by Barry Klemm
Wendell continued to face Thyssen’s bowed head, and finally Thyssen did raise his eyes to meet the challenge.
“Tell me it was worth it, Thyssen. Tell me she died for some good reason.”
Thyssen’s tormented face could barely contain its pain, but when he spoke it was level and sure. “She saved more than a million lives. And millions more are in grave danger because she is dead. But she’s given us a chance to save them too.”
Wendell Campbell stepped back a pace. It was his turn to bow his head. But then he extended his hand.
“Don’t blame yourself, Professor,” he said. “She was always sure of what she was doing.”
And they grasped cold hands on that wintry Wellington day, for only an instant, then Wendell turned and walked back to his stricken children.
*
At Auckland airport, they parted company. As they waited in the terminal for their respective flights, they spoke in muted terms of Felicity Campbell. Each of them shed a tear. Each of them hugged the others, even Wagner. Even Thyssen, who looked grey and drawn. Lorna stayed close. Professor Earthshaker was plainly beginning to show the strain.
Thyssen and Lorna would join a flight to Hawaii, where Lorna would remain to do what she could to prepare the islanders for the next event. Thyssen would return to Washington where President Grayson had called an emergency meeting to discuss the crisis.
“It said on the news that they’ve already started the meeting without you, Harley,” Brian informed him unnecessarily.
“There’s nothing I can tell them,” Thyssen said. “They don’t need me any more.”
“But can we trust those bastards. Glen and that NCA freak.”
“Joe is there. He’s in charge of that stuff now. It’s politics from here on, and the less I have to do with it, the better it will be for everyone.”
This they also knew from the media. Joe Solomon had made what might have been the most meteoric rise in the history of American politics—one day an unemployed lawyer facing all manner of charges before a Senate inquiry; the next day they were facing him as he addressed them in the Senate, as the official Project Earthshaker adviser on the logistics and budgeting of the crisis.
Andromeda would return to her pilgrims, and lead them across the Congo.
“I’ve done the recalculation on the assumption that I’m right and the singularity has been deflected from its original course. The original anticipated location of the event after next was the Caribbean but the degree of deflection models out to a point in northern Nigeria, and hopefully you and your gang will be there, Andromeda.”
“We’ll be there, Harley.”
Brian was heading for Melbourne to visit his children, and then fly on to Broome and take over organising the pilgrims from Indonesia, about half of which were now held in a huge camp on the north west Australian coast.
“Are you really just going to hand it all over to them bastards?” Brian still wondered.
“No,” Thyssen smiled. “It’s you people who are really in control now. They can’t do anything without you and they know it. And they don’t have time to consider alternatives.”
Wagner would fly to Israel to try and do what could be done to assist the trapped pilgrims in Iran.
“There’s nothing much we can do in Hawaii,” Thyssen had pointed out.“And not enough time anyway. The hit after will be in Africa and that will be our last best chance.”
“You tell me where and I’ll clear the space,” Wagner grinned.
“You may have a lot of unwanted assistance from the US Army and other such forces.”
“I never fight battles before I come to them, Harley,” Wagner said. “That’s why I always win.”
So they parted for what they knew might well be the last time. They were three less than when they last met—who knew how many fewer they would be if they ever met again. They wished each other good luck and parted.
Lorna sat with Harley all the way to Honolulu, flying backwards through the night into the day before. And with the dawn, Lorna ordered breakfast but Thyssen refused to eat. He looked exhausted even though he had snored loudly all the way.
Then he did an odd thing. He lifted his hand from the arm rest and stared at it in puzzlement for a moment. A sort of ironic smile passed over his lips, he gave a brief snort of amusement and closed his eyes and went back to sleep.
As they began descent, she tried to wake him and could not. His breathing was shallow, his skin grey. She called for help. There was a doctor on the flight who was brought by the flight attendant to make an examination.
“This man is very ill,” he said. “He will need to be hospitalised as soon as we land. Have the paramedics standing by with a defibrillator.”
“It’s a heart attack?” Lorna asked incredulously.
“I think so, yes,” the doctor said. “Does he have a history of heart trouble.”
“Not at all.”
“Well I’m afraid he does now.”
But Lorna knew the truth. Harley’s heart had not weakened—it had been broken by the terrible deaths of three remarkable women.
*
Joe Solomon watched as Glen Palenski made is way on creaking shoes around behind the seated men and women to whisper in the ear of John Cornelius. The sense of revulsion at the sighting of the young man who had betrayed them was quickly dissipated when he saw the look that passed over the NSA man’s face.
Everyone present saw that look and General Marsden, who was droning on about the readiness of the military at the time even faltered and paused.
President Grayson saw it too, and needed only to raise his hand to halt the general completely, and he directed a questioning look at Cornelius, who flinched.
Cornelius sat forward in his armchair, gripping the obviously terrified Palenski by the wrist to keep him in place, and said quietly. “Mr. President, we have just received word that Professor Thyssen will not be joining us. He has suffered a heart attack and is presently under intensive care in Honolulu.”
The words crashed about the room like a thunderclap. Joe felt physical pain in his abdomen and the skin on his face and ears seemed to spontaneously combust. Yet he knew it was coming.
