by A. D. Winch
Ursula did as she was asked, but only because she had been brought up this way. Andrea joined Dr. Johansen in front of the children.
“On the Compact Disc that you have just been watching Professor Larsen said, ‘This is disc one of four. Both pods contain identical discs,’” Andrea said. “Professor Larsen then continued to say, ‘It is of the most urgent importance that none of these discs fall into the wrong hands.’ I retrieved all five Compact Discs from Eric’s pod. Additionally I located and retrieved Eric himself. Unfortunately, Alexander did not do the same when he found Ursula.”
Dr. Johansen opened his mouth to protest, but Andrea cut him off before he could say a thing.
“I am not judging you Alexander. Please do not take this personally. I am fully aware that the pods fell at different locations than we had been expecting. I am also aware that you were confronted with problems that I did not face.”
Raising his hand, like a child asking to speak, he said, “Most certainly. Eric’s pod had the good fortune to land in a field, situated on the edge of a small town in Romania. You were able to work at a leisurely pace and retrieve everything you needed in your own good time. Ursula’s pod landed in the middle of one of the most popular tourist destinations in Europe. I did not have the good fortune of time and had to work hastily. I did what I was told to do - I retrieved Ursula. Then, with a great deal of effort, I moved the pod from a rubbish pile to the side of a hole a few metres away. I tipped the pod into this hole, and pulled it into an ancient Roman tunnel at the bottom of the hole, and then I covered it over. I had a screaming child; I had to work fast through the night, and it was very dark. However, I do still remember where the hole is located, and it will not be difficult to find it again.”
“As I said, it was unfortunate,” repeated Andrea.
Dr. Johansen stepped towards the computer screen. There were four clear cases next to it in a pile, each containing a CD. He picked them up and carefully looked at each one in turn as if searching for something.
“Why is it unfortunate?” asked Eric.
“Because he only took Ursula. He left the five Compact Discs in the pod. As Professor Larsen says, ‘It is of the most urgent importance that none of these discs fall into the wrong hands. It would be better for the world if they were destroyed than for this to happen.’ The wrong hands in this case would be the OSS. We need to retrieve the discs before they do. What is more, none of us have watched disc five yet, and it is probable that this is the most important disc of the five as it is not mentioned on the other four.”
“Andrea’s disc five is corrupted,” added Dr.Johansen, repeating what she had said earlier.
One by one, Dr. Johansen put the CD cases back down. He sighed deeply as he let go of the last, and his shoulders drooped. Reluctantly he turned back round to face the others and smiled falsely.
“Where did you find my pod, Dr. Johansen?” asked Ursula.
“Italy,” replied Dr. Johansen, “or to be more precise, in Pompeii.”
Eric almost jumped from his seat, “Pompeii? That’s a coincidence! Our class trip is to Pompeii.”
Dr. Johansen looked at Eric, shook his head and pointed to Andrea.
“That is not a coincidence. The Meyer Foundation are sponsoring the trip. I convinced your late father, Mr Meyer, to do this last summer. Your pods fell to Earth on the night of the twenty-fourth December at the same time as an Uroid meteor storm. Between ten and one hundred lumps of rock, from the Ursa Minor system, fell each hour. I did not know how long Ursula’s pod took to fall to Earth nor did I know where it was scheduled to land. I had to track down every meteorite that fell over a sixteen hour period in order to find it. Up to June last year I had investigated one thousand and two possible landing sites. Each one contained a meteor, and only sixty-three percent of these were over ten grams in weight. At this time, I discovered the site in Pompeii, and I was ninety-eight per cent certain it was Ursula’s pod. I had organized the funding of the school trip to provide cover while I searched for the pod. Since this time, Dr. Johansen has confirmed the pod is there,” explained Andrea.
Dr. Johansen cut in, “You could have just picked up the telephone and given me a call.”
“I could not. We had been given a clear instruction not to contact each other.”
Fixing his eyes on Dr. Johansen, Eric remarked, “I am pretty sure that kidnapping me, breaking into my house with my help and suspecting Andrea was here means you can’t really be trusted to follow instructions that well.”
Dr. Johansen adjusted his red cap and looked hurt.
“Only because I was concerned for your well-being. I could have left you to be killed, but I felt compelled to help.”
Eric did not know what to say to this and looked at Andrea.
“Can I say two things?” He did not wait for an answer, “Firstly I would like to clarify something. All we need to do is find the pod and the five CDs before the OSS does?”
“Yes. The two of you are valuable to the OSS, but you are safe with us. The five discs are not.”
“Secondly, this room is not very comfortable and the noise of the fans is getting on my nerves. I was wondering if we could move upstairs to the lounge?”
Before they entered the lounge, Andrea made them all wait by the oak door. The curtains were open, and winter sun shone through the net curtains into the room. At her normal pace, she approached the windows and glanced outside. Once satisfied, she drew the flowery drapes tightly shut and beckoned everyone to sit down.
