Outpost (11 page)

'Support
us, O Lord, all the long day of this troubled life, until the shadows lengthen
and the evening comes, the busy world is hushed, the fever of life is over and
our work is done. Then, Lord, in your mercy grant us a safe lodging, a holy rest,
and peace at the last; through Christ our Lord. Amen.'

The
crew walked back to the rig. Nobody spoke.

Jane
stood with Punch and looked out to sea.

'I
feel like I'm doing more harm than good,' she said.

'Shall
we go and find your asteroid?'

'Yeah.
Let's get away from this misery for a while.'

Jane
steered the zodiac. Counter-intuitive: turn the outboard left to steer right.

'Keep
us about three hundred metres from shore,' instructed Punch. 'We don't want to
rip the bottom out of the boat.'

They
followed the coastline. They hugged a ridge of lunar rock and black shingle.

A
milky film in the water. Grease ice. The ocean starting to freeze.

Jane
looked back. A rare chance to see the totality of the rig.

The
refinery was constructed around three great distillation tanks, each the size
of a cathedral. The structure was spiked by radio masts and cranes. The
platform floated on four buoyant legs. It was tethered to the seabed by cables
as thick as a redwood tree trunk. It looked like something out of a nightmare:
a squat spider big enough to crush cities. A million tons of steel. Product of
twenty different slipways. Assembled in a deep-water fjord and towed north.

'Terrifying,'
said Jane.

'What
is?'

'It's
one thing to sit with our feet up in the canteen, dreaming up plans to sail
home. It's another thing to see it for real. The ocean. The ice. We wouldn't
last a day.'

'We
have time to prepare,' said Punch. 'Plenty of survival gear aboard Rampart. And
you wouldn't be out here alone. We would have each other. Ghost is a solid guy.
Kind of man you can rely upon in a crisis.' 'Yeah.'

'And
we have you.'

'Sure.
When we run out of food I'll be first in the pot.'

'I
saw a kid on TV a few years back,' said Punch. 'He went hiking in the Rockies.
He got hit by a landslide. He woke up with his arm pinned by a boulder. He lay
there for a couple of days hoping for rescue. Nobody came, so he used his belt
as a tourniquet, then sawed off his arm with a penknife.'

'Good
God.'

'Picked
up his canteen and walked back to civilisation minus an arm.'

'Damn.'

'This
is your moment. You know that, right? I've seen you, since this shit kicked
off. It's like watching someone wake from a long sleep.'

'But
what good is it?' asked Jane, looking out to sea. 'In the face of this. All our
heroism. All our will to live. It's a bad joke.'

Sian
cleared Simon's room in Medical. She gathered up his dog- tags, his signet
ring, his watch. She found a heavily annotated copy of Marcus Aurelius's
Meditations
in his coat pocket. She put it
all in a plastic box and gave it to Nikki.

Nikki
was in the observation bubble staring out to sea.

'Thanks,'
she said, as Sian handed her the box. She tossed it aside without looking at
it.

Nikki
spent the afternoon scanning wavebands.

She
turned up the volume and put her ear to the speaker.

'Are
you sure you heard it?' asked Sian.

'There
was a voice. Male. English. It faded in and out. Has done for days.'

She
turned the dial.

'There.
You hear it?'

'. . . elp . . . ear us?..urgent assis . . !

'Get
your coat. We have to boost the range on this thing.'

Nikki
found a coil of steel cable in the boathouse. She carried it to the upper deck.

'What
do you have in mind?' asked Sian.

'When
I was at university I had a crappy transistor radio on my desk. It had a broken
aerial. If I let the stub of the aerial touch my anglepoise lamp I got a
signal. Maybe we can lengthen the antenna and pull the same trick.'

'Perhaps
we should talk to Ghost. He might be able to help.'

'Girl,
you've got to shake off that passive mindset. We're in deep shit. You can't
constantly rely on Ghost to kiss it all better. You've got to start taking care
of yourself.'

The
short-wave antenna was a scaffold spike four metres tall. Nikki climbed the
spike and lashed the cable to the top. She climbed down. She tied the other end
of the cable to a balloon pod.

'Okay.
Stand back.'

She
pulled the red rip cord. The plastic case split open. Silver balloon fabric
spilled, unravelled and began to inflate. An explosive roar as the helium
canister discharged. The foil swelled and rose. The balloon lifted skyward
taking the cable with it. A silver teardrop shimmering like a globule of
mercury. The cable extended the antenna ten metres.

'Let's
see if that does any good.'

They
returned to the observation bubble and threw their coats over a chair.

'This
is refinery platform Kasker Rampart, can you hear me, over?'

'
Hello? Hello?
'

'This
is Rampart. Go ahead.'

'Thank God. Thank Christ. This is drilling station
Kasker Raven. Hope you're in better shape than us,
Rampart.
We could use your help
.
'

Kalashnikov.
Four rotting cabins facing the sea. A wooden Orthodox church with an onion
dome. Wooden grave markers.

Jane
tethered the boat to the jetty. She climbed ashore. Punch passed her backpacks.

The
cabins had been built by whalers. They had partially collapsed. Rooms choked
with roof beams and snow. The little church was intact. Some of the fittings
were a hundred years old. Rotted pews. A rotted altar.

