‘And if anyone, including you, Walter, feels really twitchy about him after that, then we’ll sit down and have it out with him. See what he’s all about.’
He still looked unhappy.
‘And believe me, if there’s anything at all about him that worries me, then he’ll have to go.’
Walter nodded. ‘All right.’ It looked like that wasn’t what he wanted to hear, but it was going to have to do. She knew what was behind this. It was jealousy. And that irked her a little. She knew Walter considered himself to be the alpha male of their community. If she was some sort of mother figure then by default he viewed himself as the father, and that didn’t sit well with her. By implication, it meant Walter saw himself as a potential suitor for her. A potential lover, one day, when she was finally ready for it.
The thought of that kind of a relationship with Walter didn’t really do anything for her. He was ten years older. His florid face, salt and pepper bush of a beard and lank long hair reminded her of Billy Connolly.
A poor woman’s Billy Connolly.
Ever since losing Andy she’d been without a partner. Too busy surviving, too busy fighting for her children, lately too busy peace-making every petty squabble, managing the lives of four hundred and fifty-plus people to consider a partner.
If she ever did consider another man, well, it wasn’t going to be Walter. He was the best of friends, a reliable second-in-command, an invaluable Jack of all trades. Without him she wondered whether they could have survived at all, let alone have electricity. But she could never imagine ending up lying in a cot with him, surrendering and sighing under the touch of his rough and callused hands.
‘Where is he now?’ he asked.
‘Who?’
‘Latoc.’
Jenny stood up, feeling her worn knees creak. ‘Jacob, Nathan and Hannah are giving him the grand tour.’
‘What if he’s a spy?’ said Walter, his face immediately colouring after he’d spoken. She knew he’d just realised how silly and desperate that had sounded.
She reached out and squeezed his hand. ‘A spy for who, Walt?’ she replied softly, offering him a tender smile. ‘Who’s out there now, organised enough to despatch a spy our way?’
‘The chickens give us eggs,’ said Hannah. ‘Eggs and lots of poo.’
Valérie tilted his head thoughtfully. ‘You have very many chickens.’
‘I reckon we’re up to about seven hundred of them now,’ said Nathan. ‘That right, Jay?’
Jacob nodded. ‘At the last count. Some escaped ChickenLand a few weeks ago.’
They called this deck that - the birds had the run of virtually the whole of the first floor of the production platform’s main module. Wire mesh covered one or two opened portholes and an outside gantry had been wired in to give the birds an exterior run to scratch around on. Most of the floor was open plan. It had once been a series of workshops; several large areas divided by wide, sliding doors on runners. Like the rest of the rig, the rooms had been stripped bare of machinery before the crash. On the linoleum-covered metal floor, faint stains of rust, divots and grooves showed where heavy equipment had once been secured. Now, though, the floor was mostly a carpet of chicken droppings, shed feathers and idling hens that stepped around the inert bulk of the remaining equipment - old lathes, milling tools. The nearest birds stared up at them stupidly.
Through windows along one wall, looking across the walkway leading to the drilling platform, they could see several supermarket shopping trolleys loaded with seed trays being wheeled along, clattering and rattling their way across. The mesh on the small round windows was garnished with tufts of fluffy feathers fluttering gently in a soft moaning draught that chased itself through the rooms of ChickenLand.
‘It is a very good set-up,’ Valérie smiled approvingly. ‘You have done well.’
‘You want to see the magic source of our power?’ asked Nathan.
‘Yeah!’ said Hannah enthusiastically. ‘Wanna see our lectrik power?’
Valérie smiled hesitantly. ‘All right.’
‘Not hard to find.’ Jacob led the way out of the chicken rooms, shooing a few of them away as they opened the door. ‘All we need to do is follow the stink,’ he said, pulling a face.
They stepped out onto an external walkway, thick with the rustling leaves of runner bean plants climbing panels of green plastic trellis on either side of them. If the metal grating beneath their feet had been covered with a thick bed of spongy moss they could almost have been walking down a jungle trail.
