Free The Seventh Tide by Joan Lennon Page A

important gets to work on time? Is that it?!
    Jay shook her head sullenly.
    ‘We’re O-class, Jay! And in spite of a lot of rubbish to the contrary, that’s always going to be a major disadvantage.’
    ‘Which can be overcome,’ prompted her mum.
    ‘Which can be overcome, yes – but not the way you’re going about it, is all I’m saying!’
    Of course, it wasn’t all he was saying. The lecture was only beginning. But that was all that Jay actually heard. This was the stage at which she normally stopped listening.
    ‘Now, let’s not say any more about it,’ said her mum at last.
    If only. Jay heaved a weary sigh to herself.
    ‘Your father’s on rotation at the forest and I have my neuro-tech conference – and I want you to promise me you’ll work hard while we’re away. At least three units a day. You need to be caught up by the time term starts again. Right?’
    Jay said she would. She said she’d be good. Her parents left, trying to look as if they believed every word, her father to his work for the Kelp Forestry Commission and her mother to the Annual Convention of Neural Technicians. Jay then got as far as opening a homework file titled ‘World Government Section A(a)(i)’ before giving it all up as a bad lot. She grabbed a bag and headed out into the Tubes of Greater Glasgow.
    Greater Glasgow was huge, but it didn’t cover much ground. This was because the vast majority of this vast city was underwater. The monumental rise in sea level was ancient history, and the world’s enormous population had been almost exclusively sub-aquatic for generations.Living quarters, industry, food production, transportation – everything that used to happen on land now happened beneath the waves.
    At school, they were taught about the centuries of climate in turmoil, the millions dead, the extinction of species – but it was just words. The human population had more than recovered its numbers by Jay’s time, and society had adapted to the restrictions of living in an element that was basically hostile. And if some of the old images of chaos and death did come back to haunt you in the night, they were easily patched away. Anxiety, anger, sorrow, over-excitement – they were all managed by tranquillizer patch. With people living so closely packed together, it was argued that there wasn’t room for a lot of uncontrolled emotion. Breaking a window in a fit of rage didn’t just mean an unexpected glazier’s bill – living underwater meant that if someone decided to let off steam with an axe, it was quite likely to end in drownings.
    There was no shortage of statistics for the levels of violence in the olden-day societies, and all those land-based cities just seemed to be willing to accommodate it. In the twenty-fourth century, things were tighter, cities more densely packed, and their inhabitants surrounded by an element for which they hadn’t exactly evolved –well, it made sense to keep a lid on things.
    Wall dispensers were everywhere. Sensors picked up increased adrenalin breathed out by agitated citizens and politely but firmly offered sedation. The police force, known as the Guardians, was armed with paralyser guns and the instruction to shoot first, ask questions later. Someplace else, out of the public view…
    Just like the historical land-based Glasgow, Greater Glasgow had an extensive Tube system. It was powered by hydro-pressure, and its pods were well stocked with sensors and dispensers in case rush-hour delays got on a citizen’s nerves. Trains of spherical pods floated through a complicated system of transparent reconstituted algae-plast tubes, a little like an old-fashioned marble run, up, down, round and at every conceivable angle, and about a third full of water. It was an amazing feat of hydraulic engineering but, like anything you use all the time, nobody much noticed.
    The Tube was crowded – the end of the working day always saw enormous shifts of people desperate to get from one sector to