Philip Hemplow: Sarcophagus

There was one advantage to his frenzied state, which was that she barely had to speak during the call. Swan talked enough for both of them, his sentences getting lost in dead-end alleys of management argot, buzzwords running into each other with the urgency of his need to be understood. Victoria stayed quiet and watched the names drop off Swan’s laptop screen as people on the call hung up without saying goodbye, until eventually there was only some hapless project accountant listening. At that point she left the communications prefab and went in search of nourishment.

Osterberg came looking for her while she was prodding moodily at a big pot of kapusta , trying to find any chunks of sausage that had eluded the work crews. He waited until she had finished serving herself and taken a seat before starting to talk, with forced joviality.

“So, Victoria, would you first like the good news or the bad news?”

Victoria gave him a baleful look. She wasn’t in the mood for games. “To be honest, Wolfgang, I don’t care. Just give me the important news.”

“The important news. Right.” Osterberg glanced over his shoulder to make sure they were alone, and leaned across the table towards her. “You remember I took a blood sample from you this morning?”

“I remember.”

“I had one of the men drive it over to Vektor—we have an arrangement with the Occupational Health office at the waste storage facility—and gave him a list of tests I wished them to run.”

“What are you telling me? That my blood’s screwy?”

Osterberg raised his hands defensively. “No, not at all. Everything within the reference ranges—your CBC was fine. Nothing to worry about.”

“Right. Good, then.”

“I asked them to run an hCG test as well. I just had a hunch. And, well, the levels are elevated. Over 40,000.”

“hCG? That’s…”

“Human chorionic gonadotrophin. If you make me guess, I would say you are about four weeks. Pregnant.”

Victoria stared at him. “You’re kidding! You ran a pregnancy test on me without telling me? Wolfgang!”

The German shook his head vigorously. “I just wanted to be sure. I am responsible for safety here, but I did not want to worry you if it was unnecessary. Victoria, you have to go home. You can’t stay in the Zone, not while you are pregnant. Think of the risks!”

Victoria turned back to her meal. “What was the good news?” she asked, taking a mouthful of cabbage.

“I’m sorry?”

“What was the good news? You said you had good news.”

Osterberg looked embarrassed. “I’m sorry,” he repeated, lamely. “I rather hoped that was the good news.”

She had never had a row with Osterberg before, but when he started to insist that he would recall the Hip and have her flown out of there that night she lost her temper. It was none of his damned business if she was pregnant, and he might as well forget about the radiation risks because she would be having an abortion anyway. She didn’t want Malcolm’s bloody baby. The man was a walking midlife crisis whose qualifications for fatherhood ended at the level of basic biology, and were pretty minimal even then. If she was going to have a baby it would be on her own terms and in her own time. Anyone who disagreed could get back to the nineteenth century.

After a couple of minutes, Osterberg threw up his hands in resignation and agreed not to send for the helicopter. Victoria turned on her heel and left the dining shelter, pushing past a patrol of skulking VV troops who had been attracted by the noise of their confrontation. Finding her way back to her tent and sealing herself inside it, she flung herself onto the cot and tried to calm down.

She knew exactly when it had happened. Their anniversary, the month before. She had instigated it—because sex on an anniversary was something that couples did, right? She snorted at her own idiocy. Could she really be that much less naïve only four weeks later? At least she wasn’t telling herself that a baby was all they needed to make their relationship work. At least not that.

She ran her hands over her belly, imagining the tiny aggregation of cells nestled against her uterus, blindly dividing, condensing into life. A boy or a girl? Or just a problem, she reminded herself, turning out the light and rolling onto her side to get some sleep.

What she really needed was someone to talk to about it. Ordinarily Wolfang Osterberg would be her ideal confidant, but she was determined to stay angry at him. She tried talking to the darkness of the tent instead, offering her anxieties to whatever spirits moved about the Zone at night—but soon stopped for fear that they might answer.

The next morning she woke up determined to go in immediate search of Osterberg, so that she could negotiate a truce and her right to stay until the project was completed. A surge of nausea delayed her, and forced her to spend fifteen minutes retching into one of the chemical toilets. Eventually, feeling little better but with an empty stomach, she emerged and hunted him to the communications shelter, where he was trying to explain the weather to Adam Swan.

Swan looked ill. His collar was dark with grime, and the face above it was a mask of exhaustion, its texture granulated by blocked pores and dead cells. When Victoria entered, he was shouting hypomanically about snow while Osterberg tried to reason with him.

“Snow isn’t an excuse for poor project management, buddy! If a bit of snow is all it takes to de-incentivise your team, it’s your fault for not managing the expectation gradient! It’s just a challenge! Give the guys hats, or gloves—whatever they need to do the job. ‘Cos I’ll have ‘em out there nailing this thing down come Hell or high water!”

“Mr Swan, please,” implored Osterberg. “You are not listening to me. The problem is not with the men. That is not what I am saying.”

“You’re damn right the problem isn’t with the men!” agreed Swan, spittle flying. “It’s with you! I know you want this project to fail. I know you want to undermine me—set me up so it looks like it’s my fault when things go wrong. It’s all very obvious to me. It won’t work though! Because my will is stronger than yours! I have infinite will, in fact! Infinite will !”

“Will you please shut up and let me speak!” demanded Osterburg, drawing himself up to his full, imposing height. Swan shrank back, watching him warily with bloodshot eyes.

“You are panicking about the wrong things, Mr Swan,” continued the German. “The men are not the issue. The snow is the issue. Starting 48 hours from now, up to one metre of snow is going to fall. More, where it drifts against the structure. It is an old roof, on a damaged building. It will not take the weight. Do you understand? It will collapse.”

“Are you serious?” interrupted Victoria, aghast. “I mean, are you sure?”

Osterberg turned to her, his old, grey eyes serious and sad. “There is not enough support. It was already in bad shape and there was more damage caused when we removed the chimney stack. Thirty tons of wet snow will be too much. The storm already collapsed the roof of a supermarket in Smolensk, and now it is coming this way.”

He watched as the consequences occurred to her in rapid succession. A plume of fallout. A caesium snowstorm whirling south across the landscape, towards Kiev. The interior of the Sarcophagus filling with airborne, radioactive dust. The re-contamination of the Zone of Alienation. International panic, economic chaos.

“We knew this was a possibility,” continued Osterberg, examining his nails. “After all, it is why we built the Carapace in the first place.”