The
back room. A blubber stove with a cobwebbed flue. A shelf loaded with antique
supplies. Fry's cocoa. Heinz Indian relish. Tins of boiled cabbage.

The
floor was littered with modern camping detritus. Empty stove canisters. Food
wrappers. A ripped sleeping bag.

Jane
found a box. Calorie bars and a couple of cans.

'Eight
years old,' said Jane, checking the expiration date. 'Probably still edible.'

'Bit
of a wasted trip. The place is good for firewood, I suppose.'

'What's
worth more right now, do you think? By weight. Bullion or a packet of peanuts?'

They
stood in the doorway and watched sunset. Mid-afternoon. Eighteen hours of
night.

'By
mid-winter the ocean will be frozen,' said Punch. 'You could walk to the
Canadian mainland. A fifteen-hundred-kilometre hike. Pitch dark and minus
fifty, but if you, me and Sian took the snowmobiles and a sledge loaded with
fuel we could get a hell of a long way before we had to ski.'

'Global
warming. The sea freezes less and less each year. No guarantee we would reach
Canada.'

'Worth
a shot.'

'And
leave everyone else behind?'

'Too
many of us. An entire football team. I doubt it's possible to get us all home,
by land or sea.'

'I
read a lot of travel books before I came here. Fantasised what it would be
like. I read Scott's journal. Those last entries as they froze to death in that
tent. "Had we lived, I should have made a tale to tell of the hardihood,
endurance and courage of my companions which would have stirred the heart of every
Englishman." I got totally caught up in the romance.'

'Scott
was a self-aggrandising dick.'

'That's
my point. Shackleton got his men home. Shipwrecked on an ice floe. Couple of
lifeboats. Bit of food. He got them home. Every single one.'

They
closed the door and used the ripped sleeping bag to plug holes in the frame.

Punch
unfolded a map.

'One
or two research stations on this side of the island. Marine biologists.
Geologists. Most of them like Apex: little more than a couple of tents. Pretty
much all of them will have been evacuated for winter.'

'This
one?'

'McClure.
Seismologists, I think.'

'Walking
distance?'

'Yeah,
what the fuck.'

Jane
unpacked the radio.

'Shore
team to Rampart, do you copy, over?'

She
waited for a reply, but instead heard a strange tocking sound like the crackle
of a Geiger counter.

'Atmospherics?'
suggested Punch.

Jane
re-tuned.

'Shore
team to Rampart.'

'Rampart
here
.' Sian's voice.

'We
made it to Kalashnikov, over.'

'
Tell Punch we miss him. Rawlins is brewing some
atrocity in the kitchen. Regurgitated egg, I think
.'

'That
ticking noise. Can you hear it at your end?'

'It comes and goes. It's not our equipment
.'

'We'll
move on at first light.'

'Did you find anything
?'

Jane
picked up one of the calorie bars and turned it in her hand.

'No.
There's nothing here.'

'You could tow us. Rope your boat to a raft and tow us
.
'

The
guy from Raven sounded tired and desperate.

'A zodiac could make it. It would take a couple of
days, but it could make the trip
.'

Rawlins
thought it over. Nikki sat at the back of the observation bubble and watched
him deliberate.

'No.
Sorry, but no. If you were in my position you'd say the same thing. It would
take more than a couple of days. The motor would burn out. And that little boat
is the only sea-going vessel we have.'

Raven
was a drilling platform seven hundred miles north on the other side of the
Kasker oil field. Seven men running out of fuel. They were crowded in a single
room, wearing survival suits for warmth.

'We can keep the lights on another couple of weeks.
Basic power. After that, we'll freeze for real
.'

'I
can't do it, Ray. I'm responsible for the men on this rig. I can't risk them,
and I can't risk the boat.'

'So you're going to let us die? Is that what you're
going to do? Wash your hands
?'

'You're
not going to die, Ray. Just chill the fuck out. Give me twenty-four hours,
okay? I'll talk to some of the lads. We'll put our heads together. We'll thrash
out a workable plan, all right? Let us think it through.'

Rawlins
signed off. He sat back and rubbed his eyes.

'Must
be tough,' said Sian. 'Being boss in a situation like this.'

'I
nearly threw myself down the stairs yesterday. Stood at the top of the steps
outside my room and leaned forward. Just wanted to break my arm or my ankle or
something. Then someone else would have to take charge.'

'I
can't speak for anyone else,' said Sian, 'but I'm glad you are at the helm.'

'I
haven't got a fucking clue how to help these guys. Better fetch Ghost. Maybe he
can come up with something.'

Ghost
wasn't in the canteen. He wasn't in his room.

Nikki
put on a parka and descended to the pump hall at the bottom of the rig. She
found Ghost rolling an empty oil drum across the floor.

'We
have a contact. Seven guys on a drilling platform north of here.'

'Raven?'

'Yeah.'

'Jesus.
I thought they would be choppered out for winter.' 'Marooned like us. We've
been talking to a guy called Ray.'

'I
know him. I met him.'

'It
doesn't sound good. Very little fuel. They can't hold out much longer. Rawlins
wants you to come up with a rescue plan.'

'Why
me?'

'Because
you've pulled three rotations out here. You understand this environment better
than anyone.'

'Seven
more mouths to feed.'

Nikki
looked around.

'They
say you spend a lot of time down here,' she said.