10 - Captain Lincoln

Scharf’s presence gave us exactly the boost we needed. Until then, Magath had been in dream mode, storytelling mode. I had fallen totally under his spell and had allowed him to rabbit on rather than concentrate on the task in hand. The work he produced while in conversation with me, however incredible I considered it, was no more than a slight approximation of his real capabilities. The instant change brought about by Scharf’s arrival made that clear.

The two of them were an incendiary combination. They argued like cat and dog, like brother and sister, but the mutual awe was undeniable. When separated they would tell me stories of each other’s glorious pasts. When together, I would step away and allow them free rein. I was kept busy enough intercepting and diverting the constant calls on Scharf’s time. My role had been reduced to not much more than that of doorkeeper, but it was a part I played with relish. I had no idea how long I could keep it up, but I would use whatever gumption I had to protect him.

Their progress was staggering. Within two short days they had completed the first plinth and had moved on to the next largest. Regularly they almost came to blows. I noticed, however, that they always stopped short of descent into personal insult. Everything was strictly related to the movement of food through space. I did precisely nothing to intervene.

‘Are you always like this?’ I asked Scharf after one particularly violent disagreement.

‘Like what?’ he replied.

‘Tearing strips off each other. I’m sure you’re aware, but he’s had to leave the Bunker. Can’t you agree on anything?’

‘He’s gone for a swim,’ Scharf said. ‘Mad about the water, Magath. It relaxes his mind. If he doesn’t swim he gets far too highly strung.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Is it that time already? We should get some lunch. Wow. A whole uninterrupted morning. I can’t remember the last time I had one of those.’ I had diverted his phone to a blackhole number. It was a trick Donnie had taught me, and which I knew would come in useful one day. ‘You want to take me down the port? It’s not far from here, is it. You know what’s good down there?’

I was quite an expert on the facilities within the old port complex, and I promised Scharf some good octopus. Alex was mad for it at this time of year, and we spent much time trying it different ways.

‘Shall we wait for Magath to finish his swim?’ I suggested. Scharf grinned weakly.

‘Have you ever seen him eating?’ he asked.

I thought about it and supposed I hadn’t. Even when he was smoking I had never seen him actually put the cigarette into his mouth.

‘And you won’t, either, no matter how long you spend with him. So let’s get going. This afternoon ought to be productive. Don’t want to waste it.’

He preferred his octopus simply marinated and grilled. There was no better way to enjoy it.

‘Are you two old friends, then?’ I asked him.

‘You could say that,’ he nodded and sipped at his wine.

‘From Special Forces?’

‘I was never part of Special Forces, but they knew to come to me if they wanted to do anything that impacted what went on at ground level, which is everything. So I got to know them pretty well. I remember first meeting Magath. O’Hara brought him along to a planning session as soon as he’d been picked up on the moon. You know they found him up there? He’d been working for some bunch of bureaucrats and wanted out, so they kidnapped him, as good as.’ I told him I was aware of the story. He seemed to enjoy recalling it. ‘We could see he was a genius from the start,’ he continued. ‘At around that time O’Hara was trying to implement the first sentinel system. Pretty rudimentary it was, by today’s standards, but it was the precursor to everything that’s in use now. Did basic monitoring of shuttles coming back through the upper levels of the atmosphere, organising traffic flows, making sure they were still functioning properly. It allowed for in-flight repairs or trajectory changes if necessary. Even in those days we lost the odd shuttle, mostly through ignorance. By most standards what he had put together was amazing, but O’Hara wasn’t happy with it at all: it took so much apparatus to bring back and process the required information that it was almost counter-productive. It physically blocked a large chunk of re-entry area, and it cost so much to run that it would have been cheaper to pay the insurance on three completely lost shuttles per month, and the failure rate was nothing like that.

‘I asked him about it at this meeting. It wasn’t really anything to do with me, but I was interested. He explained some of the difficulties. He just couldn’t streamline it like he needed to. There was a trick he was missing, and he knew it. Never seen him so frustrated. Well, you should have seen Magath’s ears prick up. Within a day he had come up with a suite of improvements which made the whole thing totally feasible. It was still recognisable as O’Hara’s baby, just, but Magath cut through all the complexity. He’s got a talent for that. Never did like science fiction.’

‘And how did O’Hara react to that?’ I asked. ‘I’ve only met him once, but I can’t imagine he’d have been that thrilled.’

