The ice ahead seemed in fact to slope upwards as the edges of it closed together, giving the impression of a massive forecastle head. And it was onto this that Richard strode, marvelling as he did so at the manner in which the horizons fell away. Only as he reached the point which his observation from the helicopter had warned him was very much like the near overhang at the prow of a cruiser did his purposeful stride begin to slow. The new form of the ice was so much like the bow of a ship that it was all too easy to forget that this was not safe steel beneath his feet.
He looked down. The ice, weathered white here but containing the hint of a blue glow within, came to a sharp point a couple of metres further forward. Beneath that point, the two cliff edges met in a sheer cutwater three hundred metres high. Reaching back on either hand, the cliffs formed a carefully calculated forecastle big enough, they all prayed, to give the long, narrow iceberg a shiplike form regular enough to allow them to guide it along something approximating to a straight line. If they had managed that, then they were all in business.
Richard stood rapt, thinking about the business they were in and how they had come to be in it at all. The Rosses had come onto the ice because a berg this big in these waters was a once in a lifetime experience. The Antarctic calved bergs as big as Belgium — the largest on record was 335 kilometres long and 100 kilometres wide, twenty times the size of this one in surface area alone. But something this size in these waters was rare, to put it mildly. The Rosses saw it as a floating laboratory where they could carry out research impossible anywhere else. And they saw it as a unique chance to try and fulfil a dream long held by themselves and countless others: a chance to supply a worthwhile amount of fresh water to the drought-stricken coasts of Africa. It was a dream they had shared with many people over the years, and not just with academics like themselves. They had caught the interest of some senior officers of the United Nations for whom they did some of their scientific work. The Americans had been supportive too, for the experiment promised to rid them of a nasty and costly danger to the eastern seaboard. Various rich sheikhs and sultans were interested, for it had long been a dream cherished in the Gulf that icebergs could be pulled into the heart of the desert; pulling an iceberg even to Africa was something they would therefore be happy to support. And the Third World was interested, for the Rosses promised to bring some relief from the terrible droughts in Africa.
All that interest had firmed up into Paul Chan and his small team, the good offices of the nearby deep-sea research vessel Antelope, and the promise of more help. More political path-smoothing. More money. But only if the iceberg could be controlled. Controlling the movement of something this big was going to be nearly impossible, but at least an iceberg of this size would still be there when the African coast hove into view.
Richard had first come across the berg when one of his ships had been marooned upon its shores six months earlier. While trying to rescue the ship, her crew and his wife Robin who had been in command, Richard had met the Rosses and had become infected with their dreams. They had the idea of moving the berg. He had the power. Literally. He had a fleet of supertankers currently underemployed. They calculated that if they could make the berg begin to drift in what approximated to a straight line then six of his supertankers could control the drift — affect the course and speed just enough to make a difference. Icebergs had been sighted as far south as Bermuda before now; they just wanted this one to end up a little further west and south, that was all.
There were those who said it couldn’t be done; of course there were. There were those who said it would be impossible to get the berg across the equator, and many who said that if they wanted to tug ice around the southern hemisphere, they should start with the big tabular bergs off the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica.
But the fact was that this berg was big enough to make the scheme look feasible. It was here. It was available. Together with the work of the Rosses, it had generated enough interest at a sufficiently high level to make dreams border on reality and words upon action. They had the backing. They had the will. They had an agreement with the United Nations that if Colin said this step was passed, the UN would charter six of Richard’s tankers. It was the promise of this deal which had brought him a quarter of the way round the world during the last few days, from London via Reykjavik and Julianehab to the deck of Antelope where Colin Ross had come to meet him. Richard was a humanitarian but he was also a businessman. He would have swum up the Amazon to meet a man who had the power to charter six of his supertankers, all at once.
Everything depended upon whether this explosion had in fact given the berg a set of bows which would steady her and allow her to follow a simple straight line.
Deep in thought, Richard moved forward once again, his eyes at last busy beyond the edge of the ice. The point on which he stood afforded him an unrivalled view across the grey reaches of the south Davis Strait, along the course which they all prayed the berg would be following soon. Tall grey seas were rolling southward in majestic series, pulling at the departing skirts of the autumnal squall as they sailed away into the distance. It seemed to him then that he could see the whole of the North Atlantic at this point, from Baffin on his right hand to Greenland on his left, the one a brown-black line on the western horizon and the other a white glow far away to the east. But this was fanciful nonsense. All he could see was a couple of hundred square kilometres of rough water and the back end of some dirty storm clouds. A new wind patted him on the back and wrapped its chilly self round him, smelling of old ice and Arctic air. It was cold and would get colder, he thought, and the rain was gone for now, too. The berg would stop melting for a while, above the waterline at least, and that, too, was good.
He stood, lost in his thoughts, as the storm continued to clear in the distance and some blue sky began to peep through the overcast. Then, in the last of the distant shadow under the heavy clouds, something caught Richard’s eagle eye. Far away towards the phantom glow of Greenland, a light shone out green and eye-wateringly bright. It was Antelope, the better part of thirty miles away.
‘Richard!’
Colin’s excited cry called Richard back to himself. ‘Yes?’ He turned and found the big glaciologist pounding up the slope towards him, waving a pale paper flimsy.
‘Look at this,’ called Colin. ‘It’s come through more quickly than I could have hoped. Look at this and then we’ll go back to the hut for confirmation. Kate’s getting the next read-out now.’
Richard obligingly looked at the paper. A frown gathered on his high forehead as he concentrated, then it cleared and he smiled. ‘You’re right. Let’s go talk to Kate.’
It was warm in the hut and Kate had taken off her outdoor clothing. Richard was poignantly reminded of his own wife Robin by the way in which the marine biologist’s hair tumbled in a thoughtless golden profusion; but there was nothing of Robin’s steady grey gaze in the green gleam of Kate’s eyes. ‘It’s just coming through now,’ she said. ‘And it’s looking very good indeed. Here.’
On the table in front of her lay a chart of the Davis Strait. Marked across its wide blue surface was a series of points. They were increasingly dense but it was possible to see that they were joined by a line which corkscrewed in a south-westerly direction.