The O.D. Page 16

  In the ground floor flat of the ten-storey apartment block at the corner of Andrey Bartenev street, a strange thing had happened. All seven occupants of the apartment – an elderly woman, her son, his wife and their four children – had died in unison during the night, erased forever from the Siberian smokepit they called home.

  Norilsk, a centre for nickel smelting and the northernmost city in the world, is also one of the most polluted. But it wasn’t the strontium-90, caesium-137, carbon oxides, sulfur dioxide, phenols, or hydrogen sulfide that had killed the Yatchiks. Nor was it the nickel, copper, cobalt, lead and selenium particulates in the air. A far more lethal killer had risen from its lair far beneath the earth to pull the family to its invisible bosom...

  For millennia, the permafrost over which Norilsk was built had provided a solid cap to the vast reservoirs of methane below. But continuous warming of the Earth’s atmosphere had gradually thawed the permafrost and ‘dislodged the manhole cover’ to the point where, on this particular night, 10,000 tons of methane gas was able to vent uninvited into the homes and buildings of Norilsk.

  Methane displaces oxygen in enclosed spaces, with asphyxia occurring if the oxygen concentration drops below 10-15%. The point at which the risk of asphyxiation became a fatal reality for the Yatchiks was reached just after midnight. Increased breathing and pulse rates, impaired muscular coordination, emotional upset, nausea and vomiting were followed quickly by loss of consciousness, respiratory collapse and death.

  Before they realized that it was safer to breathe the poisonous air outside than the odourless axphyxiant seeping up through the floors of their flats and houses, 14,000 of Norilsk’s 100,000 inhabitants had joined the Yatchik family laid out on the acid grass of the City’s football stadium.

  What had pierced Norilsk that day was just the tip of the iceberg. Over the following ten months a further 40 gigatonnes of methane would be released into the atmosphere through this particular breach of the permafrost. With a potency as a greenhouse gas over a hundred times greater than carbon dioxide, methane on this scale was the last thing the planet needed… and there were over 1,300 gigatonnes more where that came from.

  One of Vaalon’s spies in Paris had heard from reliable sources that France was planning to send mineral and oil exploration parties to Eydos within weeks. Len Wenlight had informed Pilot that the British were merely riding in France’s slipstream− that the moment that country made more definite moves to exploit the island, Britain would let the world’s condemnation fall on France first and then slip in through the back door. France had one paw on the juicy bone, while the other hungry dogs were just looking for some way to snatch it off her. The United Nations efforts to remove the French from the island had stalled, and world opinion was like water off a duck’s back to Gallic pride. Eydos would have to beat the dog herself, but to do that, she needed a stick. Finding one was the main topic of conversation after every meal.

  Work on Nillin’s harbour was still in the planning stage and had been wallowing there for much longer than it should have. Sergio Carpecchio, the expedition’s marine engineer, and Mirko Soldo, who could do things with stone, concrete and explosives one wouldn’t have thought possible, couldn’t have been worse suited to work with each other. Two factors in the men’s make-up in particular had flown under Vaalon’s radar. Not only were they from opposite sides of the Adriatic – Venice and Dubrovnik respectively – but in personality they were from opposite sides of the universe. The Italian was closed, scheming and reptilian, the Croat open, merry and bear-like− on the surface anyway. For centuries Venice and Ragusa, as Dubrovnik was formerly known, had been bitter trade rivals, and this malignant past still flowed in the veins of both men. Soldo could trace his ancestors back to 14th century Ragusa, and Carpecchio, his Venetian forbears to the 15th century. Much to Pilot’s exasperation, it was this historic stain that was as much to blame for their disagreements as their differing personalities. That evening he went to visit them in the hut by the water in which they had been vainly trying to agree a plan.

  Even as he came in, they were arguing. “YOU ARE DANGER-MAN,” Soldo was shouting. “TWO FATHOMS IS CRAZY. WE NEED FOUR.” When he saw Pilot standing in the doorway, the big man’s demeanour changed in an instant. He laughed, put his hand round his employer’s shoulder and pulled him into the hut. Pilot came straight to the point.

