Revelation

Petersen gave a good imitation of a smile. 'First, we'd like you to fly out to the northernmost rig in our Field Centre.'

'Norsk Flesland?'

'The same. Then, from there, we'd like to fly you out to the Norsk Explorer, our icebreaker, which is currently about three hundred kilometres north of the rig, just on the limit of the helicopter's range. The Explorer will take you to A-02, which is further north again. We want you to climb that berg.'

And now it was happening again, the old, lurching sensation in the stomach. 'Why? And why me in particular?'

Petersen was still smiling, but he had calculating eyes. 'Perhaps I will have that coffee after all.'

* * *

'How you gooin ar keed?'

'Okay thanks. Just a bit nervous.'

'Yow never bin on a reeg before?' The man's voice was raised, to penetrate Findhorn's ear protectors.

Findhorn looked out at the dark sea. In the distance, lights were blazing on the horizon. The helicopter was heading directly for them.

'Nope.'

'Thought so. What's yow job?'

'I'm just visiting.'

'You joost veezeeteeng?'

Findhorn nodded. The blaze of lights was beginning to take shape. As the helicopter approached he began to make out three illuminated giants wading in the ocean, holding hands.

The Brummie was still probing. 'Not that it's any of my business, of course, yow know what I mean?'

Now Findhorn could see that their upper structures were forested with cranes and big metal Christmas trees. There were pipes and strange projections and tiny men on walkways and platforms. The arms joining the giants resolved themselves into connecting passageways. It was a city on stilts. Its lowest deck was thirty metres clear of the Arctic Ocean: the engineers had planned for a once-in-a-century giant wave. As to the icebergs, however, they relied on statistics and prayer. Against a ten-million-ton berg, Norsk Flesland might as well be made of match-sticks.

'I'm impressed,' Findhorn said.

'Ooh ar, you will be. Yow looking at something taller than the Eiffel Tower. With ten decks and three turbines geeveeng us twenty-five megawatts. We get 'alf a million barrels of crude and three hundred million cubic feet of gas every day. There's 'alf a mile of water between the reeg and the seabed and the well penetrates fifteen thousand feet of mood.'

He's close, Findhorn thought. It's pushing six hundred thousand barrels a day, and they reach it through eighteen thousand feet of Upper Jurassic sandstone.

'But you know,' the man confided, 'for all its size, there's something keeps me listening in the dark, know what I mean?'

'A big berg?'

The man shook his head. 'A meecroscopic crack. Fatigue in a leg.'

'Which one is Alpha?'

The man leaned over Findhorn and pointed a nicotine-stained finger. 'The platform in the middle, that's Flesland Alpha, the living quarters. Beta on the left is drilling and wellhead, and Delta on the right is the gas process platform. We do twelve hours on, twelve off. They like to keep the accommodation separate. There's about fifty metres of corridor joining them.'

'What's it like, working on a rig?'

'Norwegian reegs are breell. Now on Flesland Alpha, yow've got everytheeng you want, from a ceenema to a sauwna. There's a gymnasium, snooker, leather armchairs, escalators between decks, en-suite rooms, fantastic groob. It's like the Hilton. Only the American Gulf rigs can match them, and they have the weather for barbecues. Now the Breetish exploration rigs, they're roobish. Four men to a room, recreation a grotty TV room, canteen groob worse than a motorway stop.'

'I take it you're a Brummie?' Findhorn asked.

The man bristled. 'Naeiouw. I coom from the Black Country, from Doodley, can't yow tell? There's a beeg zoo there.'

'What's your job?' Findhorn asked. The helicopter was beginning to tilt. A long pier jutted out from Delta, and at the end of it a flame fluttered in the wind, throwing a thin orange light on the dark ocean below. Findhorn glimpsed derricks, and brilliantly lit walkways, and a confusing mass of pipes, and then the helicopter was sinking down towards an octagonal helideck, the wind from the rotors rippling water on its surface.

'Oi look after the peegs, ar keed.'

Findhorn decided against asking for a translation.

A muffled voice came over the intercom. 'There's a very high wind out there. Keep a firm hold of your baggage and watch your footing. Keep your ear protectors on.'

On deck, the wind threatened to knock Findhorn off his feet. It was cold and wet with sea spray. There was a smell of oil. Men on the helideck pointed toward a stairwell. Findhorn followed the oil men, in their orange survival suits and carrying holdalls, down metal stairs and along a short corridor. Here the air was warm. There was a queue at a desk marked Resepsjon; there were lifejackets to hand in, and hard hats and steel-toed boots to collect; there were ID cards to exchange for cabin and muster cards.

For Findhorn, however, the rules were being broken. The platform manager, steel grey hair poking under her helmet, was waiting. Without a word she took him by the arm and led him past the queue. There was to be no trace of Findhorn's visit to Flesland Alpha.

* * *

It was so huge that, at first, Findhorn thought he must have imagined it. Eyes straining and nerves taut, it was too easy to see non-existent structures in the whirling grey patterns of the blizzard. But then the helmsman was shouting 'Iceberg dead ahead,' and suddenly it was real, and Findhorn found himself saying, 'Oh my God.'

As it approached, the white turrets and battlements of the Disneyland castle resolved themselves into crevasses and overhanging cliffs and old meltwater tunnels as wide as motorways.

Through the big panoramic window of the bridge, wipers clicking, Findhorn and Hansen watched the ship's forecastle plunging down troughs, with black water and foam and chunks of ice swirling along the deck before smashing against the bridge and pouring over the sides. A foot of solid ice covered davits, ventilation shafts and deck railings.

Even as he watched, visibility was deteriorating. The Captain, clinging on to the engine-room telegraph, had acquired a dour, taciturn expression. His eyes, Findhorn noticed, kept straying to the ship's inclinometer. Every few seconds the clang of little bergs ran through the ship's hull.

Findhorn looked in vain for a route up the grim, lifeless structure; the cliffs were pockmarked and yet smooth; old shorelines were marked out along its length by sloping ridges. Waves bigger than houses were pounding the foot of the berg. He said again, 'Oh my God.'

'Aye,' Hansen agreed, gripping the telegraph. 'Rather you than me.'

'Ice two fifty metres,' the schoolboy called out. His face was almost buried in the cowling of the radar. His accent had just a trace of Norwegian and he had a cool, nonchalant attitude. The giveaway was the slight tremor in his voice; that, and the grip of his hands on the edge of his desk.

'Are you sure it's the right one?'

Hansen grinned sadistically. 'This is the age of GPS, Mister. But there's one way to make sure.' A blast of sound actually shook Findhorn like a jelly. His heart jumped, and the sound of the ship's horn echoed off a hundred unseen bergs. They waited.

'Would you look at that?' Hansen exclaimed.

A tiny shape was moving at the top of the iceberg. It resolved itself into a man dressed in thick white furs. The man started to wave furiously.

'Is that Watson or Roscoe?' Hansen asked.

'Too far away to say,' Findhorn replied.

To his utter horror, he realised that the berg was swaying. The ice cliff facing them was slowly tilting over. He watched aghast as it just kept on tilting towards them. The man should have fallen off, plunging to a painful death in the icy water far below; instead he quickly scrambled back and disappeared from view. A black wave was rearing up from the foot of the berg, displacing floes as it headed their way.