The Money Star

by Jon Lymon

  The north-western outskirts of London soon emerged. And as they continued to lose altitude, the sun caught something silver and shining, gliding along the surface. And another brilliant dot sparkled, moving in the opposite direction, followed by another and another. People were still moving around in vehicles. All was not lost.

  Remnant’s grip on Aurora’s hand tightened as they came into land. His tears overpowered his attempts to fend them off. He was nearly home after the longest time he’d been away since they put him away.

  ‘Get me down American pilot. Get me down. I want to walk the Earth again.’ Remnant wiped the tears away and pointed out the swirl of the Thames to Aurora, and the still-standing dome of St Paul’s. But much of the rest of the city below was rubble, interspersed with halves and quarters of tower blocks and landmarks.

  As the pilot circled, searching for a suitable landing site, Remnant gripped Aurora’s hand even harder. This was easily the most nervous he’d been for a landing on the entire mission. His stomach churned and heart thumped as the Prospector III’s engines slowed, and its underside brushed the tips of the few still standing elms. The pilot lowered the ship onto High Holborn, its wheels groaning as they were deployed, their worn tyres, still red from Mars, burned and screeched on Earth’s charred surface, feeling foreign to be back home.

  The pilot drew the ship to rest on Holborn Circus, adjacent to the junction with Hatton Garden. Remnant was not ashamed of his continuing tears, Aurora ashamed she couldn’t summon any. He clutched first at Stock because he was nearest, the blogger unable to stop emotion getting the better of him either.

  “We fucking made it, man,” he wailed into Remnant’s shoulder, the older man nodding repeatedly, tears spilling off his cheeks.

  Then he reached for Aurora who’d remained seated as Stock rushed to embrace the pilot. There were no words between Aurora and Remnant, the strength of the hold was enough.

  Their embrace was cut short by Stock tapping Remnant’s shoulder. He beckoned them to follow him to the back of the ship as the rest of the SEC crew prepared to disembark. Stock led them to a rear door that had been locked since Aurora and Remnant had boarded. He entered a multi-digit security code into the touch pad on the wall, and the door slid open. At the end of a short corridor, another small door greeted them.

  “Where are you taking us?” Remnant asked.

  Stock handed them both a pair of sunglasses.

  Aurora took hers without question, but Remnant paused, sensing what was coming. “You’ve got to be joking.”

  Stock turned to him and smiled, and put on his own set of shades. “Diamond is very resilient. Although Haalange did a good job trying to destroy it.”

  The door ahead slid open to reveal a six-foot square room lit by a low light and filled with thousands of pebble-sized diamonds, some charred, some warped by intense heat, but others perfect.

  Remnant and Aurora stood astounded as they viewed the treasure. Light was dancing inside each of the diamonds, combining to produce a captivating dazzle.

  “Go on then,” Stock said.

  “What?” Remnant asked, incredulous.

  “Grab yourself some.”

  Remnant stared at Stock, then at Aurora and back again. “Are you serious?”

  “We haven’t weighed it yet. So unless you want it all, help yourself.”

  It took a while for Remnant to comprehend what was before him. How much to take? What was a reasonable amount? He didn’t want to come across as greedy, but knew this would be the only time such an opportunity would present itself. He crouched down onto one knee and with thumb and forefinger picked out an undamaged rock about the size of a squash ball. He stared at the trove in front of him, tempted by the pile of priceless gems, yet holding a mere fraction of the haul.

  “Take some more,” Stock told him.

  Remnant looked at him and then slowly rose to his feet.

  “It’s all I need,” he said turning to Aurora.

  He pulled her hand towards him, turned it over so her palm was facing upwards, placed the gem in the centre of the palm, then one-by-one gently closed her fingers around it.

  “Man, take some more, come on.” Stock was shocked by Remnant’s reticence. “You went a long way looking for this. You deserve more.”

  But Remnant quietly walked away.

  When they reached Prospector III’s central landing, the pilot was halfway up a ladder. He called down over his shoulder. “The side door’s jammed. This is the only way out.”

  Remnant squinted as he looked up the ladder, up into the brilliant mint white of London light.

