The War of Immensities

by Barry Klemm

  “I’m sure we must be able to shoot holes in it somehow,” Jami persisted.

  “Fine. But until you do, I will consider it to be the truth.”

  “And you offer no explanation as to where this bubble came from.”

  “That is what I’m going to work on next,” Harley said. “While Glen runs up models on that basis.”

  “And what will I be doing?”

  “You’ll be on vacation.”

  “You really think I’ll be able to get this out of my mind?”

  “And otherwise, you’ll be doing what you are always doing, Jamila, my brilliant protege.”

  “Which is?”

  “Trying to humiliate me by proving me wrong.”

  *

  Harley Thyssen telephoned Brian Carrick from Moscow—of all places— and informed him that there was a fax to follow with the dates for the next convergence.

  “Make certain you meet all the dates, Brian, bang on. And if it goes wrong even slightly, let me know immediately.”

  The fax was an itinerary for the next gathering of the pilgrims. It was very detailed and precise and Brian had to sit and work on it for two hours to get the logistics right. By then he had run the pilgrims into a list of priorities according to degree of difficulty.

  But first Felicity Campbell. He telephoned her in Wellington. “Thyssen wants the pilgrims on the move a week earlier than expected.”

  “Yes, Brian. I know. He warned me to expect it.”

  “The important date, as far as you are concerned, is the 9th of July. He wants us all to fly out then.”

  “The 9th? But the hit isn’t due until the 20th. Why so early?”

  “He wants us to have a week’s holiday—vacation he called it—in Bali. And you can bring your family if you want. Paid for by the project.”

  “Won’t they get in the way...”

  “Not if you put them on a plane home by the 16th.”

  “I’m not sure if I can organise this, Brian. The kids have school. Wendell has his work...”

  “But an all-expenses paid week in Bali at the Kota Sands. How can any Kiwi say no to that in mid-winter?”

  “You’re right. I’ll see what I can do. How are things going there?”

  “Oh, Kevin’s security men are a little overbearing, but otherwise fine.”

  “The girls coping all right in the office?”

  “Like pigs in shit.”

  “And how about you?”

  “Me. I’m fine. Be a bit busy now this has come through.”

  “I meant you and Judy.”

  “Not so fine. I’m out again. But it isn’t your fault this time, Fee.”

  “I still feel guilty.”

  “Our marriage has needed a work over for a long time. Now it’s getting it. Don’t worry. It’ll sort itself, one way or the other.”

  “And Harley and Jami—where are they?”

  “Harley’s in Moscow. Jami’s in Bermuda.”

  “Got to go, Brian. I’ll need a week to organise the new sleepers. Ought to see you around about the first. Okay?”

  “Okay. I’ll book you Wellington-Melbourne on the 1st, your husband plus two Wellington-Bali to meet you there on the 9th. Send you the tickets and details. Hooroo.”

  Next he rang Joe Solomon, whom he knew would resist every aspect of the plan, so he only told him about Bali.

  “I hate holidays, Brian. And what the hell is a bloke in a wheelchair going to do for a week in Bali?”

  “Sit on the beach and fish and stuff.”

  “You ever tried to push a wheelchair through sand?”

  “Get pissed and eat yourself stupid.”

  “I can do that in Perth.”

  “I can arrange for you to fly direct Perth-Bali on the 9th if you’d prefer that to coming here.”

  “Bloody Harley. Can you ask him to make it a bit later?”

  “No, he’s in Moscow.”

  “He’s where???” Joe erupted.

  Brian hung up before he said something even more stupid, if that was possible.

  It was then evening and he knew he would catch Lorna and Chrissie tomorrow, so he took himself to the pub for a beer and a counter tea and from there he would just make it to the Casino in time to catch the end of Andromeda’s show.

  “I know. Bali, then Hong Kong,” she told him.

