The Rich Man’s House

by Andrew McGahan

  Everyone nodded. The billionaire in the lead, they descended to the Atrium and then moved into the Dining Hall. At its end they passed around a corner into a concealed servery area, and then on through a set of swinging doors into a large commercial kitchen. To one side of this, a concrete-lined service hallway ran off into gloom. Following it, they passed around two bends and reached a landing from which stairs climbed both up and down. They went down one flight and came to another landing, from which more service passages ran off on all four sides.

  But these were really service tunnels now, Rita noted, for no daylight would ever reach down here. Even the fluorescent lights were dim, the conduits for the wiring visible along the bare walls. From somewhere below—the stairway continued down—she could hear a steady roar that she assumed was the generators. But Richman led them along one of the tunnels and the sound faded.

  They came at last to a closed door. It bore no sign to identify what might lie behind it, but there was a panel and keyboard beside the door handle. After entering a security code and then having his thumbprint read by the scanner, Richman pushed the door open, and ushered them to follow.

  Beyond was a large chamber that was lit mainly by the many computer screens that glowed upon three ranks of desks and by server banks that blinked in red and green along the walls. Other walls bore lockers and whiteboards and all manner of charts and schematics. The burr of cooling fans, and the faint smell of warm electronics, filled the air. The Control Room, just like NASA, thought Rita.

  At one of the desks, bent over a keyboard in front of a terminal and flanked by a rack of video screens that displayed the footage from seemingly dozens of security cameras, was Kennedy.

  ‘Everyone good?’ the security chief enquired without turning his head.

  ‘Good,’ Richman replied. ‘You got the generators going, I see. How else do we stand?’

  Kennedy gave a grunt. ‘Generators are fine, sure, but there must have been a nasty electrical surge up here when the Power Station went, because all the fuses were tripped when I came in. I’ve flipped them all back, but I dunno, half the systems seem to be permanently fried or otherwise screwed up. I’m still trying to work it all out.’

  ‘Any news on the lifts?’

  ‘Wrecked, for all I know. They were both down at Base when the wave hit, and I get no response from either one. If the water was high enough to kill the Power Station, then it probably flooded the bottom of the shafts too.’ He glanced up, his stern face set in wonder. ‘You know the Power Station is about four hundred metres above sea level, right?’

  ‘I know,’ nodded Richman. ‘What about the emergency stairs? They in one piece?’

  ‘Doesn’t matter if they are. We can’t get to them. According to the data here, the security doors for both of the elevator shafts activated when the power went, and now I can’t open them.’

  ‘Shit,’ said the billionaire, crestfallen.

  ‘Shit,’ concurred Kennedy.

  There was a pause, with Kushal and Clara likewise suddenly stony-faced at this particular piece of news, leaving Rita puzzled.

  She asked, ‘Security doors?’

  It was Clara who explained. ‘There are only two access points to the Observatory, the two lift shafts, the main and the service. Even all the old climbing paths up the outside of the Mount were dismantled when construction began. So, as a precaution, in case kidnappers or terrorists ever get control of Base and try to come up here, the upper exit of each shaft can be sealed off with blastproof doors. It makes the whole Observatory impregnable. But now it seems they’ve activated when they shouldn’t have.’

  Kennedy shook his head. ‘No, they were doing what they’re supposed to do. They’re designed to shut if the power fails. The thinking is that in a kidnapping or terrorist attack, the Power Station might get sabotaged. So at the first hint of a power failure, the doors slam shut automatically. Of course, we’re supposed to be able to open them again from this room, but that’s one of the systems I was talking about. It’s fried. Those doors aren’t moving.’

  ‘So we’re stuck up here?’ Rita demanded, the dread in her urgent once more.

  ‘Not forever. Just until we sort it out. Which we will. I wouldn’t let anyone go down the stairs yet anyway, not until we know more about conditions at the bottom. There could be flooding, or the stairs might have been damaged by the quake. So just relax, we’ll all be sitting tight for the time being.’

