The Mountain and the Flood by Perry Sheila

Author:Perry, Sheila [Perry, Sheila]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2010-12-26T08:00:00+00:00

Chapter 14 The Bureaucrat Strikes Back

After checking the daily news on a very old flexi-screen which no longer lived up to its name, being fixed to a shelf in the kitchen, I had nothing to do except prepare to go back to the Castle to catch another glimpse of Dan.

I had only been allowed in once to see the room he was being kept in: since then, I and the others had had to make do with a distant view from behind a fence during the prisoners’ exercise session in the yard outside the barracks. The number of prisoners didn’t seem to change. I was surprised the activities of the Inland Security Service hadn’t resulted in a huge influx of new inmates. Perhaps the authorities had started to keep trouble-makers elsewhere. Perhaps there were no more dissidents.

As I was leaving the house to catch the tram, I caught sight of Mrs Jones from next-door. She waved to me from the front window. I waved back. She waved again.

Guessing this could go on all day, I turned away deliberately, speeding up a little to show I was in a hurry. I hadn’t realised Mrs Jones was going a bit loopy.

On the tram, I mulled over ideas for getting access to my files from the division. I still felt responsible for tracking the storm system we had noticed the day I had been suspended. I had been about to ask for a seven day projection on the data when the security guards had come in to escort me out. I hoped one of the others had run it and would let me know the results. Then again, we were a risk-averse crowd, partly because of the nature of our work, and I couldn’t predict with any confidence whether any of the others would be careless enough to communicate with me while I was persona non grata.

I got off the tram, crossed the road and took the steep but quicker option of the Playfair Steps instead of going the long winding way at the other side of the National Gallery. I stared up at the presidential mansion above me and wondered if Fergus was even still alive.

There was a vibration somewhere around my left ear. I pressed the buttons quickly.

‘Mrs Hepburn, have you got a minute?’ said the eager young voice of one of my assistants, Paola Visconti. Without waiting, she plunged into her story. ‘You know that storm system in the Azores?’

‘Yes,’ I said cautiously. ‘Have you run the secondary extrapolation?’

‘It’s building up pressure as it moves,’ she said, and paused. I waited. ‘One projected path takes it into the North Sea at the same time as high tide at Leith in five days.’

‘That’s just one option?’

‘Yes. Others have it fizzling out in the Canaries or dissipating in the Bay of Biscay…. But we’re a wee bit concerned as well about something that’s happening off the coast of Newfoundland.’

‘What do you mean, a wee bit concerned?’

‘There’s a twenty per cent chance that

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