The Thinktank That Leaked

by Christopher Hodder-Williams

  — For I knew in my bones that an aeroplane with two seats and sufficient fuel to get far enough away, using the minimal take-off run of a carrier’s deck, was not the ideal animal to take an extra passenger with a novice at the controls and almost no headwind. We were making only three knots, not generating the breeze you normally get from something more like thirty-five knots. The summer air up top was almost still; we’d be lucky to get two of us off; and even then I’d have to be prepared for an abrupt dive off the end of the deck to gather sufficient airspeed for sustained flight. Doing this you can all too easily end up in the sea.

  Of course, I waved all these considerations aside. We’d met with some luck. Richter would be alive and kicking and we could all fly with our clothes off, chuck out the radio equipment, lighten the plane enough to make the nearest island in the Indonesian group, I could get the bearing from the giant wall map in the War Room. And we’d all live happily ever after.

  The War Room was locked.

  We were just about to dash up to the deck above, in order to look down through the glass, when we were addressed through a loudspeaker mounted near the door.

  The voice was Richter’s. But there was something wrong with it, as though it had become peculiarly synthetic. “Kepter, I have succeeded in the programming task. Consequently most of the electrical systems are working. I have been in touch with the aircrew — they are aboard the cruiser adjacent to this carrier in the convoy … roughly three miles to the north. They state that they can get off by helicopter.”

  I said, “I’ve found an aircraft we can use to get away. I can’t fly a helicopter but I think I can get this thing off. Are you ready?”

  “Unfortunately I’ve had an accident.”

  “What sort of accident?”

  “It doesn’t concern you.”

  “Richter, for God’s sake what’s happened?” I could hear the phoniness in my own voice. I should have never left him to it. I knew, he knew. Yet he forgave it.

  I knew I wouldn’t have forgiven any such thing.

  Richter’s voice was becoming less distinct; and I thought I heard distant voices merging with it. “Don’t stand there arguing, please. This convoy is due to go down in less than three quarters of an hour. Everything is set up and the aircrew that brought us here are already preparing to get airborne. They will be heading for Meltwah Island and I shall now give you the bearing you must fly.” He did so.

  Something inside me rebelled at my own self-deception and I said, “If you don’t release the lock on this door I’m going to break in through the glass overhead.”

  “It’s not glass. It’s virtually shell-proof and unless you’re carrying a howitzer you aren’t going to make a lot of headway.”

  I said, “I’m not leaving you here.”

  “You have no option.”

  “Release this door, Richter!”

  “Is Nesta out there with you?”

  Nesta said, “I’m right here.”

  “Nesta, talk some sense into that thickhead you’re with. He’s got to get you away.”

  Nesta said, “He isn’t going to leave without you and nor am I.”

  There came a pause.

  Then an electronic click from the door mechanism.

  I thought I’d seen every possible variant on nightmares in the human repertoire — until then.

  Nesta only stopped herself from screaming out of consideration for Richter’s feelings. This time she did let me hold her — very tightly, protectively, around her writhing waist.

  I can see no justifiable grounds on which to describe graphically the form Dr. Joseph Richter had now taken. Although I’ve tried to sketch in my impression of some utterly horrendous spectacles in the course of writing this account, to step beyond those and attempt to paint the picture we were confronted with when the heavy door of the War Room opened would not only be inexcusably harrowing, it would be doing the loving memory of a very great and courageous man a treacherous disservice.

  It is fortunate indeed that those now compiling the final White Paper would have to depend solely on Nesta and myself for detailed information on this since of course neither of us would think of giving it. The only thing I am prepared to say is that I cannot imagine ever sleeping again without the terrible effigy appearing before me in my dreams. Certainly I have not been spared this assault upon my conscience so far; and always I dread sleeping alone. Nesta has to be there, ready to comfort me in my remorse for ever leaving him to do what must surely have been one of the dirtiest jobs ever.

  Mankind created Auschwitz.

