Diamond Sky Trilogy Box Set: Books 1-3

by David Clarkson

  Chapter 32

  Lucas recorded Charlie’s statement first. It did not make for comfortable listening. The scientist was convinced that the man now in custody was David Armareth. Whilst this tied in with his theory that the entire town was slowly losing its collective mind, Lucas was not sure if it was Sammy or his three friends that were the latest to be infected.

  The Aboriginal slept all through the night, but was awake and alert when Lucas opened up his cell in the morning. The station did not have the space for an interrogation room so he conducted the interview in his office. He had known both Sammy and Davo well, so whatever the case, he did not think restraints were necessary.

  ‘Do you understand why you are here?’ he asked the prisoner.

  Sammy nodded.

  ‘Do you want somebody else to be present to represent you? It will take time for the State to appoint a lawyer from out of town, but I would have no problem with somebody else of your choosing being here.’

  ‘That’s not necessary,’ replied Sammy. ‘I trust you will do right by me.’

  Lucas appreciated his prisoner’s confidence in him and still could not believe he was interviewing Sammy in relation to murder.

  ‘In that case, I will begin right away. For the record, can you confirm if you are indeed Mr Samuel Aubrey Namitjera.’

  ‘I am.’

  Lucas noted that there was no hesitation or suspicion regarding the question.

  ‘Are you able to tell me where you were between the hours of eight and ten o’clock last night?’

  This time the Aboriginal did hesitate for a moment.

  ‘Um, no,’ he replied.

  ‘Just so I have this clear; are you saying that you refuse to answer the question or that you do not know where you were during these hours last night?’

  ‘I don’t remember.’

  ‘What is the last thing you do remember?’

  ‘That’s easy,’ replied Sammy. ‘I was telling the blonde lady she had to leave the observatory. The professor wanted no folks busying him that day. She would not listen to me. Then Mr Armareth came running at the car. After that, I remember nothing except waking up with a mighty headache today.’

  He rubbed the large bump that had formed on the back of his head where Emmy struck him with the flashlight.

  ‘How well did you know Lieutenant Schwartzmann?’

  ‘I would see him and the other army guy around, but they did not speak to me. I am sad they died though.’

  ‘They?’

  ‘The two soldiers; that is who you are talking about?’

  ‘Yes, but only one of them is dead. The captain is still at the observatory.’

  ‘If you say so; it’s not as easy for a fella to tell the difference these days.’

  Lucas did not know whether to let out a sigh of relief or a curse. Whilst he hoped to find evidence of his theory in Sammy’s answers, it was still alarming to see the illness spreading.

  ‘What do you mean by that? Do you see people even when they are dead?’

  Sammy nodded, but looked troubled.

  ‘Who have you seen?’ Lucas added.

  ‘The dead don’t have faces.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Lucas. ‘I thought you were having trouble telling the difference between the living and the dead. How can this be if the dead have no faces?’

  ‘I see everyone the same. Whether living or not; the spirit is the same.’

  Lucas was unprepared for such cryptic answers. He had at least heard enough to believe that whatever was affecting Jimmy, and caused Wally and Davo to kill, was also influencing Sammy. He decided to postpone further questions until he knew more about what he was dealing with.

  After returning to his office, he picked up his phone and dialled the doctor’s number. There was a dial tone, but no response, so after giving it forty five seconds, he hung up. Almost immediately it began ringing at his end.

  ‘Hello, Officer Black speaking.’

  ‘Lucas, it’s me. I heard your call, but for a moment I did not think that it was real. I have been hearing strange things recently; voices when nobody else is around, phones ringing when nobody is on the line. My only conclusion is that I too have become infected.’

  ‘So, you found a link?’

  ‘That’s right; there are traces of an unknown compound in the blood samples I took.’

  ‘You mean from Walter and Davo?’

  ‘From everybody; even my own and I would be willing to bet yours contains the same too. It’s just like you feared; the whole town is infected.’

  ‘Do you know the cause?’

  ‘That’s what I cannot understand. It appears to be radioactive in origin, though thankfully not carcinogenic. The problem is where the radiation is coming from. We are completely isolated here; there are no power plants or such within a thousand kilometres.’

  ‘Well, send me whatever you have and I will get Charlie to take a look at it. He is going to be helping me out for a few days.’

  ‘Okay. I’ll e-mail it right away.’

  Val phoned in sick, so he had to open up the e-mail attachment himself. Luckily, Charlie was on hand to make sense of it all.

  ‘This is excellent,’ said the scientist, as he looked over the data. ‘I’ll load it into my laptop and cross reference it against the data the professor and I had on that snake of yours.’

  They both sat in silence whilst Charlie worked. After five minutes the scientist appeared to have made a breakthrough.

  ‘It’s the same,’ he said, ‘but I have found one exception to the poisoning. Well, two actually. The professor took samples from both Emmy and myself last week; both are showing negative to signs of the radiation.’

  ‘Could it be they were taken too soon?’ asked Lucas.

