The Tower: Part Four. Simon Toyne

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СКАЧАТЬ for a two-day trip. We had no idea what he had planned but he was the boss so we did as we were told.

      ‘He picked us up in his old jeep and we headed east. We thought maybe he was taking us to one of the other launch areas but we drove right past them and kept on going. He said it was good to go back to basics every once in a while, remind yourself what it was all about, and that was what we were going to do: no hi-tech, no computers, just a simple reflector telescope, a few beers and a clear sky.

      ‘We wound up late in the afternoon heading up into the Smoky Mountains just north of Cherokee, North Carolina. He had this log cabin there, way up on a ridge. It looked like it was straight out of a Western: three rooms, potbelly stove, fresh water you had to pump out of a well. It even had a porch with a rocking chair on it. I guess it was just far enough away from anywhere so that the sweep of the modern world kind of passed it by. And because it was miles from anywhere it got so dark that the whole sky lit up at night. You could see more stars there with your naked eye than you could with a good telescope in a light-drenched town or a city. He had a telescope set up near the cabin in a hunter’s hide built on a rocky ledge and we spent two days up there, tracking the planets, looking at the stars, talking about Galileo and Copernicus and Kepler, where it all came from and where we thought it was all going. He was fired up about James Webb even then. Talked about how it was going to see right to the edge of the universe, right back to the beginning of time.’

      They reached the bottom of the stairs and the desk sergeant looked up wearily.

      ‘We need a car,’ Franklin said.

      ‘Sure, no problem,’ the walrus replied, wearily picking up his phone and punching a button. ‘I trust your stay with us has been a pleasant one. Please let me know if you used anything from the mini-bar. I’ll let you know when your cab is here.’

      ‘I don’t mean a cab. We need to borrow a car. One that’s going to be able to cope with the weather out there.’

      Shepherd frowned. ‘Why do we need a car? I mean, much as I hate to say it, but wouldn’t flying be quicker?’

      ‘I doubt anything will be taking off in this,’ Franklin said, pointing outside at the thickening snow. ‘We might get lucky and make it to Charlotte, always assuming they haven’t got worse weather there. But then it’s still about a three-to-four-hour drive to Cherokee on mostly mountain roads. It’s maybe five hours from here but mostly on dead-straight, flat plain roads. Trust me, I know this area pretty well. We’ll be better off driving.’

      Franklin steered Shepherd away from the main desk and over to the row of seats by the wall. ‘Tell me why you think Douglas is there.’

      ‘There was something special about the place. The Professor had history there, real history, why else would he drive all that way when there are plenty of mountains much closer to Huntsville? It had all these photographs of people in frames tacked to the walls, some going way back, including one of the Professor as a kid standing on the porch and squinting into the sunlight as he held a model plane over his head. He must have been about five or six but you could still see the man he would become.’

      Franklin looked over at the desk sergeant who was now resolutely ignoring the constantly ringing phone. ‘How we doing with that ride?’ he shouted over.

      The sergeant looked at them over the top of his reading glasses. ‘We’re just having a Caddy waxed and polished for you now.’

      Franklin turned back to Shepherd. ‘Funny guy. He should be on Comedy Central.’

      Shepherd glanced outside at the swirling white. ‘What about the roads – the traffic’s all snarled up already, we saw it coming in.’

      ‘Exactly. We saw it coming in to town. The roads heading out will be pretty clear. So long as we get a decent car, driving’s going to be our best option. Trust me.’

      Shepherd nodded, but for the first time he wasn’t sure whether he did.

       56

       Liv sat in the kitchen eating dried fruit and salt crackers she’d found in one of the food lockers. Kyle pulled a stool from beneath a stainless-steel counter top and sat down wearily opposite. ‘You should drink some of this,’ he said, pulling a bottle of water from a thermal box on the floor. ‘It might taste a bit funny because it’s got rehydration salts in it.’ He poured half of the bottle into a glass and slid it over to her. ‘I made up a batch for your friends. Don’t worry, it’s clean. In fact all the water’s clean. I’ve been running tests every hour and the ground water’s flowing pure again. The pressure must have blown away the contaminants, though I’ll still keep checking it. Go ahead – drink.’

       Liv drank, forcing herself not to gulp it all down in one, savouring the saltiness on her tongue. ‘So tell me how you ended up here,’ she said, as Kyle poured the rest of the water into a second glass.

       ‘We were all working way down in the south in Dhi Qar Province as part of a project run by an international aid organization.’

       ‘Ortus,’ Liv said.

       ‘That’s right. How did you –’

       ‘– I recognized the logo on the side of your jeep. I know one of the people who runs it, Gabriel Mann.’

       Kyle smiled in a way that suggested he both knew and liked him. ‘You know Gabriel?’

       She nodded.

       ‘Ah, he’s a good bloke. When we first set up the project here he came and helped us out a lot. I heard he was in some kind of trouble with the law.’

       ‘He was. He is.’

       ‘Well I hope he’s OK.’

       ‘So do I … You said you were working down south.’

       ‘Yeah, way down in the southeast the other side of Baghdad in the Mesopotamian marshlands, or what’s left of them. The people there were pretty badly persecuted by Saddam and his mob after they rebelled against him in ’91. As part of his system of punishment he built huge canals to redirect the Tigris and Euphrates away from the marshes to drive the tribes out. He was pretty successful too. There’s only about ten per cent of them left. Then the war came. As soon as Saddam started losing, the locals blew holes in the dams and dykes and let the water flow back in again. We were sent to help monitor the water quality and manage the restocking of the wetlands with reed beds. There were sixteen of us.’

       ‘What happened to the others?’

       ‘Gone.’ He took a drink then carefully placed the glass down on the counter. ‘We’d been working together for six months. It was good work. The people were returning, the reeds were growing, we were even seeing some of the wildlife coming back. The marshes used to be a major staging post for millions of migratory birds until Saddam buggered it all up. Every day more life returned – both man and bird. Then all of a sudden the plug got pulled on us. It had something to do with what happened to Gabriel. Our headquarters are in Ruin and he was arrested on suspicion of being a terrorist or something, trying to blow up the Citadel СКАЧАТЬ