The Iceberg - [Richard Mariner 05]

by Peter Tonkin

  ~ * ~

  Asha Higgins swept the luxuriant thickness of her long chestnut hair out of her dark eyes and frowned down at Sergeant Dundas. There was something just not right here but she simply could not put her finger on it. She had worked for years as a doctor - in hospitals, briefly in general practice, and since the mid-eighties on a whole range of ships, most of which belonged to Heritage Mariner. In the last few she had been there not only as ship’s doctor but as wife to the captain, and she missed John now. She had got into the habit of talking things through with him, bouncing ideas off his relative ignorance but availing herself freely of his fund of simple wisdom and solid good sense. She said he played Watson to her Sherlock Holmes, which made him smile with wry amusement because for years he had been cast as Little John to Richard’s Robin Hood. Always the sidekick, he would complain, never the romantic lead.

  She bitterly felt his absence now, for there was something wrong with the sergeant she simply could not put her finger on. Could the slight discolouration of his upper right cheek and the bridge of his nose be wind burn? Could the cracks on his right hand be a kind of frostbite? And what in the name of Allah could have caused the rash of blisters across the pale expanse of his chest?

  She had looked through his clothing for clues when she first noticed the strange symptoms, but had found nothing. Well, she would just go down to the ship’s laundry and go through the clothing again. The sergeant’s and the major’s, just in case. She crossed the room purposefully and swept out through the door.

  Dougie Dundas’s eyes opened to the merest slit and, through a haze of nausea, he watched the doctor depart. A fine figure of a woman, he thought dreamily. When he was rich he would surround himself with lots of others just like her. But he hadn’t liked the way she had searched through his clothing when she thought he was asleep from her drugs. She must suspect something about his diamond, he thought. And if she did, then who else did? He had been right to hide it. It was so big and so rough that he had almost choked to death getting it down his throat, but it would be safe enough inside him until he worked out where else he could put it when Nature returned it to him again in due course. And in the meantime, not even Dr Higgins would find it unless their relationship became a great deal more intimate!

  ~ * ~

  Katya Borodin found it very difficult to swim at first. The current kept pushing her forwards down the slope of the widening tunnel, and in spite of incipient claustrophobia, she would have liked to lie forward and fin along easily in the middle of it. But every time she tried to do so, the rope pulled her up short and her legs would swing under her until she was almost hanging vertically again.

  There was very little to see in the tunnel. It was roughly round, slick and featureless, though the walls, floor and roof were honeycombed with holes of various sizes where bubbles of air must have risen through the apparently solid medium. And the lack of absolute solidity was borne in upon her by more than her sense of sight. Behind the crackle of the open channel in her earpieces she could hear the sighing bubble of trapped air on the move, the sloshing rumble of water washing not just over the ice, but through the very heart of it. When she touched the walls or the roof above, even through the thickness of her diving glove she could feel them faintly vibrating as though, among all the other sounds she could hear, there was one too deep to be audible, which the mighty berg could feel.

  The crystalline ice was lucent, but as she went down, the light faded fast. What brightness there was came in gathering shades of green. Behind her, Bob was outlined in viridescence which flared and dimmed with the passage of clouds or waves. On either hand, the walls darkened from jade to emerald shot through with the lighter tracks made by the captive air bubbles fighting upwards; ahead, the darkest bottle-glass darkened further. But never to absolute darkness, and never to formlessness. As she fought her way further down against the tugging of the safety line, she could see where the tunnel ended.

  Ended not in a wall but in an opening.

  ‘Can you see this, Bob?’ she asked, her voice quivering.

  ‘Looks like we’re coming down to the mouth of this particular river,’ said the American, his words distorted by the static on the little radio. But surely his voice, too, had been quivering just a little.

  ‘We must go there and take a look.’

  ‘Only if we’ve got enough line.’

  ‘You have used less than half the available line,’ came the even more distant voice of Colin Ross. ‘How much more do you need?’

