Fifty Degrees Below - Kim Stanley Robinson [67]
Drepung put a fingertip to the screen, looking very serious. “See that little blue dot there? That’s us. We are low. Orange all around us. That means a couple meters higher than normal.”
Charlie said, “That’s not so bad, is it?”
“The dike is maxed out. They’re saying now that they don’t think it will be able to handle this flood surge.” He leaned back to take a call on his cell phone. Then: “Now they tell me that the helicopter is on its way, and will be here before the ferries can be loaded. We would very much appreciate it if you would take the helicopter back to Calcutta.”
“We don’t want to take space you might need,” Charlie said.
“No, that’s just it. It will be easier for us if you are away. No break in the routine at the docks.”
Their van turned around and drove back toward town. Now they were going against the traffic, and could speed south and then west out the road to the airport. Once there they circled around the terminal, directly out onto the wet tarmac near the helo’s landing site.
“Another twenty minutes,” Drepung said. Joe began to wail, and they let him down to run around. From time to time they looked at Drepung’s handheld and got the image of the delta, in real time but false color. The coming of day made it harder to see, but the whole delta was now orange, and the blue areas denoting islands were distinctly smaller. “The Sundarbans,” Drepung said, shaking his head. “They are really meant to be amphibious.”
Then a helicopter thwacked out of the dawn sky. “Good,” Drepung said, and led them off the concrete pad, onto a flat field next to it. They watched the big helicopter drop down through the clouds in a huge noise and wind of its own making, settling down on its pad like an oversized dragonfly. Joe howled at the sight. Charlie picked him up and felt the child clutch at him. They waited to be signaled over to the helo. Its blades continued to rotate, chopping the air at a speed allowing them to make out a speed of rotation, whether real or not they could not say.
“Down!” Joe shouted in Charlie’s ear. “Down! Down! Down! Down!”
“Let him down for a second,” Anna said. “There’s time, isn’t there?”
Drepung was still at their side. “Yes, there’s time.”
Men in dark green uniforms were getting off the helicopter. Charlie put Joe down on the ground. Immediately Joe struck out for the helo, and Charlie followed, intent on stopping him. He saw that Joe’s feet had sunk into what must have been very soft ground; and water was quickly seeping into his prints. Charlie picked him up from behind, ignored his wails as he returned to the others. He looked back; Joe’s watery prints caught little chips of the dawn light, looking like silver coins.
Then it was time to board. Joe insisted on walking himself, kicking furiously when held by either Charlie or Anna, shrieking “Down let down let down!” So they let him down and held him hard by the hands and walked forward, Nick on the other side of Anna, all ducking instinctively under the high but drooping blades that guillotined the air so noisily overhead.
In the helicopter it was a bit quieter. There were a few people already in the short rows of seats, and in the next half hour they were joined by others, about half of them Westerners, the rest perhaps Indians, including a bevy of wide-eyed schoolgirls. The Quiblers and Frank greeted each in turn, and the schoolgirls gathered to dote on Joe in their musical English. He hid his head from them, clung hard to Anna. Charlie looked out a little window beside them, set low so that right now he could see little more than the puddles on the concrete.
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