‘This way,’ said Jacob leading.
They made their way carefully along it, passing several children and an elderly couple carefully picking pods from the stalks. Hannah announced to one of the children with solemn authority that she was doing her official job showing the newcomer around.
Jacob and Nathan grinned at each other.
Presently Jacob stepped to the left, and reached through a veil of leaves dangling down from the gantry above and doing their best to completely obscure a doorway. ‘Guess you can smell it now?’
Valérie wrinkled his nose and nodded.
Jacob pulled the leaves to one side and opened the door. They stepped into an almost completely pitch black interior.
‘Just a sec,’ said Jacob. He fumbled in the dark for a moment before finding the torch dangling from a hook just inside the door. He snapped it on. They were in a narrow passageway, ahead of them a steep flight of steps leading down to the module’s bottom floor. The smell of fermenting faeces quickly grew unpleasantly strong as they made their way down the steps and along a passageway lined with tall lockers on which were fading name tags.
‘Down here used to be the shift workers’ changing room,’ said Jacob. ‘Walter said it’s the best place for our digesters because it’s insulated. It’s the warmest place on all of the rigs.’ He opened a door and led the way in, holding his nose as he did so. ‘Here we are . . . the stinky rooms.’
Valérie and Nathan stepped inside, wincing at the overpowering odour.
‘Sorry, Hannah,’ said Jacob, gently holding her arm. ‘You know the rules, no children inside.’
She frowned indignantly. ‘But I want to show him the jenny-rater.’
Jacob smiled. Hannah frequently heard Walter referring to the generator as the ‘genny’. Knowing how her faultlessly logical mind worked, Jacob suspected his niece assumed, quite reasonably, that the machine was named after her grandmother.
‘No children inside without Mum or Walter around. You know that, Han.’
She scowled at him, but stood obediently out in the passage watching Valérie intently studying the machine by torchlight.
Jacob stepped across the floor towards the doorway to an adjoining room. ‘In here is where the methane is brewed up,’ he said.
Valérie followed him inside. The smell was almost overpowering in the generator room, but in this room the odour was even more pungent.
‘Can you feel how warm it is?’ said Nathan.
‘The crap actually generates its own heat as it ferments,’ said Jacob. He stepped across to the nearest plastic drum and rested his hand on it. ‘Feel it.’
Valérie touched the plastic and nodded. ‘Oh, yes . . . it is almost as warm as a radiator!’
The room was quiet, save for a gurgling coming from inside the large plastic containers. The only place on any of the rigs that seemed almost completely devoid of sound; the endless rumble of the sea, the whistle and moan of wind, insulated from them. Just that soft contented gurgling and bubbling from inside.
Nathan grinned. ‘What do you think?’
Valérie studied the plastic drums, the feed-off pipes coming from them and leading to several gas storage containers. Another pipe winding its way across the low ceiling and out through the door they’d entered, into the generator room.
‘That’s the feed pipe,’ said Jacob. ‘Feeding methane to the generator. ’
They stepped through the doorway back into the generator
room. Hannah was tapping one foot impatiently out in the passageway.
‘We make enough fuel for about three hours of power every night,’ said Nathan. ‘Walter said maybe one day he’ll improve it so that we get even more power and we could have spare for things like music systems.’
‘Maybe even a TV and we could watch movies and cartoons,’ added Jacob.
‘Or even, if we find a working PlayStation,’ added Nathan, ‘we could play video games again.’
Hannah, standing out in the passage, giggled. ‘Viddy-oh games!’ she chorused. She’d heard the term many times. Jacob had even described to her what they were. But in truth she had no idea - just that they were fun and happened on TV screens.
Valérie stared silently at the equipment.
‘So? It’s cool, isn’t it?’ said Jacob, certain Mr Latoc was impressed with the progress they had made here, bringing power and light again to a dark world.
The cushioned silence in the small room became awkwardly long.
