The Rain Circle by Tony Clancy

Author:Tony Clancy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: BookBaby
Published: 2019-12-26T00:00:00+00:00

12

Ceduna 31st August 2036

Friday nights at the hotel are happy and loud in the coastal town of Ceduna when live music complements such dinner specials as half price schnitzels. Tonight it is a little busier than usual and additional tables have to be set up for a group of about 30 men and women. The extras don’t say much and don’t stay on after eating, unaffected by an appeal from the band’s lead guitarist that they can’t walk out now. They shouldn’t believe all the reviews they read, the musician jokes, imploring those leaving the venue to give the band one more chance.

In a warehouse in the light industrial area on the edge of town, Kris Pavic and fellow fishermen Ryan Crawford and Tony Jonas have set up rows of plastic chairs for the visitors who are now filing in. Looking them up and down, Kris is not sure all of them are physically fit enough for the job in hand. He doesn’t want anyone getting the bends, falling foul of a preying great white shark or drowning through inattentiveness and exhaustion. What these men and women have in common is diving experience. Many are abalone divers known to Kris. Some are recreational divers, recruited from around South Australia, who think they are here to help construct an artificial reef. Chatter through the rows of seats ceases as three men and three women walk in and take seats facing the audience. From a lectern Kris announces the presence of Helga Steinert and John Modlinski who are engineers, as well as professional divers Petra Jenke, Conrad Medhurst, Marco Altmann and Molly Sydenham.

‘This is not the first visit to Ceduna for our six overseas visitors,’ Kris announces. ‘And this is not about building an artificial reef as some of you have been led to believe. It is about building a platform for a rainmaking experiment.’

He refrains from swearing people to secrecy for fear of prompting leaks. Instead he makes everything appear normal and well-planned.

‘If you look behind you there is a stack of long metal poles and clamps for fitting them together to make a sort of lattice,’ he says. ‘Your job will be to connect things together under the supervision of Petra’s team. Later she’ll demonstrate how you must click everything together. And the engineers Helga and John will explain how hoses and vents are threaded through and connected to the horizontal and vertical lines. Last time, when we undertook a very small scale test off Ceduna, this lot did it all on their own in a day. The base was less than a square kilometre, however, so they didn’t have to work that hard! This time the base is 78.5 square kilometres, filling a circle of 10Km diameter and 31.5Km circumference. That’s why we’ve recruited you all for a week to get the job done, hoping to finish about a week ahead of setting off the rainmaking system.’

It is explained that concrete blocks are already in place and will act as markers and anchors.

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