd gathering to march against the increased scale of the Ice Dock.
Most of his students had absented themselves today. Some, with excuses he wished he could frame. Others had simply been honest. They wanted to walk in protest. And why not, he privately thought.
Granted, they had picked a site that meant the impact on homes was limited. But the Mayor had recently announced they’d also need to clear the flanks of the approach channel. More families would be relocated. It’s how they worked. Once a thing was underway, it was very hard to stop. It was a bullying in some ways.
The professor noted the gun baffle on the building roof across the river, sited to overlook the bridge. On its transparent hood, the varnish of its baffle number caught the sun. Baffle three. The dark blue cap of the rifleman as he moved about the roof looked something like a lycaenid butterfly, the professor thought. Purple Hairstreak. In this light.
The professor wasn’t sure what one police marksman would be able to do if something did happen while the protest was in sway. Better to have him there than not though, he supposed.
He knew the science of why animals formed groups. But it seemed madness, to him. A crowd was a condensed target, should anybody want to cause them harm.
Better to be better at being a one.
There was a hiss from his comms button.
‘Hello.’ He pressed the patch.
‘There’s a parcel for you here, professor.’
With the large bulb of her cycle helmet and the bright material of her clothes, the courier looked like a bee herself. Or, perhaps more a wasp. The way she tapered at the waist.
The professor eyed the parcel, set there on the desk, as he clambered from his bee-keeping suit.
‘I hear you on the radio,’ said the courier.