The Blizzard
CHAPTER NINE
LEAVE the business side of things to others; that’s what he had been told. Strang did not pretend to understand the boardroom politics or the currents of the markets.
Brown, on the other hand, knew about the ways of the world. He had been one of those charlatans who claimed electricity was still under man’s control. The sort who used cheap parlour tricks to thrill over-stuffed businessmen and their wives at New Town dinner parties. Approaching his craft more like a showman, than a proper scientist, he demonstrated the basic principles of the Van de Graff machine, the electric beatification that would crown an unwilling participant in hazy blue, the salty wash inside the Lyeden Jar – the tricks that every charlatan had at their disposal to shock, spark, and amaze a gullible audience. But his questing mind soon set upon the challenge of finding proper power. The sort that would light a city, put a plane in the air, or sends freight across the world.
Groupthink supported hydropower.
At first groupthink had been sufficient to stem criticism of the monopoly, which was to last for a limited period only, while the corporation rolled out the technology across the world. But slowly, opposition began to grow over the company’s influence. Rumours started to spread in newsprint and in coffee shop gossip. Brown’s response was simple and direct as ever but he was no longer the wealthy, bored friend he had met at university.
Hadn’t they found a solution to the world’s pressing energy problems? Brown used his family’s own money to develop their theory, building a prototype water cell and commersialise the technology they were told would never work on a large scale?
It had not taken much to convince the jobless workforce at Grangemouth to move from one form of fuel to the other. The Forth now fed the world’s first water cell reactor round the clock. The distinctive steam plume was visible for miles around.
Dozens of new plants had been built. Hundreds more were planned; the company’s gift to the world. All it asked for was that to work unimpeded by those who did not understand the technology while it built and installed the stations.
To say Strang turned a blind eye to some of the less savoury things that took place would not be entirely accurate. He was not blind to the aggressive takeovers, unsavoury business practises, union busting, and bribery, but again the groupthink was such things were necessary evils.
What was the alternative? Blackouts? No trains? No shipping? No Wep?
Strang drew the line at killing. But before he walked away, a penance for Liddell’s death was required for his blind loyalty.
He was unsure how long he had been sitting in the cubicle, when light flooded his enclosure.
The man was about Strang’s own age. His iron-grey hair, neatly trimmed and receding from the front backwards. From the black shirt and white Roman collar, Strang surmised the man had more of right to be in the church than him.
Both stared each other, Strang acutely aware he must be wearing the other man’s clothing, having divested himself of the clothes soaked in the water. He tried to break the silence but could not find his voice.
“Sorry. I realise this doesn’t seem usual…”
“What are you doing?” The clergyman’s voice was without anger as if Strang were merely standing on his doorstep rather than an intruder in his church.
“I had an accident in the water and needed to get dry. I’m terribly sorry for coming in without permission. I’ll pay for any damage. I’m lost you see – and not from here.”
The priest looked him up and down and then stared at the sodden clothes on the floor.
“You seem to have had a rough time of it? But there’s a pub just down the road. Morag would have given you a towel and let you dry off. You’re not in trouble of any sort?”
Strang pondered the question. His ordeal would not seem real until he had put it into words. Without almost any hesitation, the explanation came tumbling out of him; who he was, the warning messages in the tube and flight from his home and how he came to be cowering in a confessional box.
Hidden in the shadows of the cubicle, he spoke with surprising ease, with privilege. The priest said nothing but nodded occasionally as he listened to the narrative. Finally he spoke: “Well that’s certainly a story. I think you’d best come with me. No sense in you freezing to death in here.”
Seeing no alternatives, Strang nodded. Picking up his sodden bundle, they left through the font door. A dilapidated motorbike was parked outside. As it coughed and smoked into life, the smell of stale fat was overpowering.
“Fish oil,” the priest explained as he pulled on a pair of goggles. Strang grasped tight as he took the passenger position, trying not to gag at the thick cloud.
“Bill in town has converted a few of these old bikes. The fish oil is the only thing left around here which burns – although it has its own distinctive aroma. Re-electrification has been slow in coming to many of the outlying areas. Horses are hard to come by these days and expensive. Most get sent to the cities, people round here use bikes to get around or burner engines like mine if they can.”
As they travelled the priest spoke breezily to his passenger, as if chauffeuring inventors was an everyday event. He named the hills they passed, pointing out ruined landmarks, and the home of his more eccentric parishioners.
Slowly they covered the narrow road, following the contour of the shore before turning into the hills. Strang could see frost-dusted mountain ranges in the horizon.
Eventually, they pulled up at a modern low-level structure; a very different type of church, all exposed glass and bare metal, like a giant conservatory glaring in the snow. In the distance, thick pine trees scaled the mountains, growing at surprisingly acute angles.
“Make yourself at home.” The priest pointed to the house nearest to the church and said simply: “I’ll try and help you as best I can.”
After a shower and a change of clothes, Strang felt much more his normal self and was able to make a more reasoned summary of his situation during a simple dinner of bread and cheese. His host looked sympathetic and told him not to be so hasty when Strang vowed to leave first thing in the morning.
“It seeks like you have nowhere to go. Why not stay here for a while?”
