The O.D. (7 page)

He took his photocopy of the Bay of Biscay and began placing dots in a line twelve miles off the French coastline from the latitude of Brest down to the latitude of Bordeaux. He connected the dots, then shaded France’s Territorial Waters pink with a highlighter pen. He drew another line of dots along the edge of the Contiguous Zone 24 miles off the coastline and shaded that area yellow. The final line of dots denoted the edge of the Exclusive Economic Zone 200 miles from the coast. These waters he coloured green. In the end, he had a pretty pattern, but no answers.

At half past twelve, Sally and Hilda came upstairs from the shop for their lunch break. Pilot had called them from the library to ask if he could use their kitchen, as he often did, having only a small camping stove at the net shed. Hilda, out of curiosity, walked up to him and leaned over the pot to sniff the concoction he was creating and make some empty comment about how delicious it smelled. Instead, she couldn’t help herself recoiling at the sight that met her eyes. A sodden pancake floated on what looked like porridge. On the pancake, well over to one side, rested a slice of spam and on the spam there was a saucer piled high with sugar.

Pilot noted Hilda’s puzzlement and began to explain. “The porridge is the mantle, the pancake is the oceanic crust, the spam is the continental shelf, and the saucer is France.” The woman nodded her head without a word or a smile and walked away.

The porridge was reaching boiling point and Pilot waited impatiently for the first bubble. Soon the pancake began to rise near the side of the pot opposite the spam, then subsided. The second bubble was nearer and the third was right on target. As it pushed up the pancake, the pancake in turn lifted the spam at its edge where it wasn’t weighed down by the sauce
r−
just the tiniest fraction of an inch, but hundreds of metres when scaled up to the Bay of Biscay. The bubble popped, the pancake dropped and the spam flopped. Pilot turned off the gas and sat down at the table with his notepad.

He tried to picture the moment of impact – not on France, but on his barges. He thought of his rectangle of barges ballasted at four corners by the weighty earth carriers and tried to picture the effect a rising mass of land would have on it. An image came to mind from a nature film of a whale breaking the surface of the sea at a very narrow angle and then disappearing like an escalator at the top of its run. He wondered what would happen if a small boat were over the whale as it surfaced. Would it be carried along on its back, or would the upward pressure capsize it? He drew some pictures, then decided there were too many variables: whether or not the surface of the land was coming up parallel to the surface of the sea; its speed of ascent; and the physical features of the terrain rising to meet the bellies of the barges. He could only imagine what the scene would be and concluded that if all the factors were in their favour – flat terrain, parallel planes, slow ascent – it
would
be possible for them to make a safe landfall. Possible or not, an inner voice told him he was wasting his time speculating about Vaalon’s fantastic geological phenomenon. Whatever it was to be, it would be, regardless of what Pilot conjectured. The only thing that was in his power – the only thing that should concern him from now o
n−
was what happened
after
the event.

Once again he felt a need to get out of the flat and into the fresh air. The aunts heard the door slam and went into the kitchen to tut at their great-nephew’s culinary experimentation.

“
Push
,
dear
.
Push
.”
Diminishing
amounts
of
sweat
from
a
labour
now
in
its
fifteenth
hour
were
being
squeezed
from
the
girl’s
body
. “
Breathe
,”
her
mother
said
,
willing
her
fifth
grandchild
to
appear
. “
You
have
to
relax
,
Rosa
.
You’re
too
tight
.”

“
I’m
thirsty
,
Mum
,”
the
girl
gasped
. “
I
need
water
.
ANYTHING
.
A
lager
for
fuck’s
sake
.”
Truth
be
told
,
in
this
particular
corner
of
Queensland
,
lager
was
nearly
more
plentiful
than
water
.

After
thinking
about
it
for
a
while
,
the
woman
went
out
to
the
kitchen
,
where
her
husband
and
son
-
in
-
law
were
nursing
warm
beers
by
the
broken
fridge
. “
We
need
one
of
them
,”
she
said
,
grabbing
an
unopened
can
and
racing
back
to
the
bedroom
.

It
may
have
been
the
world’s
first
lager
-
assisted
birth
,
but
with
things
the
way
they
were
in
these
parched
parts
,
it
probably
wasn’t
.
When
the
eight
-
billionth
nail
in
the
Earth’s
coffin
was
extruded
ten
minutes
later
,
nobody
was
counting
.

