Philip Hemplow - Sarcophagus

“Exactly!” cried Swan, pointing a trembling finger at the doctor. “It’s perfect! We move that baby into position, save the world, beat our deadline! They can’t say we had a choice here, it was the snow! Everyone gets paid!”

“We can’t move the Carapace into position—it isn’t ready,” replied Osterberg testily.

“We might not have a choice,” pointed out Victoria.

“We physically can’t! The winches still do not have power! There is still superstructure to dismantle. The computers and environmental systems still are not working… and once we have moved it, it will never move again. We cannot simply go back inside and carry on working on it.”

“Bull shit !” screeched Swan. “Two days! You said we have two days. Get all that shit up and running in two days! Twenty-four hour shifts, round the clock, for everyone! This is an emergency! Do you understand what that means? An emergency? Very, very important! I’m going to ring the board and tell them! This is our chance to shine, people! Get the men together!”

He pushed past them and plunged out of the shelter, stabbing at buttons on his Blackberry. Victoria grimaced at Osterberg, her anger at him suddenly forgotten.

“Should we be worried about him?” she asked. “He doesn’t seem well. I don’t think he can take it.”

Osterberg shrugged. “Probably, but I have told the men just to ignore him. Right now, we have bigger problems. The Carapace will not be ready in two days. There are weeks of work to do. You know, another one of the men disappeared during the night: walked out of the camp, has not come back.”

“Okay, so what’s the alternative? How can we protect the reactor? Because I don’t want to be here when that roof falls in.”

He sighed heavily and looked her in the eye. “I don’t want you to be here even if the roof doesn’t fall in. No, don’t start to argue again. Just think; you need to take this seriously. Do you ever want to have a child? How old are you now? Nearly forty? I’m not going to say that this is your last chance, but it might be your best.”

Victoria bridled. “Damn it, Wolfgang, I thought we went over this. I. Don’t. Want. Malcolm’s. Bloody. Baby. Even if I did, my dosimeter is well in the green. Besides, it’s not even a foetus yet. If it does get damaged at this point, it will just spontaneously abort—which saves me a visit to the doctor.”

“Why are you talking about it as Malcolm’s baby? It is your baby, Victoria. Yours.”

“That’s right, it’s mine; not yours, so just leave it. How can I walk away now? If I see the reactor collapsing on the evening news… how would you like knowing that you just ran away and didn’t stay or try to help? I’m staying. If you try and throw me off, Octra will just throw you off instead.”

Osterberg shook his head sadly. “Well, if you cannot see sense, I must impose it. You stay until the blizzard arrives, no longer—wait, I have not finished. You leave when the snow comes. You stay away from the reactor and the Carapace site. Outside the camp, you carry a Geiger counter. And nothing stupid, like going into the Red Forest or to the old vehicle park. And you let me test your hCG again. I want to be sure the embryo is implanted correctly.”

“What am I supposed to do if I can’t even visit the site?” Victoria wanted to know. “A bit of light dusting? Iron your shirts, maybe? Come off it.”

“No discussion. Herr Swan would call it a ‘deal-breaker.’ The first thing you can do is to go over my figures—the weight of the snowfall and the strength of the roof. It won’t hold, but I would like a second opinion. We need to tell the Ukrainians as well.”

“We need to tell Octra. They can tell the government. Did you talk to the ICC yet?”

“I phoned them, unofficially.”

“It’ll be all round Kiev already then. Let me deal with that,” offered Victoria. “You try to find a way to stop that roof caving in.”

“We can’t deploy the Carapace, Victoria. It’s not going to be ready. If we move it in without the internal systems working, we will never be able to complete the deconstruction of the old Sarcophagus.” Osterberg looked genuinely upset. He had brought the project all the way from the drawing board to near-completion, had lived in the camp for months at a time without seeing his family. The idea of his creation being rushed into position unfinished clouded his expression, and perhaps his judgement, thought Victoria.

“I don’t think we’re going to have a choice, Wolfgang,” she told him. “Everyone remembers 1986. The Ukrainians will insist, and Octra will go along with it to avoid paying their penalty clauses. Besides, what else can we do? We can’t stop it snowing.”

“No,” sighed Osterberg. “No, I suppose not.”

“Anyway,” continued Victoria, trying to buck him up, “if the Pyramid can save the country from another dose of radiation, you’ll be a hero!”

Osterberg visibly winced. “I just want to build the Carapace we were meant to build, Victoria,” he sighed. “I’m not interested in being a pharoah.”

Victoria frowned and corrected him. “Hero. You said ‘pharoah.’”

Osterberg stared at her. “You said ‘pyramid.’”

She pored over the German’s equations and formulae for an hour, trying to find a flaw that might allow the reactor roof to survive the oncoming snow, knowing there wouldn’t be one. Her knowledge of engineering didn’t really extend to structures and mechanical stresses, but she could just about follow his reasoning when he talked her through it. Fifty centimetres of snow would easily be enough to warp the remaining lateral supports. The Sarcophagus, hastily constructed as a temporary measure three decades before, bolted to blast-damaged and deteriorating concrete, would finally start to collapse. The reactor’s interior would be exposed to the elements once more.

Fortunately, Octra’s impenetrable shield of secretaries and personal assistants meant that she did not have to break the bad news directly to anyone senior at the company. She left messages for half the members of the Board of Directors, the legal department, and her own boss, then followed them up with e-mails. Osterberg was finally persuaded to prioritise getting power to the winches that would haul the Carapace into place. If he could do that, and they could find a way to safely tear down the remaining bits of obstructing concrete and metalwork, it might at least be possible to move it into position when the snow began to fall.

Leaving the communications shelter in search of coffee, she saw Swan standing in the square, near the gaping hole Serhiy had left in the wall of the hotel. He was in his shirtsleeves, soaked by the light drizzle that had been falling all morning, laughing hysterically into his phone.

Reluctantly, Victoria changed course and splashed across the wet concrete towards him. She should at least make sure that he wasn’t going to die of hypothermia. He looked like a refugee, standing forlornly in the rain, his lurid shirt rippling in the stiff, December breeze. Or an escapee, she corrected herself as she heard his maniacal giggling. At least the rain might be rinsing some of the sweat out of his shirt. He must have brought clean clothes with him, surely?

As she approached, she began to hear the words he was hissing into his Blackberry, and her skin crawled.

“I serve the messenger! The messenger of the Board. The Board of Directors of the whole universe ! I understand. He talks to me because he trusts me. I’m on the inside of the outside, it’s the ultimate partnership. I understand everything! It’s the only true business: the real commodity. Everything else is just lies, and shit, and shit, and lies! I see that now! Do you see? Of course you do! Adam Swan knows the truth. Adam Swan is a man of vision! A man who understands the take-home message !”