The War of Immensities

by Barry Klemm

  “Deliriously happy, my sweet.”

  “Good luck, kid.”

  “Just the thought that the next thing I’ll see will be your smiling face sustains me still, darling.”

  “Jesus, Lorna. Try taking this a little bit seriously.”

  “Would you prefer I fretted as badly as you are?”

  “I’m not fretting!”

  She sat on the mattress in the back of the vehicle—temperature controlled until the auxiliary battery ran out—took off her boots and lay back, carefully arranging her hair so that it cascaded across the pillow. She held a mirror up, to ensure everything was in its right place.

  “Are you in position? It’ll be any moment now.”

  “All set for the missionary position, lover, should you be in a hurry.”

  Her pendant—a gold Project Earthshaker badge—on a chain around her neck, had slipped sideways—she picked it up and dropped it so that it fell neatly into her cleavage. All ready. She lay there waiting.

  “Anything happening?”

  “Just my bosom rising and swelling with love, dear one. Otherwise nothing...”

  Nothing happened for far too long. She began to sweat where her flesh contacted the mattress. Of course she had scented herself everywhere but think of the smell if it took them days to find her! Maybe she should...

  “Any minute now. Hang in there.”

  “I’m not a bat. I’m taking it lying down like always and ...”

  The pain was like her entire body was crushed flat instantly. A tremor ran through her and she opened her mouth to scream but held it back, knowing he would be hearing it—and in the last instant of consciousness, she was irritated that she would be found wearing a dreadfully contorted facial expression.

  *

  But he did not hear her scream. The radio went dead and Thyssen was left shouting her name into infinity. The chopper swung wildly in the sky as the shockwave hit them from behind, and the turbulence shuddered the rotors violently. The pilots struggled to maintain control of the wildly lurching aircraft and Thyssen was thrown this way and that such that the jerking of his head almost caused him to lose consciousness. Then came the detonation, so profound that he would not have been able to hear her, had there been anything to hear. It slammed into their eardrums and they were instantly deafened, and the chopper whirled downward toward the sea as both pilots clutched their helmets in agony. The explosion, in fact series of explosions so close together that they sounded like one continuous burst, was heard in Tasmania, in Cape Town, in Tokyo, in Honolulu. Over half the globe, people stopped and looked at the sky, expecting to see thunderheads.

  Thyssen jolted forward in his seat and stared from the dome of one pilot to the other, to assure himself they were still conscious. The co-pilot lolled for a moment but then regained control—the pilot opened his mouth a bellowed a rage that none of them could hear and worked frantically at the controls. Below, the Timor Sea spiraled up toward them and Thyssen fought back bile, as indeed the pilots did. The water, deep blue when he last looked, had now turned a dirty green, and the wave crests all clashed together, having lost their current as completely as the pilot had lost control of his machine. The chopper shuddered fiercely again as the engines surged and then they levelled out, only a few hundred feet from the erratically broiling sea.

  “Can anybody hear me?” Thyssen was bellowing into the microphone.

  “Yes, we can hear you, Harley,” Felicity Campbell said from a vast distance away. “Turn your volume down. You’re too loud.”

  Thyssen fought for self control, every bit as much as the pilot had. His ears were ringing now and a dulling pain replaced the numbness, but he didn’t touch the volume—he knew he was loud because he was bellowing.

  “We’ve lost everything here,” Harley was saying. “What’s your status?”

  “Bit shook up, but we’re fine. We’ve lost all contact with Lorna though. And there’s only static coming through from all land stations.”

  It was not surprising that the Orion had come through unscathed; it was a remarkably stable flying platform; that was why they had chosen it.

  “You’ve lost her completely?” he asked, his lips pressed firmly together.

  “We lost everything for a moment. There must have been some sort of pulse. But some of it is coming back up now.”

  “Anything of... any indication...” but he just couldn’t get the words out.

  “Harley, I’ll let you know as soon as I have something. Anyway, you know where she is.”

