He struggled to a sitting position and made to get up. “Ciara!”
She leaned forward. “Don’t ‘Ciara’ me. You know what happened to us, Daddy? Do you know what happened to us?” He stammered. She interrupted him. “We were kidnapped and held prisoner.” They stared at each other. Before he could speak, she launched at him again. “Did you enjoy it, Daddy? Was it fun? Did you feel good about it?”
“Ciara!”
“I said don’t ‘Ciara’ me! It was horrible, wasn’t it? Being a prisoner? Well, that has been my life for the past two years and I am sick of it!” She straightened up and tidied her hair and her blouse. “Now that we have that cleared up, I have some things I have to say to you. First, that young man”—she pointed at me and Michael Fionn glanced at me sidelong—“that young man rescued us and saved both our lives. Do you appreciate that?” She waited.
He muttered.
She repeated, “Do you appreciate that, Daddy?”
“Yes! For Jaysus sake!”
“Good! Because from now on he is my official boyfriend! And don’t you dare say a word against him!”
I don’t know who gaped the widest, Fionn or me. We stared at each other then at Ciara then at each other again, and I do believe that a secret bond was formed between us in that moment.
“Second, this afternoon at six, Jake has a debate at the school. You will come along and you will listen, attentively, to everything he has to say. Understood?”
He nodded dumbly, gaping at her. Sebastian, who had been watching this whole performance with an expression of mild wonder on his face, coughed politely. “Does anyone have any idea of where exactly we are?”
Fionn stared at him as though he had no idea what Sebastian was talking about, then blinked and said, “Yes! This is St Mary’s Abbey. It’s just outside Little Sodbury.”
Ciara said, “How far outside?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. A couple of miles. Why?”
Sebastian said, “Because we need to get back to Oxford on the double if we are going to get to the debate on time.”
“And how do you propose to do that?”
I smiled. “In your car.”
He stared at me. It was his day for staring at people. He said, “What?”
Sebastian struggled to his feet. “It would seem, Mr. Fionn, that your daughter is not the only thing this young scallywag has half-inched from you.”
Fionn got to his feet and so did I, preparing to apologize. I said, “Mr. Fionn, it was to rescue your daughter. I would never have dreamed—”
He faced me and raised his hand, shaking his head. “Don’t even think of apologizing, young man…Jake. Ciara is right. I have been a damned fool, and it has taken this to make me realize it. You’re a grand young man, and I applaud my daughter’s judgment. Welcome to the Fionn clan. I am proud to call you my friend.”
He solemnly held out his hand, and we shook. And I manfully fought down a small lump in my throat while Sebastian and Ciara looked on, smiling.
All good.
Chapter Seventeen
The Jag was where we had left it. I fished out the keys from my pocket and opened the driver’s door, but when Ciara’s dad coughed and scowled at me, I handed them over, grinned and climbed in the back with Ciara. There we sat, holding hands and smiling secretly at each other. I guess to anyone watching, it would have been nauseating, but we were in heaven.
Sebastian sat in the passenger seat and we took off at a goodly speed toward Oxford.
After a while, I said to Ciara, “Why is it so important to you that I do this debate, Ciara? I haven’t prepared a thing. I’m going to be slaughtered. Besides, I very much doubt Dicky is going to show.”
She just appeared obstinate and said, “Trust me. You have to do it.”
I ignored her and went on. “And why is it so important that your dad hears the debate. All he’s going to see is me going, ‘Umm…errr…erm…’ and turning scarlet like a tongue-tied beetroot.”
Fionn glanced at me in the rearview and spoke up. “Let me guess. The debate is about the environment. Am I right?”
I said, “Pretty much. ‘Man Has the Right and the Duty to Exploit the Planet’s Fossil Fuel Resources.’”
“And you have to argue against that proposition. Right again?”
“Yes, sir. You are.”
