‘Press to talk. Release to listen.’
‘Mayday, mayday. This is Con Amalgam refinery Kasker Rampart hailing any vessel, over.’
No response.
‘Mayday, mayday. This is refinery platform Kasker Rampart requesting urgent assistance, over.’
No response.
‘Mayday, mayday. This is Kasker Rampart broadcasting to the Arctic rim, is anyone out there, over?’
No sound but the static hiss of a dead channel.
Fragile
The radar in Rawlins’s office sounded a collision alarm. Iceberg warning. His desk screen showed a massive object closing in, moving slow.
They watched from the observation bubble. A mountain of ice passing five kilometres distant. A table-berg, a colossal chunk of polar shelf. Ridges and canyons. Blue ice marbled with sediment. A strange hellworld.
‘I walked on a berg once,’ said Rawlins. ‘They fizz and crackle. Trapped air. Sounds like a bonfire.’
‘Some big waves down there,’ said Jane.
Heavy swells broke against the ice cliffs. Spume and spray.
‘Yeah,’ said Rawlins. ‘Wind speed is way up. There’s another storm coming. Line squalls. One cyclone after another until spring.’
‘Mayday, mayday. This is Con Amalgam refinery Kasker Rampart hailing any vessel, over.’
Two a.m. Jane’s turn at the microphone.
‘Mayday, mayday. This is Kasker Rampart broadcasting to the Arctic rim. Do you copy, over?’
Sian unscrewed her Thermos and refilled their cups.
‘We’re alone out here,’ said Sian.
‘I don’t even want to think about it.’
The upper deck of the rig was floodlit. A storm lashed the refinery. A blizzard wind scoured girders and gantries. The girls watched the swarming ice particles from the eerie silence of their Plexiglas bubble.
Sian put her hand to the window. A thin film of plastic separating her from the lethal hurricane outside. She felt the warm up-draught of the heating vent between her feet and was acutely aware of the refinery’s life support systems, the elaborate machinery keeping them alive minute by minute in this implacably hostile environment.
‘Mayday, mayday. This is Kasker Rampart. Can anyone hear me, over?’
‘How long until the sun sets for good?’ asked Sian.
‘Three weeks.’
‘Jesus.’
‘Mayday, mayday. This is Con Amalgam refinery Kasker Rampart requesting urgent assistance, over.’
‘Thank God, Rampart. This is research base Apex One. It’s wonderful to hear your voice.’
Rawlins swept his desk clear and unrolled a map of Franz Josef Land. He pegged the map open with a stapler, a hole-punch and a couple of mugs.
‘They are here,’ said Jane. ‘Indigo Bay. Some kind of botanical research project. Not much of a base. Two guys and a girl. A couple of tents. They ran out of food days ago.’
‘Poor bastards.’
‘Imagine it. Out there in the middle of this storm. Huddled in a fucked-up Jamesway. I’m amazed they are still alive.’
‘Indigo Bay,’ said Rawlins. ‘Nearly fifty kilometres. That’s a long way to hike.’
‘They’ve got a rubber dinghy. No outboard. Otherwise they use skis.’
‘Then they’re truly fucked.’
‘We have to help. We can’t abandon them.’
‘I wanted to raise a rescue ship, not bring extra mouths to feed. So yeah, I must admit, I’m reluctant to risk men and equipment for no real benefit.’
‘That cuts both ways. Why should anyone answer our call? Why should anyone pick us up, help us home? We have nothing to offer. We’re just a bunch more problems.’
‘If anyone is going to fetch these guys it will be Ghost. Rajesh Ghosh. Our resident fixer. It’s down to him.’
Rawlins led Jane to the pump hall. The hall was a vast, poorly lit chamber on the lowest level of the rig. The oil-streaked walls were ribbed with girders and studded with pressure valves, stopcocks and instrumentation.
‘Is this the pipe?’ asked Jane, walking the circumference of a huge steel column that disappeared into the floor. ‘The main oil line?’
‘Yeah, this is MOLL’ He slapped the metal. ‘It’s retracted from the seabed right now, but yeah, that’s the umbilicus. When this facility is fully on-stream it can suck nearly a million barrels a day of heavy crude out of the ground. The entire Kasker field siphoned into these tanks. Super-grade. Liquid bullion.’
Jane checked her watch. ‘It’s three in the morning.’
‘He doesn’t keep office hours.’
They followed the sticky-sweet smell of cannabis to a bivouac in the corner shadows of the pump room. A camp stove. A pile of books. A guitar.
Ghost lay on a bunk, eyes closed. He was Sikh. He had a turban and a heavy beard.
Rawlins kicked the bunk. Ghost sat up and took off his headphones. Jane caught a brief snatch of Sisters of Mercy.
‘We have a job for you,’ said Rawlins.
They studied the map.
‘It’s too far.’
‘We could use snowmobiles,’ said Rawlins. ‘We could cover a lot of ground, if the weather breaks.’
‘Until you reach your first crevasse and then you have to park and walk. A few weeks ago it wouldn’t have been a problem. But we’re down to a couple of hours’ daylight and it’s minus fifty out there. Normal circumstances, I wouldn’t consider leaving the rig. Shit. The sea is so rough we couldn’t even reach the island right now.’
‘We must do something,’ said Jane. ‘I’m not going to sit by that radio night after night and listen to those poor sods freeze to death.’
‘Okay,’ said Ghost. ‘Here’s the deal. We’ll meet them halfway. There’s a log cabin at Angakut. Built by whalers. Empty, but good wind shelter. If they can make it that far, we’ll fetch them home. I’ll go out myself, when the storm breaks.’
‘Angakut?’
‘It’s at the base of a mountain. You can see it for miles.’
‘All right.’
‘And you better tell them to get going, because the weather is going to get worse before it gets better.’
Rawlins summoned the crew to the canteen.
Most channels were dead. BBC News no longer chronicled carnage. They had lost contact with their outside broadcast units. Instead they re-ran communion from Canterbury Cathedral.
‘The BBC has gone religious,’ said Rawlins. ‘Not a good sign, I think you’ll agree. We’re doing everything we can to get off this platform. The girls are broadcasting night and day. Sooner or later, someone will respond. But it’s time to admit we might be stuck here for winter. Maybe that’s no bad thing. Looks like all hell has broken loose back home. So if we are going to make it through the next few months we need to get organised. I know you folks like your privacy, but we can’t heat and light the whole refinery. Everyone must move into this block by tomorrow night. We’ll live in these few rooms. The rest of the rig can freeze.’
‘I want a sea view,’ said Nail.
‘Flip a coin. Arm wrestle. I don’t give a damn. Just get it done.’
Jane joined Ghost in the canteen. They sat by the window. They sipped coffee and watched the storm.
‘I didn’t know we had snowmobiles,’ said Jane.
‘Two of them. Part of a cache of stuff on the island. There’s an old bunker near the shore. Not much in it. Couple of Yamahas. Some fuel.’
‘So we must have a boat to get ashore.’
Ghost smiled. ‘Clever. Trying to formulate an escape plan, yeah? Well, that’s the big question. What if nobody comes for us? Worst-case scenario: how do we make our own way home?’
Jane liked Ghost. She wanted his approval. She knew full well she was emotionally immature, prone to infatuation. She had to guard against it. Avoid making a fool of herself.