by Ray Hammond
‘OK, hold up on running that new model,’ she agreed. ‘Let’s send a Level Three warning to our liaison contact in the Pacific Disaster Center on Hawaii – and copy it to the Governor’s office. Make clear it’s just a precaution, with no imminent threat of earthquake or tsunami at the moment.’
Steve nodded and swivelled back to his keyboard.
Emilia extended a personal laser screen, cleared the simulation from the holo-pit, and brought all the theatre’s screens back to their normal pan-global views as they monitored the restless planet.
She zoomed in on a large screen that provided an orbital view of Vesuvius. The old girl was still belching vast clouds of smoke over all of the eastern Mediterranean, although good advance warning meant that at least she hadn’t killed anyone this time – yet.
Then Emilia spotted a seismic alert in a very unusual latitude. She pulled up a geographical overlay and saw that seismic pressure was building up in the middle of England. That was unusual: there had been no major earthquakes in Britain since the seventeenth century. But she was relieved to note that Geohazard in Athens was already monitoring the build-up in seismic activity. Nowhere’s safe these days, she thought.
Her personal communicator pinged. ‘Glad you’re working in the building today, Doctor Knight,’ said Taylor Blane, the CEO. ‘Would you come up to my office?’
*
Chanda Zia was standing on the old dining table in the stateroom of the Prince Sahid. For over an hour he had been addressing the full ruling council of Pacifica One as well as many other hulk residents who had insisted on thronging into the room to attend this emergency meeting.
‘No, no,’ he repeated, ‘our lawyer says that we MUST wait until he can successfully bring our case to court – he claims there will only be a short delay. If we try to break away from this region, we’ll automatically lose public support in all the rich countries.’
There was hubbub again amongst those who understood English – the only semi-common language within this wildly heterogeneous community – and to this din was added the babble of interpreters relaying Chanda’s words to others.
Rifles and automatic weapons were brandished excitedly and Chanda knew that if they’d been outside in the cold winds the young men would already have been firing angry shots into the sky.
‘We must wait,’ he repeated, waving his arms to try and cool down these hotheads. ‘We’ve waited years for this chance, and we must wait just a little longer to see how the new international court works.’
But the council leader knew that patience was finally running out. After three decades of being harried from ocean to ocean, the younger men were no longer prepared to be constantly pushed away from the richer parts of the world, treated like rubbish deposited at sea and forgotten. For months they had been repairing those old ships that were still serviceable, getting their engines working again, while new vessels had been arriving with spares, fuel and even, some said, weapons.
Thirty years before, when Chanda himself and his extended family had first been forced to flee their flooded homelands in Bangladesh, they had taken over one of the laid-up oil tankers in the Chittagong ships’ graveyard. Others had followed suit, and soon the abandoned hulks had provided weatherproof homes for thousands of displaced families from the lower-lying lands of the equatorial belt. Then millions more had followed, from flooded, desertified or drought-ridden areas of Africa, the Philippines, Cambodia, Thailand and Egypt – and from China’s coastal plains.
Some of these redundant ships had originally possessed working engines, others relied on tows, but somehow they managed to move and eventually every rich nation had been intimidated by these hordes of homeless, status-less people roaming the oceans in old, unseaworthy hulks. They had sent out their navies to harass and corral the hulk people further and further away from their shores, pushing them finally into the vast empty seas of the southern latitudes.
Ultimately, unable to secure fuel or even spare parts for their engines, these environmental refugees had been forced to chain their old ships together to survive the howling storms of the Antarctic seas. Not one single nation was prepared to open its borders to these refugees, people who were regarded as voluntary, unofficial migrants. Thus the hulk platform communities had been created.
‘Sixty of our ships already have engine power,’ bellowed a darkly bearded young man Chanda knew to be John Gogotya, one of the more aggressive of the young African-born community leaders. ‘Another hundred will be able to sail as soon as they have diesel fuel. Now is the time for us to go and find new homes!’