  The crystal mosaics, in their final retribution, created what we saw in that War Room.

  Richter’s relayed voice, sounding very distorted now and almost drowned by the cacophony of screams which came from the dying conglomorate of humankind nearby, only had one more thing to say. “Kepter, I had the right to do this.”

  I screamed back, “And you knew!”

  *

  Our departure from the deck of that Carrier was a mad dream.

  We knew that this entire fleet was going down; yet neither Nesta nor I could mentally process the information. The deck of that enormous carrier was solid, was permanent, was forever. Nearby, battle cruisers steamed a parallel course; beneath and between these, submarines oozed unseen beneath the surface, we knew, lacing in and out of the fleet like shuttles on a loom.

  Before lining up the one aeroplane aboard that I thought myself capable of flying, I glanced up at the carrier’s vast superstructure. At the base of the mast, radar dishes rotated in search of a potential enemy. The Species controlling them had not yet guessed that their true enemy — Richter — was down in the guts of the ship itself — right where the equipment for interpreting such radar signals was installed. Richter, I say. Better yet, the essence of Richter.

  I shudder now at that. I couldn’t then. I couldn’t grasp the fantastic dimensions of the denouement to come. It was this I found totally beyond my ability to comprehend. By this time I was something of an automaton myself; capable of speech and action but only as a combination of reflexes.

  Nesta said, “There’s nothing to stay for now.” It was of course quite true. We had learned that the Concorde crew were safely off in the helicopter they’d boarded on the cruiser. And assuredly there was nothing we could do for the desecrated remnants of our own species.

  But I had to go back to that hoist. Whether or not I could afford the time was not the point. Something had to be real.

  I didn’t spend long there. I didn’t even know, at first, what my motive was in taking a final look.

  Then I realized: I had to conquor my disgust. It was wrong, even evil. Throughout the whole Apocalypse my own role had been too hygienic … I could say, too electronic.

  Now, it was not. and although this was no time for mere tears, I found grief, at last. I knew I had to; I knew I would never be able to love, in any of its senses, unless meaningful compassion could replace terror of the unspeakable. And if I could not love, how was I better than the Crystal Mosaic itself? Surely I could, in such immunity, be as merciless — at some future date — as any embodiment or expression of Spender’s terrible Thought Sink?

  Back at the aircraft I said to Nesta, “I’m ready, now.”

  She said, “Do you know? … I think you would have crashed on take-off if you hadn’t done that.”

  “I might have. But this thing won’t start.”

  “It must.”

  “Won’t. Been standing around too long.”

  “Try priming it again.”

  I did, frantically. The battery was okay. The propeller turned well enough on the starter. But start it would not.

  We exchanged an agonized stare for a few moments. I glanced at the luminous dial of my watch. Eighteen minutes at the most before this whole fleet was timed to scuttle itself in a series of devastating paroxysms as every torpedo-tube accessible to electronic detonation released its entire magazine … one fish after another, launched and guid
ed in a genocidal wipe-out below the waterline, each torpedo designated to hit a sister vessel within the same fleet. And I had no doubt that Richter had by this time pulled the switch — not a man who would allow his body to be so mutilated in the interests of the failure of a mission.

  “Plugs! I’ll have to change the spark plugs!”

  As I said this, Nesta gripped my wrist. She pointed, tried to say something, but could not. At last she managed, “Look! Roger! Coming out of the superstructure!”

  I strained to see. By now it was very dark. The moon, partially obscured by a cloudpatch, was already scarcely adequate for illuminating the white centre-line of the carrier’s deck.

  But I saw the telltale blue glow. A huge sticky mass — an oily conglomorate of mosaic and captured human tissue — was oozing toward us. And it knew how we’d planned our getaway because Richter had been linked to the mosaic when we’d talked with him from the doorway of the war room down below.

  Nesta’s body was rigid. Hypnotized, she couldn’t take her eyes of that filthy, viscous clump. It was rolling, squodging slyly toward the plane — at once the most revolting, and at the same time the most frightening spectacle that remained in the repertoire of the species.

