‘Any news?’ Rita asked as she came to the table, returning various nods of greeting.
Richman, at the table’s head, was as suave and assured as if yesterday’s disaster had never happened. ‘We still have no outside communication, and no way to get down, if that’s what you mean.’
Rita took her seat. ‘But you still think rescue will be coming for us today?’
‘I expect so. Of course,’ he added, with a nod to the greyed-out windows, ‘if this murk doesn’t lift, then even when a helicopter arrives it won’t be able to land up here. It’ll have to land at the pad down at Base. But at least that will be a beginning.’
‘That’s if the helipad down at Base is even still functional,’ Kushal put in, in the tone of resuming an earlier argument. He gave Rita a sombre look. ‘We still have no idea how bad things are below. It’s worrying enough that we can’t go down—but what I find more ominous is that no one has come up.’
Richman was sceptical. ‘It’s a two and a half thousand metre climb. Would you labour up a flight of more than ten thousand stairs—ladders, really—if you didn’t have to? They may well be fine down there, apart from a little water damage, and be rightly assuming that we’re fine up here too.’
Kushal shook his head in turn. ‘You saw that wave, things will be far worse down there than just a bit wet. Someone should have come up here by now seeking medical help. The fact that no one has suggests that there is no one left who can.’
‘But they couldn’t get in anyway, could they?’ asked Rita. She was gingerly buttering a slice of toast, though she had little appetite. ‘Wouldn’t they be blocked by the security doors?’
‘Yes,’ answered the builder, ‘but we’d still see them. There’s a security camera at the top landing of the stairs; they’d show up on that, even if we couldn’t let them in. Also, there are intercom panels at the top and the bottom of the stairs, plus more spaced out in between, and no one has used them.’
Richman shrugged. ‘We can play guessing games all day. Until we can get down those stairs and see for ourselves, it’s all irrelevant. Hell, I was thinking I really would climb over to the south face and at least have a look down—but as long as this fog hangs around, there’s no point even in that.’
‘How long will the fog last?’ Madelaine asked. ‘Do we have a weather report?’
Clara said, ‘We lost weather reports when we lost the internet and the satellite TV.’
‘What about a radio?’
The major-domo shook her head. ‘We don’t have any radio receivers. That is, obviously, we have the two-way radios, the walkie-talkies. But nothing you could pick up an FM or AM station on. It’s a weird situation, I know, but in this digital age, there was just no call for something so old-fashioned up here.’
‘Wonderful,’ said Madelaine with a grunt. ‘So here we sit in digital ignorance.’
Richman sat up more sternly. ‘We haven’t been totally idle. Kennedy has been working away in the Control Room, and thinks that he’ll be able to trace the burned-out relays that control the security door and replace them. It’s taking a lot of trial and error; he’s no more an electrician than I am—but we can hope that he’ll succeed eventually. Kushal, after breakfast, you could go and help him. You must know something of electronics, you’re a builder after all.’
Kushal laughed uneasily. ‘A little, a very little. Plugs and wires were always my weak point. I had experts to look after that for me. But of course I’m willing to do what I can.’
‘And the rest of us?’ asked Madelaine. ‘Surely there is something we should be doing?’
Richman shrugged. ‘The best advice I can give for now is to keep your ears open. Without any radar or other communication, the first any of us will know of a rescue team is when we hear either a helicopter circling about, or, if a ship arrives, a horn blast from down in the harbour. Otherwise, well, it was Clara who provided breakfast, but there’s still lunch and dinner to be prepared. Volunteers?’
So they settled in for the day. The breakfast finished, Richman departed for the Cottage, to do what there Rita did not know, but he went alone, unaccompanied by Clara. Meanwhile, Kushal went off somewhat sheepishly to assist Kennedy, so it was left to the women, Rita, Madelaine and the major-domo, to clear the table and do the dishes.
Even after that was done, by unspoken agreement the three of them did not disperse: the notion of returning each to their own far-flung quarters was too lonely. Instead they held together against the uncertainty of the day, wandering into the Saloon and stoking the fire once more to a comforting blaze. There they remained until noon, either talking or drinking coffee or gazing out at the grey.
