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    The Rift
    The Rift
    The Rift
    Ebook1,172 pages19 hours

    The Rift

    By Walter Jon Williams

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    "The Rift would be a very good beach book, if you could put it down long enough to get into the water." —— The San Diego Union Tribune

    FRACTURE LINES PERMEATE THE CENTRAL UNITED STATES. Some comprise the New Madrid fault, the most dangerous earthquake zone in the world. Other fracture lines are social—— economic, religious, racial, and ethnic.

    What happens when they all crack at once?

    Caught in the disaster as cities burn and bridges tumble, young Jason Adams finds himself adrift on the Mississippi with African-American engineer Nick Ruford. A modern-day Huck and Jim, they spin helplessly down the river and into the widening faults in American society, encountering violence and hope, compassion and despair, and the primal wilderness that threatens to engulf not only them, but all they love...

    " A breakout book that you'll swear the author lived" —— SF Age

    "I don't like disaster novels. I would not have even glanced at The Rift if it weren't backed by Walter Jon Williams' reputation for excellence. And I definitely would not have kept reading if Williams hadn't demonstrated on every page that he deserves his reputation. The result? I was so engrossed in—— and engaged by ——The Rift that I forgot that I don't like disaster novels. This book is an impressive achievement.”
    —— Stephen R. Donaldson, New York Times bestselling author of The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant

    "The Rift is bloody wonderful! Williams brings an historic disaster back for an encore and metaphorically flattens it again. This is the stuff for which sleep is lost--and awards are made." —— Dean Ing

    "The Rift shakes up the world like it's never been shaken before." —— Fred Saberhagen

    "[For fans of the disaster novel] Williams delivers the requisite thrills and setpieces—— but he also, to paraphrase Conrad, offers a bit of that truth for which they forgot to ask." —— Locus

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWalter Jon Williams
    Release dateOct 27, 2013
    ISBN9780988901742
    The Rift
    Author

    Walter Jon Williams

     Walter Jon Williams is a New York Times bestselling author who has been nominated repeatedly for every major sci-fi award, including Hugo and Nebula Awards nominations for his novel City on Fire. He is the author of Hardwired, Aristoi, Implied Spaces, and Quillifer. Williams lives near Albuquerque, New Mexico, with his wife, Kathleen Hedges.

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    Reviews for The Rift

    3.5/5

    111 ratings9 reviews

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    • 5/5
      I thoroughly enjoyed this book but I thought of putting it down several times in the 180 pages of character development that precede any action. There are several story lines deftly woven together in this book and in the end I admit it was probably necessary to take up those 180 pages, so hang in there. It's worth it. The book centers around a huge 8.9 quake that takes place along the New Madrid fault in the midwest. It throws the mighty Mississippi right out of its course and generally creates havoc and mayhem. It is a successful "disaster" story with bad guys and heroes galore plus lots of ordinary folk that we can relate to as well. The nine central characters are all sufficiently unique to present a good cross-section of human nature so that we are treated to a well-rounded speculative look at the ramifications of the failure of our society's systems and their effects on individuals. Throughout the book there are quotations from historical documents of the last earthquake on the New Madrid that took place in 1812 which while horrible elude to even greater horrors of the impending disaster of a large scale quake in our more complex and populated world.The story lines expose several small fractures in our own society such as fundamentalism and the malice of white supremacy that are similar in their own ways to building a nuclear power plant over a major fault line. The plot shows us how foolish our failure to pay attention is and how easily these threats can one day open up and swallow us whole. While imprisoned by crazed KKK members a black man answers the frantic querey of "Why?!" by saying "Because somebody overlooked this damn place, overlooked it for a century, probably. All it took for death to take a grip on a community was a handful of crazy people and a lot of other people who weren't paying attention."The book is well researched and very scary in its implications. Industry and expediency have caused us to build and invest and grow our civilization right over top of one of the most unstable places on Earth with our usual short-sighted "it can't happen here" attitude and our wishful thinking. There is and has been, for a very long time, plenty of evidence that a disaster of overwhelming proportions is inevidable but we have systematically chosen not to pay attention to the facts. This book makes for very exciting and entertaining reading. It is full of edge of the seat action and thought-provoking ideas and insights. The characters are rich in detail and the message that floats in and out between the lines is a powerful one.
    • 3/5
      At 900 plus pages was a long read but not a bad book if you like the mass disaster type of story. Takes about 200 pages to get all the charactors in place but worth the time.The basic story is a massive earthquake that hits the mid-west along the new Madrid fault which runsthrough the Mississippi Valley (The last one happened about 150+ years ago and changed the landscape). It does give a good picture of what would happen if it were to happen today, in our modern cities, farms, Levi systems etc. Plus populations in the millions rather than a few 100 thousand that lived on the frontier. The author does manage to keep you interested ang feel for the charactors
    • 5/5
      This book was about an earthquake along the New Madrid fault line on the Mississippi river. It was developed around historical letters and information from the 1811-12 quake that struck the area and what it would mean if it happen today. Several different plots were interwoven in the story.
    • 5/5
      This is the only Williams book I have read but I was astounded by his descriptions, attention to detail and depth of his characters. The historical insight to what "could be" is incredible plus the factual evidence from past quakes really transcends the "fiction" quality of the book. Very interesting read from what was, to what could be.
    • 5/5
      Jason Adams is a young boy caught in a natural disaster as is everyone else along the Mississippi River and its tributary river basins.What’s happening? Continental plates and overlying sediments are shifting to relieve stress once again just as they did in the fall of 1811…before the area was thickly settled by white settlers; before the area became the industrial axis of the United States.The scenario is realistic and ultimately frightening. It is a stark testimony to the powerlessness of humanity to control and manipulate nature; and to mankind’s vulnerability to both natural disasters and the darker, baser, more sinister predilection for violence, prejudice and taking advantage of others who have been hurt.Using a cast of complicated well-developed characters, the author paints a picture of both the good and the bad in people who are all facing a struggle to survive whether they all realize it or not. The Rift is a great read. It should be required reading for everyone who believes that Earth will remain unchanging in its present form forever.
    • 4/5
      A dystopian look at the United States after a major earthquake in the center of the country inflicts major infrastructure damage. Less implausible than one might think, The Rift is a highly readable fictional disaster book.
    • 4/5
      [The Rift] by [Walter J. Williams] is exactly the type of book I love to read. I enjoy dystopian that could actually happen such as the Yellowstone Volcano or, in this case, the New Madrid Fault. [Williams] does a great job describing the events that could happen if this fault slipped. Also he does a nice job creating characters both likable and ones you keep hoping will die. The way he brings all the different story lines together is predictable but works. I recommend this book.
    • 1/5
      Simply did not have the patience to suffer through 180 to 220 pages of character development before finally getting to the meat of the story.
    • 5/5
      Wonderful read! You do have to read the first two hundred pages to get all the characters in but after that I could not put it down. I grew up in the middle of the New Madrid fault and trust me this book could happen. It was well researched and well written. I will read more of this author.