  Thyssen nodded. The pilot knew her last known position and had already plotted his course and now, hearing Felicity’s words, turned in his seat and gave Thyssen a smile and a thumb’s up sign. Meanwhile, the list of panicky co-pilot priorities had worked down to internal communications and he got that on.

  “You read me, Prof?”

  “I do,” Thyssen said, his ability to get a grip on his surroundings expanding all the time. “And you’re bleeding from the right ear, Bill.”

  “Yeah. I reckon I perforated an eardrum. Hurts like hell. I’ll switch earphones when I get a minute. Meanwhile, I’d appreciate it if you guys whispered.”

  “That sure was one hell of a bang,” the pilot said. “You didn’t warn us about that.”

  “I thought we were far enough away,” Thyssen said.

  “We ought to be at Lorna’s location in just under two hours,” Gordon the pilot was saying—relaxed now into that typical calm pilot mode.

  “And we’ll be on the ground at Makasar by then,” Felicity chimed in. “Providing the runway is still useable. Meanwhile, have a look to the south.”

  Since they were flying due north, rear vision was not easy. Gordon diverted briefly, allowing them a southern perspective.

  “Holy shit look at that!” Bill gasped, and then groaned as he hurt his ear.

  Right along the horizon, a huge black cloud was building, billowing furiously as it advanced. It stretched the whole distance, from east to west.

  “Gordon. Whatever you do, don’t let that cloud catch up to us,” Thyssen said menacingly.

  “Sure thing. How fast you reckon it’s approaching?”

  “Six hundred miles per hour is average for them.”

  “We can’t go that fast.”

  “Put your foot down. It’s already come hundreds of miles offshore. No telling how much further before it dissolves.”

  “What is it?”

  “Flying mud at about a thousand degrees.”

  “Holy shit!”

  “Yeah, that’s exactly what it’s like.”

  The nose of the helicopter dipped as Gordon laid on the acceleration.

  “Felicity,” Thyssen asked. “You get that?”

  “We are scurrying north as fast as we can go, Harley.”

  “What sort of ground readings are you getting back there?”

  “Thommo has just picked up a satellite image. It’s mostly a big black smudge but he says there are plumes running from dozens of sites, from the middle of Sumatra, right along Java, all the way through the other islands to Timor. Krakatoa’s disappeared again and places like Lombok and some other smaller islands have vanished altogether. And you’ll be glad to know the ashcloud is slowing down.”

  “Anything on Lorna?”

  “No. All the transmitters are out. I think she’ll be okay, Harley.”

  They flew on and as time passed, Harley fretted and Felicity added data provided by the technicians in the Orion. Bali was now a crescent shaped island, half its former size, at least six small islands had vanished completely, Lombok was now three small islands, each of them a thundering volcanic peak. But the main devastation had hit Java where it was unlikely that any part of the island had escaped destruction. Jakarta was wrecked completely, although along the south coast of the island, the damage seemed minimal. But all the middle and north of the island lay under searing ash and lava flows that spilled into the sea, raising vast clouds of steam.

  Gordon loc
ated Makasar first. In the dust-filled night it was impossible to see the lights of the city below, and Thyssen realised they were not lights, but fires. They flew on along the coast.

  “I think we’re over the spot now,” Bill announced and they circled, but the brilliant spotlights of the chopper only reflected back at them from the fog. Gordon eased them lower and until treetops came into view and then began a grid search. It took forty minutes before the shining skin of the land cruiser flashed back at them.

  “There she is!” Harley shrieked, unleashing the last of his anxieties, for now the truth, whether good or bad, would stride into its place.

  He bounded from the chopper before it quite touched the ground and raced forward, the lights of the chopper behind him dazzled when they hit the dust but he blundered forward and found the vehicle. Hastily he unlocked and opened the rear door. There was no sign of Lorna in there.

