The O.D.

by Chris James

  The first item on the agenda after lunch was the Eydos Bill of Rights. The laptop was switched on and the crew invited to enter their suggestions in their own password-protected file. They were given the rest of the day to do so, and when Serman clicked Harvest late that afternoon, 256 proposed rights were extracted from the 81 files onto a single list. When duplication was taken into account, the actual number of unique rights boiled down to just 13, ranging from ‘the right to leave the island at any time without ostracism or hindrance’ to ‘the right to petition.’ Under a proposal by Serman, if eight or more people objected to any proposed right, it would be stricken from the list. Of the 13 proposed rights, only one failed to make the cut: ‘The right to bear arms’. Pilot had thrown that one in as a test and it had been rejected by 81 votes to zero.

  Dan Heiberg pulled the last tent peg from the ground and threw it on the pile with the others. “Bag ‘em up, Johnny,” he said to his son. “Looks like weather coming.” After three baking hot days in Elk City State Park, Kansas, the heatwave had broken, and the blue skies were being painted over from the southwest by a growing mass of grey-black cloud.

  “Dan, come here,” Heiberg’s wife called from the front seat of the car. “They’re playing our song.” Heiberg settled into the driver’s seat and smiled as You’re the Reason God Made Oklahoma rattled the speakers. Halfway through the song, the music was interrupted by the station’s engineer.

  ‘Sorry to break in folks, but I just got a call from my cousin about a twister that’s touched down near Enid. Said it’s headed for Blackwell and Ponca City. As soon as we have any more information, we’ll let you know.’

  Their song came back on again, but Heiberg’s smile had disappeared. He checked the map, then looked at his wife in alarm. He reached over and pressed SCAN on the radio, searching for more news. Oldies… Country… Top 40… more Country… When they picked up the public radio station out of Ketchum, the announcer was breathlessly reporting on the tornado… and what he was saying was unbelievable.

  ‘Enid has been wiped off the map, according to storm chaser Jared Tillott who just got off the line with us. We have no confirmation of this but…’ There was a click, followed by 10 seconds of silence. Then there was another click and the voice was back. ‘We’ve just been told to shut down the station and find shelter. The tornado is travelling due east, and we’re right in its track. As soon as we get the all clear, we’ll resume broadcasting, if we can, but meantime, if you live anywhere on or near the line Ponca City-Bartlesville-Ketchum-Springfield we advise you to take to the nearest shelter immediately. This is KOSN Public Radio. We’ll be back on air momentarily.’

  Dan and Debbie Heiberg looked out at their three children playing in the sunshine, then exchanged a glance which said far more than words ever could. Their own storm shelter was over ninety miles away at home in Bixby. To reach it, they’d have to cross the route of the tornado. Not an option. With a gentle squeeze of his wife’s forearm, Heiberg leapt out and gathered up the last bits and pieces of camping gear. “GET IN THE CAR, GUYS,” he said jovially to the children in an attempt not to scare them. “WE’RE OUTTA HERE.”

  As his family was belting up, Heiberg opened the map again to check their options. If the tornado stayed on its line 50 miles to the south and continued to move east, they’d be okay. To be extra sure, he decided to drive west.

  On leaving the park, they had no choice but to drive towards the tornado for a mile until they reached the junction with Highway 160. In front of them, as far as the eye could see, lay the heavy blackness of the weather front, somewhere inside of which the tornado was wreaking havoc and death to all in its path.

  When they reached the highway and turned west, the skies were meaner than ever and it had started to rain heavily. The wipers could barely keep the road visible and the radio was broadcasting nothing but intermittent hissing.

  “Daddy, I’m scared,” their youngest daughter said, pressing Jumble, her favourite soft toy dog, to her cheek.

  “We’ll be fine, honey. Tell Jumble everything’s going to be okay. It’s just rain.” Dan Heiberg’s confident reassurances put everyone at ease for the moment.

  Unbeknown to the family, the four-mile-wide swathe of the tornado had veered north-northeast, after removing half the city of Pawhuska from the Earth, and was now heading straight towards their SUV at 90 miles an hour.

