The War of Immensities (6 page)

“I doubt that.
It has to be in the equipment somewhere,” Felicity knew. “Computers
behave like this. People don’t.”

“As far as we
know.”

“You have a
better idea for me, George?”

“Maybe this
does have something to do with the collective unconscious.”

“Well,”
Felicity smiled. “They’re an unconscious collective, at least. The
rest is psycho-babble, George.”

There was an
annoying young man who wore a black silk shirt, lurid checked
pants, a tweed jacket and dark glasses even indoors. His hair was
all greasy curls and the tatters of a failed beard clung to his
acned chin. He strutted about making demands in his abrasive
English shop-steward accent, pouting with resolution.

“She’s got
commitments, you know. I gotta to know when she’ll be
available.”

“We can’t
possibly know that, Mr. Tierney.”

“I’ve already
cancelled engagements right round the South Island. A lot of bloody
disappointed people. Andromeda Starlight is a big name in show biz,
you know.”

Felicity had
never heard of her. “We just have to wait, Mr. Tierney,” she said
wearily.

“I gotta to
book her in Oz. There’s contracts and all sorts of arrangements.
King’s Cross, Surfers, big time!”

“I’m sure that
when they hear she was blown up by a volcano, they’ll understand,
Mr. Tierney.”

“We really
didn’t need this right now. Her career was peaking. Gold dust is
slippin’ through our fingers here.”

“You must be
patient...”

“But how come
you keep sayin’ there’s nothing wrong with her.”

“Apart from a
lack of consciousness, there isn’t.”

“You must have
some idea. Come on. Give me your best shot.”

“We have no
idea. People have remained in unexplained comatose conditions like
this for all their lives, although not usually. A few hours or days
is much more common. It really is quite unpredictable.”

“How many days,
average? Give me somethin’ to work with.”

“We have no
idea.”

“Can’t you give
her somethin’ to wake her up?”

“No. No such
inducement exists and there would be no moral basis for using it if
it did.”

“But what the
hell is she doing, just lying there!”

“Just lying
there,” Felicity said.

Looking like a
Viking Chieftain who had just wandered in from a distant century,
Harley Thyssen inhabited his office the way a bear inhabits a cave.
The whole place was an abominable mess of books and charts despite
Brenda’s constant efforts to maintain some sort of order.

Of Norwegian
origin, Thyssen was a massive man in all directions with wild red
hair and beard beneath a weather-beaten balding crown. His narrow
eyes looked straight through you. He looked like a man who had
spent most of his life too close to the rim of erupting volcanoes
and had a voice like an earthquake as well. He sat behind his desk
with rounded shoulders and his elbows up and hands placed flat,
like a gorilla poised to spring over the laminate and tear his
visitor limb from limb.

“You look
awful, Jamila,” he said gruffly.

It wasn’t the
lack of welcoming compliment that surprised Jami but the fact that
he noticed her appearance at all.

“I got in late
last night. Had to book into a cheap hotel. I spent the morning
trying to arrange accommodation at one of the colleges.”

“You should
have called,” Thyssen said. “Brenda already arranged a room for you
on the campus. See her on the way out.”

The office
suddenly yawned before her like a trap.

“Thank you,”
she said properly.

Unlike most
student-professor relationships, the longer Jami had known Thyssen
the more she had become intimidated by him. It gave her little
comfort to know that he scared the living daylights out of everyone
else on the campus as well. He was her mentor and intimate
colleague and she was terrified of him.

“I spent thirty
years trying to get into a position to see a mountain blow its top
and never made it,” Thyssen was saying. “You ought to feel
privileged.”

“Perhaps I will
when the jet-lag wears off.”

In fact she was
growing appreciative of her numbed senses. She was preparing
herself for a classic Thyssen roasting from a man who learned
everything he knew from Etna and Stromboli.

“No time for
jet-lag,” Thyssen said, smiling, although his smile was always a
threat. “While you were lounging in the luxury of modern flight, I
was saving your ass.”

“Really?”

“Have a look at
this,” he said, searching under a pile of papers to find his
keyboard. She got up and walked around to his side of the desk to
observe the computer screen.