  “Mirko, Sergio… Two barge-loads of topsoil from Cork will be arriving in December. Where the hell are they supposed to dock?” O’Penny’s barges weren’t due until the middle of January, but enough time had been wasted, and if the harbour could be finished in two months, so much the better. What really decided them was Pilot telling the men, in Carpecchio’s case for the second time, that he would tear up their contracts if they didn’t reach a compromise by dusk.

  As Pilot was passing the communications building, he was grabbed by Jim McConie. “They’re rioting in Paris, Lonnie.”

  “Who is?”

  “The students. Students of France for an Independent Eydos… Down with French Imperialism … that sort of thing. The water cannon have been out and people are being hurt. The Government is beginning to fragment on the issue, according to Mr. Vaalon’s spies in Quai d’Orsay, and they think something will happen soon.”

  Something did. The following evening in a Paris hospital, a twenty-year-old philosophy student lay comatose on a life support machine, his skull having been fractured by a riot policeman’s baton that morning in the wake of unprecedented student demonstrations. By lunchtime, the students had been joined at the barricades by members of all five French trade union confederations and 20,000 activists from the new Paris Commune. Unbeknown to all but a few, these developments had been the final straw for the Government of France. It would only be a matter of days before they threw in the towel and recognized Eydos for what it was: Independent; Nonaligned; and, heaven help them, Non-French.

  XII

  The French occupation of Eydos ended on October first. In Paris, the following statement was issued:

  ‘Eight weeks after the accidental grounding of fourteen barges on that part of the French continental shelf known as Ile de Bonne Fortune, and having guarded and succored the unfortunate castaways over that period, the French Home Guard have today withdrawn to the mainland, their guardianship having been successfully concluded. The castaway leader, L. Pilot, has been informed that the French Government will be granting protectorate status to the island as soon as talks are fruitfully adjourned.’

  The ‘talks’ were what the envoy from Paris flew in to see Pilot about. Without ceremony, he put forward the price of French withdrawal as follows:

  1) A deep water submarine base to be established in a fjord some fourteen kilometers northwest of Nillin.

  2) A military airfield, location as yet unspecified.

  3) An exclusive mineral and oil exploration agreement between France and the island’s representatives.

  4) A trawler port and fish processing plant to be sited at another fjord to the far northwest of the island.

  5) The establishment of a chain of scientific research stations on Ile de Bonne Fortune 6) Sites for two nuclear waste burial grounds.

  “It would cost us less to let them stay,” Pilot said to Mara and Bradingbrooke when the envoy had gone.

  “Protectorate status,” Mara said. “The Gauls’ gall.”

  Unreasonable though the demands were, at least France was being open and honest about her aspirations, Pilot thought. The same couldn’t be said of Britain. According to a deep-throat source close to Austin Palmer, a nuclear submarine of the Royal Navy was at that moment charting the northernmost reaches of the island as a first step towards establishing a secret base there.

  Respect was something Pilot felt would have to be taught to his near neighbours as soon as he had the power to do so. Where this power would come from, he didn’t know. Everything depended on how the settlement developed during Phase One. Power, or rather, immunity, would only come t
hrough a successful transition to self-sufficiency and non-dependence. The first harvests would be crucial. On that matter, it had been decided to keep all cultivation to the existing sediment pits, as the soil and compost had only to be dug into the sediment, as opposed to laying an entirely new soil base over the bare rock. The total acreage afforded by the pits was more than adequate for the colony’s needs. Already, Jane Lavery’s planting programme was taking root, and the hydroponic grow tents were bulging with Moringa leaves. And Giles’s poplar cuttings had taken well to the soil-sediment mix, much to everybody’s relief.

  Down at the harbour, a sea wall had been built twenty metres out from, and parallel to, the shoreline to provide the necessary depth at quayside. The space in between was being filled with rock, courtesy of Soldo’s cordite. Haulage of goods from the convoy had temporarily ceased in preference to haulage of rubble for the landfill operation.