The two adults sat in the same place as the night before, at either end of the leather sofa. Eric sat on the sofa he had fallen asleep on but this time he was wide awake and sat upright. His face was tense, and it was obvious he was still thinking about everything he had learnt since the previous evening. Ursula sat down on the other sofa, lost in her own thoughts. Her mind was somewhere else, slowly digesting, piece by piece, the news that she had just heard.
“What do we do now?” asked Eric, getting to the point immediately.
He leant forward, his eyes glued on Andrea, waiting for a response.
“We keep the two of you close, retrieve the pod and the CDs,” answered Dr. Johansen. “This is, unfortunately, what we must do. And to do this we must travel to Pompeii. It’s as simple as that.”
“I understand that,” Eric spat out, rolling his eyeballs, “but I asked what do we do now?”
Despite discovering more about Dr. Johansen, Eric was still angry at being stabbed with a syringe and as he saw it, kidnapped.
Dr. Johansen thought for a while before replying, “We wait until the trip and then we go too.”
Andrea added more details, “The OSS do not know that you and Alexander are here. We must make sure that this does not change. They will not look for you in this house. We will continue to pretend that Eric is missing and use the media to convince the world of the same. Meanwhile, Ursula and myself will continue as normal.”
At the mention of her name, Ursula looked up. She hadn’t seemed to be paying attention but added, “I’ll just tell everyone at school that we don’t know where Eric is, and we are very worried. I can lie.”
“Our trip isn’t until the start of April. That’s almost ten weeks away!” Eric’s voice was becoming progressively louder, “You mean I have to stay in this villa for seventy days, and I CAN’T GO OUT?”
“Don’t worry Eric, never mind. I’ll bring you comics and other treats to keep you occupied,” said Dr. Johansen, trying to make him feel better.
Andrea shook her head, “No, you will not. The same rule applies to Alexander, too. Both of you must not leave the villa.”
Dr. Johansen’s mouth fell open, and he shot forward, “But...”
“No ‘buts,' Alexander. My initial instructions were to protect you. I was then given additional instructions to protect Eric. They are my instructions. If I have to protect you from yourselves, I will do this as well.”
There was no uncertainty in Andrea’s voice. The
instructions she had been given she would follow to the letter.
Both Eric and Dr. Johansen knew Andrea well enough to know that once she said she would do something, she did it. In their experience, no amount of persuasion would make her change her mind.
“Over the next ten weeks I will find a way to get the two of you to Pompeii without being seen. You will devise a plan that will enable us to retrieve the Compact Discs and the pod,” she said.
“Easy,” announced Eric.
“I do not predict it will be easy,” contradicted Andrea. “The OSS know the pod is in Italy. They know it is in the region of the Amalfi coast. They will have already sent a team there to search for it. Even if they do not suspect Ursula or myself, they will still become suspicious when we arrive in Pompeii. It will not be long after we arrive that more of them will join us.”
Silently, Ursula stood up and headed for the window. Her feet hardly lifted from the floor as she walked. She opened the curtain slightly and peeked through the slit.
Without turning from the curtain, she whispered, “Eric and I are different. We’re different from every single person outside this window. We’re different from every other single person on the planet.”
Dr. Johansen bit his nails as he thought of a response. Andrea looked from him to Ursula but before she could reply Eric spoke.
“But you knew that,” he told her softly.
Ursula moved from the window and stood behind the sofa she had been sitting on. She gripped the leather and leant forward, using the sofa’s back to support herself.
“I didn’t know we were different. I just thought we were. Thinking something and knowing something are not the same.” Her fingers tightened around the sofa, and she asked, almost pleading, “What do we do now?”
Dr. Johansen stood up and walked towards Ursula. He sat down on the sofa in front of her and placed his hands warmly upon hers.
“You do nothing. You’re unique, and we don’t know how your lives will progress but this is equally true for every other person on the planet. There is no reason for you to change. You are still the same person as you were when you woke up this morning. And that is all you need to worry about for now.”
“I need to know more about this street kid,” said Agent Angel pointing a sausage-sized finger at the picture of Ursula, “and I need to know it now. What have we got?”
Ducking as he answered, Agent Hoover replied, “Nothing Sir. We still can’t break into the school’s database. Our guys in the lab say they’ve never seen such a complex encryption code.”
Agent Angel took a draw on his cigarette, inhaled the smoke and, as it slowly entered his lungs, he thought over what Agent Hoover had said.
“That strikes me as strange, what do you think? Am I way off base here?” and he moved to behind Agent Hoover.
“No, Sir, it’s mighty strange, Sir.”
“Good, I’m glad we agree on something,” he replied calmly and then barked, “NOW TELL ME SOMETHING I WANT TO HEAR, YOU USELESS KLUTZ!”
Before Agent Hoover could duck again, he had been slapped hard on the back of the head. Through clenched teeth, he replied, “Our Enquiry Team have landed in Naples, Italy. As you well know Sir, these pods are made from a material that cloaks them from our satellites. So our Enquiry Team are just going to have to do their hunting on foot or in a four-by-four. It isn’t the best situation but our space boys have predicted that its trajectory would have meant it landed within a twenty mile radius of Naples. The Enquiry Team has an expected retrieval time for the pods of sixteen weeks. But, with me scanning the screens for anything unusual and reporting it to them, we should be able to cut that down to ten weeks.”
