Larissa might look childlike, but she had picked a volcano that even the most macho of volcanologists found scary. In 1956 Bezymianny blew its top off, creating a crater over a mile wide, with a Plinian eruption column reaching twenty-one miles skywards. It would have been lethal but for Bezymianny being in relatively uninhabited Kamchatka.
“Bezymianny? Bozhe moy! My god!” I said, in my minimal Russian.
She smiled, a faux-pas smile, but not unkind.
“My pronunciation?”
“No. But Russians say Bozhe moy for ordinary things like cabbages and people. Not volcano.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Nichevo. That means, no matter.”
We fell silent, watching the expanse of water, the cone of sleeping, silent Vesuvius, as if seeing two thousand years ago. I thought of how Pliny the Younger had stayed behind but nearly got killed anyway. He saw a terrifying black cloud, torn as if by giant lightning, with massing flames at its centre. It sank down from the volcano, onto the sea, and rolled the twenty miles across the bay. Darkness came with it, like a light going out in a closed room. Ash began to fall on young Pliny, a teenager, and his mother. They thought the world was ending.
Yet Pliny had survived to provide the first existing account of pyroclastic flows—from the Greek “cracked fire,” the lethal, fast-moving clouds of gas and ash that are the real volcanic killers. You can outrun a lava flow, but not something moving at three hundred miles an hour, at its worst hot enough to BBQ you or suffocate you with hot ash.
“Larissa, what do Russians call pyroclastic flows?”
She looked wry. “Loan word. Piroklastichesky potok. Why not borrow nuées ardentes?”
It was French, glowing clouds—ardent clouds, too, if we were punning.
“It sounds better, yes.”
“I want to see one!” From her face, an ardent wish.
“I might have wanted to be the first to film them, but Maurice and Katia Krafft”—alias the volcanic Cousteaus—“got there first.”
“And died for it.”
“At eight hundred forty degrees Fahrenheit, their clothes and hair alight, instant human carbon.”
Even for a pair of Powdermonkeys, it was sobering. I looked over the sea at modern Naples, the sprawling houses, and thought of teenage Pliny, watching the nuée ardente rushing towards him like a hellish bat, fire on its wings. He was lucky: In the twenty miles across the bay much of its force, heat, and hydrogen sulphide were dissipated. Otherwise he would not have survived to tell his tale.
Still in Vesuvius mode, we visited Pompeii the next day. I’d been before, but Larissa never had, and she was duly professional when regarding the famous casts of the volcano’s victims, the father and son holding hands, or the leashed dog, twisted in agony. We heartlessly speculated about temperature, velocity, and ash distribution. Only the sight of a doll’s head, found with the bones of an eight-year-old girl, clutched for comfort in a horrific death, gave Larissa teary pause. “So sad!”
Then we separated. I had a meeting with an Italian production company keen to use my footage in a projected remake of The Last Days of Pompeii. They were paying, so I wasn’t going to tell them what the Lord of the Rings special-effects guys had done to simulate a lava flow from Mount Doom: CGI graphics on top of K-Y jelly.
Larissa had to go to a wedding: “My cousin. They hired Versailles for reception. Why didn’t they hire somewhere with volcano!”
In the new Russia, nobody asks where people get their money. At the least, Larissa’s family were oligarchs; at the worst, mafia. I got the impression they were so relieved at an heiress not behaving like Paris Hilton, they would subsidize an expensive volcanological habit. It was probably cheaper than cocaine, anyway.
I continued to the next port of call, some serious talks with National Geographic. Life continued as usual: dangerous, solitary, and rather too weird for friends, unless they happened to be fellow obsessives. Now Larissa was a frequent guest in my in-tray: a photo here (the Versailles wedding looked like Fellini gone Slavic), a comment or professional query there. I figured at first she was networking, then that life had so blessed her that she simply gambolled through it like a friendly puppy. Finally I realised that I liked her, and that unless she was a really good actress, it was reciprocated.
I could put up with Joe Boy Barrett for Larissa’s sake.
