Ulysses nodded slowly. “There should be enough rain for everyone. But there isn’t. We’ve dammed the clouds too.”
Now I could see something gray off in the distance. At first I thought it was a landing strip, but as we got closer, it spread to the horizon, and flecks of white appeared on its surface. It was water, I realized, as far as the eye could see, to the edge of the earth and beyond. We had seen pictures of the ocean in school, of course, but the photos couldn’t capture the vastness of the unbroken plain, or its emptiness. Earth was mostly water, yet nearly all of it was undrinkable. During the Great Panic, the coastal cities suffered most. Looking at the unbroken stretch of grayish-green, it seemed as if all of man’s problems could be solved if only we could drink from the ocean. But we couldn’t.
Then I saw something else: a blue octagon resting on the sea. It appeared first like an indistinguishable point on a darkened background, but as we got closer, it resolved into eight sides, like a giant blue spider, each with an oversized silver pipe that stretched into the ocean. I could see as well that it wasn’t actually on the ocean. It sat above the water on steel stilts that the waves could not touch.
“What is that building?” I asked, though I suspected I knew the answer.
“Bluewater,” confirmed Ulysses. “That’s where they do their magic.”
The global desalination company’s magic came with a price. Desalination was more expensive than most countries could afford, and large-scale desalination poisoned the oceans with minerals, chemicals, and sludge. Yet just as humans might turn to cannibalism if they were hungry enough, governments turned to the sea for their water. Soon companies like Bluewater were more wealthy and powerful than any nation, and anyone who could afford the price lived with a steady source of water.
“It’s more taking without giving,” Ulysses concluded. “Someday they’ll pay.”
The helicopter dipped left, and my stomach dropped. But what I saw next made me sick with worry. A jet in the near distance, close enough that I could see the Bluewater emblem—a black spigot superimposed over a blue wave. It rocketed low in the sky, then banked toward us.
“Ulysses,” I whispered.
But he had already seen the jet, and he barked quick instructions to the pilot. The helicopter swooped back to the right, but there was no way to outrun a jet. The next time, it passed so close that I could actually see the pilot in the cockpit. He wore a black and blue helmet with an oxygen mask over his mouth, and his eyes were covered by something see-through and metallic. He dipped his wings twice, signaling us to land, but the helicopter pilot ignored him.
“Fly inland,” Ulysses instructed.
The helicopter turned from the ocean and raced over the land. The jet kept pace, crisscrossing the sky above us and repeatedly dipping its wings. Once we even saw the pilot make a landing motion with one of his hands, but Ulysses and his pilot ignored him.
“They’re going to shoot us down,” said Will matter-of-factly.
“Not yet,” said Ulysses.
Now the helicopter was over a thick field of geno-soy, a crop that was irrigated with water from the desalinating factory. The plants looked withered and brown, but I knew they had been genetically altered to require as little water as possible, which allowed them to survive in harsh conditions. The fields stretched as far as I could see without a retractable roof or any sign of evaporation management. They rippled in the wind from the rotors, bending like waves in a storm. Their beauty was transfixing and held my eye as the horizon disappeared.
The shadow of the jet moved swiftly across the ground. It bore down on us before I saw it in the air. There was a puff of smoke from beneath one of its wings and a missile flew at us with deadly accuracy.
“Ulysses!” I screamed this time.
There was no time even to blink. The missile exploded in a ball of fire just one hundred meters from the nose of the helicopter. It knocked us sideways and threw Will and me to the floor, but the copter remained in the air.
“A warning shot,” said Ulysses. Then to the pilot: “Take us down before they straighten their aim.”
We scrambled back into our seats, and this time we buckled ourselves in securely. If there was a place to land, I didn’t see it. But the pilot hurried to the ground as if he did. Too fast! We were coming in too fast! We couldn’t land at this speed!
There was a terrific ripping noise and a spine-shattering crash. The windows blew out, and everything inside flew outside. The safety harnesses cut deeply into our shoulders, and the backs of the seats were like hard rubber mallets against our heads.
The hush that followed was the stillness of death. Ulysses was the first to speak. “Vera? Will? Roland?”
Will’s voice was soft but clear. My head hurt, but as far as I could tell, nothing was broken or bleeding. The pilot, however, was silent.