  And I knew I had to keep my head. If I went on uselessly running down the battery trying to start an engine with damp plugs, it would be flat by the time I’d fitted fresh ones. I didn’t know where to find them. I could not leave Nesta alone. I couldn’t …

  “Nesta! That tool box. There’s got to be a spare set of plugs!”

  She managed to grab the tool kit from behind her seat but she was yelling at me: “No! You can’t get out of this plane! You’ll never do the job in time anyway!”

  I said, “Look! Set of plugs, brand new, right here in the manufacturers’ packaging! How about that?”

  Her voice dropped down low. “And how about that? You’d be crazy to climb out. Let’s just pray she’ll start on one more try. Maybe we flooded the carburettor. Roger, try! I’m not going to watch you being … being sucked into that devil’s dung.”

  It had rolled nearer. Five metres away, not more.

  Then I saw the fire hydrant.

  “High pressure hose! I’ll turn on the water, hand the hose up to you, you’ve got to play the water on the sludge, keep it back, get the idea?”

  “It won’t work!”

  “Don’t argue!”

  I yanked back the plastic hatch of the plane, jumped down onto the deck.

  We’d found the plugs. Impossible. We’d found them. Let’s go all out for another impossibility … I reached the hydrant, unwound some hose. “Hold this. Tight, Nesta! The recoil-action will try to wrench it out of your hands. Then just keep playing it on the slime. You’ll need all your strength. Ready?”

  “Ready.” I could see her eyes darting between the mosaic and me.

  I turned the cock without difficulty. The water-pressure was intense, almost whipping the nozzle into free air out of Nesta’s grip. But she held on.

  And the jet of water met its target. The sudden stench cannot be described. I would not care to try it.

  But the advance of the sludge was arrested.

  “Hold that!” — I needed light. I figured the backglow from the approach-light array, which faced away from us, would probably do the trick. I ran for the switchbox and the lights came on.

  No time for mistakes. Take each plug out of the tool kit, one at a time, chuck each old plug over the side, and don’t chuck the wrong one. Put the tools back after using them. Don’t drop them over the side.

  It seemed like forever. The plane’s engine was difficult to get at and the engine-housing, once folded up and in, cast confusing shadows so it was difficult to locate each hole in the cylinder-heads, find the right ignition cables, snap them on.

  And I was working in bedlam. High-pressure water played ungodly tunes on the hollow metal stanchions on the far side of the flight deck, spuming up, then catching in the radar dishes and reverberating in those. And all the time, while Nesta held the mosaics at bay, there was no holding the clock. Total of four plugs to change: two of them done. And yes, they were damp and pitted at the business end. We knew why the engine wouldn’t start.

  Now, the two cylinders on the starboard side. Here, I was even closer to the mosaics, constantly splashed by water, inevitably contaminated, too, by blobs of Electronic Cancer. I’d have to do something about that pretty fast.

  But now plug number four. I got the old one out, promptly dropped its replacement.

  It rolled toward the edge of the ship’s deck. I scrambled and slipped. Nesta let out a scream.

  I caught the plug like a cricketer, suicide-bent, got a glimpse of the sea a hell of a long way below me, thought I’d slither in with my prize still held aloft — a ludicrous figure of fun for the doomed species to mock until the instant it died.

  I got back. I don’t know how. Drenched, I returned to the aircraft, screwed that last treasured plug in, got the wire on, closed the engine faring.

  As I did so my eyes became rivetted on a phosphorescent trail in the water, not far below the surface, not unlike the glow from the mosaics themselves. Disturbed ocean water tells its own tale. A moving object energizes tiny quantities of mineral salts. They glow in its wake. Here was the first fish.