“Well, there’s your answer. For the last two years I’ve been drawing up a report for the European Commission on whether Europe should sanction the exploitation of oil reserves under Greenland. I’ve come under extreme pressure from certain interested parties—in particular, the Nixon Corporation—to advise in favor. I have received threats to my life, which I disregarded. Then I received threats against Ciara, which I shall not have. I make no bones about it. As those interests have requested, I am taking a hard-headed economic approach, and in my report, I am going to advise the commission to go ahead and drill for oil.” He was silent then said, “You’ve seen the lengths they’ll go to achieve their ends. But Ciara is on me day and night not to do it. I suppose she hopes that with your eloquence and reasoning, you’ll persuade me not to. Well, let me tell you, young man, you’ve your work cut out for you. I will not put my daughter at risk, especially not from these…creatures!”
“Oh, boy…” I flopped back in the seat. My heart sank. Not only was I going to make a compete fool of myself, but I was also going to let down my dad and Ciara. No pressure, Jake.
But as we sped through the country lanes, I kept getting flashes of the weird experience I’d had at the abbey while Ciara and the others had slept. I kept hearing Ar En’s impassioned pleas, both to me and to Danu. And, as irony would have it, I was now racing to a confrontation with that very same man to argue his point while he defended the opposite. I glanced at Ciara. She was smiling a secret smile at me, like she knew something I did not.
Eventually we skidded to a halt outside the school at half past five. We all piled out of the car and ran along the drive to the main door. The headmaster was there, receiving people with a look of extreme consternation on his face. He had over two hundred people in his audience, including diplomats, politicians and captains of industry, and, up to that moment, he either had no debaters or just one, with nobody to debate against. He stared at me aghast. Then he stared aghast at Michael Fionn, then at all of us as a group, with collective aghastness. I followed his gaze, first at myself then at my companions. We were scratched, bruised and muddy. Our hair was matted and uncombed and our clothes were torn.
He said, “Mr. Norgard, would you care to explain?”
But Fionn cut him dead. In a huge, booming Irish brogue he roared, “Do not even dream of questioning the boy. He is a hero. And what he has done in the past twelve hours will earn him a medal. Let the boy do his thing, and lead me to my seat before I pass out.”
They left me and were ushered into the debating hall. The headmaster looked me over and said, “There is no time to clean up. Take your seat in the speakers’ corner, by the stage. And for goodness’ sake, comb your hair or something.”
He walked away and I hastily ran my fingers through my mop then squeezed along the front row of the hall, feeling the eyes of over two hundred people on me. Among them, I saw my dad and Rosie sitting near the back. Dad seemed worried and not a little annoyed. Rosie was just disturbingly beautiful and cheerful, as always.
Then, as I arrived at the speakers’ corner, I stopped dead in my tracks. Brutus was sitting leering at me, and by his side was Dicky, appearing spruce, dashing and handsome with one leg crossed over the other, watching me approach.
He raised an eyebrow at me and said, “Good of you to join us, Norgard. Some kind of hold-up?”
“Nothing I couldn’t handle.”
He smiled. “Manage to prepare much?”
I sat and assessed him. He was unbelievable. I had to admit I had a grudging respect for the guy. “I have some ideas,” I said. “I had some inspiration during the night. You might be surprised.”
/> “I don’t doubt it. You’re a surprising chap.”
I glanced at him, but there was no hint of irony in his voice or on his face. Without thinking, I said, “Yeah, well, it runs in the family.”
He seemed not to hear.
Then, Mr. Singh stepped onto the stage. I felt a hot pellet of anxiety sear through my belly. He cleared his throat and began to speak. The school had an ancient tradition of debating, and many of its alumni had cut their teeth here and gone on to be among the greatest orators in the English Parliament at Westminster and at the House of Representatives and the Senate. This year, the debating teams had once again excelled, and he looked forward to an illuminating, lively and challenging debate. He failed to point out that neither of the two young men there today had been part of those teams or that one of them had done absolutely no preparation and no debating to date. He did, however, ask the audience to put their hands together for Mr. Richard Nixon of the Hern team, “who will argue in favor of the controversial proposition that, ‘Man Has the Right and the Duty to Exploit the Planet’s Fossil Fuel Resources.’”