  ‘It is difficult to judge distance. Not only is there the effect of the water to be considered, there is the lack of any recognisable scale. I do not have any idea how big anything which I can see actually is, therefore I cannot tell how distant it may be.’

  ‘That isn’t much help, Katya.’

  ‘It’s the best we can do, Colin. Katya’s right. No way can we judge distance accurately down here. Give us as much line as you can, we’ll keep updating you as we go.’

  ‘No sign of the missing men?’ asked Richard’s voice reedily over the set in his suit.

  ‘No,’ answered Bob, his voice deep with sadness. ‘Like it says in that old hymn, Richard, “Time, like an ever rolling stream . . .” ‘

  ‘ “ . . . Bears all its sons away.” ‘

  ‘That’s the one, old man. They’re long gone, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Then you should come back at once,’ said Colin, his voice loud and his tone urgent.

  ‘But no!’ answered Katya Borodin at once. ‘Dr Ross, how can you say this? We must look. How can we not? We must!’

  The silence then told how deeply Colin was torn. Had he been down there in that unique position himself, he would not have hesitated for an instant. There would have been no force on earth great enough to pull him back from discovering what lay beyond the debouching of the underground, submarine river. And having Katya and Bob report to him in detail what lay beyond the tunnel, at the heart of the iceberg, might well add significantly to his understanding of the mechanics of its monstrous construction. He was a scientist, an explorer in the minutiae of ice crystals and the tiny forces that made snowflakes form as they did as well as in the enormities of frozen continents and what made glaciers the size of Amazons create icebergs the size of countries. He had spent his life discovering the facts he was now so expert in, no matter what the cost.

  And yet the cost was potentially so high. Manhattan had already claimed too many lives, but their loss had not slowed the project and put at risk the hope of the dying millions in Mau. Bob and Katya were different. They were the best in their field. If they died, then the project might well die too and Manhattan would be left to waste itself in the warm water, and Mau would be left to tear itself apart. The responsibility weighed very heavily upon Colin, for the situation was of his making and the project the result of his work. Ultimately, they were all here because of him. Those who were no longer here had died because of him. And any more who were injured or killed would weigh like lead upon his conscience until he died.

  He met Richard’s eyes, not asking for advice, but summoning the moral courage to proceed. Richard advised in any case. ‘Go for it,’ he said.

  But his voice was drowned by Katya’s sudden exclamation, ‘There’s something moving down there! Bob! Do you see it? There’s something moving just beyond the tunnel mouth!’

  ~ * ~

  Katya was hanging upright in the water, kicking lazily against the current to keep her legs from sweeping on downstream. While waiting for Colin’s decision, she had switched on her torch and shone it around, marvelling at the way its light changed the colours of the ice all around her. Lost in wonder at the new rainbow of blues that the torch beam seemed to trap just above her head, she had played the beam on down the tunnel roof until, with a shock, she saw the light vanish and realised she was shining it straight out through the tunnel mouth. And as her dazzled mind was just beginning to come to terms with that, something flashed across the broad brightness of t
he beam. Something bright, vivid with movement. Something alive.

  She had called out to Bob in her excitement, but it was Colin who answered her. ‘Right,’ he snapped crisply. ‘Give me depth reading and remaining oxygen time before you proceed, please, Katya.’

  She looked at her depth meter and was surprised to see that she had descended less than ten metres - the tunnel had given the impression of sloping more steeply down. But she still had lots of oxygen left, especially as she would clearly have no real problems of decompression at this rate.

  The realisation that she was so near the surface did nothing to dull the wonderment she felt, but it subconsciously added to her confidence. When Colin said, ‘Take care!’ she took little notice. As soon as her line slackened, she was off, moving purposefully after the pointing finger of light towards the gape of the tunnel mouth. As the beam of light plunged into the shadows beyond, a whirl of movement was revealed and her eyes fastened upon it, dazzled and increasingly mesmerised.

