The War of Immensities (76 page)

Brian Carrick
flew from Auckland to Melbourne, and was sitting on a bus stop
bench outside the school that his kids attended when the panicky
call from Lorna told him the news of Harley’s collapse. He promised
to fly immediately back to Hawaii, and almost rushed straight to
the airport, but then he knew he had to continue here first.

Somehow, the
sudden awareness of Harley Thyssen’s human vulnerability reminded
him of his own.

The kids
emerged and spied him immediately and made quite a fuss and he took
their tiny hands and started to walk, almost from instinct.

“You comin’
home soon daddy?” Leo asked him.

It had only
been eighteen months but the boy had doubled in size.

“Soon, maybe.
If your mum says its okay.”

“She’s lonely,”
Sheila said empathically.

“Doesn’t Uncle
Larry look after you anymore?”

“He comes round
sometimes, when somethin’ needs fixin’,” Leo said diffidently.

“They usta yell
at each other all the time,” Sheila added helpfully.

They were so
busy telling him all the gossip from school and the neighbourhood
that they hardly noticed they had reached the house. Judy stood
there. She seemed younger somehow. It looked like she had done
something with her hair.

“Mummy, mummy,
look who we found?” Sheila cried excitedly.

“He was hangin’
around outside school,” Leo assured her.

Judy ordered
them inside but she stayed.

“You in town
long, Brian?” she asked as if she was interested.

“I’m flying out
tonight. But I’ll be back,” he said uncertainly. He wasn’t at all
sure why he was there. When the divorce proceedings had become hung
up due to his continual absence, Judy had allowed it all to slip
sideways.

“Why don’t you
stay for dinner,” she said. It wasn’t a question.

“That’d be
fine.”

And there it
was. So simply done. The accomplishment of something that a virtual
army of social workers, psychologists, psychiatrists, marriage
counsellors, friends, relatives and legal representatives had
comprehensively failed to achieve for eighteen months.

Judy had only
one question and she asked it as soon as dinner was done and the
kids put to bed. “Do you think things can be put back they way they
were, Brian?”

“Are you
talking about the planet or us?”

“Both really,
but...”

“It’s almost
over, darl,” he said. “It will go one way or the other. For me, for
us and for everyone. Maybe it will be okay—there is a chance I
think. But after that, it will never be the same.”

“I was really
referring to us.”

“There’s a lot
to put behind us.”

“Larry is just
a friend,” Judy said determinedly. “I was just trying to make you
jealous. You’re the only man I ever loved. I just don’t have the
sense to love anyone else.”

“I’ve had my
dalliances too. But you’re the only woman I know who can put up
with me for more than an hour.”

“Well, that’s
settled then. The kids will be thrilled.”

The great trek
of Andromeda’s legions across the breadth of The Congo Republic was
ended, and they stopped at Bususulu, where Thyssen’s instructions
ran out. Before them lay the great rivers that must now be crossed,
the Maringa at their feet, the Lulonga further on, and a few miles
beyond that, the giant of which those were mere tributaries—the
Congo.

Here the road
petered out in the marshy land surrounding the rivers. All about
the terrain was slightly undulating and covered with dense tropical
vegetation. The pilgrims were strung out for miles back along the
road, which you couldn’t leave at any point. And now there was
nowhere to go on to either.

“I’m organising
boats,” Captain Maynard said, leaning over the map on the bonnet of
his land rover. “But really, we have to fly the next leg.”

“Next leg?”
Andromeda asked.

“The focal
point is here, just a little way north west of Lake Chad.”

“They said
Hawaii…”

“Yeah. We miss
that one, but the direction is still okay for us. Slightly north of
west.”

“Show me,”
Andromeda asked, leaning over his shoulder.

Maynard laid
the ruler to the map and positioned it carefully from their present
location to the Hawaiian Islands. Presently, they were positioned
just two degrees above the Equator, and Hawaii was twenty degrees
and half the world away. It was only slightly shorter via the
Atlantic and Americas than it was back over Asia and the
Pacific.

