Doggerland

by Ben Smith

  After the first twenty rungs his hands had seized up and blood was trickling down his wrists and up his sleeves. He couldn’t get a proper grip, so he started hooking one forearm over the rung to hold himself in place and using only one hand to reach up at a time. It slowed his pace, but it kept him stable and gradually he made his way, rung after rung, reaching up, hooking his arm and bringing his feet up after him. Ten rungs with one arm, then ten with the other.

  Fifty rungs. Sixty. Below him, the base of the tower had receded to a small disc, but up above, the nacelle seemed no closer.

  A hundred rungs and his legs were starting to shake, whichever arm he hooked over the rung would quickly cramp up, his hands were slick with sweat and the cloth was starting to come loose. Twice already he’d slipped – one arm and leg swinging out into space. The tapering of the tower was barely a few degrees, but as the boy climbed higher it felt like he was hanging almost upside down. He slowed his pace, made sure of his grip, kept going.

  His neck was aching from looking up, so he stared straight ahead as he climbed. There were no horizontal rivet lines on the tower, which meant that each side must have been manufactured as a single piece. It was the sort of thing the boy would normally have found interesting.

  Somewhere around two hundred rungs he lost count, but eventually he reached up and felt the edge of a gantry. In his relief he almost lost the strength to pull himself up. He lay face down on the grille and closed his eyes. His muscles were burning and his mouth and throat were so dry he could hardly swallow. He had drunk a few mouthfuls of brackish water from the container on the boat. He should have gone back for more before he started climbing. Why hadn’t he gone back for more?

  It was okay. He’d get the lift working and then he would go back down. He was sure he could get the lift working. There was power, so it had to just be a connection. He took a deep breath and pushed himself up, but the hatch to the nacelle wasn’t there. Instead, the ladder carried on, as far as he could see, up into the gloom. On the wall next to him there was a cross-section diagram of the tower, highlighting the first of two evenly spaced service platforms, installed to give workers a rest during their climb.

  The boy sat at the top of the tower. His legs were shaking, his hands were numb, his arms and back burning. He was drenched in sweat and the cold was setting in again.

  For the last hundred rungs all he’d heard in his footsteps, in his breathing, in the throbbing of his hands, was the rhythm of the old man’s words: ‘The storm’s … coming … back … You’re as … stupid … as … he was.’

  However he’d tried to vary his movements, the rhythm stayed the same, until all he could do was listen and climb and, when he got to the top, wait until his heart rate slowed.

  He swallowed gratingly and pushed himself to his feet, staggered, then steadied himself against the rail. He looked up at the hatch. At least it wasn’t rusted shut. He reached up, even though it felt as if his arms wouldn’t reach, and pushed, even though it felt as if he couldn’t push. The hatch opened and he climbed up into the nacelle.

  The lights came on automatically and the boy found himself standing in the middle of a spacious room surrounded by vast components all encased in white. At first he thought the machinery wasn’t working, then he realized it was just so quiet he could barely hear it. On the far side of the room there was a gleaming control panel and attached to the housings of every piece of machinery were coloured signs detailing design specs, efficiency ratings and safety warnings.

  The boy went over to where the gearbox should have been, but instead the drive shaft connected straight to the generator. ‘Direct drive,’ he said. He’d read about the system before. They had fewer moving parts, increased efficiency. He started to open the casing, to get inside and see how it worked, but then he stopped and looked around. He’d forgotten for a moment where he was, what had happened. He rubbed his hand over his jaw. What was he supposed to be doing? It took him a while to remember the control panel – he was meant to be finding that and fixing the lift, and then going back down to get water.

  The lift was easy to fix. In fact, it didn’t need fixing; it just needed its circuits switching on. By the look of things, no one had touched anything since the turbine had been installed. There were plastic films over all of the buttons, and instruction booklets in plastic holders next to every piece of machinery. The boy picked one up, felt its untouched pages and uncracked spine. Then he noticed, just beyond the control panel, another door.

  It wasn’t heavy like a hatch; it was just a normal door. The boy took hold of the handle and opened it slowly, half-expecting there to be nothing but open air beyond; but instead there was another room, the same size as the one housing the turbine’s workings.

  Automatic lights flickered on, revealing a long table and six black chairs wrapped in cellophane. On one wall there was a large screen, covered in a layer of bubble-wrap, and on the other walls there were framed posters – technical drawings of turbines and gearboxes, pictures of the farm on clear bright days with words like ‘future’, ‘stability’ and ‘security’ printed on them. In the far corner of the room there were more posters, rolled up and leaning against a wall, and a stack of cardboard boxes.

  The boy took a step forward, then stopped, lifted one foot then the other. The floor looked strange. He leaned down slowly, took his boots and socks off, working loose the stiff laces, and let his bare feet press into the fibres of the clean grey carpet.

  He walked into the room and turned around. There was a tall, rectangular machine behind the door. It looked like a water filter. On one side there was a clear plastic tube filled with paper cups. The boy went over, pulled out a cup and placed it beneath the spout. He found a switch on the side and turned it on. The machine whirred and groaned. There was a hissing and a juddering of pipes, then a row of buttons lit up and the machine settled to a low electrical hum. The boy pressed the top button.