  When she reached the tunnel mouth, instead of recognising the fact, stopping and taking stock, she swam on out without a further thought and the body of Jock McGann, dead for six hours now but still spinning wildly in the swirl of the buried whirlpool, collected her in his icy arms as he swept by and jerked her bodily out and away. It felt strangely as if she had been pulled into a particularly energetic dance. The length of his body slammed against hers and the pair of them whirled out of the horizontal position in which she had been swimming into an upright position. There was an instant in which she thought he might miraculously be alive, but then the brightness from her waving torch revealed the gaping sockets of his eyes. His mouth was wide and screaming, as though he could feel the small fish there feasting on his lips and tongue. Overwhelmed with revulsion, she pushed away from him only to shove herself backwards against the side of the cave they were dancing round. She felt a stunning blow against the back of her head and surrendered to the dark.

  The woven polyester line stretched taut along the tunnel, then it parted and Katya was gone.

  The first Bob knew of it was the disorientating moment when the loose line suddenly became bar-taut, crushing him against the roof. ‘Katya!’ he called into his face-plate microphone, only to be answered by her wail of shock and surprise. Then the line was loose and he knew with a cold certainty what that meant.

  ‘She’s gone!’ he called up to Colin. ‘Give me enough slack to follow. I’ll make an assessment from the tunnel entrance. Quickly!’

  As soon as the line slackened, he fought his way forward, but unlike Katya, he was very careful indeed to note where the tunnel mouth was and he did not let his vision probe beyond it until he was firmly wedged within it.

  ‘There’s some kind of cave here,’ he gasped. ‘I can’t really see how big it is. I can’t make out the far side. I can see a little of the ice immediately outside and it looks as though the tunnel debouches near the top of a sheer ice wall, but I can’t tell how deep it is. I guess it must be open to the sea, though, because there’s a lot of stuff in here. There’s a kind of slow whirlpool. Everything I can see is swirling around. I can’t see Katya, though. I guess I need to go ... My God!’

  ‘What is it? Bob!’ Colin’s voice was sharp with much more than concern now. He glanced across at Richard who was rapidly preparing to go down into the tunnel.

  The American’s voice came back onto the airwaves. ‘It’s OK. I cut my hand, is all. There’s some kind of metal wedged in the ice here. Bit of plate from some old wreck, I guess. Son of a bitch, that’s a sharp edge. Maybe that’s what parted Katya’s line. It’s well enough honed, God knows. Colin, there’s all kind of stuff washing around in here. I still can’t see Katya, though. Wait a minute. Let’s have absolute silence.’ On his command, there was silence on the air. They all held their breath. There was the faintest whisper of respiration. ‘That’s her. She’s still breathing. Must be unconscious, though. I guess I’m going to have to go in. How much line do I have?’

  ‘Less than five metres. Wait a minute. What, Richard?’

  ‘If we secure the end of his line to my safety harness, it’ll double the length available to him. I’ll go straight to the end of the tunnel and we can take it from there.’

  ‘Sounds good. Did you hear what Richard said, Bob?’

  ‘Yup. Sounds good to me too, Colin.’ There was a slight pause. Then, ‘Katya, it’s Bob here. Can you hear me? Katya. It’s OK, we’re coming to get you. Hang on. Stay calm and hang on.’

  While he was broadcasting his message to Katya, one of Richard’s seamen was securing the end of Bob’s line to the front of Richard’s safety harness. Richard gave Colin and Kate a wave and slid into the water.

  Like the other two before him, he was struck by the smoothness of the air-shafted walls, by the quality of the light coming through them; by the strength of the flow and by the unexpected warmth of the water creating it. It wasn’t exactly hot, but it wasn’t icy cold either.