  Kushal enquired, ‘Can you tell anything at all about what’s happening down there?’

  Kennedy waved a hand to the wall of video screens. Many of them displayed shots from around the Observatory, but the lower eight screens were either black, or displayed only static. ‘Not a single feed active down there,’ he said. ‘Short of hanging over a balcony to see for myself, I can’t tell a thing.’

  ‘Well, then, shouldn’t we do that?’

  Walter Richman smiled humourlessly. ‘You wouldn’t be able to see anything. To get a view down to Base or even catch a glimpse of the harbour, you’d need to do some mountaineering. You’d have to climb over the parapet up on the Terrace and then traverse all the way around the shoulder of the summit to the south face—that’s the only place you could see Base from. True enough, it could be done, there’s some climbing gear down in the Museum. But I wouldn’t be rushing to that option just yet.’ He glanced to his security chief. ‘What we need is Eugene up here; this stuff is his specialty. He definitely went down with all the others before the quake?’

  Kennedy nodded bitterly. ‘He did. And so did the other two maintenance guys who could have helped. By protocol, this room is supposed to be manned every second. But fool that I am, I let everyone go down; I thought it would only be for ten minutes. So the six of us here is all we’ve got.’

  Richman let out a puff of air. ‘That’s a fuck-up, Kennedy. No mistake.’

  ‘No one knows it better than me, sir,’ said the security chief, head bowed.

  But the billionaire did not seem terribly interested in blame. ‘All right. Nothing to be done about it now. The generators are going, that’s the main thing. How much fuel have they got?’

  Kennedy raised his head, pointed to some readings on one of the computer screens. ‘The tanks are full, so that gives us at least a fortnight of emergency power. Heating, lighting, refrigeration and so forth are all secure. Of course, we lose some less critical systems. The lifts are gone, as we know, and the heating of the pools, for instance, is out.’

  ‘Food and drinking water?’

  ‘Fully stocked, more or less. Again, that means enough for a fortnight at the very least, by the protocol, probably far more in reality, given that there are only six of us. The rule book assumes three times as many people here, as a minimum. We won’t have to worry about starving for a month and more. Not that it’ll come to anything like that, of course.’

  ‘Communications?’

  ‘None with below, and the internet and the phones are out, so there’s no communications with the outside world just yet either. The whole hub at Base must be shut down or lost. I’ve still got my radio here, but none of my men are responding on it. If they’re not dead down there, then I’m assuming they lost their radios in the flood. But we’re not without options. Once we dig out the satellite phones, we’ll be able to get in touch with Hobart and call up some support. Even if the harbour is wrecked, they can still land a rescue chopper up here.’

  ‘There are satellite phones here then?’ queried Richman. ‘There was supposed to be at least one in the emergency kit in the Cottage, but it wasn’t there when I looked. Where are the rest of them kept?’

  Another frown from the security chief. ‘I don’t know. I haven’t looked yet. But they sure as hell have to be here somewhere.’

  ‘Well, let’s make that priority one. And priority two, we need to get those security doors open, so we can go down and see what the damage is at Base. You work on the doors, Kennedy.’ He turned to the others. ‘The rest of us, ti
me to start opening some of these lockers. Let’s find those phones.’

  They set to. Rita, for one, was glad to have a task that could distract from her shock and sense of foreboding—and glad too that Richman, surely no stranger to extreme challenges, had recovered and seemed to be in calm command once more.

  But the following hour brought only frustration. The searchers tore open every locker and cabinet in the Control Room, and then hunted through two adjacent storerooms that were filled with first-aid gear and other emergency supplies—but nowhere did the promised satellite phones appear.

  Richman was furious. ‘I saw the damn things not two months ago down at Base during the final fit out, eight of them, charge packs and all. They were supposed to be installed up here six weeks ago at the latest. If the fool responsible has left them down below, if they’re still sitting there now, or washed away, I’ll sack him if he’s not already dead.’

  No one laughed.

  The only remotely useful devices the search turned up was four pairs of walkie-talkies, of the kind that Kennedy and his team used.

