Loss of Separation

Loss of Separation

Conrad Williams

Solaris Books

For Rhonda. I burn for you.

First published 2010 by Solaris, an imprint of Rebellion Publishing Ltd, Riverside House, Osney Mead, Oxford, OX2 0ES, UK

www.solarisbooks.com

ISBN: 978-1-84997-245-1 (.mobi/Kindle)

ISBN: 978-1-84997-246-8 (.epub)

Copyright © 2011 Conrad Williams.

The right of the author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owners.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Also by Conrad Williams

Decay Inevitable

One

The Unblemished

London Revenant

The Scalding Rooms

Rain

Head Injuries

Nearly People

Game

Use Once Then Destroy

Part One

Cheyne Stoking

Loss of separation between aircraft occurs whenever specified separation minima are breached. Loss of separation may ultimately result in a mid air collision.

source: www.skybrary.aero

Flight Z

Departure

The dead captain peers through cockpit windows flecked with blood and the fear-spittle of screams. Vomit, like panic paint. The wipers work at this grue, smearing, turning the control tower into a Grimm's windmill with ghost sails. This monster should not be able to fly.

- Roan ground from Flight Z on stand Lima Three-Zero requesting start-up clearance.

- Flight Z is cleared to Tamara Airport. Your initial routeing is Dunwich One-Niner. Cleared to line-up and hold on runway One-Niner Left.

-
What are you doing? We can't just leave him like this. We have to...

Engulfed by black carbon, two giant passenger jets have become fused together in an unimaginably violent collision. The shark's head of a Jumbo jet seems to erupt from the mangled wreckage of a Boeing 777, like something struggling for air. One massive wing hangs from this convolvulus of aluminium, dragging and sparking on the apron as the molten shreds of the landing gear carry the jets along the taxiway. Its blistered engines - nacelles flayed open to reveal the weird anatomy of these powerhouses - stutter with flame, drizzling aviation fuel across the tarmac. Humours haze the black hulk, rendering its shape uncertain. Fractures in the fuselages are bonded shut by human glue.

The aircraft is the pilot; the pilot is the aircraft. The captain feels the jet a part of himself, as all pilots do. Must. He might look down and see his body blend sinuously with the seat, a molecular marriage of biology and mechanics. The blasted airstrip: pockmarked and strewn with skulls and naked, wrenched corpses bearing astonished expressions. He aligns the jet with the runway, and the engines clear their throats. He plays the throttles against the brakes and feels the tonnage pulling against them. The aircraft wants to be back up there, screaming in the night.

- Flight Z, this is Roan ground, you are cleared for take-off. Wind two five zero at fifteen.

Setting power. Brakes off.

We have to what?

We have to finish him off.

Gathering pace, Flight Z grinds over the runway. Skulls and ribcages pulverise beneath the massive wheels; clouds of bone dust rise in their wake.

Eighty knots... one hundred fifty one knots...

Vee-One...

... one hundred fifty eight knots

... Rotate...

He's dead. Look at him. He's dying. Leave him.

Engines screaming, the nose lifts and Flight Z arches into the night, wings flung out like something in the act of capitulation.

... Vee-Two... Positive rate of climb...

... Gear up...

We can't leave him. What if someone comes? What if he wakes up?

The bay doors wail open, fighting against the buckle of that previous impact. The howl of wind as drag is increased. Body parts fall away like titbits picked from a tooth. The bogies retract. At 300 feet the crosswind slams into the fuselage and the aircraft turns into it, crabbing against the airstream, inviting turbulence.

I can't do this. I can't do this. I won't do this.

The 777 hangs from the body of the Jumbo like a forgotten stillbirth. This abomination shrinks into the violet night, guided by a heartbeat beacon, otherwise flying blind. No porthole lights. No pre-flight safety announcement. No in-flight entertainment. A troubled, monotonous banshee call rises into the troposphere. And then, after a short while, even that is gone.