    Book preview

    The Rift - Walter Jon Williams

    THE RIFT

    Walter Jon Williams

    Copyright (c) 1998, 2013 by Walter Jon Wiliams. All rights reserved.

    Published originally as by Walter J. Williams.

    Cover by Ares Jun

    OTHER BOOKS BY WALTER JON WILLIAMS

    Novels

    Quillifer NEW!!!

    Hardwired

    Knight Moves

    Voice of the Whirlwind

    Days of Atonement

    Aristoi

    Metropolitan

    City on Fire

    Ambassador of Progress

    Angel Station

    The Rift

    Implied Spaces

    Divertimenti

    The Crown Jewels

    House of Shards

    Rock of Ages

    Dread Empire’s Fall

    The Praxis

    The Sundering

    Conventions of War

    Investments

    Impersonations

    Dagmar Shaw Thrillers

    This Is Not a Game

    Deep State

    The Fourth Wall

    Short Stories

    Daddy’s World

    Investments (Set in the world of Dread Empire’s Fall)

    Prayers on the Wind

    Collections

    Facets

    Frankensteins & Foreign Devils

    The Green Leopard Plague and Other Stories

    This work is dedicated to Willie Siros

    without whose information on the geology of

    the New Madrid Fault, given over lunch at a

    truck stop in Bastrop, this book would not exist.

    Author’s Note

    The following is a story of chaos, destruction, death, and civil strife following a massive earthquake in the central U.S.

    It is also a tale of a more innocent time.

    In the 1990s, when The Rift was written, the world seemed a more stable and secure place. The Cold War had ended, bringing to an end the threat of a worldwide atomic holocaust that had furnished the background for so many works of fiction both hopeful and despairing. While I did not subscribe to Francis Fukuyama’s theory that history had just ended, it did seem as if the role of the American chief executive was to intervene cautiously and hopefully in minor ethnic conflicts abroad and to be seen to be caring about people and their problems.

    And then, well, elements of my novel started to come true.

    Not a giant earthquake at New Madrid, no. But the floods of 2002, 2008, and the disastrous floods of 2011 gave more than a hint of what might befall the country in such an event. The fall of the Twin Towers resulted in an abrupt lurch in foreign policy, as well as highlighting the dangers of religious fundamentalism. And, more than anything, Hurricane Katrina brought the world of The Rift vividly into focus.

    As I watched Katrina unfold on the television, I was oppressed by an appalled sense of déjà vu, particularly as regards the apparent decision of the authorities to sacrifice thousands of people, most of them poor, disadvantaged, and black. In The Rift, the racial tragedy is the work of bad men with bad intentions. During Katrina, the sacrifice seemed the default tactic of all involved. Even the city administration, run by an elected black mayor, seemed incapable of doing anything other than enact the cultural imperative of the region.

    And when I heard of the Danziger Bridge shootings, I couldn’t help but think of Omar Paxton and the officers of my fictional Spottswood Parish.

    Another jolt of déjà vu came with the Tohoku Earthquake of 2011 and the subsequent meltdowns of the nuclear reactors at Fukushima. Again, watching the catastrophe unfold in realtime, on a high-definition television screen, I couldn’t help but think that in my story of Larry Hallock and the nuclear power station at Poinsett Landing, I’d written the script the world was now following. I sometimes wish that I’d been a little less prescient.

    When I began planning to reissue The Rift, I considered whether I might want to rewrite the novel to give my characters knowledge of these events. But I realized that not only would this be a major undertaking, it might well be impossible— if my characters knew about Katrina and Fukushima, would their actions remain even remotely the same? Or would they behave differently, and with a different mindset?

    It may be that all disaster novels are creations of their own time, reflecting the anxieties of their particular era. But even if that’s the case, that doesn’t eradicate their virtues: The Poison Belt is just as entertaining as it was in 1913, even if we no longer believe in the luminiferous aether stretching between the stars. The insights of Alas, Babylon and On the Beach are no less stirring than they were in the 1950s, and the wit and cynicism of A Canticle for Liebowitz is no less refreshing than it was in 1959.

    I am therefore pleased to present to you The Rift, which barring the correction of a few errors of fact and more than a few insalubrious sentences, appears just as it did in 1998.

    May you be preserved from all disasters.

    Walter Jon Williams

    New Mexico, 2013

    Lights of ships moved in the fairway— a great stir of lights going up and going down. And farther west on the upper reaches the place of the monstrous town was still marked ominously on the sky, a brooding gloom in sunshine, a lurid glare under the stars.

    And this also, said Marlow suddenly, has been one of the dark places of the earth.

    —Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

    PROLOGUE

    LAST CHANT OF THE SUN MAN

    He was a god to his people. He lived high above the earth, in the realm of his brother the Sun, and his rule stretched from the world of life to the world of spirits. His word was absolute. Even the gods respected his desires.

    So why did the dogs disturb his dreams? It seemed unfair that he could not order them to stop their howling.

    The unearthly crying of dogs awakened the Sun Man before dawn. Leaving the slave Willow Girl asleep on the pallet beneath her buffalo robes, he dressed himself in the dark— a cape of bright bird feathers, a headdress of white swan feathers that ringed his head like the battlements of a tower, an apron of pierced whelk shells brought two thousand miles upriver from the Gulf of Mexico— and then he picked up his boots and made his way out of the long house and into the still, cool predawn air.

    How may I serve the Divine Sun, my husband? said a voice.

    The Sun Man was startled, then annoyed. His wife, the Great Priestess, had a habit of turning up when she was neither wanted nor expected. Now she lay before him, stretched full on the ground in a prostration of respect. He wondered how long she had been there.

    The Sun Man dropped his boots before her. You may lace up my boots, if it suits you, he said.

    The Great Priestess rose to her knees. She held out one of his boots, and he stepped into it. Her tattooed face pursed with disapproval as she worked the hide laces.

    That lazy Willow Girl hasn’t done the job? she said. She doesn’t know enough to protect the feet of the Divine Sun against the dew?

    She was asleep, the Sun Man said.

    Her voice grew more severe at this weak excuse. It is not her business to sleep when the Divine Sun is awake.

    I will speak to her.

    It is a whip of braided deerhide that will do the speaking, the Great Priestess said. I will see to it myself.

    The Sun Man kept his face still. If you do not think such a matter beneath your notice, he suggested hopefully.

    Nothing that concerns the Divine Sun is beneath my notice, she replied.

