Half a kilometer offshore, the tunnels began. Some of them must have been there 
for many years, for they were rough as tree trunks, encrusted with barnacles 
and algae. But it was clear that in the last few days they had forked and split 
organically, like roots questing for moisture; clean new tubes forced their way 
out through the encrustation and ran uphill toward the tide line, splitting 
again and again until many orifices presented themselves to the refugees. The 
shoots terminated in lips that grabbed people and drew them in, like the tip of 
an elephant's trunk, accepting the refugees with a minimum of seawater. The 
tunnels were lined with mediatronic images urging them forward into the deep; 
it always seemed as though a warm dry well-lit space awaited them just a bit 
farther down the line. But the light moved
along with the viewer so that they were drawn down the tunnels in a kind of 
peristalsis. The refugees came to the main tunnel, the old encrusted one, and 
continued moving on, now packed together in a solid mass, until they were 
disgorged into a large open cavity far below the surface of the ocean. Here, 
food and fresh water awaited them and they ate hungrily.