Scores of voices roared their support. Chanda knew that many of the recently repaired ships had already been slipping away at night, using the cover of bad weather to cloak them from the radar of the circling naval escort, then returning a few nights later. The rumours were that these expeditions had gone in search of new sources of food, water and, most importantly, diesel fuel.
‘No!’ shouted Chanda, over the din. ‘No! Our only hope is to stick together. Let’s just give our lawyer a few weeks more to get his case going.’
There was a sudden loud report, deafening in the enclosed space. Then all went quiet.
‘We will wait no longer,’ pronounced John Gogotya, as he lowered his automatic rifle. ‘We have no land, no water, no sunshine, no rain. And now we have no legal case. We are leaving here to find a new home.’
There were whoops and shouts of support from all round. Then most of the young men were jumping up and down, chanting.
‘Then do what you must,’ said Chanda with his head bowed. But no one heard him over the din.
*
Lunch had been set up for Perdy and her host in a colonnaded gazebo on the west lawn where a table had been laid with white linen and glittering silver cutlery. Two chairs were placed in readiness. A butler in a grey tunic and dark striped trousers was waiting to greet Perdy. He was uncorking a bottle of Cristal champagne.
Nicholas Negromonte arrived ten minutes later, driven across the verdant lawn in a balloon-tyred golf cart.
‘Welcome to Langland Park, Perdy’ he said, bounding into the gazebo. ‘How did you like my Spitfire?’
So American, thought Perdy. No hesitation in talking immediately about himself and his expensive toys. She knew that his father had been a Greek shipping tycoon who had taken US citizenship only shortly before his first son had been born, but this Negromonte seemed wholly American in his unashamed love of money and technology.
‘Must be expensive to keep such an important antique flying,’ she said, offering him a wry smile.
Negromonte glanced at her quickly, trying to assess whether she was being ironic or merely stating the obvious. It wasn’t easy to know with these Brits.
‘One of the last three still flying,’ he said, as he accepted a glass of champagne from the butler’s silver tray and sat down beside her. ‘To you,’ said Negromonte, raising his glass.
‘To this glorious day,’ said Perdy. ‘It’s beautiful here. You’re very lucky.’
She’d meant her statement to be a little provocative. Did he think of himself as lucky, or as clever, or as merely entitled?
‘I am very lucky indeed,’ he agreed smoothly. ‘Especially to have you here for . . . how long can you stay with us? I was hoping you could stay for dinner this evening, at least.’
As he spoke, Perdy noticed the table in front of her starting to sway. Instinctively, she reached out to steady it, thinking that it had been caught by a gust of wind. Then she felt her chair flex beneath her and she saw a crack suddenly snake down one of the gazebo’s white Doric columns.
Negromonte leaped to his feet. ‘Outside,’ he yelled, grabbing Perdy’s arm and yanking her from her chair. ‘We must get away from the building.’
*
Twelve miles to the north of the Langland Park estate, the Reverend Nigel Phillips, rector of the little parish of Dale Deep, Lincolnshire, was alone in the little thirteenth-century church of St Michael’s when
the first tremor hit.
The vicar was a devout man and, as was his weekday afternoon custom, he had locked himself inside his church for privacy and was now on his knees in the front pew. He was praying for the recovery of a seriously injured girl who had been knocked down and run over in the village High Street the week before.
At first, Reverend Phillips thought he must have been taken ill. His eyes snapped open and he hung onto the pew for support. It seemed as if his balance had been suddenly impaired.
Then he noticed that the old brass chandelier above the altar was swinging wildly from side to side. He frowned in confusion, then suddenly guessed what must be happening. Almost 300 years earlier, Lincolnshire had suffered England’s worst earthquake on record.
The vicar realized what he should do. He jumped to his feet and ran along the flagstoned aisle towards the pair of high-arched doors at the far end of the nave. He knew that he had to get outside immediately, away from the old stone church.
As he reached the doors, he felt the worn slabs beneath his feet begin to heave. Then he saw a crack starting to open up between the massive wall and the floor.
