The War of Immensities (39 page)

“Are you sure
it will blow?” Felicity asked.

“Of all the
mountains in the affected zone, it is the most likely. It is the
most unstable structure of all of them. That pinnacle is really
just a volcanic plug, and when the pressure is on, it’ll pop.”

It was
Felicity’s turn to try a bad French accent. “And if it pops, the
champagne flows, as one French Administrator put it to me.”

“And I shall be
there to drink it,” Jami said, again raising her glass in a
toast.

Felicity
clinked her dubiously. “How bad will it be, Jami?”

“Hard to say,”
Jami said grimly. “But that magma will have to come to the surface
and it will be moving one hell of a lot of rock to do so. If it
gives easily, there will probably only be minor earthquake damage
and landslides. But if it resists and holds for a time, it’ll go
with a hell of a bang, and all the rock you see there will go up in
the air and come down on Papeete and all the surrounding terrain.
That will be terrible.”

“Fools.”

“I hate talking
like this,” Jami said, feeling again that sadness well within her.
“You know, there was a time when I wished for this. I got sick of
all those remote locations and wanted it to happen somewhere
civilised, somewhere exotic. Well, I got my wish in Italy and I’ll
get it again tomorrow evening. I feel so awful about it.”

Felicity
reached and patted the back of Jami’s hand. “Jami, you can’t hold
yourself responsible.”

But she did.
She was. “Why not? It carries my name. These disasters are the way
I’ll always be remembered.”

“These are
forces beyond your control. Beyond any control.”

“Still,
sometimes I think it’s me doing it.”

“We all feel
like that. Everyone does. If I get out of bed on the other side, or
avoid black cats, or say my prayers, maybe it won’t happen. Foolish
superstitions, Jami.”

Jami nodded.
Even she thought she was becoming too maudlin over this. “Still,
like you say, everyone feels it. It’s just I feel it a little bit
more than most.”

“No. You feel
it exactly the same as everyone else. It’s just human nature.
Whatever is the matter with you?”

“Are you asking
as a doctor?”

“No. As a
friend.”

“There’s
nothing wrong with me.”

“Except a
sudden strange recklessness.”

“It’s what
Harley would do.”

“Most people
would think that a poor example to follow.”

Jami offered
her a smile of encouragement, as if it was Felicity and not herself
that was taking the risks. “It’ll be safe tomorrow, really. I know
the risks.”

“Are you sure
it’s not a death wish?”

“Of course not.
I’m just a bit depressed, that’s all. I’m not planning to commit
suicide.”

Felicity looked
at her as if she was a specimen under a microscope.

“But you are
suffering depression.”

“It’s just
marginal.”

“Which is not a
good time to be judging risks.”

“I know what
I’m doing, Fee. Volcanoes I understand. It’s men that fuck me
up.”

“Oh I see.
Men.”

“Yes, it’s just
men. You know?”

“Only too well.
I could give you something.”

“I should
think, Fee, that the exhilaration of actually seeing a mountain
erupt will be all the tonic I need.”

“Yes, that’s
it. Stick to mountains. Forget about men.”

They grabbed
the last few hours of sleep that they would get for some time, and
then as the sun descended toward the Pacific, they shared a taxi to
the airport and flew their separate ways. Felicity flew in the
Orion with a team of analysts to be ready to fly immediately to
wherever new sleepers might be found. None were expected, since the
effected area would be entirely in the middle of the Pacific Ocean,
but still they wished to be sure, just in case there was an error
and one of the islands might be engulfed.

Jami flew with
Pierre Duclos, in circles around the towering peak of Orohena.

“The sunset is
very beautiful from up here,” Pierre suggested.

But Jami didn’t
answer and didn’t look at the sunset.

“I know what
you are looking for,” Pierre said over the intercom—it was a twin
engine plane with a sealed cabin but it was still rather noisy and
rattled rather more than Jami was happy with. “You are one of those
fools who think Orohena will become a volcano tonight.”

“It will,” Jami
said sharply. “And I am the very fool who said it would.”

