The Silent Vulcan Read online

  "I promised you to look after your echo-sounder, therefore I considered it my responsibility to see that it was looked after and returned to you. Would it be possible to borrow it again, please?"

  Dayton shrugged and offered the instrument back to Harding. "In that case, you might as well hang onto it."

  "That's extremely kind of you, Mr Dayton," said Harding gratefully, taking the echo-sounder back.

  "Well at least you haven't seen fit to commandeer it. Not like that D-S Malone who took my distress rockets."

  "Mr Malone was enforcing an order requiring all explosives and firearms to be handed in," said Harding mildly. He had had this argument before with the belligerent yachtsman.

  "I wasn't told they'd be used for a bloody coup d'etat!"

  "Nor was I," Harding replied gravely. "Strange, that. But apart from the death of Mr Harvey Evans, which was a terrible accident, it wasn't bloody."

  Dayton pointed at six ponies grazing at the far end of the paddock. "And what about those?"

  "They're ponies."

  "I know that! I didn't mind three grazing my paddock so much, but there's now six of them!"

  "I'm sorry, Mr Dayton. We're short of grazing. Every scrap of land has to be pressed into service, as I'm sure you're aware."

  "My paddock is not a scrap of land, dammit. But six of the damned things! They scratch themselves on my yacht!"

  "Using the sharp end, presumably? They obviously recognise quality."

  "This place is turning into a police state."

  "Better than a policeless state," Harding observed. He added, confident that Dayton hardly listened to anything that was said to him, "Well -- I mustn't let you take up anymore of my valuable time. Thank you for the echo-sounder. I'll take great care of it."

  "Did you find anything?" Dayton demanded as Harding turned to leave.

  "I find anything what?"

  "In the lake. With my echo-sounder!"

  "I'm writing a report now. It'll be on the news in the next day or so." Not wishing to annoy Dayton more than he already was, Harding added, "Actually, we did find something. The lake silt's settled now. We certainly detected some sort of anomaly which may or may not be the Silent Vulcan. We couldn't have done that without your echo-sounder."

  "So what are you going to go about it?"

  Harding looked blank. "What would you have me do about it?"

  "Well I don't know! You're the new big white chief, for God's sake!"

  "Yes -- but I hardly think--"

  Dayton took Harding by the arm, led him a few paces away from his yacht, and pointed at it. "What do you see, Mr Harding?"

  "A boat. It's hard to miss."

  Dayton hated his beloved yacht being called a boat but he let it pass. "A dream, Mr Harding," he said with unexpected passion. "Sailing around the world with my wife was only half of that dream. The other half is to take part in the round the world single-hander. Not to win, but to take part, you understand..." Dayton paused, staring at his yacht. "It's all I've ever wanted to do... It's next year. That's why I bought her here. So I could fit her out as I wanted her fitted out rather than entrust her to a bunch of clueless marina fuckwits. If I miss next year's race, there won't be another for five years, and by that time they'll say I'm too old. In fact, I know they will... Taking part in that race is something I've dreamed about all my professional life, Mr Harding. I want nothing else. I will settle for nothing less."

  Harding nodded sympathetically as he turned to leave. "I understand, Mr Dayton. I really do."

  "How deep was your mystery object?"

  "120 metres," Harding replied. "Surprising how deep Pentworth Lake is." He was about to add that it was deep enough for Dayton to sail his boat on, but decided that that would've been unnecessarily cruel.

  It is doubtful if the dour yachtsman would've heard the comment if Harding had uttered it. He watched the stooping figure cross the paddock towards the house, his mind racing as it formed an outrageous plan. He gave Lennie Hunter a curt order to carry on and returned to his house. His wife was working in the kitchen. She called out but he ignored her. She, too, had been looking forward to him taking part in the single-handed round the world yacht race.

  A few minutes rummaging in his workshop and Dayton found what he was looking for: an empty aluminium firkin -- the beer keg was a leftover from his 65th birthday party that would've been returned to the caterers were it not for the Wall.