  15. THE THIRD LAW OF THERMODYNAMICS

  Joe Solomon, a free man at last, planned ahead. He flew to New Orleans and waited for the linkage to take hold of him, then made the long slow journey by rail back to Washington on what he suppose to be the Chattanooga Choo-Choo. In fact it went a little quicker than he planned and he arrived too soon and had to keep on going, all the way to New York. But that was okay. Through Lorna, Thyssen had provided him with an address in The Bronx, which was supposedly their secret base, and while the news broadcasts made their initial reports of the disaster in Indonesia, he rode the final stage in a taxi. He supposed, in the end, it was perfect timing.

  The whole journey took over a day and the final taxi ride almost an hour but Joe didn’t mind. A time of relative peace, after two weeks of wheeling and dealing over ranches for sale in the Matto Grasso. Yet it was here, not Brazil, where such deals were to be done and he was getting there. It was just a matter of time. The driver had the temerity to sneer at the miserly tip and roared away in disgust. Joe checked the street both ways before he approached the building.

  They weren’t following him. At least, not that he was able to observe. He had listened for extra clicks on his telephone and heard none. Of course, there were no charges pending and he wasn’t really wanted for anything, but they might at least have had the decency to keep an eye on him. As it was, he felt lonely, cut off from the world, as if he barely existed. So too, as he approached the building, did he realise that he had no idea where his colleagues of Earthshaker were nor what dangers they faced, no idea of how his business in Perth was faring, hadn’t heard from his brother in five weeks.

  He pressed the special code into the intercom and, while he waited to go through Val’s complex security procedure, saw instead that the door simply opened. Val Dennis, the most antisocial man in New York, had ramps for people in wheelchairs, all the way to the goods lift and there everything was within reach, as if it was designed for him. There was no button to press for Val’s floor, but a code that Joe didn’t know. But when he closed the grille, the lift set off without any instructions.

  It stopped at Val’s level—Joe recognised it immediately from the vast array of electronic and other junk piled everywhere. It was such a tangle that it took Joe a few minutes to realise that the place had been wrecked. Everything he could see was smashed. His wheels crunched over shattered glass. He had to push his way through a forest of hanging cables. Once again the idea of carrying a gun seemed sensible. On a couch over by the window, he saw the figure of Val Dennis lying and as he neared it, he saw the blood all about.

  Val Dennis, his eyes closed by swelling, blood running from his spilt lips and nose, lay on his belly with an arm that was plainly broken dangling over the side of the couch. Joe could see he was still breathing, though he showed no other sign of life. He looked around and spotted the telephone and picked it up. It might had been the only thing in the place still working. He called an ambulance and hung up and then advanced to see what he could do to help Val. Not much really.

  Then astonishingly, Val spoke, though without moving his jaw. “Who’s there?”

  “It’s Joe Solomon, Val. What happened here?”

  “Joe? Ah, yeah. Joe. Thyssen’s creative accountant.”

  “That’s me all right. What happened here?”

  “They came, man. Took all the Earthshaker stuff. Wrecked the rest. Wrecked me too.”

  “Who came?”

  “Suits, man. Government dudes. Bastards.”

  “Our side?”

  “Bad guys wouldn’t be this nasty. Left me here to bleed to death. Can you believe that?”

  “I’ve called for an ambulance.”

  “Ain’t paid me subscription...”

  “I’ll pay for it. Do you know what they wanted?”

  “Kill Earthshaker. If they ain’t got it, no one else can have it. You know how they think.”

  “You just take it easy.”

  “Hey man, listen. You gotta get onto Harley. Jami went to Lombok.”

  “Where’s Lombok?”

  “Java, man. Near there anyway. Said she wasn’t gonna miss the biggest explosion in history.”

  “She went there. How?”

  “On crutches. I couldn’t talk her out of it. You get Harley to pick her up before it’s too late.”

  “It’s already too late, Val. Most of Indonesia has just been blown off the face of the earth.”

  *

  She awoke in utter darkness—perhaps this was what it was like to be dead. Or maybe she had gone blind, and deaf. When she had been knocked out, the sun had set and the very sudden night of the tropics had been coming down, but there were lights, and sounds, all around her. The interior of the vehicle had glowed with red and yellow lights on the control panels, and two computer screens, and green digital figures, all of which whirred and buzzed lightly. And the static on the radio. Now all of it seemed to be gone.

