Doggerland

by Ben Smith

  The cameras greyed out or were torn from their housings. The connection to the central system went down. There were no weather reports. The satellite map scrambled. The world shrank to the metres between bed and washroom, washroom and galley, galley and pool table.

  They would circle the table all day and all night. They would play on to the point of exhaustion. Yet they would still be too restless to sleep. The rig seemed to draw in the energy of the storm, storing it in its metal shell. When the boy walked down the narrow corridors, his skin would tingle and his hands twitch. If he brushed his arm against a wall or doorframe, the hairs would rise.

  The automatic lights shorted out, as did the morning alarm. The boy tried to reset them, but the timer must have gone, because the lights started dimming in the middle of the day and the alarm went off just as it was getting dark.

  Outside, the days became almost as dark as the nights. They played on regardless. In between shots, the boy would look out of the window trying to judge, by the quality of greyness, whether it was morning or evening, noon or dusk, but any change in light or colour bore no relation to the time of day.

  Sometimes the sky was a depthless black, but the sea somehow shone silver and yellow. Sometimes the sea would be dark and the sky would be almost white with spray. Then a sudden sheet of lightning would throw itself to every horizon, illuminating the storm in its enormity and flooding the room with a light so clear it caused even the strip lights to cast clean-edged shadows.

  One day, or maybe night, he glanced out of the window and saw a light – a single light, flickering out in the dark. Then another appeared, and another, until there were seven, strung out in a row. He stood, staring, until he finally realized what they were – the turbines that had failed to feather their blades had finally overheated and burst into flames. The lights stayed for minutes, or maybe hours, before, one by one, they were extinguished by the rain.

  As they played, they added more rules – that a ball could only be potted if it had first come off a cushion, that a ball could only be played against a cushion if it had first come off another ball – dragging the games out, making them more complex, until there was no end in sight.

  Whatever the rules, they both played the same way they always played – the old man working the angles, the boy favouring the long shot, both of them knowing exactly what the other would do next.

  Sometimes, one of them would lose concentration, or the other, in a moment of inspiration, would pot three balls in a row. Then the game would suddenly change. The one in the lead would play quickly and try to pressure the other into rushing his shots. The one losing would become careful, defensive; digging in; forcing the play back to stasis.

  Finally, the old man slept. He finished a bottle of homebrew and slumped over the table, still standing, his face resting on the baize. His hand twitched against his cue. The boy found a blanket and covered him. When the old man woke up, the blanket fell onto the floor and they started playing again.

  Water forced its way in through pipes and ducts, through the hatches, through the rivets in the walls and the sealant round the window. Water trickled from vents, ran down gantries.

  The boy put out tins to catch the drips. When the tins filled, he went round emptying them into a crate, which he took down and emptied into the dock – returning water to water.

  This became the only way to tell how many days had passed. The inches of water collected in the tins, the number of crates emptied into the dock.

  One night, the old man was about to take his shot when a deep grinding sound reverberated through the walls. He and the boy stepped back from the table and steadied themselves. The rig shook, seemed to sway, and then all of the balls slowly slumped against one cushion.

  The boy stood upright, tilted his head one way then the other. He went to the table, picked up a ball and put it on the floor. It stayed there for a moment, then rolled slowly across the room and bumped into the old man’s boot. The old man looked down at the ball, then up at the boy. They both stood still and waited, feeling for any movement with each successive thump of the waves.

  They stayed there until the window paled to galvanized steel, but there was no further slippage.

  After a few days they’d stopped noticing the tilt. The only difference was that the floor’s new angle served to correct the listing of the pool table, so they no longer needed to prop up the buckled legs.

  Systems

  The boy woke to the strangest sound – a sort of hissing, like air escaping from a broken compressor. He lay in bed listening for a long time before he realized that it was his own breath – a sound he hadn’t heard since the storm began. He moved his hands and heard his fingers rasp against the sheets. Then, gradually, he made out the air con, the water system and, from two floors up, the computer rebooting. He jumped out of bed, gathered together his tools and a tow rope and made for the dock.

  The maintenance boat was ready to go. He’d kept it charged all through the storm, so at the first opportunity he could go out and check on his boat. He ran down the stairs, his boots echoing off the metal. But when he got down there, the engine was already switched on, the dock gates open and the old man was standing at the wheel.

  The boy stopped in the doorway. ‘You going out?’ he said.

  ‘Thought I might.’

  The boy cursed himself for not waking earlier.

  ‘I thought we could take a little trip,’ the old man said.

  ‘A trip where?’

  ‘I thought you could tell me.’

  The boy felt his mouth go dry. ‘There’ll be lots of work to do. I think zone two caught the worst of it.’

  The old man looked down at the tow rope. ‘Work? Is that what you were planning on doing?’

  The boy looked down at the tow rope. The old man would find out anyway. When the boy brought the boat back to the rig he’d see for himself. That’s if there was anything left of the boat to bring back. The boy climbed on board, threw the rope in the corner of the cabin and walked over to the wheel.