“I got Pascoe
to model your data from Ruapehu,” he said, thumping keys as if he
was making a stone hammer. “Three simultaneous epicentres, each
6.3.”

“Wow.”

“That’s not
all. We got data in from Auckland and Canberra and Ross Base. Their
seismic readings indicated no preliminary activity whatsoever.”

“I told
you.”

“You telling me
is of no consequence when unsupported by impartial data,” Thyssen
said ruthlessly. This, Jami realised, was another of those Thyssen
near apologies.

“You know I
wouldn’t dare bullshit you, Harley,” she said in triumph.

He ignored
that, searching his desk and coming up with the video remote
control. He virtually shoved her out of the way to move across the
room where they could watch the television, thumping it on as he
walked. He had a tape in and prepared—he had been waiting for her.
“This is edited from various news reports on the general
media.”

A battered
woman appeared, dishevelled and troubled as much by wind as the
microphone poked at her face. “...there was some sort of shock wave
before it happened. I felt it all through my body. It nearly
knocked me off my feet...”

“But the
explosion came after that?” the reporter asked.

“I felt real
crook afterwards...”

The image cut
with a crude edit to a fat little man at a different location.

“It was like a
punch in the guts. I near blacked out. Then, suddenly, there’s this
god-almighty bang and up she went...”

Thyssen pressed
the pause. “We got six more of them on the tape and they all say
the same thing you did.”

“I was
beginning to wonder if I’d got mixed up and imagined it.”

Thyssen
lumbered back to his desk and flopped down.

“Well, armed
with that stuff and with a bit of re-writing, at least your report
will become acceptable upstairs.”

“You want me to
fix it, huh?”

“No, I don’t.
I’ll fix it. I’ll put my name on it—just in case it proves to be
worth a Nobel.”

“Do I get a
mention?”

“The actual
purpose will be to try and screw some funding out of them to
support you while you do the research, so I guess I can’t avoid
mentioning you completely.”

“What
research?”

“You get down
the lab now and you study every eruption in recorded history and
see if there’s any sign of any of these anomalies having happened
before.”

“Oh God, do I
have to?”

“No. But I can
justify using an inexperienced student like you to do the work
while I maintain control of the project. Otherwise, I’d have to
farm it out to a funded research unit and that way we both miss out
on the Nobel.”

“Do you really
think it’s that important?”

“Only if you
can demonstrate that it might happen again and that its effects are
of some importance. So, probably not. And if it is a one off, we’ll
have only wasted money on one low-grade student. The board will
like that argument.”

“What if I
refuse?”

“You can’t.
Anyway, if this does amount to something, it’ll be called The
Shastri Effect. Immortality beckons, child. Get outa here and earn
it.”

“You silly,
silly man, look what you’ve done to yourself,” Judy Carrick was
saying, trying to talk normally to the awful visage of her husband,
the way the nurse had told her to. The skin discolouration was not
as bad is it looked. Quite superficial in fact, the nurse said.
Well, he was getting a little blotchy anyway, with all that
drinking down the footy club. His nose especially. Now his whole
body looked like his nose. She was glad she had left the children
outside as the nurse suggested.

“Brian. It’s
me, Judy. We’ve come all the way from Melbourne. I had to use the
house payments to pay for the airfare but they say there’ll be some
compensation. We had a lovely flight. The kids were so excited.
They’re here with me. They’ve given us a room in the nurses’
quarters and its a bit small but very nice. I’ll bring the kids in
in a minute and they can have a talk to you. Larry’s arranged a
driver for the truck and he says he’s okay, but, well, who knows
what sort of bludger he is and I don’t know how we’re going to make
ends meet. But don’t you worry about that. You just worry about
getting better. Oh look, here comes the doctor now...”

Red with
embarrassment, Judy broke off as the doctor made her way over.
Doctor Felicity Campbell, the name tag said. She was a woman of
about forty with blonde hair above her smiling ruddy face and a
very nice slim figure, just like Judy used to have herself before
Leo came along.

“Hi, Mrs.
Carrick. I’m Doctor Campbell. Are those your littlies out
there?”

“Yes, poor
little darlings. They had a sleep after they got here but it’s very
tiring for them, all that travelling.”

