Strange Temple

by John Lilley

  ‘Well there she is, the Cloud Maker,’ announced Susan with a fair amount of obvious pride.

  ‘Err, well what can we say?’ said Bill. ‘I was not expecting a museum tour. Are you suggesting that we’re actually going out to sea in that old rust-bucket?’

  Susan frowned. ‘Oh come on, it’s actually been very well preserved in here. We have all of its primary systems online now. There are just a few remaining fixes which we can do once we’re underway.’

  ‘Would it not be better to fix everything before leaving the shore?’ suggested Carlos from beneath a rather furrowed brow.

  ‘We just don’t have time. As soon as we are on board, we’ll be off. The remaining fifteen of us arrived from the dome by hovercar, just before you did. Central and his gang think we are having a big picnic down here. He may see through our deceptions in the next few hours, and we need to be many miles away by that time,’ said Susan.

  As she spoke there was a loud metallic grating noise from one end of the dock, Gene grabbed the gantry railing. They watched as water began to cascade through the now open sluices.

  ‘Two hours and the gates will be fully open, come on everyone this way,’ she continued and led the way off the gantry in the direction of the nearest boarding ramp several levels below.

  The lower levels within the dock had been flooded during recent tests on the gates, and as a result the concrete steps were badly stained with green slime, despite the best efforts of the Kids to clean them. The stairwells were lit only by windows cut into the walls of the dock. Gene was having some difficulty, going down steps was one of the worst things for aggravating his knees, but he didn’t complain, he just took his time. A few minutes later they emerged onto a wide gangway which led onto the deck of the Cloud Maker. The four progressed slowly across onto the deck; the gangway seemed disturbingly flimsy and began to bounce just before they reached the deck. Bill made the mistake of looking down and had to grab the guard rail as a sudden attack of vertigo took him.

  ‘Steady as you go Bill,’ said Susan, who was just behind him, ‘Nearly there now’.

  The deck did seem reassuringly stable compared to the gangway, mainly because the ship was still sat on its maintenance cradle. This would all change soon as the incoming seawater made the triple hulls of the Cloud Maker buoyant. The Kids had made extensive alterations to accommodate the extra passengers. The ship was built to be mostly autonomous, using inertial positioning systems and an inbuilt weather station to place it in the optimal position for generating the white cooling clouds. Amazingly, most of the computers still worked, their military nuclear-hardened construction had no doubt helped with their longevity. The new crew just needed to tap into the inertial guidance systems to plot a course across to the old world. The ship was designed to take a maintenance crew of five, but only for short periods when it was coming in and out of port for an annual service. Fitting in forty people and enough stores to last the two-week 3,800-mile journey was quite a problem. Makeshift lower decks with cabins and storerooms had been bolted in place. Freshwater was not a problem since the ship’s desalination system was working well and seemed to have more than enough capacity. However, enough fresh water was on board to be able to provide emergency rations for all. The three Native Americans in the crew were confident that they could catch enough fish and seabirds on the journey to ensure a good supply of protein. The rest of the food supply consisted of freeze-dried sachets, and since the electrical output of the flettner rotors was immense, equivalent to a small town’s supply, they would have no trouble heating up a few boil-in-the-bag meals.

