by Peter Tonkin
It was half an hour after Max and Borisov had come to tell him the captain wanted the systems checked after the chief’s ill-fated testing of the manual override. It was just coming up to five and T-Shirt was disobeying orders and beyond caring whether the systems he had spent the afternoon working on were going to survive the hour. They were in Jolene’s cabin, sitting together on her single bunk, and she was curled against him, shaking like a leaf. The storm was worsening as far as he could tell, and the chill coming in over the failed environmental maintenance system was becoming quite fearsome, far beyond anything the little electric heater in the corner could handle. But even so, bundled in his warm, dry clothing, he was quite snug and for the life of him he could not understand why she was not. He believed her when she said she was not scared, though she had told him all about her confrontation with Killigan and Hoyle.
Her slim body seemed as well-wrapped as his own, and yet …
‘Look,’ he said easily, ‘I’m not getting fresh here — not unless you want me to, that is — but I just gotta check something out.’
Before she had even the faintest idea what he was talking about, he slid his hand in through the front of her clothes, snaking his fingers down layer after layer until they found the skin between the outer swell of her left breast and her armpit. His breath hissed, drowning out her half-hearted, ‘Hey …’
‘Mrs DaCosta,’ he said. ‘You are as wet as a drowning kitten under there and as cold as a Slush-Puppy. We gotta get your body temperature up, lady. And I know whereof I speak, for the redoubtable Dr Glasov demonstrated on Max, Dai and myself only a couple of days back just how to approach this very problem. But do not ask,’ he said severely, getting up and looking down at her, ‘do not ever ask how she took our temperatures.’
He leaned over. She slid back. She gazed up at him, her eyes clear and calm, colourless as pools of dew.
‘Trust me?’ he asked quietly.
She nodded. ‘Oh yes,’ she said.
‘Now,’ he said gently. ‘This is without doubt the stupidest time and place to be playing doctors and nurses.’ As he spoke he glanced up at the clock above the door. The word ‘time’ caused a sort of Pavlovian reflex now.
It was ten to five when he began to remove her clothing. As he worked, he piled the duvet round her so that as the layers came off they were replaced by warm swan’s down. As he slid her pale, chilled, shivering nakedness out of wet shirt, clammy jeans and soaking underwear and into warm, dry wrappings, he continued to talk quietly and easily. He asked her about her past, probing into her family background in Austin. He skated delicately over the matter of Mr DaCosta but managed to establish that the relationship, like the man, was dead. Then he told her of his own life, experiences and simple philosophies, as if he felt he should bare a bit of his soul while he bared all of her body.
When she was naked and wrapped in the duvet, he took the wettest of her clothing and draped it over the electric heater to dry. The little radiator could not heat the room, but it should be able to perform that simple function well enough. Then, still bundled in the duvet, he carried her through to the shower. Sitting her against the heated towel rail cushioned by the fluffy, water-warmed towels, he swiftly removed his own clothing, slinging it outside onto the bed. ‘If this is getting too much for you I’ll keep my shorts on,’ he said. ‘It’s medicinal in any case.’
She shook her head, white-faced, blue-lipped, wide-eyed and shaking. ‘I need all the help I can get,’ she said. ‘Shock treatment is good.’
‘Hokay …’
When he, too, was naked he turned and switched the water on. Only when he was satisfied with its temperature did he come back towards her. With fastidious care he dried his hands and arms on a towel, then he reached down for her, lifting her to her feet and deftly whirling the dry duvet off her body and out through the door onto the bed, safely under the cloud of steam that was beginning to gather — even though the shower was little more than tepid.
‘Now, where was I in the story of my life?’ he asked, pressing the icy length of her against himself and stepping into the warmth of the shower stall. ‘Ah yes, Special Forces training …’
When Max thundered joyfully on the door soon after five o’clock to tell T-Shirt that the systems he had fixed were still alive, there was no reply. When he came back at six to say that Dai and Kyril had partially restored the ship’s network and enough of the communications system to allow them to receive TV pictures again, though they could still not send out any messages, there was still no reply. When he came back at seven o’clock to say that the environment system looked as though it was going to stay as dead as the lading and galley systems, any reply which might have been forthcoming was smothered beneath the duvet.
