energy. This is what she did, this is who she was, and this would make her life meaningful.
She’d come here to fix things and leave some kind of mark. Nicolai Vladik was an egotistical chimpanzee if he thought he could stand in the way of that.
“The numbers just don’t match up with your recommendations,” she announced, pulling a dog-eared stack of pages out of the file folder she’d been carrying around. “Look, I’ve charted them all the way back to our start-up here and, to be honest, the variance is well within usual tolerances.”
“You’ve not charted the spikes, though, have you?” he asked.
“Spikes?”
“They occur randomly, and our instrumentation has found it difficult to adequately record them.”
“Our instrumentation is state of the art.”
“Then you should be able to chart the spikes.”
“What spikes? How can I chart something that my reports tell me isn’t happening?”
“They are happening. All the time.”
“Based on what? A few unsupported readings from a few malfunctioning sensors?”
“They aren’t malfunctioning,” he said. “I’ve been trying to tell everyone. The readings are inconsistent because the mountain is unstable.”
“The mountain could be sitting on top of the most powerful cache of geothermal energy ever located to date,” she insisted. “You think our company should just walk away because of some inconsistencies? I’m not leaving until I know for certain the mountain is unstable.”
“If you want to know if this mountain is unstable—and I assure you that it is—you need to stop looking at reports.”
“What, and just take your word for things?”
“No. Take the mountain’s word for things.”‘
Oh good God. He was one of those people? How could she not have picked up on that? Every jobsite seemed to have one of them, some closeted new-age earth lover claiming Mother Nature spoke to him and begging them all to form a drum circle, or whatever. She’d never in a million years pegged Nic to be that guy, though.
“So the mountain talks to you, does it?” she asked.
He frowned at her. “You believe mountains speak, Ms. McGowan? Well, I suppose that makes as much sense as relying on a bunch of outdated, irrelevant data to tell you what’s going on out there.”
“You have a better way to gather reliable information?”
“Yeah, I do. I study the mountain—the whole mountain.”
“And what exactly does that mean?”
“It means I don’t sit here with charts and lopsided numbers. I’ve gone out there.”
“You went out there, onto the mountain?”
“Yes.”
“But we don’t have permits for that.”
“I know.”
“Damn it, Nic! You mean to tell me you’ve gone out there, onto that so-called unstable mountain with no permit or authorization? That can jeopardize our whole operation here!”
“The mountain is what’s jeopardizing your operation. Your data is incomplete because your view of the mountain is incomplete.”
“Look, we had to pull every string we could get our hands on just to be allowed as much access as we got. Maybe you haven’t noticed, but there’s a huge, untouched glacier rolling along right next to our mountain. It represents years and years of pristine and uninterrupted climate study. We aren’t allowed to go anywhere near it. We can’t touch it or even breathe on it while we’re here. That’s why we set up our jobsite and our instruments way the hell over here on this side of the mountain, and not on the freaking glacier.”
“And that’s why you can’t pick up on the instabilities. I’m telling you, if Geo-Diagnostics gets the okay for more-intrusive exploration in this area, you’re going to regret it.”
“Is that some kind of a threat?”
“No. It’s a statement of fact.”
“Well, my data doesn’t support your so-called fact, Mr. Vladik. Drilling a few holes and installing subterranean sensors won’t cause a dormant volcano to erupt, if that’s what you’re implying.
Wilkie Collins, M. R. James, Charles Dickens and Others