All the while they followed Richman’s instructions and listened. But although occasionally one or another of them would lift her head attentively as if in response to some sound from outside, nothing definite ever emerged from the silence, no reassuring throb of helicopter rotors, no warning blast of a ship’s siren. From time to time, Clara took a walkie-talkie out onto the Terrace and ran through the radio channels, but she received only static in reply.
Then it was time for another foray into the kitchen to prepare lunch. Madelaine ferried the sandwiches down to Kushal and Kennedy, and returned with the report of only slow progress on the door. Clara attended to Richman in the Cottage, and brought back no report at all.
Once the lunch tidy-up was complete, the chardonnay came out again, and the three women sat about the fire contemplatively. ‘So tell us, Clara,’ Madelaine enquired after a time, filling everyone’s second glass, ‘are you as confident as Richman that rescue will really come today?’
The major-domo, reclining in her chair, had her booted feet resting on the edge of the hearth. Her gaze seemed faraway. ‘Walter likes to imagine the world as it should be, organised and swift. I’m not the same. I know the world is often confused and slow. So no, I don’t expect a quick rescue. I think it will take all of today at least before any serious alarm is sounded. By tonight, maybe someone will demand action, but even then, they won’t send a helicopter straightaway, they’ll wait until daylight and morning.’
Rita spoke up, having noted the major-domo’s use of the more intimate Walter. ‘How is he holding up? Richman? I know he seems confident. But this whole project, the Observatory, the town at Base, everything he’s spent the last few years on, lies in ruins now, doesn’t it? I know nothing up here has been damaged, but if Base has been wiped out, then surely the Observatory isn’t viable anymore.’
‘Oh, he’ll rebuild,’ said Clara simply. ‘He’s already told me that. Money is no object when it comes to this place. He refuses to be beaten by anything that concerns the Wheel. Ever.’ Her voice caught. ‘But lord, people are dead down there. Hundreds of them maybe. Just for the sake of his stupid house.’
Attuned to the conflicting emotions in the statement, Rita gave a glance to Madelaine. Did the designer know that the major-domo planned to soon leave Richman’s service? Could it be spoken of openly?
Madelaine, however, was only gazing at the windows and the fog. ‘But tomorrow?’ the designer pressed of Clara, as if she hadn’t even heard the last exchange. ‘You’re sure by tomorrow someone will come?’
‘Perhaps,’ the major-domo sighed, sitting up, the moment gone. ‘If this cloud lifts.’
But the fog didn’t lift. All afternoon it remained, unmoving, as deep and still as if all the windows had been painted over. At about three thirty, stifled and bored, the three women at last went up to the Conservatory, donned jackets from by the doors, and ventured out onto the Terrace.
It had warmed only slightly through the day, and the temperature stood at minus twelve degrees Celsius, but as it was windless, this was not unbearable. Still, the Terrace was a gloomy sight. There were no lights on, no fires blazing in the pits or the hearths, and up here the embedded underfloor heating was not powered during emergencies, so ice had formed over every surface, congealed out of the freezing mist.
The mist its
elf was even more oppressive now that they were out in it: visibility was no more than ten yards, making even the open Terrace feel claustrophobic. And yet conversely it also felt terribly exposed, at least to Rita. She was all too aware of how slick the icy floor had become under her feet, and she could not help but imagine some awful, slipping, sliding accident that would send her careering into one of the parapets and then straight over the edge, to plummet endlessly, wailing, into the silent greyness.
Except it wasn’t silent. There were sounds out there. Some were local to the Terrace, ice cracking underfoot, or sometimes, more mysteriously, from where no one was standing. And sometimes a soft, insidious clatter came from beyond the parapets, like pebbles or flakes of rock pattering down sheer cliffs. And that was probably only ice too, sheering away from the flanks of the Mount.
