The Limpet Syndrome

by Tony Moyle

  “Something?”

  “Well, someone, I think,” replied Nash. “Somewhere deep down inside me, I heard a voice.”

  John guessed that whoever had been guiding him was now guiding Nash. If he guessed correctly he’d soon find out who it was. For now, they had a flight to catch.

  “Where did all the birds come from?” said Nash. “I was waiting at the door, trying to decide how to get in and what to do, when this huge cloud of wings descended on me.”

  “That’ll be my family,” replied Sandy.

  “What?” replied John and Nash together.

  “They think that I’m one of them. I suppose you can’t blame them. I was born, as it were, into their flock. They’ve followed me everywhere and put their lives on the line to protect me.”

  “Maybe some things in life are more important than…well life,” said Nash poignantly.

  John knew exactly what he meant. He knew that Nash would have swapped places with Herb in a heartbeat, just as he would sacrifice himself in the end if he needed to.

  “Nash, help me get Victor off the plane?” asked John. “Sandy, go and find Syd.”

  They dragged Victor down the stairs, purposely bumping his head on every step. John had already removed the gun from Sandy and decided to keep hold of it just in case it came in useful.

  “When we’re clear of the runway I want you to let Victor go,” John instructed Nash. “He’s done all the damage he can do.”

  Syd had been found tied up in one of the sheds that surrounded the airfield. Although unhurt by his experience he was eager, as they all were, to get as far away from Victor as possible. All three of them made their way back onto the aircraft, leaving Nash and Victor to watch them take off into the beautifully clear sky. The throng of pigeons took off in unison with no chance of keeping pace.

  - CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE -

  THE LONGEST DAY

  The aircraft flew all night. Not because it had to, but because it was at John’s request not to land at night. His instructions to Syd had been to continue to circle over the Swiss Alps as long as the fuel load would allow. The sun rose from behind the mountains, framing a magnificent scene worthy of any postcard. As John watched it from the cockpit he knew that this was the penultimate time the sun would rise before the solstice. The start of the longest day. Tomorrow, when that sun reached its full height, the world would find out whether there would be another.

  “I’m getting low on fuel,” Syd indicated the dial on the dashboard. “Which airport do you want me to land at? I’ll need to radio clearance.”

  “We won’t need an airport, Syd.”

  “Come again,” replied Syd and Sandy in unison.

  “We’ll be taking a slightly more direct route. I can’t run the risk of being recognised at an airport, however remote. I also can’t afford the time needed to get from the airport to where we are now.”

  “What exactly do you mean by a more direct route?” chirped Sandy.

  “I mean this,” said John, reaching behind his seat and removing a parachute pack that he had quietly placed there earlier in the journey. He offered it up to the air like a trophy.

  “You’re crazy!” shouted Syd.

  “It’s very possible.”

  “Have you ever plummeted at one hundred and twenty miles an hour and felt the power of the wind force your body in opposite directions?”

  John considered the two journeys he’d taken at the speed of light, through and out of the Earth’s atmosphere, into the odd black hole or two and right to the very limits of human knowledge. “It’s really no problem, I’ve gone faster.”

  “Who knows where you’ll land?” added Syd. “Around us is some of the most inhospitable terrain in the world. That’s if you survive the landing, which could be on a glacier the size of a small country or on a precipice where blizzards will catapult you into a deep abyss.”

  Syd was not the only one against this course of action.

  “What about me?” added Sandy.

  “Sandy, I thought you’d have noticed by now that you can fly.”

  “That won’t be flying, John, it’ll be falling uncontrollably. I can tell that you’ve never flown before. It takes more than just gravity. Believe me when I tell you it takes a while to perfect it.”

  “You’ll be fine and honestly it’s the easiest way,” comforted John. “Syd, how close above Jungfrau can you get?”

  “In this weather, about ten thousand feet. If you want to land in a specific place then you’ll need to skydive for as long as possible, otherwise you’ll be dragged off course by the wind. If your chute is going to open in time you’ll need to pull the cord at least a thousand feet from the ground. But by then you’ll need to pull the cord straight away or they’ll be searching for a John-shaped fissure.”

  Syd changed direction sharply, bringing the plane down and to the left. Where the skies had been perfectly clear, out of contact from any major weather issues, they were soon blinded by dense cloud and fog. John put on the backpack and placed goggles over his eyes.

  “OK, as far as I can tell from the equipment, we’re within the area of Jungfrau,” Syd shouted down the plane at them. “The chances of you landing in the right place are tiny, but hopefully you’ll be within a three-mile radius.”

  John forced open the side door and was knocked over by the power of the oncoming elements that searched for shelter inside the relative cosiness of the plane. There was no change in pressure on account of the bullet from Victor’s gun that had destroyed one of the windows and made for a rather noisy and cold journey. Sandy was backing away from the door.

  “Look, I’ll hold onto you until after I pull the chute, that way you should be protected until we’re closer to the ground,” said John, beckoning Sandy over.

  “I suppose you’ve gotta go somehow.”

  “If it’s any consolation, if you do die again, you’ll survive. God knows in what form, though. Ready?”

