The door closed and Sarina’s mother stood to confront her. “Sarina, you don’t have to do this, just because of some misguided loyalty to that boy and the so-called Professor. I will take whatever steps needed to prevent them—”
Sarina held her mother’s hand. “Mum. It’s okay. I’m convinced it’s a genuine emergency. The Professor wouldn’t dream of doing this unless they really did need me and ...”
Her mother raised her eyebrows.
Sarina sighed. “To tell the truth, Mum, I’ve been having these blackouts and dizzy spells. I’m really frightened I have the same problem my great-aunts had. Maybe I do need help. But it will only make things more stressful if I try to stay here and paint, knowing Nathan is in trouble and the Professor has some emergency on his hands. They would do the same for me, you know. Besides. If I’m really going to go mad, then I might as well have tried my best to do something to put the world to rights.”
Her mother looked at her for a while. “Mr Blanchard was right. It’s the children who should be put in charge of our world.”
Sarina smiled. “Except Nathan.” She looked around the room and heaved a sigh. “Oh well. It’s a good job I only just unpacked.”
They made quick work of repacking and rushed down to meet Agent Blanchard, who, as usual, was on his phone. He caught sight of them and beckoned them to follow him out to the car waiting outside the hotel.
“Miss Metcalfe! Miss Metcalfe!”
The voice came from behind and Sarina turned to see the hotel’s concierge.
“I have zat translation you asked for!” The young man smiled and held out a folded piece of paper. “It was eezy, but a bit strange. I hope it eez what you wanted. Au Revoir!” He bowed and ran back to his station.
Her mother was looking at her.
“Just something I saw on television—I wondered what it was they actually said,” Sarina said, and she got into the back of the car. Agent Blanchard closed the door for her and got into the passenger seat in front.
Sarina found the button and lowered the window. “Don’t worry, Mum. I’m sure it will be sorted out in no time. See you soon!”
“That’s what you said last time,” her mother said, looking worried, but still managing a happy wave as they pulled away nonetheless.
The heliport was on the top of a hotel at the end of the street and Sarina wondered why they had bothered with a sleek black car. Another ‘agent thing’, she supposed.
In two more minutes she was airborne again, and looking down through the clear night sky at the beautiful lights of Paris.
She unfolded the note the concierge had given her and started reading. The news was about some children at her school all having reported the same strange event, and psychologists were still investigating. But that wasn’t what stood out. What leaped off the page into her brain and held it in a vice-like grip were the phrases: “saw a big black bird” and, “asking them to take him to the Orange Witch”.
Her stomach heaved. This time she knew it wasn’t the helicopter.
~ 12 ~
Missing Persons
Inspector Bolton pulled the alert off the network spooler, and peered at the text. It was from a government department he had never heard of.
The headline read: “Missing Persons: High Security Alert” and went on to request all local constabulary to be on the lookout for three missing persons; possibly in possession of a dangerous machine.
He scanned the identity photos printed on the alert and frowned.
He opened his office door and called down the corridor. “Crawford? You there? If you can pry yourself away from ‘Detective Monthly’, I wouldn’t mind you scanning your eyes over these mugshots.”
“Yes, Inspector, I’ll come right away,” the disembodied voice called back.
Bolton retreated into his office and sat down at his desk with the printout. He stroked his chin as he peered at the photos.
Sergeant Crawford burst through the door. “What is it, gov?”
“Calm down, Crawford. It’s not a murder hunt. Here”—he thrust the printout at Crawford—“take a look at these. Do you recognise them?”
“Yes, sir, I do all right. That’s them kids what damaged the shed and the playground.”
The Inspector nodded. “Thought as much. Which means this laddie”—he pointed to the photo of Professor Harrison—“is the interfering busybody that whisked them away from under our noses a few weeks ago.” He looked up at Crawford with a grin. “Some of our secret boffins are on the lookout for all three of them. Seems they might have a dangerous device with them. I think we should alert the lads. These perpetrators are known to be in our vicinity—and with prior form.”
