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The Abrupt Physics of Dying

Page 29

by Paul E. Hardisty


  He kept going.

  Moving through the chaotic jumble of rock and stone had been difficult enough under the harsh illumination of the sun. But now the faint luminescence of starlight altered the topography utterly, so that even simple geometries became distorted and took on a looming ethereal aspect, the lithic architecture of planes and angles shot in a monochrome of black and grey, prisms of shadow and substance indistinguishable. He moved towards the glow of the facility’s floodlights, studying the ground as he went. He would have to come back this way soon.

  Soon he came to the facility’s perimeter fence. The four-metre mesh and razor-wire line clattered its way from the edge of the plateau down to the wadi floor. He stopped, looked left and right. The steel posts had been drilled and cemented in place, anchored to rock bolts with heavy-gauge wire. The mesh was like chain-mail. There was no way though. He felt the energy drain from his body.

  Clay set down the instrument case, dropped his pack, took a sip of water. He reached out, touched the thick wire meshing, looked up. There was no way over. He would have to go under, or through. He began tracing the line of the fence, step by step, examining every foot of mesh, every post, feeling his way in the dark. Soon he had reached the wadi flank. Here the rock was vertical, smooth, metres high. Perhaps the gap in the fence that the chief had described was further up, on the wadi sides. He looked up towards the plateau, still high above. That would mean scaling the rock. It could take hours, precious darkness slipping away. He turned back, retraced his steps along the wadi floor, checking the fence, considering options.

  He was almost to the far cliff when his hand caught a fold in the mesh. He stopped, peered down to where the wire met the wadi bed. The mesh had been dug into the sediment and cemented in place. But here, a boulder the size of a small car had been driven into the fence on the up-wadi side. The posts had held, but the wire bowed out, like a trawler’s net filled with a big catch. A flash flood had done this. He had seen something similar once in Oman, a wall of brown boulder-laden water flattening everything in its path, over as soon as it had begun. He moved to the far side of the boulder. Here the mesh had burst open. There was a gap.

  He prised back the mesh and squeezed under the flap. His trouser leg caught on a barb, tore the canvas. He stopped, pulled himself free, kept moving towards the lights in the distance. Again he wondered about Rania. What had she been doing in Al Shams’ building that night? She said she had tried. Tried to do what? Kill him? Had she known about the attack, perhaps heard about it from one of her sources? Had she tried to warn Al Shams? And, if so, why would Hussein have gunned her down? Had it been a mistake? He had seen so many men blown to pieces by their own airstrikes, villagers maimed in crossfire. Once the monster was released, no one was safe from its blind slashing fury. He pushed it away, focussed on the ground under his feet, the lights ahead.

  It took the best part of an hour to navigate up the wadi floor to a point immediately below the CPF. He was about to start the climb up towards the edge of the plateau when his foot fell through a crust in the soil. He lurched forward and steadied himself against a boulder. His foot came away with a sucking sound, covered in mud.

  He bent down and scrabbled at the loose sand with his hands. There was water within inches of the surface. He touched his finger to the water, let a drop fall onto his tongue. It was brine, saltier than the sea. He continued up-wadi, through a graveyard of dead, stunted bushes. Fifty metres along, he found the first pool, no more than a metre across, a mirror of stars. He kept walking. Soon there was water everywhere, rivulets of brine trickling from pool to glassy pool. He squelched along in the deepening water, boots soaked.

  He heard it before he saw it. As he approached, the air thickened with aerosols of barium and chloride and a hundred other compounds unknown until the stench was unbearable. He wrapped the tail of his keffiyeh over his mouth and nose and sloshed ahead in the darkness towards the sound. He was knee-deep in it now, the water warm, malevolent. The steel pipe, standard twelve-inch drill casing, was warm to the touch. Industrial sewage spewed from its mouth in a continuous arc, thundering down into a deep wide pool.