  Two hours later the first signs of buoyancy were becoming apparent as the ship gently lurched forward, finally free from its service cradles. Dave Cross, now known as “Helm” was running through some final checks on the ship’s systems. One of the gauges on his dashboard indicated that the pressure on the gates of the dry dock had now been equalised. He pressed the talk button on his walky-talky and gave the order to the two guys still ashore to open the gates. The sounds of straining metal rumbled through every fibre of the ship. The gates shook briefly before jerking open a few inches and then slowly continuing in a more controlled manner. Everyone stared ahead where the sea was now glistening in the distance. Helm switched on the ships small battery-driven manoeuvring thrusters, and the ship slowly edged its way out of the dry dock for the first time in over 100 years. It hadn’t even cleared the dock before Helm released the rotors and they began to turn, slowly at first, but soon rotating at a speed which made the crew glad that they were on the other side of protective head-height safety screens. Helm used the thrusters to set a course out of the harbour before switching on the main electric motors. The sea behind Cloud Maker foamed from their powerful twin propellers, and the ship picked up speed. The local seabird population were quick to take advantage of the opportunities of the ship’s wake and the many creatures it brought to the surface. Nobody saw the arrow leave his bow, but everyone on deck saw the large gull (Marinus Giganticus) hit the deck. John Blackhawk bent down and pulled the arrow from the bird’s chest and picked it up by its neck. The bird’s nine-foot wingspan now dangled fully extended from its lifeless body.

  ‘Sailors chicken,’ said John as he raised the five pound bird aloft for all to see. ‘You’ll be glad of it once you’ve had those damned boil-in-a-bag meals for a few days.’

  Back in the idyllic paradises that were Gene’s, Bill’s and Carlos’s domes, things continued to tick-over as usual. The environments they contained were maintained despite the best efforts of the surrounding oppressive natural climatic conditions. Heat-exchangers swapped what would be the greenhouse temperatures within the domes with the constant 12 degrees of the aquifers deep beneath the desert floor. Temperature differences were also exploited within this process to generate electrical energy. The domes’ systems were mostly self-sustaining. Even the lubricants used were manufactured in the large underground farms of the domes. Of course, all machines needed regular maintenance and eventual rebuilds and replacements, but these events were very occasional and were factored into the total energy and resource footprint calculation. Like all surviving nations, there had been a reclamation period, but that was a long time ago, and further scavenging for metals and other rare elements was now unnecessary with the vast pre-processed stockpiles at Central’s disposal. Any part could be remanufactured from scratch a million times over.

  Today, however, there was going to be a slight change in this routine. It started amongst some of the smallest maintenance droids in each dome. They continued to navigate themselves around their underground labyrinth but didn’t do any of the tasks which had been allocated to them. Within hours there was some serious overheating in a few of the ancillary systems. The larger specialist service droids were called out, but also seemed to have difficulty in fixing the problems. They did start the jobs but didn’t finish them. By this time several secondary systems had failed and reverted to their backups. The slowly rising temperatures at first seemed to be within expected variation, but then they reached their upper limits. At this point, many small cooling pipes ruptured. With no small droids to fix them these leaks flooded and shorted out the remaining maintenance subsystems. Shortly after this, the secondary backup systems failed. Juanita first noticed there was a problem when she heard a whistling noise coming from the main airlock, but the telemetry she was getting was telling her that nothing was wrong. After a brief conference with Manuel, they tried to contact Brad, tried but failed. They both ran into the house, and down into the service elevator, however, the elevator was no longer working. Manuel tried the ancient switches several times, but the lift wasn’t going anywhere. At this point, they were both aware of a message coming through the channel usually used by Central to warn them that he would be taking over their units. The message said: ‘Hi guys, this is Central, Carlos won’t be back today, so I’m giving you both the rest of the day off.’

  The two simulants stared at each other. Usually, they
would communicate among themselves by digital radio signals, but they both found that since the last message they had lost that ability.

  ‘What do you think is going on?’ said Juanita, feeling awkward having to actually talk to Manuel.

  ‘I’ve no idea, I feel like I’ve been cut adrift. If we could get down below, we might find out what’s going on. With the house lift out of action and no stairs we could try the car lift?’ said Manuel.

  ‘I can work with that, let’s get over there,’ said Juanita as she clicked off to the rear of the house.

  They both realised the error they had made, when with no radio available, and no physical switches, they could not lower the car lift.

  ‘Well what should we do now?’ asked Juanita.

  ‘The whistling has stopped. Perhaps we should just wait for Central to fix things. There’s a whole army of droids down below. Why not let them sort it out. I expect they’re right on it as we speak,’ said Manuel.