  “Ladies first,” he said to Aurora, helping her onto the lower rung.

  She took a deep breath and ascended the ladder a rung at a time, the diamond zipped in her jacket’s inside pocket. Remnant watched her disappear onto the roof of the ship and beckoned to Stock to go next.

  “You sure?”

  Remnant nodded.

  Stock made short work of the ladder and was up and out before Remnant had time to prepare himself for his exit.

  “Come on, Sye,” Aurora called down.

  Remnant gripped the sides of the ladder, his heart beating faster than at any stage he could remember during the trip. During his whole life, even. His arms tingled, his legs felt numb and weighed heavy. He took the first three rungs one at a time before being forced to stop. Why was he so breathless? He managed another rung. The white light from above had a hue of blue to it now, a clear, sunny day to welcome him home.

  Another rung.

  “You OK down there buddy?” Stock called.

  Remnant shook his head, which was full of haze. His throat was parched and burning. His lungs battling to work with this real oxygen, accustomed now to the processed variety generated on the ships and by the masks. He managed another step but again had to stop.

  “Give me your hand,” Aurora called out. She saw Remnant was struggling. “Help him someone,” she cried.

  Remnant felt his legs give way and slip from the rungs. But Stock and Aurora grabbed his outstretched, flailing arms in time and together they hauled him kicking and screaming onto the roof of the ship. He couldn’t breathe. Between them, Stock and Aurora thumped his back and pumped his chest, trying to shock his heart and lungs into action. Remnant managed to take in some air. The burning caused him to yell something incomprehensible, a mixture of joy and disbelief. He was pulled to his feet and felt one arm go around Aurora, the other around Stock. His head tilted back, feeling the warmth of the sun burn his swollen skin. His tearful eyes, clenched shut, desperately wanted to open. He had to see. He wanted to see what had happened to his world.

  54

  Remnant circled on the spot where the security guards used to survey Hatton Garden and Greville Street. The panoramic view it afforded him revealed this was not the home of his memories and dreams. He looked upwards to the block of flats where Edgar lived. It was gone. And the adjacent block where number forty-eight, his home, had always been was half as tall, its upper balconies fallen into the jewellers below

  DT’s jewellery store remained charred, its one surviving storey boarded up. Remnant’s eyes and his heart desperately wanted to see DT searching the rubble for anything valuable he could salvage, but everything of value from that place had gone. Including the man himself. When he’d asked him, Stock had shaken his head at Remnant. ‘Too far out. Not even a NASA spec escape pod could get you home that far from Earth.’

  Looking beyond the jewellers, Remnant took in the remains of the neighbouring café, its glass-less door hanging from a hinge. The market stalls of Leather Lane were deserted, their tent poles fallen and burned. The shops along the sides of the road that had always struggled to survive, failed to survive subsequent aborted launches and successful looting, their walls and windows pitted and smashed by the sniping and the firing that had followed.

  Remnant rotated on the spot again, and saw the Prospector III surrounded by armed SEC guards, and a small crowd of locals who
were gathering to admire the magnificent ship. Remnant searched the faces for familiar ones, but their shellshocked eyes, pale complexions and gaunt cheekbones rendered them all unrecognisable.

  Remnant started to run.

  “Sye, where are you going?” Aurora called.

  He ran past the jewellery shops on Greville Street their fronts mere facades, two-dimensional like a film set, their backs, bodies and hearts blown out and away. He hung a right down Leather Lane, surprised to see the speed bumps scarring what had been their launchpad. He swung a swift left into Baldwin’s Gardens and right again into the open square bordered by tatty garages that led to the lock-ups. The shutters were down on Edgar’s, but still Remnant tapped the combination. There was no answer. Remnant tried again but the result was the same.

  “Edgar? Edgar?”

  Remnant slapped and kicked the door.

  “What are you doing, Sye?” Aurora asked, breathless from the chase.

  Remnant rested his head against the door of the lock up and shook his head.

  “Come on,” said Aurora. “Stock’s got to go.”

  Aurora led Remnant back to Holborn Circus, a few people nodding and pointing at them both as they walked. Stock saw them coming and ran forward to greet them.

