Dealing

 

Jane and Sian waited on the floodlit dock with a stretcher. Jane had binoculars.

'Here they come.'

The zodiac came in fast. Ghost killed the engine and threw Jane a rope. Simon lay on the aluminium floor of the boat. Jane helped drag him from the boat. They laid him on a stretcher, put it on a cargo trolley and wheeled it to the freight elevator.

The stretcher buggy was parked at habitation level. Rye drove Simon to Medical. Jane and Sian jogged behind the little electric car as it hummed down dark corridors.

They moved Simon on to the operating table.

'Cut off his clothes,' said Rye. 'Get him under the shower.'

Jane and Sian hacked through Simon's clothes with trauma shears. His genitals were so shrivelled by cold he looked female. Nothing between his legs but a tuft of pubic hair.

There was a bathroom at the back of the bay. They dragged Simon to the shower and stood him under a jet of hot water.

Rye stripped out of her survival gear and filled the hypothermia bath, tested it to forty-six degrees.

'All right. Let's get him immersed.'

They laid Simon in the bath.

'Keep his hands and feet out of the water.'

She shone a penlight into his eyes.

'Ideally I would like to test rectal temperature, but we'll spare him that indignity for now.'

'His hand is fucked.'

'We'll see how his condition develops as we restore circulation. Of course, that's when the pain will begin.'

 

Jane jogged a kilometre circuit of C deck. She was joined by Sian. 'Spoken to Ghost?'

'Briefly,' said Jane.

'What did he say about that Apex guy? The one who didn't make it back.'

'He refuses to talk about it.'

They trotted down unheated corridors. Each puffing exhalation was a great plume of steam-breath. They both wore three tracksuits. The metal floor was slick with ice so they ran in snow- boots with thick rubber tread. Their route was lit by weak daylight shafting through the corridor windows.

Jane ran fast and lithe. She had lost four kilos. Her clothes felt loose. Sian struggled to keep pace.

Jane had been fat all her life. Her body had been nothing more than a sweating, aching encumbrance but now she felt an intimation of what it would be like to be supple and strong.

'What's the deal with you and Punch?'

'How do you mean?' asked Sian.

'Both young, both bright. An obvious match.'

'I always thought Nail and Ivan seemed like a happy couple. Pumping. Preening. Oiling each other down.'

'Nice deflection.'

They ran the kilometre circuit then ran it again.

 

Sian returned to her room to shower.

Jane walked past Medical on her way back to the accommodation block. Dr Rye was packing packets of drugs into a box. Jane felt obliged to offer help.

'Happy pills,' said Rye. 'Seroxat. Triptafen. You've got to expect depression in a place like this. No daylight. Nowhere to go. There will be plenty of demand, now night is closing in.'

'How is Simon?'

Rye gestured to a side room.

'Stable. Sleeping. Infection: that's my chief concern. This is a first aid station. Serious injuries are supposed to get a priority airlift. We don't have enough antibiotics for long-term treatment.'

'Right.'

'I probably shouldn't mention it, but what the hell. You might need to know. Nikki? That girl we pulled off the ice? She was pretty distraught about the man they left behind. She blames herself. It should have been me, blah, blah. I dosed her with Anafranil but it takes a few days to kick in. She'll need a shoulder, someone to coax her through the next few days.'

'Okay.'

'The crewmen are smoking weed and hoping for a ship, but once the sun has set for good the mood will quickly head downhill. There are black days ahead. Thank God we don't have guns on board.'

 

Sian found Simon watching DVDs in his hospital room. Goodfellas. He was pale. His hands and feet were bandaged. Sian held a cup so he could sip from a straw.

'Can you help me up a little?'

Sian pressed the Elevate button to raise Simon's head.

'Where's Nikki?' he asked.

'Eating in the canteen. Eating and eating. Can I bring you any food?'

'No thanks.'

BBC News was still showing slow-motion footage of a fluttering Union flag and a list of refuge centres.

'It's been that way for days,' said Sian. 'The refuge list doesn't update. I suppose the studio has been evacuated. We'll be watching that image until the satellite fails.'

'Are there no other channels?'

'North America is totally off air. All the Russian and Euro channels are long gone.'

'Jesus.'

'See that BBC logo in the corner? I like to look at it. It's comforting. A last little piece of home.'

'I killed my best friend to get here,' said Simon. 'And I'm just as stuck as before.'

'We've got heat, we've got light, we've got food for months. Look around you. This rig is one giant construction set. It's packed full of survival equipment. I promise you, one way or another, we will get you home. We'll get everyone home.'