*
Jolene and T-Shirt emerged from her cabin at seven thirty and went in search of Mrs Agran. Jolene was wearing her own clothes and was aglow with warmth, especially because she was also wearing T-Shirt’s parka over the top of them. T-Shirt was less well dressed and nowhere near as warm, though he, too, was all aglow. They were in search of Vivien Agran because they really needed more clothing. With the environment system still down, the temperatures in the bridgehouse were beginning to reflect those outside, save only for the wind chill. T-Shirt was armed against the cold with all of his vests and three shirts. He also carried his spare parachute snugly on his back, and his duvet tied round his neck like a warm cloak. They could think of no one else who might be able to supply the extra clothing Jolene still needed. T-Shirt doubted whether even Mrs Agran would have anything spare now, for everyone he saw was bundled up in every stitch they could lay their hands on. But as things turned out they couldn’t find her. Her cabin was locked and no amount of knocking or calling could elicit a reply. A quick check of her usual haunts revealed nothing. Questions to passing stewards drew a blank. They found Anoushka, dressed for skiing at Aspen, but even she had no idea where her boss was. She told them there were no more warm clothes available.
T-Shirt’s eccentric costume turned quite a few heads when the pair of them arrived in the dining salon at five minutes to eight, local time, at exactly the same moment as Richard and Colin, Robin, Kate and the twins. The weather was showing no sign of moderating. No more dead computer systems had been revitalised since six. They were still deep in the grip of a very dangerous situation and four hours’ hard sailing from Deception and the promise of safe haven. But the millennium was just arriving at the Greenwich meridian, halfway round the world from where it had started, halfway through the twenty-four hours it would take to complete full circle, and four hours still away from Kalinin herself. It was four minutes to midnight in London, and Big Ben filled the screen.
‘Why are you dressed like that?’ asked Mary, wide-eyed.
‘In celebration,’ T-Shirt answered cheerfully. ‘It’s my impression of my favourite English king. Richard the Third.’ And as he leaped and capered, whirling his cloak over the hunch of his parachute, the most famous clock in the world began to chime midnight.
As it did so, Lieutenant Borisov rushed in, white with worry. ‘T-Shirt,’ he called. ‘Captain Mariner. Can you come with me, please?’
He took them straight up to the bridge, darkly silent, refusing to answer their worried questions, clearly fighting to get his thoughts in order.
On the bridge he took them over to Captain Ogre. One look at them called Varnek over to stand beside his captain.
‘What is it Borisov?’ she demanded.
Borisov took a deep breath. ‘As lading officer I should have thought of it before. But I have thought of it now and we may have time to plan for it if nothing else.’ He paused. No one said anything.
‘We have managed to deal with the bug so far by re-programming the central clocks in the servers,’ he said slowly. ‘That way the systems will work until the components on the next level down — the circuits and the chips themselves — are asked to check the time and the date. When that happens we will have an even more serious problem, because
we still do not know which individual chips are two thousand-proof.’
‘None of them except Mrs Agran’s if the servers are a good guide,’ said Richard.
‘Why would they be asked to check the date and the time?’ asked T-Shirt.
Richard answered. ‘On my ships there is an automatic systems check once every month. All the systems perform an automatic status assessment and report back automatically. Not the people, the machines. Automatically.’
‘Yes!’ said Borisov, his face alive with relief to have found such a ready understanding. ‘This is the same on Kalinin. The systems will be asked to check themselves automatically. And the instant they begin this they will begin to close down again because every single chip, down to levels we can never hope to reach, will have to check on what the date is. And there is nothing we can do. It is something only head office can stop. Only they have the codes and the passwords.’
‘When?’ demanded Richard. ‘When is the systems check programmed to happen?’
‘Every month, at the same —’
‘When?’ demanded Richard and T-Shirt both at once.
Borisov looked at them all, his eyes wide with worry. ‘During the first five minutes of the first hour of the first day of the month, local time. We have until midnight. Then we lose it all.’
