The Wind From Nowhere

by J. G. Ballard

  “As far as I know be’s still with Marshall’s intelligence unit over at Whitehall. Dora’s just had her baby; I mean to look in on her before I leave.”

  As they made their way out of the lounge, they passed a tall American submarine commander who had come in with a slim blonde-haired girl in a brown uniform with Press tabs on its sleeves. Her face and neck were covered with minute abrasions, the typical wind-exposure scars, but she seemed so relaxed, following the American closely with unforced intimacy, that he realized these two, who had obviously come through a period of prolonged exposure together, were the first people he had seen who had managed to preserve their own private world intact.

  As he took his seat in the briefing room in the Personnel Reallocation Unit he wondered how far his own character had benefited by the ordeals he had been through, how much it had gained merit, as the Buddhists would say. Could he really claim any moral superiority over Avery for example? Despite his near death at Knightsbridge he had so far had little choice in determining his own fate. Events had driven him forward at their own pace. How would be behave when he was given a choice?

  Maitland was assigned to one of the big Titan supertractors ferrying VIP’s and embassy personnel down to the submarine base at Portsmouth. Many of the passengers would be suffering from major injuries sustained before their rescue, and required careful supervision.

  Listening to the briefing, Maitland had the impression, as Avery bad suggested, that the Americans were withdrawing in considerable numbers, taking with them even severe surgical cases. When the last convoy had set sail for Greenland, would Brandon Hall have outlived its usefulness? The nearest British base was at Biggin Hill, and if the wind continued to rise for the next week or so it would be difficult to reach. Besides, what sort of welcome would they receive if they did go there?

  The captain confirmed his doubts.

  “How far is there any effective contact between the bases around London?” Maitland asked as the meeting broke up. “I feel we’re all pulling the lids down over our respective holes and sealing them tight.”

  The captain nodded somberly. “That’s just about it. God knows what’s going to happen when they decide to close this place. It’s cozy down here now, but we’re on board a sinking ship. There’s only about one week’s supply of generator fuel left in the storage tanks, and when that’s gone it’s going to get damned chilly. And when the pumps stop we’ll have to climb into our diving suits. The caissons below the foundations have shifted and water’s pouring in from underground wells. At present we’re pumping it out at the rate of about a thousand gallons an hour.”

  Maitland collected his kitbag from the hospital dormitory. On the way out he looked in at the woman’s ward, and went over to Dora Symington’s cubicle.

  “Hullo, Donald,” Dora greeted him. She managed a brave smile, made a space for him on the bed among the feeding bottles and milk cans. She raised the baby’s head. “I’ve been telling him he looks like Andrew, but I’m not sure he agrees. What do you think?”

  Maitland considered the baby’s small wizened face. He would have liked to think it symbolized hope and courage, the new world being reborn unknown to them in the cataclysmic midst of the old, but in fact he felt grimly depressed. Dora’s courage, her pathetic little cubicle with its makeshift shelves and clutter of damp clothes, made him realize just how helpless they were, how near the center of the whirlpool.

  “Have you heard from Andrew yet?” she asked, bringing the question out carefully.

  “No, but don’t worry, Dora. He’s in the best possible company. Marshall knows how to look after himself.”

  He talked to her for a few minutes and then excused himself, taking one of the elevators up to the transport pool three levels below the surface.

  Even here, some 75 feet below ground, separated by enormous concrete shields ten feet thick, designed to provide protection at ground zero against megaton nuclear weapons, the presence of the storm wind raging above was immediately apparent. Despite the giant airlocks and overlaying ramps the narrow corridors were thick with black sandy grit forced in under tremendous pressure, the air damp and cold as the air stream carried with it enormous quantities of water vapor—in some cases the contents of entire seas, such as the Caspian and the Great Lakes, which had been drained dry, their beds plainly visible.

  Drivers and surface personnel, all sealed into heavy plastic suits, thick foam padding puffing up their bodies, hung about between the half-dozen Titan supertractors grouped around the service station.