  She hurt everywhere, as if she had been completely crushed. Her head throbbed, every muscle ached, her stomach was terribly upset. Had she lain here, she wondered, for all eight days? So where was fucking Harley? Where was everyone and everything. The moon and stars seemed to have gone out. Painfully, she forced herself into a sitting position. She was starting to sweat—it was very hot and stuffy in the vehicle, now that its air conditioning system had stopped. But she could move. In fact, nothing seemed broken or severely damaged when moments ago she could have assumed many injuries. She was just sore. And it was so very dark. And quiet.

  Then, slowly, her senses began to kick in and start working—it was as if they had been stunned into dysfunction and needed a moment to find their start button again. It wasn’t quite as dark as before—so she wasn’t blind. There seemed to be a faint glow illuminating the interior of the cabin, coming from behind her. And sounds. Faint crackling sounds. In a way, that emphasised the darkness and silence—only in these conditions could such faint emanations be so prominent.

  She got herself onto her knees. She was so stiff and sore but still it was apparent to her that she had not been lying here for anything like eight days. Her mouth wasn’t even dry—it couldn’t have been more than a few minutes, but in those minutes, an eternity had passed. Something tickled her upper lips and she wiped it—she realised her nose was bleeding. But almost as soon as she knew it, it stopped. In the faint glow, the interior of the cabin was beginning to take shape. She found the radio switch—the only one really familiar to her—and flicked it. Nothing happened. She flicked it back and forth but still there was no static in the headphones. She took them off and threw them away in disgust. He hadn’t come, the bastard. Like every other man in her life, Harley too had let her down. Then she remembered the auxiliary power switch and flicked that a few times. She wasn’t dead, but the technology certainly was.

  There was the glow that was her only source of light. She slid across to the rear windows but it was just a foggy glow. Then she realised that was on the inside, her breathing on the window. She gave it a wipe and things became clearer. There was a fire, which also accounted for the crackling s
ound. Down in the village, one of the huts was well alight. Now that gave her something to think about. The fire could spread and, if the wind direction was right, could come this way. Something needed to be done.

  Fire. Light. Her instincts were kicking in and she remembered she desperately needed a smoke. Which lead her to her lighter and a moment or two of illumination. Enough to see the blood on her hand from her nose. She flicked the lighter off and sat, smoking. And as it calmed her, her brain began to work. There was a fire extinguisher in here somewhere. She went forward and discovered it attached under the dashboard. Along the way, she remembered there was a torch clipped to the window frame. Battery powered—should work. She found it and it did. Fine. Let’s go fight the fire.

  She opened the rear door and immediately the outside air hit her. It was pretty hot and stuffy inside but out there it was even hotter. There was a strong wind coming from, if she was right, the south. For sure if she didn’t put that fire out, it might come her way. But it just didn’t seem right, to go and fight a fire while smoking a cigarette. She leaned on the back of the vehicle and smoked, and then realised that she didn’t want a pee.

  Which meant that not a great deal of time could have passed. Maybe she had only been unconscious for minutes, or even seconds. No. There was the afterglow of sunset when she last saw anything, but not this utter blackness. She raised the torch. The sky seemed so close overhead that she might have been able to touch it. Smoke from the fire—some of that for sure but there seemed to be some denser, darker, cloud up there, heavy and ponderous. Dust thrown up by the earthquakes that she might have gladly slept through? She reminded herself to watch out for fissures.

  Now she was ready. She was pushing thoughts of snakes and spiders and scorpions out of her mind, not to mention all manner of other dangers, but the cigarette had provided courage and she stamped it out with thanks. She started off, and immediately saw little bundles littering the ground. Dead birds. Not dead, just KO-ed. As all the snakes, spiders, scorpions and all other dangers would be. Feeling even braver, she headed down the hill.