Swaying from side to side in an attempt to remain upright, he tried to insert the old key in the large escutcheon lock of the ancient door. As he missed the keyhole, he heard a sudden loud crash from above, then a booming bell-toll. He looked up as the master bell, Brother James, plunged through the floor of the belfry, smashed onto the top of an interior stone buttress, then ricocheted outwards and tumbled down on top of him.
Crushed under twelve and a half tons of fifteenth-century Belgian-cast bronze, the vicar died instantly. He was to be one of the three human casualties of the Lincolnshire earthquake of 2055, Britain’s worst-ever seismic shock. It lasted almost two minutes and registered 4.8 on the Richter Scale.
*
‘Dr Knight – Emilia? Do come in,’ said Taylor Blane cordially as she put her head round her boss’s office door. Emilia noted that Gloria Fernandez, Blane and three other men were already gathered around his meeting table.
‘Coffee?’ asked the CEO smiling. His attitude was now very different to what it had been at their first meeting.
Emilia declined and took a seat beside Gloria Fernandez.
‘This is Colonel Greene from the US Defense Nuclear Agency,’ said Blane, as he introduced a sallow man in late middle age.
‘Doctor Bowman you already know . . .’ She realized it was the medical consultant who had recently treated her, from the Radiation Unit in the San Diego Naval Hospital. As she returned his smile she felt a sense of alarm – what was he doing here?
‘And this gentleman is from a government agency in Washington . . .’ said Blane. Emilia waited for his name and department details, but her boss didn’t provide them.
‘Now, how are you feeling after your adventure on Mount Māriota?’ asked the CEO, almost solicitously.
‘I’m fine, absolutely fine,’ said Emilia, frowning slightly. She couldn’t imagine what this meeting was about.
‘It turns out you have done your country a great service,’ Blane continued, looking down at a DigiPad on the desktop in front of him. ‘But before we can share any more information with you, we need you to sign this. Mrs Fernandez will witness your signature.’
He turned the DigiPad towards her and pushed it across the table. Emilia read the heading.
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA NATIONAL SECRECY AGREEMENT
‘It’s the standard agreement for government contractor employees,’ explained Gloria. ‘I’ve already signed one – it’s really just a technicality.’
‘Except that we put you in prison if you ever repeat what you are about to be told,’ said the unnamed man from the unidentified government agency.
‘Then I’d rather not know at all!’ snapped Emilia, rising from the table.
She was about to leave the room when Taylor Blane stood up quickly and intercepted her. He placed a kindly hand on her shoulder and led her back to the table.
‘I think we rather got off on the wrong foot, Emilia.’ He smiled, motioning her back to her chair. ‘You have done something of very great value and I’d like to tell you about it, but we do need you to sign this agreement . . .’
Shrugging reluctantly, she lifted the DigiPad and read through the chapter headings.
‘It just means that you can’t divulge information that’s of crucial importance to our country,’ said Gloria Fernandez. ‘That’s not unreasonable, is it?’
Emilia considered, then gave another shrug, unclipped the stylus and added her signature in the space indicated. She then passed the electronic reader to the HR executive.
‘Very good,’ said Colonel Greene, the man from the Defense Nuclear Agency, as Gloria witnessed the document. ‘We have since analysed the radioactive rock sample you brought back from Samoa. Any idea what it is?’
‘Well, from its weight, and from the dosage of radiation I picked up, I thought it might contain some traces of uranium.’
‘Dead right,’ said Greene. ‘But in fact it is something more special than that. It is thirty-five per cent nickel, twenty-eight per cent iron, and thirty-one-point-six per cent pure uranium.’
Emilia immediately thought back to the size of the sample she had collected – almost a third of that had been pure uranium! She’d never read about uranium ore being found before in such concentration.
Then she completed the calculation. ‘And what about the other five-point-four per cent?’ she asked.
‘That’s why we’re all here,’ said the unnamed agent. ‘That was plutonium.’