    The Sun Man restrained another sigh. His wife was the absolute ruler of the household, and he had no business disrupting her domestic arrangements. If she wanted to whip a slave, she could do so. He could only hope that she would do the whipping herself, frail and old as she was, and not order a burly male servant to do the job.

    He would have to try to think of a way to make it up to Willow Girl later.

    The problem, he reflected, was his wife’s common birth. If she had been born into the privileged and sophisticated Sun Clan, the divine rulers of the People, she would have had a greater tolerance for his flings with the slave girls. She would have known that his liaisons meant nothing, that he was merely exercising one of the perquisites of his birth.

    But the Sun Clan was very small, and the noble clans weren’t very large, either, so both were required to marry outside of their caste, which meant marriages with commoners. The Sun Man’s wife had brought her commoner’s views into his household, and expected her husband to remain faithful to her bed as if he were merely a farmer or a stinking fisherman. Such behavior was proper to one of the lowborn, perhaps, but certainly not for an all-powerful autocrat whose rule had been ordained in heaven. The Great Priestess did not understand that his slave girls were not a threat to her own position, but were just a way of keeping his bed warm at night. They were an itch that he scratched, nothing more.

    The Great Priestess finished tying the laces of his boot. She held out the other, and the Sun Man stepped into it.

    The funeral of your divine brother, the Fierce Badger, was very expensive, she said, her voice deliberately casual.

    Here, he thought, was the real reason why he found her waiting here in the doorway.

    True, he said.

    And Eyes of Spring, your sister and the mother of your heir, is growing frail.

    Also true.

    It will be necessary to give her an expensive funeral as well. Should you not consider a war on the northern barbarians by way of acquiring spoils?

    I will give the matter thought.

    He had given it thought— these facts were obvious enough— but it was clear that he had not given it as much thought as the Great Priestess.

    The war chief is new to his post, she continued, and we have a whole class of young warriors that require seasoning.

    Relations with the barbarians are good, the Sun Man said. There hasn’t been any trouble between us in years. I do not want my old age to be troubled by wars, and a war would disrupt our trade northward for copper and pipe clay.

    It is sad that Eyes of Spring is so weak, the Great Priestess reminded. There will be great mourning soon, and disruptions one way or another.

    She tied the bootlace with a little snap of finality, then turned her head to direct her stony face to the horizon. She had made her point, and now her husband was dismissed to go about his business.

    Out in the town below, the dogs yowled.

    I will speak to my brother the Sun on this matter, the Sun Man said, and walked across the level, grassy field atop the mound until he gazed over the edge at his sleeping kingdom below.

    The Sun Mound on which the Sun Man lived covered ten acres, its base larger than that of Khafre’s pyramid in faraway Egypt. Across the plaza was another mound equally large, the Temple Mound from which the Sun Man worshiped his divine brother, the Sun. Each mound had been built over the last hundred years by the painstaking labor of thousands. The great mounds had been raised one basketful of earth at a time, each basketful dug by hand and carried to its destination by a dutiful citizen.

    Twelve thousand people lived below the two great earthen mounds, half within the ditch and wooden stockade that surrounded the heart of the city. The City of the Sun was one of the great cities of the world, its population larger than that of barbaric Saxon London over four thousand miles to the northeast. Many more thousands of the Sun Man’s subjects lived in large towns linked to the city by road and river, and thousands more in small villages or isolated farms. If the Sun Man ordered the new war chief, his nephew Horned Owl, to make war on the barbarians of the northwest prairies, he could bring over three thousand warriors into the field, more if the Sun Man called in the allies. It was the largest armed force on the North American continent, and assured the Sun People’s domination of their world.

    And the Sun People in turn were dominated by the Sun Man, the divine ruler who held the power of life or death over every single one of them, who spoke daily to his brother, the Sun, the great burning disk that ruled the heavens and commanded all things on earth.

    The Sun Man regulated everything within his empire. The time of planting, the time of harvest. He kept track of the calendar, scheduled all ceremonies, festivals, and initiations; ordered entire populations to report for duty to build mounds, repair the stockade, or maintain roads. He collected taxes in the form of corn, and traded it for precious objects or distributed it in times of famine. Though other chiefs acted as magistrates, the Sun Man was the court of final appeal—he gave justice, imposed fines, and ordered exile, punishment, or death. Although the war chief led the soldiers into battle, it was the Sun Man who declared the war and made the peace that followed.

    His word was not only the law, it was the divine law. To defy him was no mere rebellion, it was blasphemy.

    If only, he thought, he could command the dogs to be silent. What was bothering them?

    The Sun Man began to descend the earthen ramp that led from his Dwelling Mound to the plaza below. Pain shot through his knees and back at the impact of each step. Walking downhill was always painful for him. His shoulders ached so dreadfully that he could barely raise his arms above shoulder height. He had lost half his teeth, and the rest were worn to nubs by grit in the stone-ground maize that made up most of his diet.

    The Sun Man was very, very old.

    He had lived for forty-one years.

    At the bottom of the grass ramp the Sun Man met his two chief attendants, his pipe-bearer He Who Leaps Ahead, and his new mace-bearer, Calls the Deer. Both had been about to chant their way up the Sun Mound in order to formally awaken him— approaching the Sun Man required a degree of ceremony— but the dogs had done their job for them. They prostrated themselves before the Sun Man, faces into the turf, outstretched arms offering the pipe and mace for his use. The carved and ornamented pipe and the simple, heavy stone mace symbolized the Sun Man’s spiritual and temporal powers, the first able to summon spirits to the earth, the second capable of splitting a man’s skull.

    Stand, the Sun Man said.

    Calls the Deer, at twenty-five in the prime of life, sprang easily upright, then had to help He Who Leaps Ahead to his feet. The old pipe-bearer’s name, the Sun Man thought, no longer reflected the man who stood before him, but instead the swift youth of memory, first in races and first in war, who had joined the Sun Man’s official family back when they both, and in memory the world itself, were young. Now Leaps Ahead was ancient, crook-backed and white-haired, the tattoos on his face blurred with age, as if smudged by tears.

    The Sun Man cast an admiring glance at Calls the Deer. The young man was a fine example of the noble caste: he was strong, a fine hunter, and his splendid memory gave him perfect recollection of the large number of chants and other religious ceremonies that were a part of his duties. He was deferent to his elders, but knew also how to maintain the dignity of his own high position.

    A pity he will die soon, the Sun Man thought. For he knew that he, himself, would not last much longer. And when he died, much of his world would die with him.

    He who dwells in the sky

    He who gives warmth and light to the world

    This is the one we come to praise

    This is the one whose greatness we come to exalt

    It was not proper to face the god directly when approaching him, so the Sun Man and his attendants wove left and right as they ascended the Temple Mound. Their snakelike ascent made the ritual approach much longer than if they had walked directly up the ramp.

    Let all the world sing his praises

    Let the god rise into the sky

    Let him bring his blessings to the People.