There was polite applause and Dicky sprang—he had to spring. Guys like him always ‘spring’—lithely onto the stage and stepped to the lectern, as though he’d been doing it all his life since he’d popped out of his mother’s womb. I could just see him, as they were snipping the umbilical cord, “Doctors, nurses, may I first of all thank you for my warm welcome into this world…”
I snapped out of my surreal fantasy and watched him. He was taking his time, looking carefully at each section of the audience. He delayed too long and that made them uncomfortable, nervous on his behalf, so when he did start to speak, they would be anxious to support him. When he finally opened his mouth, his voice was strong and confident, with just enough arrogance to carry the sheep but not enough to offend the wolves.
He said, “The planet is dying. Temperatures are rising, deserts are spreading, the ice caps are melting. The planet is getting hotter.” He paused, nodded and smiled. “For anyone who has spent the winter in England, that can only be good news.” They laughed for him, as he knew they would. His delivery and his timing were faultless. He went on, “But I am only partly joking. In the last ten to fifteen thousand years, humanity’s relationship with the planet has changed beyond all recognition. From being vulnerable, weak bipeds at the mercy of our environment, we have become masters of the planet, and it is the environment—the planet itself—that is at our mercy. Some, the bleeding hearts, the Greens and the sandaled, woolly-hatted lentil stirrers of the world, will tell you that this is a bad thing. I am here to tell you that they are wrong.”
He paused, looking again from face to face, like a man who has all the time in the world—like a man who is in perfect control, like a man that you follow.
“It is not!” and his words echoed around the chamber. “It is not the destiny of man to sit in a yurt gazing up at the stars, eating brown rice and healing his wounds with lavender oil. It is not man’s destiny to break his bag in a brutish cycle of struggle, year after year, with the unforgiving earth.
“It is man’s destiny to build space ships to explore the stars, to reach with his mind and his hands to distant planets, to send men and women to Titan and Jupiter, to sail the methane oceans of Neptune, to explore Alpha Centauri and send robots to the heart of the sun. It is the destiny of humanity to conquer the solar system, to master the mysteries of faster-than-light space travel, to conquer disease, to overcome old age and live to five hundred or a thousand years, acquiring wisdom and understanding surpassing anything we know today.”
He paused, his words ringing out around the chamber. The audience was bewitched. He smiled, gave a small laugh. “You can’t do that from a yurt. To do all that, you need observatories, laboratories. You need hospitals, research facilities and foundations. You need plastic, rubber, steel. You need electricity, you need machines and you need more machines to build those machines… That is called industry! And let’s be clear, ladies and gentlemen, you can’t run that kind of industry on windmills.
“For that kind of industry, you need atomic energy, coal and oil…”
He fastened his eyes on Fionn and he let the words hang there in the air, like a belch at the vicar’s tea party. I was fascinated. My head—not for the first time that day—was reeling. Was this the same guy who had tried to decapitate me a few hours earlier because, according to him, I supported those who were destroying his precious Mother Earth? I was agog.
He plowed on with his irresistible style, explaining in minute detail how the cycles of the earth led it through periods of glaciation and periods of extreme heat. He pointed out that sixty-five million years ago, the planet had been up to ten degrees hotter than it was now and modern scientists were bleating about a mere two-degree increase. He pointed out that a warmer planet would be a more stable planet, and how a hundred more years of oil and coal could lead us to finally creating the fusion reactor that would give us universal nuclear energy.
“Think!” he said, as though thinking meant necessarily agreeing with him. “Think! If instead of castrating industry, we embrace and manage the changes it brings to our world. We can use that energy to develop the holy grail in energy sources—the fusion reactor. One fusion reactor, ladies and gentlemen, can provide the world with as much energy as the sun, and enable us as a species to fulfill our potential and our destiny.
“Let us not slide backward into a new age of superstition, ignorance and tedious inedible food because we are afraid of the consequences of our genius. Let us instead drive forward and blaze a trail to a better world, a better life and the universe at our feet!”
There was tremendous applause. People burst out laughing, stood, clapped wildly and cheered. It was more like a rock concert than an Oxford debate. I glanced over at Ciara. She was watching me with no expression. Next to her, her dad was on his feet, clapping vigorously. Dicky held up a hand. The room fell silent.