Pilot spent the early part of the afternoon walking to Marazion, back to the train station for a cup of tea, over to the post office, into the police station for a look at the noticeboard and up Causewayhead to people-watch. He was observing something he never could understan
d−
human life and all its working parts, functioning or not to a design he felt to be wrongly conceived from the beginning. He saw people over the years sell their lives and the souls of their children to their places of work without question or remorse. He saw the whole framework of humanity as a large animal coming to the end of a fat kil
l−
unbeknown to it, the last of the game. To Pilot’s way of thinking, a mass of human beings could no more exercise restraint than a thousand soldier ants happening across a juicy rodent. Anyone falling outside the scale on the side of sense or awareness would be left on the shoulder while the main column marched on, painting over any road sign that suggested it was traveling the wrong route.

Just then, one of the town’s homeless walked by. Pilot had often found the man sleeping in the doorway of his aunts’ shop and had made a practice of inviting him in, but the vagrant had always declined. As Pilot looked at the stubbled and grimy face, he saw a laughter and contentedness in this outcast’s eyes, as if he alone knew that it was warmer outside than in.

When Pilot got back to the flat to wash up, his saucepan was still there, exactly as he, and subsequently his aunts, had left it. But the sugar-weighted saucer had pushed the spam down to a level where it was flush with the surface of the pancake. He poked it with his forefinger and forced a thin circular band of porridge up through the space between the pancake and the side of the saucepan. Then he pushed France all the way down to the bottom of the pot and watched the porridge wash thickly over her from all sides.

IV

Two days later, Pilot was on the phone to Brussels. He had based his initial ideas for the island’s name on variations of Atlanti
s−
Atlantis
Minor
,
New
Atlantis
,
Atlantis
Novus
. Then he moved on to anagrams of Atlantis. The island would comprise the edge of the continental shelf, pushed up wedge-like at a slant –
Atislant
,
Atslanti
,
At
-
Slanti
,
Slanttia
. Great anagrams, but ridiculous names. Same with
Listtaan
. ‘Listing’ in the ocean. Not an impressive picture. The other problem he was having was that all the names were based English words and he felt it should be more international.

He liked the anagram
Nilstaat
, from the Latin root ‘nihil’, nothing, nil, and the German word for nation, ‘Staat’.
Nilstaat
fit the concept of a nonaligned, unaffiliated state, but it sounded too German.

By lunchtime Pilot knew it had to be a made-up nam
e−
something
non
-lingual, like
Häagen
Dazs
, dreamchild of an advertising copywriter. Of the fifty names he invented, he whittled it down to ten and then went to bed. By the morning, nine had evaporated. He’d based the tenth,
Eydos
, on the Greek word
eîdos
, meaning ‘the distinctive expression of the cognitive or intellectual character of a culture or a social group.’

“I won’t be processing any of the paperwork until the end of July,” the soft-spoken Scottish voice at the other end of the line said, winding up their short conversation. “How do you pronounce it again?”

“Eye-doss, A-doss, Eee-dose, Ay-doze, Eye-doze, Eye-dose,” Pilot replied. “It’s non-ligual.”

His next call was to his mentor to arrange a time to view the IGP’s computer models. “As soon as you can get here,” Vaalon said.

In the morning, Pilot arrived at Penzance station half an hour before departure time to ensure getting a table in the unreserved coach. The journey lasted five and a half hours, most of which he spent reading files on the laptop. Vaalon’s vision was solidifying in Pilot’s mind and things were beginning to seem less fantastical than at first.

The IGP building was just off Exhibition Road behind the Natural History Museum and Pilot found it easily. His anticipation and excitement when Vaalon greeted him at reception was impossible to hide. “Follow me, Lonnie,” the man said without preamble. He ushered Pilot into a large room on the third floor housing a number of computers, sat down at one and signaled Pilot to pull over another chair.

The screen came to life and Vaalon began to play the keyboard like Chopin. One diagram after another – in 2-D and 3-D, black and white, multicoloured – danced across the monitor. “Bear with me, Lonnie. I’ll start with ‘pc-R00018’, the pyrocoagulum we’ve been following for two years.”

“What’s a pyrocoagulum?”

“It’s a lump of magma – a knot of greater viscosity than the material around it. By charting its movement, we can guage the pull of the magnetic field created by the solar tide.”