There was a silence as Emilia digested this additional information. Geology had been her foundation subject at university and she remembered that plutonium was normally found only in trace amounts. The super-heavy metal used for making atomic weapons was produced in quantity only within nuclear reactors.
‘Are you sure?’ she asked, stunned.
‘Not only was it plutonium, it was isotope two-three-nine,’ said the colonel from the Defense Nuclear Agency. ‘Fissile material, almost weapons grade.’
‘I don’t understand,’ said Emilia. ‘How could it possibly be plutonium?’
‘That’s what we intend to find out,’ said the colonel. ‘We’re going to dig down into that volcano as soon as the present eruption subsides. We’d be grateful for a copy of the simulations you’ve created, and we’re going to have to impound all the video material and data that you and your assistants captured on site . . .’
Emilia was no longer absorbing much of what was being said around the table. Her mind was racing; she knew that fissile plutonium could only be produced by neutron irradiation, by the sort of atomic bombardment that takes place during nuclear reactions.
If that sample had been brought up from deep inside the Earth, did it mean that there was nuclear activity occurring within the core? Some maverick scientists had suggested such a thing in the past – had suggested that the Earth was a mini-sun, that only continuing fission at the core could produce the swirling magnetic fields that protect the planet from cosmic radiation.
And if plutonium was now breaking away and travelling up through the previously impervious mantle to be ejected by a volcano, what must be happening at the core?
‘Dr Knight . . . Emilia?’
She realized that they were trying to regain her attention. It was Dr Bowman who was speaking to her now.
‘Once I learned that you’d been handling pure plutonium, I thought I should come up and see you myself,’ said the doctor. ‘The half-life is so long that we’re going to have to keep a much closer eye on you.’
‘You mean I’ve got to go back into hospital?’ asked Emilia, alarmed.
‘No, but I think you ought to be transferred to light duties for the moment,’ said Bowman. ‘Until we establish the rate of decay in the bone marrow samples we’ve taken.’
‘I’m arranging for you to take on a local PR role for Geohazard,’ said Gloria Fernandez. ‘Go round the sc
hools, talk to the children about earthquakes, that sort of thing.’
‘But what about monitoring the Pacific Region?’ asked Emilia.
‘We’re bringing Carlos Robredo up from Mexico City,’ said Blane, firmly. ‘He’s arriving this afternoon.’
*
Under spreading cedar trees that were already ancient when King Henry VIII had hunted across these rolling pastures, Nick Negromonte and Perdy Curtis strolled together in a companionable silence. It was late evening and they had not long finished dinner.
The afternoon’s earth tremors had subsided quickly, and her host had soon gathered status reports from his staff all around the estate. There was the crack in the gazebo column, but there had been no obvious damage to the venerable old house itself, nor to any of its many outbuildings, gatehouses or estate cottages.
‘Quite a surprise,’ Negromonte had said as they were driven back in the golf cart across the lawns. ‘Not the sort of thing you expect in England.’
Then he had given Perdy a personal tour of the house. She learned that it had been extended and refashioned by the sixth Lord Langland between 1763 and 1786, and that this tract of the English wold had been graced with Robert Adam’s Palladian genius and Capability Brown’s green artistry to celebrate the noble lord’s success in the Virginia cotton plantations.
‘What a fantastic art collection!’ Perdy enthused, gazing at seemingly endless walls of pictures, including paintings by Canaletto, Tintoretto and Rubens.
‘Most of them came with the house,’ Negromonte admitted. ‘The last owner didn’t want to split them up – and your government didn’t want them to leave the country.’
‘So do you ever open this place to the public?’ she asked, staring up at a large painting of a woman captioned Portrait of an Unknown Woman; From the Studio of Michelangelo.
‘For a few months a year, when I have to be elsewhere.’
The tour had taken almost two hours and even then Perdy realized that she had seen only part of the mansion. As she passed some open doors she was aware of a quiet buzz of activity, and she realized that the ERGIA Corporation maintained a sizeable staff at Langland.