  “LOOK, THERE’S A STRIP OF WHITE SKY UNDER THE BLACK,” Johnny shouted. “AND ANOTHER ONE OVER THERE. IT’S CLEARING UP.” But the area in between remained black as night and had begun taking on a distinct funnel shape unlike anything they had ever seen before on YouTube.

  “I thought it was supposed to be moving away from us, Dan,” his wife said softly so the children wouldn’t hear the fear in her voice.

  “Is that a tornado, Dad?” Johnny asked, pointing at the funnel that now filled 45 degrees of the horizon. His father, a ball of knotted concentration, didn’t respond. Dan Heiberg’s knuckles gleamed white on the steering wheel as he tried to outrun the storm.

  “Daddy. I’m scared.” the small voice behind Jumble said again after a gust of wind had nearly blown the SUV into a ditch. With forward visibility all but gone, Heiberg was forced to stop the car.

  “What are you doing, Dan?”

  “Come up here with Mom and Dad, QUICK,” he said to the children. He reached over the back of his seat and lifted their youngest into his lap. The other two hoisted themselves over and were immediately enveloped in a desperate circle of love and fear. “Merciful Lord in your heavenly − “

  Their bodies were never recovered − at least, not in their entirety. DNA extracted from a partial human foot found near Emporia, 83 miles north of their estimated take-off point, was matched to a sample given by Dan Heiberg’s brother. It was sufficient for closure. The family were just five souls in a death toll in excess of 19,000. It was the deadliest tornado in America since 695 people lost their lives in the Tri-State Tornado of 1925.

  In this part of the Bible Belt, more people than not were calling it an Act of God. Wiser heads were calling the world’s first F6 tornado, with wind speeds in excess of 320mph, an Act of Man.

  “I’d like to put a motion to the vote,” Pilot said after breakfast the next day. “Two motions. One, that there be no populating of the island until we have a population policy. And two, that we wait five years before we even discuss a population policy. We have enough work ahead of us not to have it slowed down by offspring. We should wait.”

  “I second both motions,” Mara said.

  “As do I,” Bradingbrooke added.

  One by one, every person in the mess room seconded Pilot’s motions.

  “Unanimously seconded. No vote needed,” Serman said.

  Early the following morning, the helicopter carrying the specialists arrived. Pilot and the rest of the crew welcomed each of them aboard Ptolemy with a handshake and the last of their Cornish pasties. By this time, news of Jeckyll’s shooting was worldwide and Pilot noticed some fearful glances being cast by the new arrivals towards the French soldiers encamped in the distance.

  The first man Pilot spoke to was Harvey Giles, the 50-year-old arborist/forester from Montana. “Welcome to Eydos, Harvey,” Pilot said, recognizing the bolo tie from the man’s file picture. “It’s not Dubai, but I promise you it’ll be a lot more interesting.”

  Giles looked out across the bleak, grey landscape through his thick glasses. “I thought planting trees in sand was going to be hard. But… bare rock?”

  “Mr. Vaalon’s got it covered. After dinner I’ll hand out the briefing files.”

  Before the newcomers sat down to a meal of pesto pasta and canned peas, Pilot apologized to them for the deception. “Although it may not look like it to you,” he assured them, “you’re now part of one of the most exciting experiments in human history.” He almost believed it himself. But one man in particular did not buy it.

  “I don’t do experiments,” the Venetian marine engineer
said. “Please arrange transport from this island as soon as possible.” Pilot took the man aside and began using every form of cajolery he could think of to change his mind, but he seemed dug in. In frustration, Pilot pulled the man’s contract from an attache case and threatened to tear it up. The loss of $30,000 a month was more than Sergio Carpecchio could entertain and he grudgingly acquiesced.

  Within the steel walls of the city, Vaalon’s delayed plans were being put into operation. The priority was to select sites for a harbour and a farm. A general survey of their surroundings was required in order to bring potential harbour sites and possible cultivation areas as close to each other, and to the barges, as possible. Five parties were formed – two to explore the Atlantic coastline, two to survey the interior, and one to walk the mainland-side coast. The crews’ topographer and agronomist briefed the explorers on how to evaluate the terrain, determine drainage lines, measure tides and so on. Much of the island could be ruled out just by applying commonsense, they said. Each group was provisioned and equipped for two weeks on the rock and by one o’clock they were ready to move.