Crawford sniggered. “Yes, gov. If those three are in trouble, I would be more than ’appy to coordinate a search for them, and make it me highest priority.”
Bolton nodded. “Thought you might. Just make sure I’m there when you find them, Crawford.”
“Will do, gov.” Sergeant Crawford grinned at his superior and left.
Inspector Bolton tapped his pencil on the Professor’s photo. “What have you got yourself mixed up in now, Mr Smarty-Pants Harrison, eh?”
~ 13 ~
Guitar Solos
Alpha ‘Alf’ Mbaye stood on a wide sidewalk in Royal Street, New Orleans. Royal Street was in the popular French Quarter, and Alf was about to start his contact-juggling busking act. He’d been in America for two years now, studying dance at Tulane University. He was lucky enough to land a scholarship from a wealthy Senegalese philanthropist who had seen his examples of choreography and was impressed with Alpha’s innovative style.
But the money was not enough to cover all his costs in the unbelievably expensive city.
Luckily, he had another talent: Contact juggling.
He’d taught himself to juggle from an early age and on one trip into the big city in his homeland as a young boy, he’d seen a woman doing miraculous things, apparently rolling a glass ball up and down her arms, around her neck, defying gravity. He had to be dragged away by his father and had vowed to learn how to perform this amazing trick himself.
Now, outside the row of antique stores, where the wealthy came to sniff out their latest acquisitions, he’d found a willing audience. Willing to pay money, that is. To see him perform his own contact-juggling miracles with the glass ball.
The ladies liked him the most, and he’d learned to show off his lithe brown body—not that he’d needed to do anything specific, since contact-juggling worked best on bare skin. More control.
Two bright-looking tourists stopped to watch him. They didn’t look like they were locals. They looked Japanese, Alf thought. He flashed them his bright white smile and started his routine. Within seconds, they were oohing and aahing. As they always did. Little did these two know he had a new trick to practice today, for the first time in public. It wasn’t truly perfected yet, but today was a quiet day for busking, so he figured he’d go public.
It was a bold trick, and one that required some creative gauging of speed and distance. The ball would roll up one arm, across his neck, then appear to drop onto his ankle, where it would roll up his leg against gravity and he would trap it by leaning back in a contorted backbend and using his strong stomach muscles to stop and lock the ball.
But, as usual, he was cocky and confident. Especially with these lovely tourist ladies admiring him. They would pay up big for a breath-taking trick such as this.
He grinned again and started the new move.
The ball rolled gracefully from one shoulder to the other and down his arm. This was the point of critical measurement. Or it would have been, if he hadn’t forgotten completely what he was doing, or how to do it. The ball dropped alright, but his leg moved somewhere it shouldn’t and he jumped back at the same time while flinging his arms around. What the ...?
The ball smashed on the ground, drawing a tiny shriek from the two audience members, who looked at him, clapped, and threw money in his upturned b
eret. They giggled together, and walked off.
He stared after them, then looked down at the shards of glass at his feet. What had happened to him?
Some poorly pronounced English words floated back from the giggling duo who had bumped into some fellow sightseers and were pointing back to him. “Juggle clown!”
~~~
The stadium had filled to its almost 100,000 capacity for each of the previous four nights that ‘You, Who?’, the world-famous rock band, had played to rapturous applause from the Barcelona crowd.
Tonight, the fifth and final night, was no different and Bobo, the lead singer, so-named after the comic-book chimpanzee detective he used to impersonate when he was young, had just wowed the crowd with the anthemic chorus of their current hit single: ‘Climb It Change’. Proceeds from the song were donated to the ‘Climb It’ appeal; designed to fund what Bobo considered a steep road to ‘climb’; to convince the world to take stronger action against climate change.
The Hedge—the band’s adored guitarist and nicknamed due to his ridiculously unkempt hair—watched his friend gyrating in front of the audience. Personally he would have preferred the profits from ‘Climb It Change’ to be donated right back to his own pocket, but conceded that without Bobo’s monkey-looks and Gaelic charm, he would never have made it famous.
But he could still have his moment in the spotlight.
