Enzo nodded, offering a phone. “Si, Dr. Ben Rollins. This is your father, yes?”
Jess stepped across the platform and took the phone. It was a strange time to return her call. “Dad, what’s up? Are you okay?” She listened for a few seconds. “What? You want me to do what? Wait, slow down. You’re still at the Astronomical Union meeting, right?”
“Is everything all right?” Giovanni asked.
Jess listened to her father for thirty seconds, holding her hand up at Giovanni and Enzo. Then, setting down the receiver, she looked at both of them. “I’m sorry, but I’ve got to go.” She pushed past Enzo and hopped down the stairs as quickly as she could.
NOMAD
Survivor testimony #GR14;
Event +62hrs;
Name: Aubrey Leaming;
Reported location: England, undetermined
My name’s Leaming, engineer onboard the RNLB Jolly Roger out of Gravesend station, just south of London. Suppose I’m captain now. We lost Valentine, first mate Ballie Booker too. Horrible. Did save eight civvies, got ‘em secured down in the survivor room, for what that’s worth.
When they ordered the evacuation of the city, we knew it was madness, but then the whole thing was madness, wasn’t it? Where d’they expect people go? So me and the boys decided to hoof it into Tower station, see if we could pick up a few. I mean, we had the Jolly Roger, the steel-carbon Severn-class lifeboat of the RNLI, bastard can take anything…anyway, we race up the Thames as it empties out. Twenty feet of water gone in an hour. We make it as far as Canary Wharf before our keel hits mud.
We know it’s coming, but people are standing there on the walls, just staring. Captain Valentine, God bless him, gets up there, convinces a few to trudge through the muck and we secure them, like I said. But then…we thought it was a cloud, mate. It was Ballie who realized what it was. A wave, man, maybe a thousand foot high. Ballie screamed at me to get inside, strap in while he battened down the hatches. The first sheet of water hit us like we’d been fired out of a cannon, cracked the superstructure and half the starboard windows on impact, but she held, our Jolly Roger, she did. Old Ballie never strapped in…we were tossed around like a cork in a blender, puke and blood everywhere. For best part of an hour we were submerged before popping to the surface and the Roger righted itself. Unbelievable, mate, absolute madness.
I was the only one still conscious, so I set the bilge pumps and went to check our position, radio for help. But the electronics was down, the VHF antennae sheared off. Just this shortwave, and thank God for that. So I went topside, took the sextant and charts. Didn’t know what to expect, but certainly not bloody blue skies. As if nothing had happened. Like we’d been transported into another world. I got latitude of 52.4 degrees north. Can’t measure longitude in daylight, but we started in London and were swept along, and that wave came from the south, near enough. So I was over Leicester. Or Birmingham. But nothing, just churning blue. No land visible at all and I was supposed to be in the middle of bloody England…
Transmission ended signoff. Freq. 2182 kHz/USB.
Subject reacquired pgs 16,24.
OCTOBER 18th
10
CHIANTI, ITALY
JESS FOUND HER mother waiting for her at one of the stone tables in the garden outside the western wall of the castle. A cloudless, aquamarine sky hung over spectacular views down the valley and into the plains sloping to the Mediterranean. On this side of the walls stretched manicured lawns crisscrossed by gravel paths and trimmed hedges, shaded by huge, ancient oaks. Hector was playing soccer next to the reception building with Raffael and Lucca, teenage brothers who performed odd jobs around the castle. Enzo was playing with them as well.
“Someone slept in,” Celeste said in a singsong voice as Jess approached, the leftovers of a breakfast of cheese and cured meats spread on a plate before her. “Want some?” Celeste asked, holding up a cup and carafe of coffee.
Nodding, Jess slid onto the stone bench opposite her mother. She hadn’t slept in. She hadn’t even slept. All night she’d been on the phone with her father, going over the information he had. About Nomad. About the unknown anomaly approaching. This morning she’d hidden in her room, needing to be alone, needing to think.
“Did you have a nice evening with Giovanni?” Celeste asked, filling the coffee cup and handing it to Jess. “You seemed to hit it off. I saw the two of you up in the observatory when I was walking down here with Nico.”