  His own Titan was the fifth in line, a giant six-tracked articulated crawler with steeply raked sides and profile, over 80 feet long and 20 feet wide, the tracks six feet broad. The gray-painted sides of the vehicle had been slashed and pitted, the heavy three-inch steel plate scarred with deep dents where flying rocks and masonry had struck the vehicle, almost completely obliterating the U.S. Navy insignia painted along the hull.

  A lean-faced big-shouldered man in a blue surface suit looked up from a discussion with two mechanics who were sitting inside one of the tracks, adjusting the massive cleats. Royal Canadian Navy tabs were clipped to his collar, a captain’s rank bars.

  “Dr. Maitland?” he asked in a deep pleasant voice. When Maitland nodded he put out his hand and shook Maitland’s warmly in a powerful grip. “Good to have you aboard. My name’s Jim Halliday. Welcome to the Toronto Belle.” He jerked a thumb at the Titan. “We’ve got just over half an hour before we take off, so how about some coffee?”

  “Good idea,” Maitland agreed. Halliday took the canvas grip out of his hand, to his surprise walked around to the front of the tractor and slung it up over the hood onto the driver’s hatchway. As Halliday rejoined him, Maitland said: “I was going to leave the grip in the mess in case we have to make a quick getaway.”

  Halliday shook his head, taking Maitland’s arm. “If you want to, go ahead. Frankly, I recommend that you make yourself at home aboard the ship. Can’t say I feel any too confident about this place.”

  As they collected their coffee in the canteen and sat down at the end of one of the long wooden tables Maitland examined Halliday’s face carefully. The Canadian looked solid and resourceful, unlikely to be swayed by rumor.

  They exchanged personal histories briefly. By now there were so many disaster stories, so many confirmed and unconfirmed episodes of heroism, such a confusion of dramatic and tragic events that those still surviving confined themselves to the barest self-identification. In addition, there was the gradual numbness that had begun to affect everyone, a blunting of the sensibilities, by the filth and privation and sheer buffeting momentum of the wind. The result was an increasing concentration on ensuring one’s own personal survival, a reluctance, such as he had just seen in a basically confident man like Halliday, to put any trust in the durability of others.

  “Our last trip we carried only three passengers,” Halliday explained, “so a medic wasn’t needed. It’s obvious they’ll soon be closing the unit down.”

  Maitland nodded. “What will happen to us then?”

  Halliday glanced up at him briefly, then flung his cigarette butt into the coffee dregs. “I’ll leave you to guess. Frankly, we rate a pretty low order of importance. As long as movement above surface is possible, the big tractors have a valuable role, but now—well…just about all the VIP’s have got where they want to be; the perimeter’s really being pulled in tight. Have you been up top recently?”

  “Not for about a week,” Maitland admitted.

  “It’s hard to describe—pretty rough. Solid roaring wall of black air—except that it’s not air any more but a horizontal avalanche of dust and rock, like sitting right behind a jet engine full on with the exhaust straight in your face. Can’t see where the hell you’re going, landmarks obliterated, roads buried under tons of rubble. We steer by the beam transmitted between here and Portsmouth. When the stations close down our job will be over. Only yesterday we lost one of the big rigs—their radio broke d
own when they were somewhere south of Leatherhead. They tried to make it back by compass and drove straight into the river.”

  As they neared the tractor Maitland saw a small group of passengers waiting, two men and a young woman. All the hatches were being secured on the rear section of the vehicle, and it looked as if these three were the full complement and would travel in the forward section, leaving the rear empty. As Halliday had said, it seemed a complete waste of fuel and personnel—the Titan would have been better employed rescuing Andrew Symington and Marshall—and Maitland felt a sudden sensation of resentment toward the three passengers.

  One was a small plump-faced man with a brush moustache, the other two a tall American in a navy trench coat and the girl wearing a leather helmet, goggles over her forehead. As he approached she slipped her hand under the American’s arm, and he recognized the couple who had passed him in the lounge bar.

