Philip Hemplow: Sarcophagus

It subsided quickly, leaving her gasping for breath. The attack had taken her completely by surprise, which soon gave way to embarassment as she felt Osterberg’s presence behind her.

Nausea gone, she stood up again and turned to face him. As she did so, the room careened past her eyes in an uncontrollable blur. Osterberg managed to grab her wrist, but was too late to prevent her from crumpling unconscious to the floor.

She came round to find the German doctor’s thick fingers pressed to her throat, measuring her pulse. When she tried to sit up, he pushed gently against her shoulder and told her not to move.

“Take a minute. Do you have any pain?”

Victoria performed a quick review of her body parts. She felt sluggish, and the ground was cold against her back, but she wasn’t in any pain. The helmet Osterberg had made her wear had at least protected her head.

“What happened there?” she groaned. “How long was I out?”

“Only for a minute,” replied Osterberg. “You had vomiting, do you remember? Your blood pressure is quite low. No fever, though.”

“I just stood up too fast, Wolfgang. Can I get up now?”

The doctor shrugged and helped her to her feet, holding her arm until he was sure she wasn’t going to sink back to the ground. “No more walking around for you this morning,” he told her. “I will drive you back to camp; you rest there. I have to take some blood from you, check your sugar and electrolytes—no argument! After lunch, if you feel well, you can see our work here.”

Victoria felt sheepish, but was still slightly nauseous. If she was honest, the idea of lying on her bed in the warmth for a few hours was quite appealing.

Wolfgang walked her to the car, racking the driver’s seat back to accommodate his extra girth, and reclining the passenger seat so that Victoria could lay almost prone. He cast frequent, concerned glances at her as he drove, but said very little. Victoria stayed quiet, too, and spent the journey gazing at the screen of her mobile phone—and the photograph of the suggestive shadow, that she could have sworn had turned and started moving towards her.

Half an hour of lying on her bed was all she could stand before she began to feel guilty and useless. She was fine, she told herself. A moment of postural hypotension, that was all it had been. Sitting up, she opened her laptop and logged into the site’s wireless network to check e-mails. She could at least do that. Later, she would find out what progress had been made on upgrading the reactor’s dust-suppression system, or offer to test the sensors that had been installed for it—anything that would make her feel useful again.

The local network relied on a satellite connection. It was slow and unreliable, the e-mails trickling into her inbox at snail’s pace. The first one to download was marked as ‘spam’. She was about to delete it when the subject line caught her eye.

(Unknown Sender) SPECIAL OFFER! Invite the Disruptor: Crawling, Crawling Chaos. Honour the messenger for he is come!

Crawling chaos. The same cryptic nonsense that had infected the Carapace mainframe. Victoria couldn’t repress a shudder, or ignore the feeling that something unfathomable was happening in the Zone. Something too big and nebulous to see properly; something that was just glimpsed in the corner of the eye. It felt as though they were laboratory rats, unable to see beyond the confines of their maze while hidden hands manipulated them towards the centre.

On the other hand, it could be the result of a virus. Maybe the ‘crawling chaos’ drivel was the signature of some new species of computer malware. If so, she should show it Yosyp. It might help him to diagnose the problems with the Carapace system. Despite the risk, the impulse to click on it was surprisingly strong, and she was about to do so when a second e-mail came through. Somewhat to her surprise, it was from Malcolm. Instantly forgetting about the spam, she clicked on that one instead.

hows it going? do u know if ur back for xmas yet? ive booked a place with les and frank in majorca so we can spend xmas out there. if u want to come as well i need to know soon though cos there will be a topup fee. fuck turkey and sprouts, xmas on the beach!!! thsi girl les is seeing is coming as well so its not like u would be the only girl. place looks great in the picture its right by the beach and only 50 metres from the pub! right gotta go. talk to you soon.

She read it three times, her disbelief turning to disdain and then anger as she did so. She already knew the message for what it really was: an ultimatum. Even if she could, he knew there was not a chance in Hell that she would agree to spend Christmas with his idiot friends in bloody Magaluf. He would wait for her to reject the invitation, then use that as evidence that they were “growing apart” or that “it wasn’t meant to be,” or whatever other hackneyed platitude would enable him to break up with her without the sting of guilt. Some people could be read like books; Malcolm could be read like a very thin comic.

What angered her the most wasn’t the implication, the threat of breaking up—she was an adult, and hardly enamoured with the state of their relationship—it was the lack of respect. Treating her like some kind of problem to be ‘handled,’ as he dumbly fumbled for a way out. Well, screw him.

She typed for half an hour, listing his inadequacies and failings, and telling him where he could shove his turgid, Balearic Christmas. After two years of biting her tongue, it felt good to be jettisoning so much ballast. All the times she’d indulged his immaturity and priggish ways, tiptoed around his vanity and ego; all the times she’d feigned enthusiasm for his wretched dee-jaying; all those times were over.

Dragging the pointer to the ‘send’ button, she paused. If she clicked, that would be it. One push of her finger to terminate their withering relationship. He would be gone by the time she got back, and she’d return to an empty flat. An empty flat and an almost-empty life.

Oddly, she couldn’t imagine what Malcolm’s immediate reaction to the e-mail would be. Would he be astonished? Furious? Dismissive? Self-pitying? All four, probably. Maybe, though, it was a bit too pathetic to just lance the boil with an e-mail. It was the kind of thing he’d do, sure—but was she just trying to pre-empt him? Perhaps she should have it out with him, face-to-face. Perhaps that was the dignified thing to do.

Typing it had been cathartic. She skimmed through it again, wincing at some of her more viperish words. It might still come in useful, she decided. No need to send it there and then. She saved it to the Drafts folder instead.

After lunch Victoria was determined to get involved in some hands-on work, but Osterberg persuaded her to stay in the dining shelter and revise the schedule for dismantling at-risk portions of the reactor roof. A lot of it was guesswork on her part, estimating the performance of the cranes mounted up there and the effectiveness of the radiation shielding in their cabs. In the end she produced two: one conservative and one optimistic, based on the amount of exposure the available workers could sustain.

She was still working when darkness fell across the site and the crews began to troop in for their evening meal. Before she could get some food herself, Swan appeared and hauled her off to a teleconference with London, New York and Paris. He was still wearing the same clothes, and still didn’t appear to have slept. His hair was sticking up and his speech was pressured to the point of near-incoherence—even more so than usual. He blamed jetlag, but Victoria began to worry that the manic look in his eyes was due to more than that.