He hung his head and found himself looking at his feet, a catch in his throat. He breathed slowly for a moment and then his eyes moved left again, falling on the black heels she was wearing before eagerly climbing her smooth legs to the knee, where the hem of her dress clung.
The mention of his name catapulted him back to reality and the thought of Angela’s dress were superseded by the turning over of his stomach. The gravity of the situation returned with gusto and the vest seemed suddenly heavy again. The dull clang of bricks and other heavy objects against the perspex had faded away as he got lost in thoughts of Angela. But now he flinched at each one. He stepped towards the podium, lining up next to McPherson who was standing behind a host of microphones.
In the little glass box, there was a collection of people. Three other GSC employees, four armed guards, two journalists, McPherson, Angela, and him. The box had been airlifted in as one single piece and dropped on the top steps of the American GSC Headquarters in Washington DC.
They were giving an address that was being streamed live all over the world. The “pups” had now matured and had been placed in cryo ready for the trip. To the left of their little box was a collection of trucks stamped with the GSC logo, which were presently being filled with liquid nitrogen in order to keep them at the correct temperature during transit. When they were ready, they’d begin their journey to Cape Canaveral and from there be put into storage at the Kennedy Space Centre until they were ready for the launch.
The address they were giving was an update for the public, who were entirely against the whole thing. Or at least that’s how it seemed by the present turnout.
Either that or the protestors scared the supporters too much to be there in person. Either way, the three-inch shield, designed to stop high powered rifle bullets, although totally protective, was the opposite of reassuring. The fact that it was needed, that someone might try to take a potshot at him or someone else was the scariest part of all. Even though it was bulletproof, it wasn’t soundproof. Specially adapted micro-vents in the material allowed for clear sound transfer, which meant the thuds of the objects striking the glass rang through loud and often enough to be disturbing. And the chorus of the aforementioned name calling was as brutal as if the glass wasn’t there at all.
He moved slowly forward and McPherson beckoned him towards the tentacled microphones growing from the stand like an upturned octopus.
‘And now,’ McPherson said, turning back to the octopus. ‘To shed some light on the hard work that has gone into making this project possible, Doctor Florian Gertlinger.’ McPherson gave a slow clap as the crowd erupted in boos.
Gertlinger seemed to drift forwards on legs not his own and then nervously found himself tapping at the nearest mic with his finger. It hissed and screamed furiously through the sound system and those closest to the speakers winced. As they’d done for McPherson, the words of his preplanned speech illuminated themselves on the inside of the glass. It began with a superficial greeting and had been crafted to be as unbiased and uninformative as possible. He said the first word.
‘Hello.’
After that, he couldn’t bring himself to say the rest. A moment of silence passed, the crowds’ boos subsiding as they waited for his next words. He was sure they’d boo again then.
He took his glasses off and sighed, rubbing his eyes. He leaned in and began, not reading the words in front of him. ‘Look, I want to be honest with you, with all of you—”
As he began veering from the script, Angela appeared at his side and tried to guide him from the mics. She was grinning falsely to keep up appearances. He shrugged off her iron grip and came back to the lectern. He cleared his throat as Angela fired a confused look at McPherson, who was doing his best not to give his anger away.
They were stunned by the act of rebellion, but for the first time, Gertlinger felt liberated. He wanted to face these unhappy people head-on, to explain his side once and for all. So he did.
‘I know that this is controversial. I know that it goes against your morals and your beliefs, but please, hear me out. What’s in those trucks—” he threw his hand to the left to illustrate the trucks parked in line “—is the product of us. They are the product of humanity. God created man in his image, so why wouldn’t we strive to be as much like him as we could? If he knows everything, then in creating us thousands, millions or billions of years ago depending on what you believe, he would have known what we would have become, what we would have done. Don’t you see that if it was an affront to him, he wouldn’t have gone along with it and allowed it to happen? If he didn’t see us fit to strive, to reach for the stars, to reach for the heavens, then he wouldn’t have bothered creating us in his image in the first place. We are not going against anything. You’re wrong if you believe that.’
Gertlinger took a breath.
The boos began to come again now, but more sparsely.
He continued. ‘Don’t you see that this is merely the next step for humanity. If you don’t believe in the evolution of a species then you must believe in the evolution of the mind. It’s all around us in the cars we drive, the phones we use and the food we eat. This is merely one more leap forward for us. And I swear to God, to every god, to any god, that if this is an insult to them and I am in the wrong, then I will stand before them and I will own up to my sins. And if he, or they, see fit for me to burn in hell for all eternity then I will accept that willingly. But, what if we stop? What if we don’t do this, and it disappoints him? What if this is his great plan, for us to do everything that we can to be better, to go further than ever before, every single day — and by stopping, that is the real affront. That is us saying that we don’t want to be made in his image, we don’t want to be worthy of more, capable of more — we just want to be a shadow. What if Archimedes, or Newton, or Hawking, or Einstein, or Tesla, or Edison, or Bell, or Curie had felt the same? We’d know nothing, we’d be nothing. All those great men and women dared to think differently, to rise above the claims of heresy and insanity they faced… Not everyone agreed then, and not all of you agree now, but this is the next step.