‘You’re right about that. He thought about stepping away, but in the end it was still his idea. They worked on it together, and it revolutionised space travel. In those days we ruled the galaxy. But it cemented Magath’s reputation, and since then he’s been given the same latitude that O’Hara has always demanded. He has total freedom now: no soldiers under his command; his only responsibilities are holding forth whenever people ask him to, and trying things that nobody else would think of. He’s just like O’Hara that way: won’t do anything twice. In other ways he’s completely different. He’s a much nicer chap, of course, and more likely to look you in the eye, despite everything. A better swimmer, too.’

‘Was he born blind?’ I asked.

‘Maybe. Difficult to be sure, isn’t it? All I know is that he doesn’t treat it as a disadvantage in any sense. I suppose it might just be a factor in his genius. Sometimes I try and imagine what’s going on inside his head. He translates the sounds of talk and chalk into three-dimensional models on the fly. It’s like his whole body is a production line, with his hands as the final output gate. Nobody has ever met anybody like him.’

I agreed. My octopus had been prepared in a tempura batter and I wiped my fingers painstakingly at the thought of the incomparable models gracing the plinths of The Bunker.

The afternoon proceeded mostly as expected. Magath was in place by the time we returned, fully dressed and ready to start. The pair of them were running through potential scenarios whereby rival shuttles might breach the timelock tunnel at various points along its course rather than having to meet its strict entry criteria. The developers of the timelock had assured us that such sabotage was impossible, especially considering the additional protection the superchilled hard crust gave, but we wanted to explore for ourselves. If rogue shuttles could be introduced, the whole fabric of the model was compromised: contaminated produce could bring about a national sickness epidemic; our own shuttles could even be forced out of the tunnel and redirected elsewhere. Both scenarios were close to doomsday in their potential.

Scharf, playing the role of would-be intruder, asked questions of Magath in an attempt to elicit information necessary for him to effect his illegal ingress. Magath gave replies, making sure to only pass the information to whomever legitimately required it. The whole scene resembled a giant game of mental chess where only one side had a king, and where the attack never let up. There were also no rules. The temperature rose steadily, accusations of cheating became common, and were only resolved by physical recourse to the growing model on the second plinth.

Honours were broadly shared, I guessed. Scharf would attempt to tie Magath in knots, a pointless undertaking for anybody of lesser experience and intelligence, and every now and then he would succeed in screwing a vital piece of security information, fairly or unfairly, from the defender, which he would use to drill a virtual hole in the side of the supposedly invulnerable timelock. When this happened, the model was updated to address that weakness. Several times they invited me to join them, but I was happier, not to mention fully occupied, keeping track of progress as well as I could, flitting from board to board with my chalk.

I was scribbling manically, picking out the relevant points within one of their louder disagreements, when distracted by a familiar sensation. It was a scent. I wheeled around. Of course. Captain Small was standing close by me, watching and listening with a smile on her face. It seemed like days since I had seen her.

‘Captain Small! This is unexpected,’ I said loudly, so that Scharf and Magath would hear. They appeared oblivious and carried on. Small looked different somehow. She carried a couple of large towels, the same blue as her uniform, under one arm, but it wasn’t that. I turned to face her properly, and I noticed it. Next to her was another woman. I might have been unsurprised to find Corporal Farbrace there, but this was unexpected. She wore an identical uniform to Small, except that the skirt was noticeably shorter. Her blonde hair was close-cropped, like a man’s, and her neck was as alluring as her legs. She stared straight at me and her clear eyes made me self-conscious.

‘This is Captain Louise Lincoln,’ Small explained. I shook her hand, although I said nothing. She turned slightly, to watch Magath and Scharf at work. They were both talking as loudly as they could.

‘So, this is my team, is it?’ she chuckled. ‘Should be a doddle!’

I looked at Small. She chuckled herself.

‘You haven’t been told?’ Captain Lincoln asked me. I shook my head. ‘I’ve been assigned by Colonel Watson direct. I’m new on his team. He wants me to lead this initiative. You boys need to be given some slack to come up with your designs. You concentrate on what you’re good at. I’ll do all the other stuff. I see you’re already getting into the spirit of things.’ I looked past her at the other two. Scharf had located a bucket of wingnuts and was launching a distributed denial of service attack using an ingenious array of rotary launching mechanisms which needed little manual intervention. While his opponent fended them off, he tried to physically compromise the timelock with a hand drill. Magath kicked out wildly at him, catching his jaw once or twice with fearsome cracking sounds.

‘I’ve been well briefed by Terry and Caroline,’ Captain Lincoln continued.

‘Caroline?’ I muttered. I wasn’t paying full attention.

‘Captain Small,’ she laughed and nodded at Small.

‘Oh, of course. Sorry,’ my cheeks coloured. The whole situation was vaguely embarrassing, but I had made it a rule to never interrupt the creative process, no matter how it degenerated. I attempted to divert her attention from the brouhaha behind. ‘So how should we kick things off? I’ll be guided by you. What do you need?’