  He heaved the heavy keg onto his workbench and stood back to study it critically. Originally it had held 41 litres of beer. He opened the tap and released a dribble of stale lager. He tested its weight again. My God -- it was heavy for aluminium. Obviously it had a substantial wall thickness, designed to withstand a lot of rough handling. His surmise was proved correct when he unscrewed the bung and checked the keg's wall thickness between his thumb and forefinger. At least 8 millimetres as near as he could judge. His heartbeat quickened. There seemed little doubt that it would be ideal for the crazy plan that was taking shape in his mind. As a former naval gunnery officer he had had some experience of the simplest and crudest armament that most of the world's navies possessed.

  Depth charges.

  But Dayton was thinking about the possibility of one depth- charge.

  One with its hydrostatic fuse set to detonate at a depth of 120 metres.

  Chapter 10.

  DESPITE HER AGE, Sister Mary Thomas Selby was remarkably adaptable. Half a litre of water, no more and no less, was just right for her morning cup of tea even if were home-dried nettle tea, and even if it did mean having to wait until 11:00am when the sun was high enough to boil the careful measure of water in her kettle without a long wait. Her eyesight was good so she had no trouble using a long hazel staff to hook the kettle onto the arm in the centre of her four-metre diameter solar dish. A painful twinge in her hands due to her arthritis. Of course, at her age she was entitled to one of the charcoal burners but she had found working the air pump plunger difficult, and having to fiddle about with charcoal granules was a messy business. Afterall the radio was always going on about the need to strictly limit all fires -- something about having to keep carbon locked up in trees and only releasing it in controlled quantities. Everyone seemed to be coping with the solar dishes that were popping up everywhere like grotesque silvery flowers, and so could she.

  Selby Engineering was stencilled on the dish in large letters. Tony Selby was her nephew. She was proud of him. As a child he had been just like his father -- her brother -- always making things. He had taken over his father's engineering business at the age of 23 and had invested heavily in new machine tools. With new shapers, capstans, lathes, mills, stamping presses, injection moulding equipment and a wide variety of other tools, Selby Engineering and its 100 employees had been able to tackle any business that came their way. Immediately following the Wall crisis they had doubled their staff and turned out these solar cooker dishes by the score -- from which they had acquired skills in papier mache moulding. They had followed this with solar water heating panels, methane lamps, and charcoal cookers -- all well-designed and built to last, and with good spares support because Pentworth could not afford to waste materials or labour on planned obsolescence. They had even designed and built a pair of steam-driven 20 kilowatt methane-powered generators to supply their plant's power needs. She knew from her nephew's increasingly rare visits now that his dependence on Adrian Roscoe to keep his factory going rankled considerably.

  She sat at her garden table to wait for the kettle to boil, enjoying the warmth of the sun. Looking up at the huge, silvery dish on its lattice framework mounting of lashed chestnut saplings took her mind off the strange and abrupt change of scenery not 10 metres from where she was sitting. The dish was such a clever device. In her teaching days she had often used papier mache in her craft classes at St Catherine's to make the heads of glove puppets, but she had never imagined that her talented nephew could use it to make such an extraordinary range of items. Even her shiny new telep
hone, installed last week, was made of moulded and lacquered papier mache.

  Himmler, the Taylors' siamese cat, rubbed around her legs. He wasn't so much a cat as an ever-empty, ever-hopeful stomach on legs, and had the retired nun down as sucker No. 4 on his morning breakfast round, for it is a truth, univerally acknowledged, that a hungry cat of good breeding must be in want of a breakfast. Or, in Himmler's case, several breakfasts. She reached down and rubbed his head. Himmler responded with his standard emotional blackmail tactics of endearing loud purrs and sticking his tail up when stroked to ensure that Sister Mary's hand didn't fall off the end of his back.

  "Still no sign of your Vikki then, Himmler?"

  His many years experience as a skilled scrounger had taught Himmler that old ladies talking to him was a sure sign of victory. Breakfast No. 4 was a few affectionate head butts and a couple of pitiful meows away.