    Through long practice, the words came easily to the Sun Man’s lips. But his mind was occupied by thoughts of life and death.

    Barring pains in his joints and in his teeth, the Sun Man remained healthy. He was still able to chant loudly at the ceremonies, participate in some of the slower dances, and pleasure himself with Willow Girl. His mind was clear. But at his age it only took a little thing to bring him down, a chest cold that wouldn’t leave, a winter chill, a careless fall.

    And when he passed from the world, Calls the Deer would die with him. As would He Who Leaps Ahead, and many others.

    For the divine Sun Brother could not go unaccompanied to the spirit world. His two chief attendants would be strangled at the funeral by bowstrings, and so would his wife the Great Priestess, and Willow Girl, and all the slave girls who had borne him children. Members of the Sun Clan— including his sister Eyes of Spring, if she outlived him— would volunteer to be strangled, and so would prominent members of the noble and commoner castes. The cavernous long house atop the Sun Mound would be burned, the mound raised above its ashes, and a new long house constructed for the Sun Man’s nephew, who would reign after him.

    A new conical burial mound would be raised above the Sun Man, and at least thirty young girls would be laid to rest with him there, and an equal number of young warriors, all to serve the Sun Man in the afterworld. To provide these ghostly servants, any young person would do, including slaves. But if there was not a sufficient supply of slaves, then the People of the Sun would have to volunteer, or be persuaded to volunteer.

    That was why the Great Priestess had chosen to speak of war this morning. The funeral of the Sun Man’s younger brother, the war chief Fierce Badger, had reduced the number of suitable slaves, and his older sister, Eyes of Spring, was in frail health. If she died soon, a few dozen girls and warriors would be called upon to accompany her. If the supply of attractive, youthful slaves actually ran out, the Sun People themselves might be called upon to die before their time.

    When this happened— and if there was an insufficient number of volunteers to make up the difference— there was sometimes an unseemly discord within the Sun People as the community’s leaders chose those most suitable for strangulation, always the fittest warriors and the most beautiful and pleasing young women, people whose lives the selfish commoners sometimes wanted to preserve. In the past there had been loud protests and even violence, disharmony that could mar the funerals of the great. It was always good for the community’s health if there were a supply of slaves on hand for sacrifice.

    That was why the Great Priestess wanted war now, why she wanted the Sun Man to send the new war chief and three thousand warriors marching northeast onto the prairies.

    She wanted to make certain that her husband’s funeral, which would also be her own, would be suitably grand, and that the mound would be raised above them without disharmony among the People.

    There was sense behind this plan, the Sun Man conceded.

    But wars, also, lacked harmony. And the Sun Man, perhaps selfishly, did not want strife to mar his last years.

    He would speak to his Brother Sun, he thought. And if the Sun was in favor of war, then the Sun Man would order his mace-bearer to carry the declaration of war to the war chief.

    We obey the words of the Sun

    We follow him in all his ways

    We chant his praises to all the world

    It is our Brother Sun we exalt above all others

    The chant had carried them to the top of the mound. Before them was the big temple with its steeply pitched roof of prairie grasses. Fragrant pine smoke rose to scent the air. The three prostrated themselves before it once again, and then rose to approach the temple.

    We walk in the ways of the Sun Brother

    He will bring us the corn and the deer

    He commands the wind and the rain

    Our hearts are filled with his essence

    Chanting voices answered from the temple where the night attendants waited. It was their duty to feed the eternal flame, to make sure that this little bit of the sun that glowed atop the altar was never extinguished. Horrid penalties waited for those who neglected this duty and permitted the fire to die, but these hideous tortures had never been inflicted in the Sun Man’s lifetime.

    The night attendants piled more pine boughs atop the altar. Flames crackled higher. The Sun Man stepped to salute the altar, arms raised high, blazing heat burning on his face and palms. Then he turned to face the East, where the first pearl light of dawn was spreading over the dark horizon.

    He who dwells in the sky

    He who gives warmth and light to the world

    This is the one we come to praise

    This is the one whose greatness we come to exalt

    They chanted until the Sun Brother was high above the horizon, until Grandfather River to the east had turned first to gold, then to silver, and the fields and homes of the Sun People shone bright in the cloudless morning.

    The Sun Man brought the chant to an end, and there was a moment of silence in which the Sun Man felt harmony radiating over the world like the beams of the sun. And then the dogs began to whine again, and the mood was spoiled.

    What is wrong with the dogs? said Leaps Ahead. Is there some kind of sickness among them?

    Perhaps there is a cougar upwind, said Calls the Deer.

    The Sun Man raised his face to the sky. He felt no wind on either cheek. The air was utterly still.

    And still the dogs howled.

    If the Divine Sun wishes, Calls the Deer said, I will order men out to look for a cougar.

    Yes, the Sun Man said. That would be best. But come back after giving the order— I may have another errand for you. Carrying the declaration of war to the war chief. He turned to He Who Leaps Ahead. You may go to breakfast, old friend. I won’t need you till my afternoon audience.

    As the Divine Sun wishes, Leaps Ahead said.

    After the two chief attendants prostrated themselves before the Sun Man and then made their way down the mound, the Sun Man dismissed his other attendants as well. He wanted to be alone to consult the Sun concerning this weighty matter of war.

    Beneath the sky’s canopy of divine blue, the Sun Man could see the waking city spread out before him. Below the two giant mounds were lesser earthworks, peaked burial mounds and the ridged mounds that supported the homes of the nobles. Below these lived the commoners in mud-and-wicker buildings with peaked grass roofs. Round granaries were set on stilts to keep animals from plundering them. Smoke rose from breakfast fires, staining the air. Children played ball games in the plaza, women knelt in the open before their homes and ground corn for breakfast, craftsmen sat in the open working with flint or basketry. Fertile cornfields, the source of the Sun People’s wealth, stretched out flat almost to the horizon, the young corn turning the red-brown soil to a sea of green.

    To the west was the creek that supplied the town with its water. To the east was Grandfather River, the huge brown expanse, over a mile wide, that wound its serpentine way to the Gulf of Mexico far to the south. The City of the Sun was set a respectful distance from the Grandfather River, which usually overflowed its banks twice a year, and in fact sometimes flooded the city itself, forcing its population onto the mounds for protection.

    Grandfather River was hidden along almost all its length by the tangle of cottonwood and cypress that lined its banks, but the Sun People had long ago cut all the nearby timber for building and for firewood, and now fields traveled down almost to the water’s edge. Crops were planted there following the spring flood. On the water’s edge were stacks of wood, lumber rafts that had been floated down Grandfather River and then broken up to provide the city’s firewood.