Vaalon settled on an image Pilot guessed was a cross-section of the Bay of Biscay and began pointing out the various layers. “Mainland France, seawater, continental shelf, crust, mantle and this swirl here is pc-R00018. This is its position as we speak.” Vaalon flicked the right arrow on his keyboard a few times, moving the magma lump deeper into the mantle. “And this was its position when we first identified and measured it.” He tapped back and forth between the two images to give Pilot an animated rendition of magma in motion. “Now, look what happens when I advance it 13 weeks.”

Pilot put his face closer to the screen and focused on the continental shelf and pc-R00018’s increased proximity to it. The movement was so imperceptible that he almost missed it. Vaalon zoomed in and ran the sequence again. This time, the line of the continental shelf could be seen converging on the surface of the sea. One further click of the left arrow and part of the line rose
above
sea level. Vaalon traced the section that was out of the water with his fingertip. “From here to here is about 150 miles. Let’s look at it from a different angle.”

He rotated the aspect 90 degrees clockwise, giving a southeast to northwest view, and ran the sequence again. This time, the cresting of the continental shelf was much more graphic, appearing as a narrow angled wedge pointing towards the mainland. Vaalon ran his finger horizontally from the fat end of the wedge to where it disappeared under the sea to the east. “From there to there is around 20 miles. And this figure – “ he pointed to the western elevation “ – is between 300 and a thousand feet.”

Something was niggling Pilot. “In that sequence you showed me just now, between your discovery of our magma lump and its position today, it hardly moved at all. How fast is it rising?”

“Approximately one foot every ten years,” Vaalon said. “Slower than a glacier.”

“Then how can it cause the island to surface so quickly? Logic says it would take three or four hundred years for that stretch of shelf to crest.”

“In this case, logic is trumped by the harmonics of solar magnetics, tectonics, lithospherics and isostatics. Together they create the jolt necessary to trigger the pulse I described earlier. The equilibrium that keeps landmasses stable – isostasy – refluxes, or
hiccups
. A volcano will be many years in the making, but it only takes an instant to erupt. On the geophysical clock, the birth of your island will be a mere nanosecond event. On the human clock, it’ll take anything from five to ten hours. Babies can be born quicker than Eydos, but I guarantee you it’s not going to take 400 years.”

Pilot sat baffled and mute in front of the computer.

“Lonnie, you’ll just have to put your trust in the quality of knowledge and the accuracy of data used to program our software. The computer models all predict that your island’s going to surface this August… stabilize… dry out for a few centuries… then sink again just as suddenly. It will – “

“Why doesn’t the island keep on rising during the centuries it’s above water?” As soon as he’d asked the question, Pilot had guessed the answer, remembering how, in his porridge-pancake-spam-saucer experiment, the weight of France had prevented the spam from rising any higher over its bubble.

“The solar tide holds the shelf in stasis until it ebbs. It can’t rise higher because of the weight of the mainland and the magmatic pulse itself lasts at least four hundred years,” Vaalon said. “So, Lonnie. How are you feeling now?”

“Hungry.”

Over dinner at the Casa da Comina, Pilot brought up the politics of sovereignty. “I need to know if there’s a plan, Forrest, and what influence, if any, our advocates have.”

Vaalon’s eyes locked onto Pilot’s. “On June 23rd you’re flying to New York with me to meet Fridrik Geirsson, Iceland’s ambassador to the United Nations. I can understand your concern about this aspect of the operation, but a meeting with Geirsson will dispel your fears. He and his father before him have
owned
the UN Commision on Maritime Law for the past forty years.”

Over the ensuing three weeks while he was waiting for his passport to arrive, Pilot meandered through Vaalon’s hard drive as though through a spring meadow. He noted facts, figures, weights, measures, cargoes and personnel with the same part of his mind that fed on beautiful countryside, magnificent trees and poetic skies. This wasn’t work. It was pleasure.

In preparation for his trip to Dublin, he read the files of his three Irish crew several times until he knew them as well as one can, short of actually meeting them in the flesh. Jane Lavery was in charge of the settler’s vegetable-growing programme. A gardener for the Earl of Dungarvan, she had been an
environmental
activist
since
her
late
teens
and
had
even
spent
six
days
in
jail
for
handcuffing herself to the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine during a demonstration against the genetic modification of potatoes. Now, at the age of twenty-seven, her protesting had taken a more mellow turn. The keyboard had replaced the sword, her popular blog having gained over a thousand subscribers in just six months. Pilot clicked the link to her blog site, read her latest entry – a well-documented case linking southern India’s escalating birth defects to genetically modified rice – then went back to her photograph.
Frecklebound
was the only word to describe her. He’d never seen so many on one human face. He found her colouring of olive skin, rust-coloured hair, brown eyes and freckles unusual and very attractive.