  It says something for human terror that I hardly noticed the immense impact of that first explosion. I remember that my eardrums seemed to fold in and I couldn’t hear Nesta. Only the instruments told me the engine had fired first time. The whole deck vibrated from the explosion so violently there was no question of feeling the throb of the propeller through the seat. I couldn’t see the prop. Everything around us was coming apart. Nesta was shouting and gesticulating with one arm she’d dare let go from the hoze-nozzle. I looked up. The whole superstructure towering above us was leaning. It had torn up part of the deck around its base. There a floundering froth of water and mosaic lividly pummelled at the cracked flank of the bottom buttress. It couldn’t be long before the entire tower collapsed on us.

  I shouted to Nesta to let go of the hose. By this time the jet of water had subsided to a trickle. But I’d got the engine revved up, taking the calculated risk of pitting throttle against brakes when the oil temperature was still far too low. But no time for niceties. We had to get away.

  A second torpedo got the carrier in the guts as I started the roll. The whole deck heaved and partly split across. I could see the gap widening ahead and just prayed I’d got enough speed to jump the fissure. When I reached it I flicked back on the stick at the risk of losing a wing in a partial flick-roll. I didn’t and we sped forward in the madness as the whole superstructure just behind us and to our right crashed down onto the deck and dented the carrier like a can of beans.

  Not a pretty take-off if we were to get off at all. I was all over the place. Unfamiliar aircraft doing its utmost to get out of hand and debris trying to hole the wings and snap off the airscrew. Much too soon the end of the deck was ahead. I knew I hadn’t got full flying speed, would have to make the dive down toward the water, just tipping the aircraft over the end, in the hope of swooping it up again without getting into a high-speed stall.

  There it was. Straight down toward the water, hellbent at full throttle. Nesta was ready with a foot on her rudder. She knew what would happen if we dropped a wing too low. Officially we were out of control. Aeroplanes aren’t supposed to fly that way.

  I saw a massive explosion from our impossible angle so near to the sea. A brilliant flash on our right indicated where a submarine had held position in the convoy, a fraction of a second before. I saw it rise up in a crazy attempt to get clear of its own element. I hoped we’d make a better job of it.

  Our undercarriage just topped the crest of an angry wave. The impact was a minor one but we were still very slow. I held the stick hard back and prayed. All I could do. We climbed. We were away. We were flying.

  We were flying through a bursting hell of screaming metal shrapn
el ingots, bits of ship as a fleet came apart in order to sink.

  And, like that, the Sixth Fleet of the United States Navy crisscrossed itself with interweaving torpedoes. You could see very little of it because there was so much spray. But, within the hulks of so many stricken ships, those nukes — when they did go off — were not going to reach their targets. God knows why some warheads hadn’t mushroomed prematurely. We were lucky; though of course the stage-by-stage arming process of nukes is — under conditions even like these — fail-safe.

  Not so our flying. A huge slab of flying metal nicked our port side, holing us. By a fluke it missed the control runs. Very draughty but still airborne. O God, give me height. Height, I say!

  My ears cleared suddenly. The engine sounded sweet. Oil temperature reading okay and the engine hadn’t melted.

  Nesta said something.

  I turned and managed something quite close to a grin. “What?”

  She responded, shook her head. I never asked her what it was she did say. I think it had something to do with my standard of flying.

  Nesta said, “I think we’re going to need these.”

  “What?” — I was trying to put as much distance as possible between us and the submerged fleet. We’d still be lucky to survive. There must have been more megatons of potential holocaust beneath the surface of the Pacific than you could stuff into a full-sized plutonium factory.

  “Goggles. I found them in the captain’s cabin.”

  I took the pair she handed me. Their significance was simple: without them we would go blind, once the big bang came.

  “You’re a resourceful woman.”

  “I’m a frightened child.”

  “On that level,” I said, “we could have an interesting competition. I’ve never flown this type of aircraft before but its structural strength had better be an improvement on the state of its sparking plugs. Or it won’t matter if we go blinder than the proverbial bat. Is the propeller going round? No one ever flew so slowly since someone got the idea of sticking a pair of wings onto a fusilage.”