Humberside

2065

As we passed the Goole our bow wave danced and jumped through between the ruins. The plants that grew over the old walls lapped and waved. We followed the old highway as it rose out of the water and ran alongside us towards Snaith. The land beside the highway grew greener as the salt water released its poisonous grip.

We’d left the homeship in Cleethorpes Harbour and taken the smaller skiff inland while flights of cargo drones whizzed overhead. Sure, they were annoying, but there was no way we’d be able to deliver all that food and material by hand. Our job was handing off the resettlers to their negotiated landing places. The world was on the move, everyone knew it, but here, today, the Boonmees had travelled across the crumbling world, but they had been chosen to live here, welcomed and needed for their expertise and experience with salt water inundation and coastal defence.

As we approached Snaith, there was a gaggle of people waiting on the jetty. The encroaching saltmarsh tickled the underside of the reclaimed wooden and plastic panels that had grown out from an old concrete railway siding. The storm last night had blown in one of the floating solar arrays. The little island bumped up against the edge of the saltmarsh while an opportunistic maintenance crew traced cabling through the mattered plant life to ensure everything was in order. We could see flickers of fish scudding into the estuary from their disturbed nurseries on the underside.

There were cheers, greetings, offers of food with beer, and the predictable requests for news as the six of us landed on the jetty. We followed the throng up Ferry lane and into the town proper. This close to the water’s edge, most of the buildings had been mined out, ready to become a breaker reef like Goole with their useful innards being transferred further inland to provide resources for the rest of the town. Urban mining wasn’t just the domain of the neomad wrecker clans, everyone in town played their part in stripping out buildings before damp mulched them down to poison the ground. The salt scent of the sea receded, replaced with petrichor as we emerged into the ruderal cracked crossroads that served as the central gathering place in town. The old Plough Inn slumped, tired on the other side.

Mok Boonmee was already engrossed in conversation about what species of plants he’d brought with him to be germinated in Snaith’s salt marsh, and I took it upon myself to introduce his young’uns to their new lodging at the Inn. They were delighted to find their rooms fitted out with everything young people would need to acclimatise to a new place. The townsfolk had donated everything. It was always a surprise to find how welcoming people could be, and how generous. It was why I always insisted on coming ashore and meeting them first hand. As we crossed from cosy dimness into the brightness of the crossroads, the sound of tabla, violin, many stamping feet vibrated the air as voices rang out in grateful welcome.