The expedition’s master-carpenter and builder, Josiah Billy, had been born in Australia. Orphaned while still crawling, Billy had learned to walk in a succession of foster homes before sprinting out on his own at fifteen. His paternal grandfather was Aborigine. The other three grandparents were Irish. A gifted club rugby player, but unable to make it into the Australian national team, Billy had been invited to play for Ireland, based on his Irish lineage. With few family ties in Australia, he took the first flight out. Josiah Billy had won fifteen caps as a loose forward in the Ireland national rugby team, but sin-bin offences in successive games had put an end to his international career. Vaalon’s notes described ‘a hefty, thirty-two-year-old joiner, wood carver and poet’. Pilot looked at the photograph, but couldn’t see the poet. He thought Josiah Billy looked dangerously alpha and wondered if he’d be able to work with him.

He closed Billy’s file, opened Macushla Mara’s and went straight to her photo. Her thick black hair, prominent eyebrows and dark lashes could have washed ashore from the Spanish Armada; the green eyes were Irish; the nose and mouth Pre-Raphaelite. Governmental speechwriter Mara, a Trinity College classics graduate with a PhD, would soon be working for Lonnie Pilot, a Cornish tutor of seven-to twelve-year-olds, as his ‘press secretary’. With a sickening dip in confidence, he closed out the file. If he were able to pass himself off as a convincing leader to these people, no-one would be more surprised than Lonnie Pilot.

Three days before his flight, Pilot’s passport arrived. He thought it a waste of money, because, in just over two months, he’d be throwing it, along with his past, into the English Channel. He re-read the postcard he’d received from Macushla Mara. Its calligraphy was exquisite.

Dear Lonnie Pilot,

Mr. Vaalon has booked us rooms at the Central Hotel, Exchequer Street. See you in the hotel bar at around seven? Looking forward to meeting you and the others.

−
M. Mara

Pilot was relieved that he wouldn’t be the only stranger in the group.

Maroon, moss green and peat brown were the predominant colours of the first floor Central Hotel bar. Four underpowered wall lights added little to the dingy atmosphere of a space more akin to a waiting room than a watering hole. An emaciated, acned youth in black trousers, white shirt and black tie hung loosely behind his bar, Pilot’s Guinness being the only drink he had poured in half an hour. In the far corner, a young woman in an orange coat, already confirmed by Pilot as being neither Jane Lavery nor Macushla Mara, sat nursing a long-cold coffee and looking at her watch every two minutes. It was 6.45. Plenty of time to drown his nerves, which were still on edge. His flight from Exeter had been both frightening and exciting, as it was the first time Pilot had been on a plane. The bus ride into the city centre, consisting of road works topped by rush hour, was worse.

At seven o’clock, a large man entered the bar and began scanning the room. In the gloom, Pilot couldn’t tell if he were Josiah Billy or not. The answer came when the orange coat leapt from her seat, skipped over to the fellow and threw her arms around him.

Five minutes later, Pilot’s peripheral vision picked up another figure coming through the door. He turned his head, recognized Jane Lavery, and raised his hand. Lavery smiled and sauntered over to his table. She was tall and slim, and far more striking than her photograph had suggested.

“Glad to meet you, Mr. Pilot,” she said, extending her hand. “How was your trip?”

“Uneventful.” Pilot had decided not to mention the fact he’d never flown before. Heads of state
flew
. “Call me Lonnie.”

Lavery pointed to his glass. “Would you like another drink, Lonnie?”

Pilot’s natural reaction would have been to offer to get the drinks himself, but he decided to stay in character. “Guinness”, he said. “Thank you, Jane.”

As the barman was waiting for the head to settle on Pilot’s drink, Josiah Billy walked in and went straight to the bar. “I’ll have what she’s having,” he said, turning to face Lavery. “Jane Laver
y−
I recognize the freckles. I’m Josiah Billy.”

“Hello, Josiah.” She shook Billy’s hand with unfeminine gusto. “By the way, the Guinness is Lonnie Pilot’s.”