  Halliday gestured Maitland over, introduced him briefly to the passengers. “Commander Lanyon, this is Dr. Maitland. He’ll be riding down to Portsmouth with us. If you want your temperature taken, Miss Olsen, just ask him.”

  Maitland nodded to the trio and helped the young woman, an NBC television reporter, carrying her tape recorder over to the starboard hatchway. She and Commander Lanyon had just reached England from the Mediterranean, had come up to London with the third member of the group, an Associated Press correspondent called Waring, in the hope of getting material for their networks back in the States. Unfortunately their hopes that the wind would have subsided had not been fulfilled, and they were returning empty-handed, en route for Greenland.

  Ten minutes later the seven of them—three passengers, Maitland, Halliday, the driver and radio operator—were sealed down into the forward section of the Titan, a narrow compartment 15 feet long by six feet wide, packed with equipment, stores and miscellaneous baggage. Canvas racks folded down from the sides and Maitland and the passengers sat cramped together on these, the three crew members up forward, Halliday at the periscope immediately behind the driver, the radio operator beside him. A single light behind a grille on the ceiling cast a thin glow over the compartment, fading and brightening as the engines varied in speed.

  For half an hour they hardly moved, edging forward or backward a few yards in answer to instructions transmitted over the R⁄T. The roar of the engines precluded any but the most rudimentary conversation between those at the back, and Maitland let himself sink off into a mindless reverie, interrupted by sudden jolts that woke him back to an uneasy reality.

  Finally they began to move forward, the engines surging below them, and at the same time the vehicle tilted backward sharply, at an angle of over 10°, as they climbed the exit ramp.

  The air in the tractor became suddenly cooler, as if a powerful refrigerating unit had been switched on in the compartment. They appeared to be moving along a tunnel carved through an iceberg, and Maitland remembered someone at the base telling him that the surface air temperature was now falling by a full degree per day. The air stream moving over the oceans was forcing an enormous uptake of water by evaporation, and consequently cooling the surfaces below.

  The Titan leveled off on the final exit shelf, then labored slowly up the last incline.

  Immediately, as the huge vehicle slewed about unsteadily, its tracks searching for equilibrium in the ragged surface, the familiar tattoo of thousands of flying missiles rattled across the sides and roof around them like endless salvos of machine-gun fire. The noise was enervating, occasionally appearing to slacken off slightly, then resuming with even greater force as a cloud of higher-density particles drove across them.

  Standing behind the driver, Halliday steered the Titan by looking through the periscope. Occasionally, when they moved across open country, he left the driver to follow the compass bearing provided by the radio operator, and came back to the passengers, crouching down to exchange a few words.

  “We’re just passing through Biggin Hill,” he told them after they had been under way for half an hour. “Used to be an RAP base here, but it was flooded out after the east wall of the main shelter collapsed. About five hundred people were trapped inside; only six got away.”

  “Can I take a look outside, Captain?” Patricia Olsen asked. “I’ve been underground so long I feel like a mole.”

  “Sure,” Halliday agreed. “Not that there’s a damn thing to see.”

  They all moved forward, swaying from side to side like straphangers on a rocking Underground train as the tractor slid and dragged under the impact of the wind.

  Maitland waited until Lanyon and Patricia had finished, then pressed his eyes to the binocular viewpiece.

  Sweeping the periscope around, he saw that they were moving along the remains of the M5 Motorway down to Portsmouth.

  Little of the road was still intact. The soft shoulders and grass center pieces between the lanes had disappeared, leaving in their place a four-foot-deep hollow trough. Here and there the stump of a concrete telegraph pole protruded from the verge, or a battered overpass, huge pieces chipped from its arches, spanned the roadway, but otherwise the landscape was completely blighted. Occasionally a dark shadow would flash by, the remains of some airborne structure—aircraft fuselage or motor car—bouncing and cartwheeling along the ground.

  Maitland leaned against the periscope mounting. With the topsoil gone, and the root-system which held the surface together and provided a secure foothold for arable crops against the erosive forces of rain and wind, the entire surface of the globe would dust bowl in the way that the Oklahoma farmland had literally disappeared into the air in the 1920’s.