‘So . . . uh . . . didn’t anyone else you come across have stuff like this?’
Valérie shook his head slowly. He glanced at them both. ‘It is frightening.’
Nathan looked confused. ‘Frightening?’
Valérie shook his head sadly. ‘Do you not see? It is taking us back to what we were before.’
‘Yes! That’s what we—’
‘Before was a very bad time. You know this? Too many of us, all in our big cars, in our big homes. Eight billion people all wanting the new TVs, the new music systems, the new video games. The more things we had the less content we became. You would want that world again?’
Jacob and Nathan nodded.
‘You want to live in a big city, full of noises and lights?’
‘Yeah, ‘course,’ replied Nathan.
The man shook his head with incredulity. Both Nathan and Jacob stared at him, bemused.
‘I believe the world was sick then,’ he continued. ‘And people were sick with a disease of the soul. You understand me?’
Neither boy did. Not really.
‘Most people were not really happy. Most people were sick in their heart, unhappy with their lives. We all lived our isolated lives in our little homes and saw the world beyond through a tiny . . . digital window. People did not talk to each other. Instead they typed messages to complete strangers on the internet. The more things we had the unhappier we become because there was always people on the TV who had very much more.’
Valérie shook his head and smiled sadly. ‘You do not see how much better your life is now, do you?’
Jacob, Nathan and Hannah continued to stare at him in bewildered silence.
‘I think your mother understands this. It is not things - and all the electricity that makes those things work - that makes a good life. They are just things; distractions, you know? Shiny little amusements made to look so wonderful and fun and the answer to your unhappiness. But you get the shiny things home, you unwrap them, you hold them in your hand . . . and they are just shiny things, that is all. They mean nothing.’
Valérie looked at the generator. ‘You know what it is that really destroyed the old world?’
They shrugged.
‘It was greed.’
Nathan and Jacob glanced at each other.
‘You know children killed each other for things like training shoes? Or mobile phones?’ Valérie continued. ‘The time just before the crash was mankind at his most evil. There were wars for oil, wars for gas. People killed for things, for power. Killed for oil. It was a world filled with jealousy for all the things we would see others have on the TV. A world of greed. Anger. Hate.’
He ran a hand through his dark hair, pushing it out of his eyes. ‘All the bright shiny lights and the noises . . . video games, the TV, the internet, the music, the shopping, the arcades . . . these things were made by the governments to distract us; to keep our minds full and busy.’
Hannah leant into the room, her feet still obediently out in the passageway. ‘Why . . . why did the guvvy-ments want us to have busy minds?’
Valérie turned to Hannah. ‘So we did not realise how unhappy we all were.’
They stood still and silent.
Valérie clicked his tongue then rapped his knuckles on the generator’s iron casing. ‘Maybe machines like this are the first step back to bad, bad times, eh?’
The three of them stared at him, bemused by the comment.
‘I wonder,’ said Valérie, ‘do you ever think that this planet would be better off without people on it? Do you ever wonder if the oil crash happened for a reason? Just like the asteroid that finished off the dinosaurs because their time was done. Maybe it was our time.’
The words hung in the air, echoing off the hard rusting metal walls.
‘Uh . . . okay,’ said Nathan quietly. He pointed towards the doorway. ‘So . . . that was the generator room, anyway. Would you like to go see the tomato deck?’
He led the way out, stepping past Hannah. Valérie followed, and Jacob emerged in his wake.
‘You coming, Han?’
She looked up at him, her face ashen. ‘Is Mr Latoc right? Will the jenny-rater make everyone unhappy again?’
Jacob sighed. ‘No . . . he’s just, I dunno, exaggerating a bit. Ask Leona, she’ll tell you we weren’t all miserable.’
‘Mum always says it was better then.’
‘There you go.’
Jacob followed after Nathan and Valérie, whilst Hannah looked back once more at the dark generator room, listening to the sound of gurgling and bubbling, echoing along the feedpipes like the stomach of some large and hungry monster.
