saying.’
Mal’s funeral was scheduled for three in the afternoon. The crew gathered in the Rampart canteen. They kept it short, anxious to dispatch the man’s body and quit the ice before Hyperion passengers surrounded them and attacked.
They trained floodlights on the ice between the refinery’s cyclopean legs. The crew, those who knew and liked the man, descended from the rig. They stood over the shrouded body while Jane intoned the old words:
‘Our days are like the grass; we flourish like a flower of the field; when the wind goes over it, it is gone and its place will know it no more. But the merciful goodness of the Lord endures forever.. .’
Most of the guys didn’t believe in God or heaven, but they liked the rhythm of elegiac prayers, the tone of resignation and acceptance.
They smashed a hole in the ice, then slid his body into the sea. The men watched Mal dragged away by the current. Every one of them thought the same thing. Is this how it will end? One by one pushed into the ocean and carried away by the tide. What would the last man do? That final, lone member of Rampart’s crew about to succumb to starvation or infection? They would break a hole in the ice then say a prayer at the water’s edge. Conduct their own funeral oration. Maybe sing a hymn. Then they would cross themselves, close their eyes and drop into the ocean.
The Voice
Nikki curled foetal and covered her head. Waves slammed into the boat. She had sealed herself below deck. She rode out a series of impacts like one car crash after another. She wrapped herself in a sleeping bag for extra protection. She lay in the dark. Every couple of minutes she felt the boat rise like it was about to take off, then dive into a deep trough. She sang to calm herself down, but couldn’t hear her own voice above the white-noise roar of the maelstrom.
She was cramped. She could barely move. She had lowered the sail and rigging, folded the silver fabric, coiled the rope, and stowed them below deck.
The mast was still raised. A design fault. It was welded in place. It could not be lowered flat. A big steel spike raised skyward during a fierce lightning storm.
Nikki doubted she would feel a lightning bolt when it struck. Steel mast, aluminium hull. She would be microwaved in an instant. A cooked sailor, lying in her bunk, crisped and smoking, like a hunk of roast pork.
She lay waiting to see if the boat would shake itself to pieces. She waited to see if the bolts and welds would hold. She waited to see if she would live or die.
She wondered how long the storm would last. She checked the luminescent dial of her watch. Seven hours of wind and rain.
It felt like the waves were easing off. She switched on her flashlight. The cardboard storage boxes had split open. The interior of the cabin was a jumble of tins and cartons. Her sleeping bag was dusted with cornflakes.
She wriggled to the roof hatch. She reached for the deadbolt. She hesitated. This could be a big mistake. If the typhoon ripped the hatch from her hand the boat would quickly become inundated and sink. Yet the waves seemed to be diminishing. The boat was no longer hurled from side to side. Maybe the storm had passed.
Nikki released the deadbolt and lifted the hatch a fraction. Blast of frozen wind and salt spray.
Flash of lightning.
She let her eyes adjust. A seething ocean. Surging, frothing waves.
Second sheet of lightning.
Something up ahead. Something big, oncoming, eclipsing the stars.
‘Holy fuck.’
A massive wave, high as an office block.
She slammed the hatch and hammered the deadbolts home. She threw herself on to the bunk and curled tight.
Building roar. The boat was rising, rising like an express elevator.
Brief moment of balance at the summit of the wave, like a rollercoaster about to plunge.
The boat pitched nose-first. Smash impact. Fast tumble. The boat flipped end over end. Nikki stayed foetal and protected her head as she was pelted with cans and cartons.
Deceleration. Slow spin, then calm and quiet.
She pushed boxes and bags aside and sat up. A trickling sensation down her neck. She took a pen torch from her pocket and switched it on. Blood on her neck. A cut beneath her right ear. Nothing serious.
She stretched. Her back was bruised. She sat in silence for a while, glad to be alive. She pressed a sock to her ear to sop blood.
Wind noise slowly began to ease.
A trickling sound. Nikki sat forward. Steady, constant drip- drip.
She kicked bags and boxes out of the way. A split in the hull. A cracked weld. A steady stream of seawater.
She stuffed a jacket against the crack and tried to stem the flow. Water sprayed her face.
She took Nail’s dive knife from her pocket and tried to wedge fabric into the fissure with the tip of the blade. No good.
Water gathered at the bottom of the boat, covering her shoes. She threw open the roof hatch and bailed with a tin cup.
She tried to keep calm. If she allowed herself to panic, if she gave in to screaming terror, she would die.
Brainwave. She slapped a plastic plate over the leak and braced the plate tight in position with a ski pole. Fierce jets of water sprayed from behind the plate like sunrays. She hammered the pole into position. The leak slowed to a dribble, then stopped.
Knee-deep in freezing water. Bottles and bags floated around her. She bailed some more.
She woke, damp and shivering. She ached. She stretched.
She exhaled into a cupped hand. Her breath smelled like sewage. She found toothpaste among the clutter. She squeezed paste on to her finger and rubbed it over her teeth.
She took out the radio.
‘Rampart, do you copy, over?’
It took an hour to raise a reply.
‘Rampart here.’
A faint voice. A murmur through hiss and crackle.
‘Jane? Is that you?’
‘How’s it going, Nikki?’
‘The boat almost sank.’
‘Say again? The boat sank?’
‘There was a storm. I’m all right.’
‘What happened to the boat, Nikki? What went wrong?’
‘It was the welds. A big wave split the hull. If you build another boat, you’ll have to make it stronger. The waves out here are like mountains.’
‘I’m losing you. You’re passing out of range.’
‘I just wanted to say goodbye.’
‘Good luck, Nikki. God bless.’
Nikki unrolled global maritime charts. Depth contours. Tides, wrecks and buoys. She had to be careful. The paper was wet and easy to rip.
She examined ocean currents. A map of the Arctic covered in swirling arrows. She was about to reach the Greenland Sea. She was caught in a current called the Beaufort Gyre. Part of a bigger system of circular currents that meshed like cogs and dictated transpolar drift. It would carry her south, then east to the Norwegian coast. But it might take weeks.
