Can It Take Them?

The telephone rang at half past ten.

It was in the inside pocket of the grey suit, a satellite telephone, the only one on the bluff that had worked since nine forty-two, and it rang with a small old-fashioned ring like a telephone in a hall while the class was still laughing at Mr Ferrante’s question. Castellanos walked three steps away and answered it with his back to everybody, listened for ten seconds, and came back and held it out.

“Sir. The Prime Minister. And the Governor of California. On the same line.” He did not lower his voice. “The Prime Minister asks whether you’ll speak to them before he does anything.”

The laughing stopped.

It was heavier than an ordinary telephone, warm from the pocket, with a thick stubby aerial. He held it slightly too tightly and walked round to the far side of the big tree, and Castellanos came and stood three steps off with his back to him.

“This is Frederick.” Then, because that was wrong, because it was not that kind of call: “This is the King.”

“Sir.” Lord Whitlock, the slow flat Rhode Island vowels, every word set down square on a table, the line coming and going in a long hiss like the sea. “Thank God. Are you hurt?”

“No. A cut. Nothing. We’re all here. Fifty-eight. Mr Ferrante’s leg is hurt. We’re on the bluff at Santa Monica, above the pier.”

“I know where you are, sir. I’ve had Sergeant Castellanos’s four words every ten minutes since a quarter to one.” A pause, and the hiss. “I have the Governor on the line from Government House.”

“Your Majesty.” A woman’s voice, close and clear, because she was forty miles away and not three thousand: low, quick, the edges of the words worn off. “Teresa Marchetti. I’m very glad you’re alive, sir. I’ve had the Commonwealth on the other line since nine forty-five and I’ll keep this short. The State Chancellor has asked the Realm for help, in writing, twelve minutes ago. Sacramento’s standing and the Chancellor’s in her office, and she asked me to say the Commonwealth cannot do this alone and doesn’t intend to pretend it can. Ventura is,” the line hissed, “Ventura is beyond what we have. Oxnard. The coast from Malibu north. Our people are on the roads and the roads aren’t there. We need the Navy and the Army and the money, and we need it declared, so that every department in New Westminster knows it’s declared.” She stopped. “I’m saying this to you because the Prime Minister asked me to, sir, before he answers it. I don’t think anybody’s ever done it that way round before.”

He did not know what he was supposed to say.

“Sir,” said Lord Whitlock. “I’m going to declare a federal emergency in the Commonwealth of California. The Cabinet met at twenty past one our time and agreed it without a division. I’ll sign it about ten minutes after I put this telephone down. I don’t need your consent. It’s mine to do under the Act, and I’d do it if you were in New Westminster or in Stockholm or asleep. But you’re on the bluff, sir. You’re the only one of the three of us who can see it.” A pause. “So I wanted to tell you before, and not after. And to ask whether there’s anything you can see that the Governor and I can’t.”

He looked out past the trunk. The railing and the edge and the sea beyond, standing grey-green, waiting to come again. North along the coast, the brown haze and the grey column beyond Malibu. Hundreds of people on the grass all along the park, sitting, standing, calling names. The buildings with their windows out. The stairs. The crooked sign.

“There’s no water,” he said. “Nobody’s got any. There are hundreds of people on this bluff and the taps don’t work and it’s going to be hot. Nobody’s thought of it yet because of the sea. They will at about two o’clock.”

The line was silent.

“And the phones don’t work. None of them. Since nine forty-two. Nobody here knows whether anybody else is alive. There’s a girl in my class whose grandparents are in Pomona and she’s been looking at her phone for an hour and it says No Service. If there’s any way to make the phones work, that’s what they want. More than the water.” He swallowed. “And the people on the beach didn’t know what the sea going out meant. They walked out to look at the fish. Somebody should say that on the radio, all the way up the coast, in case it goes out again. When it goes out, you go up.”

Only the hiss.

Then the Governor said, “Water, telephones, and the sea going out. I’ve written it down. The first two will be in front of the Commonwealth in five minutes and the third on the ABC in ten.” Her voice changed. “Pomona’s standing, sir. The east of the basin shook and stood. We’ve had nothing bad from Pomona. Tell your girl.”

“Thank you.”

“Is there anything else, sir?” said Lord Whitlock.

A Prime Minister in the Cabinet Room at Charter House, three thousand miles away, at a quarter to two in the afternoon, with the pen and the paper in front of him, waiting, because he had decided to wait, for a boy on a bluff.

