Cloud Cuckoo Land Read online

  Gary stood back and thought for a minute. He held his own nose between his thumb and forefinger, then he decided it was ready. Leonard and Ben got the nod and stood by with their shovels. Gary tipped the mixer forward and the cement poured out. Ben started to drag the stuff across the reinforcing rods, Leonard spread it out and knocked it down into place.

  ‘How long will concrete this thick take to dry out?’

  Ben plunged his hands into a bucket of clean water and rubbed the stuff off.

  ‘It’ll set overnight, take a good week to really harden up, though. We’ve got time.’

  Gary took his turn at the bucket.

  ‘Let’s get some lunch.’

  ‘Yeah OK, I’ll catch you up.’

  He washed his own hands and watched the two guys head off towards the house, shaking their arms to help dry their fingers.

  The sun was high overhead, he could see the air flow moving across the wetlands in waves, swaying the reeds, fanning out as it arrived. It was an onshore breeze with a saline tang to it. There was something else, though, in the air, like a smouldering vegetation or a sweet, composting plant. Then he recognised the smell, it was Cannabis, someone nearby was smoking grass. There was no-one in sight but when Leonard started to sniff the trail, he saw a possible source. There were two venting pipes in the roof of the shelter and when he bent over the first, the fragrance became even stronger. He stepped down into a sort of trench, a gap between a granite slab and the main door into the shelter. The door itself was made of concrete, cast into a steel frame with three iron hinges. These hinges were really just welded loops, and the door had been lowered onto one long hinge made from a scaffolding pole. Leonard pulled on the door, it swung smoothly and he stepped into the dark. The air was damp and cooler than outside and the sound of his own feet seemed to be magnified. He couldn’t find a light switch so he edged forward with his hand running along the wall ahead of him. He eventually found the corner of another door. This one had a long handle so he pulled on it and as he did, bright, fluorescent light came through the gap. Leonard was surprised by the size of the room. A polished red floor with racks of steel shelving along each wall, stacked high with numbered boxes.

  ‘Who’s there?’

  ‘Leonard.’

  He watched a woman with iron-red hair step out from between two aisles of racking. He’d seen her before, around the house.

  ‘What d’you want?’

  ‘I’m just having a look around I suppose, what’s your name?’

  ‘Gaynor.’

  Instead of approaching him, Gaynor puffed on her joint, turned and climbed a steel ladder which was bolted to the side of a huge plastic storage tank. Leonard moved around to the foot of the ladder.

  ‘What’s that?’

  She turned to answer.

  ‘It’s a ten thousand gallon water tank, there’s another one further into the shelter. I’m running through the routine checklist.’

  She held a wet tag of litmus paper up to the light and compared it to a colour chart. Then she popped some tablets from a foil sheet and dropped them into the tank via the access hatch.

  ‘These will keep the drinking water stable.’

  ‘What else is in here?’

  Gaynor climbed back down the ladder.

  ‘The essentials, food and water, medical supplies, the back-up generator and the communications equipment.’

  She crossed the room and tapped her knuckles against a steel drum.

  ‘And this is the air filtering system. It should keep our air clean even if we have to seal up the shelter and re-breathe for a while.’

  ‘Re-breathe?’

  ‘We circulate, re-use the same air. The drum is an air scrubber, it’ll remove 99% of airborne particles down to as small as 0.3 microns, and the activated carbon trap absorbs the carbon dioxide.’

  ‘How long can you live, sealed up like that?’

  ‘We don’t really know.’

  She wrote something into her notebook, then walked away into the far corner of the room. She shouted back at him.

  ‘I’m going to do a generator test, don’t worry about the noise.’

  ‘Right.’

  There was a faint whirring, then a deeper thudding as the starter motor sparked up the diesel engine. It revved, turned at a constant pitch for a moment, then cut out.

  She walked back to where Leonard was standing, looked up at him, half smiled, then offered him the joint. Leonard declined. She asked him, ‘What do you think of our Barry then?’