‘If you are a good person, a loving person, a person who wishes nothing but good for the world, then do not stand in the way of its salvation. Stand behind it. Stand behind us as you stand behind each other now. Let this cause unite the world as no religion has ever been able to. And you know what? Crucify me if I’m wrong.’
Gertlinger drew a sharp breath after spitting those last words. He turned from the microphones and walked towards the Angela and Mcpherson, the pair of them cast in stone, shocked, waiting for the crowd to erupt into savage anger and a howling discord of disapproval.
But they didn’t.
There was nothing but silence beyond the glass.
FIFTEEN
THE VEIL
2122 AD
Katarina stood in the wash of the spooling rotors.
Her long coat buffeted in the autumn air and a few odd flakes of snow danced around her in the half-light. Aaro had called the night before and told her the news. She’d said few words in response, but told them to get down to the rear courtyard at the plant at dawn. That’s where the chopper was, and that’s where Aaro and Sorina were now. They’d packed up everything they’d want to take with them — which wasn’t a lot — thrown it in a bag and slung it over their shoulders.
Katarina’s hands were in her pockets and her collar was pulled high. Her cheeks had rosed against the cold, but she didn’t seem phased. It was obvious that she was keen to get going. Aaro surmised that the untimely demise of her engineer had set her plans back a little and she needed to get the mission back on schedule.
Katarina extended a hand to Sorina as she approached and she took it. She was taller than Katarina, built a little stronger, and about the same age. The twinge in Katarina’s mouth told Aaro that Sorina was squeezing tightly. He cracked a smile at that and sucked hard on his cigarette. Katarina and Sorina exchanged nods of mutual approval — or somethi
ng similar — and turned towards the chopper. Aaro swivelled to face Oslo for possibly the last time, walking backwards, took the final drag on his cigarette and flicked it into the wind. By the time it hit the ground, exploding in a shower of sparkling embers, Aaro was already halfway into the chopper. He tossed his bag into the back and clambered in next to Sorina. He sat and she handed him a pair of headphones. He secured them on his ears and Katarina shoved the door closed. She was sitting opposite, her back towards the divide separating them from the cockpit.
‘I’m glad you decided to come along. We couldn’t do it without you,’ Katarina said, her voice tinny in their ears.
Aaro nodded back and Sorina took his hand and held it. She felt proud to be headhunted for something, even though that hadn’t actually happened — Aaro didn’t have the heart to tell her, and from where he was sitting, it would only have jeopardised his chances of getting her onboard for the whole thing.
The engine whined as it stretched into its upper rev range and the cabin shook a little, the rotors dragging the bird into the sky. The wind was stronger higher up and the chopper swayed around in the air, bobbing higher like a buoy on invisible waves.
The metal can climbed into the clouds over the city and swept eastwards towards the border. It was a landlocked view all the way to Stockholm but neither Aaro nor Sorina had seen it since the world all went to hell. The Stockholm-Oslo Highway was visible underneath them as the pilot flew the chopper at full tilt, following its line. Behind them, the bleak skyline of Oslo quickly faded to a smog-spewing shadow, a blot of ink against into the grey canvas of the Norwegian sky.
On the highway below, burnt out corpses of cars and trucks lay still. Spans of fencing, broken or bent, flapped gently in the wind. Either side of the tarmac, the landscape looked not only natural, but beautiful. Outside the walls, things were so horrific and dangerous, it was easy to forget how wonderfully pretty the world was.
It seemed moments before the pilot signalled that they were only about twenty minutes from Stockholm. They’d been transfixed by what was outside the walls. Neither of them had seen it for what seemed like forever.
Aaro turned to Katarina and cleared his throat. ‘So how’s this going to work?'
‘Okay.’ She began with a sigh. ‘We’ll be landing before nine. You’ll have the day to meet the team and go over the plans, check the trucks and study the schematics for the reactor. We’ve put you up at the Royale Hotel, just down the street from the plant. You’ll be setting off just before sunrise tomorrow, to cover as much ground as you can before dark. After that, you’re on your own. We’ll have radio contact the entire way there and back, though, so don’t worry.’ She said the last part with a smile as if it was some sort of reassurance.
Aaro smiled weakly and Sorina squeezed his hand. She was strong, but the task was daunting to say the least. Aaro elected not to ask anything more, in case he fuelled her, and his, fears even more. It’d been more than a decade since he’d been outside of the safety of the city. The last time was fourteen years ago, and it was something he desperately wanted to, but knew he could never forget.
He sat in silence, thinking about it, his fingers growing white under Sorina’s knuckles.
The engine note sagged and the chopper swung around, throwing its tail into the wind with a little wiggle. His window still showed nothing but open, grass-covered ground and lakes, but past Sorina’s rapidly rising and falling chest, he could see Stockholm.
But it wasn’t anything like Oslo.
It still looked like a city.
This deep into the autumn, the sun wasn’t especially strong. And even at half past eight in the morning, it was scarcely above the horizon, just a dim orb hidden in an ocean of grey cloud.