  “As I’ll ever be.”

  John tucked Sandy under his arm and looked down into the cold, bitter sky, offering a nod to the gods. As he leapt out he immediately felt the force of the elements batter him upwards. It was a breathtaking experience where any sense of human control became an utterly distant notion. It was only the sight of the plane disappearing in the distance that qualified in which direction he was moving. His outstretched arms, drawn to their furthest possible position by the forces of nature were the first indication that neither of them contained a pigeon. With the mountainous white earth expanding rapidly beneath him, he pulled the ripcord, silently thanking the Almighty as he watched his parachute unravel correctly. His pace immediately slowed, allowing him to search the sky for his lost companion.

  What had he done? Sandy was nowhere to be seen. Had he beaten impossible odds to find Sandy, only to lose him at the final hour because of his own stupidity? The approaching ground revealed specific features rather than the nondescript, craggy white mass he’d first witnessed. He didn’t really know what he was looking for, other than a soft landing. Through the swirling snowfall he spotted a distant building perched on the peak of a mountain, its man-made metal and glass frame at odds with the surrounding desolation that Mother Nature had moulded for thousands of years.

  If he landed somewhere near it he could escape the elements and just possibly ask a few people for help. Discovering an anonymous talent for controlling a parachute he was going to land quite close to it. Right next to it. ON IT! He pulled furiously on both of the cords to slow himself down. But it was too late. A heart-stopping ripping noise followed as he came to rest suspended in mid-air.

  The chute was wedged precariously on the corner of the metallic roof, forcing him to dangle helplessly in front of a huge glass window built to show off a vast, glacial valley that stretched almost as far as the eye could see. There were no lights on inside the building, but as John peered through he thought he made out a shop and a cafe. Where had he landed? He struggled to free himself, spinning in cir
cles and twisting the ropes of his parachute every time he reached for safety. The building had been constructed on the very edge of a precipice and his ripped chute was the only thing stopping him falling hundreds of feet to his demise. He immediately stopped struggling and started shouting.

  *****

  At the moment John jumped from the plane, Sandy had been torn from his grip and catapulted downwards like a stone. No parachute was going to slow his descent. The competition between the battering winds and the uncontrollable force of gravity had conspired to drag him some distance away from where John was falling. Eventually his friend disappeared from sight. The speed and disorientation of his plummet muddled his senses to the point of unconsciousness and hurried him into a decision.

  He forced his head into a nosedive and painfully pushed open his wingspan, the air whistling through the wound in his left wing. The speed of his fall initially increased, but slowly the aerodynamics of his body shape finally came to his rescue. It pushed him into a horizontal position like a world war pilot pulling a burning aircraft up from a seemingly disastrous dive. Moments before he careered into the mountainside he regained full control, gliding tantalisingly close to death several metres above the snow. Lifting his feet to land, they hit the icy surface at speed. Slipping and sliding like a comedy duck, he punctured a snowdrift with a thump.

  The creature that eventually crawled out, caked in layers of snow and gasping for air, had a passing resemblance to another, recently deceased, pigeon. Although he shook off most of the snow it was impossible to dislodge the cold absorbed into his feathers. If he was going to survive in this inhospitable environment he’d have to find somewhere warm and safe. Around him was a low, wide ravine that was cornered by three jagged peaks in a triangular formulation. In the cliff face, at the base of one of the mountains, nestled a weather-worn hut raised on stilts. A wisp of grey smoke billowed from the chimney.

  *****

  It was eight-thirty in the morning and the three staff members of the Jungfrau visitor centre were standing in the viewing gallery staring agog at the thing that hung limply in front of their huge, panoramic window. They were used to seeing the magnificent view that made a less than exciting job far more bearable. Today, that magnificent view was being ruined by a hysterical idiot hanging upside down, pointing at a tangled parachute and drawing his finger across his throat. He appeared to be talking to them, but the three-inch glass was rebounding his message back down at the vast valley.

  On the other side of the glass John saw three woman with confusion etched upon their faces. They had barely moved since one of them had flicked all the lights on, illuminating him against the backdrop. Their lack of urgency suggested to him that being courteous to customers was probably a struggle, whilst rescuing one from certain death was totally outside of their job descriptions. They also appeared to take no regard to his desperate pleas for assistance.

  “I’M GOING TO DIE!” he shouted to the valley again.

  *****

  It had taken Sandy about an hour to drag his battered body up the steep slope to where he’d seen the smoke rising into the sky. When he reached the cabin he was relieved to find that it was real and not a consequence of his scrambled brain playing tricks on him. The building appeared, at least on the outside, to be designed from discarded planks of wood, worn and tired. Its weathered walls held back the elements by pure good fortune. It had tricked itself into believing that the uniquely chaotic way that it had been built banned it from collapsing in the face of all laws of physics. The few windows that it had were small and firmly closed and the entrance door was misshapen and small, as if the elements had eroded it over time.

