Whiteout!

Chapter 11

We were not talking only about Kelleher any more.

I said, 'Are you guessing?'

He took a swig of coffee, swallowed, shook his head. Then he sighed and his shoulders sank.

'Yes, sir, I'm guessing. But - '

I waited, but he didn't go on.'But what?'

'It's hard to describe. The men are low, sir. Low mentally, low physically. They're under pressure. Too many things have happened already. Now we have another.' He nodded towards the ward and Kelleher.

'Already one guy cracked.'

'He's been working day and night,' I said, 'under far greater strain than - '

'Sure he has, sir. And why? Because every goddam thing has broken down. The men know that. But why has everything gone crazy? They don't know that\ And I don't know, and you don't know, and Major Smales, he don't know.'

I said, 'What are they saying?'

He hesitated. 'Jinx, maybe.'

'People always talk about jinxes when things go wrong,' I said. 'While we've been developing that hovercraft, there have been jinxes all along the line. When you get the right answer the jinx goes away.'

As I listened to my own voice pouring out soothing syrup, I was vaguely ashamed of myself. He was articulating some of my own doubts, and I was treating him the way Barney Smales had treated me. I added lamely, conciliatorily, 'Most of the time, anyway.'

'And when they don't go away, sir?'

Bad trouble, I thought, but didn't say it. Instead I asked, 'What else are they saying, jinxes aside?'

The medic looked at me, blinking.

I said, 'Go on. What do they say?'

He hesitated. 'Well, sir. One of the guys hadone ofthose James Bond books.'

I forced a grin. 'Well, he's not here.'

'No, sir. Maybe I kinda wish he was.' He too forced a thin smile. 'Anyway, at the front there was this quote from Al Capone. What he said was , "Once is happenstance, second time coincidence. Third time it's enemy action." '

I nodded. It was precisely what any group of men would be saying in these circumstances; I'd thought the same thoughts myself. But there were holes in the theory you could drive a tractor through. Kelleher was one such hole. I said, 'But who's the enemy? And why the action?'

He shrugged. 'Who knows?'

'All right,' I said. I was thinking: the medic was the first to share my own earlier suspicions, or, at least, the first to put them into words. And he knew Camp Hundred and its occupants a great deal better than I did. 'Let's take these things one at once. Start with the enemy. Who could it be?'

Again the thin smile. 'It could be any man here.'

'Me, included?'

'Well, yes, sir!'

'Or you?'

'Sure.'

I said, "The helicopter crash and the man who got lost on the surface were long before I got here. Does that let me out ? And you were here.'

He said, 'Aw hell, it's not me.'

'Then who? Have the men been speculating?'

'Sure.'

'And?'

'There's three hundred men plus. Could be any one of them.'

'No favourites?'

'No, sir.'

'Has it been narrowed down? Ten men, five, two?'

'No, sir. Look - ' he exhaled noisily, in exasperation. 'A posting up here to Camp Hundred is .., well, it's not always popular. Some guys like it, or maybe they just like the idea, right? But when you're here, a month or so and all you want is out.'

'So it's somebody who wants out ? And to get out, he's ready to sabotage the whole installation?'

He nodded. 'Something like that. Who knows what happens in people's heads?'

'Aren't you forgetting,' I said, 'that this nut of yours, whoever he is, is placing himself in exactly the same danger he's forcing on everybody else? If the whole place becomes inoperable and they have to get everybody out, he could be the last man to leave, not the first. And if it were to reach the point where people began to die, his chance of dying is the same as everybody else's.'

'Sure I thought of it. But did he? Maybe we're talking about a psychotic. Maybe he just hates the place and everyone in it and he can't think beyond hitting at it.'

I said, 'I like that theory a lot less even than the bad luck theory. And if you think about the things that have happened, one by one, there are a lot that nobody could have manufactured.'

'Like?'

'Like Mr Kelleher. Like the polar bear that slashed the fuel tank. Like the helicopter crash.'

He gave that thin smile again. 'Okay, sir, I got me a persecution complex. But there's things some guy could have done. Sabotaging engines, killing Doc Kirton - and, sir, that sure hasn't been explained. Not to me, not so I'd believe it.'

'It hasn't been explained to anybody's satisfaction,' I said. 'But do you know something special ?'

'Yes, sir] Since you ask me, I sure do.'

'Go on.'

'Put it this way. Captain Kirton's, body was by the main tunnel entrance, right ?'

I nodded.

'Okay. Well, the Doc never went near the tunnel entrances. He had a kind of a block about it. He commuted between the hospital, the mess hall and the officers' club, that's what he said. He'd never been on top and he wasn't going till the day he went back Stateside.'

I said, 'It's a very thin story.'

