Revelation

'There's another body in the pilot's seat,' said Dawson. 'No way can we reach it.'

'Why couldn't they have crashed further up the glacier?' Watson complained.

Findhorn was peering into the ice. There was a metallic glitter from a black, rectangular shape about four feet into the ice. 'What's that?'

'It's what this is about, pal,' said Dawson. 'As if you didn't know.'

The awful tilting of the berg had stopped; but neither was the ice mountain righting itself.

Findhorn said, 'Tell your men to get out of here and leave me a chain saw.'

Watson disappeared round a corner and returned with the troll. The Irishman half-slithered down the tunnel, his free hand waving a chain saw and looking like a big crab's claw. Watson pointed his torch and without delay the man started on the ice. The noise in the narrow tunnel was deafening but the saw was cutting quickly into the wall, ice spraying around the tunnel.

'Get your men out of here, Watson,' Findhorn said again.

The berg was beginning to move again, but instead of levelling out, the tilt was increasing. 'Oh Holy Mother of Christ she's going,' Watson wailed, his eyes wide with fear.

The Dubliner was in to the depth of his elbows. The tunnel had levelled and was now beginning to tilt in the opposite direction.

Now the chainsaw man was in up to his shoulders.

There was a tremendous bang, deep and powerful. The berg shook. Watson shouted, 'What the hell?'

Findhorn slithered back to the main cavern, which now lay below them. A wall had split. The fissure was now a foot wide and as he looked it continued to widen with a horrible cracking noise. Men were at the shaft entrance, fighting and punching to get on the ladder. He ran back to the side tunnel, hauled himself up by the red nylon handrail.

'Abandon ship,' he called out, his voice thick with fear. But Dawson was pushing the Irishman further in.

The Irishman's feet were kicking frantically. He wriggled back out, his face grey. 'Feic this, I'm out o' here,' he said harshly. He promptly slipped, landed with a gasp on his back, and slithered down the tunnel, the chain saw tobogganning ahead of him.

'Give me your ice axe,' Dawson snapped at Findhorn, gripping the handrail.

'Don't be a fool, Admiral. She's splitting. Get out of it.' But Dawson grabbed the axe with his free hand and leaned into the shaft, hacking furiously. Findhorn, gripping the nylon rail with both hands, waited in an agony of impatience and fear.

There was another bang. The berg suddenly lurched.

'She's going!' Findhorn shouted.

The admiral was tugging at something. 'Get me out! Quickly!'

There was a third tremendous Crash! from the direction of the main tunnel. Findhorn's feet gave way. He thumped heavily on to the ice, tumbled into the cavern. The fissure was now six feet wide and he tobogganed down towards it. Boxes, lamps, drills, chain saws, men were slithering down out of control into its mouth. Water was surging down the shaft, carrying men with it. The lights failed. In the blackness someone was screaming, high-pitched. Findhorn, on his back and accelerating out of control, felt a freezing wind rushing past him. The screaming was now above him, receding as if it came from a man shooting upwards. From below came a deep, powerful Bang! like an explosion. It filled Findhorn's world: and at last he recognized it as the sound of water slamming into a cavity. He was now in near free-fall.

And then he felt a giant hand pushing him up from below, as if the tunnel was accelerating skywards, and ice gouged a painful furrow in his brow, and a patch of light grew rapidly overhead, and in a moment the approaching grey had lightened and bleak daylight was streaming into a crevasse and he was out and fifty metres up and arching through the air, arms waving helplessly. He had time to glimpse a tiny boat with two petrified faces looking up, and beyond it the misty outline of the icebreaker, and dominating all a massive, ice-speckled black wave, a malign, living entity taller than the ship, and in the seconds while he somersaulted towards the Arctic water, Findhorn knew he was about to die.

4 Findhorn's Dream

Findhorn recalled his death in great detail. Mainly, he thought what a stupid way to go.

They'd had a boozy lunch at El Greco's, Hazel, Bruce and he. The spada had been first class (sauce-free, grilled to perfection). They'd discussed the Matsumo contract, and had agreed it was amazingly lucrative. Over coffee and ouzo they'd wondered — out of his hearing — about the attractions of Kontos, alias 'Bonkos', the ugly Greek proprietor with the red Ferrari and the endless string of what Bruce enviously described as 'luscious bints'.

Outside the restaurant, Hazel had shouted something to Findhorn as he'd stepped onto the busy street, his head spinning with wine. He'd had only a fraction of a second to follow Hazel's shocked gaze before the Leyland truck hit him, smashing his skull onto the hard London street, a massive wheel crushing his chest an instant later.

The heart monitor sent out its microwave signal and by the time the ambulance had reached the casualty entrance at St John's, the vultures were already awaiting the formal pronouncement of death. The casualty doctor shook his head over Findhorn's smashed chest and the corpse was quickly transferred to the team with no more than a hurried signature. In their grey, sealed van, along the Mall, the body was strapped to a table. A variety of scalpels and a small saw were used to remove Findhorn's head. As they turned up Haymarket, the blood vessels attached to the body were ligatured to stem the flow of blood. At a red light, while tourists and office girls crossed in front of them, Findhorn's carotid arteries were being connected to tubes and the blood in his head was replaced by a cold, cold liquid. Around Piccadilly and up Regent Street, his head was wrapped in foil and immersed, upside down, in a vat of liquid nitrogen, causing a surge of freezing fog to flood the van temporarily before escaping through a vent into the busy street. The metal lid of the vat secured, warm air was pumped into the van and the team took off their masks, goggles and bloody gloves, and relaxed. Somebody opened a Thermos flask; a cigarette was lit; and, over the headless cadaver, the chat turned to the forthcoming match. The van headed swiftly towards the Ml, its destination a large, anonymous country house tucked away in the Buckinghamshire countryside.

All this Findhorn saw as if from above, from a camera in the roof of the van.

There was a tunnel, and all that ever had been or would be was imbedded in its walls, and he was moving along the tunnel towards a tiny light marking its end, and the light grew until he found himself in a brilliant white room and he woke up, unable to move. The cold was unlike anything he had ever experienced. It was an intense pain. Something was throbbing gently in the background, like the flow of blood through his ears. The room had no walls or ceiling; it was egg-shaped, white. There was no discernible lighting but it was bright like an operating theatre. A door slid open and a nurse, twentyish, came silently in and bent over him. She was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.

'I made it,' he said, but the voice came out as a whisper.

'Just.' Her voice was surprisingly rough.

'How long was I dead?'

'A very long time. Very long.'

'I have a body?'

She smiled. It was a strange, mechanical smile, the lips almost curling into a semicircle. 'Of course. Cloning is an ancient art. You are now thirty, perfect in physiology, and will remain so for all time. And your intellect has been boosted. By the standards of your century, you are a superman.'

'Has anyone I know survived?'

'No. Brain preservation was very uncommon in your day. It makes you a very rare specimen. We have plans for you.'