“Straight over
Sierra Leone,” Andromeda said quietly.

Maynard needed
to peer at the map to understand what she meant. Indeed his ruler
passed directly over that tiny state of the extreme west coast of
Africa.

“So?”

“Oh nothing,”
Andromeda said awkwardly, and then backed off. “You were
saying.”

“Well, that’s
just the direction for the next few days and it will take us that
long to get these people across the rivers.”

“And then?”

“There’s a good
airstrip at Mbandaka. Big enough for the C-130s. So we can float
the whole shebang downriver and offload them there.”

“But that’s on
this side of the Congo.”

“Yes. Then we
fly them.”

“With two
planes?”

“The US Air
force is on the way with more. As many as we need. And the
destination is N’guigmi, in Niger, near Lake Chad.”

Andromeda
considered it grimly. “It sounds very complicated, Captain.”

“Best we can
do.”

“Well, we have
to get out of this jungle.” And then she trailed a casual finger
across the map. “What’s the terrain like through here.”

“Cameroons?
Nigeria? Rough. Big mountains. Big jungle. No roads. Hopeless. But
that isn’t where we’re going anyway… Why do you ask?”

“Sierra Leone’s
that way.”

“Sierra
Leone?”

“Land of my
fathers, Captain.”

“I thought you
were Jamaican.”

“All black
Jamaicans came from Africa somewhere, Captain, as slaves under the
British. My ancestors came from Sierra Leone.”

“I see.”

“Do you?”

“You want to go
there?”

“It is the way
I’m going… The way I’ve been leading these people all along.”

“But you were
following Professor Thyssen’s plan.”

“His plan has
run out.”

“No. We have
new information. Lake Chad…”

“Provided by
the American government.”

“But they got
it from Thyssen…”

“We can’t be
sure of that. And Harley is hardly in any condition to help us now,
even if he is still alive as they say.”

“You don’t
believe it.”

“Black people
have a funny way of distrusting the American government, Captain.
With all due respect to yourself.”

“So you think
there might be something wrong with the information.”

“Harley always
told me, personally, which way to go. I distrust any other
source.”

“I’m sure.
Look, why not contact Lorna, or Wagner…”

“With Harley
out of the game, we don’t know whose instructions they are
following.”

“Are you sure
you aren’t just a wee mite paranoid, ma’am?” Maynard said, slowly
beginning to realise that she was serious.

“I’m surprised,
after the way they’ve treated you, Captain, that you aren’t.”

“But… but… if
you’re not going follow this plan, what are you going to do?”

“I think I
should follow my instincts.”

“And what do
your instincts say?”

“Land of my
fathers, Captain.”

They had
offered her a room but she remained by the bedside, dozing from
time to time. Beside her a figure barely recognisable as Harley lay
with a tube stuck up his nose and the only sign of life the beeping
lines of luminescence charting his vital signs across the monitor
screen.

Lorna stirred.
Her eyes had sunk back into their hollows and showed black rings
about them. She looked pale and exhausted. She saw Brian standing
in front her without realising he had entered and hugged him for a
long time and then told him of the circumstances.

The heart
attack was survivable, but there was a lot more wrong with him than
that. It was as if every part of him had been hanging on grimly and
now that one organ failed, the rest went with it. The nurses were
silent and did their work reverently, the doctors merely nodded and
kept their distance.

Even now, as
the patient slowly began to regain consciousness, there was no
excitement or anticipation. “It’s all up to his fighting spirit
now,” the ward doctor had told Lorna when she had made a scene and
demanded a response.

“I’ve seen this
before,” the Head Nurse murmured. “The only reason he’s hanging on
is because he refuses to die.”

Lorna had
remained at the bedside throughout the entire week. Her skin was as
grey as Harley’s, her hair dishevelled, her clothes unchanged for
days. She had spilled small darts of food down the front of herself
and didn’t care. She had vomited everything she tried to consume.
The tranquillisers the nurses had offered had given her only the
minimum of sleep. The whites of her eyes were red, her lips were
forced into a hard blue line.