    The land, the crops, and the firewood were all owned by women, and descent and ownership traced through the female line— this was why the Sun Man’s successor would not be a child of his body, but rather the eldest son of his eldest sister. The Sun Man could not but approve of this arrangement— freed from the distractions of property, economics, and agriculture, the men were able to concentrate on more important matters, like hunting, diplomacy, religion, and war.

    War. It would be his decision, taken in consultation with his brother, the Sun. No mortal being had the right to interfere. What he planned to do now was to enter the temple alone, feed the temple’s eternal fire with willow bark and tobacco to summon the god, and then explain the problem to his brother. Only then could harmony be achieved and the correct decision made.

    But harmony was going to be difficult to achieve, even in the Sun Man’s mind. The wailing dogs unsettled his thoughts. Their cries reached a kind of crescendo now, an eerie chorus that sent a shiver of fear up the Sun Man’s back. What is going on? he wondered. What is happening?

    And then the Earth flung him off its back. He landed on the turf with a cry, the wind going out of him. His swan-feather headdress fell from his head and rolled away. The mound throbbed beneath his belly, as if a giant was kicking the mound again and again. There was a crackling, snapping sound, and the Sun Man looked over his shoulder to see the great Sun Temple tumble and fall, the cypress posts that supported its roof snapped off clean.

    My brother’s home! he thought in anguish. The Earth, he thought, had committed a blasphemy against the Sun.

    A sulfurous stench assailed his nostrils. The air was filled with a horrid growling noise, like a beast snarling through teeth it had planted in the throat of its prey. The Sun Man clawed at the turf and tried to rise, but the Earth threw him down again. He managed to get to his hands and knees and crawl to the edge of the mound.

    A terrible incomprehension filled his mind. The scene before him was so unaccountably strange that he could not wrap his understanding around it.

    The ground was heaving up in waves, rolling from east to west like a storm swell on a huge lake. Houses and people were being flung from the green wavetops like driftwood. The grass roofs waved in the weird, turbulent surf, or tumbled down as the lightly built houses collapsed. Great cracks split the earth, and here or there an entire house was swallowed, tumbled into dark chasms. Faint against the sound of the terrible growling, the Sun Man could hear screams and cries for help.

    Everywhere, it seemed, the Earth was attacking the Sun People. Huge jets of water shot out of the land, dozens of them, taller than trees, their towering heads crowned with vapor. These fountains flung white sand into the air as well as water, and some had already built tall pale cones around their roots. Some of the water jets even spat big stones from the ground, black rocks large enough to crush houses.

    Across the plaza, the Sun Man watched as the Sun Mound, his own home and that of his ancestors, came to pieces. An entire corner of the mound suddenly fell away, slumping onto the flat ground below as if it were nothing more than liquid mud instead of dry soil stabilized by turf. Tons of soil spilled like a wave onto the town below, sweeping away a half-dozen houses. Horror struck the Sun Man as he saw little human figures struggling in the moving flood of soil.

    Above, atop the mound itself, the Sun Man’s house had fallen as one corner of the foundation spilled down the mound into the town below. The grasses of the crumpled roof thrashed, and the Sun Man hoped that this was caused by survivors trying to dig their way out rather than by the motion of the earth.

    The scent of smoke touched his nostrils. He turned, scuttling on hands and knees like an insect, and looked in horror as a tower of flame blazed up above the roof of the Sun Temple. It had fallen onto the roaring altar fire, just stoked with pine logs, and the sacred flame had set the roof alight.

    No! the Sun Man thought. There were sacred objects inside— ancient pottery and flint, a black stone that had fallen from the sky, figures of gods and animals, and these could not be sacrificed to the flame. The Sun Man tried to rise again, was once more flung to his knees. So he crawled, the Earth’s terrible growling in his ears, toward the temple to rescue the holy things.

    It was useless. The dry grass roof caught in an instant, and the old cypress log timbers and wickerwork walls were well seasoned. By the time the Sun Man could crawl more than a few paces, the entire structure was ablaze. Heat beat on the Sun Man’s face. It was so intense that he had to turn and crawl back the way he had come. The strings holding together his whelk-shell apron had broken, and he trailed carved shells behind him as he crawled.

    Still the Earth shook, still her horrid roar rumbled in his ears and in the very marrow of his bones.

    It was beyond him. There was nothing he could do in this war of the Earth against the children of the Sun, nothing except finally to remember his chief role, that of intermediary between the people and the divine forces that controlled their world.

    He crawled again to the edge of the mound, threw himself flat, and began to pray.

    Brother Sun, rescue us! he cried. Earth Woman, please do not punish your children! Cease the war between you! And then he lost all sense and could only babble.

    My wife! he said. "My children! Save them! Don’t let them die! Save my babies!"

    At his words, to his own great astonishment, the rumbling ceased. The Earth’s violence faded, but the Sun Man could still feel smaller tremors shivering through the ground beneath him.

    The Earth had ceased her attacks, and all at his divine command. He blinked in awe at his own power as he looked at the scene below. Thousands of buildings in his city had fallen, almost every one. Many, fallen onto breakfast fires, were now alight, columns of gray smoke rising in the still air. Most of the long wooden stockade that protected the central part of town had fallen. The fountains of water continued to gush from the ground, each now rising from a cone of white sand that had built up around its base. Some of the fountains were luckily placed so as to put out fires, but most just added to the confusion and terror of the people and animals below.

    My poor people, he thought. Most that he could see were prone and helpless as himself. A few were on their feet, but they staggered helplessly, as if possessed by a fit. Howling dogs spun in circles or barked and snapped at everyone nearby. Hundreds of children were wailing. Many adults were screaming as well, injured or trapped in fallen houses.

    The sky was very strange. A few minutes ago it had been blue and cloudless, but now low clouds were forming, black and threatening. He could see the clouds growing, expanding in the air like a black stain.

    Thank you, Earth Woman! he said. Thank you for sparing us! He peered across the plaza— now torn in half by a rent twenty feet across— and tried to distinguish the few people he could see wandering around the Sun Mound. Had the Great Priestess survived? Eyes of Spring, his sister? His many children? Willow Girl?

    The Sun Man tried to stand, but a horrid vertigo seized him, and he fell again. Why is the world so dark? he wondered.

    Praise to the Earth! he continued automatically. Praise to Brother Sun!

    He cast a look to the east, to where Brother Sun was rising above the riverbank, and he stared.

    Grandfather River, he realized dumbly, was gone. Gone. Gone completely. Between the fields on the west side of the river, and the great thicket of oak and cottonwood on the far side— now mostly fallen, he saw— there was nothing but the muddy brown bed of the river, and here and there a long silver pond, all that was left behind when the river left its bed.

    Grandfather River fled, the Sun Man realized. Horrified by the war between Sun and Earth, the river had turned its face from the world.

