“Come on,” Thorne said, putting a hand on his shoulder, “let’s get started.” They turned to the cargo containers, left by the helicopter. They were sitting a few yards away, in the tall grass.
“Can I help?” Malcolm said, a few yards away.
“If you don’t mind, no,” Eddie said. “We’d better unpack these ourselves.”
They spent half an hour unbolting the rear panels, lowering them to the ground, and entering the containers. After that, they took only a few minutes to release the vehicles. Eddie got behind the wheel of the Explorer and flicked on the ignition. There was hardly any sound, just a soft whirr of the vacuum pump starting up. Thorne said, “How’s your charge?”
“Full,” Eddie said.
“Batteries okay?”
“Yeah. Seem fine.”
Eddie was relieved. He had supervised the conversion of these vehicles to electric power, but it was a rush job, and they hadn’t had time to test them thoroughly afterward. And though it was true that electric cars employed less complex technology than the internal-combustion engine-that chugging relic of the nineteenth century – Eddie knew that taking untested equipment into the field was always risky.
Especially when that equipment also used the latest technology. That fact troubled Eddie more than he was willing to admit. Like most born mechanics, he was deeply conservative. He liked things to work – work, no matter what – and to him that meant using established, proven technology. Unfortunately, he had been voted down this time.
Eddie had two particular areas of concern. One was the black photovoltaic panels, with their rows of octagonal silicon wafers, mounted on the roof and hood of the vehicles. These panels were efficient, and much less fragile than the old photovoltaics. Eddie had mounted them with special vibration-damping units of his own design. But the fact remained, if the panels were injured in any way, they would no longer be able to charge the vehicles, or run the electronics. All their systems would stop dead.
His other concern was the batteries themselves. Thorne had selected the new lithium-ion batteries from Nissan, which were extremely efficient on a weight basis. But they were still experimental, which to Eddie was just a polite word for “unreliable.”
Eddie had argued for backups; he had argued for a little gasoline generator, just in case; he had argued for lots of things. And he had always been voted down. Under the circumstances, Eddie did the only sensible thing: he built in a few extras, and didn’t tell anybody about it.
He was pretty sure Thorne knew he had done that. But Thorne never said anything. And Eddie never brought it up. But now that he was here, on this island in the middle of nowhere, he was glad he had. Because the fact was, you never knew.
Thorne watched as Eddie backed the Explorer out of the container, and into the high grass. Eddie left the car in the middle of the clearing, where the sunlight would strike the panels and top up the charge.
Thorne got behind the wheel of the first trailer, and backed it out. It was odd to drive a vehicle which was so quiet; the loudest sound was the tires on the metal container. And once it was on the grass, there was hardly any sound at all. Thorne climbed out, and linked up the two trailers, locking them together with the flexible steel accordion connector.
Finally, he turned to the motorcycle. It, too, was electric; Thorne rolled it to the rear of the Explorer, lifted it onto brackets, hooked the power cord into the same system that ran the vehicle, and recharged the battery. He stepped back. “That does it.”
In the hot, quiet clearing, Eddie stared toward the high circular rim of the crater, rising in the distance above the dense jungle. The bare rock shimmered in the morning heat, the walls forbidding and harsh. He had a sense of desolation, of entrapment. “Why would anyone ever come here?” he said.
Malcolm, leaning on his cane, smiled. “To get away from it all, Eddie. Don’t you ever want to get away from it all?”
“Not if I can help it,” Eddie said. “Me, I always like a Pizza Hut nearby, you know what I mean?”