But from further afield in the gloom came a low sound that had nothing to do with ice, it was altogether vaster, a low-toned howl, like wind piping in some huge hollow tube. What it might be none of them could at first guess, but turning from point to point to locate the source, they decided it came from the east. In other words, from the direction of the Wheel.
Finally, Clara gave a slow nod. ‘It comes from very high up, I think. I’ve heard something like that before, in my climbing days.’
Rita was staring into the fog. Though the darkness was no deeper eastward than westward, she could sense or imagine a more profound shadow rearing there, giant.
‘I was in the Himalayas,’ Clara went on, ‘part of a team trying to climb Kangchenjunga—that’s the third highest of the Himalayan peaks, just a few hundred metres lower than Everest. One night as we were at Base Camp, at near to five thousand metres, there was a sound like this sound now, coming out of the darkness. It was dead calm where we were, but in the moonlight we could see up to the summit ridge, and up there a great plume of snow was being torn off the mountain. That’s what we were hearing, the wind over the peak. We were four thousand metres below, but even so, the howling was terrible. Suddenly, I did not want to climb the mountain at all.’
‘And did you?’ Rita asked.
‘No. The weather turned bad the next day, and stayed bad for weeks. We never got above six thousand metres. But I remember that sound.’
Madelaine had her head cocked in fascination. ‘You think there’s a gale blowing higher up on the Wheel? Even though it’s calm here?’
‘If there is, and if we’re hearing it from ten thousand metres away and more, then I don’t like to imagine what kind of wind it is.’
But then the sound faded again, and silence reigned once more.
They came to the pool. Normally it would be floodlit in such a gloom, as well as illuminated internally, sparkling blue-green and steaming invitingly, no matter the chill of the air. But now it was unlit, the water frigid and black, a rime of ice creeping inwards from the edges.
‘Will it freeze over?’ Rita wondered.
‘Probably,’ said Clara. ‘With the heating off, there’s nothing to stop it.’
‘Will it freeze solid?’
‘I’d think not. Even under emergency power I gather that there’s still a certain amount of heating applied at the base, to keep the internal plumbing from freezing, which would damage the pipes. The top will freeze, I’m sure, but not the whole pool.’
There seemed no point staying any longer, so they retreated carefully across the icy ground and went back inside.
▲
At four thirty p.m., with the greyness outside beginning to deepen to black as true evening drew near, there was finally a development.
The Saloon intercom crackled into life. ‘Heads up, girls.’ It was Richman’s voice. ‘Kennedy has got the door open. Come down and see.’
They exchanged glances. The billionaire’s tone did not sound celebratory.
They rose and trooped off through the Dining Hall to the service tunnels, then down through the maze—Clara confidently leading the way—past the Control Room, empty now, and on to the uttermost depths and the service landing.
There they found that the heavy steel slab that had blocked the service elevator shaft had now withdrawn upwards into its slot. Revealed was a large rectangular threshold, opening onto a narrow landing, beyond which a dark vacancy yawned, cold and echoing. Richman, Kennedy and Kushal were on the landing, standing at a rail and peering down, into the shaft. ‘Come on,’ beckoned the billionaire. ‘You won’t believe this.’
The women filed in, Rita the hindmost. She had tried, coming down, to prepare herself for this, knowing that she was likely to find the shaft and stairway unsettling. But even so …
She found herself on a concrete platform that jutted out into a vast vertical tube hewn from the inner heart of the Mount. The far edge of the platform matched up with a square tower of scaffolding that rose within the greater circle, fixed by multiple anchor points to the curved walls. This square tower was divided into two rectangular shafts. The left shaft was for the service elevator. Guide rails ran down it, and a thick cable dangled from a chute in the roof overhead, above which, presumably, lay the winching room with its great engines and flywheels. At the platform’s edge, sliding doors of wire mesh, closed now, prevented the careless from stepping over the lip when the carriage was not there to receive them.
Down the other shaft within the great scaffold ran the emergency stairs, accessed by a simple gap in the railing, open to the void.