    A moving cloud crossed the empty riverbed and poured itself across the Sun Man’s vision, as if the river had inverted itself into the sky and was now in flood. Passenger pigeons, tens of thousands of them, risen in alarm from the wrecked forests on the far bank, now flocked west in search of a safe place to land.

    Praise to the Earth! the Sun Man continued to chant, and turned again to the wrecked city below. He should try to stand again, he thought, and show himself to the people. Demonstrate to them that their divine ruler was unharmed, and ready to face the fearful emergency.

    And then an actinic flash lit the dark sky, turning the world into light and shadow, and to the Sun Man’s utter horror he saw the lightning strike his ruined house on the Sun Mound. The grass roof exploded, flinging burning thatch in all directions. At once the entire structure was alight. My children, he moaned.

    He had only a few seconds to absorb this dreadful sight before another firebolt lanced down, striking the burning temple behind him. The Sun Man clapped hands to his ears at the shattering sound, and cowered as flaming debris fell around him.

    The Divine Sun, his brother, was fighting back, flinging his lightning bolts at the Earth. But his own people were caught in the middle.

    Spare us! the Sun Man whimpered. Turn your dreadful lightning away!

    His answer was another flash, another boom. He looked across the plaza to see people spilling down the slopes of the Sun Mound, fleeing from the dreadful thunder. Don’t run! the Sun Man commanded. Rescue my family!

    But they could not hear him. Another bolt smashed into a field not far away. The cloud of passenger pigeons overhead dispersed, each bird frantic to escape the blasts. Screams and wails were rising from the city.

    Save us, the Sun Man moaned. Spare us your anger. Save my family.

    But the shattering bolts continued to fall, one after another. The Sun Man felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise, and tried to burrow into the turf of the Temple Mound, clutching the soil with his fingers. The lightning bolt crashed to earth mere yards away. The Sun Man’s head rang with the sound. The flash blazed through his closed eyelids. He could smell his own hair burning. Deafened, stunned by the blast and by the catastrophe that overwhelmed him, the Sun Man lay on the scorched grass, unable even to beg the gods for aid. He could hear the shiver and boom of lightning around him, but he kept his face pressed to the mound, cringing from the sound of each blast.

    In time the blasts grew less. The Sun Man blinked, opened his eyes. The world was still dark, and low clouds still threatened overhead. Gray smoke rose into the heavens from dozens of fires. Tens of thousands of frantic birds circled madly in the air.

    My family, the Sun Man whimpered. He propped himself up on an elbow and gazed across the wrecked plaza to the Sun Mound.

    The long house was still in flames. Nothing living could be seen on the mound, though a few sprawled, motionless figures testified to the deadly nature of the lightning blasts that had rained on the high platform.

    The city below was half-concealed by smoke from burning lodges. Only a few stunned human forms moved in the murk. If they were wailing or calling for help, the Sun Man’s deafened ears could not hear them. The tall fountains of water had subsided, though their white sand cones still covered the drenched corn fields.

    The war between Sun and Earth seemed to have reached a truce.

    The Sun Man rose to his knees. Praise to the Sun Brother, he murmured, and held out his hands, palm upward, in a prayer position. Save your people. His head whirled.

    He looked around, and his mouth dropped open.

    Grandfather River was coming back! But he was not returning to the old riverbed; he was pouring across the fields to the south, heading straight for the City of the Sun. He was running backward, south to north! And he was angry, foamy white teeth snarling as he rolled steadily toward the city, a wall of brown, churning water ten feet high.

    Terror snatched the Sun Man and pulled him to his feet. His head spun. Madly he pointed and shouted at the stunned people below.

    Flood coming! he cried. Run to the mounds! Run now!

    A few people stopped and stared. Run now! the Sun Man screamed. Run to the mounds! Grandfather River is flooding!

    The people seemed to be conferring. Only a few began to move toward the earthen mounds.

    Run! Run! Grandfather River is flooding!

    The river’s foaming front poured into the southern reaches of the city, sweeping broken houses before it. The river was full of wreckage, entire uprooted trees standing in the flood like fangs. A few people looked south in alarm, but they were on the flat ground, lines of sight broken by mounds and wreckage and smoke, and they could see nothing.

    Run! Run!

    And then the river burst through the broken stockade, rolling the shattered logs of the wall before it like a row of pinecones. The people below stiffened in horror, and then, too late, began to run.

    The Sun Man’s words dried up on his tongue as the river ran through his city, sweeping away the shattered lodges, carrying the straw roofs and wicker walls along on the white-toothed tide. He saw dozens of people madly trying to swim, others clinging to wreckage and crying for help. Only a few dozen managed to stagger up the Temple Mound’s earthen ramp, or climb its steep sides. Others scrambled up conical burial mounds, or clustered on the flat-topped mounds the nobles used for their lodges.

    The Sun Man collapsed, wailing. Earth Woman had made war on him, and his divine brother the Sun had abandoned his people.

    He would die, he thought. He would refuse food and water, and he would perish along with his nation. He sat down on the Temple Mound, crossed his legs, and began to sing a song of death.

    His people, cowed by the world’s inexplicable fury, did not dare to approach him.

    Within a few hours the river’s level had dropped, and the survivors gazed down to a mass of wreckage that littered a steaming swamp.

    Other than the rubbish that floated in the still water, and the mounds with their clusters of stunned, homeless refugees, nothing remained of the greatest city that had ever been raised on the continent of North America.

    PART ONE

    M1

    It is a remarkable fact, that there is a chain of low, level and marshy lands, commencing at the City of Cape Girardeau, in Missouri, and extending to the Gulf of Mexico; and between these two points there is not a rock landing except at the small town of Commerce, on the west side of the Mississippi River; there is, furthermore, only one ridge of high land from Commerce to be met with on the west side of said river, which is at Helena, in Arkansas.

    Report on the Submerged Lands

    of the State of Missouri (1845)

    ONE

    The horizon immediately after the undulation of the earth had ceased, presented a most gloomy and dreadful appearance; the black clouds, which had settled around it, were illuminated as if the whole country to the westward was in flames and for fifteen or twenty minutes, a continued roar of distant, but distinct thunder, added to the solemnity of the scene. A storm of wind and rain succeeded, which continued until about six o’clock, when a vivid flash of lightning was instantaneously followed by a loud peal of thunder; several gentlemen who were in the market at the time distinctly perceived a blaze of fire which fell between the centre and south range of the market.

    Earthquake account, Feb 12,1812

    The sound of drumming and chanting rolled down from the old Indian mound as the school bus came to a halt. Jason Adams wanted to sink into his seat and die, but instead he stood, put his book bag on one shoulder, his skates on the other, and began his walk down the aisle. He could see the smirks on the faces of the other students as he headed for the door.

    He swung out of the bus onto the dirt road. Heat blazed in his cheeks.