  “There are two more things to look for,” Pilot said just before they left. “The French ship we saw just before our landfall, Largesse, sank with Shenandoah. We need to look out for both wrecks, but most importantly that of the Largesse. If it’s on the island, we have to find it before the French do. If they beat us to it, it’ll blow our sovereignty claim out of the water, especially if there are any dead French nationals aboard.” Pilot was hoping that the mass of moving water would have swept the French ship off the shelf and into the Bay to the east, but there was a possibility it might not have.

  As the five teams trudged off in different directions over the sunlit, windswept landscape−each followed by a detachment from the French encampment− Pilot headed for the communications room. Jim McConie was on duty and smiled when he entered. “We’re an internet sensation, Lonnie,” he said. “Our clip of the French invasion has had 700 million hits. ‘Lonnie Pilot’ is up to number three in search topics, ‘Eydos’ is at number seven, and half a million people have signed the online Book of Condolence for Ali on the Scholasticorps website.”

  “If they find the Largesse it won’t matter how many people sign it, Jim.” Pilot thanked him and exited to observe proceedings outside. The component parts of the trolleys and wagons were being brought up from Westcliff’s hold and arranged on the rock in preparation for assembly. A crewman from Rome was orchestrating this little operation with Toscanini-like precision.

  The cargoes of the three disemboweled barges had been removed for sorting, and work was in progress on the other side of the convoy, lifting out the prefabricated sections of the portable building systems from King Solomon’s belly. The sections of rubber barrage not shredded on landing were now being deflated.

  Rather than pitch in with the others, Pilot felt a need to get away from the noise and activity of the convoy. Getting himself a notepad, pen and collapsible stool, he turned his back on the barges and strode southwest across the endless expanse of denuded rock, turning around every few minutes to wave at the two French soldiers shadowing him.

  Thursday’s sun came up behind a dome of rain clouds half a mile thick and wasn’t seen for the entire day. The rain was relentless. Worried that it would wash away their spilled topsoil, Serman directed that the portable buildings be loosely assembled over the exposed piles, and this rain-drenched operation took most of the morning.

  Everyone felt refreshed after having had a proper night’s rest in the comfort of their own beds and relieved not to have the French soldiers on their backs, although the legionnaires could still be seen less than a mile away, constructing the pre-fab barracks that had been airlifted in at first light.

  McConie and his team of listeners were logging the exploration parties’ radio reports and keeping track of what was happening in the wider world beyond. The UN resolution, although ineffective, had given everyone heart. Britain’s attitude, gleaned from the news reports of government statements, Pilot translated as being, ‘If we can’t have it, no one can.’ They were more interested in getting the French off the shelf than in removing Lonnie Pilot and his cohorts, although they were not too happy about the settlers’ growing stature.

  McConie opened a file on his kPad and handed the tablet to Pilot. “Coastal casualty and damage reports,” he said. Pilot sat down and began skim reading. The naval dockyards at Plymouth had taken a major hammering, as had those at Portsmouth. Several war ships had been swamped and sunk by the waves. A preemptive strike by Eydos, he thought. The tidal surge up the Thames had been less discriminating. Although the death toll had been in the tens, not hundreds, the cost of the damage was being expressed in figures he could barely comprehend. Similar devastation had visited the Low Countries, not surprisingly. Government ministers of all the affected nations were blaming the deceased for their own deaths, claiming that all necessary measures had been taken to remove them from harm’s way. That morning, Pilot had gone onto the thisiscornwall website for news. Although Penzance had received a severe soaking, no-one had died in the flooding.

  Other worries played on his mind and these he tried to deal with rationally one by one. Kerry Jackson was in no danger from the French, he reasoned, because he was too much in the public eye now – a media hero. The fact that Jackson’s father was the Prime Minister of New Zealand was also helpful, even though his son was no longer a New Zealander.