  For weeks he had imagined a leaking membrane or vessel, some accident of poor maintenance or bad design left unexamined, brine leaking unknown into the ground. Ignorance and stupidity, yes, wilful neglect, perhaps, but not this, this deliberate evil. His diaphragm contracted violently. He doubled over, spewing vomit into the cesspool around his legs. Unsteady, he staggered to the bank, the night sky oscillating crazily at his feet. Vertigo loomed as he scrambled up away from the fumes and collapsed onto dry ground.

  After a while his head cleared and he pulled himself up, still woozy; he scrambled back down to the pipe, collected a sample, made the required measurements, stowed the instruments and started back along the wadi floor towards the CPF.

  When the glow of the lights was directly above, he started up towards the plateau, scaling three terraced slopes of loose ironstone and shale tiles, each separated by a bench of flat-lying carbonate. The last slope was the longest and steepest. His feet ploughed into the loose rock, the tiles sliding away beneath his feet, and the sound they made, like the empty ring of a submerged bell, seemed to grow with each step, despite the din of the generators. Several times he stopped and looked along the crest line above and tried to slow his breathing and open his ears, but all he could hear was the punching of his heart and the uninterested grind of the diesels.

  Finally, he reached the hardpan layer that formed the crust of the plateau. He hunched down behind the low wall of rock and peered out across the no-man’s land of the plateau towards the arc lights of the facility. No war-time blackouts here. Neither side was about to destroy the prize for which men were being sacrificed. Had this been Hussein’s target after all, a scorched-earth plan of last resort?

  The main process compound stood bathed in light, surrounded by a three-metre chain-link fence topped with an angry barbed-wire lip. Just within the enclosure were the generator skids, separators and storage tanks, and, further along, the control building, workshops and the main entrance leading to the access road. Somewhere beyond the compound were the evaporation ponds – a series of football-field-sized depressions scraped into the ground. According to the chief, the new well had been drilled just outside the facility, near the head of the main wadi.

  He scanned the facility from one end of the darkness to the other. Other than the night-orange glow of the flare that danced across the sand and warped the Euclidian geometries of the buildings, nothing moved. He slumped down on his haunches with his back to the hardpan layer and gathered his knees to his chest.

  The night shift would be on now, if they hadn’t changed their routine. Everyone else, managers, engineers, labourers, would be in the camp compound just beyond the main complex. Normally a night watchman was posted at the entrance to the camp. They would have added more guards now.

  He looked up at the black sky, the stars, so many of them here. He breathed deep, held it a long time. His pulse slowed. He imagined her that night, waking and slipping from the bed as he slept, moving off into the night, alone, a weapon in her hand. What had she been thinking, what had driven her? Why had she given him that story? And why had she given herself that night, only to … to do what, short hours later? Attempt murder? Give warning? He shivered. Don’t think about it, any of it. Just get it done. Then find her.

  He picked up the instrument case and clambered up and over the limestone parapet, then set out in search of the well, the lights of the facility spectral and forbidding on the darkened plain ahead.

  He moved over the extinct Cenozoic landscape like a ghost, sliding across the black tableland, keeping the glow of the CPF lights to his left, moving indiscernible over the open ground. He located the well easily enough. The wellhead was fitted to a stem valve connected into a three-inch steel pipeline that ran away over the ground in the direction of the facility. A totaliser was fitted between the stem valve and the pipe weld, an
d a small diameter sampling port was tapped into the main line. The configuration was unlike any oil well he had ever seen.

  He crouched low over the sample port and cracked the valve. A steady stream of clear liquid poured to the ground, splattering his boots. He scooped a handful and brought it to his lips. It was sweet and pure. He dropped his mouth to the stream and gulped down the cool, delicious water. Then he pulled out his water bottle and filled it to overflowing.

  He swung the pack off his shoulders and fished the torch from one of the outside pockets and grabbed his fleece jacket from the main pouch. He flipped open the totaliser’s plastic cover, pulled the jacket over his head like a hood, and flicked on the light. The curved number plates ticked away as the water rushed through the pipe. He recorded a number, counted out a minute, read the dial again, subtracted the two values, multiplied by sixty, then by twenty-four. The figure he calculated was far too large. He must have made an error. He timed it out again. Same result. No mistake. They were pumping the aquifer for all it could give, changing the natural gradient, taking so much water that flow down to the base of the escarpment had stopped. That was why the spring had dried up at Al Urush. It also explained the falling water level in the ghayl at Bawazir. But what could they be doing with so much fresh water? There was only one possibility he could divine, but it was too perverse to contemplate.