  ‘I doubt it. A sample from the professor taken on the same day shows positive. As do samples from Mike and Bradley, although with much lower concentrations of radiation, which makes sense since they arrived later. Wait a minute, that’s weird.’

  Charlie frowned whilst his fingers worked the keyboard, trying to find fault with what his eyes were seeing.

  ‘What’s weird?’ asked Lucas.

  ‘There’s a second sample taken a day later. Bradley’s is the same, albeit with a slightly higher concentration of the radiation showing, but Mike’s is completely clear. This makes no sense. All I can think is that the samples were somehow mixed up.’

  ‘What about Emmy and yourself?’

  ‘He didn’t take another sample. That’s not a problem - I can test mine here. I brought a few things down with me.’

  Lucas watched on nervously as the scientist stabbed himself in the arm and withdrew blood into the syringe. Charlie then took a second syringe and beckoned for Lucas to roll up his sleeve.

  ‘Do we have to do this now?’ Lucas asked.

  ‘You’re not scared, are you?’ replied Charlie, with some amusement.

  ‘Of course I’m not scared. I just don’t like needles. When you’re a cop these things carry much more negative connotations than they do to a scientist, that’s all.’

  ‘I can assure you I’m not going to pump your veins full of class A drugs, if that’s what you are worried about.’

  ‘Can you guarantee that what you take out won’t contain something a lot worse?’

  It took only a few minutes for Charlie to get the results. A rich benefactor and a government research grant bought much more state of the art equipment than the local GP could afford. The results were as they expected.

  ‘So I’m infected?’ asked Lucas.

  ‘I wouldn’t say that “infected” is the right word to use. This is not a virus that can spread between people. You’ve been exposed to some kind of radiation; the effects of which we cannot begin to guess. If what you told me about Jimmy is true, this may even be a blessing. Just imagine what a cop with super powers could do?’

  ‘After seeing what Walter and Davo were capable of; I would rather not. The doctor also imp
lied that his symptoms were not pleasant. These are certainly not super powers we are talking about. I’m glad I’ve not experienced anything yet. Do you know why that is?’

  ‘I don’t know. The samples taken from you and the doctor are no less concentrated than any of the others. In fact, yours is slightly higher. Since the reported effects all seem to be neurological, I am guessing it is purely a question of will. A weak mind would be more susceptible, which explains why this started in animals.’

  Lucas took a small amount of comfort knowing that his level headedness and strong willpower, which had often been a source of mockery, had protected him.

  ‘What else have you got?’ he asked.

  ‘That’s it,’ replied Charlie. ‘I think there must be more to the professor’s research than this, though. He is the most meticulous scientist who ever lived. I’m guessing that whatever he had was too sensitive to store on a shared drive. I would need access to his personal files back at the observatory to find more.’

  ‘Is that going to be a problem?’

  ‘I don’t know. It depends on the level of encryption. If we are lucky, Emmy may be able to gain access. He will have made sure that she would be able to access anything she needed should anything happen to him.’

  ‘So that’s what we’ll do. We’ll call Emmy and with luck, she can find a way to stop this thing before it gets out of hand.’

  Chapter 33

  She lay for what must have been an hour just staring at Lucy’s sleeping face. It was a long time since she had last woken up next to a girl. It did not matter that nothing physical happened between them. It was the intimacy that was important. Being able to share her innermost thoughts and to feel accepted was worth a thousand sexual encounters.

  As Lucy finally began to stir, Emmy got up and went to the kitchen to prepare them both a brew. She hoped her absence would do a much greater job of arousing the other girl’s curiosity than her presence surely would.

  After flipping on the kettle, she leaned back against the table and for the first time she dared to hope that the ordeal was finally over. The killer was safely in custody and proving his guilt would be easy. If needed, she could record a testimony from the victims themselves. Her invention could yet prove to be the ultimate deterrent to murder. Now that would be a legacy for her grandfather to have left behind. Perhaps he may even be awarded a Nobel Peace Prize posthumously.

  Any hopes of a stress-free morning were dashed when a call came through from Charlie just after she sat down with her drink. He seemed to think that Lucas and he were close to making a breakthrough, but he needed access to her grandfather’s personal files. She tried to deflect him as even she did not know the password, but when the phone was handed to Lucas, she could no longer resist the pressure being placed upon her.

  ‘Okay,’ she conceded. ‘I’ll give it a try, but I cannot promise anything. You’re asking me to guess the password of a genius.’

  ‘Is everything okay?’ asked Lucy, as she entered the kitchen.

  ‘It’s nothing that we need to worry about. I will have to leave you for a while though, whilst I check out something for work.’

  ‘What should I do if, you know...’

  She tilted her head in the direction of Mike’s room.

  ‘I forgot about him. Perhaps it is best if you come with me then. I’m only going to Pops’ office.’

  They picked up their drinks and went straight to the study. Emmy took a deep breath as she passed over the threshold. So long as she kept busy, she hoped she would not think about what happened in that room. Her hopes for the future may have lifted, but it would be a long time before she would fully come to terms with her recent past.

  She powered up the computer whilst Lucy took a look around. It did not take the other girl long to locate the “ego” wall.