Which tonight, was about to happen. Bobo had permitted him to have three minutes on stage for a guitar solo no less. He’d persuaded his short friend to allow this to be without any other band member playing, and tonight would be the fulfilment of a childhood fantasy from way back: Shredding serious improvised guitar licks in front of an adoring audience of a mere 100,000.
Sweet.
Bobo and the drummer—who didn’t even have a name, but went by the punctuation mark of: ’—both nodded to him.
He swipe-strummed the chord he was holding over from the last bar of the chorus, and started to run his fingers up the fret-board, hearing the familiar soaring notes from the song echo around the stadium and watching with amusement the thousands of fans air-playing along with every note.
Tonight he would surprise them. Total improvisation. No holds barred.
At the prearranged moment, he held up his plectrum hand high; and the music stopped.
The stadium screamed, then the noise died down.
He made them wait.
‘Hedge Hedge Hedge Hedge’ came the chant.
He grinned at them and pranced forward to the centre of the stage, and slammed his hand down to the first notes.
The crowd roared approval, assuming that the discordant garbage coming from his multi-stacked speakers was intentional.
He swallowed his surprise and quickly recovered with another grin. Schoolboy error. He let his fingers race up and down the keyboard, as they loved to do, and let his musical imagination run riot.
It sounded worse than an amplified menagerie of tortured donkeys. The crowd fell silent as the awful noises whipped around the stadium. The Hedge looked back at Bobo and ’ in panic.
Bobo, his microphone still hanging by his side waiting for his cue to rejoin, gave a tiny shrug of annoyance, and gestured for The Hedge to do what he was supposed to do. A rip-roaring, 100% improvised solo.
He gathered himself and laughed at the crowd. They always liked that. But the crowd sent back tones of grumbling disapproval. Where was their beloved solo?
He tried one more time. Holding his hand aloft, he waited for the inevitable cheer, which still came, although reluctantly.
He dropped his hand and played for all he was worth.
A cacophony of off-tune clangs and plings smashed through the speakers and ricocheted around the stadium. The crowd fell quiet, realising they were watching the equivalent of a train wreck in slow motion. Thousands of mobile phones were held high recording the debacle. YouTube would be busy tonight.
Valiantly The Hedge struggled to produce his famed sound, but instead more squawking ducks exited the massive speakers. He felt Bobo’s hand on his elbow. “I’ll take it from here, mate.”
Bobo stepped forward, raised his mike to his mouth, threw back his head and screamed out a high note, obscuring any of the diminishing echoes of donkey-squeals pervading the sound system. The crowd roared.
The Hedge stemmed his tears, unplugged his guitar, and stormed off stage. That night, You, Who? finished their set with just Bobo, drums and bass. The fans loved it.
The next morning, newspapers printed the inevitable corny headlines: ‘The Hedge Cut Down In His Prime’, ‘Hedge Fails To Hog The Stage In Barcelona’, ‘Hedge Row Erupts’.
~~~
In Moscow, things were heating up in the Bolshoi Theatre. Ivanya Vereskov, the internationally celebrated ballet dancer, was returning to guest-perform with the Bolshoi Ballet. The production was to be a modern interpretation of one of the most well-known of ballets: Prokofiev’s Romeo And Juliet. Tension had been building all week, as it was rumoured Vereskov would incorporate a freeform piece, inspired by the audience’s ‘empathy for Juliet’ as she called it, and would be completely spontaneous.
The ballet world was in uproar. How dare the Bolshoi—that most upstanding of institutions—sully a performance of such classic beauty. Perhaps those oddball New Yorkers and their off-beat performers would gladly embrace such an event, but this is Russia!
The more innovative commentators pushed back with equal verve. ‘Ivanya,’ they said proudly, ‘has been studying with William Forsythe, renowned choreographer. Renowned for pushing his students to ‘listen to the emotion’ and to ‘listen and feel your body’ and to let the spontaneity come. This would be a true Russian Revolution, they said.