“Declare it,” said Frederick.

“Sir.” And faintly, through the hiss, a sound he recognised after a moment: a pen being uncapped. “I’ll ring again tonight. Once. The Household will tell you when. Stay where you are, sir. Please. Whatever anybody tells you.”

“I’m going to,” said Frederick, and the line went dead.

He gave the telephone back to Castellanos and went round the trunk and crouched in front of Lucía, on the grass with her phone in her lap.

“Pomona’s standing. The Governor said. The east of the basin shook and stood. Nothing bad from Pomona.”

Lucía looked at him.

“The Governor. Of California.”

“Yes.”

“You asked the Governor of California about Pomona.”

“She told me before I asked,” said Frederick, which was very nearly true.

Lucía put her face down on her knees, on top of her phone, and stayed like that a long time, and Priya put a hand on her back. Frederick went and sat at the edge of the class beside Theo, and Theo did not ask.

---

It came again at ten to eleven, smaller. Kimura had moved the class across to the inland side of the park under the big tree, and nobody went near the railing now. From the grass he saw the grey-green bulge rise behind a white line over the edge of the bluff, lower this time, and heard it hit the foot of the cliff with a duller boom and go out again roaring, and the people who had gone back to the railing came away quickly, and nobody clapped.

Twenty past eleven, smaller again. Ten to twelve, so small that they knew only because a man along the park with binoculars said so aloud and lowered them and went and sat down on the grass with his back to the sea.

After that, if it came, nobody saw it.

---

On the far side of Ocean Avenue a white car stood by the kerb with the trunk of a fallen palm across its bent roof and its driver’s door hanging open and nobody in it. Its engine was running and its radio was on, loud. By eleven there were thirty people round it on the pavement, by half past a hundred, and Mr Abernathy let the sophomores across in fours, with Kimura standing in the road between the park and the car with her arms folded.

Frederick went at a quarter to twelve with Theo and Lucía and Priya.

The ABC’s Pacific service, the one the old man on the pier had had on for the shipping forecast. A man’s voice, low, steady, very tired, the voice of somebody who had been talking for two hours and was going to go on.

… repeating, for those just joining us. At nine forty-one this morning, Pacific time, an earthquake of magnitude eight point four struck off the coast of Ventura County. That figure is from the Seismological Laboratory at Pasadena and has been confirmed by the Realm’s own survey. It is the strongest earthquake in the recorded history of the Commonwealth of California. The rupture appears to have begun beneath the Santa Barbara Channel and run eastward beneath the coast towards Ventura and beyond. A tsunami warning remains in effect from Point Conception to San Diego. Do not go to the beach. Do not return to low ground. Waves are continuing and more may come …

Ventura was very bad. The man said it, very bad, and said it again, and was silent a second, and went on. Oxnard was very bad. The coast highway was closed at every point from here to Ventura by landslides and the sea. There were fires in Ventura and Oxnard and the hills above Malibu, and one of them in Ventura was the oil terminal on the harbour. The grey column from the top of the wheel.

The airports were closed: Los Angeles, Burbank, and Ontario, which had been closed since November and reopened last week. The interurban had stopped, every line. The power was out across the western basin and most of the eastern, and the hospitals were on generators, and the water was off in Santa Monica and Malibu and Ventura and nobody should drink from the taps. Twice, slowly, as though reading it off a piece of paper for the first time: If you are on the coast and you see the sea go out, do not go down to look at it. Go up. Go up at once.

The Prime Minister had declared a federal emergency at nineteen minutes to two, New Westminster time, which was nineteen minutes to eleven here, ten minutes after he had put down the telephone. Frederick said nothing about that to anybody. The Navy was sailing from San Diego.

And at the end of every part of it, the same words, in the same tired voice, so that by the fourth time he could have said them with the man:

No figure can yet be given. The search goes on.

His own name did not come. He waited for it at every pause, and somebody in New Westminster had decided that it would not.

---

“Eight point four,” said Lucía, on the way back across the road. “Is that a lot? November was seven point eight.”

“It’s a lot.”

“How much is a lot?”

He did not want to tell her. He told her. “Every whole number is about thirty times the one before. In energy. Not ten. Thirty. So eight point four is about sixteen times November. Perhaps more.”

She stopped in the middle of Ocean Avenue by the trunk of the fallen palm.

“Sixteen Novembers.”

“Not here. It was further away. Most of it was under the sea.” He did not know whether that was true. “It’s not sixteen Novembers in Santa Monica. It’s,” and he had been about to say it’s Ventura, and heard himself about to say it, and stopped.