‘You coming, Han?’
‘Coming,’ she replied.
Chapter 18
10 years AC
‘LeMan 49/25a’ - ClarenCo Gas Rig Complex, North Sea
Hannah watched him eat breakfast. He spooned the porridge into his mouth and smiled courteously at those who were speaking to him across the table. He said little himself. His eyes drank in the details around him, but his mind seemed elsewhere, far away.
As was Hannah’s.
Mr Latoc troubled her. What Mr Latoc had said troubled her.
Leona urged her to eat up whilst the porridge was warm, and then continued in conversation with Rebecca, the other woman who taught classes at their school. They were heatedly discussing what sort of subjects they wanted to bring into the classroom. Leona wanted to add some complicated things like science and technology; stuff to do with machines. Rebecca, on the other hand, wanted to add more ‘farmy’ things.
She ate in silence and continued to watch Mr Latoc smiling politely at all the right times, even laughing occasionally, but just not there.
Elsewhere.
Finally, he finished his porridge and excused himself, standing up from the long table as he fiddled clumsily with his crutch and began to limp across the floor. Arnold Brown, old as the hills, offered him a steadying hand and offered to take his dirty bowl to the canteen counter for him. Mr Latoc smiled and thanked him, then shuffled towards the door of the canteen. It opened and the ladies coming in for the second breakfast sitting stepped aside and allowed him through on to the gantry outside.
Hannah hurried to finish her breakfast with three well-laden spoons, piling in one after the other until her cheeks bulged like a hamster. She almost gagged on it. She wasn’t hungry. In fact, something was gnawing away at her tummy, making her feel sick. But Leona certainly wouldn’t let her step away from the table with anything less than a scraped-clean bowl.
She stood up.
Leona stopped talking and glanced at the bowl. ‘That was quick.’
Hannah nodded and smiled as she worked the porridge down.
‘You all right there, honey?’
‘Yes,’ she managed finally. ‘Want to go play for a bit before school.’
‘Okay, but class starts in half an hour.’
Hannah nodded.
‘And only inside or on the tom
ato deck. The wind’s up today.’
‘Okay,’ she replied, scooping up her bowl from the table.
She walked over and placed it on the washing-up counter, then hurriedly stepped out through the canteen door onto the gantry. The wind tossed her blonde hair in all directions, stinging her cheeks with one or two spits of rain.
She saw him standing at the far corner, leaning on the safety rail and looking down on the decks below. Right now it was a hive of activity as people emerged from all corners to head up to the canteen for breakfast or in different directions for their morning chores.
She approached him warily, the wind teasing his long dark hair as well. The rumple of wind covered the soft clank of her sandals on the metal grating. She was standing right beside him before he seemed to notice and turn his gaze from the decks below towards her.
‘Oh,’ he said, ‘hello, Hannah, I did not see you there.’
Hannah didn’t do ‘good mornings’, ‘how are you doing today’, ‘it’s blowing lively this morning, isn’t it.’ Those were the kind of boring openers she let adults waste their time on. She had something far more pressing to deal with; something she’d been stewing on all night.
‘Is Walter’s jenny-rater really a very bad thing?’
He seemed taken aback by so direct a comment out of the blue. But after a moment, seemingly recalling his tour from yesterday, he nodded slowly. He lowered himself down, squatting so that his face was more on a level with hers, grimacing with pain as he did so.
‘How much do you know about the times before?’
Her eyes rolled up to the sky as she attempted to retrieve some of the many potted descriptions she’d been fed over the years. ‘Leona said those were fun times. But Nanna says things weren’t so good. That most people pretended to be happy, but weren’t.’
‘Your grandmother is right. Even I did not see this back then. I pretended to be happy like everyone else. We had our cars, our gadgets, our internet, our shopping malls. And the nights glowed with neon signs, telling us to buy even more things, to wear more things, to eat more things. But I am sure now few of us were happy.’