  Sandy struggled through the piles of snow to greet the door, tapping it twice with his beak. After several minutes the door opened. A scraggy beard, whose last shave was in nineteen-seventy nine, emerged from the sanctuary of the cabin attached to a scrawny face. The only other aspect of the person that Sandy saw, through the fraction of door that he’d opened, was a layer of dark green Gor-Tex. The man, bewildered as to who might be walking the mountains at this time of the morning, opened the door enough for Sandy to hop through unnoticed. For a final time the bearded waterproof scanned the barren wasteland, tutted to himself, and closed the door from the onrushing elements. Without removing his thick layers of warm insulation, he made his way back into the cabin and up a flight of stairs.

  At the top of the stairs a scantily furnished kitchen, where beaten pots and pans adorned cluttered work surfaces, encircled a long, Viking-style wooden table that stretched across the width of the room. Unlike most kitchens, this room was a place of refuge for all manner of paraphernalia. A menagerie of once colourful ropes lay piled in a corner like a poorly managed reptile house, whilst a dented tool kit sat prominently next to a kettle that whistled warmly from the stove. Another equally bearded man with blackened fingers gazed through the condensation-soaked window.

  “Qu’est-ce que c’est?” he said, as his colleague entered from the stairway.

  “Rien,” came the muffled reply from lips unseen but most certainly there somewhere under his bushy mane.

  In truth, Sandy and John were less than a mile away from each other, not that they knew of course. They had to find each other, and quick. Which explained his rather rash next move. He jumped up onto the table, sending both men into prophylactic shock.

  “D’où viens tu!?” screamed one of the men after gaining his composure. Sandy had no time to explain what these two mountaineers were about to witness, or any grasp of the French language to help him.

  “Look, by any chance has either of you seen a parachute landing near here?”

  The haggard men tried to verify with each other that they weren’t the only ones hearing a talking bird. The pigeon had broken into an elaborate game of charades.

  “Fièvre de cabine?” one questioned the other.

  “Pa-ra-chute,” Sandy repeated slowly and loudly as he attempted to mime the shape of a parachute with his frozen wingspan.

  *****

  John had been hanging around, quite literally, for about four hours. Finally they had discovered the inclination, if not the exact means of rescuing him. The former, John suspected, being a much more difficult a job than the latter. Although the latter wasn’t going to be easy. They couldn’t reach him by land because land was some considerable feet below them, a fact that John was now more than familiar with.

  To make matters worse the viewing gallery had begun to fill up with interested and bemused tourists. Most of them had made the journey by train and on foot to see one of the most magnificent glaciers in the world. A spectator of several ice ages, this awesome spectacle of ice sheets, that had moulded the valley over countless millennia, was a mere distraction compared to the sight of an inappropriately dressed man floating upside down in front of it. After all, the glacier had been there forever, and this might not last that much longer. John’s suffering was compounded by the endless photographs and video footage being taken. He couldn’t wait until they made their way into the public domain. If he hadn’t already destroyed Byron’s reputation, this ought to do it.

  He watched as the red-fleeced staff members gathered around, hopefully to discuss his removal. One of them was analysing the pages of a large binder that John guessed might be the staff manual, although he doubted whether this situation had ever been simulated and planned for. The staff members dispersed, either having agreed on a plan or conceded to John’s permanent residency as a regular feature of the Jungfrau tour. After a long period of inactivity a face appeared next to the metal guttering above John’s head.

  “Comment ça va, monsieur?” came a sarcastic voice, partly dissipated by the wind. John had been a relatively competent French speaker in life, but he hadn’t used it for years.

  “Tu te fous de ma gueule,” he replied, remembering some of the more colourful phrases that a foreign exchange student had once taught him at college.

  A rope was slowly reeled down to h
im, until it bobbed in front of his eyes. He wrapped the length around his waist and tied four or five unofficial knots, tucking them tight.

  “Allez.”

  As the weight transferred from the cords of the parachute to the rope it triggered a switch in his focus. Taking in his surroundings he reminded himself of the reason he was in this predicament in the first place.

  Along the line of mountains that fought through the clouds, occasional shards of sunlight escaped through the gaps that it found between the two. Stalked by one of these mountains, a small cabin on stilts hid in its shadow. A few hundred metres above its peak a shot of thin, blue light pierced a hole in the cloud allowing more of the sunlight through. John’s heart leapt. This was the sign he’d prayed for. A message from Limbo beckoning him home. All he needed was to find Sandy again.

  The new local celebrity composed himself in the warmth of the visitor centre. He posed for a photo or two and signed some autographs, each time remembering to sign ‘Byron’, not ‘John’. With his heart rate back to a semi-acceptable level and the blood fully balanced to all parts of his body rather than just his skull, he readied himself to set off again. He thanked his rescuers, even though they had been less than competent and were still somewhat perplexed by proceedings. John conjured up some French in his head and managed to secure a fleece, waterproof jacket, thermos flask of coffee and walking boots for the next, and hopefully last, part of his journey.

  Jacque, the man who had rescued him from the roof, led him through the crowd to an exit that would lead him on the hour-long journey to the position that John had indicated on the horizon. The sun had passed the midday point, which left less than twenty-four hours before it cycled around again to its highest point of the year. Then what? With renewed vigour he left the building to a huge cheer, although no one was quite sure what they were cheering for.