“He can’t die
like this,” Lorna said in a broken murmur. “Not now. Not after all
he’s done.”

She sat by the
bed, a hunched pathetic figure, and Brian advanced, hunting words
that might help when no help was possible.

“Why is he
hanging on like this, Brian?” she asked him with calm ruthlessness.
“His job is done. He has no life. But he’s hanging on.”

“I don’t know,”
he said distractedly. ““Maybe it’s because of you.”

She looked up
then, managed a smile and closed her hand over his.

“They’re
evacuating the hospital,” she said grimly. “But he’s too ill to
move. This place is going to be blown to hell and we can’t get him
out.”

“Maybe he’s
trying to be ironic,” Brian said.

They weren’t
really making much of an effort to evacuate the Hawaiian islands.
People there knew how to live with volcanoes. The epicentre would
be far to the north in the Pacific and every caldera could be
expected to erupt at maximum force, but the locals knew how to stay
away from them. Tidal waves would inundate the islands but most of
the population knew to move to the southern areas and high ground
where they would be safe. The buildings were designed to withstand
earthquakes. All this Lorna knew, based on the idea that Harley’s
corrected system predicted accurately.

But if the
people were hard to move, there was also only a token effort on the
part of the government to move them. The entire island group would
fall within the Zone and they would add to the numbers of sleepers,
ready for the counter attack in Africa next month.

She tried to
explain all these things to Brian, but he already knew. And why
not, she reasoned. It was probably he who held the clearest picture
of these things in his mind. They both could see that the President
had meant what he said when he declared they would go with the
Thyssen plan. Hawaii would be the dress rehearsal for the final
battle.

Glen Palenski
had prepared himself well. He had diagrams, videos, overheads, the
works. He needed to get it right. His audience was the President,
the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the heads of Congress and the Senate,
the CIA chief, NCA and all those other agencies. And he had ten
eminent geologists and astronomers to back him up, seated in a row
like targets in a shooting gallery, off to right of stage.

But it was
Glen’s show, and he would introduce the argument, and then they
would debate it. Hardly any of them agreed on any part of it,
except on this one point, the one that he was about to make.

“Gentlemen,
there is little doubt now that useless the circumstances change
dramatically, our planet will be destroyed, and it will happen
within a few months. Professor Thyssen offers us a possible
solution—no one else does. Therefore the biggest problem that we
have is what happens if Thyssen is right. If he is wrong, we are
making a great effort for little or no gain, but if he is right,
the consequences will be enormous.

“If he is
right, several millions of pilgrims will be gathered on the plain
near Lake Chad, at this location here. Already, an airstrip is
under construction to receive them, on the assumption that Hawaii
comes off as Thyssen predicted and we can then assume that his Lake
Chad prediction is also right.

“If Thyssen is
right, the effect of the presence of these pilgrims will diminish,
perhaps even destroy, the singularity. Again, the magnitude and
position of the Hawaiian outcome will show us this. If the
deflection is as Thyssen has calculated, then the focal point will
be here, 270 kilometres northwest of the large island. If the
diminishment of the effect is correct, then the impact will be
lower on the scale than Iran, and perhaps even than Java.

“In each
instance, the scale was increased, 9.6 in California, 10.1 in Java,
10.6 in Iran. But Brazil was only 8.9, and Thyssen proposes that
the diminishment was the effect of the presence of the
pilgrims.

“Professor
Jordan, however, differs and will tell you that it is because the
singularity itself is decaying. If so, Hawaii will be less than
8.9. If Thyssen is right, then since there will be no pilgrims
present this time, it will increase again, to about 9.5.

“So what of
Africa. If Thyssen is wrong, we will have expended a lot of time
and energy and money for no gain except perhaps further knowledge.
But if he is right, then at Lake Chad we will find all of the
pilgrims freed of the Shastri Effect, and the impact will have been
further diminished. Perhaps it will be deflected, but if so it will
be far smaller. It may even be completely destroyed.