  Where the others had taken their time, exploring with some care - to begin with at least - Richard knew what was down here and he hadn’t the inclination to linger. And the men in charge of his safety line would not pull him up short before he reached the tunnel mouth. He was able to do what Katya had wished to do, therefore: he fell forward into the heart of the flow and finned purposefully down the tunnel as quickly as he was able. ‘I’ll be with you in a moment, Bob,’ he said as he swam swiftly down the tunnel. ‘Wait till I get there before you move.’

  ‘I hear you, but hurry it up.’

  As he swam, Richard collected the slack line in great loops so that when he did come up behind Bob, he was ready and able to control the speed at which the American went into the cavern beyond. ‘Anchor me,’ he ordered, and his safety line tightened at once. Following Bob’s gesture, he saw the curved blade of metal protruding from the tunnel’s mouth and he angled himself so that his body would ensure Bob’s rope came nowhere near it. In order to do this efficiently, he had to come very near the mouth of the tunnel and so, as his American friend stepped out into the whirl of it, Richard found himself perfectly placed to observe the cavern and almost everything within it.

  It was just possible to see the far wall, about seventy-five metres distant, - although as Katya had observed it was difficult to judge distance down here. His first glance out gave him an instant impression of being able to see the whole shape of the formation, however, and he carried that in his head as he concentrated on keeping an eye on Bob as he fought against the whirlpool current.

  The shape of the cavern seemed to be like the top half of an hourglass. There was a roof, domed and shadowed, quite close at hand above, then walls which fell inwards as well as downwards to shadows which made their foundations impossible to fathom. Richard guessed he could see more than two hundred metres straight down, however, before the green light failed. And even then, there was the quicksilver gyre of the current reaching further downwards still. The mouth of the tunnel in which he was wedged was but one dark spot among many, though as far as he could see it was the topmost.

  What was happening immediately around him and what he could see and understand of what was happening further out in the cavern made it quite easy for him to understand what was happening in this part of the iceberg as a whole. The cavern had begun to form because the honeycomb of tunnels crossed here and one at least opened out to die sea far below. In the flow of water - meltwater, sea water - a small gyrating current had been set up. Richard knew that until the hook had been blown off the cliffs fifty metres or so behind his back, the iceberg had moved around in circles, so perhaps the swirling current had been born of that movement. Or it might have begun to swirl because the iceberg had stopped doing so. Either way, he had no doubt that the force of the internal streams producing the whirlpool current would have been increased by the faster melting and the greater pressures caused by driving Manhattan at ten knots through the Gulf Stream.

  The chamber had been shaped and filled by the whi
rlpool of water, fed by the streams endlessly spewing inwards from countless tunnels opening in its walls like the one he was standing in, and pouring out at its base, no doubt, the detritus which eventually fell down the quicksilver swirl of water at its heart. The outpouring below would intensify the suction above so that the tunnel rivers could never fill the place, no matter how fast they flowed, or satisfy the whirling suction of the gyre.

  Bob was finning as hard as he could into the force of it and was just about holding his own. From Richard’s point of view he was soaring away across the current in bird-like flight, falling back slightly as though riding down a strong wind, but remaining more or less level with the tunnel mouth. But the wind was not a clear wind. Like an autumn gale, it was full of bits and pieces, hard and soft, with and without life. Bob’s torch showed the unexpected thickness of the detritus here. Much of it, blessedly, was weed. Unnerving sheets and streamers of brown; clumps of the stuff, torn loose to swim like huge brown octopi and giant men o’ war. In amongst the slow, sinister reaching of the ten-metre arms of the weed were dazzling dartings of tiny shrimp and fish which caught the white torchlight and gleamed like falling stars. Shoals of them darted, riding the dark force of the current with agile ease. And where the small, bright-sided sparks of life darted, larger fish hunted singly and in shoals of their own. Mackerel with flanks like oil on water, thick-finned hake, steely-sided cod. As insidiously as the trembling rumble of forces ill contained, of air bursting out and water gushing in, the iceberg had been unexpectedly filled with life down here as well as outside in the brightness and the air.