  From a home affairs point of view, Pilot had reason to feel confident. The real worry lay in the island’s foreign relations – in what to do about French and British self-interest. In the end, it had been decided to invite the French Foreign Minister to Nillin for the ‘Protectorate’ talks, rather than hold them in Paris. An open protest regarding Britain’s provocative, secret submarine incursions was also to be written and beamed up to the iPatch satellite as soon as possible.

  A dozen or so early risers were already breakfasting in the mess hall when Dr. Dahl came in from his customary dawn patrol with news of trespassers on the basin rim. Three or four curious crew went out to have a look.

  “What the fuck is that?” Budd said.

  Jane Lavery tried to make sense of the vision. “It’s Mary the Holy Mother herself,” she said. In the distance, a figure silhouetted by the lightening sky behind it stood at the top of the cliff, arms outstretched, robes flapping in the wind. Budd went off to rouse Pilot, while Giles, Lavery, Billy and Horvat set off for the basin road.

  Budd and Pilot caught up with them just before they reached the escarpment rim. Twenty metres further on, their strange visitor stood motionless, arms outstretched, feet apart and head thrown back to the heavens. Every now and then it would give a jerky shudder that began at its torso and rippled outwards to its fingertips, which would whiplash, as if their owner had just received ten thousand volts, then fall still again.

  Around this central figure, golden-robed men and women sat cross-legged with their hands on their knees and their eyes closed. All wore the same expression of blind expectancy, like so many newly hatched sparrows.

  Pilot wasted no time in walking up to their lime-green-robed leader and tapping it on the shoulder. When it turned around, it was no Virgin Mary.

  “What are you doing here?” Pilot asked.

  By way of an answer, the man clapped his hands as a signal for his followers to stand at ease. They immediately relaxed their stiff poses and began chatting amongst themselves in recognizable American accents.

  ‘Lime-green’ looked to be about thirty. He had long, straight hair to the small of his back and a walrus moustache over a receding chin covered in black stubble like a burnt-off bracken field. He opened his arms theatrically and embraced Pilot.

  “Man, are we glad to see you. I just can’t believe my eyes. The Archangel Himself. All the waiting ... all the praying ... it’s like –”

  “What do you want? What are you doing here?”

  Lime-green clapped again. In unison, his followers rose up and began mingling with Pilot’s crew, hugging everyone in sight.

  Pilot glanced at Dubi Horvat and rolled his eyes. He had never seen an unhealthier group of people. Lime-green had barely enough flesh on him to cover his bones, and the others exhibited similar emaciation and a general lack of light in their eyes. It was revealed they had eaten hardly anything since leaving Idaho two weeks earlier. They’d flown to Brest, via Paris, and then chartered a helicopter, which had dropped them some 30 miles to the north. They had wandered in the wilderness of the shelf for ten days, carrying nothing but their money belts and a blind conviction that Lonnie Pilot was the ‘Seraphic Prodigy’ for whom their cult had been waiting five years.

  Back in the newly erected mess hall, as the Disciples gorged their way through a week’s supply of food in one sitting, Pilot and Giles huddled in a corner trying to devise a way of getting the forty-seven intruders off the island.

  “We could send for the chopper and make them work for their keep ‘til they’re evacuated,” Giles said. “They’re from my neck of the woods. Let me have a word with them.” He went over to talk to Lime-green, who said his name was Clarence Drance.

  “Drance?” Giles asked, the name sparking a connection. “Your old man didn’t work at Bonner Mill, did he?”

  “You’re from Bonner?”

  “Missoula.”

  “Well if that don’t beat all,” Drance mumbled, his mouth crammed with bread and corned beef hash. “You bet Dad worked at Bonner Mill. Left his frickin’ arm there.”

  “Yeah, I remember.”

  “Never worked again. Me and my brother Delaney moved out to Spokane after that and started the Disciples. When folks started victimizing us, we headed for the hills near Coeur d’Alene. And now we’re here, where we belong.”

  Giles looked around the tables at the lost, hungry, hapless faces and felt 20% pity, 80% repugnance. “What’s your religion all about?” he asked.