Each time he had seen Thyssen, the man looked older, the stress deepening the lines on his face and turning his skin a frightening grey colour. Lately he seemed to be sweating, almost all the time. And who could doubt the enormous weight he carried upon his shoulders, like Atlas, holding up the entire world and weakening under the strain.
He was what, sixty maybe? No one seemed to know really. He was a big man, fleshy, who abused his health continually. Add to that the massive strain of the situation and the disaster was a certainty. Only a powerful sense of immortality seemed to keep him going.
Logical as that all sounded, Joe tried to imagine a felled Harley, broken and beaten and ill, and the image would not come. Harley was a giant, indestructible, his will prodigious, his manner godlike. For all its inevitability, it was an impossible idea to come to grips with.
It was the second day of the conference and they were gathered in armchairs about the fireplace in the Oval Office. Joe was the only member of the Earthshaker group available and had been pulled in at the last minute when it was discovered Thyssen would be delayed by Felicity’s funeral. When he had entered, President Grayson had looked at Joe and asked. “I take it then that Professor Thyssen will not be honouring us with his presence today either.”
The funeral had been the day before. Thyssen could have been there by then, had he wanted.
“I have no information, sir,” Joe had answered, as he had the day before.
The president walked away, shaking his head and saying. “That man. That man.”
Now Joe saw the same lines of stress in the face of Eugene Grayson, and the eyes forlorn, the lower lip trembling slightly from the shock of the news. “What is the prognosis, John?” he asked quietly.
“Not good. His condition is critical.”
Gray
son gave out a massive sigh, and sat back in his armchair, looking around each of the faces present. “Well, we’ve managed so far without him. But is there any sense in continuing?”
Cornelius leaned forward to tap the lap-top computer on the table before him. “We have all of his data here.”
“Data is data. But who can argue his case?” And he looked directly at Joe.
Joe, who had been rarely called upon to speak, found the effort enormous in these powerful circumstances. “If Harley wanted his case argued, he would be here arguing it.”
“He seems to be in no position to do so, by no choosing of his own,” Grayson said reasonably.
“He went to New Zealand as a personal priority rather than attending these discussions,” Joe persisted.
Do not contradict the president, advisers had warned him. The fierce glare in the eyes of Eugene Grayson emphasised the error—those eyes then dismissed Joe and redirected that gaze upon Cornelius, who spoke with comfortable ease. “I believe, Mr. President, that the absence of Professor Thyssen is intentional, and constitutes a demand that his conclusions be accepted as a fait accompli, without compromise.”
Grayson wobbled his head as he thought about that. “Yes, I think that is a reasonable conclusion. But even if he is right, although we have the data, how are we to interpret it?”
Joe, knowing in part he wished to make amends for his error, now committed the worse sin of interjecting. “It has already been interpreted, by your own people. Isn’t that so, John?”
“But there was error...” Cornelius muttered.
“Which has been explained and can be compensated for,” Joe argued.
“So you say,” Cornelius came back. “Other more reliable and more reputable scientists, with other systems, are now making equally accurate predictions. Several of them predicted the region in Brazil almost as accurately as Thyssen’s system.”
“Almost...”
Grayson’s powerful voice imposed itself over them easily. “Gentlemen, let us not argue. I think it is obvious that we need someone to present Professor Thyssen’s position at these talks. The only question is, who?”
Joe, who had only argumentativeness in him, silence himself with some effort.
But Cornelius, a well trained operator, could speak calmly. “If I may be so bold, sir. We have here Dr Glen Palenski, who was for a long time Thyssen’s best regarded student. I doubt that there is anyone better equipped to express the Professor’s views than he is.”
The look of combined terror and astonishment on Glen Palenski’s face brought smiles all around the room. Plainly, had Cornelius still not gripped his wrist, he would have bolted for the door.
The President’s hooded eyebrows lurched toward Joe. “Your thoughts on this, Mr. Solomon?”
Joe supposed the expression of horror on his own face matched that on Glen’s. “It is true that Dr Palenski is the only surviving member of the Earthshaker team who is a trained scientist,” Joe heard himself say to his own complete amazement.
“But I sold them out !” wild-eyed Glen Palenski blurted frantically.
“Judas,” Joe countered, “was the disciple who loved Christ most.”
Every head in the room was in its hands. Some were hiding mirth, some horror, some embarrassment, but all were hiding something. But, because he was President of the United States of America, Eugene Grayson regathered his wits first. He gazed long and hard at the trembling young man across the room, who might have been handcuffed to John Cornelius, so firmly was he gripped. “Dr Palenski, do you believe that Professor Thyssen is right?”
Glen calmed at the question. It was plainly one that was easy to answer. “Yes, sir. I always did. We differed only on matters of loyalty to the state—never on matters concerning Earthshaker.”
“And are you willing to present his side of the discussion?”
“Yes sir. I sold him out once. It was a big mistake. I won’t do it again.”
“Mr. Palenski, I must ask you to confine your statements to those scientific matters in which you are expert.”
