Emily was one of those drivers who liked to divide their concentration between control and conversation. With her right hand on the wheel, she gestured extravagantly with her left. With her eyes firmly on the road ahead — which was coming towards them at more than thirty miles an hour — her tongue was in animated overdrive.
‘You will see. Millions of them, helpless and hopeless. Only now is the true horror of what has been happening upcountry beginning to emerge. Ann Cable has agreed to see you tomorrow if she feels strong enough and she will give you a taste of the overall picture. But I can show you a thousand — a million — examples of individual suffering. In a way it is fortunate that they are all here. At least when the iceberg arrives we will only have to get the water a couple of kilometres up here to them. And, when they are stronger, they can help us move more and more of it. The food aid has been tremendous, but it is the water which will set us free. Even if it only gets these people back on their feet, it will have been worthwhile, but I’m sure there will be enough to get the irrigation system working again.’ Her shining eyes left the road and swung across to look at the Indian woman. The hope they contained was so intense, Indira seemed to feel it on her skin like sunlight.
‘There’s almost as much water there as in Lake Nasser behind the Aswan Dam! All fresh and clear! It will bring my country back to life, I know it!’
On the last day before the serious ship-handling began, they split the new area of exposed ice into sections and scanned them as fully as they could for radioactivity. The process was as laborious and difficult to achieve as had been the sweep across the now submerged island which John had organised. But Richard was willing to use all the crews he had, a team which was effectively 150 strong. And they found nothing. Insofar as they were able, they examined the surface of the ice in detail from the new wide shoreline at the back to the low cliffs at the front, which still formed a rough forecastle head. The new Bell had arrived and all that day the helicopter plied back and forth transporting, checking, guarding and carrying back. It was little enough cause for celebration, but it would serve. Richard asked his captains to give their crews a ‘well done’ party and he himself joined in the swing of things in Titan’s wardroom, playing the genial host overseeing a breathtaking feast with a range of courses carefully selected to guarantee that everyone enjoyed themselves to the full. And he led the festivities at the dance afterwards, though women were in short supply and they had to rely on the ship’s ancient audio-tape collection.
‘I don’t know how he does it,’ said Sally Bell to Wally Gough as he ran breathlessly up to her just before she broke up the party by going up onto her watch. ‘He’s not what you’d call mercurial, but he was so down yesterday and he’s on such good form tonight.’
Wally looked at his captain with some speculation. It had never occurred to the youthful cadet that there was more under the surface than appeared at first glance. With childlike simplicity, he had assumed that if the captain seemed cheerful then he must be so. And most of the crew seemed to share his thoughts, for as the night wore on, so the morale aboard Titan — and aboard the other ships too — began to rise back up to its usual level.
Richard felt it; he was hoping for it and looking out for it. The sacrifice of one fine ship and so many men was worthwhile only if the whole enterprise was worthwhile. And independently of the intrinsic worth of what they were trying to do, it would only be fully worthwhile if the next two days passed off without a hitch.
Oh, how he was tempted to go to his charts again and look through the figures ready for the morning. But he would not dream of doing so. Here came young Wally Gough, tipsy with excitement from having talked Sally Bell into dancing with him on her way up to the bridge.
‘Wow!’ said the cadet breathlessly. ‘That was better than navigation lessons!’
It was as though they were standing side by side, looking out through the same clearview into the first glimmer of dawn together, but in fact Richard and John were ten kilometres apart, with their ships on parallel courses, swinging the head of the iceberg round onto the due easterly straight line which would take them over the bar and into Mawanga harbour in thirty-six hours’ time. Each had a walkie-talkie and as they dictated the increasingly minute course changes to their helmsmen, they kept in contact with each other, checking, discussing, adapting. Both were using the satnav system to place themselves exactly on the surface of the earth and each was checking the other’s readings.
As the sun came up over the horizon, Sally Bell hurried out onto the bridge wing with her sextant and Richard briefly found himself talking to Steve Bollom as John did the same. The reading they achieved agreed exactly with the readings from the satnavs and the commanders felt more relaxed about placing absolute reliance on the machines as they charted, almost metre by metre, the progress of the ships towards their destination.
As soon as it was light, Yves Maille appeared on Titan’s bridge, and Richard nodded at once, knowing what the Frenchman wanted and happy to let him take it. Ten minutes after that silent nod, the Bell helicopter lifted off the main deck and skimmed away at wavetop level.
All day it plied back and forth, covering and re-covering the increasingly narrow band of water between the lead ship and their destination. It hovered low, dropping markers and watching them drift. Colleagues from the shore came out in boats and fed the Frenchman readings of temperature, salinity, current.
Especially current.
The weather was calm. Noon and afternoon ticked by without the slightest stir of wind. The waves swept in from behind the iceberg and, as its guardians moved it more slowly and more slowly still, the waves swept past it in majestic green series, moving shore-wards and showing it the way. Until, just at the point where Yves hovered most anxiously and his colleagues bobbed and puttered in their boats, little more than fifty metres out from the tips of the bull’s horns, the waves began to break up unaccountably and what had been a regular corrugation became instead a restless, cross-hatched mess of sharp-sided, triangular waves.
‘Of course, we never even considered actually closing the outer end of the anchorage after we got the iceberg into it. That would have been like building the Aswan Dam, under water, in a matter of days. A little difficult, even for the United Nations, I think you’ll agree!’
Warren Cord had got his press conference and he was enjoying it. All of the UN personnel in place had assembled for an early evening reception at the residence of the President. Present were the senior staff like Indira and Mohammed Aziz; the Mau Club representatives like Emily and Warren himself; aid workers, diplomatic staff, UNICEF reps, Save the Children men and women. During the last month more than a hundred people had arrived and there were many more on the way. The Secretary General was due tomorrow; but so was the iceberg itself and it seemed more sensible to hold the reception now. And, with a view to the proposed elections, acting President Aaron M’Diid had allowed the proceedings to begin with a press call. It was a little unexpected and the others were unprepared and not too happy about it, but Warren was ready for this and he was not a man to pass up such a heaven-sent opportunity.