  ‘I like him, he’s a good man and he’s got a plan hasn’t he, he’s rallying people.’

  ‘He’s doing his best and he stays informed, he knows all about the Ice Moon, well, as much as there is to know. He studies all the reports, reads all the scientific papers. He thinks it’ll help, knowing all the latest facts and figures.’

  Leonard nodded.

  ‘But he doesn’t approve of cannabis. Says we need all our faculties, that we need to stay sharp. He says drugs are ultimately suicidal, but sometimes I just need to dull down, take the edge off, you know.’

  ‘Yeah, I know.’

  ◊

  The idea of viewing a spectacular sunset filled Leonard with dread, he couldn’t bear all the communal ooing and ahhing that goes on and how you had to agree that it was beautiful. It seemed to him that the only way to appreciate the phenomenon was by chance, in a rippled reflection, or against the side of someone’s daydreaming face.

  In the evenings though, after eating, Barry often wandered up through the courtyard with ten or fifteen of the others to watch the sunset. They watched the last few degrees of the solar arc, until a thin red stripe lay along the western horizon. Then the end of the day was declared, ticked off with a pen stroke through the calendar.

  This evening, as the light faded and the shadows deepened, he felt glad of the ritual. They stood there for a while all looking the same way. Nobody said very much and as soon as the last patches of colour had faded, they turned back. A few children still up after bedtime, asked to be carried.

  Barry lit up a cigar and the ash-end glimmered in the half-light. Danny, Paul, Ben and Gaynor stayed where they’d been standing for the sunset. Their heads were raked back to spot the first starry pin-pricks that mapped out the night-sky.

  Gaynor had brought her glass of wine up from the house. It was empty now but she still held the rim up to her lips, she bounced it there and looked off into the mid-distance. Her shoulders were bare and the wind chilled her. She snapped out of it and looked at Leonard. She raised her left eyebrow and let her mouth slide into a brave smile.

  They’d started to walk back toward the house, when a flash of white shone through the reeds a few hundred yards back along the main approach road. Danny and Ben started to run and Barry shouted out some instructions. Leonard grabbed Lena’s hand and jogged her off toward the house. He made sure she was OK, then he went back outside. Car headlamps flashed across the road. Leonard caught up with Barry down on the driveway.

  A beaten up Saab had stopped in the middle of the road and turned onto the driveway. Ben walked forward ahead of the others, he bent down to the driver’s window and rested his hand on the roof.

  Leonard asked Barry what was going on.

  ‘We’re being cautious, Leonard, they could be dangerous.’

  Ben looked over his shoulder and shouted out.

  ‘They say they’re lost?’

  When his back was turned, all the passenger doors opened up at the same time. An internal map-light flickered on and Leonard could see that there were four men in the car, they were all armed and beginning to aim their weapons.

  Ben threw himself to the ground and short bursts of automatic gunfire came out of the reeds along the roadside. Leonard could hear the bullets cutting through the sedge grasses and marsh peas before they slammed into the car.

  Barry looked up from the ground, he had small pieces of gravel stamped into the heel of his hand and pressed into his cheek where he
’d dived for cover. He looked up at Leonard.

  ‘Raiding party, happens every now and then. Good job the boys on watch had their wits about them.’

  ◊

  The incident left the house haunted with what might have happened had the car not been intercepted. News of Barry’s shelter had leaked out into the surrounding villages. More patrols were posted through the night but getting to sleep was not at all easy.

  When Barry woke Leonard at something like four in the morning, he sat bolt upright in a panic. Barry pacified him, he apologised for shaking him up.

  ‘Sorry Leonard, but you should come downstairs, there’s something I want you to see.’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Yes, now! Come on.’

  Leonard got up and pulled on a pair of trousers, he followed Barry along the hallway and downstairs into the music room.

  The television was tuned to a news channel, and the reader was looking flustered.

  ‘Sit down and have a look at this report, it’s coming in live.’

  Leonard did sit, he rubbed his eyes and squinted at the screen.

  ‘Do you want a cup of tea?’

