Tanker

Bill worked in a power plant which was based on a Carnot engine, generating power from heat. The heat came from warm water which the company shipped from West Africa, kept warm on the voyage north. The company had recently started to ship cargo with the water to boost their profits and the first of these tankers with extra cargo had just docked. He watched his control screen, sipping tea from his mug his late wife had given him. A green light showed. Bill stood up and pressed ‘unload’.

——

On board the tanker, Sid filled his trunk and sprayed it on his back. Plop, plop, plop. The water formed large droplets and fell into the tank. He felt the pressure in his trunk build as he drew the next fill. Plop, plop SPLASH. He looked across through the dark, ‘You’re a long way from Africa’ he said.

He was talking to Elda, who dipped her front five toes into the warm water.

‘Aren’t we all?’ She replied. As she paddled at her end of the pool, the surface of the water shifted. A hole in the tank had opened beneath them.

‘We’ve been gone for a long time’ said the somewhat precocious Sid.

‘I think it’s only been two weeks.’ Elda replied.

‘How can you tell when it’s always dark? Feels like one long night’ said Sid.

‘Your stomach growls every three hours here, just like it always has’ replied Elda.

Sid looked at where he remembered his belly was, rough leathery skin, damp in the warm tank. They had found the crates of cargo on the first day, which were full of fruit and vegetables but they’d finished the last of the mangoes yesterday. He was hungry and hoped Elda’s idea would pay off. The pair of them had abandoned their dried-up watering hole back home, and headed for the coast. Elda remembered seeing the glint of solar panels on the Tanker’s deck, not that she knew what they were. They had reminded her of the look in her father’s eye when he knew where to lead the herd, then snuck on board.

From below there was a deep ‘clunk’. They looked at each other, Sid afraid and Elda excited. Elda put her head underwater to listen closer. There was a whirring sound, and she saw an eerie light coming from the hole beneath. She bobbed back up, ‘It’s finally morning’ she said, squinting. ‘I don’t like mornings’ said Sid.

They looked at each other and decided it was time to leave. They paddled toward the edge but the usual place was far above them. They moved to the opposite side but again they were stuck. The water level was dropping and Sid began to panic. Elda turned and saw Sid holding himself in a ball with a face like a scared rabbit. She paddled toward him, and nudged him with her leg. He calmed down. ‘Well at least there’s water here’ said Sid. Two weeks of night with all the water they could want but they were out of food and falling toward their doom. Elda was intrigued as they became one with the vortex, looking up at the ceiling. Where the light shone upward two elephant silhouettes formed in a tapestry-like backdrop, if she ignored the dung. They reached the bottom of the tank, in the midst of a torrent emptying into a wide hole. As they reached it Sid saw Elda also looked like a scared rabbit.

They were flushed into a metal pipe, being pushed downstream in the current, their trunks pointing up out of the water. As they went deeper into the pipe, Sid’s trunk began to bob under the surface, then they were side by side and stuck. It went dark. ‘Well that was a short day’ thought Sid.

——

Back in the power plant, Bill stood at control screen, a sensor detected a blockage. He pressed the ‘halt flow’ button and muttered to himself. He swiped himself out of the building and walked swiftly across a meadow down to the dock. The tanker was a mile offshore, connected to the plants’ heat-exchange generators by a pipe which sagged over the estuary, connecting the outflow to the sea. His steel toe cap boots clumped onto the wooden pontoon, and he wrenched the emergency release lever.

‘Yield will be down’ he said to himself. Shutters fell either sides of the blockage where Sid and Elda took in remaining breaths. The isolated section fell down into the river, and amongst the gushing warm water two baby elephants plopped out. Bill saw them paddling to the shore, his jaw dropped and he rubbed his eyes. This was going to be tricky to explain to his superiors.

He took a deep breath then pushed the button to hoist the pipe back into position. Sid and Elda clambered onto the bank and waddled toward the meadow. Bill heard the pipe click back into position, up in the control room there would be a ‘resume flow’ button to press. He set off back through the meadow, seeing the sun beginning set over the estuary. He passed Sid and Elda chewing through the long grass where the mower didn’t easily reach. Elda was wide-eyed at the new scenery, out in the bay the tanker roof glinted with red-orange light. Sid was chewing grass that was greener than he’d ever tasted before.

Back in the control room, the button pressed, in Bill’s mind he was drafting a report to his boss. He held his mug while the kettle boiled. Something inside him softened as he thought of Sid and Elda in the meadow, ‘I’ll tell them it evaporated’.

Content including story and photo copyright Joe Russell 2016