  The old man stared at the boy and didn’t move out of the way.

  The boy stopped. ‘If you want me to take you there, I’m driving.’

  The old man stayed staring at the boy for a moment, then stepped back from the wheel.

  They travelled out in silence. The sea was calm, the sky a milky white. The only signs of the storm were a few less turning blades and a few more towers leaning at precarious new angles. One tower had a gash down its flank; another had a dent half the size of the maintenance boat pressed into the metal.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ the boy said.

  The old man said nothing.

  ‘I found his boat.’ The boy looked in the mirror and saw the old man turn away to the window.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me he was trying to get out?’

  Still the old man said nothing.

  The boy cut the engine and turned away from the wheel. ‘Why didn’t you tell me anything?’

  The old man carried on looking out of the window. ‘What good would it have done?’ he said quietly.

  ‘I’d have known.’ The boy took a step forward. ‘He didn’t just give up.’

  ‘He did give up.’

  ‘He was good at fixing things. He had a plan. I’d have …’

  ‘You’d have what?’ The old man turned from the window and took a step towards the boy. ‘You’d have done exactly what he did. Got some idiotic notion in your head. Obsessed over it for years instead of keeping your head down. And then, when it didn’t work out …’ He stopped, looked past the boy out of the window and frowned.

  The boy followed where the old man was looking. There was just the farm – the sea and sky as calm as they had been before. He was about to speak, but the old man had already moved past him and taken hold of the wheel. He hit the accelerator and turned the boat in a tight circle.

>   The boy stumbled and banged against the side window. ‘What the hell are you doing?’

  ‘Storm’s coming back.’

  ‘There’s no storm.’

  ‘Fast.’ The old man increased the power and the boat thumped over the water.

  ‘Wait.’ The boy staggered to the front of the cabin. ‘We’ve got to go back for the boat. It might still be there.’

  The old man didn’t answer. He was staring ahead and kept glancing in the mirror.

  The boy reached over and cut the power.

  ‘What are you doing?’ the old man shouted.

  The boy put his hand on the wheel. ‘I can get it to work. I know how. We can both get out.’

  The old man put both hands on the wheel and tried to shove the boy away. ‘We don’t have time for this.’

  The boy gripped harder and stayed where he was. Heat rose up his chest, his neck, lodged in the backs of his eyes. The old man had his head buried in the mud and silt and clay of the seabed. He would keep them both stuck out there for ever.

  The old man shoved again. He looked up at the boy and the boy looked down at him and they stood in silence, wrestling with the wheel, while the boat bobbed among the towers and, far out to the west, the waves began to rise.

  The old man’s arms were starting to shake, the veins standing out on the backs of his hands. The boy inched the wheel his way and gritted his teeth. ‘He was going to come and get me out.’ He inched the wheel again. ‘He had a plan. He was going to come to the mainland and then get us both out.’ He planted his foot forward and shoved his way between the old man and the wheel. ‘And you didn’t say anything. You just let me think that he—’

  Suddenly the old man let go and swung his fist, catching the boy on the ear.

  The boy stepped back. He raised his hand to his ear.

  ‘Well he did, didn’t he?’ The old man stood with his hands on his knees, breathing heavily. ‘If you’ve seen that boat, you’ll know it could never have worked. He knew it too and he took off in it anyway. He knew exactly what he was doing.’ The old man wiped his mouth and turned back to the wheel. ‘And he knew what’d happen when he didn’t come back. That you’d end up out here. That you’d have to take his place. I told him. You think he was thinking about you when he did it? You’re as bloody stupid as he was.’

  The boy stood still. His ear stung. He stretched his jaw. Then he grabbed the old man and wrenched him away from the controls. As he did it, the old man pulled on the throttle and the boat lurched sharply. The boy stumbled and fell, his elbow driving into the old man’s chest. The old man hit the ground and doubled over. For a moment he was silent, unmoving, his body curled, then he let out a long, gasping breath. His chest shuddered and his legs twitched. And then he began to cough.

  The boy pushed himself up, tried to steady himself against the tilting deck and the movement of the boat, which was turning in a tight circle. The sky wheeled around the cabin.

  He staggered to the controls and cut the throttle. The boat slowed, stilled and righted itself, rising and falling in the swell.

  He crouched down by the old man, reached out, but stopped just short of touching him. ‘I …’ He breathed heavily, swallowed.

  He stood up and went over to the control panel, switched on the satnav and entered the coordinates for the tower where he had last moored his boat. The screen flickered. He hit the side of the control panel and the picture stabilized. He turned the wheel and pushed down hard on the throttle.

  The waves were growing. Behind him there was a smudge of black on the horizon. Just a few feet away, against the wall of the cabin, the old man lay, eyes screwed tight shut, still coughing and shaking. But the boy tried not to think of that. He just watched the flickering satnav screen, squinted out of the windows, scoured the rows. He knew he should be close, but the screen kept glitching, the symbols jumping from place to place.

