Terry Neale - Jo-el

“I can show you calculations, I can show you what happened to Cirion two million years ago.”

“What’s she talking about, Dad?” said Maggie.

“There’s a galactic storm heading for earth, similar to one that destroyed their original planet two million years ago”

“What do you mean, their original planet?” Maggie spurted out.

“They had to move.” I said.

“The whole fucking planet.”

I nodded my head. “What did you say, Sally? Only thirty-five percent survived?”

Sally said “Yes, approximately.”

“Wait a minute,” Maggie stood up and help her arms out. “I don’t understand. When? When is this storm going to wipe us out?”

“Seventy years or so.” I said.

“Oh, God, for one moment I thought you were going to say next week. So, we have seventy years?”

“If what the Cirion people say in correct, yes.”

“And what are we supposed to do?” Maggie was now very animated.

“Leave.” I said.

She glared at me and then at Sally and swung around, her mouth gapped open as wide as it would go. She spluttered, “What? Leave? And where the hell are we going?” She was facing me again.

“To another planet.”

“Jesus, Dad, what the hell are you smoking? That’s some heavy juice. You’re kidding, right?”

I shook my head and looked down at the carpeted floor. There was silence in the room for a moment. I waited for Maggie’s next question. In my mind I played a game, guessing the letter of the next word to emanate from her mouth.

“How?” she almost shouted out.

I smiled, inwardly, I was right. I told her to sit down, which she did, reluctantly. I explained about the spacecraft we needed to build, the two planets that the Cirion people had found that could sustain human life. That we would have to start again, rebuild, but with their technology. Maggie was dumbfounded. She constantly shook her head.

“So, how are you planning to sell this to the world, Dad?”

“By doing what I’m doing, do you see that, now? I have to do something unbelievable or no one will believe a word I say. It would appear that we have a long time, seventy years. But the task is beyond belief, we’ve never been outside of our solar system. We’ve put people on the moon, a quarter of a million miles away. These planets are one point six trillion miles away; it will take about four months at almost the speed of light to reach them.”

“This is too much, Dad. I’m lost. Who else have you told?”

“You’re it,” I said.

“Me! You haven’t told anybody else?”

I shook my head.

“Why not?”

“Come-on Maggie, you can figure that out.”

“They wouldn’t believe you.” I smiled.

“I’m meeting with the President tomorrow.”

“The US President?”

“Who else?”

“And you’re going to tell him.”

“That’s my plan.”

I could see in her face that she was beginning to understand what I was trying to do.

“I guess you’d never have gotten close to the President without all the stuff you’re doing? I can see that. They’d have locked you up in a funny-farm. Wow! It’s insane.” Then she paused and stared at me for a long time. “Why you?” She looked at Sally, “Why’d you pick him? Nice guy, but world savior, that’s a stretch. And why just one person? Don’t you have a few more of those belt computer things?”

Sally smiled warmly at Maggie. “He a reasonable man, he will do the right thing. We only had one belt. It was part of the original mission package, sent two hundred and fifty million years ago. The Cirion people had several contingency plans when they decided to send out monitoring stations to far away planets, one of them was that maybe one day someone from Cirion would come here so they wanted a belt that was compatible with the computer software at the time. But they’ve never been able to figure out how to travel at faster than the speed of light and until they do, no one from Cirion could travel here. But it doesn’t matter now, does it, because in seventy-three of your years this planet won’t exist.”

“Well you’re a happy fucker, aren’t you?” retorted Maggie.

Sally ignored Maggie, her expression deepened.

“Joel, problem.”

“What?”

“Two guys just chopped off the left hand of both Cathy Vogel and Stewart Nolan.”

“Jesus Christ! Show me what’s happening.”

A live video of the scene at the CNN studio in New York came on the disc-monitor. Cathy Vogel was in Nolan’s office, slumped in a chair, grabbing at her severed wrist, blood spurted from the wound, she was screaming. Nolan was behind his desk sitting on the floor, screaming as he stared helplessly at the stump that moments ago was attached to his left hand. Blood poured down his arm. A man ran into the office and screamed.

“Where’s the perps?” my voice was raised. The scene jumped to two guys leaping two steps at a time down a grey stairwell. “Knock them out, Sally, but don’t kill them.” Seconds later both men collapsed as if they’d fainted. “Who are they?”

“I assume you meant who sent them? Probably Verminov, they’ve done work for him before. They had passes to enter the studio, but the passes were fake. But whoever gave the initial instructions didn’t do it verbally or by text or email that I can find. Which means they must have been outside the network, probably underground.”

“Are they carrying?”

“No, or I might have seen them.”

“Verminov is sending a message.” I said.

“Probably because of those ten guys you terminated.”

“That was bloody quick.”

“Who knows what I did to Espinosa and Yerchenkov?

“Anybody with a Twitter account.”

“What about the ten guys?”

“That hit the airways fifteen minutes ago, but was probably all around the underworld within minutes. Those men died almost half an hour ago.”

“Still that is damn quick, thirty minutes to initiate retaliation.”

“I’m reviewing the two guy’s movements. They live near 120 thstreet. Ah! One of them said to the other on the subway, ‘fifty k for a hand job, easiest money I’ve ever made’. I’ve got the phone call, twenty-two minutes ago, from a guy called Manning, he’s in New York. He told them they get fifty thousand dollars each if they chop off the left hands of Vogel and Nolan in the next thirty minutes. He told them where they were and said a guy would meet them with security passes at the entrance. They took the subway.”

“Unbelievable. Who else is at risk, Sally?”

“My guess is anybody you’ve had contact with that is open knowledge.”

“Adrianna?”

“She’s asleep, early hours tomorrow there.”

“No one gets close to her, Sally, okay?”

Maggie had watched the video and listened to us talking, there was a look of astonishment written firmly in her eyes. “What the hell is going on, Dad? What did you do?” I explained about the ten crime bosses and the ones that were out of reach. I told her about severing the hands of Espinosa and Yerchenkov. “You did what?” she said.

“It’s war Maggie, and I’m playing their game, I just didn’t realize how deep their reach can be. I have to be more careful.”

“People are dying. Innocent people are being mutilated.”

“Maggie, I can’t argue with you now, I need to go see someone.” I turned to Sally, “what’s Pippa up to? I need to talk to her.”

“She’s at home, there’s a swat team stationed near her apartment, she’s safe.”

“I need to find out who else knows my real identity, she has to tell me. Is she in her apartment alone?”

“Yes, just Billy.”