'He said it more than once.'

'Even so, I can puncture that argument myself. The day the bear got in, he was with me, right beside the entrance. He went into the fuel storage tunnel to see what the bear had done.'

The medic shrugged helplessly and gave a little grimace. 'It's just a feeling, sir. But to my certain knowledge .. . Well, he told me one time he hadn't been past the officers' club trench one side, and the reactor trench the other, in all the time he was here. He told me, sir. So one night - night, remember that, because the Doc spent all his nights in the club, you ask anyone - one night he goes along there and he dies. And snow buries his body and then the 'dozer turns him into ground beef. Story is he has a thrombosis, or something, right? He walks down there, where he never goes, and he has this thrombosis, and he falls down dead right where the snowblow'll cover him and the 'dozer'll mash him up.'

The medic's voice had risen as he spoke; he was arguing his case intensely, and, to me at least, fairly convincingly.

But I couldn't take his side; I couldn't say, that's right, I see it all now - and then spend another hour rooting with him through Camp Hundred's assorted troubles, because to do so would be to apply fuel to hot places. The medic felt strongly, and sooner or later, back with his mates, he'd talk it all over, and anything I'd said would be tossed into the eddies of speculation. Also it seemed to me that at the moment, with Kirton dead, the medic was pretty important to everybody at Hundred and the best thing I could do was to make some attempt to restore his morale. So I egged him on to talk about himself, his home town, his army career, his girl-friends and so on. It wasn't a particularly easy conversation, and it ended when Allen came out of the ward and said it was my turn to watch over the patient. I took my book with me into the ward and sat beside Kelleher's steel cot. His mouth hung agape and he breathed noisily and wetly under the imposed relaxation of the anaesthetic. But at least he seemed peaceful. Looking at him now, it was hard to imagine Kelleher as he'd been a few short hours earlier, mouth distorted in that rictus grin, grunting and snarling like an animal. My cheek still ached painfully from his bite and I remembered the astounding strength in the man as he flailed on the cot in the reactor hut's office. The hold of mind upon body, I reflected, was a thing one took entirely for granted ; a thing most of us maintain throughout our lives. But Kelleher that morning had demonstrated how tenuous the grip is, and how a mental trip-switch, once released, triggers off things we cannot conceive of. I'm no psychologist. I'm not now and wasn't then, and even in the light of later events, I still find it hard to understand the suicidal compulsion that drove Kelleher when he actually tried to climb into the reactor kettle.

My first spell on watch in there was uneventful. So was Allen's second. But I'd only been sitting there for a few minutes of my own second spell, reading quietly, when Kelleher muttered something. I looked at him, all at once tense and alert. His eyes were closed and he was frowning a little, but the big body lay still under its restraining heavy canvas. I reached for the telephone, unsure whether he was muttering in his sleep or awakening, but anxious for support if the latter were the case. He spoke again, before I'd lifted the receiver, and this time the word was clear. 'Jesus,' he said. Something - perhaps a feeling that a crowd would upset him -kept my hand off the phone. I said gently, 'How do you feel ?'

He repeated the word, still far away, surfacing very slowly. 'Feel?’ he said. 'Feel?'

I waited. Perhaps a minute went by. Then, 'Oh, boy, those . ..'

He was quite calm, as yet barely conscious. I lit a cigarette, deliberately injecting an everyday sound into the stillness.The cigarette was finished before he spoke again, but by now there were small movements of his legs and arms. Quite suddenly, he opened his eyes wide, blinked at the light and turned his head towards me. He said, 'I can't move.'

'Don't worry. You're all right.'

He blinked several times more, fighting his way up to consciousness, and said at the end, 'I had an accident?'

'In a way.' I was watching him carefully for any signs of incipient violence.

'Radiation?' he said sharply. 'Did I get a blast of radiation?'

I shook my head. 'No.' I was thinking that at least his mind was clear. He was aware he'd been unconscious, aware of one possible reason for it. I smiled and said, 'It was a kind of collapse. You've been working too hard.'

He looked suddenly worried. 'Heart? I had a coronary?'

'No.'

He relaxed. 'Thank God. I was warned once to get some of this weight off... Why can't I move? He frowned again, fear in his face, and I cursed myself for allowing the delay. I reached for the phone, told Allen he was awake, and stood back while the medic came in and gave him a sedative injection. Kelleher watched, too, as the canvas flap of the straitjacket was peeled back and the hypodermic went into his arm. He said, in brief horror, 'Christ, I'm in a .., in a .., in ...' and he was asleep again before the word could come out.

Allen looked at me. 'He seems lucid.'

'Yes,' I said, 'he was lucid all right.'

'Back to normal ?'