  Then he saw it – two rows ahead, swinging loose from the foot of a tower. One of the mooring lines had snapped and the boat was wallowing low in the water, but it was still there.

  It took time to pilot in against the swell, but eventually he managed to come in close to the lee of the tower. He ran out on deck, tied the tow-line to the stern and then reached out with a boathook, pulled the other boat alongside and climbed aboard. He released the mooring cable and the two boats drifted free from the tower. Then he secured the tow-line to the bow, jumped back over to the maintenance boat, went into the cabin and stood for a moment to catch his breath.

  It was only then that he noticed how dark it had become.

  Clouds banked up in a vast semicircle, spreading out from the west. All the turbines had turned, and were facing into the clouds, beating hard.

  The rig was over there, somewhere towards the swelling storm. The satnav screen fuzzed and pixelated. The old man was still lying on the floor. The only sounds were the wind, the engine and the old man’s coughing. And then there was a flash and a shuddering rumble, as though something too tightly wound had snapped.

  The boy took a step towards the window, then a step back to the control panel. He checked the battery gauge, then the satnav. He turned the satnav off. He looked down at the old man, then out of the window. He stood in the middle of the cabin, closed his eyes and tried to order his thoughts.

  Here were the things he knew:

  They were over an hour from the rig, and only then if he could run at full speed; but towing the other boat would slow them down.

  The storm was moving fast, advancing across the sky, swallowing field after field.

  It would get to the rig before them.

  If they tried to get back to the rig it would catch them in the middle of the fields.

  The storm was going to catch them, that was a certainty.

  The only choice he had was where that happened.

  He opened his eyes. So then, there was only one option.

  A heavy swell came in and caught them broadside, but he used it to swing the boat round, giving it enough power at the last moment to keep them steady and move them into the middle of the channel between the towers. The key was to conserve the battery, to use the current where he could, let the front push them east, towards the open water between the zones.

  He thought about how the old man would pilot the boat, how he would handle the wheel, use the waves that spread from the bases of the towers to carry them along. He tried not to think of him lying on the floor at the side of the cabin, coughing and convulsing with each breath.

  The storm was gaining on them; the swell increased; all around, the turbines slowed and feathered their blades as the wind passed beyond the upper threshold. Then, suddenly, the towers thinned to open water. The boy let the swell carry them further. Now they were out of the fields, he left the wheel, made sure the windows were secure and bolted the cabin door. The old man had stopped coughing, but was still lying on the floor, shaking and breathing heavily. The boy went to the locker, took a strap off one of the toolbags, tied it to a handle on the cabin wall and hooked it over one of the old man’s arms. The old man’s eyes were closed, but he gripped hold of the strap. The boy went back to the wheel and turned the boat to face the waves. The last turbines of the field were swallowed up by cloud.

  He wondered how big the storm was. He could no longer see the edges of the front. It had spread so that it filled the entire hemisphere of the sky. He wondered how long it would last. Hours? Days? It didn’t really matter. The battery was on sixty per cent; once it ran dry, events would take care of themselves. He took his watch out of his pocket and checked the time. It was only then that he noticed his hands were shaking.

  The old man had opened his eyes and was sitting up against the cabin wall, holding on to the strap. The boy thought he saw him nod, but it was hard to be sure in the movement of the boat.

  He wondered if this was the same storm that had
hit them before. How would he know? Could he call it the same storm if it was composed of entirely new molecules of water and air? He had read, in one of the technical manuals, that all fluid systems were fundamentally similar, sharing an ordered pattern of chaos and complexity. He had thought about that for a long time. How randomness could form a pattern, which would never really be a pattern because it would always be different. So even if there were two storms made of exactly the same molecules, in exactly the same proportions, hitting in exactly the same place, they still wouldn’t be exactly the same storm.

  He was almost glad when the first wave broke against the bow, because then he thought of nothing at all.

  The boat rose and fell, like a piston powered by the waves. The storm pushed and tore in all directions. The boy increased the power, driving the boat to stillness. The only sign that time had passed was the gradual fall of the battery meter. And, at some point, the dark of the storm was joined by the dark of night.

  Everything shrank to the hazy limit of the boat’s lights – a bubble of bright turbulence, encompassing the vessel. Water squeezed in from under the sealant. Water flushed across the deck. A fist of water beat on the window and, when it cleared, left a delicate web of fracture lines in the glass. There was a faint smell of smoke, then the wipers slowed and stopped. The oncoming waves were reduced to glimpses between the sheets of water that swept down the windscreen.

  The boy clung to the wheel, tried to keep his footing. The locker burst open and its contents flew across the cabin. The old man sat braced in the corner, hanging on grimly, staring straight ahead. There was a crash from the deck and, through the rear window, the boy saw that the cleat he had tied the tow-line to had been wrenched loose and was close to breaking off.