What was it about Chillipepper? Spider and his department had compiled a huge form guide to the world’s and even some extraterrestrial volcanoes. I would be sent an extract, everything I needed to know this time. But on my preliminary e-research, it wouldn’t seem that Chillipepper rated significantly in the volcano stakes. It wasn’t snow-peaked, nor did it have glaciers draping from its slopes like bridal trains (and—if melted by eruptions—causing torrential, lethal floods). It didn’t have the stately cone of Fuji, nor fountains of picturesque, fiery lava. Sure, it was an active stratovolcano, which means explosive, but not very, on the available evidence. It didn’t have a body count, not like Vesuvius nor Krakatau (thirty-six thousand in 1883).
That was off-putting, as was the fact that the Chillipepper region was currently in a state of—if not active—then grumbling civil war. For twenty years government forces and rebels had been at odds: holdups, murders, even massacres. The US State Department did not recommend the area for tourists, to put it mildly. There were only two entry points, a minor airport with an indifferent safety record, and a highway frequented by both guerrillas and the local bandidos. My travel agent would freak, and I didn’t know how I was going to pitch such a relatively boring volcano at the powers-that-pay. I could always write the conference off as a business expense…
But, but, I thought, I’m the Powdermonkey who brings home the footage. I could simply trade on my reputation. I reached for my address book. Then my in-tray beeped as it received a huge infodump from Spider. The accompanying message read: WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?
What indeed? What do you know, my master?
It took some time to get down to Chillipepper. I only got the fare together after promising Cody Veitch some footage of the chillis for use in a lifestyle gourmet program. As it was, I missed most of the first day of the conference after further delays caused by fog in transit. It was dark by the time the elderly prop plane passed the volcano, and I perceived Chillipepper only as blackness between the lights of the city and the stars. And when I got to the site of the conference, I found a major traffic headache.
“Festival time,” said the taxi driver. His day job was teaching English, he said, which spared him my dog-Spanish.
Outside, a gaggle of girls, wearing scanty frills in various shades of red, yellow, and orange and a lot of glitter, banged on the rear window.
“It’s okay,” said the driver. “They don’t mean robbery, they just want to give the gringa a present.”
I wound down the window and received a necklace of fresh chillis, pointed as shark teeth. Dependent from it was a doll made of one large chilli, wearing a peasant scarf, shawl, and frilly skirts roughly fashioned from corn husks.
“Chilli harvest festival?”
“And Don Nestor’s day. Our Saint Nestor, if he makes it past the gringos in the Vatican.”
He sounded doubtful.
I was intrigued. “Isn’t sainthood automatic since the pope abolished the devil’s advocate? All you need is a miracle.”
Outside, a conga line of costumed animals—pumas, parrots, jaguars—passed gyrating wildly to the amplified beat of drums, electric guitar, and some screeching local variant on the fife.
“We’ve had our miracle: No eruptions since eighteen seventy-two.”
I’d read Spider’s form guide to Chillipepper, so I knew the driver was slightly exaggerating. There’d been no major eruptions, but plenty of tremors, rockfalls, and clouds of ash.
“And how did Don Nestor achieve that?” Volcanology wasn’t a science in the 1870s; otherwise some rival researcher would probably have killed Don Nestor for getting
there first.
“He sprinkled holy water on the volcano.”
Remind me to suggest that to the Shinto priests near Unzen, I thought, the Japanese volcano where the Kraffts and forty others died. But the driver continued:
“That’s what they say in the church. But outside the church, they say different. You see, Don Nestor wasn’t just a Catholic priest. That’s Rome’s problem.”
A gap in the traffic appeared, and as the driver accelerated to fill it before someone else did I glimpsed a procession, priests in robes, banners, huge crosses. The Catholic Church might be the religious supremo in South America, but underneath the veneer of Christianity are all sorts of wild and woolly variants, with pre-Columbian elements, or incorporating deities brought from Africa, given a quick scrub and a name change, just like their worshippers, the slaves. Santeria, Candomblé, Vodoun; it was interfaith in practical, colourful action.
“What’s the story they tell outside the church?”
