All the Birds in the Sky(67)
“Pipe,” it turned out, referred to the Great Siberian Natural Gas Pipeline. And “Passage” referred to the Great Northern Shipping Passage. They were both the brainchildren of Lamar Tucker (a Texan who had helped pioneer slickwater fracking) in partnership with a Russian conglomerate called Vilkitskiy Shipping. The Russians wanted a new shipping route to replace the Northwest Passage, one that avoided Canada altogether, going through the heart of the Arctic ice. There was just one catch: Their route went straight through a massive deposit of ancient methane clathrate in the Chukchi Sea that had been trapped under the ice for millions of years. Scientists warned that releasing all that methane at once could supercharge the effects of climate change overnight. Hence the pipeline—Tucker believed you could drill down by inches, release the pressure slowly, and trap the still-frozen methane by bonding it with silicates. Then you could pipe the energy-rich methane sludge to a facility in Yakutsk. You’d generate enough electricity to power half of eastern Russia, and maybe sell surplus power to Mongolia, China, or even Japan.
“But it’s going to go wrong, I know it,” said Diantha. “They have no idea what they’re tampering with. They must be stopped.”
“Yes,” said Patricia. “But what are we supposed to do?”
“Do?” said Diantha. “Look around. We are the best students at Eltisley Maze. Between all of us, we have mastered so many skills. Toby, I have seen you unmelt the last snows of spring, and reverse three days’ decay. Sameer, you once tricked a bank manager into giving you five hundred pounds and the power of invisibility. Patricia, I have heard the teachers whisper that you have a connection to nature that even they don’t fully understand. We can do this. The Tree depends on us.”
They set off that very night, with only what they could carry. Diantha insisted: There could be no dallying (and no chance for anybody to have a change of heart and tell the teachers). They all went back to their rooms at Eltisley Hall and stuffed random objects into duffel bags.
“Where are we even going?” Toby said. “I have a practical in two days. At Eltisley, where they expect you to show up.”
“We’re going AWOL,” said Taylor with a very quiet whoop. “No more tests, no more tutorials, no more Math class, no more lectures—and no more puzzles at The Maze—until we finish our mission.”
Patricia stuffed a toothbrush and three pairs of underwear, plus a tattered copy of Tales of the City, into her satchel. She was going on an adventure—she was going to make a difference. She almost danced down the mahogany staircase in the North Residential Wing of Eltisley Hall, except that Sameer kept shushing her. She squirmed with adrenaline as they broke into the magic airship and spoofed their way past the security questions.
“Hell to the yeah,” Patricia said as they spiraled up off the ground. “Let’s do this.” She and Taylor high-fived, and then Patricia and Sameer hugged while Diantha laughed from the cockpit, whose controls were wooden grapevines and figs.
The expedition didn’t feel real until they were over the Arctic and the moonlight had given way to two sheets of sunlight—sky and ice, both painful to behold. Patricia’s joy went sour. She looked out at the vastness below and couldn’t tell one bright streak from another.
“We have to hit them before they know we’re here,” Diantha said from the cockpit. “I hope everybody is prepared for any eventuality.” Patricia, Toby, Sameer, and Taylor all said yes.
“We’re doing the right thing,” Taylor said as they set down. “We’ve studied long enough.”
Patricia was wishing she’d brought another three layers of clothing: She could do a spell to keep herself warm, but it would be a distraction. She wound her scarf around her neck and lower face, as many times as it would go.
“Toby, you’re on transmutation of metals, because you’re our best Healer. If it’s steel, you turn it to tin,” Diantha said as they stepped out of the ship. “Sameer and Taylor, you will confuse and confound any opposition we may encounter. I will attempt to seal any borehole in a spectacularly irreparable fashion. And Patricia? You will bring the full fury of nature down on them. Be creative.”
They all high-fived and set off across the tundra toward the drilling installation, which looked like a lighthouse on the ice, with a single rusty structure on top of a platform, supported by four squat legs connected by the lower half of a pentagram. On one side of the drill was some kind of pumping station with a bulging metal sleeve. On the other side, Patricia saw a huge diesel tank that had probably been airlifted there and a number of snowmobiles and retrofitted trucks. Looking at a massive tank marked “WARNING: HIGHLY FLAMMABLE,” sitting on top of the world’s largest reservoir of methane, Patricia shivered. Her apprehension shaded into terror.
“Guys,” Patricia said. “I think we ought to stop and—”
Someone yelled in Russian, and dogs were barking. Guys wearing parkas and goggles drove toward them in a couple snowmobiles, waving what looked like machine guns. Sameer and Taylor nodded and ran into their path. A moment later, the guards opened fire—but wildly, in random directions, because Sameer had done something to confuse them.
“Watch out!” Patricia shouted. “Don’t make them shoot their own fuel t—” But she couldn’t make herself heard over the gunfire, the engines, the yelling, and the dog pack.