The O.D. (16 page)

“That’s terrible,” someone called down.

“One innocent child for a man. One ripe virgin for mankind,” Bradingbrooke said, joining Pilot on the ground.

Jane Lavery was the next one down. “One empty vessel for a man. One shiny new toilet bowl for mankind.”

Pilot could make out in the moonlight the disappointment on Jane’s and everyone else’s faces. There were no pebbles, no rocks, no sand, no sediment. The entire landscape had been scoured clean of its skin by billions of tons of seawater dragging over it during its ascent. “I can’t believe how pessimistic you all are,” he said. “This place is beautiful. Use your imaginations. It might not look great now, but we’ve inherited nobody’s mess to clean up and nobody’s bad planning.”

The others just looked at their feet.

Macushla Mara parted her dark tresses and said, “A unique opportunity, to be sure.”

Fatigue, hunger and cold soon got the better of them and, as the exhausted, bedraggled party made its way up the rope in front of him, Pilot bent down, ran his palm over the smooth, clammy rock and rapped it lightly with his knuckles, as if testing its solidity. Then he grabbed the rope and hauled himself up the rubbery slope of their fortress wall.

In the mess room later, with everyone fed and watered, Pilot appeared with half a dozen bottles of liqueur. “Kruskovac. Pear brandy from Croatia, courtesy of Mr. Vaalon,” he announced. “Pass it around.”

Pilot was still finding sleep elusive at 4am when he heard the unmistakable sound of rotor blades threshing the air to the east. He rushed up on deck and was joined by at least fifty of his crew. No one needed the moonlight to see what was happening. Searchlights from half a dozen or more helicopters zig-zagged over the glistening surface of the island looking for suitable landing spots. Pilot watched with growing anxiety as eight troop-carrying Chinooks with French markings set down next to the convoy and disgorged nearly two hundred of that country’s elite fighting men. The French commandoes were well-oiled, sliding out of their helicopters and encircling the convoy in under five minutes.

Those on board
Ptolemy
waited to see what their visitors would do next. The all-too-visible firearms cradled in the soldiers’ arms like malevolent babies struck fear into the watchers’ hearts. Some ran below to their rooms and locked themselves in. Others just braced themselves for the worst, frozen to the deck, hearts pounding.

An hour of standoff passed. While lookouts were sent to the four corners of the flotilla, Serman suggested that everyone else take it in shifts to go below for an early breakfast in case they didn’t get a chance later.

Lonnie Pilot, who had fallen asleep from exhaustion just twenty minutes before first light, was wakened by a gentle hand on his shoulder. “It’s like an air show out there, Lonnie,” Jane Lavery said. “You’d better come up.” Eydos was ten hours old and the news of her birth was reverberating around the world.

They climbed the ladder onto the wheelhouse roof where Aaron Serman was counting planes. “Where do you think that one’s from?” Pilot asked as a plane sliced the air overhead.

“This is its second pass. Royal Navy, I think. Two French planes were just here and waggled their wings at our friends over there before leaving.” Pilot glanced across at the French commandoes and could see the smoke from their camp stoves. There was an aroma of coffee on the breeze. Another plane appeared from the south and buzzed the convoy at just a hundred metres. Its red and yellow roundel declared it to be Spanish.

Someone appeared with a tray of steaming coffee mugs and a plate of toast – no butter. Seven more planes came and went by the time the three had finished their breakfast. Pilot wiped the crumbs from his mouth and began to take in the scene around him. Beyond the ominous French encirclement, the view confirmed his fears that the whole of Eydos was nothing but roc
k−
undulating but otherwise formless, apart from the cloud shadows that rolled over its bald surface. They would have their work cut out planting one blade of grass, let alone themselves.

He scribbled a note to Vaalon. ‘One injury, not serious,’ it read. ‘One no-show –
Shenandoah
, as I think you already know. We’re surrounded by French troops, but they haven’t made contact with us yet. Looks like they’re just flexing their muscles for now. We’re nine-tenths in possession and we’ll see what today brings. ~Pilot.’

The previous evening, he had set a rota of volunteers to monitor the airwaves and he was eager to find out what they’d heard. Entering the radio room with the note, Pilot recognized the sole New Zealander in his crew, Kerry Jackson, sitting next to McConie. In his file photograph, Jackson looked like a fair-haired version of Lonnie Pilot. In the flesh, the resemblance was uncanny. He was wearing headphones and typing into a kPad. Pilot gave the note to McConie for encrypting, then addressed Jackson. “What’ve we got so far, Kerry?”

Jackson scrolled to the beginning of the log and handed Pilot the tablet. The first mention had come at 2230 GMT and as he read through the entries, Pilot was able to piece together the jigsaw of what had been happening in the outside world since the Bay of Biscay had exploded the previous day.

The first major waves had hit the Pilat Dunes in southwest France at 1630 and had reached St. Nazaire by 1700. The tsunamis had not abated until 2130. In spite of repeated warnings, and a deliberate exaggeration supplied by the IGP of the projected height of the waves, many people had ignored the order to evacuate to higher ground and had paid for their intransigence with their lives. Although the exact number of French dead was not yet known (and wouldn’t be for several months) it was estimated at between 3,000 and 5,000. Only a handful of casualties had been reported from the Channel Islands in what the Bailiffs of Jersey and Guernsey were calling the most successful evacuation before the jaws of death in history. In fact, the islands had been largely shielded by the Brittany peninsula, which had taken the brunt of the seas. The more exposed Isles of Scilly had been scoured by 20-30 foot waves, but not before every living soul, bar nine St. Agnes dairy cows, had been evacuated in what the British Prime Minister had described as ‘the most comprehensive relocation of an island population since Tristan da Cunha’.