  ‘I guess you’re right. I doubt we could fix whatever it is anyway. I’m going to finish planting that last bed of marigolds,’ said Juanita.

  ‘OK, I’ve got some dusting to do in the library. See you later,’ said Manuel as he turned to go back to the house.

  Fifty feet beneath them Carlos’s truck sparkled in the low lighting of its underground garage. Ten yards from the vehicle the inspection cover on the nearest processor rack had been removed and was lying on the floor. Inside the small translucent creature clung tenaciously to the circuitry of one of the motherboards. From there it had spread its virus and identified Central’s main processor locations. The virus was very pervasive, and since it came from within, it met few barriers. The creature had just contacted its companions in the other domes, and between them, they had gained control of the central communication array 100 miles away. The large dish rotated slowly to point north and simultaneously, three high-level relay drones were given new mission data.

  Ten minutes later the creatures all got the same message: ‘OK boys, this is Chief; I’m going to take it from here and finish the job.’

  45 ACROSS THE POND

  The first 100 miles were relatively incident free. They steered the Cloud Maker at a steady twenty knots along a course that was two miles from the coast. This was mainly to keep out of the heavier seas but also because they liked the security of being in sight of land. The ship was proving to be easy to manage; the six computer-controlled sails displayed varying degrees of compliance with the helm. The three at the front behaved themselves and remained taut as they rotated, however, the other three often suffered from slight collapse that interrupted their rotation. The crew were actively studying the manuals for clues on how to get all the sails back in full working order.

  Apart from the sail problems, Harry’s other cause for concern was what action Central would take once he discovered they were missing. When they’d got back from the forests he’d been amazed that Central had not immediately recovered the military-spec hovercar, it just didn’t seem to fit the profile they had of Central. Perhaps he was actually becoming more resigned to them taking off and joining the Natives? Now they knew what had happened to Bruce and Neil it was deeply worrying to think that he could do something similar to them. Jake was convinced that Central had gone off the rails since that incident, but there was no way they could rely on that. With any luck, the illusion at the oasis would be effective long enough for the “specials” to plant their virus in the domes. He had a feeling that Central would smell a rat before that happened and send in some additional reconnaissance devices to confirm the signals he was receiving. Before they had left Columbia, they had wrecked the long-range hovercar that Jake had used to do the pick-up from the oasis, but they had no idea what other flying vehicles Central could bring into play, or perhaps something even more deadly, like a nuclear missile? It was not possible to contact Chief with the equipment they had, so Harry was in the dark about what was happening back on the mainland. But as the day progressed and nothing happened Harry began to feel that they had got cleanly away.

  One incident that took everyone’s mind off the journey for a good hour was when eight fin whales came alongside. The enormous creatures seemed to be following the Cloud Maker, and the thought did cross John Blackhawk’s mind that Chief had sent them. The Four stared in awe as the whales bobbed alongside; it was like having their own personal fountain display as the whales repeatedly blew. The three Native Americans were soaked to the skin from the salt water, but they didn’t care. This was a priceless event for them all.

  One problem with the Cloud Maker was that she relied on an inertial system. This generally worked well but needed occasional updates from land-based beacons or satellites to recalibrate. The beacons had not been around for many years, and the satellites were fried, so the crew had to replace that validation by taking fixes on coastal landmarks. The problem with this was that the coast had changed dramatically over the past 200 years. Not only had the sea levels continued to rise but extensive coastal erosion had done some seriously reshaping. Fortunately, the ship’s systems contained a full set of ancient digital charts with enough natural landmarks on the charts that were still visible to get a fix from. They estimated that they were still travelling across what was North Carolina, back in the 21st Century. This was confirmed when they passed within two miles of the marker buoy for the submerged city of Norfolk. As night drew in Harry looked forward to getting in some practice with the sextant. They’d found several of them on board, he presumed they had got quite a bit of use once the satellites went offline. Harry rapidly realised the shortcomings of these instruments when the sun went down and the stars and moon that night were obscured by a thick blanket of cloud. The best shot they had was by using Jake’s salvaged laptop and connecting it to the ship’s systems, then using fuzzy-matching techniques, attempted to make the best of the available data. The initial results from this process were reasonable and gradually improved until they were confident with the inertial system’s calibration.

