Ness by Robert Macfarlane

Ness by Robert Macfarlane

Author:Robert Macfarlane
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780241396575
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2019-09-04T16:00:00+00:00


In the Green Chapel

III

‘Can you hear something?’ asks The Ornithologist of no one in particular.

The Armourer says:

Let the catechism commence. Who holds the Strike Enable Facility keys for the operational round?

‘I do,’ says The Engineer, holding up a pair of white plastic plugs and a cylindrical barrel key, tagged with a blue disc on which is marked by hand the number 75215.

The Armourer says:

Do we intend to detonate in shallow coastal waters in depths up to but not exceeding forty metres, or do we intend to detonate in deep oceanic waters at depths below forty metres?

Chorally they reply: ‘In shallow coastal waters.’

The Armourer says:

Then we must regretfully restrict ourselves to the 0.5-kilotonne yield.

And have we in all ways, to the best of our specialisms and to the full extent of our expertise, given the dynamism of the situation, optimized both yield and kill probability?

Chorally: ‘We have.’

Then let us begin the detonation sequence. First we will arm the round.

The Engineer steps eagerly forwards, uses one of the white plastic plugs to open the arming panel, and then – peering through his changed eyes – fits the barrel key and turns it clockwise by 180 degrees. He seems surprised and a little disappointed by the ease of this action. The Armourer looks pleased.

The Armourer says:

Let us sing ‘The Firing Song’.

They begin to sing again, but the words do not take form in air entirely as they have been intended:

‘Oh happy band of pilgrims, drift upward to the skies

Where such a murmuration shall win so great a prize!

Song of the bomb, the drifting song, the firing song.

Shingle shelters bunker, bunker shelters blast,

Dark drifts down, night flies fast.

Song of the wren, the devil-bird’s song, the firing song.

This half-life landscape fading to grey.

The king’s in his cradle, the bomb’s in its bay.’

The Physicist looks up into the vaultings of the Green Chapel. In the green light that is now both without and within his body – but that does not seem to pass through his skin or any other surface, rather to exist in separate domains on either side of a horizon, as if coming from two distinct sources – there are quick sharp shadows flickering faster and faster, on banking turns and orbits, shadows that are scythe-like and that, as he watches, cut towards him through the greenness and then pass into his body as if the greenness has somehow given them free entry or made him translucent, and he watches these shadows move within and through him at dazzling speeds, painless and graceful.



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