I said, 'What's normal?' and phoned the command hut to let Barney know. He was properly relieved and said he'd be along later to inspect the patient, but he sounded worried and distracted. After that, the vigil continued its silent way. I finished my two hours and Allen took over, then I was back at Kelleher's bedside, and so it went on except that Allen was relieved temporarily by Sergeant Vernon while he went off to handle some minor matter of administration. It was around eleven that night when Barney Smales finally came along in response to a message I'd phoned through to the effect that Kelleher was stirring again. He looked drawn and weary as he stood looking down at the cot.

Kelleher was moving drowsily, in so far as the canvas jacket and leg restraints would let him move at all.

'How was he before V Barney asked me.

'He wasn't awake long, and he was still half-way under,' I said, 'But within limits he was rational enough.'

Barney took off his parka and cap and sank sighing on to a chair. He said, 'Not enough, unfortunately. It's this way, and it's a bastard. The reactor we've got was a new design for operations up here. It's still experimental. It's not leased. We bought it. So it's the army's but under certain conditions. One of those conditions is that any major work on the reactor has to be done under the supervision of the civilian manufacturers. That means that when we shut down and refuel, and when we go critical, one of their guys is in complete control. Under the terms of the contract, we can't do it ourselves.'

'But surely,' I said, 'under circumstances like these - '

He cut me off. 'The contract says under no circumstances. It's absolutely clear and absolutely specific that in the event of sickness or incapacity of the supervising engineer, work will be discontinued until he can be given a clean bill of health by a doctor. Or until he can be replaced.'

'So even if Kelleher's okay ...'

'Even if I think he's okay, even if every man at Camp Hundred thinks he's all jim-dandy, that's no damn good. He's got to be seen by a doctor and certified okay. Or we got to get somebody else flown in here.'

'And the weather?'

'Stinks,' Barney said flatly. 'We got a phase three up there and a radio blackout. We're still on that one diesel generator you hauled up here and, boy, we're on the knife edge.' He rubbed his eyes wearily, then looked moodily at Kelleher. 'Thought you said he was coming to.'

'He was. He was stirring, anyway.' I rose and poured some coffee and handed the cup to Barney. 'That contract,' I said, 'doesn't sound very sensible to me. Not unless the Army's engineers are incompetent.'

'They're okay. Carson and his assistant both have masters' degrees in nuclear engineering. But Kelleher actually led the design team on this baby. That's the real point. Remember it's all still experimental.'

I said, 'What if you overrode the contract terms. As commander on the spot? Difficult decision, I know, but taken in the interests of the whole establishment ?'

Barney mustered a rueful grin. 'The only authority I have over the reactor operation is to order a shutdown. And then only on qualified advice. If I ordered those guys to heat her up to the critical phase, first of all they wouldn't do it, because they know the rules, too. After that, well, maybe it's not the most important thing in the world, but they'd log the order and log their refusal, and when their log goes back, guess who gets the fast chop?'

Kelleher, after the first twitches, had lapsed again into deep sleep and Barney decided against waiting. He rose, finished his coffee, and left.

About midnight, Carson came along and peered at the still-sleeping patient. He and one of his technicians were to take over the watch for a few hours while Allen and I got some sleep. Alone in my hut, I put on pyjamas and climbed into bed. I myself felt almost anaesthetized; bone weary and fuzzy-headed. But, as so often happens when sleep seems infinitely desirable, it becomes unattainable, and I lay in the dark, full of resentment, with my mind slowly gaining a clarity and energy I didn't damned well want. My need was for sleep, not for a quick mental canter round Camp Hundred and its assorted problems and mysteries. But whichever lobe of the brain controls inquisitiveness was now firmly in the saddle and digging in the spurs, and despite myself, I began to brood. I felt pretty sorry for myself, too; full of those wee-small-hours blues that can sometimes come close to despair. Lying there in the dark, I felt them crowding in, and to drive them back a bit, I put on the light and lit a cigarette, and that brought back thoughts of another cigarette I'd smoked in bed, twenty-four hours or so earlier; the one that had damn near been my last.

I got out of bed and looked at the badly-charred chair on which the ashtray had rested the previous night. It was a perfectly ordinary wooden chair, with the seat upholstered in foam-rubber or plastic foam and covered in some kind of charred plastic sheet, PVC or something. The hole in the sheeting was cigarette-shaped, a couple of inches long, and the cylinder of tobacco ash still lay along it. We've all seen dozens of similar burns, caused by careless handling of cigarette ends, and there was nothing unusual about this one. But still, it puzzled me. When you're a smoker, you tend to have a way of putting out a cigarette, and I always fold the butt over and press down hard, so that the lighted end is crushed out by the tip. That way there are no sparks. Ashtrays I've used tend to contain flattened, V-shaped butts. So why was this one straight? Because I hadn't put it out : that was the obvious answer. I must have left it burning in the ashtray and the damn thing had rolled out of it and on to the upholstery. Well, maybe. But I don't put cigarettes down and let them burn away. Never? Well .., no, I thought defensively, I don't do that. It's a thing I'm careful not to do. And in any case, there was a memory, almost distinct in my mind, of stubbing that cigarette out before I went to sleep.