Chapter Twenty-Five
Dai Gwyllim stuck his head out of the radio room door. ‘I think Kyril’s done it, Captain,’ he said. ‘You should be able to call out now.’
They all crowded round the door into the radio room, all except the navigating officer and the helmsman. The radio equipment glowed as brightly as a Christmas tree as Kyril programmed in the wavelength and the call sign for their main office in St Petersburg. The machine’s memory had been wiped when it crashed. ‘It will slow us, doing everything by hand,’ said Kyril. ‘But at least we can call out now, eh? That is good.’
‘You have done well,’ said Irene. ‘You will receive special mention in my logs.’
‘It may not be all that permanent,’ warned Dai Gwyllim.
‘And it will die again at midnight,’ said Borisov to Richard, sotto voce.
‘Not if we can get the codes and close down the automatic status check,’ he answered gently, his deep voice confident, assured.
The storm outside took the ship and hurled it sideways, as though trying to throw it bodily onto the black rocks of the shore of Graham Land to leeward. They all staggered a little. The lights flickered. The lift across the bridge hissed into action, the car speeding downwards. A weather picture started spooling out of the weather-watch machine.
‘We’re through!’ exulted Kyril. He flipped open the receive channel.
A slow, clear Russian voice began to speak to them.
‘Give me the mike,’ ordered Irene. As she spoke she reached in and took it from Kyril’s hand. She pressed the SEND button and spoke. ‘Hello, St Petersburg. This is Kalinin. We have an urgent message, over.’ She lifted her finger from the button.
The voice droned on. Even though it was speaking Russian, it was obvious to Richard that it was the voice of a machine, pre-recorded.
Irene pressed SEND again. ‘St Petersburg, this is Kalinin …’
The lift doors hissed open. Max and Jolene erupted onto the bridge just as Irene released the button and the mechanical message claimed the air again.
‘T-Shirt,’ said Max, urgently. ‘It just said on the TV that some sections of Moscow have closed down. They don’t know if it’s the bug or some hacker with a virus and a sad sense of humour but bits of the commercial system aren’t responding, some of the city’s municipal systems, traffic lights and the phone system have closed down and —’
‘Not just in Moscow, then,’ said Borisov.
‘… cannot accept your call,’ continued the mechanical Russian voice. ‘Account remains unsettled since January first, nineteen hundred. This system is closed until full settlement is received. We are sorry, this system cannot accept your call …’
Irene swung round. ‘Mr Varnek,’ she ordered coolly. ‘This part of the system is not working properly but other parts may be. Please try and establish contact by fax. Mr Borisov, e-mail. Now! Kyril, put that on automatic call-back and try to raise America.’
‘Only Russia has the twenty-four-hour office and the codes,’ warned Borisov as he crossed to the bridge computer and tried to get out onto the Internet.
‘Yes, but if there’s anyone in the American office, perhaps they can get through to Russia more easily than we can and call us back.’
‘Also,’ said Richard, slipping a thought from a different priority level into the conversation, ‘while you’ve got a line out, you might try calling Deception. There’s an Argentinean summer station there. They might be able to help and they’ll certainly need to know we’re coming.’
‘Good thinking. Kyril, you heard.’
‘Yes, Captain. Dai, can you take that book and look up their wavelength and call sign please? I’ll try America now.’
Richard strode away from the bustle, his mind still busy. He stood looking out into the storm-darkened gloom under a midnight sun. It was almost too dark to see. Only the lights defined the ship’s outline in the whirling whiteness. He was forcefully reminded of the last transmission from the failing ice-watch, all gunmetal grey, fading featurelessly to dark slate with a wild whirl of specks just large enough to have white faces and black-shadowed backs. He leaned forward, unconsciously riding the corkscrew heave. Foam surged back up the deck like a tsunami wave and attained the square front of the bridgehouse, exploding up in a vertical wall of instantly-freezing foam. It set onto the clearview and the wipers and froze solid for an instant before the heated glass broke the icy grip of the stuff, the wipers swept back into motion, and, like Saul at Damascus, Richard could see again.
