The Human Blend - Alan Dean Foster [91]
Within the lush tangle of riotous greenery lay impenetrable mangrove jungle, kudzu dead zones, pockets of dry land long since colonized by invasive plant species from farther south, stilt towns that on a far smaller scale struggled to replicate the architecture and structural engineering of the city the two visitors were leaving behind, vast stretches of protected parkland and nature reserves, the isolated glitterflash of Seminole gambling islands, and the increasingly isolated suburbs of Miavana itself. It was to one of the most distant of the latter that a confident Whispr was now steering the nearly silent watercraft they had rented.
Another hour of watching little but greenery race past moved an increasingly restless Ingrid to ask, “Are we still in the city?”
“Technically, yeah. Miavana’s municipal boundaries run a third of the way to the Gulf. But the main populated part of the metropolitan area is just a strip along what used to be the coast, from where the submerged highway used to go out to the Keys all the way back up to Jacksonville.”
She frowned. In her course of studies geography had always taken an academic backseat to more career-relevant subjects like biology and the other life sciences. “What are ‘the Keys’?”
Whispr nodded to his left. “String of islands that used to curve out into the Gulf from the southern end of the state. Been underwater a long time now, I guess. Real popular with the sea Melds who live there. Supposed to be good diving for Naturals and the rest of us, too.”
“You dive?” She eyed him in surprise.
“What, are you kidding me?” He shuddered slightly. “Swimming I like, but if I have to stick my head underwater for any length of time I get claustrophobic. The way I feel about it, if Nature wanted us to swim like fish she would have given us all gill melds.”
By now they were encountering as many reed- and grass-choked channels as those that had been cleared for travel. Whispr slowed down to keep from clogging the boat’s jet intake.
“You can tell we’re getting into the low-rent district.” He indicated one old channel that hadn’t been cleared in years. “Bad road maintenance.”
Ever since Whispr had opened the watercraft’s canopy and reduced their speed in order to save battery power she had begun to succumb to the morning’s rapidly increasing temperature.
“When do we get to—wherever it is we’re going?”
Bringing the craft around to port he nodded toward a tight cluster of stilt-mounted structures. They seemed to materialize out of the cloying humidity like a mirage in the desert. A notably cheap and badly constructed mirage.
“We’re here.” A touch on the accelerator began to reduce their speed.
She studied the approaching heat-sink of a minor municipality. At least on initial view, “here” looked decidedly unpromising.
13
The town of Macamock Hammock (Macmock to the locals) consisted of a few hundred homes and associated commercial structures built just above the dark water and linked together by a web of scoot trails and walkways whose deteriorating condition would have sent a nonbribed transit inspector into a spasm of despair. To someone like Ingrid Seastrom who hailed from a modern metropolis like Greater Savannah it was astonishing in an age of water-resistant polymers, ceramics, and carbon-fiber construction to encounter a boogeyman from the past that had been largely banished elsewhere.
Rust.
She had to double-check with her companion to convince herself she was not seeing things. But rust it was; not dark red paint or some aging polymer binder. A number of the community’s oldest standing structures actually were fashioned of ferrous derivatives. Some had collapsed