  He moved on towards the ponds. Directly ahead, the main evaporation pond loomed silent and dark like a mass grave of stars. He crouched and scanned the facility for activity. The big oil tanks screened most of the rest of the compound from view. He could see no one. He took a deep breath and set off at a run. With each stride he emerged further from the darkness, and as the noise from the generators increased he accelerated steadily, adjusting his direction to keep the big oil tanks between him and the buildings and walkways beyond.

  He reached the outer berm of the main pond and flattened himself against the piled dirt slope, breathing hard. The outer berm was in partial shadow of the lights, and from where he lay he was completely hidden. He could hear the gush of the main discharge pipe just a few metres away inside the pond. An overpowering stench filled the air, an alchemist’s blend of volatile aromatic hydrocarbons and the latent bitterness of barium, the smell of fossil water released from a hundred-million-year prison term vibrating with pent-up energy. He pushed his face into the crook of his elbow and forced back the urge to gag. It was the same smell as before, down in the wadi. They must be piping the water from the ponds, dumping it into the wadi.

  And then, above the hum of the machines, he heard the distinct sound of voices. He froze and looked out into the darkness. Two orange embers, cigarette ends, burned in the distance. Two men were talking and laughing, sharing a joke in Arabic, walking along the well access road, camp workers perhaps, or soldiers. They were coming towards him.

  There was only one way he could go. As quietly as he could, he slithered on his stomach to the top of the berm and slipped over the crest and down the interior slope into the pond enclosure. The berm was about two metres high on the outside, but inside the water level was lower, so there was room to lie on the slope without touching the impounded fluid. He crabbed his way along the slope, away from the men, and squeezed under the discharge pipe. The vapours here were even stronger, the smell a queasy mix of sulphur, chlorides and decaying solvents. He retched into his hand. The lights and shadows thrown from the compound and the swirl of stars reflecting on the slick surface of the pond disaggregated before him, like a nebula released from the laws of gravity. He put out one hand and dropped to his knees, vomiting uncontrollably. Between each bitter contraction he managed to scramble a few feet away from the pipe and up towards the lip of the berm. He collapsed just as he reached the clear air flowing over the crest.

  He gasped and opened his eyes wide, gulping in the fresh night air, filling his lungs, purging toxins from his system. Gradually his vision widened as he reclaimed the dark periphery of consciousness. He was lying on his back with his head just below the lip of the berm. The voices were closer now, back from where he had come, probably just beyond the berm. His escape route was blocked. He grabbed the handle of the instrument case and scrambled along the inside slope of the berm towards the second discharge pipe, away from the voices. Every few metres he stopped and slithered to the top of the berm to breathe deeply of the clean air that flowed from the wadi. He had to get the sample now and find a way out. Soon the vapours from the pond would overcome him and he would slide down into the liquid and drown in a metre of toxic slurry that he had helped to produce.

  He pulled the pack from his shoulders, opened the case and balanced it against some larger stones near the top of the berm. If the men decided to walk up to the crest they would have a clear view of him, prone on the slope, bathed in the orange light of the flare. He had to work quickly. He gulped in a lungful of clean air, twisted down the bank and scooped up a sample of the emulsion. Then he crawled back up to the crest, exhaling as he went. He worked the instruments, recorded the numbers in the fieldbook, capped and stowed the sample.

  That was it. He replaced the instruments in their individual protective foam graves, took a deep breath of good air, and then slid back down to the starry surface, pushing the open case before him. He pressed the lid of the case under the surface of the emulsion and let the weight of the water drag the case down. The dark liquid flowed over the instruments and penetrated quickly into the foam, covering over the shining eyes of the dials as the case sank out of sight.