Chapter One

The Dead Baby

While I was in a coma, surgeons operated on my spine. Cancellous bone chips were harvested from my iliac crest (they told me later) and placed carefully between the damaged dorsal vertebrae. Wires and glue held these plugs in place. They stabilised the spine with a metal brace to assist the fusing of the damaged spinal column. I was an Airfix kit for four months. At least I didn't know anything about it. The hit-and-run left me with so many broken ribs. It left me with a punctured lung; I almost drowned in my own fluids. Both femurs fractured in three places; the bones of my lower leg had impacted up through the patella in my left knee. I came off the bonnet and my face was the first thing to hit the ground. There are fourteen bones in the face, not counting the teeth, the
ossicula auditus
and Wormian bones. The orbit of my right eye turned into so much calcium dust. When I revived, six months of my life had been pissed through a catheter and my muscles were porridge. They took the bandages off and I found myself wishing that they would just keep unravelling, to a point where I would no longer fill the shape they had suggested. I didn't look at myself; I still haven't, three weeks later. I was no longer capable of crying.

'Where's my girlfriend?' I asked - or tried to ask - the surgeon, while he was prodding my back with a pencil, telling me how extremely lucky I was. My mouth felt alien, as if it had been grafted on to me, courtesy of a donor. Perhaps it had. I felt as if my skin had been removed and then stretched back over me the wrong way around. Nothing fit; nothing felt comfortable. Everything hurt, even the space that I occupied.

I had no idea what an iliac crest was.

There was a gull lying on the beach, trying to move its broken wings, making a pathetic sound among the pebbles. I wondered if it had been attacked by a seal. Surf frothed beneath the bird's throat, turning pink. I might have gone to help, If there was anything I could have done, but I was just as ruined. Out of hospital three weeks and I was determined to celebrate.
Here's to pain
; I raised the miniature bottle of rum and swigged it down. All along the beach, fishermen were switching off the ochre lamps in their tents, thoughts turning to breakfast. Rods were dismantled and stowed in tackle bags, old bait heaved into the sea. Beyond them, the land took over, flat and unyielding, save for the jutting thumb of an abandoned mill stuck on its own in a fallow field.

The idea of nightfishing had horrified me as a child, before I realised what it really was. I used to imagine hooks spiralling into the sky, cast by madmen. Barbs snagging on the velvet, tearing it open, tearing it down. It bothered me that anyone would want to do that, let alone try. Precious little bothered me now. A dying bird on the beach. A metal rod in my spine. Nearly three hundred people on a flight out of Heathrow airport missing death by seventy feet. You begin to learn how to keep a lid on it.

After the fishermen had gone I noticed there was another figure, much further along where the sand gives way to greater fans of shingle, and the dunes with their punk tussock hairstyles rear up between the beach and the caravan park. It was hooded, staring out to sea, stock still. Some time later it moved off in the direction of the harbour and something in the way it moved called to me. It was as if the figure was aping my shuffling gait; but then, it could just have been the unstable shoreline, dotted as it was at this hour with the detritus the surf coughed up.

I returned my attention to the job at hand. I shifted in the shingle and stared at the box for a long time. It was an Umbro shoe box, a new one. Someone with size 9s had bought something coloured LIGHT SILVER/VAPOUR/BLACK GOLD. I patted my jacket pocket for matches.

BURN THIS FOR ME.

I don't spend too much time on the contents. It's too much like prying. But sometimes you can't avoid the objects that tumble out; they contain their own force, a fearful potential. A map of Alaska slashed with black biro. Aeronautical charts (which gave me pause) with their dense codes, vectors and warnings to pilots.
CAUTION: Severe turbulence may occur over rugged terrain. CAUTION: Numerous windmills. CAUTION: Intensive aerobatic practice area.
A letter so old the page is as fragile as an insect's wing. A cat's collar. A photograph of a man in khaki shorts whose ice cream has fallen from its cone. Something grey, excised, rattling in a clear plastic tub. A promise, or a threat, of fidelity.

It takes to the flame every time, first match in. It goes up as if it were created for this moment. I get a few looks from the fishermen as they trudge up the beach to their kippers and their coffee, but some of them keep their eyes averted and in this way I know that I have burned secrets for them.