  There was a rumble and a loud hiss and steam began venting from the machine. The boy pressed the button again, but the machine carried on. He took a step back. A smell like burning filled the room. He was about to pull the plug out of the wall, when the machine stopped and the lights on the buttons came back on. He stepped forward and peered into his cup. It was full of steaming, black liquid.

  The buttons had strips of protective tape next to them. He unpeeled the tape slowly from the button he’d pressed, revealing a label.

  ‘Coffee?’ he said.

  He picked up the cup and touched the liquid to his mouth. It was scalding and caused his salt-cracked lips to sting. It tasted almost bitter, almost burnt. He waited, then took another sip and felt the hot liquid work its way down into his body. It crossed his mind that the old man would like it. He had talked about something once – something he used to drink that tasted bitter and strong. Maybe it was coffee. He had tried to describe it to the boy but the boy had been replacing a fuse and hadn’t really been listening.

  He looked around, at the table, the chairs, the pictures of this strange, pristine farm covering the walls. Everything gleamed. Everything was too bright.

  The boy closed his eyes. Waves towered over him. The door of the cabin swung in the storm. The battery gauge shone, but no numbers were visible. He opened his eyes, pushed it all down until it settled tightly in his chest. He couldn’t think of it.

  He stood there for a long time. Finally, he put his cup down on the table and went back into the other room, over to the roof hatch. He pressed a button and the hatch opened, flooding the nacelle with wind and noise. He climbed the ladder and looked out. The wind roared around him, shaking the hatch, which he sheltered behind. The roof of the nacelle was huge; there was a small helipad in front of the hatch. It took the boy a moment to catch his breath and fully open his eyes. He was so high. It felt like he was balancing in the centre of a great disc of water. Behind him and to either side the turbines spread in straight rows, shri
nking over and beyond the sea’s curving limit. But straight ahead, eastwards, there were ten rows and then nothing. The boy closed his eyes and opened them again. The wind boomed across the water. There was the edge of the farm and, beyond it, the open sea.

  c.11,000 Before Present

  One day a coastline appears – a band of silver stretching across the horizon – and suddenly there is an edge to things.

  The forest thins and turns to salt marsh, which turns to mudflats and tidal lagoons. Rivers become brackish and undrinkable. They spread into estuaries, which shift with each tide into a mesh of furrows, sandbanks and channels.

  What yesterday was sure footing is now unstable ground.

  Crusts of sand loosen and slip. Drought turns to flood, heat to searing cold, silence to cacophony. Plants drift from pool to pool like animals; animals take root and bloom like flowers. The water teems with brittle shells; and within each shell is a soft, watery body.

  The tide presses in and draws back. It presses in a little more, it draws back a little less, each day. Low cliffs calve boulders. Boulders fracture into rocks. Rocks are ground down to pebbles. The sea rises by a pebble’s breadth each year.

  Suddenly there is an edge to things. What yesterday was sure footing is now unstable ground.

  Paper Cups

  The boy stood in the roof hatch with an armful of paper cups. He’d thought it was well into the day, but when he opened the hatch he found it was still dark – the sky just beginning to leach a dull red from far out across the sea. He must have been awake all night. He looked down. There were paper cups covering every surface of the nacelle, spilling over onto the floor. He had no idea how long he’d been out there.

  The sky turned rusty, then grey, then settled on a yellowish tint that seemed to glow through the thinner patches of cloud like a torch shining through a sheet. He dropped the cups over the side of the nacelle, one by one.

  On the first day he stayed up in the tower. He couldn’t bring himself to go back down and see the state of his boat.

  He checked the control panel and the screen in the back room to see if they were connected up to the system. He thought that if he could access a map of the farm, he might be able to find out where exactly he was; but, while all the electrics in the turbine were working, none of it was linked up to the system.

  He sat at the table in one of the cellophane-covered chairs and retied the ragged cloths around his palms. He was too tired to move or sleep. He reached over for the stack of boxes in the corner of the room.

  Three of them were full of brochures and information leaflets – piles of them, all exactly the same, with the same pictures that were on the walls, and the same words, just more of them. The last box was much lighter. At first the boy thought it was empty, but when he opened it he found it contained hundreds more paper cups for the coffee machine. They had some kind of image printed on the side. It wasn’t the Company logo, yet it seemed familiar. The boy sat and stared at it for a long time, but could not place it exactly.

  That first night he tried to sleep, but when he closed his eyes all he saw were the towering waves, the empty cabin, the door slamming open and closed in the wind. He got up, drank coffee, and failed to sleep again.

  The damage to the boat was as bad as he’d expected. The engine had come loose from its housing and been smashed apart as it was thrown around the hull. The heaviest parts and three of the batteries had finally come to rest on the port side of the engine room, causing the boat to list. The hull, at least, seemed intact, although the remains of the engine were sitting in over a foot of water that sloshed in the bottom of the keel.