[In Penzance, two elderly women, having sandbagged the entrance to their shop earlier, had only minimal flood damage to clear up.]

An American seismologist noted that, unlike the Japanese and California-Oregon tsunamis, the seas thrown up by the island’s rising had been lower, due to the slow surfacing of the continental shelf. Even so, the damage they caused was already running into tens of millions of Neuros. [Derived from the German word
neu
, the new currency that had replaced the collapsed Euro had an unintentional ‘nervous’ring to i
t−
unintentional but perfectly appropriate. The entire global financial foundation was more unstable now than it had been since the minting of the first coin.]

Pilot read through the remaining entries quickly but found no reference to his five advocates, the press release or anything at all suggesting that the risen land had already been settled and christened. They were merely updates on wave damage, terrible loss of life and remarkable rescues and evacuations, but no mention at all of Eydos or its mysterious flotilla of barges. Until the satellite dish could be erected, they were unable to check what the world wide web was carrying.

The early morning BBC news bulletin was just about to begin, so Pilot made himself as comfortable as he could, given his growing agitation, to listen. Again, no reference to them was made beyond a physical account of the new island. Aerial radar reconnaissance during the night had confirmed it to be a 155-mile ribbon of bare rock running from northwest to southeast parallel to the French coast from Brest down to Nantes. At its widest, the island was only 23 miles. The average width was 17 miles and the shortest distance to the French coast was 62 miles. The BBC’s Science Correspondent confirmed that the island was, in fact, the edge of the European continental shelf. Pilot noticed that it wasn’t referred to as the
French
continental shelf.

‘This accounts,’ the report continued, ‘for the island’s peculiar topography, in which the entire west coast consists of cliffs rising in some places to over three hundred metres, whereas in the east the land rises at such a narrow angle that even two miles inland it is still only a few feet above sea level.’

The last item in the bulletin made Pilot choke on his coffee. ‘Political commentators are already predicting a major diplomatic wrangle between Britain and France as to who has legitimate claim over the new island. Another solution being promoted is that it be declared an international protectorate, similar to Antarctica.’

Pilot summoned Odile Bartoli, a French woman from Aix, to the radio room. When she arrived, he asked McConie to find a French radio broadcast for Bartoli to translate.

Seconds later, a torrent of French burst from the speakers. “They are talking about it. Shhhh,” Bartoli cautioned. When the newscast finished, she looked at Pilot in disbelief. “They say all about the wave damages and that there are many dead. Then they say about the island ... where it is… how big. There is no mention of us. Then they say its nam
e−
Ile
de
Bonne
Fortune
.”

Pilot could feel his heart sinking. He never thought it would be easy, but neither did he suspect the French would stonewall so blatantly. Someone, somewhere must have received their declaration.

“Incoming message from London,” McConie said. Pilot watched as line after line of indecipherable gibberish rolled up the monitor. When it stopped, McConie pushed a button and the letters relocated into English. Pilot squatted down and began reading Forrest Vaalon’s first communication in weeks.

You
made
it
.
Five
didn’t
.
Rebecca
Schein
only
survivor
of
Shenandoah
.
French
vessel
Largesse
also
lost
with
all
hands
.
Declarations
made
UN
,
Dublin
,
London
,
Madrid
.
Not
in
Paris
.
Good
and
bad
news
.
I
read
your
declaration
.
Wouldn’t
have
said
it
like
that
myself
,
but
there’s
no
mistaking
your
presence
.
Well
done
.

The
Shenandoah
deaths hit Pilot like a sledgehammer and he was composing a reply to Vaalon when a noise outside caught his attention. He stepped out on deck with McConie to investigate what sounded like a helicopter close by. In fact, it was coming in to land just outside the French cordon.

He watched the heavy machine descend with a mixture of dread and hop
e−
hope that it was carrying his North Ronaldsay sheep and not more troops. He was relieved to see that it wasn’t a military helicopter, but a private charter of some kind. The second it touched down, swarms of newsmen leapt to the rock like D-day troops at Juno Beach. They were halted by the French commandoes, and Pilot could make out the officer in charge being harangued by reporters. The standoff lasted five minutes before the French opened their human wall and let the reporters through.

In
The
Psychology
of
Leadership
Pilot had read that, in a situation such as this, the leader leaves it to his lieutenants to make the initial contact. So he sent his press secretary and Eydos’ deputy leader to meet the media.

Mara and Bradingbrooke crossed over to the wreck of
Earthmover
II
, descended the aluminium ladder that had been placed at her bow, met the newcomers ten metres from the convoy and were quickly engulfed. The reporters were all talking and shouting at once, swishing their microphones and cameras through the air like butterfly nets.

“HOW DID YOU KNOW THIS PLACE WAS COMING UP?” “ARE THERE ANY CASUALTIES?” “WHICH ONE OF YOU IS L. PILOT?” “WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?” “DO YOU SERIOUSLY THINK YOU CAN LAY CLAIM TO THIS ISLAND?”

Macushla Mara stepped forward to silence the mob, which was becoming unruly. “We’ll speak to
one
of you only,” she said, fishing the sea of faces before her. Pilot had briefed her earlier about the tactic President Reagan had employed when dealing with a White House press corps that had grown competitively obnoxious during Jimmy Carter’s more laid back presidency. “The tall man over there with the white hair and the safari suit. Austin Palmer. Does anyone object if he acts as your spokesman?” Mara had seen the man fronting television documentaries and knew him to be impartial, honest and well-respected. No one objected to the choice, so Palmer stepped forward.