  She was in her dressing room, sitting at the mirror, taking off her make-up. There was barely room for Brian to stand behind her and the atmosphere of scents and perfumes would have knocked him flat on his back had there been room to fall.

  “How could you know? I only found out today.”

  “Because my man Joel received a couple of mysterious bookings that just had to be arranged by Harley.”

  She hunted amongst the bottles and tubes on the top of the dresser and came up with a card.

  “Kota-Sands, Bali, 8th to the 14th of July but I gotta be there on the 6th for rehearsals. Then the Hong Kong Sheridan from the 22nd for a month.”

  “Bloody hell.”

  “The reason Harley is smarter than the rest of us is because he learns from his mistakes,” Andromeda smiled.

  *

  “...the sky split in two, and high above the forest the whole northern part of the sky appeared to be covered in fire. At that moment I felt a great heat as if my shirt had caught fire... I wanted to pull off my shirt and throw it away but at that moment there was a bang in the sky, and a mighty crash was heard. I was thrown to the ground about three sajenes away from the porch and for a moment I lost consciousness. My wife ran out and carried me into the hut. The crash was followed by a noise like stones failing from the sky, or guns firing. The Earth trembled, and when I lay on the ground I covered my head because I was afraid stones might hit it. At that moment when the sky opened, a hot wind, as from a cannon, blew past the huts from the north. It left its mark on the ground...”

  Nikolai Singara closed the book on his own fingers to mark the place and gazed serenely across the table, where Thyssen sat, pouting.

  “That’s all of them,” he said, and Thyssen nodded.

  “No other eye-witness accounts?”

  “No,” Nikolai smiled with patience. “So, tell me. Is there to be some explanation of why I am reading to you this admittedly fascinating but nevertheless very ancient piece of our history.”

  Because it’s in Russian, Thyssen somehow managed to avoid saying. You didn’t make trite jokes in the presence of any Russian, especially not one of their most eminent scholars.

  “I was hoping for something, but I think we have to agree it was a comet,” Thyssen said sadly.

  “On the face of it, to be sure. But remember, these eyewitness accounts were the translated words of the very primitive Tungus people, and they were making their accounts five years after the event.”

  “Five years?”

  “Alas, the officials of the Czar considered the affairs of court infinitely more important than the mere collision between the Earth and a giant meteor.”

  “That was what they thought at first?”

  “Oh yes. But even so, they knew it was so massive an explosion—it was felt in Moscow, the shock wave circled the earth twice, and they could read at night in the city streets by the scattered light for a week. But it was way out in Siberia and just a bunch of dumb peasants and who cared? When the expedition lead by Kulik finally arrived, they saw the forest flattened in that radiating pattern we’ve come to know so well for a diameter of ten kilometres from the centre. They expected to find a crater bigger than the one in Arizona. But there was nothing.”

  “Yes. I know,” Thyssen said. “Extraordinary. Are you satisfied by the comet explanation?”

  “Those who made it are completely. And you should be too. It is the only way to explain how the object left no trace. The ice, burning up in the upper atmosphere... I don’t need to tell you this, Harley. But I do want to know why it tickles your fancy some ninety years after the event.”

  “Oh, I was just lo
oking at the Oz Baykal region on the map and happened to notice Tunguska nearby. It set me thinking...”

  “One thousand kilometres nearby. You think these matters are related, Harley?”

  “No reason why they should be...”

  “But you wanted to hear the eye-witness accounts from the original Russian to see if there was any mention of people being rendered unconscious and waking up eight days later.”

  Thyssen laughed. Of course he knew he could never fool this old man and hadn’t really been trying. Nikolai loved mind games, and being allowed to show he could read Thyssen’s mind was plainly giving the old man the greatest pleasure. It was fun for Thyssen as well.

  “I can see it is hopeless to try and keep secrets from you, Nikolai.”

  “And alas, having found no such reports, does that mean your theory is confounded?”

  “I guess.”

  “You don’t sound completely convinced.”

