Infestation

- 12 -

Svetlanova had all of the men’s names clear in her mind now. Her head too was clear, the ringing having faded into the far distance, her hearing almost back to normal, although she made a mental note not to stand so close to them if there was going to be more shooting.

She had also come to a decision on her immediate future; she’d thrown her lot in with these men, even when every fiber of her being was telling her to get back to the pantry and hide. She knew it was unrealistic; this team was her only chance of getting out of here. If it meant being taken to London for questioning, then so be it; Banks had already heard her recording and there really wasn’t a lot more she could tell them they hadn’t already heard or seen for themselves. In their vernacular, the Russians came, they drilled, they fucked up, story over. It made for a succinct, if short, report.

Over the last hour, she’d even developed a bond with the wounded Glaswegian man, Mac. She watched his wounds for any sign of green, all clear so far, and he gave her cigarettes and chat. They both thought they were getting a good deal.

He’d listened while she retold her story, having asked to hear it.

“Did you not hear when the captain played it back?” she asked.

“I’m Glaswegian, lass,” he said. “We have enough trouble with English, never mind Russian.”

It took a while in the telling, over strong sweet tea and more of Mac’s cigarettes. He studied her with more respect after he heard the tale.

“How long were you in yon wee room?”

“Two days, I think.”

“Then you’re a braver man than me, lass. I’d have gone mental.”

“I’m not sure I didn’t, for a while,” she replied. She took another of his cigarettes. She was developing a taste for this British tobacco; and it kept her mind off what was going on outside the window.

The storm had already ramped up; beyond the glass was now a sheet of running water but she didn’t have to see out to know it was bad. The rock and sway of the boat told her that, along with the now incessant creak and squeal of the hull sounding up from somewhere far below them.

Mac saw her apprehension and laughed.

“Don’t worry, lass,” he said. “These old boats can take a pounding. My auld dad built buggers like this on the Clyde and took me along to see them when I was a bairn; I know what their bones look like and they’re hardy. And besides, this isn’t even the worst scrape the cap’s got us into and out of.”

He started into a long involved story, of a brothel in Cairo, a girl who was really a boy, a misunderstanding about payment, and an epic bar fight followed by a hasty retreat involving half the Egyptian police force. The details of every twist and turn of the tale had them both laughing long before the end.

She was surprised to look up to see Banks take out the satellite phone for his next check-in.

“Is it worth the risk, Cap,” McCally said. “You said yourself, the chopper’s on its way already.”

The captain motioned toward the window.

“If anything wants to come out in this weather to get at us, it’s welcome to try,” he said. He switched the phone on, checked in as before, and signed off again. If any of the isopods had taken note, it was impossible to tell. Hynd was by the door watching the stairwell and gave the thumbs up as Banks put the phone away.

“Two hours,” he said. “All we have to do is sit tight.”

“Can they land in this weather?” Svetlanova asked, for she knew from experience that nothing Russian would attempt to fly, never mind land, in the middle of an Arctic Circle storm like this. Russian pilots were brave but they were also realists.

Mac answered first.

“Lass, the fly boys can land on a flea’s arse in a howling gale. They’ll be here.”

McCally and Mac were now playing cards, three-card brag, with cigarettes as collateral. Svetlanova might have joined them, had Banks not taken her to one side by the window.

“You mentioned a discontinuity on your tape. You think it’s where these things are coming from?”

“I’m sure of it.”

“And what is it, this discontinuity?”

“An anomaly in the rock strata,” she said, remembering what she’d told the ship’s captain. “Ever since 1909 when Andrija Mohorovičić noted a zone where seismic waves speed up when they should be slowing down, people have been itching to drill and find out what’s there. That’s what we were doing here; our surveys showed us the discontinuity was closer to the seabed here than anywhere else in the world. Our geologists thought it might mark a huge gas field or, barring that, a mineral layer that could be cheaply mined.”

“You’re in Canadian waters,” Banks said and Svetlanova waved her hand.

“The sea is the sea. Anyone can lay claim.”

Banks laughed.

“I’m not sure the brass see it that way, but I’m not a politician. Tell me more. You pierced the discontinuity and these things came out of it? So effectively, you made a hole, sprung a leak somewhere down there, allowing the isopods out of their cage?”

“Yes, that’s about the sum of it. We, as you say, fucked up. It’s a big hole in the seabed. We put a camera down; I saw the footage not long before everything went wrong. It was in black and white of course, color cameras won’t work at depth but even then the screen shimmered and glowed. The seabed looked like a scraped clean slab of stone, with tracks, almost like roadways, radiating out in all directions. There was a hole, glowing and gleaming like a flickering bulb, a giant eye, looking up at us from out of the earth’s crust, daring us to poke it again.

“That wasn’t even the worst of it. The hole had cracks radiating out from it, the same radii, mirrored in the scraped tracks on the seabed, glowing tendrils pulsing and spreading even as we watched. Far from closing up, the hole down to the discontinuity was still growing. Isopods swarmed everywhere below. Big ones, small ones, a multitude of them, pouring up out of the discontinuity, scuttling and scurrying and quickly lost in the dark seas beyond the camera’s reach.”

“Why didn’t you mention this before?”

“You didn’t ask… and there’s little we can do about it. The drill is kaput and unless you’ve got a submersible hidden in your jacket, there’s no way down.”

“Will they keep coming?”

“Given I don’t know how many of them there are, whether they can survive for long out of their natural environment, or anything about their reproductive cycle, there’s no way to tell. They could stay local to here…”

“Or they could spread,” Banks finished for her.

“I’ve had plenty of time to think about it while I was stuck in the pantry. Imagine them getting into one of the main currents,” she said. “The big one from here goes down toward the St. Lawrence seaway. They could get all the way down to the Great Lakes. Imagine them in Toronto, Montreal, or even Chicago. Imagine the carnage.”

“Or going the other way, heading down the North Sea,” Banks said. “To London. It’s not a huge stretch to imagine one of those big buggers climbing Big Ben, or rampaging among the tourists in Trafalgar Square. We have to do something.”

Svetlanova motioned to the window.

“We’re on a holed boat, in a storm, with no operating drilling rig. You’ve lost two men already. What can we do?”

Mac looked up.

“I say we take off and nuke the site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.”

“Fucking A,” McCally replied and the men all laughed as if they’d made a joke; she wasn’t sure if Mac was serious or not but replied as if he was.

“That might work,” she said.

Banks looked like he might reply but a gust of wind caught the boat broadside and the vessel lurched, metal squealing. They rolled and Svetlanova lost her footing, tumbled into Banks and sent both of them to the floor in a tangle of arms and legs. For several breaths she thought they were going all the way over, then the old boat righted, almost over compensated, then rocked back into position. But something felt wrong now; they felt lazier in the water, too heavy but at the same time rocking and rolling more violently with the wind. Sleet, almost hail, spattered hard against the window.

Banks helped her to her feet and they looked at each other. Neither spoke, neither had to.

It’s going to be a long two hours.