  The boy drained it by hand, which took most of the day, working back and forth with a small plastic bucket. By the time he’d finished, it was almost dark. Not that he needed any light to see what he knew already – what remained of the engine was irreparable.

  There was nothing of use in the nacelle. The turbine’s components were all in sealed units. According to the technical posters, this made each part easier to replace. It also meant that the boy had no idea how they worked.

  He sat at the table and folded his hands together. The wind buffeted the walls of the nacelle. He was miles from the rig, miles from anywhere, moored to a turbine with a boat that he had no way of fixing. Just like his father.

  Except that what the boy had done was worse.

  The wind thumped and groaned. Sometimes it sounded like footsteps at the bottom of the tower; sometimes like the creak of boots out on the deck of the boat.

  He took the roll-mat and sheets from the cabin, gathered together the few tools he had left in the engine room, unloaded the crates from the hold and, cramming them into the small service lift, took them up to the top of the tower.

  He laid the roll-mat down in a corner of the inner room and stacked the crates against the far wall. There were enough supplies to last for months. The food in the tins was fine, but the damp of the hold had caused most of the labels to lose their adhesion and slip into a brown pulp at the bottom of the crates.

  The tins had been stored on the boat for so long that their edges were covered in a rind of rust. The sheet was speckled with pale brown spots of damp, and the roll-mat, when he laid it flat, crumbled away at the edges. Bits of foam broke off and stuck to the damp on the boy’s hands.

  He ate something that sounded like fruit, but had the bitter tang of melted plastic; something that rattled like plastic, but tasted sickly sweet.

  He sat in the cellophane-wrapped chair for hours. He found that, if he sat still for too long, a day could pass by without him really even noticing it.

  Some days he would go down the tower to check on the boat. He would test the moorings, examine the hull and measure the level of the water that had crept back in overnight.

  Some days he would stay in the nacelle and read through every identical leaflet in the boxes, drinking cup after cup of coffee.

  Whenever he looked at the logo on the cups, he started humming a tune. He tried to place it, but as soon as he tried to focus, it evaporated from his mind. He tried to stop himself humming it, but it would creep back before he realized what he was doing.

  The boat wallowed in the water, listing and scoured with rain. It looked almost the same now as the night he’d found it – the same broken engine, the same objects strewn over the deck. He thought about his father’s tools, which he’d found around the engine, and the blown panel in the transformer – up until the end his father had been trying to make the boat work.

  He wondered, for a moment, what anyone would find of him. Nothing but a crumpled bed at the top of the tower, some empty tins, a pile of used paper cups.

  He tidied the deck of the boat, went down into the engine room and gathered together his father’s tools, then he climbed up onto the jacket and sat, watching the water, scanning it for anything that might drift past, anything he could use. Anything.

  The water buckled and creased. A shadow moved across the surface, as if there was someone just behind him. He didn’t turn around. After a while he felt the platform give a little, as if someone had shifted their weight.

  He’d been sitting, staring out at the water, for so long that he almost didn’t notice when he did see something. At first it looked like a long pole, but as it drifted closer, he saw that one end was broad and flat. It was a paddle, half eaten away by the sea, but it was still a paddle.

  He rushed down to the boat, grabbed the tow-line, then climbed back up to the jacket and scanned the water again. He waited until the paddle was as close as it would get, then he threw the hook. It hit the shaft, but there was nothing to catch onto, so it slipped off. He pulled the line back in and tried again, but the same thing happened.

  He stood for a moment, watching as the paddle drifted further on, then he took off his boots, tied one end of the tow-line to the railing and the other round his waist, and jumped into the water.

  He swam as hard as
he could, but the current was strong and the paddle was being dragged away quickly. He took another three strokes. It was almost in reach. Then the line tightened and jerked him to a stop. He yanked it and reached out again, but the paddle was metres away. He strained on the line, then felt the knot slip. He froze. The current was grasping at his legs, trying to pull him out. Slowly and carefully, already shivering, he took hold of the line and pulled himself back to the tower.

  Every night he climbed to the roof hatch and looked out, searching for any light, for any sign of anything. He would stand there for hours, sheltering behind the hatch, gripping a cup of coffee against the cold.

  Sometimes he would think he’d seen a glimmer, but it would just be the lights from inside the nacelle reflecting off the water that streamed from his eyes as he stood, staring into the wind.

  Then, once, he did see something, just as he was turning to go back inside – a tiny light, moving slowly far out to sea. His heart started drumming hard. He waved with both arms and shouted until his voice went hoarse; but the dark pressed in and the wind dragged away any sound.

  He stood with his hands on the rim of the hatch and, as the cold crept up through the metal, he remembered what the light was. His father had told him about them once, long ago. He had lifted the boy up to a tiny window and the boy had gripped the metal sill and they had watched a light travelling through the dark. It was a cargo ship – a boat the size of a town, hauling tonnes of supplies around the world. His father had pointed out of the window and told him how they used to travel in great convoys, how the docks would be jammed all year round. How there were hardly any left now, maybe just one or two a year, still travelling along the shipping lanes, like the last of their species still following the old migratory routes.