“Don Nestor, he hiked up his skirts and climbed the volcano. And when he got to the top and looked into the crater he saw fire: a god, woken from a long sleep, hundreds of years, and mad as hell to find that in the meantime all his temples had been razed. Now, Don Nestor, he grew up here, he knew how things worked. He sat on the crater rim, his feet dangling, and explained. Like how people might go to church on Sunday, but they’d hedge their bets, show respect to what was here first. When they planted crops, they’d turn towards the mountain, and say please silently, and when they harvested, they’d show thanks. But to the gringo priests they’d pretend that the dollies made outta chillis and corn husks were kid stuff. Nobody would say why the dolls get thrown into the harvest bonfire.”
“Displaced sacrifice,” I said.
“Whatever you call it. Don Nestor, he cut a deal. You’re feeling a bit neglected, hey? How about we throw a volcano party each year when the chillis get harvested? I’ll host it, to keep the monsignor happy, but everyone will know who’s really being honoured.”
Outside firecrackers popped, the partygoers broke into raucous song.
“And in return you lay off the fire from above, for your people, who show you the proper respect.”
“And what about other people?”
He grunted, gunned the motor, which backfired in response.
“You’ll have to cut your own deals.”
I hedge my bets, too. Once I’d dumped my baggage at the hotel, I took an everyday, nonvolcanological camera and went out to the street party again. If nothing happened with the volcano, I had just the footage to chilli-spice up Veitch’s cooking program, or even a travel show. It was two AM by the time I hit my pillow, totally wrecked. I made a very late entry to breakfast, when most of the conference attendees were heading to the day’s papers. Still, I managed a few greetings and had pressed into my hand the latest issue of a volcanological journal. I flicked through it, while breakfasting, then became riveted by the lead article.
“It’s Professor Barrett’s keynote address from yesterday, mostly,” said a lugubrious voice.
I looked up to behold Zapata, to a T, complete with drooping mustaches. The name tag said: GONZALES. He was director of the Observatorio Volcanológico, a local boy who had been studying the volcano most of his life. The conference had been his idea—he headed the organising committee. Then Joe Boy had decided to take it over. Which meant Joe Boy got the glory, Gonzales got a heap of extra work.
We swapped pleasantries, how nice the conference could accommodate me at such short notice, even without space on the program to show my films, yes, such a pity, some other time, maybe. But his mind was not on chat, from the way his gaze kept returning to the article, which was practically burning a hole in the tablecloth beside my orange juice.
“It’s fighting words,” I said. The usual stuff, but positively incendiary, this time.
He frowned. “He and Professor Sigurrson, pistols at dawn…”
“On top of some volcano.”
An almost-smile, interrupted by several flunkies dashing in with a computer printout. Whatever it was, they didn’t want me to know, for they hurriedly withdrew. I finished my breakfast, studied the conference program. Tomorrow was excursion day, including a field trip to the volcano; today was speakers and the conference dinner. Currently Ivan the Incomprehensible was speaking on the chemistry of cooling magma. About as interesting as watching…magma cool, I decided. I went back to my room, checked Spider’s Chillipepper file against last night’s information. Yes, there had been an eruption in 1872, smallish in volcanological terms, but which had nonetheless sent a nuée ardente shooting down the mountainside for several kilometres. No casualties, but clearly enough for Don Nestor to gird his loins and ascend the volcano.
My SMS chimed, again Spider:
LPE.
Oh! I thought, suddenly realising what the huddle had been over the printout. Had I looked over Gonzales’s shoulder, I would have seen an image like a fringed caterpillar, a seismic signal. They were called Long Period Events, and measured the vibrations caused by superheated steam within an otherwise peaceful volcano. Spider had published about them lately, articles studded with ornate equations. If he was right, then Chillipepper was suddenly going to get much more interesting.
I eyed the doll, now hanging from my mirror, then threw the window curtains open. Revealed was my quarry, a brooding bulk, dominating the landscape as volcanoes inimitably do. I sat back on the bed, gazing at it. A familiar adrenaline surge began to build in me, which—if I intellectualize it—is the closest I get to sex.
Chillipepper here I come!
Downstairs, it was morning teatime. I went looking for Larissa but found her conversing with Joe Boy.