The one I was smoking now had burned low, and I was putting it out automatically, when I caught myself in the act and examined what I'd done. It was in the middle of the ashtray, as always; bent over, as always. Hmm ...

I bent and blew away the ash so I could look more closely at the chair seat. Inside, beneath the two-inch hole, the plastic foam upholstery was badly charred. Pushing my finger through the hole I tried to guess at the size of the burned area. It wasn't big. The burn had cut through the PVC cover and smouldered steadily through quite a few cubic inches of the foam. As I pulled my fingers out again, they were covered in a dark, dusty smear. I tried to brush it off, and couldn't, because the ash was moist. Moist?

I rubbed my fingers together, the moisture and fine ash turning into a thin black paste on thumb and forefinger. How in hell had it become moist? Half-digested bits of long-ago chemistry lessons came back as I looked for the answer. Did carbon absorb moisture from the atmosphere? I thought so, but couldn't quite remember. Probably it did. On the other hand, this hut was heated. What effect would that have? The truth was that I simply didn't know, ill-educated lout that I am. But one thing I did know: water puts out fires!

Okay, I thought. Look at it that way. When I'd stumbled out of the hut, there had been smoke and fumes. The thing was smouldering hard enough then. But when I'd returned later with the duty officer, Westlake, it had been out. And now it was moist.

Also.., well, also the tunnel door had been locked, and wasn't when Westlake and I returned. Even allowing for my state of near-panic at the time, I was reasonably certain of that. So...?

I stepped away from the chair and deliberately tried to empty my mind of the conclusion that was swarming all over it; tried to forget the conversation with the medic; tried to be logical and reasonable as I thought it through. I tried it all ways, looking for every possible reason for the sequence of events. But at the end, after half an hour spent resisting it, I found myself accepting the conclusion that fitted. To accept any other, I'd have had to accept, too, the fact that the habits of a lifetime had been temporarily suspended: that I'd mistaken a closed door for a locked one; that I hadn't been able to think straight. I dressed quickly and left the hut. The lights in Main Street were very dim, keeping the load on the generator low, and the whole length was deserted. I turned into the command trench and went into the hut. Westlake was sitting at Master Sergeant Allen's desk. He looked up from Red Star Over China, saw who it was, and said, 'Start another fire ?'

I smiled. 'No.'

'So what can I do for you ?'

'Is there,' I asked him, 'a fire manual? I'd like to do some reading.'

He grinned. 'More joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth -’

'The manual,' I said.

'Sure.' He passed it over from a rack of heavy army-issue books on the wall behind his chair.

'Thanks.' I took the plastic-bound volume. 'Mind if I borrow it?'

'Not if it comes back.'

I returned to my hut, lay on the bed and began to try to find my way through about three pounds of assorted fire regulations. Finally I found what I wanted: a complete paper on the effect of fire on plastics. It laid heavy emphasis, as they always do, on the dangers of cigarettes, the need for ashtrays everywhere. Then it went on to describe the particular hazards. PVC, I learned, produced a wide variety of highly toxic gases during combustion, among them phosgene and benzene. But it wasn't PVC that really concerned me. The seat cover was PVC, but the foam inside wasn't. Then I found the bit about polyurethane foam, and read that. Having done so, I read it again. And I wonder, dear reader, as the Victorian novelists used to say, whether you quite realize what it is you're sitting on when you relax in your soft, squashy armchair?

Because polyurethane foam, when it burns, produces, if I may quote the manual 'extremely large volumes from small quantities' of a) carbon monoxide, and b) hydrogen cyanide.' Just to underline the point, carbon monoxide is lethal. All those people who commit suicide by running a hose pipe from the exhaust into the car are making use of carbon monoxide's handy properties. But compared with hydrocyanic gas, carbon monoxide is gentle. Hydrogen cyanide is the stuff they used in American gas chambers to execute murderers - literally the quickest of all gaseous killers. And polyurethane foam had been smouldering quietly about a foot from my nose!

'Careless fellow,' they'd have said at the inquest, if there had been an inquest. 'He left a cigarette burning.'

What I was suddenly burning to know was the name of said careless fellow. Because I was sure now that somebody had tried to kill me!