“Grandpa’s in Pomona.”

“Pomona’s sixty miles from Ventura. More. On the other side of the basin.”

“I know where Pomona is.” She looked at her phone. No Service. “I just want him to tell me.”

---

At one o’clock Kimura took the class along the park, slowly, away from the edge, to the end of Ocean Avenue, because Mr Abernathy wanted to know about the bags.

The hotel was standing. White walls, the red roof on most of it, the palm trees in its garden all but one. The tower at the corner leaned out towards the road, so slightly that you saw it only against the line of the building beside it. Every window was out, on every floor, so that it looked like the others on the street, a face with the eyes gone. And the crack from the lobby, the one painted over in cream, the one Marisol had called November, was not inside any more. It came out through the front wall from the ground to the roof, a long dark zigzag, wide enough at the bottom by the door to put your hand in.

A fireman in a yellow coat stood on the step with his arms folded and yellow tape across the door behind him. Forty guests stood on the pavement in front of him, some in dressing gowns, some in a towel, one woman in a bathing costume and high heels, looking at the building they could not go back into.

Marisol was at the front by the step, in her uniform, with her glasses on their chain and a clipboard, going through the guests one by one with a pen. When she saw Ellicott coming along the pavement she looked at the whole line, and her face did something, and she made fifty-eight marks on the clipboard very quickly, without counting, and put the pen behind her ear.

“I can’t let you in,” she said to Mr Abernathy. “Nobody’s going in. The engineer from the city says the back wall’s come away from the floors and it could go any time.” She looked at the class. “Your bags are in there. All of them. I’m sorry.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“I know it doesn’t. I’m sorry anyway.” She found Frederick along the line and looked at him over the clipboard, at the dust and the blood and the cut over his eye. “It moved,” she said, quietly, to him. “It’s supposed to move. It moved. It didn’t fall.”

“Yes.”

“Everybody in it got out. Every guest. Every one of the staff. Juan from the kitchen carried old Mrs Feld down four flights in her wheelchair, chair and all.” She tapped the clipboard with the pen. “It moved, and it didn’t fall, and everybody got out.” And she turned and looked at the hotel, with the crack down its front and the tower leaning, for a long time.

---

At twenty past one the satellite telephone rang again.

It had rung, Castellanos told him later, nineteen times between nine forty-one and one o’clock. It had rung at the top of the wheel, in the green car, while the wheel was shaking. Castellanos had answered every one with the same four words, except once, at half past ten, under the big tree. Alive. Unhurt. Bluff. Holding.

This time he talked for three or four minutes, very quietly, with his back to them. Once he said no, sharply. Once he said I understand. Once he looked over his shoulder at Frederick, and away. Then he came back across the pavement.

“Sir. A moment.”

They went a little way off under the palm trees in the hotel garden.

“There’s a helicopter. Navy. From Coronado, off San Diego. Airborne since half past twelve, here in about ten minutes. It can land on the grass by the big tree. It’ll take you and Sergeant Kimura and Sergeant Brannigan and me to Coronado, and from Coronado there’s an aircraft to New Westminster tonight. Her Majesty knows. The Prime Minister knows. The Household asked for it at a quarter past ten.” A pause. “It’s what the arrangement says. It’s what it’s said every trip since you were four. If the place you’re in stops being a place, they come and take you out of it.”

Frederick looked across the road at the grass by the big tree where the class had sat all morning. It was here now, on the pavement outside the hotel, in a line, Mr Abernathy at one end and Kimura at the other. Theo nearest, with Priya. Marcus. Felix. Lucía with her phone. Mr Ferrante sitting on the kerb with his leg out in front of him and Señora Ruiz beside him. Devon with the T-shirt round his knee.

“How many seats?”

“Eleven,” said Castellanos, after a moment. “Eleven and the crew.”

“There are fifty-eight of us. And three teachers. Can it take them?”

“No, sir.”

“Can it come back for them?”

“No, sir. Not today. It’s needed in Ventura. It’s coming here for you and then it’s going to Ventura and it won’t be back.” His voice did not change. “There’ll be buses, the Commonwealth says. Tomorrow, perhaps. The day after. The roads are bad.”

“So if I go, they stay.”

“With Sergeant Kimura, sir. I’d leave her with them.”

“And if I don’t go?”

Castellanos looked at him for a long time.