  Four hundred and fifty miles east of the beached convoy, Kerry Jackson was released penniless onto the streets of Paris. Almost immediately, and out of the jaws of the newsmen about to devour him, he was bundled into a black Citroen and taken to a hotel near Paris Beauvais Airport. There, he was introduced to Rebecca Schein, who had been there for a week.

  “Glad to see you, Rebecca” Jackson said. “Watched you being winched up. We saw the next rescue, too, but then lost sight of the chopper. I’m really sorry about your mates. What happened out there?”

  Schein winced. “Hard to describe, Kerry. Fear, helplessness and hopelessness as we were being whipped and tossed around by the waves. Then, relief when they attached the winch to my waist. Then, elation as they pulled me aboard. Then, joy when they got Mary in. Then, despair when their CPR on her failed. Then, when I knew that was it− that all the others were dead, too… I’ve never felt an emotion like it.” Schein forced a smile. “Life goes on, Kerry. We’re both flying to the island in the morning in the same helicopter that rescued me.”

  When Pilot emerged from his cabin, it was raining harder than ever and all work outside had stopped. He sat down with Serman to try to clear the fog in his brain and organize some indoor work, but it was obvious that he didn’t want to work and neither did anyone else.

  The remainder of that wet Thursday Pilot spent trying to get to know the advisers. Of particular interest was stonemason and jack-of-all-trades, Mirko Soldo. Soldo had worked all over the world in a variety of occupations, from car assembly worker to masseur. For Pilot, his attraction was a seemingly inexhaustible knowledge of all subjects from dowsing to smoking ham. He struck Pilot as being the vocational version of Forrest Vaalon. Normal lifespan and normal brain capacity ruled out the ideal – to know everything about everything− but Pilot’s white-maned mentor and the bearded Soldo came pretty close in their different ways. “Do you know the history of cement, Lonnie?” Soldo said, launching a monologue that captivated Pilot for over an hour.

  Dr. Leidar Dahl, coming from the highest latitudes of Norway, hated to waste sunlight, so it was only natural that he was always the first one up in the morning. But when he entered the mess room to fix himself breakfast, three people were already there. Billy, Bradingbrooke and Nirpal Banda, the crew’s only Indian, had been so close to the convoy the previous evening that it seemed crazy to spend another night on the rock. So, under a bright moon, they’d walked back through the night and were exhausted. What they had found, they wanted to deliver in person, rather than by radio
. While the three finished their coffee, Dr. Dahl left to wake up Pilot.

  A few minutes later, Pilot entered the mess room and sat down at their table. “Make my day,” Pilot said, digging the sleep from his eyes.

  Billy slapped his notebook on the table and flipped a few pages. “We set off in a southwesterly direction, which we thought would be the shortest route to the coast,” he said. “After two hours we reckoned we’d covered ten miles, but even from that distance we could still see the convoy. Not a lot of woodland out there to get in the way. Nothing but slick, grey-black rock as far as the eye can see.”

  “It smells like salt and dried snake skin,” Banda said.

  “All we could hear was the wind in our ears and we might as well have been the last people on the planet,” Billy continued. “We carried on walking for another three miles, expecting to fall off the edge at any minute. Over to you, Henry.” Billy went to refill his cup, leaving Bradingbrooke to continue the story.

  “Because the view in front was always uphill, we never saw a horizon, and when we finally did come to the edge, it caught us by surprise. Below us was a fog bank. It was impossible to gauge how far down it was. We followed the cliff edge northwest and after a while saw a gap in the white-out below. Waves were crashing against the base of the cliff about two hundred metres down. The elevation began lowering from there, and after four hours of walking, we’d dropped to about two hundred feet above the sea. It was nearly five o’clock by then and we were tired, so we stuck our tents to the rock and went to bed. In the morning we carried on northwest and came to the mouth of a kind of loch or fjord.”

  Or a turbidity canyon, Pilot thought.

  “It was only a few hundred yards across at the entrance. We followed the inlet eastward for a mile, descending all the time, then the loch turned south and started narrowing. We followed it for another half a mile before it ended with gentle waves lapping against the rock. It was too steep to get down from our bit of the cliff so we carried on south. Where the water stopped, a basin continued, surrounded on three sides by escarpments.”