  Sister Mary missed Vikki. Such a sweet girl. Always cheerful despite that awful handicap of her left hand, always happy to run little errands such as on Saturdays when she had only to phone Ellen Duncan's herbal shop and Vikki would drop by with the order on her way home. At least those misguided Bodian Brethren sentinels had stopped coming around now, pestering her, poking about in her outhouses -- looking for Claire Lake, they said, because they were worried about her.

  Sister Mary prayed that the rumours that Vikki was safe were true.

  A movement caught her eye. She turned her head and stared at the Farside sabre toothed cat padding stiffly and silently across what appeared to be the end of her lawn. The fur around its jaws was matted with blood and feathers. It stopped and wiped its fearsome fangs on the desiccated sedge grass, twisting its head from side to side and using its paws to help with the clean up, its movements almost identical to those made by Himmler after a cadged breakfast. The creature was thin, badly emaciated, its ribs showing through its lustreless fur. She doubted if a bird would provide it with enough sustenance. It paused and raised its head. The nun shivered. The baleful yellow eyes, the pupils reduced to slits in the bright sunlight, seemed to be staring straight at her.

  Himmler saw the big cat. He made a strange noise in his throat and decided that he had pressing business on the roof of the cottage. From the safety of the chimney stack, he subjected his distant cousin to death from a thousand glares, and puny growls interspersed with bouts of furious chest washing that jingled the silver bell on his collar.

  Unlike Himmler, Sister Mary had seen the female big cat on several occasions. After her first fright, she had always felt some empathy towards it. Like her, it was old and stiff. But this was the first time it had stopped so near the Wall that sliced through her property. For several seconds the two stared at each other across the awesome gulf of 40,000 years. She wasn't afraid. Living so close to the Wall had given her confidence in its strange powers but she couldn't help a stir of apprehension as the malevolent eyes seemed to bore into her. She wondered if the cat could see into her world as clearly as she could see into its world. Well -- there was one way to find out. Pulling herself out of the garden chair required a little effort. She grabbed the hazel staff and advanced on the sabre toothed cat like a medieval pikeman. The tip touched the Wall and caused that strange blackening at the point of contact. The resistance and the size of the black patch increased as she pushed harder. It was like poking a pillow. Jabbing caused the black patch to flash, which the big cat would be certain to see. But it resumed its unconcerned washing and even ignored her kettle which had started whistling.

  During a talk on the radio Bob Harding had speculated about the possibility of interaction between the present day world of Pentworth and the bizarre world of Farside and its wind-desiccated steppes and stunted trees of prehistoric northern Europe. She wondered if she should tell him about this, but it was negative information and Bob Harding was now chairman of the council; he would be far too busy these days. The sabre tooth got bored with washing and stalked off, disappearing down a steep rise in the undulating landscape.

  Himmler came down from the roof, pleased with himself for having vanquished a fearsome foe, and resumed his demands for a fourth breakfast.

  The crunch of wagon wheels in the lane intruded on Sister Mary's thoughts. She unhitched her boiling kettle, and grabbed a carrier bag containing her empty milk bottle and her portable radio. She went around the side of the cottage to greet her visitor. The twice-weekly visits of the Morris man refuse collector was always a welcome event although conventional household refuse was now a thing of the past. Her radio had said before its batteries died that this week all light bulbs were to be rounded up.

  "Good morning, Mr Norris," said Sister Mary, making a fuss of the new arrival's pony.

  "Morning, sister," said Russell Norris, jumping down from his cart. He touched his broad-brimmed morris straw hat, and opened his post chest. A big man. Two metres of muscle and good humour. This wasn't his normal duty but Malone had assigned him to warn off Adrian Roscoe's search parties that had been concentrating on this area.

  The morris men visited every one of Pentworth's 1800 or so households at least twice a week. In the months since the Wall had appeared, they had evolved into postmen, refuse collectors, pollution inspectors, bread and milk delivery men, and now policemen -- all rolled into one. Most important of all, they were government representatives -- a valuable point of contact between the people and the governing council which acted as a rapid conduit for grievances and ensured they were addressed quickly. They were strict enforcers of government policy and had the power to exact fines for all breaches of the emergency regulations, such as lighting bonfires without a permit, although such powers were rarely needed now.