  As he turned away from the periscope, Halliday was right beside the radio operator. A signal was coming through from Brandon Hall, and the operator took off his headphones and passed them to the captain.

  “Bad news, Doctor,” the operator said. “Flash in from Brandon Hall about a friend of yours, Andrew Symington. Apparently the emergency intelligence unit in the Admiralty bunkers were attacked yesterday. Marshall and three of the others were shot.”

  Maitland gripped the strap over his head. “Andrew? Is he dead?”

  “No, they don’t think so. His body hasn’t been found, anyway. Marshall managed to get an alert through before he died. The gunmen were working for someone called Hardoon. As far as I could make out he’s supposed to have a private army operating from a secret base somewhere in the Guildford area.”

  “I’ve run into Hardoon before,” Maitland cut in. “Marshall was also working for him.” Quickly he recounted his discovery of the crates of paramilitary equipment in Marshall’s warehouse, the uniformed guards. “Hardoon must have decided to get rid of Marshall; probably he’d outlived his usefulness.” He looked up at the strap in his hand, and jerked it roughly. “What the hell could have happened to Symington, though?”

  Halliday lowered his head doubtfully. “Well, maybe he’s O.K.,” he said, managing a show of sympathy. “It’s hard to say.”

  “Don’t worry,” Maitland said confidently. “Symington’s a top electronics and communications man, far more valuable to Hardoon now than a TV mogul like Marshall. If his body wasn’t found in the bunker he must still be alive. Hardoon’s men wouldn’t waste time carrying a corpse around.” He paused, listening to the hail drive across the roof. “All those crates were labeled ‘Hardoon Tower.’ This secret base must be there.”

  Halliday shook his head. “Never heard of it. Though the name Hardoon is familiar. What is he, a political big shot?”

  “Shipping and hotel magnate,” Maitland told him. “Something of a power-crazy eccentric. ‘Hardoon Tower’—God knows where, though.”

  “Sounds like a hotel,” Halliday commented. “If it is, it won’t be standing, that’s for sure. Sorry about your friend, but as you say, he’ll probably be OK there.”

  Maitland nodded, leaning on the radio set and searching his mind for where Hardoon Tower might be. He noticed the radio operator watching him pensively, was about to turn
away and rejoin the trio at the rear of the compartment when the man said:

  “The Hardoon place is just near here, sir. About ten miles away, at Leatherhead.”

  Maitland turned back. “Are you sure?”

  “Well, I can’t be certain,” the operator said. “But we get a lot of interference from a station operating from Leatherhead. It’s using a scrambled vhf beam, definitely not a government installation.”

  “Could be anyone, though,” Maitland said. “Weather station, police unit, some VIP outfit.”

  The operator shook his head. “I don’t think so, sir. They were trying to identify it back at Brandon Hall; there was even an MI5 signals expert there. I heard him refer to Hardoon.”

  Maitland turned to Halliday. “What about it, Captain? He’s probably right. We could make a small detour out to Leatherhead.”

  Halliday shook his head curtly. “Sorry, Maitland. I’d like to, but our reserve tank only holds two hundred gallons, barely enough to get us back.”

  “Then what about uncoupling the rear section?” Maitland asked. “It’s no damn use anyway.”

  “Maybe not. But what are we supposed to do, even if we find this character Hardoon? Put him under arrest?”

  Halliday returned to the periscope, indicating that their argument was closed, and hunched over the eyepiece, scanning the road. Maitland stood behind him, undecided, watching the radio-compass beam on the navigator’s screen. They followed the beam carefully, driving along a razor edge between a stream of dots—leftward error—and a stream of dashes—rightward error. At present they were deliberately three degrees off course, in order to take advantage of the motorway’s firm foundations. Halliday was following a bend in the road, and the radio compass rotated steadily, from 145° to 150°, and then on around to 160°. Unoccupied for the moment, the operator was searching the waveband of the vhf set. He picked up a blurred staccato signal and gestured to Maitland.

  “That’s the Hardoon signal, sir.”