“This is
nonsense. It has been extinct for thousands of years.”

“Until
tonight.”

“Look for
yourself. Extinct. Quiet. No earthquakes. Nothing.”

“Expert on
volcanoes, are you?”

“Enough to know
there would be some fore-warning.”

“So you really
don’t think it will erupt?”

“If I did, we
would be flying out to sea, not around and around with the trees
dusting our bottom.”

“There’ll be
more than trees dusting our respective bottoms in a moment.”

“You know, mon
cherie. You begin to frighten me.”

She wasn’t
frightened herself. She was exhilarated. As they flew, she operated
a video camera but that she pointed only vaguely in the right
directions. She didn’t want to see it through a viewfinder. She
wanted to see with her own eyes. She could use the camera to zoom
in on relative spots. Still she kept it running, just in case it
might pick up something she was missing.

Ten remote
automatic cameras on the ground were also recording the scene,
spaced equally all around the island, as they were on several other
nearby volcanic islands, and in the Cook Islands too. Never had
there been such a preparedness for an eruption, but this time she
had the hottest seat in town.

Around they
went again as the sun crept nearer the horizon. It was twenty-one
minutes before official sunset and the light was clear and nothing
was happening. Or so it seemed. Then there was the sudden shock
ripping through her body, the moment of nausea that was all so
familiar and she knew it was about to happen. Her eyes locked on
the mountain, straining for signs.

For it took
Jami a moment to realise that there was something going on, and
then even longer to grasp what it was. At first there was dust
kicking up here and there in the forest below. Earth tremors
causing landslides? she wondered. Below the cliffs at the foot of
the peak, the trees of the forest on the gentler slopes seemed to
be shrinking. Startled flocks of birds flew everywhere.

Trees can’t
shrink, Jami told herself. She focused with the zoom to get a
better idea. Trees fall, they don’t shrink...

There were some
trees that toppled now, but apart from them, the whole forest
seemed to be descending into the ground. Then she realised she was
perceiving it the wrong way around. The forest on the slopes was
staying where it was—it was the cliffs that were rising out of the
ground!

She looked at
several places at once. Everywhere, the volcanic rock of the steep
cliff faces were rising, dragging themselves out of the ground as
if by the roots. She could even see, in places, a line of darker
rock appearing above the tree line as stone previously underground
was exposed to the daylight. She saw it now—the whole upper
pinnacle of the mountain was rising upward.

“Merde!” Pierre
said.

Jami grabbed
his arm as he tried to move the rudder. “Don’t go yet. It’s still
safe.”

Pierre could
hardly react. He was staring and blank astonishment at the
impossible.

Jami knew what
was happening. The pinnacle, all of it, was a giant volcanic plug
and now the pressures below were forcing it out, indeed exactly
like a cork out of a bottle. Clouds of dust were rising everywhere,
and soon her view would be obliterated. She wanted to hang on these
last few seconds, to see it all. And even as she thought that, the
plug began to break up, with giant cracks opening and flame and
smoke bursting through. And then the whole top of the mountain was
lost in smoke and the cloud rushed toward them.

“We can go
now,” she told Pierre.

But the pilot
was in a paralysis of terror and she needed to belt him about the
head. He nearly vomited, wide-eyed and gagging convulsively.

Jami jerked the
rudder to swing them away from the blast and then Pierre had it. He
opened the throttles and dived low and away they went, with what
sounded like rain beginning to pelt on the skin of the plane.

Stones, Jami
knew, and then rocks.

There were
several severe crashes as boulders bounced off them but somehow
they remained airborne. Pierre, a great pilot after all, dived for
speed and then swooped upward to get above the igneous hailstorm.
The plane bumped and jolted wildly and the windscreen was awash
with mud, blinding them. But Pierre was climbing and knew which way
out to sea was—he didn’t need any visibility.

“Stupid bitch,”
he was shouting in English. “Stupid stupid bitch.”

He seemed to be
addressing this to the aeroplane, but Jami supposed that it was
more likely her. She didn’t care. Long before they had escaped the
danger zone, scurrying ahead of a great wall of fire, she flopped
back in her seat with a huge smile.