  Thyssen smiled. “As you say, inarticulate peoples, and long after the event.”

  “Still, Harley, it is always a difficulty, isn’t it, when the evidence refuses to fit the theory.”

  “It usually means you need a new theory.”

  “Or better evidence,” Nikolai smiled, and snapped the book shut. “I know a place where a most reasonable coffee may be had.”

  It was a joy to talk to the old man, his mentor from Greenpeace days. Now retired, Nikolai still remained a man of great influence around the Kremlin. He was, after all, one who had tasted the temptations of the West and returned to Russia quite untainted. Although it took a few years of impeccable behaviour in the gulags to prove it.

  Thyssen had arrived in Moscow and contacted Nikolai immediately. His only fore-warning had been a one page summary of Project Earthshaker emailed a week beforehand. A desire to speak with the Secretary for the Interior? Within an hour, Singara was able to report that the Secretary would be able to fit them in tomorrow, at two. With time to fill, they had strolled into the Museum of Science, and Thyssen, rather casually, had asked about Tunguska.

  On the 30th of June, 1908, something hit the Earth, big enough to flatten 2000 square kilometres of forest and be felt all around the world yet it left no crater, no fragments, no radio-activity, no trace. A touch, it was called, of the finger of God. No human had been killed or injured, although a vast herd of reindeer had been destroyed. The biggest explosion in recorded history and hardly anyone noticed.

  Nikolai had, at Thyssen’s request, read to him the eye-witness accounts without surprise nor complaint. Thyssen supposed that the old man had already double-guessed him. As he always did. He had not, for instance, bothered yet to ask why Thyssen wanted to see the secretary, nor had the subject been raised. As they made their way through the smoggy streets toward the cafe, Nikolai finally said. “Harley, I do not believe that the Tunguska event was a comet.”

  “Really? Why not?”

  “Because a comet, at any size, would have been visible in the night skies for some weeks or even months before the event. And no such thing was reported.”

  “So what do you think it was, Nikolai?”

  “The same thing you think it was, Harley.”

  In the warmth of the cafe, they sipped the coffee from big mugs. Nikolai was ready to play the next stage of the game. Without preamble, he said with a mischievous look over his steaming mug. “So, you believe that there are —sleepers, you call them?—at Baykal.”

  “I know there are. And I know exactly where they are. Precise co-ordinates.”

  “How many of these unfortunates do you think there are?”

  “I have no idea. There may only be one, but I suspect more.”

  “One hundred and ninety-seven, according to unofficial reports.”

  “That many?”

  “Unofficial reports are always inaccurate.”

  “Unlike official reports?”

  “Official reports are only usually inaccurate. Unofficial ones always are. But the real difference, Harley, is that the degree of inaccuracy of official reports can always be assessed by political analysis, whereas this is not possible with unofficial information.”

  “Still, I have towards two hundred people in there.”

  “I understand that is so.”

  “Interned, I suppose.”

  “Quarantined. The contagion being presently unknown.”

  “And is the Secretary likely to accept my assurances that there is no contagion?”

  “Hardly.”

  “Is he aware that—what shall we call it—relapses are likely when they get to the pilgrim stage?”

  “They have seen it for themselves. A mass escape was attempted.”

  “Did any of them actually escape?”

  “No.”

  “Officially no or unofficially no.”

  “Actual no. We are not complete barbarians, Harley. These people are receiving the best medical care available.”

  “I see.”

  “And they are not unaware of Project Earthshaker. They have heard all of the unofficial reports concerning it.”

  “The trouble with our unofficial reports are that they are always accurate.”

  “Yes, we know that, Harley. And your official reports never are.”

  “Will it be effective, do you think, to plead with the Secretary for the release of these people into my custody?”

  “I should think not. They are Russian subjects, with no permits to leave the country. It would be most irregular for such permits to be issued to persons in an unstable medical condition.”

