• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Dikes and levees had failed; there’s just too much water in that part of the world to wall away. And there’s nothing under the Big Easy to sink a piling into that would be big enough to hang a building from. But you don’t just walk away from a place that holds the grip on the human imagination New Orleans does.

So they’d simply floated the city in pieces and let the Gulf of Mexico roll in underneath.

Simply.

The lighters and their trains came and went into Lake Pontchartrain, vessels too huge to land on dry earth. They sucked brackish fluid through hungry bellymouths between their running lights and fractioned it into hydrogen and oxygen, salt and trace elements and clean potable water; they dropped one train of containers and picked up another; they taxied to sea, took to the sky, and did it all over again.

Sometimes they hired technicians and tradesmen. They didn’t hire laborer-caste, dole-caste, palms stained indigo as those of old-time denim textile workers, or criminals with their hands stained black. They didn’t take artists.

Patience stood under an awning, watching the clever moth-eaten rats ply their trade through the market, her nanoskin wicking sweat off her flesh. The lamps of another lighter came over. She was cradling her painful hand close to her chest, the straps of her weighted net bag biting livid channels in her right wrist. She’d stalled as long as possible.

“That boy had better be in bed,” she said to no one in particular. She turned and headed home.

Javier’s bed lay empty, his sheets wet with the rain drifting in the open window. She grasped the sash in her right hand and tugged it down awkwardly: the apartment building she lived in was hundreds of years old. She’d just straightened the curtains when her telescreen buzzed.

Jayve crouched under the incredible curve of the lighter’s hull, both palms flat against its centimeters-thick layer of crystalline sealant. It hummed against his palms, the deep surge of pumps like a heartbeat filling its reservoirs. The shadow of the hull hid Jayve’s outline and the silhouette of his primitive water-craft from the bustle of tenders peeling cargo strings off the lighter’s stern. “Mad, can you hear me?”

Static crackle, and his friend’s voice on a low thrill of excitement. “I hear you. Are you in?”

“Yeah. I’m going to start burning her. Keep an eye out for the harbor patrol.”

“You’re doing my tag too!”

“Have I ever let you down, Mad? Don’t worry. I’ll tag it from both of us, and you can burn the next one and tag it from both. Just think how many people are going to see this. All over the galaxy. Better than a gallery opening!”

Silence, and Jayve knew Mad was lying in the bilgewater of his own dinghy just beyond the thin line of runway lights that Jayve glimpsed through the rain. Watching for the Harbor Police.

The rain was going to be a problem. Jayve would have to pitch the bubble against the lighter’s side. It would block his sightlines and make him easier to spot, which meant trusting Mad’s eyes to be sharp through the rain. And the etchant would stink up the inside. He’d have to dial the bubble to maximum porosity if he didn’t want to melt his eyes.

No choice. The art had to happen. The art was going to fly.

Black nano unfolded over and around him, the edge of the hiker’s bubble sealing itself against the hull. The steady patter of rain on his hair and shoulders stopped, as it had when the ship drifted over, and Jayve started to squeegee the hull dry. He’d have to work in sections. It would take longer.

“Mad, you out there?”

“Coast clear. What’d you tell your mom to get her to let you out tonight?”

“I didn’t.” He chewed the inside of his cheek as he worked. “I could have told her I was painting at Claudette’s, but Mom says there’s no future in it, and she might have gone by to check. So I just snuck out. She won’t be home for hours.”

Jayve slipped a technician’s headband around his temples and switched the pinlight on, making sure the goggles were sealed to his skin. At least the bubble would block the glow. While digging in his net bag, he