She shook her head again. For an instant, contradictory blurs of motion canceled; she was smiling up at me, as if I was a child afraid of a thunderstorm. “Don’t worry! We’ll be fine!”

What did she think would happen, when the ocean came screaming in? We’d just … hold each other up? One million drowning refugees would all link hands and tread water together?

Stateless had driven its children insane.

A fine moist spray rained down on us. I crouched and covered my head, picturing deep water rushing into the depressurized rock, blasting fissures all the way to the surface. And when I looked up, there it was: in the distance, a geyser fountained straight into the sky, a terrible silver thread in the moonlight. It was some hundred meters away – to the south – meaning that the path to the guyot was already undermined, and there was no hope of escape.

I lay down heavily beside the girl. She shouted at me, “Why were you running in the wrong direction? Did you lose your way?”

I reached over and gripped her shoulder, hoping to see her face more clearly. We gazed at each other in mutual incomprehension. She yelled, “I was on scout duty. I should have stopped you at the edge of the camp, but I thought you’d just go a little way, I thought you just wanted a better view for your camera.”

The shoulder camera was still packed in my wallet; I hadn’t even thought of using it, turning it back on the camp as it was flooded, broadcasting the genocide to the world.

The gentle rain grew heavier for a second or two – but then subsided. I looked south, and caught sight of the geyser collapsing.

Then, for the first time, I noticed my hands trembling.

The ground had quietened.

Meaning what? The stretch of rock we lay on had broken free of its surroundings, like an iceberg birthed screaming from a glacial sheet, and was floating in relative tranquility now – before the water rushed in around the edges?

My ears rang, my body was quivering – but I glanced up at the sky, and the stars were rock-steady. Or vice versa.

And then the girl gave me a shaken, queasy, adrenaline-drunk grin, her eyes shining with tears of relief. She believed that the ordeal was over. And I’d been warned not to think I knew better. I stared back at her wonderingly, my heart still pounding with terror, my chest constricted with hope and disbelief. I found myself emitting long, gasping sobs.

When I’d regained my voice, I asked, “Why aren’t we dead? The overhang can’t float without the lithophiles. Why aren’t we drowning?”

She rose and sat cross-legged, massaging her bruised calf, distracted for a moment. Then she looked at me, took the measure of my misunderstanding, shook her head, and patiently explained.