“Thank you so much. It is heart-warming to see so much good sense among such eminently useful people. Please do welcome now, my friend Jake Norgard, who will try to persuade you all to live in yurts.”
He left the stage among a storm of applause and laughter. He had them in the palm of his hand. And I had…well, absolutely nothing to say. I walked to the lectern, smiling, as the applause changed from uproarious approval to polite welcome.
I stood, smiling, waiting for the applause to stop. When it had, I looked back at Dicky and gave a small laugh. “Thank you, Dicky.” To the audience, I said, “He’s a very funny young man. A comedian. Fortunately, he doesn’t expect anyone to take him seriously.” There was some laughter but not like the laughter he’d got. I examined their faces—Ciara’s, full of love and hope, her dad’s, full of curiosity and interest and Sebastian’s full of concern. The rest, attentive, listening, hoping to hear something of value. I smiled.
“I don’t live in a yurt. And I hope that none of you do. I live in a Tudor manor that has been fitted out with all the latest modern conveniences, and I wouldn’t have it any other way, unless I was in an apartment overlooking San Francisco Bay. So please, be reassured, I do not believe that humanity’s destiny is to live in yurts and eat brown rice and lentils. In fact, in many ways, I agree with my brother’s vision of humanity’s destiny.
“But I take into account something which he, apparently, wants to ignore. And that is that we are not alone.”
I looked at him. He was staring at me fixedly. I turned back to the audience. They were interested and curious as to what I was going to say next. I was pretty curious myself. I glanced over at Ciara, and as I peered into her eyes across the room, I felt my heart open and I began again to speak.
I shook my head. “We are not alone. I do not only mean that we share this earth with whales and polar bears and rhinos—though we do. I mean that we share this earth with trillions of species, each of which is imbued with a spark of life and a spark of intelligence. We are not the only species in th
is world that has a destiny. Every living creature in this world—and infinite other worlds—has a destiny. And though we should embrace ours, fearlessly, and explore the moons of Jupiter and the oceans of Neptune, we should not do so as a self-seeking, predatory species bent on the destruction of all those who stand in our way. We should do so as compassionate creatures and bringers of light. And before we take our compassion and our light to Titan or Neptune, we should make use of it right here on Earth.”
I paused and gazed again into their faces. Not an eyelid fluttered. And I realized, with some surprise, that they were, quite literally, spellbound. I don’t recall exactly what happened next. I think I bewitched myself. I seemed to go into some kind of trance. I recall, bizarrely, processions of images moving across the hall, and everybody there watching those images. There were images of a scorched, smoldering planet, wastelands peppered with carcasses and skeletons—some animal, some human. Jeeps and Land Rovers belched black smoke and flames. Factories disgorged billowing acid-smoke and gas. The oceans, like wastelands, steamed and boiled under a crimson sun.
I watched their faces as they watched the images that flowed from my mind and my mouth. It was like a bizarre, shared consciousness, as though I had taken them all by the hand into a parallel world within my own mind. I showed them, as though I were playing a long movie for them, the true consequences of their passive neglect and negligence. I showed them their world, their home, if they continued to allow themselves to be led on the path to apocalypse, and their faces showed dread—and horror. And when I looked at Michael Fionn, I saw his face, damp with tears.
I paused and knew I held them in my hand. And I said those words that possessed the most powerful magic in the world. I said, “But there is hope, and hope is all we need. We have options. We have possibilities. We have potential!
“All we need is to make better choices. If we have chased the easy option, the quick fix, the instant gratification, and it has led us to the brink of destruction, then let’s make longer movies in our minds about the consequences of our actions—and our inaction. Let’s make the choices that lead to a world where we can be free and happy and healthy, where grass is green, the oceans are rich with life and the air is clean. Let us make the choices that lead to a world where people are free. Let us make the choices that lead to a world where all life—all conscious life—is respected, can live in dignity and grow to fulfill its destiny.
The Dreaming Spires Page 14