  “Meaning?”

  “They don’t trust you, Harley. They suspect that the sleepers have suffered an ecological accident which you know about and they don’t. They suspect that you might be trying to find some way to blame Russian scientists for your own ecological disaster.”

  “I though the KGB was all wrapped up.”

  “It is, but it’s mentality remains.”

  “So, I shouldn’t plead for their release.”

  “It would be fruitless, and, I should think, unwise.”

  “Then I need a better plan.”

  “A Rambo-style, single handed rescue, perhaps?”

  “Is that what you suggest?”

  “No, Harley. It was a joke. I’m sorry. I’m not very good at them.”

  “Yes you are.”

  “In any case, I think the plan that you have in mind is the correct one, Harley.”

  “Which is?”

  “You don’t want the Secretary to release those people at all. You want him to assure you that they will stay exactly where they are.”

  *

  Chrissie watched in amazement as the two women confronted each other with broad smiles and admiring looks. Lorna, in a smart blue mini-suit and green beret perched on her flowing red hair, and the American woman, in a similar suit, long black hair, about ten years older but not showing it.

  “Sit down, Mrs. Tribe,” Lorna said. She might have been asking the journalist to sit on a hand grenade.

  Stella Tribe perched on the edge of the chair and produced from her crocodile skin handbag a small tape recorder which she switched on and set between them on the desk before she smiled warmly and asked. “Do you mind?”

  In reply, Lorna Simmons picked up the tape recorder, switched it off and handed it back to her. “What I have to tell you you’ll be able to write by hand.”

  Without the slightest flicker of protest, Stella Tribe took out her notebook, pen, poised to write, saying. “I really do appreciate this interview, Miss Simmons. You just don’t know how much trouble I’ve had trying to get to speak to one of you people.”

  “Oh yes I do,” Lorna smiled. She wasn’t fooled by Stella’s show of innocence.

  “So, tell me, Miss Simmons, when did you...”

  “No questions.”

  “I need some background...”

  “You have all the background you need.”

  “A statement then?”

  “Exac
tly. I am Lorna Simmons and hereafter I am spokesperson for Project Earthshaker. You want to know something, you talk to me. The project is classified Top Secret by both the US and Australian Governments so you are warned that any attempt to interview other members of the project will be a breach of the official secrets act and I can assure such a breach will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.”

  Chrissie was delighted. She had listened to Lorna rehearsing that as she paced the office all afternoon and, as far as she could tell, Lorna had got it word perfect.

  “I understand,” Stella Tribe said seriously.

  “Good. I want you to organise a press conference for me, tomorrow afternoon, anytime, anywhere and make sure all your competitors are there. I will answer any questions that I am able to.”

  “Will Professor Thyssen be there?”

  “No. Just me.”

  “I wasn’t aware you had any training in sciences, Miss Simmons.”

  “I don’t. But I have been carefully instructed in what I can and can’t say.”

  “Well, Miss Simmons, I’ll do what I can. But I doubt that you’ll get a full press turn-out if you’re all that’s on offer.”

  “I know. So I’m going to give you a scoop, Mrs. Tribe, which will make sure they’re all be there.”

  “Oh really?”

  “Take this down.”

  The pen hovered over the paper.

  “Shortly before sunset, on the 20th of July, a massive earthquake will occur in Western Europe, at about 7.4 on the moment-magnitude scale. Probably in the Mediterranean region. We expect it to trigger a number of volcanic eruptions in the vicinity.”

  “I assume Professor Thyssen has made this prediction?”

  “He has.”

  “He’s been wrong in the past.”

  “From which errors he has learned. This one will be right.”

  “7.4. That’s awfully serious, isn’t it?”

  “Depends on how close the epicentre is to populated areas. In 1993, a 6.2 at Latik in India killed nearly 10,000 people, but a year later in Bolivia, an 8.3 killed only ten.”

  “Is that part of the statement?”