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Chapter 14
Hatch throttled down the diesels of the Plain Jane, then dropped anchor twenty yards off the lee shore of Ragged Island. It was 6:30, and the sun had just topped the sea horizon, throwing a gauzy gold light across the island. For the first time since Hatch had returned to Stormhaven, the island's protective mist had lifted completely. He clambered into the dinghy and motored toward the navy-issue prefabricated pier at Base Camp. Already the day was warm and humid, and there was a certain heaviness in the air that presaged bad weather.
As he gazed across the scene, his old apprehensions began to ease. Over the last forty-eight hours, Ragged Island had grown comfortingly unrecognizable. An enormous amount of work had been accomplished, more than he could have believed possible. Yellow "crime scene" tape had been strung around the unstable areas of the island, with safe corridors delineated for walking. The meadows above the narrow strip of shingle beach had been transformed from a place of deserted silence to a miniature city. Trailers and Quonset huts were arranged in a tight circle. Beyond, a brace of massive generators thrummed, wafting diesel fumes into the air. Beside them sat two enormous fuel tanks. Bundles of white PVC pipe flowed across the muddy ground, shielding date lines and power cords from the elements and unwary feet. In the midst of the chaos stood Island One, the command center, a double-wide trailer festooned with communications gear and transmitters.
Securing the dinghy, Hatch jogged along the pier and up the rough path beyond. Arriving at Base Camp, he walked past the Stores shed and stepped into the Quonset hut marked MEDICAL, curious to see his new office. It was spartan but pleasant, smelling of fresh plywood, ethyl alcohol, and galvanized tin. He walked around, admiring the new equipment, surprised and pleased that Neidelman had purchased the best of everything. The office was fully equipped, from a locked storeroom full of equipment and drug cabinets to an EKG machine. Almost too equipped, in fact: Among the medical supplies in the lockers, Hatch found a colonoscope, a defibrillator, a fancy electronic Geiger counter, and a variety of expensive-looking high-tech gadgets he couldn't identify. The Quonset hut itself was larger than it looked. There was an outer office, an examination room, even a two-bed infirmary. In the rear of the structure was a small apartment, where Hatch could spend the night during inclement weather.
Stepping outside again, Hatch headed for Island One, carefully avoiding the ruts and furrows left behind by the treads of heavy equipment. Inside the command center, he found Neidelman, Streeter, and the engineer, Sandra Magnusen, bending over a screen. Magnusen was like a small, intense bug, her face blue in the outwash of the computer terminal, scrolling lines of data reflecting on her thick glasses. She seemed all business, all the time, and Hatch got the distinct feeling that she didn't like most people, doctors included.
Neidelman looked up and nodded. "Data transfer from Scylla finished several hours ago," he said. "Just completing the pump simulation now." He moved aside to give Hatch a view of the terminal.
SIMULATION COMPLETED AT 06:39:45:21
RESULTS FOLLOW
INTERLINK SERVER STATUS OK
HUB RELAYS OK
SECTOR RELAYS OK
DATASTREAM ANALYZER OK
CORE CONTROLLER OK
REMOTE SITES CONTROLLER OK
PUMP STATUS OK
FLOW SENSORS OK
EMERGENCY INTERRUPT OK
QUEUE MEMORY 305385295
PACKET DELAY .000045
—CHECKSUM VERIFICATION—
CHECKSUMS FROM REMOTES OK
CHECKSUM DEVIATION 00.00000%
DEVIATION FROM SCYLLA 00.15000%
DEVIATION FROM PRIOR 00.37500%
END RESULTS
SIMULATION SUCCESSFUL
Magnusen's brow furrowed.
"Is everything all right?" Neidelman asked.
"Yes." The engineer sighed. "No. Well, I don't know. The computer seems to be acting flaky."
"Tell me about it," Neidelman said quietly.
"It's running a little sluggishly, especially when the emergency interrupts were tested. And look at those deviation numbers. The island network itself shows everything normal. But there's a deviation from the simulation that we ran on the Cerberus system. And there's even more of a deviation from the run we did last night."
"But it's within tolerances?"
Magnusen nodded. "It might be some anomaly in the checksum algorithms."
"That's a polite way of saying it's a bug." Neidelman turned to Streeter. "Where's Wopner?"
"Asleep on the Cerberus."
"Wake him up." Neidelman turned to Hatch and nodded toward the door. They walked out into the hazy sunlight.
Chapter 15
There's something I'd like to show you," the Captain said. Without waiting for an answer, he set off at his usual terrific stride, his long legs sweeping through the grass, leaving a backwash of pipe smoke and confidence. Twice he was stopped by Thalassa employees, and he appeared to be directing several operations at once with cool precision. Hatch scrambled to keep up, barely having time to glance at all the changes around him. They were following a roped path, certified safe by the Thalassa surveyors. Here and there, short aluminum bridges spanned old pits and rotten areas of ground.
"Nice morning for a stroll," Hatch panted.
Neidelman smiled. "How do you like your office?"
"Everything's shipshape and Bristol fashion, thanks. I could service an entire village from it."
"In a sense, you're going to have to," came the reply.
The path climbed the island's incline toward the central hump of land, where most of the old shafts were clustered. Several aluminum platforms and small derricks had been placed over the muddy maws of shafts. Here, the main trail forked into several roped paths that wound around the ancient works. Nodding to a lone surveyor, Neidelman chose one of the central paths. A minute later, Hatch found himself standing at the edge of a gaping hole. Except for the presence of two engineers on the far side, taking measurements with an instrument Hatch didn't recognize, it seemed identical to a dozen other pits in the vicinity. Grass and bushes hung over the lip and sagged down into darkness, almost obscuring the edge of a rotting beam. Gingerly, Hatch leaned forward. Only blackness showed below. A flexible, metal-jointed hose of enormous circumference rose from the invisible depths, snaked across the muddy ground, and wound its way toward the distant western shore.
"It's a pit, all right," Hatch said. "Too bad I didn't bring along a picnic basket and a book of verses."
Neidelman smiled, removed a folded computer printout from his pocket, and handed it to Hatch. It consisted of a long column of dates, with numbers beside them. One of the pairs was highlighted in yellow: 1690±40.