  "And another fine morning it is too," Russell continued cheerfully. "Just two letters and they look like bills."

  She took the folded sheets -- envelopes were rarely used now -- and broke the seals. "Bills," she said ruefully, thrusting them into her apron pocket. "No refuse, Mr Norris. But I've found some more books."

  "Hang onto them until next week, sister. It's still a bit chaotic at the library."

  "How are things in town?"

  "Getting back to normal," said Russell, taking Sister Mary's empty milk bottle and her radio. "The Pentworth House bakery is back in business. And methane supplies from Pentworth House are back to normal. Some sort of deal Mr Harding did with Father Roscoe. I'll be back on normal policing duties tomorrow."

  "Ridiculous doing any sort of deal with those cultist loonies. They should've all been arrested."

  The morris man wasn't going to be drawn into discussing government policy. "Have their search parties been around recently?"

  "No. I think that sign has put them off." The nun indicated a notice that had been fixed to the side of her cottage: TELEPHONE AVAILABLE HERE FOR EMERGENCIES.

  Russell replaced the batteries in the radio and tossed the discharged cells in a collection bag. Pentworth's precious stock of dry batteries were looked after by a special government depot. He opened the food pannier and took out a full bottle of milk and half a loaf of bread. "Will this do you until friday?"

  "Oh, lovely." Sister Mary put the milk, bread and her radio in her carrier, and dug in her pocket for a ten euro promissory note. "I saw my sabre toothed tiger again just now."

  "Have you been leaving saucers of milk out for it?"

  Sister Mary laughed. Russell Norris declined her invitation to have a cup of tea. He was behind schedule. Before driving off he promised that his replacement would move her solar dish to a more optimum position now that the days were getting shorter.

  Sister Mary returned to her cottage. Her memory failed her for a moment when she looked around her kitchen for her kettle. Of course -- it was on the garden table and would have to be brought back to the boil. Such a fine morning, why not have tea outside? And why not the Indian Tree china? A little treat wouldn't come amiss. That meant going into the front room where she kept her china cabinet. She hesitated at the door. It wasn't that she was frighten
ed of the Wall -- not after all these months -- rather that seeing the vista of the distant wind-swept steppes instead of the fireplace and bookcase where the Wall had sliced through a third of the little room reminded her of what she had lost: the missal given to her by her father when she had taken her first communion; family photographs from three quarters of a century ago that helped guard against the cruel memory thief of old age. Oh well...

  She opened the door and froze. She stood rooted on the threshold, clutching the doorknob for support. Her first rational thought to emerge from her sudden whirl of confusion was that her eyes were playing tricks. But she was blessed with good eyesight. Maybe her mind was failing? And she knew that that couldn't be the case because it was all so real. The room was intact, no missing corner. Her crammed bookcase, her ornaments, the much-missed, precious photographs, the clock on the mantlepiece that had belonged to her grandmother -- all were where they had been last March before the Wall had materialised and taken them from her.

  Telling herself that maybe she had dozed off and was dreaming, she shuffled to the mantlepiece and reached out trembling fingers, fearful that her sense of touch would contradict what her eyes were telling her. The mantle clock's hard, ebony case felt as it had always felt when she used to wind it each week. She noticed that there was dust on the mantlepiece -- something she would never normally allow.

  But this isn't normal!

  Yet it was. Everything was. Even the pain in her hand as she picked up the worn key and held it at a slight angle to prevent it slipping as she wound the clock. It started chiming immediately as if to make up for the lost hours. She spent the next few minutes in a daze as she explored her long-lost mementoes before realising that she couldn't keep this astounding news to herself.

  The pain in her finger joints was hardly noticeable as she turned the little crank handle on the telephone in the hall.

  Pentworth's manual telephone exchange was in the basement of Pentworth Museum. Carol Hopkins saw the exciter lamp flash for Sister Mary Joseph's number and answered the call immediately. Because of her age and that she lived alone, Sister Mary had been supplied with the first of the new telephones intended for private use now that all essential services and government offices had been connected.