Streetlights burned in the city below, lighting up the streets like glowing veins. Unrationed electricity was a luxury that had long since eluded Oslo. They had flaming sconces and lamps but no electricity on the streets. It was a precious commodity and not to be wasted. But Stockholm looked to be a different animal altogether.
The chopper sank between the tall and clean buildings, sidling through the streets towards a sprawling complex visible through the gap in the dividing wall of Katarina’s shoulder.
It was a large dome of shining glass, steel and white concrete, with two cooling towers. One either side. The chopper circled them and aimed to set itself down on a helipad on top of a low slung square building behind the dome.
In the still morning air between the towers, the helicopter settled gently onto the landing pad and the pilot killed the engine. Before the rotors started to slow, Katarina had already cracked the door and jumped out. Aaro and Sorina exchanged a quick, nervous glance and the did the same. They followed Katarina’s powerful stride off the pad and down a stairwell into the building. The door was freshly painted blue and inside it was much the same. Clean white walls and waxed tiled floors. They walked the length of the bright corridor, the sounds of laughter filtering through the doors they passed. Katarina cast a quick look back and mouthed the word ‘breakfast’ to them, signalling what was transpiring beyond the closed doors.
People seemed happy there.
They kept moving and Sorina grabbed Aaro’s hand again, pressing herself against his shoulder as they walked. He felt her breathing quietly, reservedly. She was nervous, and so was he. They tried to keep pace but Katarina was a well-practised walker. She walked with purpose on long legs and covered ground effortlessly while Aaro and Sorina jostled along behind her, bags on shoulders. It seemed that the general and severe lack of motivation and morale that festered in Oslo was not to be found of Stockholm. Things seemed to be normal here. Or at least what normal was twenty years ago, where people didn’t just survive, but lived instead.
Thinking about that, Aaro didn’t realise that they’d closed ground on Katarina. She was waiting at the end of the corridor, hand on a door handle. She nodded as they drew up to her side and then pushed through.
A more familiar sight and smell greeted them as they found themselves inside the dome they’d seen from the chopper. Welders drowning in fountains of sparks. The smell of grease and oil. And the noise of sockets on bolts. The space was huge, like a hangar. The roof careened up overhead to a central circular sheet of glass in the centre. The solid concrete ceiling was grooved deeply with channels that moved away from the circular skylight and met the floor at the room’s edges, disappearing into the ground and continuing downwards in vertical tunnels that stretched on who knows how far.
The floor was flat and the space relatively empty except for all the workers, the heaps of wiring coiled randomly, the two large, articulated trucks against the far wall, and the one huge central construction sunk into a well in the floor almost ten meters down and fifteen across. Inside it was a bleak obelisk made from lead, stretching towards the ceiling. There were platforms around it loaded up with consoles and computers.
It wasn’t finished, but Aaro knew that he was looking at the reactor housing. The wiring on the floors was for where the control centre would go and the channels in the ceiling were… ‘Blast catchers?’ he said to no one in particular.
Katarina turned to him and half smiled. ‘What?’
‘The channels.’ He pointed at the ceiling. ‘To catch the blast and direct it down there.’ He moved his finger towards the dark tunnels in the corners.
‘Uh, I’m not sure, I didn’t design the place. But I guess that makes sense.’ She wrinkled her brow. The thought had never occurred to her obviously, but the notion that the designers of this nuclear plant were putting in failsafes and safeguards to do their best to nullify any nuclear explosion that may transpire was making her visibly queasy. She shook her head a little to shrug off the nausea and then inhaled deeply. ‘Right. Are you ready to meet the team?’
Aaro and Sorina exchanged another glance and nodded together. Katarina took off again at her normal pace and they followed.
She circled the central hub, abuzz with workers. Engineers assemb
led, welders welded, technicians were building the consoles, and foremen were gesturing to the next sections that needed work. The three of them weaved through the workers, seemingly oblivious to their presence and headed for the trucks, which, now that they got closer, it was easy to see weren’t normal.
They were hulking long-distance heavy-haulers. But not just that, they’d been outfitted to drive through hell and back.
The tires were thick and knobbled to tackle dicey terrain and there was a stout looking winch attached to the front bull bars in case they got stuck. Mounted in front of them were cow catchers that looked like they’d been lifted off a pair of freight trains. The windscreens were covered by interwoven steel mesh and the doors were lined with razor wire, the seams overlaid with steel plating so that it was all flush.
The top of the cab was outfitted with a rail that ran right around the edge, and mounted on it was a fifty calibre machine gun that would have been at home on the back of a military jeep, accessible via a sub-hatch on the roof, which also doubled as an alternate escape route if things got hairy at ground level, Aaro guessed. The trailer was modified to match. The sides were covered in razor wire and there was a huge steel box on top of them with two thick machine gun barrels, one set over the other, sticking out. The box was on a gyroscopic mount so that it could rotate freely and the undercarriage was coated smooth with steel sheeting. The fuel tanks were buried somewhere in the bowels of it all.
The Veil Page 9