“Then you stay, sir. And I stay. And the helicopter goes to Ventura.”

---

He heard it before he saw it, a long low beating from the south, and then it came in low over the roofs with its nose down, grey, and everybody on Ocean Avenue looked up, and it turned over the park and hung over the grass by the big tree and came down in a storm of yellow dust. The palm trees bent. People on the grass ran back with their hands over their faces. It settled on the cracked grass with its blades still turning, and a door in its side slid open.

A woman in a green flying suit and helmet ducked under the blades and ran bent over across the grass, and Castellanos went to meet her in the middle of the road by the fallen palm, and they shouted close together over the noise, and then she looked past him at the line on the pavement and found Frederick at once, and came across to him, and took her helmet off.

“Your Majesty. Lieutenant Commander Ingram. HMS Coronado.” She had to shout. “I’m to take you and your officers to the ship, sir. We need to go now. We’ve got Ventura after this.”

“How many seats have you got?”

She blinked. “Eleven, sir. Eleven and the crew.”

“I’ve got fifty-eight people.” The voice from send him, not quite his. “Fifty-eight sophomores from Ellicott High School and three teachers and a woman from the hotel whose house is in San Bernardino. They came on the same aircraft as me. They’re my class.” He looked at her. “Can it take them?”

She looked past him at the line, all of it, the sophomores and the teachers and Marisol with the clipboard and the guests in their dressing gowns, and back at him, and he saw her decide not to say any of the things she might have said.

“No, sir. It can’t.”

“Then I’m sorry. I’m very grateful. Please tell the ship I’m very grateful. But I’m not coming.”

The blades went round behind her.

“Sir. I have orders.”

“I know you do. I’m sorry about them. I’ll write to whoever gave them to you and tell them it was me.” He swallowed. “My mother sent me word in a corridor at school in November, on the day of the earthquake there. She said, stay in the room. The same as the Tuesday before, when I became King in a class, and stayed in it.” He looked at the line. “This is the room. I came on the trip with them. I’m going home with them, when they go.”

The blades went round.

She looked at Castellanos over his shoulder, and Frederick did not turn to see Castellanos’s face, and she looked back.

“Then I’m going to Ventura, sir.”

“Yes.” Then, because it had come to him while she spoke: “But you’ve got eleven seats and you’re going to Ventura anyway. Could you take some people? Not me. People who are hurt. There’s an old man under that tree who was on the beach when the sea came in. A woman on the grass along there who hasn’t been able to stand since the shaking. A man by the railing with his arm wrong.” He looked at her. “Could you take them to a hospital? Somewhere that isn’t Ventura?”

She looked at him a moment longer. Then she put her helmet back on.

“Show me.”

---

They took nine. The old man from the beach in his blanket, carried across the grass by the two surfers, who would not let anybody else do it. The woman who could not stand. The man with his arm wrong. A boy of about eight who had been under a bookcase in a house on Fourth Street and had not spoken since his father carried him out. Four others. And Mr Ferrante.

Mr Ferrante did not want to go. He said so from the kerb, clearly, to Mr Abernathy and Señora Ruiz and Lieutenant Commander Ingram, who had come to look at the leg and said that’s broken, sir, below the knee, I’m surprised you walked. He said he was on a trip and he did not leave trips, and that he had a class, and that there would be a question on it.

“Dan,” said Señora Ruiz.

He looked at her.

“Go. I have the folder. I have the class. I have Mr Abernathy. Go and have your leg, and then come back, and ask your question.”

He went. Brannigan and one of the surfers carried him across the road and the grass with his arms over their shoulders, and he did not look back until he was at the door, and then he did, at Señora Ruiz, and lifted one hand, and was gone inside.

The door slid shut. The helicopter went up off the grass in its yellow storm and hung a moment over the big tree and the broken railing and the crooked sign at the top of the stairs, and turned, and went north low over the roofs along the coast, towards the smoke.

Castellanos stood beside him on the pavement with his hands at his sides, looking north where it had gone, for a long time.

“I’d have carried you, sir,” he said at last. “Onto it. If I’d had to. I’d have picked you up and carried you across that road in front of everybody on this street, in a way you wouldn’t have liked, and I’d have been right to.”

“I know.”

“I’m glad I didn’t have to.” And then, still looking north, in a voice Frederick had not heard from him before: “Your father would have stayed too, sir. At sixteen. He’d have asked the same question.”

Frederick could not answer.

Behind them, on the pavement, Mr Abernathy was counting.