Rye changed Simon's dressings. She unwrapped his right hand. The smell of necrotic flesh made Sian want to retch.

Sian sat on the edge of the bed. She wanted to distract Simon from the sight of his rotted hand.

'So what's the first thing you will do when you get home?'

'Fuck knows. Doesn't sound like there is much waiting for us. And what can I do? I'll probably never use a knife and fork again. I'll have to lap food from a bowl like a dog.'

'You're exhausted, hungry and dehydrated. You get two days' self-pity, all right? That's your allocation. Wallow. Whine all you want. But after those forty-eight hours are up, you are officially a malingering twat.'

'I need a shit.'

'Is that why you haven't been eating? Worried about using the toilet?'

Sian lowered the bed and helped Simon stand. He shuffled to the bathroom. Sian helped tug down his pyjama bottoms.

'Call me when you are done.'

Sian helped Simon wipe, then walked him back to bed. She found Rye checking the drug cupboard.

'What are you giving him for pain?'

'Codeine. He'll get a couple of cycles. After that, he has to tough it out.' Rye gestured to the pill packets and bottles. 'We don't have much of anything. Once his share is used up, he's on his own.'

 

Jane knocked on Nikki's door.

'Who is it?' Nikki sounded groggy. She was probably dozing on her bunk.

'It's Reverend Blanc. Do you have a moment? I need your help.'

 

Jane led Nikki to the observation bubble.

'How have you been?' asked Jane, as they climbed the spiral stairs.

'Standing by every heating vent I can find. Just can't seem to get warm.'

Jane showed her the radio console.

'We've been trying to hail any passing ship by short-wave. We man the radio round the clock. We were hoping you could pull a few shifts.'

'What should I do?'

'Sit here. Press to transmit, yeah? Kasker Rampart. That's the name of the platform. So you say something like: "Mayday, mayday. This is refinery platform Kasker Rampart requesting urgent assistance, over." Then you release the switch and listen for a reply.'

'Okay.'

'Do you like Monopoly? We've been holding a tournament.'

 

Sian walked Simon to the shower. She set the water running, took Simon's dressing gown and helped him into the cubicle. She sat on the bed and waited for him to finish. 'How's Nikki?' he called.

'Seems okay. They've got her helping out in the radio room.' 'Keep an eye on her. Make sure she's all right. She seems tough, but she's not. We left Alan to die. She may act casual, but on some level it will be eating her up.'

'Jane is looking after her. Jane's good with people. She has an instinct.'

'I'm done.'

Sian wrapped Simon in a bath towel and led him from the shower.

 

Jane took the elevator down to the docking platform. She found Punch in the boathouse. The boathouse was a steel cabin with a wide hole in the floor. The zodiac was suspended above the water by chains. The walls were racked with survival equipment.

'What's this?' asked Jane, inspecting a big plastic pod.

'A weather balloon. Don't mess with it.'

'Maybe we should build a boat. A raft or something. Give everyone a job. For morale, if nothing else.'

Punch had found a golf club. He putted scrunched paper into a mug.

'Do you think Tiger Woods is dead?' he asked.

'He's probably sipping martinis on a private island somewhere. Times like this, the rich buy their way out of trouble.'

'But imagine if we were the only people left. The last men on earth. I'd be the best golfer in the world right now. You'd be the only priest. And Ghost would be the only Sikh. Imagine that. A four-hundred-year religion terminating in a dope-head grease monkey.'

'I thought you liked the bloke.'

'I do. But think about it. All the people that made you feel worthless and small down the years. The bullies and bosses. All gone. It's exhilarating, if you think about it. Freedom from other people's expectations. We can finally start living for ourselves.'

'We can't be the only survivors. There must be others like us. We just need to find each other.'

Jane found a yellow Peli case on a shelf: a crush-proof, watertight plastic container about the size of a shoe box. She turned the box over in her hands.

'Do you mind if I take this?' she asked.

 

The crew ate dinner in the canteen. Mashed potato, a sausage, a spoonful of gravy.

'Eat it slowly,' advised Punch. 'Make it last.'

Rawlins lifted his plate and licked it clean of gravy. The crew copied his lead.

Jane stood on a chair and called for attention. They looked up, wondering if she were about to say grace all over again.