“Bet! Goodtaseeya!” He was a man who went in for bear hugs, unfortunately. As I disengaged, I noticed that his beard had whitened and his big mitts were liver-spotted. “Bet, loved your work on Redoubt”—an Alaskan volcano overlooking a major oil field, which had meant lots of lovely oil money. “Any more on Danger Man?”
Larissa was standing to one side, just looking at me and smiling. Somehow I had to get Joe Boy to piss off. So I opened my mouth and said the very thing to piss him completely.
“Well, no, I got an approach from a European network for a documentary on Professor Sigurrson. The Stephen Hawking factor, you know.”
For a moment I thought he was going to explode.
“Sigurrson! When he’s trying his best to ruin this conference!”
He stormed off towards a group of what, to judge from the concerned, adoring glances, were his grad students.
“Ruin?” I said to Larissa.
“Professor Sigurrson sent out—what do Americans call it on police shows? An APB. Watch out for perp, one stratovolcano, ten thousand feet tall, armed with explosives and dangerous.”
I glanced around, looking for Gonzales, who was bailed up in a corner, pulling at his mustaches and talking glumly into his mobile.
“I was behind him in coffee queue, US Geological Survey rang. Next city council.”
An LPE, if I’d followed Spider’s math correctly, was no joke. Neither was the possibility of having to evacuate a city. In the process a major volcanological conference would be disrupted, in which, I would bet, knowing how Joe Boy operated, substantial US funds had been sunk, with the lure of more in the future. If Gonzales wanted up-to-date instruments for his Observatorio Volcanológico, something no Third World government could easily afford, he couldn’t annoy Joe Boy. And Joe Boy, I thought, recalling the article, had no time for LPEs, preferring magmatic quakes—vibrations you could feel underneath your boots, goddammit, a real man’s seismic shock.
“Field trip’s off?” she queried.
“Over Joe Boy’s dead body.” What, miss an opportunity to show off?
“But Gonzales has say, surely?”
“Not a very loud say. He’ll mumble something like: On your own head be it.”
She shrugged. “We had paper on Chillipepper yesterday, it
’s not Bezymianny. I’m going on field trip.”
“And I am, too, Larissa.”
In the morning, at six AM, packing for the mountain, I sent an SMS to Spider to tell him what I was doing. It was a message that brooked no opposition, he’d know that.
A reply came: REMEMBER WHEN I ASKED YOU WHAT YOU WANTED?
I remembered, from last year, in that curious remote intimacy we’d reached, when I’d asked him if he envied me. What I wanted…I’d thought of the Kraffts, then of volcanologists David Johnston and Harry Glicken riding a helicopter to Mount St. Helens the day before it erupted. They were all dead now, from nuée ardentes: Johnston the day afterwards, at St. Helens, Glicken at Unzen with the Kraffts.
I had told Spider then: I want to take the ultimate volcano photographs, no matter what. I repeated that now, signed off. Dawn was rising over Chillipepper; the mountain—and the field trip—awaited me.
Downstairs, in the lobby, I found a milling crowd of scientists, and Gonzales, shouting to be heard:
“I said, we have a new field-trip option, courtesy of the Provincial Agricultural Co-operative: tasting tour of chilli farms and wineries.”
Clever, I thought. If there was one thing to compete in the macho stakes with volcanoes, it was chillis. I wandered out of the hotel, to find a waiting line of jeeps, and warmed up with a brief recap of my nicotine habit. As I blew smoke rings—top that, volcanoes!—I watched Joe Boy commandeer the newest and biggest jeep. A group formed around him: the co- and junior authors of his incendiary paper, his grad students, Ivan the Incomprehensible and Boris, his twin and much more understandable brother, me and Larissa.
“Don’t we get a guide?” I said.
“I’ve been up the mountain before,” Joe Boy almost snarled, plainly not forgiving me from yesterday.
Russians sit down quietly just before a journey, I knew that from Mir. I check my backpack.
“What’s that?” Larissa asked. We’d been drinking chilli-flavoured vodka last night, which had left her apparently untouched, now she was lurid in magenta and green Gore-Tex.
The Del Rey Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy Page 7