  “Everything OK?” he asked.

  “I just needed to see somewhere,” said Remnant.

  Stock placed his hand on Remnant’s shoulder. “We’re heading home, pal,” he said quietly. “We don’t want to be hanging around here too long for obvious reasons.” He motioned to the crowd that was growing around the ship. “Plus, I don’t want to keep the President waiting.”

  Remnant nodded. “I’m sorry that London’s not looking its best,” he said.

  Stock scanned the blasted buildings, the bullet peppered walls. “I expect we’ll find much the same story in Washington.”

  Remnant nodded and embraced this guy who looked even younger under Earth’s sunlight. “I can’t ever thank you enough for getting us back,” he said. Stock smiled, pulled away and embraced Aurora.

  After Stock and the SEC guards had boarded, Aurora walked alongside Remnant down the alleyway that led to The Old Mitre. They discovered one of the patio beer barrels still there, bathed now in the dust-filled sunlight that sheared through the empty wooden window frames of the pub, a hollow shell that Remnant daren’t enter, respecting the lifetime ban imposed on him by Gordon. His eyes searched for the flash of the quiz machine, the tired eyes and hair of Edgar, Gordon’s paunch, but found nothing familiar, nothing but dusty barstools and a bar that had been pillaged of all its liquid and brass.

  Aurora tugged at his sleeve. “Let’s go find your daughter.”

  They walked back up the alleyway and onto Hatton Garden, in time to see the Prospector III roar back up High Holborn and high into the brilliant blue sky.

  Remnant led Aurora in the same direction, west towards Oxford Circus and Chloe’s Bayswater home, not knowing whether she’d be there, whether her house would be there.

  Former offices and sandwich shops and banks and internet cafes were all either deserted or doubling as shelter for those who’d kept their lives but lost their homes to the bombs and the bullets. A few cars braved the unmarked, uncontrolled roads.

  As they reached the junction with New Oxford Street, Remnant and Aurora froze. Draped down the length of one of the few streetlamps that still stood was a giant propaganda poster of a smiling John Stock with the words, ‘The Man Who Saved The World’ written under his feet, and followed by his blog’s web address. They looked at each other in amazement.

  They continued walking west to Centre Point, now just four storeys high but still a focal point for the homeless. Both became conscious of people who were squatting in the ruined shops and offices they passed or walking nowhere in particular, looking closely at them, some double-taking. Remnant gripped Aurora’s hand even more tightly. He didn’t want to look behind because he could hear they were being followed. It had been a few sets of footsteps at first, but the number had multiplied rapidly.

  He didn’t want to get violent so soon after his return home, but he sensed the area’s atmosphere had changed. War changes people and places, it can’t fail to, he thought. The fighting in London would have been fierce, the casualties heavy, the survivors embittered and desperate.

  Aurora felt the weight of the gem in her pocket more than ever. “Take it,” she whispered to Remnant.

  “Take what?”

  “The diamond. You have it.”

  “No way. Keep it where it is. Just don’t look back, keep going forward,” he whispered.

  They were almost running now, Remnant wanting to get to Bayswater quickly, but as they ran the footsteps behind them ran too. Thirty, maybe as many as fifty pairs. There was no escape. At Oxford Circus, Remnant stopped dead in his tracks and turned to face the thieves chasing him.

  The group numbered in excess of fifty. Old men and women at the back, young children and mothers in the middle, teenagers and schoolkids at the front. All looked expectantly at Remnant. A little girl at the front smiled.

  “What do you all want?” Remnant shouted.

  The little girl pointed towards a man in incendiary orange overalls who was up a ladder using a broom to smooth the last corner of another huge propaganda poster onto a billboard. The message on it simply said ‘Peace’. The picture below was the one Stock had taken of Remnant and Aurora embracing as they floated in space.

  They looked at each other, unable to comprehend what was before them.

  Remnant turned to the crowd. “What do you want from me? I don’t know what you want from me.” They stared at him, wide-eyed and hopeful. “Whatever it is, I can’t give it to you. I don’t have the skills or the talent to help you.”

  He looked to Aurora who didn’t look convinced.

  “I don’t, I don’t.”