'Okay, folks. Here's the deal. We've got a bunch of helium weather balloons downstairs. A week from today I am going to launch one of the balloons with this box attached. The prevailing wind should carry it south to Europe. If any of you want to write a letter to someone back home, then drop it in the box. Million-to-one shot? Maybe. Even if the box lands in the sea, one day it will wash up and one day someone will find it. You may think it's a stupid idea, but do it anyway. Put it down on paper. Put a message in the bottle. The things you wished you'd said but didn't get a chance. I'm going to leave this box in the corner. It's a good opportunity to unburden yourselves. Make use of it.'

 

Sian sat in the corner of the canteen, pen poised over a sheet of paper.

She had a stepfather. Leo. A carpet fitter. He was a nice enough guy. He cared for Sian's mother during that last year of ovarian cancer. Sian spent each Christmas Day at his little terraced house, ate a turkey dinner in front of the TV, but they never progressed beyond superficial pleasantries. It had been three years. Sian often wondered if he had a new girlfriend. A divorcee with kids of her own. Maybe he wanted to drop Sian from his life, but didn't know how.

Leo was a fit, capable man. He kept a bayonet beneath the bed in case of burglars. He would be all right.

Sian screwed up the paper. Better this way, she thought. No one to worry about but me.

The coffee urn. She filled a Styrofoam cup. Punch no longer supplied milk powder or sugar. Everyone took it black and bitter.

 

Jane sat in her room with a pad on her lap. She wrote love-you letters to her mother and sister. Then she wrote on behalf of the crew.

 

My name is Reverend Jane Blanc. I am chaplain of Con Amalgam refinery platform Kasker Rampart. We are marooned in the Arctic Circle west of Franz Josef Land. We have supplies to last four months. Winter is coming. By the time you read this we may be dead. We have little hope of rescue and we are so far from inhabited land any attempt to sail to safety in an improvised craft would almost certainly fail. I often promise the men we will all get home, but I have no idea how this can be achieved or what horrors might await us beyond the horizon. So I appeal to anyone who may read this note: please do what you can to ensure that one day these letters reach the people for whom they are intended, so that they can know what became of us.

God bless,

Jane Blanc

 

Jane sealed the notes in an envelope and took it to the canteen. She slotted the envelope into the Peli case.

Sudden PA announcement: 'Mr Rawlins, Reverend Blanc, please report to Medical right away.'

Sian. By the sound of her voice, something was very wrong.

 

Simon was curled foetal at the bottom of the shower cubicle. He was dead. He held a scalpel in the swollen, blackened fingers of his left hand. He had slashed his wrist. He lay naked in a puddle of pink blood-water and unravelled bandages.

'Jesus fucking Christ.'

Rawlins shut off the water. Jane helped drag the dead man from the shower.

They carried Simon to the operating table. They watched Sian wash him down. They lifted him into a rubber body bag and zipped it closed.

There was no mortuary on the refinery, so they laid Simon on the floor of the boathouse overnight.

'He was talking to me,' said Sian. 'Reaching out. Screaming for help and I was too stupid to hear.'

'A person's life is their own,' said Jane. 'It's not your job to save them.'

 

Nikki sat in the observation bubble reading a magazine.

'We'll be holding the funeral at three,' said Jane.

Nikki flipped pages like she hadn't heard.

 

The crew processed down steel stairs that spiralled round one of the rig's gargantuan legs. An ice shelf had solidified around each leg. They walked across the ice and congregated at the water's edge.

Jane turned the pages of her service book with gloved fingers.

'O God, whose Son Jesus Christ was laid in a tomb: bless, we pray, this grave as the place where the body of Simon your servant may rest in peace, through your Son, who is the resurrection and the life; who died and is alive and reigns with you now and for ever.'

Simon was swaddled in sheets. He lay on a stretcher. Ghost lifted the stretcher and the body slid into the water.

'As they came from their mother's womb, so they shall go again, naked as they came. We brought nothing into the world, and we take nothing out. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.'

The shrouded body floated just beneath the surface. Ghost pushed the corpse away from the ice with a golf club. It drifted away, drawn by the current, a white phantom shape beneath the water.

'Support us, O Lord, all the long day of this troubled life, until the shadows lengthen and the evening comes, the busy world is hushed, the fever of life is over and our work is done. Then, Lord, in your mercy grant us a safe lodging, a holy rest, and peace at the last; through Christ our Lord. Amen.'

The crew walked back to the rig. Nobody spoke.

Jane stood with Punch and looked out to sea.

'I feel like I'm doing more harm than good,' she said.

'Shall we go and find your asteroid?'

'Yeah. Let's get away from this misery for a while.'