    Wooh! one of the kids called out the window as the bus pulled away. I can feel my chakras being actualized!

    Your mama’s going to Hell, another boy remarked with satisfaction.

    Jason looked after the bus as it lurched down the dirt road, thick tires splashing in puddles left by last night’s rain.

    Another few weeks, he thought, and he wouldn’t have to put up with them anymore.

    Not for the length of the summer, anyway.

    The drumming thudded down from the old overgrown mound. Jason winced. Aunt Lucy must have let his mother off work early. There wasn’t going to be a lot of business at the greenhouse till Memorial Day.

    It was bad enough that his mom was a loon. She had to drum and chant and advertise she was a loon.

    Jason hitched the book bag to a more comfortable position on his shoulder and began the short walk home.

    Green shoots poked from the cotton field to the north of the road. The furrows between the green rows were glassy with standing water. Swampeast, they called this part of Missouri, and the name was accurate.

    The inline skates dangled uselessly off Jason’s shoulder. Gravel crunched under his shoes. He could put up with the drumming, he thought, if only he were back in L.A. Drumming was even sort of normal there— well, not normal exactly, but there were other people who did it, and most other people didn’t make a point of telling you that it qualified you for eternal damnation.

    Jason passed by the Regan house, a new brick place on the lot next to where Jason lived with his mom. Mr. Regan was as usual puttering around Retired and Gone Fishin’, his bass boat parked inside his carport. So far as Jason could tell, Mr. Regan spent more time polishing and tinkering with his bass boat than he did actually fishing. The old man straightened and waved at Jason.

    Hi. Jason waved back.

    Found a place to skate yet? Mr. Regan asked.

    No. Other than the outdoor basketball court at the high school, which was usually full of kids playing basketball.

    Mr. Regan tilted his baseball cap back on his bald head. Maybe you should take up fishin’, he said.

    Jason could think of many things he’d rather do with his life than sit in a boat and wait for hours in hopes of hauling a wet, scaly, smelly, thrashing animal into the boat with him. He really didn’t even care for fish when they were cooked and on a plate.

    Maybe, he said.

    I could give you some lessons, Regan said, a bit hopefully.

    Regan had made this offer before. Jason supposed that he sympathized with his neighbor’s being retired and maybe a bit lonely, but that didn’t mean he had to assist him in his rustic amusements.

    Maybe after school’s out, Jason said.

    After he finally went crazy from living in the Swampeast, he thought, sitting in a boat next to a stack of dead fish might not seem so bad.

    The drum boomed down from the mound behind the houses. Jason waved to Mr. Regan again and cut across the soggy lawn to the old house where he and his mother lived. Batman, the dog that belonged to the Huntleys on the other side of his house, ran barking toward Jason in order to warn him off. Jason, as usual, ignored the dog as he walked toward his front porch.

    Jason’s house was very different from the four modern brick homes that shared its short dirt road. A dozen or so years ago, when the farmer who owned this area decided to retire, he sold the cotton fields to the north of the dirt road and created a small development south of it— two new brick homes built on either side of his own house, four altogether. When his widow died, Jason’s mother had bought the old farmhouse, and when Jason first saw it, four months ago, he thought it looked like the house that Dorothy lived in before she went to Oz. It was a turn-of-the-century frame farmhouse, large and spacious, painted white. There were a lot of things that Jason liked about the house: the funky old light switches, which had pushbuttons instead of toggles. The crystal doorknobs and the old locks on all the bedroom doors, some of which still had their skeleton keys. He liked the sashes that made a rustling sound inside the window frames when he lifted the windows, and he liked the screened-in front porch with its creaking floorboards. He liked the tall windows with the old, original window glass that had run slightly— he remembered his science teacher telling him that glass was really a liquid, just a very slow liquid— and which gave a slightly distorted, yellowish view of the world. He liked the extra room, because the house was intended for a much bigger family than the two people who lived in it now, and he liked having more space than he’d had in L.A., and having a room up on the second floor with a view.

    But the view was of the wrong part of the world, and that was what spoiled everything.

    Jason bounded across the porch, unlocked the front door with its fan-shaped window, and dumped his book bag on the table in the foyer. The house welcomed him with the smell of fresh-cut flowers that his mom brought home from Aunt Lucy’s greenhouse. He passed through the dining room— Austrian crystals hung in the window, spreading rainbows on the wallpaper— and into the small, old kitchen that his mother was always complaining about. More crystals dangled in the windows there. Jason opened the refrigerator and poured himself a glass of water from the plastic jug, careful not to pour out the large quartz crystal that his mother had placed in the jug.

    The crystal expands the energy field of the water from one foot to ten feet, his mother had explained, and then you can drink the energy.

    He had never asked why he would want to drink energized water. The explanation would only have made his eyes glaze anyway.

    He drank half the glass of water and refilled it, then returned the jug to the refrigerator. He took an orange from the refrigerator drawer, used a knife to cut it into quarters on the ancient zinc countertop, dropped the knife in the sink, and then— his stomach presumably radiating powerful metaphysical energy ten feet in all directions— he went up the narrow back stair from the kitchen to the second floor.

    He went into the corner room he thought of as his study, with his computer, desk, and skating posters, and flicked the switch on his computer’s power strip. The sound of his mother’s drumming came faintly through the closed windows. Jason sucked the juice from a slice of orange while he looked out the side window.

    To the east, the dirt road dead-ended against the green wall of the levee, the huge dike that kept the Mississippi from flooding into their front yard. The river was normally invisible, hidden by the cottonwood thicket that stretched almost a half-mile from the levee to the riverbed, but the river was unusually full right now, with the spring melt and a long series of rains, and had flooded partway up the levee. Through the tangled trees, Jason could glimpse an occasional patch of gray water.

    He had thought, when told he would be living near the Mississippi, that he would at least be able to watch the boats go by, maybe even big white stern wheelers like on television, but the combination of the impenetrable underbrush and the levee’s big green barricade had blocked any view from the flat ground. Even when he climbed onto the old Indian mound behind the house to see well over the levee, he could see water only here and there.

    He turned his eyes to the north window, where the rain-soaked cotton field stretched on to a distant row of trees on the horizon. The cotton field was mostly brown earth marked by the wide rows of young green cotton, but here and there the soil was stained with circular pale blooms, as if God with a giant eyedropper had splashed white sand down onto the rich soil. Jason had sometimes wondered about those circular patches, but he hadn’t thought to ask anyone.

    The land was so flat that the trees at the end of the cotton field seemed to mark the edge of the world, hedging it to the north just as the levee did to the east. The only thing he could see past the trees was the tall water tower in Cabells Mound, the town where he went to school. The modern tower, all smooth curved metal, looked like a toilet plunger stuck handle-first into the ground.

    He narrowed his eyes. He had plans for the water tower.