“Good, maybe you have a use after all,” said Agent Angel and ran a finger softly down Agent Hoover’s ear. “With the boy missing we must have the contents of that other pod instead. It’s taken a long, long time, but we are finally nearing the end of our search. I think I can just wait another ten weeks.”
Agent Angel patted Agent Hoover hard on the back.
“Prove to me you’re not a klutz, Hoover. Stay vigilant, liaise with our boys on the ground and find me that Goddam pod!”
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Chapter 24 – House Arrest
For as long as he could remember, Eric had hated the end of winter. The snow was grey and had turned to slush; the skies were grey, and grey rain drizzled down. Spring was on its way, and the delights of summer were just around the corner. However, the fact that they were close just made it even worse; so close yet so far.
This year Eric hated it even more. He was stood in his room peeking at the world, through a thin gap in his curtains. It was Sunday evening and even though the sun was setting the light was brighter than at any point during the day. The grey clouds that had thrown down rain for two weeks solidly had begun to separate. They drifted across the horizon like gigantic ships, leaving open patches of sky. Golden rays spilled through the gaps, making buildings shine as it touched them. Eric wished he was outside.
Moving away from the curtains, he approached a Formula 1 calendar on his wall. A sleek, racing car dominated the sheet and printed on top were the days of the year, listed out under each month.
In the middle of January, he had taken a thick, red marker and drawn a big cross over one of the dates. He had repeated this at the end of each day since then. Each cross marked another day of his house arrest as a prisoner in his own home.
From his pocket, he pulled out the marker and put a cross through the sixth of April. This was the last day of the sentence forced upon him by Andrea. A luminous green circle ringed the seventh - the date of their freedom. His time under house arrest had seemed to last forever.
The two weeks until the end of January had passed reasonably easily. It was like being on holiday and, as he felt he had not experienced a truly relaxing Christmas vacation, he had welcomed the break. He had read, played on his computer, learnt a few more songs on guitar and had come to terms with a lot of the events that had happened. During this time, he had stayed out of the way of Dr. Johansen, or Alexander as he was now called.
When freezing February came, however, Alexander kept bothering Eric. He would ask Eric if he needed something or wanted anything or if he would like to play a game, any game, any game at all.
It was about this time that Eric started looking forward to Ursula coming home from school. Even though he wouldn’t admit to it, Ursula’s arrival home was more often than not the highlight of his day. They would talk together, play tricks on the adults, practise reading each other’s minds and chase each other around the house like two lively kittens. The best part of his entire imprisonment was Ursula’s half-term holiday when he had a week to spend with her.
Once Ursula had returned to school, Alexander started to bother him again. Within a few days, Eric lost his temper with the man who had kidnapped him. He said a number of things he shouldn’t have and called Alexander a baby for biting his nails. Alexander tried to say nothing back but in the end he called Eric a spoilt brat who didn’t appreciate how much people cared for him.
It had not been a pleasant experience for either of them, but it had cleared the air. Over a cup of tea, Alexander apologized for ‘kidnapping’ him, Eric reluctantly apologized for the things he had said, and they agreed to start afresh.
Alexander began to teach Eric as he was not in school. When they weren’t learning, Eric discovered a chess opponent who was not easy to beat and a drummer who was happy to beat out any rhythm for Eric’s guitar. To work off their energy, Andrea installed a small gym in one of the spare rooms. As well as running on the treadmill, rowing and pushing weights, Alexander taught Eric some more martial arts. They also, and most importantly, worked on a way to recover the CDs and the pod without being detected by the OSS or anyone else.
Over the following weeks, they studied maps and internet sites of Pompeii, proposed countless plans and then found ways their plans could be foiled by the OSS. Surp
risingly, they worked well together, bounced ideas off each other and were finally able to select the best plan.
Even though they were both irritable at being stuck indoors, they tried hard not to take it out on the other. This was probably the reason they had spent the last three days of their sentence apart and in their own rooms. Gradually they had both become fed up with the other, a little stir crazy and were feeling like bears in a cage.
Eric looked at the calendar again. The green circle around the seventh shone like a bright star. The plan was ready. Tomorrow they would be free.
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Chapter 25 - Escape to Pompeii
Before the sun rose, everyone in the Meyer villa woke and got ready. Eric walked to the window and peered outside. As he looked he thought of the rhyme he had been taught at school, ‘red sky at night, shepherd’s delight.’ It was true. This morning the outside world looked glorious; the sun was bright and the sky clear. It was a wonderful start to his first day of freedom. He put on black jeans and a dark blue, sports top and went down to the kitchen.
Alexander was already there. His salt and pepper stubble had been stylishly trimmed. He was wearing a crisp V-necked T-shirt along with his trusty red cap. Like Eric, he was full of nervous energy and the two ‘prisoners’ talked happily about their planned escape.
Ursula joined them in the kitchen soon after. She was still half-asleep. Her favourite ripped jeans were not done up properly, and an orange cardigan that her grandmother had knitted her hung scruffily from her shoulders. Andrea did not join them.