Now the moment had come, and the expectant audience held their breath as the stage cleared elegantly, one-by-one, each performer sliding from view, until only the diminutive figure of Juliet/Ivanya was frozen in a pose on stage.
Her head lifted and her chin jutted up as she looked defiantly to one side and raised both arms, one up, one down.
The audience stilled.
Ivanya leaped in what was probably supposed to be a Grand Jeté. Instead she landed short and with a crashing thump on the stage, then proceeded to horse-gallop around the stage with a shocked look on her face.
At first the audience cheered—this was truly avant-garde!—then, when Ivanya swapped the gallop for a funky-chicken dance and a stunned expression as she clearly struggled to control her limbs, the audience lost their patience and began to boo and jeer.
The dancer saw expressions of disapproval and disgust appearing on every face she looked at; burst into tears, and kangaroo-hopped off stage to tumultuous boos and hisses and an audience in uproar as many fought to leave the horrible spectacle. What an insult!
The headlines rivalled those in Barcelona: ‘Vereskov Verylost’, ‘Romeo, Romeo, Where Gallop Thou?’, ‘Bolshy Bolshoi Backers Hopping Mad’.
~~~
The BBC Evening News led with the breaking story: A sober-faced announcer in a dark suit appeared on screen. “A mystery disease appears to be robbing young children of their imagination. Schools across the country are reporting young children breaking down in tears while playing with building blocks; when finger painting; and when engaged in other normal primary-school activities such as clay-modelling and making sand-castles.”
The camera switched to close-ups of distraught children standing in front of a pile of plastic building blocks arranged in a shapeless pile, then to one small girl in close up, being cuddled by a worried parent. The girl’s face was covered with finger-paint prints of various colours.
A woman appeared on screen. Underneath the caption ran: ‘Mrs Beadle, Headmistress, Chelton Primary’. She spoke. “We are naturally very concerned. At this stage we don’t know if it is a virus, or if the children are experiencing mass-hysteria. Child psychologists are advising us to pull-back on creative activities and let the children watch soothing television programs that will no
t be too stimulating, while we try to understand the issue.”
The camera moved to a shot of a darkened classroom, where a group of subdued and sniffling young kids watched Teletubbies.
The screen switched back to the announcer, who held a sheaf of papers and nodded as he spoke. “Experts are extremely concerned by the widespread nature of the so-called ‘nightmare epidemic’ and are currently investigating the connection with this new outbreak across our schools. We’ll keep you informed on the hour, every hour, and will interrupt our regular broadcasts with any breaking news.”
A new graphic appeared on the screen showing the night sky; an artist’s depiction of a comet and a long spectacular tail; and the text below it: ‘Comet 76 Shines Bright’. The announcer’s voice continued. “A new spectacle arrived in our night skies this week: The long-awaited Comet 76, which is purported to have one of the most vivid and colourful tails. This is due to the comet’s unusual metallurgy, and experts are saying the expected trail of dust entering our atmosphere will be one of the most spectacular celestial events of the century.”
The picture switched to a group of tents, camped outside the UK Space Agency in Swindon. A small band of scruffy protestors jiggled makeshift signs with various slogans: ‘Alien Dust Threat: Tell The Truth!’, ‘Viral Weapons Lies’, ‘Creative Brain Drain Conspiracy: Alien Abduction?’
“Sources in government have denied any link between concerns raised by top creative thinkers, and the development of a so-called ‘super-mind virus’, which has been seized on by conspiracy theorists around the world.” The view switched again to a balding man standing in front of a flat, grey, featureless building. The caption read: ‘John McPherson, Joint UK-USA Space Research Programme’.
The man was responding to a question. “These claims are groundless; frankly any time anything bright appears in the sky, we receive another raft of calls and demonstrations claiming various government conspiracies, or terrorist cover-ups. However, we have taken the claims by our top thinkers seriously and will issue a statement in due course.”
The Dreamer Chronicles Trilogy Boxed Set Vol I - III: A Sci-Fi Parallel Universe Adventure (The Dreamer Chronicles - Science Fiction For Kids And Adults) Page 43