‘Motherfuck,’ said Clara, who had reached the railing first. Reluctantly, but drawn inexorably, Rita inched to the rail, gripped her hands on the banister, and forced herself to look.
And oh god … it was awful.
She had been warned, sure enough. The stairs were not really stairs, she had been told. And it was true. What she beheld was a series of ladders, narrow, bare and steeply angled, that switched back and forth as they descended within the scaffold tower, joined each to each by only the tiniest of landings made of naked squares of metal grating.
There was nothing solid to any of it, no proper railings, no floors that weren’t merely screens. And around this matchstick structure opened the immense emptiness of the shaft, falling and falling in vanishing perspective to its invisible base, two and half thousand metres below in the darkness. Oh, there were lights in the shaft, pinpricks mounted on the scaffolding, but they did nothing to illuminate—all they did was give dimension to the terrible abyss as it sank.
But all of that Rita might have borne, whatever her private terrors. None of that was the worst. The worst was that the stairs were—
‘You see that, Clara?’ commented Walter Richman. ‘Can you explain that? I’ve been asking Kushal, and he sure can’t.’
Kushal shook his head, defensive. ‘It should not be possible. The specifications took into account the threat of earthquake. All the anchor points are rated for much higher torsion than yesterday’s little tremor could have produced. It makes no sense.’
‘And yet,’ said Richman, ‘there you are.’
Rita was battling with nausea, so revolting was the sight. About fifty metres below, just where the gloom of the shaft began to dim details into a blur, one entire flight of stairs had come loose from its lower landing, and was now hanging about forty degrees askew, its last step dangling over the gulf. And even further down, at the limit of visibility, a second flight of stairs had come similarly free.
‘There must have been some particularly bad flexing within the shaft,’ Kushal was musing. And Rita understood his defensiveness now—this was his job; he had built these stairs. ‘It’s a little understood field, in fact, the effects of torsion upon structures attached within a confined shaft. In any case, the specs we were given were clearly insufficient.’
‘We’re not interested in blame just now, Kushal,’ Kennedy said testily. ‘All we want to know is, can we still risk climbing down there?’
Madelaine expressed at least a little of the horror that Rita was feeling but couldn’t voice. ‘Go down that? Are you crazy?’
‘Oh, I think it could be done,’ pondered Clara, her gaze moving carefully over the stairs, a mountain climber assessing an untested face. ‘If only an occasional flight is loose, then it’d be no great feat to climb down to the next one, using the scaffolding. But if multiple flights in a row have come away further down, it might get tricky. Even so …’
‘You’d actually try it?’ asked Madelaine, her expression awe stricken.
The major-domo tilted her head. ‘I’m just saying it would be possible.’
‘We’re not all mad fools like you bloody climbers,’ commented Kushal. ‘I’m not going down there no matter what.’
Richman spoke again. ‘For the moment no one is going down. If it turned out that there was no other choice, then maybe I’d let Clara try, if she really wanted, and if we rigged her up with safety gear. Certainly she would be the best choice among the six of us. If I was ten years younger, sure, I’d be willing to give it a go myself, but there’s no arguing with old age, and you others have no climbing experience at all. That only leaves Clara. But there’s no need for any heroics yet. We’ll at least wait to see what tomorrow brings. Come the morning, we’ll probably have a helicopter landing on the Terrace, in which case the state of these stairs will be irrelevant.’
Rita remembered to breathe. It had been out of the question, of course, that she would ever go down those terrible stairs herself—but even the thought of Clara going down, expert climber though she once was, had been making her head throb with anxiety. Thank god it had been ruled out. The only dim surprise was that Richman, no matter his age, hadn’t volunteered himself first, at least if only to then be talked out of it by the rest of them.
Clara, meanwhile, had been staring intently into the depths of the shaft. Now, to Rita’s renewed alarm, she leaned far out over the rail and cupped her hands around her mouth. ‘Hello!’ she called. ‘Hello below! Is there anyone down there?’
The others all froze. Echoes of the call sounded ghostly from the depths, then silence settled, chill, and watchful somehow.
The Rich Man’s House Page 37