  ‘Yeah, sounds good.’

  Barry poured the tea and dealt out the biscuits.

  The newsreader was confused by last minute information which was being fed into his earpiece. He sat up straight and said.

  ‘Yes, OK we can now go live to that report.’

  The picture cut away from the man behind the desk and switched to a fuzzy, sea-level camera angle with some foreground military hardware. The low grade video was obviously filmed from the deck of something like an aircraft carrier. The seas were heavy because the deck was lifting and falling. The camera lost focus, cut to black then went to tele-photo, it lifted away from the horizon and followed a smoking trail which scorched across the sky.

  The commentary explained that the 1000-ton object was a fragment of the Ice Moon. The video followed the burning fragment across the sky and down into the sea, where it crashed then skipped off the surface; it literally bounced up off the Pacific ocean and climbed back out, fast and low-angled again, piercing up and through the cloud.

  ‘Bloody hell, what’s that all about?’

  Barry piped up.

  ‘A fragment of the asteroid, Leonard.’

  The television image cut out of the video and into a computer simulation which showed the trajectory of the fragment. The commentary explained.

  ‘As the fragment came through the earth’s atmosphere this morning, the angle of flight combined with the glancing contact with the water’s surface caused a most unusual continuation of the fragment back out of the earth’s atmosphere and on into space.’

  Barry laughed.

  ‘Bloody hell, fantastic, eh!’

  ‘Are there any more pieces?’

  ‘Not that they are telling us about, have a look at this.’

  Barry crossed the room and booted up a computer monitor.

  ‘I’m afraid I’ve become a bit of an expert on the asteroid. It’s become my specialist subject. I’ve got all these trajectory forecasts and plenty of these computer simulations and survival scenarios. Have a look at this, it’s a live feed from the near earth asteroid tracking centre.’

  Barry tapped into the computer and the screen shifted to blue, the main page clicked on and the first image appeared. In the corner of the screen a countdown clock reported that there were just eighteen days to impact.

  ‘I’ll run this and you’ll see.’

  The screen cleared to show a view of the earth from space.

  ‘The last estimated position of the impact was grid referenced to 26°52’North 118°34’East. That’s eastern China, a place called Fukien province. Did you know that some people are actually going there, they want to be right underneath the thing when it hits, silly sods.’

  ‘I can sympathise with the logic.’

  ‘Thing is, there’s some doubt as to the exact position of impact because the asteroid will pass through the gravitational field of Jupiter before it reaches us. This may give it a kick as it goes by, knocking it to the west, the impact could be anywhere in Russia or even through into eastern Europe. Look, I’ve got these sky surveys, of the northern hemisphere.’

  The screen scrolled down until Barry said, ‘Ah there it is, look. I watched the radio telescope images first, before we got these visuals. Not that impressive is it, fizzing away like a cheap firework?’

  Leonard put his finger on the screen.

  ‘Is that it?’

  ‘Yeah, looks harmless enough on this scale, problem is it’s eighteen miles across. The energy released on impact has been calculated and it runs into hundreds of gigatons. It’ll be travelling at something like twenty kilometres a second when it hits. And that’s right off the Torino scale.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s like the Richter scale, only it measures the destructive potential of asteroid impact.’

  ‘And it’s off the scale.’

  ‘Yeah, ‘fraid so, right off.’

  ‘So what does that mean? What’ll it be like when it hits?’

  ‘Catastrophic, it’ll fuck us right up!’

  Barry switched off the computer.

  ‘Are you ready for another smashing piece of news Leonard?’

  ‘Like what?’

  Barry unfolded a piece of paper and read the short message out loud.

  ‘This is a transcript of a radio message that came in this afternoon. It’s from Beryl, it’s short and sweet and it reads - Dear Leonard, how is Lena? You must return soon… Adeline pregnant.’

  Leonard wanted to see the piece of paper himself.

  ‘Does this complicate things for you at all?’

  ‘I could use a drink, Barry.’

  ‘Never a truer word.’

  Leonard sat heavily into an armchair.