‘Why not take me through what goes on in here? It looks fascinating,’ she suggested. I was worried it would be something like that.

‘No problem. Um, what do you already know? What’s your background?’

‘I know what the root of the problem is,’ she started, ‘and I know how little time we have. I also know the importance of you lot down here. My job is to make sure nothing gets in your way. I can’t offer much more than that in practical terms. Until a few weeks ago I worked in the textile industry. I did a bit of designing when I was younger, but moved into marketing. Only the real hardcore creative types stay in design – the rewards aren’t great unless you love the work. But then Caroline headhunted me and here I am. I’m only really an acting Captain. A year of evening courses until I’m properly commissioned.’ She grimaced at the thought.

‘Well, those two over there are Sergeants Scharf and Magath,’ I told her. ‘They’re the real brains behind this operation.’ I winced slightly as I uttered the words. Magath had successfully set up deflector shields to deal with the wingnuts but, while he disposed of the drill, Scharf was gently turning the dial on the timelock, stretching it further and further and expanding the time inside it to a funereal crawl. Much more of that and the whole model would have been destroyed. He relented and proclaimed his victory loudly. They set to work, together, reconfiguring the entire tableau from scratch.

‘I know of both,’ Lincoln said. ‘It’s impossible not to be aware of Sergeant Magath. Anybody who has regularly travelled into space must have been touched by his influence. And I heard of Scharf from Major Thompson. Something to do with an automated lubrication system for the robotic arms in the warehouses.’ I had heard the same story, from Magath, among many other tales of disarming common sense and vision. ‘What is it they’re building now?’ she asked.

I interrupted the squabbling Sergeants. They greeted her affably and went to some pains to explain the details of what they were currently piecing together. Magath took her through the exact alignment of the deflector shields, and the complex configuration which allowed the spread of entry portal to the timelock to be kept to an absolute minimum. He showed her how the shuttles had been manufactured exactly to scale and how they floated down the concertina tunnel to touch down on the cardboard runway. Scharf explained how the properties of everyday cardboard had inspired the latest advances in asphalt technology, making it a perfect material for such a mock-up. We left the models and I took her around the chalkboards while the men carried on, highlighting which sets of calculations pertained to which particular parts of the solution. By this time we had filled almost the whole circle of boards. I felt a surge of pride as I literally walked her through our efforts. Captain Small looked on me as if I were a gifted child. Captain Lincoln seemed impressed and I wanted to marry her.

‘Where we’re really struggling,’ I told her as we came to the end of the boards, ‘is testing. You can see the guys are running through scenarios in here, and the scaling of the models is scarily accurate, but it’s not enough. It’s the best we can do, but it’s nowhere near enough.’

‘How come? What are the shortcomings?’ she asked.

‘The biggest problem we have is that we don’t have a good idea of how big we need to make all of this,’ I explained. ‘We know what needs to go where, but we don’t know how much of it. We’re making educated estimates currently, but it’s no more than glorified guessing.’

‘It’s true,’ Scharf piped up. ‘This is all brand new. At least this scale of deployment. For example, nobody has attempted to use a superchiller on anything even a quarter of this size before. We need to thoroughly test it. If you really want to make a difference you could see what you can do there.’

‘I thought,’ she looked at Captain Small as she spoke, ‘that we already had an initiative in place, using exactly the same technology. Why can’t we do what they’re doing? Why can’t we use their test zone?’

‘You’re talking about the Project Van Diemen, I presume?’ Magath said.

‘I can’t remember its name,’ Lincoln replied. ‘It covered a few different areas: holiday transport, waste disposal, that sort of thing.’

‘That’s the one,’ he confirmed.

‘So, why can’t we use their testing zone?’ she repeated.

‘They don’t have one,’ Magath said.

‘What do you mean?’ Lincoln sounded surprised. ‘They’ve been at an advanced stage for months now, I was told. They’re almost ready to start deploying. They must have something.’

‘What they have,’ he spread a long arm around the models on the plinths, ‘is no more advanced than what you see here. In fact, I would go so far as to say that Sergeant Scharf and I have travelled considerably further down the realistic testing road than Project Van Diemen. I have been involved, in some capacity, since they started. They would have built a fully-equipped testing zone if they had thought it possible within their timescales. However, the simple fact of the matter is that they know this solution will function to their requirements. They have guarantees from the manufacturers.’

Captain Lincoln looked aghast. ‘They haven’t tested it at all?’

Magath confirmed.

‘Well,’ she started, slowly, thinking. ‘Can we not get our own guarantees from the manufacturers? It’s the same people, I presume?’