  ‘Better than nothing, I suppose,’ was the security chief’s assessment of the radios. ‘They have a range of maybe twenty miles from up here across the open ocean, but that’s only useful if a ship is passing by and listening on the right frequency. Likewise, we could talk to Base, but only if someone down there is alive and in a state to hear us.’

  Clara took up one of the handsets. ‘Well, I can check for a passing ship anyway. I’ll be up on the Terrace if anyone needs me.’

  She went. The others remained behind, watching impatiently as Kennedy strove to open the security doors. But he was no expert, and no matter how he fiddled with fuses or rebooted various computer systems, nothing he tried could bring the unlocking mechanism back online.

  ‘The doors really are shut?’ Richman checked finally. ‘It’s not a mistake; we’re not just getting false readings from the blown equipment?’

  Kennedy shrugged. ‘It’s no mistake. But go down and see for yourself, if you like.’ At length, they did just that. Leaving Kennedy in the Control Room, the other four set off to inspect the service elevator shaft in person.

  It lay several levels below, down through the tunnels, and even amid all the other confusions and horrors of the day, Rita found the descent an unnerving experience. The passages and stairways seemed endless, burrowing ever deeper into the Mount, marked at various junctions only with the arcane codes of letters and numbers that she had noted on her previous investigation. No wonder the poor cleaning woman had ended up lost at the pool!

  But Richman appeared to know his way unerringly. They passed the generator room as they went, a clamour coming from within, along with a heavy smell of diesel, and through an ajar door Rita glimpsed a line of great behemoth engines, twice her height, labouring in the gloom as exhaust fans hummed nearly as loudly as the generators themselves.

  Then it was on, down away from the noise into a colder, quieter section of the tunnels. At last they arrived at a final wide landing beyond which no stairs descended. Along three of the walls metal roller doors were marked Storage One through to Storage Three, and on the ceiling ran rails for a crane. The fourth wall formed a large threshold, identified by a sign overhead which read Service Elevator and Emergency Stairs. Caution, Long Steep Descent.

  But that threshold was barred now by a grey metal slab that had slid down from a housing above—a slab that was proof, so Rita had by now learned, against bullets, grenades and even rocket launchers. It was held in place by great electromagnetic locks set within the bedrock of the Mount, out of reach and quite immune to any interference other than a coded electronic order from the Control Room.

  ‘Well,’ observed Richman, ‘it’s shut all right. And there’s no manual override.’

  Kushal was nodding unhappily. ‘I told you that was asking for trouble.’ Richman shrugged. ‘Kennedy advised that a manual override would be too dangerous. It could by worked by any staff member, say a traitor in league with attackers from the outside.’

  ‘A traitor could just as easily open the doors from the Control Room,’ Kushal argued.

  ‘The Control Room is a secure area, open only to half a dozen people at most, much more closely vetted than the general staff. If one of them is a traitor, then the whole place is compromised regardless. No … from a security standpoint, this was the smart move. We just didn’t take into account an earthquake, followed by avalanche, followed by a goddamn tsunami big enough to take out the Power Station and burn out the electronics that control these things.’

  Rita paid all of this little heed. She was staring uneasily at the security door, thinking not so much of the wisdom or folly of its installation, but rather of what lay hidden behind it.

  There would be no elevator carriage waiting, she knew that. It had been caught down at the bottom during the quake. There would be just the empty shaft, a two-and-a-half-thousand-metre-deep hole plunging down through the mountain, a cable dangling into the blackness, falling, falling …

  That, and the stairway.

  But no ordinary stairway, she knew. It would not be walled-in all around, impossible to fall from, as would be found in any normal high-rise. No. How had Clara described it earlier? More a series of ladders than a staircase. A series of ladders, two and a half thousand metres high. The shudder such an image sent through Rita was terrifying both in the dread and fear of the expanse and yet also in its simultaneous vertiginous allure, reaching out, trying to draw her in and down …

  No. She would rather wait even for the terror of an evacuation by helicopter from the Terrace, than venture down such a stairway. Or perhaps, even better than either, simply linger up here for as long as it took for the elevators to be restored to operation. There was a month’s worth of food, after all.