  The eyes set deep in Drance’s hairy face softened. “Basically, we’re angel worshippers. Delaney and me realized that the angels are the purest of mortals. Don’t let the wings fool you to thinking they’re not human like you or me. The wings were invented by Italian painters. For two thousand years the angels have been living at the right hand of God, picking up on His ways, perfecting their society and cultivating their bloodline direct from the angel Gabriel.”

  “Is Delaney with you?” Giles asked.

  “No. Bank of America in Seattle. He couldn’t cut our self-deprivation.”

  Giles was looking at Drance as if he were a dead dog on a beach. Drance took another large mouthful and chewed and swallowed before continuing. “What does anybody know about what goes on up there, anyway? A lot of it’s just commonsense. It doesn’t take a genius to know that our lives down here are just getting shitier and shitier. The angels in their pure state know they got the power to help− the power to release us from our earthly chains. We believe in the Second Coming all right, but it wasn’t to be Jesus this time, but an angel. It’s taken over two thousand years for them to produce the Seraphic Prodigy for his mission on Earth. That’s why we’re here. To offer ourselves unto his service.”

  “You think Lonnie Pilot is an angel?” Giles said, looking Clarence Drance square in the eyes. “The Second Coming?”

  “Sure as I’m here and you’re there.”

  “Hold your horses, Clarence. Let me just say one thing to you – and I want you to listen to me as if you’re the young Clarence Drance of Bonner, Montana, and not a Disciple of the Serawhatever. Will you do that?”

  “It’s all the same to me, man. I haven’t changed. It’s just, I didn’t know the Truth then, that’s all.”

  Giles sat back and adopted the down-home grin he always used in tricky situations. “Clarence, what if Lonnie Pilot isn’t your angel-messiah? What if all this here’s got nothing to do with angels, devils, God, religion or Charlton Heston? Have you ever stopped to think you might have jumped the gun? Come to the wrong landing site? The real Seraphic Prodigy would have given you a sign for sure. Look over there at Lonnie Pilot. He’s already got enough problems to sink a battleship. That was before you arrived. Clarence, we just don’t have time for your kind of self-indulgence here. We can’t afford to give you and your Disciples a free meal ticket on Eydos. A helicopter’s coming here in a couple of days, and I want you and your friends to be inside it when it leaves.”

  Unbeknown to both men, Pilot had been listening to the latter part of the exchange and was now walking towards them. “I’m sorry when a
nyone’s beliefs are shattered, but I’m no angel, full stop,” Pilot said. “If I were you I’d go back to Idaho and wait some more.”

  Drance, for all his woolly ideas and self-deception, when having the carpet pulled from under his feet so convincingly, had no answer to it. He knew he was a fraud, but such was his instinct for self-preservation that his only thought at that moment was how to extract himself without loss of face with the only people in the world to whom he mattered− his forty-six adherents. He stared at his bony fingers for a moment, fighting back tears, then put his forehead down over his clasped hands to hide his distress from his followers.

  “Shit,” he blustered. “Holy shit. What am I going to tell them?”

  Pilot looked at Giles, who shrugged.

  “You could try telling them you were wrong,” Pilot said without softness.

  Drance continued sitting with head on hands. His followers, thinking he was deep in prayer, did likewise. Feeling like intruders, Pilot and his tree surgeon took themselves and their compatriots out of the building, leaving the mess hall in sole possession of the Disciples and their compromised leader.

  When Pilot and Giles had gone, Drance climbed up on the table as if it were a pulpit and addressed his congregation. “People,” he began, “I have something to tell you. I’ve just had holy words with the Seraphic Prodigy himself in which he conferred his blessings upon us all and thanked us for our prompt attendance. More importantly, he has entrusted us with a mission. To take his word back to the States and to let the Satan-worshippers there know what we have witnessed today. Now, I hope you all understand what I’m telling you. The Archangel has given us the entire continent of North America to convert in his name. If we succeed, he has promised to extend our parish to Central and South America. There can be but one more reward after that, you guys ... the WORLD. They’re flying us out on our own chopper next week. Now, WADDAYA SAY?”