“Yes, of
course. Why don’t you bring them in, Mrs. Carrick?”

“Oh please,
call me Judy. I hardly know who Mrs. Carrick is, when you say it
like that. And I was worried what they’d think, with Brian being in
such a state.”

“Children
adjust to these things better than we adults, as a rule, Judy.”

“I’ll just give
them some idea of what to expect first.”

Judy made her
way out into the corridor and along to the waiting room where a
young nurse had Leo and Sheila under control as much as possible.
Leo was pulling the girl’s pager to bits while Sheila restyled her
hair.

“No, children
leave the nurse alone. Thank you Miss. I hope they weren’t a
bother. Now Leo, put those batteries back. You can’t have them. How
will the lady know when she’s wanted if you nicked her batteries?
There you go.”

The harried
nurse hurried away to other duties. Judy sat the children on seats
and straightened them and sat beside them herself. Felicity
Campbell sat on the other side.

“Now kids, this
is Doctor Campbell. She’s looking after Daddy while he’s here. Say
hello to Dr Campbell.”

“Hello, Doctor
Campbell,” Leo said, extending a hand to be shaken.

“Hello,” said
Sheila, suddenly shy and quiet.

“When can we
see Daddy?” Leo demanded.

“In a minute.
Daddy is asleep, but you can talk to him. We won’t mind if you wake
him. He looks a bit funny. He has this big bruise all over his skin
but don’t be scared because it doesn’t hurt him at all, it just
looks very strange and it will go away soon, okay?”

“Why is he
asleep?” Leo asked.

“Is he very
tired?” Sheila wondered.

“No. He’s just
resting for a while, until he gets better.”

“Can we go
now?” Leo asked.

They each took
a child’s hand and made their way forward. Judy lead them to the
side of the bed. Leo stood on tip toe, but Sheila needed to be
stood on a chair.

“Oh, yuk.”

“Has he been
sunburned, Mummy?” Sheila asked.

“It’s not even
as serious as sunburn, Sheila,” Doctor Campbell said helpfully.

“He ain’t
asleep,” Leo was sure. “He’s just fakin’ it.”

“What makes you
think so, Leo?” the doctor asked carefully.

“He ain’t
snorin’.”

“It’s a special
kind of sleep,” Judy said, trying to hide her chuckling. Dr
Campbell had a hand pressed over her mouth as well.

“We put that
tube in his nose so he wouldn’t snore,” Felicity Campbell lied.

“You can talk
to him,” Judy prompted. “Go on, tell him you’re here.”

“What if he
wakes up?” Sheila whispered.

“We want him to
wake up,” Felicity smiled.

“Well, okay
then,” Leo decided and leaned as close to his father’s ear as the
plastic cocoon would permit.

“Hey Dad! Wake
up!” he bellowed.

“Go back to
bloody bed, son,” Brian Carrick replied.

One hour later,
all hell broke loose in the isolation ward. Joe Solomon started
screaming in agony and with that bells rang all through casualty.
The nurses came rushing with crash carts and after a few desperate
moments, the interns sedated him again.

“What’s going
on?” Lorna Simmons demanded, sitting up on her bed. Beside her,
Chrissie Rice was murmuring and twisting. Brian Carrick, with full
vital signs restored, had already been sedated.

They settled
Lorna and sedated Chrissie, and the panic was over. Felicity
Campbell looked at the astonished face of Shirley Benson and could
only assume a similar expression occupied her own countenance.
Almost instinctively, they both went over to Andromeda Starlight.
Felicity determined a flicker from the eyes and Shirley took the
patient’s hand and spoke in a loud voice.

“Andromeda. If
you can hear me, squeeze my hand!”

“Go away,
Honey. I’m tired. Let me sleep,” Andromeda Starlight murmured.

It remained
only to check on Kevin Wagner, the American, and Felicity shone a
light in his eye. It flickered.

“Better get a
sedative course running right away.”

Felicity stood
in the centre of the room and gazed around. A nurse was just about
to start removing the electrodes from Lorna Simmons’ forehead.

“Wait a minute
nurse,” she called, remembering.