  Except, the idea of lingering in the Observatory was no relief either. Indeed, now that she was trapped here, however temporarily it might be, she wanted nothing more than to be gone. All her resurgent senses groaned with certainty that something awful was going to happen here. But even so, to take the stairs as escape … no. Not them. Not yet.

  Anyway, the door was shut.

  They spent another hour down in the bowels of the service area, searching each of the three storerooms for the elusive satellite phones. The rooms were filled mainly with furniture or with pallets of bulk items like toilet paper. There were six enormous TV screens still in their boxes, presumably awaiting installation somewhere, a huddle of gleaming new refrigerators, even a spare grand piano hulking under a blanket. But there were no smaller appliances or technological items, and no phones.

  Finally they retreated, weary and claustrophobic after so long in these dim, bare-walled caves. It was by now nearly seven p.m., only three hours since the earthquake, but already that seemed an age ago and a different world. They returned first to the Control Room, where Kennedy reported that there was no change—they remained incommunicado—then they climbed back up and out to the main levels, through the Dining Hall to the Atrium.

  ‘We could all use a drink, I bet,’ Richman declared, heading for the Saloon.

  Up here, it was almost possible to believe that nothing had happened. The air of luxury still prevailed, most of the lights were on, a fire was laid ready to ignite in the great fireplace, the mellow recesses of the Library still beckoned enticingly.

  But not everything was as usual. The great transparent wedge that divided the Saloon from the Dining Room, the base of the Terrace Pool, would normally have been floodlit from within and glittering like an undersea fantasy as the bubble streams rose to the surface. Now, under emergency power, it was unilluminated. In daytime light would still have filtered down from the surface, but with night above the pool was black, an ebony monolith, making all the spaces around it, the Dining Hall, the Saloon, the whole Atrium, feel smaller somehow.

  But no matter. Kushal set to getting the fire going, and Rita, along with Richman and Madelaine, circled around behind
the bar to inspect the state of things. As it happened, the wine fridge was still powered, and so even amid disaster the chardonnay was being kept at the perfect temperature.

  They had all just settled into couches with their drinks, the fire flaming up nicely, when Clara appeared, descending the stairs from the Conservatory. She was dressed in one of the long outdoor coats, her face pinched with cold and anxiety.

  ‘Any luck?’ Richman asked, though the major-domo’s expression was answer enough.

  Clara shook her head, going straight to the fire, hands outstretched. ‘I’ve been transmitting maydays over a dozen channels and more, but so far no one has responded. Not a squeak.’

  ‘Well, it was always a long shot.’

  The major-domo nodded. ‘I waited till full dark to be sure, but there are no lights out at sea, not in any direction. Other than that, all I can say is that it’s getting colder and colder out there. I think there might be some weather coming.’

  Rita turned her gaze to the great glass panels overhead and the view of the sky. All was night out there, except for on the eastward edge of vision: there, faint and high above, in the upper reaches of the atmosphere, a wisp of gossamer pink glowed. It was the peak of the Wheel, catching a last vestige of the long-past sunset, and around it once more a nacreous cloud was shimmering pale.

  So high, so cold, so strange. A primal part of Rita reacted with a shiver, as if she had spied the approach of some black and deadly storm of ice.

  ‘So what now?’ Kushal asked.

  Richman sipped a whisky. ‘We wait.’

  Kushal gave a sigh, considered the glass in his own hand. ‘It hardly seems right though. Many must be dead or injured down below—and yet here we sit, unharmed, drinking whisky. It feels …’

  ‘Obscene,’ Madelaine filled in for him. She lifted her glass in turn. ‘Nevertheless, short of jumping over the edge, there’s nothing we can do to get down there or to help anyone. We can’t even help ourselves. We’re trapped, who knows for how long.’

  ‘Oh, four days at the most,’ declared Richman casually. ‘Don’t worry about that.’