  ‘Wow,’ was her simple response.

  ‘It’s not intended to impress, believe it or not. Pops rarely allowed visitors into this room, so it was purely for his own gratification that he displays all of that.’

  Lucy looked more closely at one of the certificates.

  ‘He was an athlete too? Brawn and brains; it must have been hell for him to be in a wheelch...’

  She broke off when she saw Emmy watching.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said.

  ‘It’s okay. Even with his disability, he achieved so much. All of that equipment I showed you yesterday would never have been possible without him.’

  The computer came on and presented her with the password entry screen. She would be a fool to think she could second guess such an intellect, but when it came to passwords, even the greatest minds tended to stick to common patterns. Personal secrets can only be protected by a word or phrase that is also of equal personal value to that which it protects.

  She started with the obvious; mixing names of family members with birthdates. When that proved fruitless, she progressed to names of eminent scientists and athletes.

  Still nothing.

  ‘I knew this would be impossible,’ she said.

  ‘Could he have written it down?’ suggested Lucy.

  Emmy could not help but smile at the other girl’s naivety. Jackson Fox possessed one of the sharpest minds the world had ever known. He could recite lengthy paragraphs of complex scientific theory word for word after reading it only once. He was not the sort of man that was likely to forget his own password.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘Pops had a photographic memory. When I was just five, he demanded that I be able to recite the entire periodic table by heart. It was Hell, but I eventually managed to burn it into my memory. I don’t think he ever understood how other people never found learning as easy as he did.’

  ‘The periodic table; I had trouble enough with my times tables at that age.’

  ‘Well, that was Pops. He used to test me every morning before breakfast. Not just on the names of the elements, but also their atomic value too.’

  As the memory travelled along her synapses, an idea started to form in its wake. She returned her hands to the keyboard.

  C-B-M-g-F-L-i-F-C-a-M-n

  Nothing.

  S-i-P-T-i-B-A-l-H-e-B-A-r

  Nothing.

  She was sure that she was onto something. This had to be the key; all she needed was the exact code. She glanced back over to the “ego” wall, which Lucy had commented on earlier. Amongst the various degrees, science awards and athletics honours it was obvious that her grandfather really did love himself.

  That was it!

  She made one final attempt at entering the password.

  N-e-H-L-i-N-a-K-P-S-i

  ‘I’m in,’ she said, as the screensaver gave way to a list of all the professor’s private folders.

  ‘How did you crack the code? I thought nobody could second guess such a genius.’

  ‘The periodic table,’ replied Emmy. ‘Remember how I told you that he made me memorise it from such a young age. The password was simply his name; Jackson, written out with the chemical code for each element in place of its requisite letter of the alphabet.’

  ‘Obvious, really,’ said Lucy, the irony heavy in her voice.

  Emmy searched through the folders that had been updated most recently. She found an analysis of the blood samples that her grandfather had taken alongside a comparison to the blood of a reptile. Several of the specimens contained what was referred to only as “x”. She cycled through a few pages looking for more references to this mysterious and unknown quantity.

  The professor had put together a theory of the time that “x” took to display its effects in a host body against species. First the reptiles and small rodents would be infected, followed by poultry and household pets then larger marsupials like kangaroos, and finally humans would be the last to succumb.

  She moved to the next page, which featured a basic diagram of the infection area with the observatory at the epicentre. The intensity of “x” varied at different times of day. A graph showed several spikes where the r
eadings were off the chart. Something about the times and dates was eerily familiar.

  ‘I have to call Charlie,’ she said, motioning for Lucy to pass her the phone.

  She quickly dialled and her colleague answered after the first ring.

  ‘Hi, Emmy, please say that you have something for us.’

  ‘I have, but it’s not good news. I’ve found the source of the radiation; it’s us.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Exactly what I said. When any transfer of energy takes place, there is always a percentage of energy that is lost, usually as heat. In this case, when our consciousness has separated, the loss has been in the form of some kind of psychic energy that radiates outwards, mutating the synapses of every being it touches. Prolonged use of the machine has given you and I, and maybe Mike too, an immunity to the effects. From what I have managed to gather from Pops’ notes, these effects boost activity in otherwise dormant parts of the brain. He was unable to test on a human subject, but his notes allude to many forms of ESP being possible; telepathy, telekinesis, even the ability to foresee the future. This makes the work that we have been doing look like kindergarten stuff.’

  ‘He knew this and did not tell us?’

  ‘Yes, I’m finding it all hard to take in. It gets worse. From what I have read, Pops did not think that the general population would be able to cope with the mutation. He predicted that eventually, all infected would succumb to madness. What if this is linked to the murders; that would mean we are indirectly responsible? He could have prevented it and he never even warned us.’

  ‘There is no time for regret. Lucas has been finding more and more cases of people who are infected. It has already taken over the town. The professor was right in thinking that our minds are not equipped to deal with this kind of activity. It’s only a matter of time before everybody goes crazy. We may still be able to do something about it, though. Our little machine may have caused this thing, but it could also provide a cure.’