“Wow,” she
cried. “That was fantastic.”

Far out to sea,
the shockwave hit the Orion as a severe bump. The technicians were
all watching their instruments and only Felicity, looking out a
side window, saw the huge cloud rise above the horizon. It was, she
observed, exactly like a nuclear mushroom cloud, soaring upward,
illuminated from beneath by fire and throughout by bolts of
lightning. The technicians babbled jargon, only a little of which
she understood. She didn’t ask for explanations—she would get all
the details she wanted later. For the moment, she picked up what
she could from what had become a cacophony of voices and whirring
engines and beepers.

Five volcanoes
had erupted—three in the Society Islands and two in the Cook
Islands, all exactly as predicted. 7.8 on the scale. The epicentre
was far from any island but they were checking thirty kilometres
outward from the centre for signs of habitable places.

“Shit!” someone
shouted. “There’s a ship. There’s a fucking ship, ten klicks from
the epicentre.”

That, Felicity
knew, was her own cue. She undid her seat belt and moved over to
the operator who had spoken, leaning over his shoulder to look at
the radar screen before him. She could plainly see the ship within
the sweep.

“Any idea
what?”

“Looks like a
destroyer. Both the Americans and French have warships in the
area.”

“Yes, I know,”
Felicity said. You couldn’t blame them for wanting to gather their
own data, but at what cost? She felt the Orion banking steadily.
She picked up a headset and spoke to Captain Taylor, the pilot.

“I assume we
are going to overfly that ship.”

“Yes,” Taylor
answered. “We’re in contact with Fleet Task Force Command right
now.”

“Hard to make
out,” the radio operator reported. “The Yanks seem to have lost
contact with one of their ships. USS Barton. Ahh, they’re calling
us.” There was a pause. And then. “They admit loss of contact. They
want to know if its safe to approach her.”

“Tell them,
yes,” Felicity said automatically. “There are no contaminants
involved here. From a medical point of view, they can approach the
ship, and board it, safely. They can expect to find everyone in a
state of unconsciousness, from which they’ll recover in eight
days.”

The radio
operator gazed at her quizzically. “Do you really want to transmit
that?”

“Yes I do.”

Within minutes
they located the USS Barton, looking remarkably awkward and
cumbersome despite its trim lines as it rolled with the turbulent
sea. The violence of the sea itself seemed incongruous, under the
gentle yellow glow of a twilight suddenly extended. Three tidal
waves, of increasing size, had departed the area that they knew of,
to batter the coastal communities all the way around the Pacific
rim. The waves crashed over Barton’s decks and she bobbed about
like a cork in a stream. A French frigate, they had been assured,
was on the way to take her in tow.

“To where?”
Felicity demanded.

“Papeete.”

“Is there a
dock left to tow her to?”

“Early reports
suggest only superficial damage there.”

Felicity
nodded, moving in the cramped thundering confines of the cluttered
tunnel that was the interior of the Orion. Everything was
illuminated only by the monitor screens and dial lights. She pulled
off the domed helmet they had given her and extracted with
considerable effort, a mobile telephone from her pocket and punched
out a number. An excited voice answered.

“Jami. Are you
okay?”

“Wow, Felicity,
you should have seen it.”

“I’m rather
glad I didn’t, kiddo. How are things there?”

“Orohena blew
all right, but it all went straight up—the entire top of the
mountain. It rained boulders for a while. Hailstones the size of
television sets. They’d hit and bounce. I saw one go straight
through the roof of a house, out the front door and into the house
across the road. I guess there’s a lot of people killed or injured,
but the town is still standing and its nowhere near as bad as we
feared.”

“Is it possible
for a ship to dock in the harbour?”

“Oh yes. And
the runway at the airport is still okay. Everything is working
here, more or less. A few fires. Practically no panic. Mostly there
are people all around the island standing and watching the
show.”

“As long as
you’re okay.”

“I’m fine. What
happened at your end?”

“We have a ship
load of sleepers, compliments of the US Navy.”