‘It’s getting worse. Shifting westward slightly,’ he called to Varnek. ‘Did the weather sat give us a time and place for the eye?’
‘On this heading. Two hours.’
Varnek’s answer made Richard glance up at the chronometer. He saw with surprise that it was coming up to ten o’clock. ‘That should see us into Deception,’ he said quietly to himself, ‘if nothing else does!’
‘Still nothing on e-mail,’ sang Borisov.
‘Fax isn’t answering either,’ called Kyril. ‘I can’t raise America, and all I can get from Deception is an automatic message saying they’re currently unmanned but the refuge and supply centre is open for emergencies. But there’s a very strange thing here!’
‘What’s that?’ asked Richard and Irene together.
‘It’s a general warning. It comes every now and then on all the bands I’ve tried. Even the emergency band, so it must be important.’
‘Warning about what?’
‘Interference, I suppose you’d call it.’
‘What from?’
‘Mir. The space station Mir.’
‘What about it?’ asked Richard, intrigued.
‘The Russian Space Agency is bringing it down tonight. Sometime between midnight and two our time it’s due to enter the atmosphere. Somewhere over Argentina on a path over the Falklands just to the north of us, they think. They’re warning about interference, possibly black-outs as it breaks up in the atmosphere.’
*
‘… which promises to be the biggest fireworks show in history,’ the English commentator was saying. Even two hours after midnight there, London was still on the air. Midnight had got as far as Cape Farewell in Greenland, and would soon arrive in Rio which was gearing up as only Rio could. But in the meantime, lacking anything else to talk about, the increasingly desperate anchorman was discussing the forthcoming destruction of Mir. ‘Perhaps only the Russians, especially under their current financial circumstances, could have come up with the idea of getting rid of a two-hundred-ton space station simply by crashing it into Earth’s atmosphere. I have here a representative of Greenpeace who, as you will imagine, has a strong and not particularly festi
ve opinion …’
In spite of the storm, the continuing festivities and the cold, the twins were asleep at last. As the Greenpeace man was joined by a woman representing Friends of the Earth to observe that the space station was due to break into four pieces — three of forty tons and one of eighty tons containing a nuclear reactor — and that no one seemed to know exactly where or when these things would actually land, Robin and Kate picked up a slumbering infant each and eased themselves out of the dining salon.
It was difficult to carry the children because they were so heavy now and the ship was rolling badly, but the women picked their way carefully along the corridor to the lift. When the car came, the doors hissed open to reveal Killigan and Hoyle leaning back into the rear corners. After only the slightest hesitation, Robin said, ‘Going up?’ and strode in. Kate followed, and an uneasy silence ensued as the lift rose one more deck to their level.
‘What do you think those two are up to?’ asked Kate as they walked along the corridor to the Mariners’ stateroom.
‘I don’t know,’ said Robin thoughtfully. ‘But I don’t like the look of them. When I’ve put the twins down, I think I’ll stay with them. Could you go and find Richard and Colin? Update Richard as to where we are and tell him about those two — not that he’ll be able to do anything about them. He won’t want to leave the bridge.’
Once the twins were tucked down, with Robin anxiously but comfortably on watch, Kate went off to deliver her friend’s worried message. Her first thought was to take the lift up to the bridge, but the thought of being trapped in it with Killigan and Billy Hoyle made her think again. So when it did not immediately answer her summons, she turned and made her way along the pitching corridor and up the heaving companionway instead.
She reached the bridge and walked into what was obviously an explosive atmosphere. ‘Look,’ Richard was saying, obviously trying to keep things calm, ‘We just have to plan for it. OK, so the radio’s down again. The radio on the Sikorsky is still unreachable and wouldn’t raise much except local traffic in any case. From the sound of things, we’d never have got any sense out of St Petersburg in time. America might have been able to help but Borisov here doubts it. Fine. At least we know the equipment on Deception is there and functioning one hundred per cent. That’s what we’ll have to go for. The camp is up on the clifftop at Mount Pond and it’s a bit of a climb from the beach —’