“Yes sir. Professor Thyssen is right. He was always right. And I can prove it.”
“Can you now? Then please, do so.”
“Harley believed that the pilgrims deflected and weakened the singularity. Calculations based on his assumptions place the next event in the Pacific Ocean near Hawaii. No one else could arrive at that conclusion without making his assumptions. Therefore, since there will be no pilgrims in the Zone at that event, if his prediction is correct, then his further conclusions will be beyond doubt.”
Grayson nodded. “Well, I understood about half of that. If Hawaii comes off as he said, then we are committed to following the Thyssen plan. Is that it?”
“Yes sir.”
“John?”
“That’s it in a nutshell. And if Hawaii doesn’t happen…”
“Then we have to come up with an entirely new plan, isn’t that right, John?”
“Yes Mr. President.”
“Mr. Solomon?”
“That’s how I understand it.”
“Mr. Browning? Mr. Walker? General Marsden? Do you have opinions on this specific matter?”
“Not on this specific...”
Grayson again emitted a great sigh. “That man stood in this very office and he argued with me. Me! An eminent scientist and the President of the United States of America, standing toe to toe, hurling insults at each other like two boys in a schoolyard. Can you imagine that? Well, I’m the President and I won that argument as a President should and I have lived to regret that victory. Like Mr. Palenski, I too have no desire to make the same mistake a second time.”
*
Brian Carrick flew from Auckland to Melbourne, and was sitting on a bus stop bench outside the school that his kids attended when the panicky call from Lorna told him the news of Harley’s collapse. He promised to fly immediately back to Hawaii, and almost rushed straight to the airport, but then he knew he had to continue here first.
Somehow, the sudden awareness of Harley Thyssen’s human vulnerability reminded him of his own.
The kids emerged and spied him immediately and made quite a fuss and he took their tiny hands and started to walk, almost from instinct.
“You comin’ home soon daddy?” Leo asked him.
It had only been eighteen months but the boy had doubled in size.
“Soon, maybe. If your mum says its okay.”
“She’s lonely,” Sheila said empathically.
“Doesn’t Uncle Larry look after you anymore?”
“He comes round sometimes, when somethin’ needs fixin’,” Leo said diffidently.
“They usta yell at each other all the time,” Sheila added helpfully.
They were so busy telling him all the gossip from school and the neighbourhood that they hardly noticed they had reached the house. Judy stood there. She seemed younger somehow. It looked like she had done something with her hair.
“Mummy, mummy, look who we found?” Sheila cried excitedly.
“He was hangin’ around outside school,” Leo assured her.
Judy ordered them inside but she stayed.
“You in town long, Brian?” she asked as if she was interested.
“I’m flying out tonight. But I’ll be back,” he said uncertainly. He wasn’t at all sure why he was there. When the divorce proceedings had become hung up due to his continual absence, Judy had allowed it all to slip sideways.
“Why don’t you stay for dinner,” she said. It wasn’t a question.
“That’d be fine.”
And there it was. So simply done. The accomplishment of something that a virtual army of social workers, psychologists, psychiatrists, marriage counsellors, friends, relatives and legal representatives had comprehensively failed to achieve for eighteen months.
Judy had only one question and she asked it as soon as dinner was done and the kids put to bed. “Do you think things can be put back they way they were, Brian?”
“Are you talking about the planet or us?”
“Both really, but...”
“It’s almost over, darl,” he said. “It will go one way or the other. For me, for us and for everyone. Maybe it will be okay—there is a chance I think. But after that, it will never be the same.”
“I was really referring to us.”
“There’s a lot to put behind us.”
“Larry is just a friend,” Judy said determinedly. “I was just trying to make you jealous. You’re the only man I ever loved. I just don’t have the sense to love anyone else.”
“I’ve had my dalliances too. But you’re the only woman I know who can put up with me for more than an hour.”
“Well, that’s settled then. The kids will be thrilled.”
*
The great trek of Andromeda’s legions across the breadth of The Congo Republic was ended, and they stopped at Bususulu, where Thyssen’s instructions ran out. Before them lay the great rivers that must now be crossed, the Maringa at their feet, the Lulonga further on, and a few miles beyond that, the giant of which those were mere tributaries—the Congo.
Here the road petered out in the marshy land surrounding the rivers. All about the terrain was slightly undulating and covered with dense tropical vegetation. The pilgrims were strung out for miles back along the road, which you couldn’t leave at any point. And now there was nowhere to go on to either.
“I’m organising boats,” Captain Maynard said, leaning over the map on the bonnet of his land rover. “But really, we have to fly the next leg.”
“Next leg?” Andromeda asked.
“The focal point is here, just a little way north west of Lake Chad.”
“They said Hawaii…”
“Yeah. We miss that one, but the direction is still okay for us. Slightly north of west.”
“Show me,” Andromeda asked, leaning over his shoulder.
Maynard laid the ruler to the map and positioned it carefully from their present location to the Hawaiian Islands. Presently, they were positioned just two degrees above the Equator, and Hawaii was twenty degrees and half the world away. It was only slightly shorter via the Atlantic and Americas than it was back over Asia and the Pacific.