Strang could not disagree but felt unhappy about imposing on a stranger, resolving to spend no more than a few days under his host’s roof. He was shown to a small but comfortable room on the top floor, clearly a store cupboard when there were no visitors. In the centre of the room, an elaborate old-fashioned tabletop train set. The railway, like the ones Strang remember from his childhood, was complete with tiny passengers, trees and signal boxes. There was even a miniature church, with a priest and congregants standing outside.
The vacuum tube messages had he received were still crumpled in his pocket. He had taken them out of his sodden clothes. He read them again as he sat on the low mattress. He was being hunted. There was no doubt in his mind about that.
There was a crack. Crack, once more. It seemed to come from the outside draughty window. Once more, the pane rattled causing him to flinch against his will. He got out of bed and walked to the window. A tiny robin was perched on the peeling window frame. It pulled its head back and drove its beak once more into the frail pane. Strang opened the latch and made to shoo the bird. But then, there was the creaking betrayal of rickety floorboards, followed by shuffling footsteps. He heard the crackle of a Wep receiver being tuned. A few moments later, the distinctive tap. Dot-dash-dash-dot/Dash-dash-dash/Dot-dash-dot-dot. The police code.
Strang had not been trained in the code from an early age. He was born in an era of telephones when there was enough power to keep the lines constantly charged. Only later had it become necessary to send messages in short, energy-saving busts. He could not immediately translate the clicks and beeps but quickly grabbed a pencil and scrawled down the sounds as they were spelled out.
…BREAKIN AT ST MARYS STOP SAYS HES SCIENTIS
T STOP THINK ITS MAN IN PAPERS ON RUN FROM EDINBURGH STOP RECOGNISE PICTURE STOP GOT HIM IN THE HOUSE NEXT TO ST AGNES STOP AS QUICK AS YOU CAN STOP
Strang’s tired body was shaken out of sleep.
He could not see the response from the police operator, which would be printed on the teleprinter downstairs. But he knew well enough what they would say.
His greatcoat – now almost dry – was on the door and he threw it over his shoulders. Would the priest try to stop him? Would they have to fight?
The tapping on the glass resumed… the window.
It was only a short drop to the ground. Prising the frame open as quietly as possible – Strang felt the night’s cold teeth of the night. He edged out of the window. For several awkward seconds, one leg stubbornly refused to vacate the room and its train set. Eventually he lowered himself so only a few feet separated his boots from the snow beneath. He fell in a crumple in the snow, wet but unhurt. There was the sound of movement in the room below.
Cautiously, Strang moved through the garden onto the road, his feet sinking in the pristine white blanket. It would not be long before police and possibly Brown’s men arrived. Walking swiftly on the path Strang looked towards the mountainside, dimly visible in the stifled light. If he could get himself up into the trees, he had a slim chance of evading them.
A gravel track veered off the main road, probably leading to a cottage set away from the village. He began to hobble up the slope, turning every minute, expecting to see the flashing lanterns and hear the rattle of hoofs.
He cut through the gorse filled ground. The trail was difficult to follow and he could only see the broad outline of where he was going. He was not a young man anymore and had no walking boots, no waterproofs.
Waves of snow began to sweep across the fields, reducing the trees to silhouettes. A few patches of green or brown were visible in the white wasteland. Banks of cloud would lift and fall, revealing colossal slopes, although the mountain peaks would remain tantalisingly concealed.
He could no longer see the main road he had walked down or the priest’s house by now. The police must surely be on their way. They would be asking the priest where Strang had gone, why he had not heard the window opening or his body dropping onto the snow. They would be calling for back-up. Dogs, perhaps, or even an airship?
Hobbling as fast he could and gasping for breath, he eventually reached the treeline.
With exhaustion, fear, and the feeling that his situation was hopeless, Strang had only enough energy to collapse on the ground. Having walked up the hill for what felt like an age, he let the waves of frustration and fear wash over him. Freezing, trapped on a lonely mountain, without money, and hunted.
One way or another he was going to die very soon. He tried to calculate how long it might take him to die. There was probably some formula used by mountaineers based on body mass, wind chill, clothing layers, water penetration and so on. Feeling his own ribs through the thin layers of damp clothing, Strang knew that whatever the calculation, his time own chances would be at the short end of the scale. Another hour, perhaps slightly longer. Would he be conscious when he died or slip into a blissful coma surrounded by dense pines?
Whump-whump-whump-whump.
The tell-tale sound of an airship turbine. They were searching. In the valley, there was also the braying of horses. Rescue was not an option. Any policeman who found him would deliver him to Brown. In big cities it was not unusual to see eight or nine different police forces in competition, their horses in a patchwork of livery with heir sponsors’ corporate logos.
The law was that, theft, burglaries, fire raising, and murder must be dealt with on a first-come, first-served basis. But even the dimmest of officers knew that the needs of their sponsors outweighed any other consideration.
It was not unusual for a firm as big as UisgeCorp to sponsor every police force in every major city, ensuring priority for its staff and its interests any time and any place. Every officer in the land would be searching for him now.
Strang did something he had not done, nor thought about doing, for decades. He began to pray. Unsure of the words or syntax, unsure if what he was saying was really a prayer, he challenged God – if he existed – to deliver him.
He asked that he would not die. Nothing happened.
The birds nesting above him prepared to relieve themselves.