  He scrambled back to the lip of the berm and sucked in air. Then he pushed his head up and blinked into the harsh manmade light. Just to his right, where the second discharge pipe pierced the fence, was a gate, and just behind, a small workshop building, the larger main works shed, the cubic control room capped with a satellite dish, and the main entrance. The wadi edge was less than fifty metres beyond.

  The gate was open. He couldn’t go back. The two men were still smoking and talking at the far end of the berm. If he stayed inside the pond any longer he was sure he would pass out from the fumes, this time for good.

  He scuttled along the inside of the berm all the way to the second discharge pipe, immediately adjacent the gate, climbing up to breathe and oscillating back down towards the water each time to make a little more ground. Finally he reached the second pipe. Waste gushed from the outlet into the pond; a fine spray of atomised liquid and toxic aerosols swirled in the flare light, floating in the already thickened air. Even the smallest breath seared his lungs, lurched him into spiral of vertigo and nausea.

  He clawed his way to the crest of the berm and peered over at the contorted fence and the open gate, and into the shifting ground of the compound. Lights burned from inside the control-room window and he could see someone moving about inside. Otherwise it was clear. He must go now.

  He rose to a crouch, but toppled over as the blood rushed from his head. He fell to his knees and dropped his head to the ground, struggling to fight off the modulating whine that filled his ears. The sound abated and he raised his head, certain that he must have been seen, so exposed was his position in the full light of flare and floodlights. But there was no one to see him. He lunged down the outer slope of the berm and through the gate and flattened himself against the wall of the small building just inside the fence. The door to the main works shed was directly across the gravel walkway, only a couple of metres away. Yellow light shone from a small window to the left of the door. He scanned the walkway and the buildings up ahead. Still no one. He was breathing so hard he thought his lungs would rupture, and his head felt as if it would collapse in on itself at any moment.

  Someone shouted above the din of the generators. The voice came from the far side of the compound, back from where the Arabs had been smoking at the end of the berm. He sprinted across the walkway and moulded himself against the corrugated steel wall of the work shed and pushed open the door and peered inside.

  A tracked vehicle sat on the smooth
concrete floor covered by a heavy canvas tarpaulin. The bogeys and armour plating were painted in desert camouflage. Behind the vehicle, against the far wall, supply crates of various sizes and shapes were stacked almost to the ceiling. On the near side, to his left, drums of diesel fuel, more wooden crates, work benches, drill presses and grinders, a compressor, shelves of tools, but no one to use any of it. The big sliding doors were only partially closed, and through the gap he could see the main entrance way. The big chain link gates were wide open.

  He ducked inside and moved across the shop floor, the armoured vehicle on his right. The wadi edge was only a sprint away. He walked towards the open door with steady strides, past the crates and the tools hanging from hooks in their silhouetted dead-man spots on the wallboard, clear of the vehicle’s sloped front, until he was no more than a few paces away from the open door. He glanced at the stack of containers on his right – wood and formed metal, each stencilled with numbers and Cyrillic characters. Outside he could see open floodlit ground and the edge of darkness where the wadi would be. He was almost there. Just a few more metres to the safety of the wadi, then a couple of hours of hard walking down to the ghayl – meet Abdulkader, a two-day drive to the Omani border, and get the next flight out from Muscat. He could be in Geneva in six days.

  Just Economics

  Perhaps it was because he had allowed himself to believe, at just that moment, and for the first time, that he deserved this, that he deserved her. That kind of superstition had always plagued him, despite his professed determinism and his rationalist’s training that dictated every event was purely causative, without inherent glory. Things happened because someone or something made them happen. You pulled the trigger and the bullet left the muzzle, and if your aim was good and its path was true, it hit the target, but more often than not its course was altered by wind, or humidity, or gravity, and the difference might only be a matter of millimetres, and it hit where it hit – in a kid’s belly, a friend’s brain, a lover’s chest – and that was all there was to it. Or maybe Abdulkader was right. Perhaps Allah had willed it for some reason mysterious and wholly unknowable, and, if so, it was already done, already set. And there was always the possibility that he himself had caused it, through some symmetry between decisions made and the things he had decided he would not do. He would never know.

 

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