The War of Immensities Read Free Page A

knew that over fifty
people remained in the critical quadrant, most of whom would surely
be dead. Deaths already amounted to thirty on the periphery of the
blast area, and injuries over a hundred.
    Jami Shastri
was found, dazed but unharmed, at the monitoring station two hours
after the eruption. She thrust a satchel containing the print-outs
and data disks into her rescuers’ arms, refused to leave, refused
medical assistance, and demanded her data be taken directly to
Auckland University where it could be analyzed. Her demand proved
impossible for the moment since Auckland was coincidentally
fogbound at the time and all traffic was being directed south. Soon
the white cold fog from the north collided with the black hot fog
sweeping up from the south and a black rain began to fall
constantly on the towns right around the Bay of Plenty to North
Cape.
    In a deep coma
and suffering multiple broken bones, Kevin Wagner arrived at the
emergency medical centre being established in the town of Turangi
on neighbouring Lake Taupo, brought in five hours after the blast
by the men who rescued him from the surging river that had once
been a trickling stream. Theirs had been a terrifying journey
through a smoke-filled night on treacherous roads. The flood waters
from the rising river had forced them to divert and they found the
road broken by landslides and fallen trees. Along the way, they had
picked up four other casualties as they forced their way through a
chaotic and unfamiliar landscape.
    Wagner’s
condition was critical but stable, and he was soon dispatched by
helicopter to Wellington which, lying south-west of the thermal
zone, escaped all of the worst effects of both the meteorological
white fog and the volcanic black one.
    By morning, the
ash pall that veiled the ground from the air began to dissipate and
fall to earth. The rescue helicopters probed deeper into the zone,
searching for survivors. Beneath them now was a world that only
knew the colour grey. All along the plateau between the three
peaks, felled trees lay in sweeping rows like scattered straw,
stripped completely of their leaves and branches. The entire
plateau was a desert of grey mud.
    Wayne Higgins
was flying a Hughes 500 four-seater helicopter that he used to
provide joy-flights for the tourists, but now the seats had been
dragged out. Air Rescue had allocated him a crewman, Jim Rogan, who
squatted in the doorway, the yellow helmet on his head his sole
protection from the downdraft, his visor failing to keep the dust
out of his eyes. As they swept around the steaming slopes of
Ruapehu, Rogan spotted the glimpse of colour far to the left.
    “Over there.
Turn 60 degrees left,” he shouted into the intercom over the
constant crackle of interference.
    The colour was
gold and green metal protruding from the broad pool of ash and as
soon as he saw it, Rogan guessed it was a helicopter. As the
chopper banked in toward it, Rogan could see it was a section of
fuselage, but there was no evidence of rotors or tail as he might
have expected. There was no other wreckage visible that he could
see, the rest was swamped in the grey layer of ash that had settled
upon the snow.
    “It looks
soft,” he said to Wiggins. “Better not land.”
    It had snowed
the night before, and the effect of the layer of hot grey ash on
top of the powder snow was likely to cause all manner of strange
effects. Officially, there had been eleven centimetres of snow and
about five centimetres of ash, but in a drift ravine like this,
there was no telling how deep either might be. The effect of heat
on cold might have melted the surface briefly then refrozen it as
ice creating an illusion of firm footing when in fact you could
slip ten metres below the surface and be lost.
    Rogan hooked
himself to the winch cable as Wiggins brought them in to a point
where he hovered without quite touching the ground. The rotors set
off a blizzard of black snow, blotting out all visibility. Into the
midst of it,