    He wanted to climb the spiral metal stair that wound to the top, put on his skates, hop on the metal guard rail, and wheelbarrow down to the bottom: back skate in the royale position, crosswise on the rail, front skate cocked up so he was rolling only on its rear wheel.

    He’d go down the spiral rail, fast, with centrifugal force, or whatever it was called, threatening to throw him off the tower at any second.

    And then he wanted to do something cool and stylish on landing, like landing fakie, a 180-degree spin on the dismount to land moving backward; act as if zooming at high speed a couple hundred feet to the ground, right on the edge of wiping out the whole time, wasn’t anything, was just something he did every day, and required a little flourish at the end to make it special.

    That, he thought, was Edge Living. Edge Living was something to aspire to.

    His mouth went dry at the thought of it.

    The only question, of course, was whether he’d ever dare try it. He’d done the wheelbarrow on rails before, but the rails were all straight, not curved outward, and he’d never wheelbarrowed more than a single story.

    Three metal-guitar chords thrummed from the computer. I am at your service, master, it said.

    Jason turned his attention to the screen. His friends in California, he thought, wouldn’t be back from school for another couple hours.

    He’d browse the Web, he thought, and check out all the chat lines devoted to skating.

    *

    For most of the eleven hundred years since the time of the Sun Man, the old Temple Mound had seen little change. The area remained a wilderness, low-lying and marshy and flooded every few years. The Mississippi flung itself left and right like a snake, carved a new course with every big flood. Every time it shifted course, it deposited enough silt over the next few years to raise the area through which it traveled. Then another flood would spread the river wide, and the river would find an area lower than that which it had built up, and carry its silty waters there.

    Over the years the Mississippi had carried away the Sun Mound, the big mound where the Sun Man had built his long lodge and where he had lived with his family. Many of the smaller mounds had also been flooded away during inundations, and the rest had been plowed under by farmers, who saw no reason why some aboriginal structure should impede the size of their harvest.

    Only the Temple Mound remained, the huge platform from which the Sun Man had witnessed the destruction of his people. The Mississippi had spared it, and the white men and their plows, daunted by its size, had spared it as well. The Cabell family, who had grown corn and wheat on the land for three generations, and had gamely held on through deluge and drought and civil war, had built their home on one of the mound’s terraces, safe from the floodwaters that regularly covered their corn fields. But even they had given up in the end, abandoning their home in the 1880s after too many floods had finally broken their spirit. The Swampeast had finally defeated them, just as it had defeated so many others. Nothing was left of the home now, nothing but some old foundation stones and a broken chimney covered with vines, and the mound was overgrown, covered with pumpkin oak and slippery elm and scrub.

    It was the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers who finally made the Swampeast habitable. Just south of Cape Girardeau the levee line began, to continue 2,200 miles to the Gulf of Mexico. The long green walls, supported by a mammoth network of reservoirs, floodways, flood gates, flood walls, pumping stations, dikes, cutoffs, bendway weirs, and revetments, were unbroken save for where tributaries entered the Mississippi, and the tributaries were walled off as well, some for hundreds of miles. The levees kept the flood-waters out and finally permitted the farmers to clear the land and till their soil in peace. Cotton replaced wheat and corn in the 1920s, and the farmers grew wealthy on the rich alluvial soil.

    During the decades of prosperity, the farmers had forgotten that the conditions under which they had prospered were artificial. The natural state of the land was a swampy, tangled hardwood forest, subject to periodic inundations. The People of the Sun, whom the whites later called Mississippians or Mound Builders, had altered the land for a while, had changed its natural state from a nearly impenetrable hardwood thicket to corn fields dominated by huge earthen monuments, but the land reverted swiftly to its natural state once the Sun Man’s time had passed. Now the cotton fields, graded to perfect flatness by laser-guided blades, stretched west from the levees, but they had been imposed on the land, and so had the titanic earthworks that protected them. The condition of southeastern Missouri was as artificial as that of the Washington Monument, the St. Louis Gateway Arch, or the space shuttle, and, like these, existed as a monument to the infinite ingenuity of humankind. The land, like the space shuttle, had been manufactured.

    But that which is artifice occupies a precarious position in the world of nature. Artificial things, particularly those on the scale and complexity of the space shuttle, or of the levee system of the Mississippi, are manufactured at great cost, and must be maintained with great vigilance. Their existence is dependent on the continuation of the conditions under which they were designed. The space shuttle Challenger was destroyed when one of its systems was unable to react with sufficient flexibility to an unseasonable frost.

    The levee system, on the other hand, was built with the understanding that two things would remain constant. It was understood that flood waters would not rise much higher than they had in the past, and that the land on which the levees were built would not move of its own accord. If either of these constants were removed, the levee system would not be able to prevent nature from returning to the highly artificial landscape which the levees were built to preserve.

    The first of these constants was violated regularly. The epic flood of 1927 made obsolete the entire levee system, which was reengineered, the levees being built higher, wider, and with greater sophistication. The flood of 1993 again sent water to a record crest right at the juncture of the Mississippi and the Missouri, and briefly threatened to make St. Louis an island. The inevitable result was a greater commitment to reinforced levees.

    The second constant, the requirement that the earth not move, had not been tested.

    Though such a test, as history showed, was inevitable.

    INLYNE: I’M JUST BUMMIN CUZ I GOT NOPLACE TO SK8.

    DOOD S: I’M ALMOST THE ONLY AGGRESSIVE SK8R HERE.

    Where, Jason typed, is here?

    He was almost holding his breath. Assuming that Dood S was female, which was likely if the online handle was intended to be pronounced dudess, Jason might have found himself a potential girlfriend. So far Jason discovered that he and Dood S were the same age. They agreed on bands, on skate brands, and on the study of history (sux). They were both reasonably advanced skaters. They could royale and soyale, they could backside and backslide, they could miszou, they could phishbrain and Frank Sinatra. They were both working on perfecting various alley oop maneuvers, but Dood S was making more progress because she, or possibly he, had a place to skate.

    The answer flashed on the screen.

    DOOD S: SHELBY MONTANA

    INLYNE: BUMMER

    Jason’s answer was heartfelt.

    DOOD S: WHERE RU?

    INLYNE: CABELLS MOUND MISSOURI

    DOOD S: WHERE IS THAT?

    Good question, Jason thought.

    Between Sikeston and Osceola, he typed, feeling sorry for himself. If he were feeling better about living here, he might have mentioned St. Louis and Memphis.

    DOOD S: HAHAHA LOL I’M SORRY

    INLYNE: ME 2

    Jason heard the door slam downstairs. His mom must be home.

    RU a girl? he typed. Flirtation was fairly useless if they lived a thousand miles away from each other, but what the hell. He was lonely. It never hurt to stay

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