  The crew were also experimenting with the sails and had discovered that the rotors didn’t give the slightest cause for concern in even the most severe gusts. They confirmed with guidance from the manuals that the rotor ship could tack into the wind at 20-30 degrees, while a vessel with a conventional sail rig could not tack closer than 45 degrees. This meant that course changes were minimised for Cloud Maker, but for most of their trip, the prevailing westerly winds would be behind them anyway.

  John Blackhawk, Jake and a team of the Kids who all had an engineering speciality, spent some time below decks examining the internal workings of the sails mountings to see if they could bring the faulty sails up to full power. After a few minor tensioning adjustments the sails began to behave better, it was just their electrical power output that was still slightly down. They figured that the faulty sails must have been older than the other ones, which had been changed in the latest refit. So the problem was put down to simple wear and tear. They were all thankful of the degree of redundancy that the six sails gave them.

  A massive storm woke everyone at first light. The towering seas dwarfed the Cloud Maker, tossing it about like a toy. The ship’s systems had automatically turned into the waves and reduced the sail area to the equivalent of a storm lashing on a conventional ship. All movements across the deck were limited. Many of the crew found the experience terrifying, and most of them felt sick to some degree. For Jane, just a brief look out of the window was all she needed to confirm what her inner-ear had been telling her for some time. The storm grew stronger for the next two hours with massive lightning strikes hitting the sea all around the ship, accompanied by deafening thunder. For most, it was a case of trying to lie in their bunks and avoid being hit by unsecured objects. Old Bill was having a bad time of it, he’d been terribly sick, but had managed to get most of it into a waste bin. Unfortunately, during his last session at the bin, he was tumbled across the cabin and landed awkwardly against the door frame. His left shoulder was n
ow badly bruised and swollen. Since then Jake had insisted that Bill was strapped into his bunk to prevent any further injury.

  ‘It’s for your own good old buddy,’ he said as he adjusted the heavy webbing straps across Bill’s frail body. ‘Besides, I don’t think you have anything else to throw up.’

  By mid-morning, the storm had begun to abate, but the seas were now a whole lot bigger. There was no sign of land, but the ship’s ancient radar suggested that it was still only 30 miles to their port side. They decided to head nearer to shore again to improve their bearings. The information gained by their Heath-Robinson navigation system had managed to recalibrate the inertial system, but they still needed the reassurance of the occasional landmark fix. They were all expecting the weather to grow worse as they went further north. The Atlantic Conveyor had been stopped for over 150 years which had really screwed up the world’s weather patterns. Also, the Jetstream had moved further south resulting in most of the precipitation now falling in the northern hemisphere, above the 50-degree latitude line.

  The rain had reduced visibility to less than a mile, but despite this, the sails were back to their full configuration, and they were making excellent progress. Confidence was improving, and everyone was keen to make as much speed as possible. The rain continued well into the night and once again denied the crew a night of celestial navigation checks using the old instruments.

  After the second day at sea, most of the crew were now getting their sea-legs and only occasionally threw-up. For most, the hot protein breakfast of the third day was a turning point in many ways. The huge swells no longer worried them, and they all had increased confidence in the ships’ sea-worthiness. By 11 am the rain finally stopped and the decks dried off enough to allow enough grip for those who wanted to walk about, to do it with reasonable safety. Even Bill managed to make it up to the bridge once Jake had unstrapped him from his bunk. His shoulder was on fire, and he was struggling to use that arm without making the pain worse. Jane strapped it up for him and found some strong painkillers from their first-aid kits. From the bridge, they all looked out over the undulating green waves with hope and anticipation