  ‘Don’t move a muscle, I’ve got just the thing.’

  Leonard watched Barry go to his drinks cabinet and open the doors. A pale, yellow bulb flickered on and a row of bottles appeared. He took down a bottle and two glasses.

  ‘This is a bloody good French brandy, it should do the trick.’

  He handed a glass to Leonard.

  Leonard swirled and took a sip. Barry stood by his collection of decoy ducks and did the same.

  ‘I’ve got to get back. This business with Adeline, I don’t know where I am with that.’

  ‘Of course, I’ll get you set up for the trip. Leave it to me.’

  Barry slapped Leonard on the shoulder and topped up his glass.

  ‘Now, now Leonard, keep it in perspective, lad. Don’t lose your focus, deal with the problem and move on.’

  ‘How do you deal with the stress of all this?’

  ‘I have my feet on the ground, I have my philosophy.’

  ‘Are you a religious man?’

  ‘Heaven forbid.’

  Barry smiled then crossed the room to his bookcase, where he placed his finger against the spine of a paperback. He tipped it off the shelf, then returned and looked for his page. He cleared his throat.

  ‘I’ll give you the reference because of course I don’t wish to claim this pearl of wisdom as my own. It’s a note from a chapter headed: “The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche” by C.G.Jung. Page one hundred and thirty. He’s talking about belief, life after death and all that gumbo. Here it is, he says:

  ‘”At this point, just when it might be expected, I do not want suddenly to pull a belief out of my pocket and invite my reader to do what nobody can do-that is, believe something. I must confess that I myself could never do it either.” 3

  ◊

  The only car still running was the one they’d shot to bits on the road the other night. It was a solid old Saab with a whistling turbo. Although it had been through the final scene in ‘Bonny and Clyde’ and was bullet-riddled, it had half a tank of fuel left and was still running well enough.

  There wasn’t much to load up, just some food and water f
or the journey. Leonard took some directions from Paul, and Danny handed him a shotgun and a box of cartridges. His advice was sombre enough, ‘Shoot first, ask the questions later.’ Paul pared that down even further to, ‘Just shoot, don’t bother about any bloody questions. And try not to get lost, just follow those routes and avoid the towns on the way. Keep your speed up and don’t deviate from your sole purpose. What I mean is don’t get sentimental about hitch-hikers or nothing.’

  Leonard had a good look over the car; he’d popped the bonnet and crawled underneath. The oil and coolant levels were low but it would probably make the journey.

  Barry rolled up with a more detailed map of the area and handed it over.

  ‘Tell me, Leonard, and do be honest. Why won’t you take your chances here and stay with us?’

  ‘That’s very kind of you, Barry, but…’

  ‘Cut the crap now, and tell me.’

  ‘It’s nothing to do with you.’

  ‘You don’t think the shelter is going to work, do you?’

  Leonard stored the map in the glove compartment.

  ‘The shelter might, but also might not hold up to impact stress. Who knows how the shock waves will travel? There are a lot of unknown factors.’

  Barry faced Leonard, he wasn’t afraid of eye contact.

  ‘Fifty-fifty?’

  ‘You mustn’t say anything to the others, Leonard.’

  ‘Of course not, but look, you do have a very good chance here, that’s better than most people.’

  ‘Well, what’s the alternative? If we didn’t have the shelter, what then? We’d be at our wits-end wouldn’t we, resigned to wandering the country like everybody else, on a hiding to nowhere, searching out some elephant’s graveyard to curl up and die!’

  ‘I’ve got a stomach ache!’

  Leonard looked into the back seat and Lena was folded up into a ball.

  ‘Don’t worry, Lena, it’ll ease off when we get moving.’

  She sat up and rested her arms on the front seats, her head lolling through the middle.

  Barry kissed her on the forehead and turned to have a last, quiet word with Leonard.

  ‘It’ll be chaos out there with the impact so close. Please be careful.’

  Leonard nodded and shook Barry’s hand. He started the car and waved to the small crowd gathered on the drive.