‘It is, but there’s no way they would give us the same sign-off. Simply because of the scale. Van Diemen’s volumes are a tiny fraction of ours. If there’s a full-sized test zone to put together, it’s going to be provided by us. Of course, Van Diemen would be a very interested party in that, and we’d want to build in their requirements.

‘We already know mostly how the test zone needs to look: Sergeant Scharf here has drawn out the ground-based portion on many occasions for many interested parties. But we haven’t managed to get anything built yet. His best efforts have all met with stonewalling. It might make sense to see if O’Hara can do something to help. What do you say, Sergeant?’

‘He might be able to move boulders I’ve not,’ Scharf agreed. ‘I’m kind of running out of ideas.’

‘This is RSM O’Hara, once of Special Forces?’ Lincoln asked, and wrote his name. It was the first and only note she took during the conversation. ‘Colonel Watson told me about him. He sounds terribly exciting.’

Neither Magath nor Scharf responded. Small tapped Lincoln gently on the arm. ‘I can probably help organise something with RSM O’Hara,’ she said. ‘If I don’t get anywhere, we can raise it with Colonel Watson and he’ll make sure we get what we need. Don’t worry.’

‘Fine. Well, there’s something useful I can be getting on with. I think it’s been a promising start,’ Lincoln smiled at everyone. ‘Shall we?’ she added, looking at Small and standing.

‘Haven’t you forgotten something?’ Small jerked her eyes towards The Bunker’s entrance.

‘Oh my God!’ Lincoln exclaimed. ‘He’s been out there all this time! Lieutenant Mortenson, you can come in now!’

A man poked his head around the rock. He took in the scene quickly, then skipped into the room. ‘This is Lieutenant Mortenson,’ she told us. He greeted each of us separately. He was short and stocky, and had a very similar hairstyle to Lincoln herself, except his covered most of his face too. His shirt was undone almost to his waist. A tooth of some description hung from a leather thong around his neck and scratched the skin of his solar plexus. ‘He’s just joined Colonel Watson’s team also. A specialist from Security Services.’

‘That’s right,’ Mortenson chipped in. His voice was high and excitable. ‘Five years in counter-espionage until Colonel Watson rescued me and showed me some new horizons! Pleased to meet you all. Desperate to get started. Everything looks great. I was listening in while you were showing Captain Lincoln around. A few things I can help with straight away.’

Nobody said anything. Magath smiled to himself. Scharf looked at Small. Both the female officers were looking at Mortenson, whose attention was flitting from face to face, trying to find a home. In the end he turned to the women and said: ‘Is it that time?’ They looked at each other and nodded.

Mortenson removed his shirt, then sat down to take off his shoes and socks. He dropped his trousers. He wore khaki swimming trunks. The women were doing the same. Both removed and folded their uniforms carefully, revealing matching red bikinis. Gold Captain’s stripes ran around both halves of both costumes.

‘Come on mate,’ Scharf said to Magath. ‘If you can’t beat ‘em…’ And they stripped off and followed Lincoln and Mortenson into the warm water.

I was left alone with Captain Small. Up to then, I hadn’t paid much attention to her as a female human being, but it was impossible not to now. Her figure and her skin lost nothing in comparison with that of Lincoln, who could easily, if she stood still long enough, have been mistaken for a marble statue of a Greek goddess. I didn’t know where to look. She sat next to me on the cold stone.

‘Are you going to join us? The team needs to bond, and you’re a part of that team, you know?’ Her hand lay very close to my leg. I didn’t dare move one way or the other.

‘I know,’ I croaked. ‘It’s a great thing. We seem to have a real team now. A real chance. I just need to finish off a few bits in here, then I’ll come in, I promise.’ We could hear Mortenson’s breathless voice clamouring for attention, and behind it Lincoln’s laughter.

‘Caroline!’ she shouted. ‘I need help!’

Small got up. ‘See you in a few minutes, then,’ she winked at me. ‘Coming!’ she shouted and trotted out of The Bunker. Seconds later I heard a perfectly formed splash that seemed to suck water in rather than send it outwards.

I sat and surveyed the scene they had left. The second plinth was almost totally rebuilt after Scharf’s and Magath’s fight. It looked more complete than ever. The chalkboards mocked me with their naiveté. Was such amateurish mathematics really sufficient for a project of this magnitude? It was the best I was capable of. Five sets of clothes lay in various configurations around our working area. The animal energy vibrating around the neighbouring chamber exacerbated the lingering silence around me. I still carried Small’s scent in my nostrils.

Our team had grown by two, and both were vital roles. Six weeks suddenly seemed much longer than I had ever expected it to. Everything felt possible. So why was despair digging such a hole in my core?