“Well, I’ll be damned!” muttered Everson. He looked up, abashed. “Sorry, Padre.”
Padre Rand shook his head, dismissing the apology as unnecessary, seeming just as flabbergasted.
“I’ve seen this before,” said Nellie.
“We all have,” said Atkins. “We didn’t make any sense of it last time, either.”
“We haven’t,” said Reggie. “Where?”
“The canyon,” said Nellie, “before the Fractured Plain, when Corporal Atkins came looking for you. Only that one was set in the canyon.”
Norman shook his head. “We didn’t see it.”
“You must have,” Nellie insisted. “You couldn’t miss it.”
Wally shrugged. “My eyes were on the road.”
“And I was pounding away at some bastard insect men high up on the–” Norman paused. “The canyon wall you says?” A penny dropped. “Oh.”
“Do you think there’s a link then between that one and this one?” asked the Padre.
Here, Nellie was on less certain ground. “Well, it does seem… odd,” she admitted. “Don’t you think?”
“Oh, it’s that all right,” agreed Jack, stamping on it with his hobnails, with a sound of metal on metal. It was solid; there was no hollow note. “But everything about this place is bloody odd.”
Almost as a reflex, Atkins swung his right foot, scuffing the hobnails against the metal surface with the memory of sparking clogs on cobbles. He’d done it since he was a child, running through the streets with William, and later with Flora, too. There were no sparks here, though.
Beyond the crater, another bolt of lightning crazed into the sky with a thunderous clap hard on its heels. Whatever it was, it was getting closer.
“Riley, what do you make of this?” Everson asked the signaller.
Riley pushed his cap back on his head, and then rubbed his palms together with relish. “Tonkins, get the listening kit out.”
The kit was one of Riley’s own devising, based on a captured German Moritz set, used to listen in on British communications. He placed copper plates against the exposed metal and connected the wires to the boxed listening apparatus.
Tonkins put the earphones over his head. After several minutes his eyes narrowed, then slowly widened. He beckoned Riley urgently. “Corp!”
Riley rolled his eyes in exasperation and held his hand out. “Well, hand ’em over, lad.” Tonkins gave him the earphones and Riley placed them over his own ears.
“What’s going on?” asked Norman as they gathered to watch the sideshow.
“The Iddy Umptys reckon they can hear something,” Gazette whispered back.
“What, down there?”
Gazette nodded.
“Jesus!” Norman leapt back as if he’d stepped on a hot plate.
“Relax,” said Gazette, unperturbed. “If it’s like the one in the canyon, it’s built like a brick shithouse.”
“Quiet, back there!” hissed Everson.
Turning his attention back to the signalman, Everson looked on in frustration as a similar look of bafflement washed over the Corporal’s face.
“Well, I’ll go to the foot of our stairs!” exclaimed Riley. The NCO pulled the earphones down around his neck and looked up at Everson, baffled. “It’s Morse code, sir.”
“Morse–”
Riley scowled, held up a finger to shush him, and put the earphones back on.
His wide-eyed gaze met that of Everson’s. “It’s us, sir,” he declared.
Everson was perplexed. “Us?”
“It’s young Buckley, sir,” said Riley.
Everson let this sink in for a moment. “You mean back at the canyon. How?”
“Same way we eavesdropped on German communications, I expect. Electric induction of some sort. There’s a low electric current runs though the earth, a telluric current, you might say, but it should be too weak to transmit the signal this far, unless…” His voice trailed off as he deliberated.
“Unless what?” asked Everson impatiently.
“Unless these two places, this oojah, the strip, and the canyon wall are connected somehow, transmitting the signal like a cable.”
Beside him, Tonkins nodded in eager agreement.
“Is that possible?”
Riley raised an eyebrow. “Have you taken a look around, lately, sir?”
“All right, point taken, Corporal,” said Everson, taking it in his stride. “Can you send a message back?”
Corporal Riley gave him a black look for even doubting it. He hauled over a kit bag, set up the telegraph apparatus as best as he could and began tapping the Morse key on top of the wooden telegraph box. Then they waited.
“C’mon, Buckley…” muttered Riley, frowning intently as if trying to draw the message through the ground by willpower alone.
There was a tense minute until Riley yelled and punched Tonkins in the arm, before sobering up and reporting po-faced. “Sorry, sir. I mean, message has been received and understood, sir.”
Everson was bewildered and surprised, but relieved. “So we have a line of communication.”
There was a loud howl of interference. Riley let out a yelp and ripped the earphones from his head. “Jesus, Mary and Joseph!”
A moment later, a magnesium white light flared briefly, lighting up the jungle as another bolt of lightning ripped up into the sky beyond the crater, followed a couple of seconds later by a peal of thunder, causing the men to flinch and duck.
“Right, well, we’ll try again after this damn freak storm has passed. Pack up again, Corporal, and prepare to move out.”
AS THEY HEADED towards the centre of the crater, Nellie caught up with Atkins and tried to set her stride to his, but he didn’t slow his pace and she had to compensate by jogging intermittently to keep up with him. He might not want to talk to her, but she had one or two things to say to him. She glanced back over her shoulder. The tank crew were watching her, though trying not to look as if they were. Sweet, really. She turned her attention back to Atkins.
“How’s it feel to be commander of a tank crew, then?” he muttered darkly.
“Don’t be like that, Only. They’re not bad men. They haven’t been themselves; the fumes affected them. You should know that better than most.”
“You disobeyed orders. You went looking for him.”
“You’d have done the same,” she said, scurrying to keep up.
“Yeah, well, I only hope you find him alive, that’s all.”
The resentment in his voice surprised Nellie, but he had just lost a good mate and she put it down to that. “I’m sorry about Porgy. Edith will be, too. She liked him.”
“He isn’t the first mate I’ve lost, and he probably won’t be the last,” said Atkins.
There was another flash and thunderclap, almost on top of one another. Atkins sighed heavily.
“I feel like my life’s not my own anymore,” he said. “I’ve had prophecies thrown at me, deciding my future. I’ve had that bloody chatt, Chandar, treating me like some kind of saint for saving its life and telling me I’m something of great significance. Half the men believe me to be some kind of St George, the rest think I’m a glory hound. It feels like everyone else owns a piece of my life but me. Nobody asks what I want.”
“It’s not just that, though, is it?” said Nellie. “There’s something else troubling you.”
“It’s no business of yours.”
“I’m not saying it is. But whatever it is, it’s eating you up. It might help to talk to someone.”
“You, I suppose?”
“No, but you need to talk to somebody. One of your mates, perhaps.”
“No!” he said curtly. Then in a softer, reconciliatory tone, “They wouldn’t understand.”
“The Padre’s a good man,” Nellie suggested.
“I’ll think about it,” he said, head down, eyes fixed ahead, drawing the topic to a close. He stomped along in a sullen silence but, she noticed, his pace had slowed to match hers. It was enough.