The Lifeboat

by Keith Fenwick

  “Here’s your coffee, love.”

  “You shouldn’t go off without telling me,” Sue sobbed. “I woke up and you were gone. I didn’t know where you were.”

  “I only went outside to have a smoke,” Bruce began reasonably and a little guiltily. “And you were asleep.”

  “Who did you meet? I could hear voices in the background, women’s voices,” she probed, suspicious.

  That couldn’t be right, Bruce thought. The only woman in the café had been the waitress.

  “I went out for a smoke and ended up having a cup of coffee with Wisneski.”

  “I don’t believe you,” she snapped. “We’ve only been married five minutes and you are already cheating on me. And you don’t even have a hangover.”

  To be fair to Sue, Bruce had not really come to grips with the concept he was no longer an individual independent unit. Like it or not, he had to take Sue and the sprog into account as part of the contract they had entered into the previous day. That is, he should honour and understand the contract. He wasn’t cheating on Sue, but neither was he as fully committed to their relationship as he should be.

  The sound of his phone trilling in his pocket put paid to any further navel gazing.

  “Morning, Dad,” he said, noting the number.

  “Morning, son. Ready for breakfast?”

  “Yep, we’ll be down in a moment then we’ll shoot through.”

  And then, with almost indecent haste, it was all over and done and dusted. After a leisurely second breakfast and a couple of extra cups of coffee, a very waterlogged Bruce and Sue packed, and after making sure little Bruce was safe and sound with Mrs Pratt, they were ready to roll.

  Seven

  Bruce’s idea of a perfect holiday involved renting a car and then driving them over long distances, so when he had the opportunity he made sure he indulged himself.

  As a honeymoon present to himself, he had managed to book the modern version of an iconic muscle car from his youth. The car was okay as far as it went but after a few minutes he thought his ute was probably more comfortable to travel in. It was a bit of a let-down really. Hopefully, once out on the open road he would feel differently about the experience.

  After a few minutes pressing buttons on the satellite navigation system at random, to enter the address of their destination, Bruce gave up and logged into Google maps on his mobile, entered the address Wisneski had emailed him and handed the phone to Sue.

  “Don’t play with it,” he told her. Much to Bruce’s frustration Sue was simply incapable of using Google Maps as a GPS and was always fiddling with the menu icons and then complaining when it wouldn’t work.

  The original plan had been they would spend their honeymoon on a leisurely road trip to Las Vegas and maybe take in the Rugby Sevens if they managed to get there in a couple of days. Then cruise back to Portland via Los Angeles and San Francisco to spend a few days with Sue’s parents before flying back to New Zealand. Well, that had been the plan until yesterday.

  However, to keep the peace he thought he had better double-check that Sue was on the same page as him. As he was quickly discovering, he could never be too sure which page he should be on.

  “You know we aren’t going to make it to Las Vegas for a few days,” he suggested as they drew away from the kerb and the little group that had gathered to see them on their way. “At least not today.”

  “Yes, I know, Bruce. I’m not stupid,” Sue snapped. Her personality transplant appeared almost complete. Or maybe she just had a bad hangover?

  “Does your hangover cure work on Sue as well?” he asked the MPU.

  No, my full functionality, including the medical suite, resides in you alone, the MPU replied, which Bruce thought was useful to know. It was an indication Sue was unable to upstage him or get in his way with the MPU or access to Myfair’s spaceship. Well, his spaceship, if control or access meant anything. Unless of course the MPU decided to shift allegiances again midstream.

  The MPU remained mute and Bruce decided not to press the point further – it was becoming increasingly apparent he needed the MPU more than the MPU needed him.

  “OK, honey, the place where we’re meeting up isn’t far away, they just want to brief me. Us,” he corrected himself quickly. “On the actions required regarding the asteroid, and when. Myfair will be there as well.”

  “Humph!”

  The rest of the short trip was silent except for the GPS squawking directions at them from time to time.

  “Destination on your left in 250 yards.” Why did the manufacturers always seem to use a woman’s voice to give directions? Bruce wondered. Most women he had met had no sense of direction, so it seemed a little ironic to use a woman’s voice in the sat nav or GPS unit. While he was on a roll he also wondered why Americans persisted with yards and miles instead of using the metric system like the rest of the civilised world. He had stumbled onto the topic being debated on a radio talk show a few days earlier and was a little stunned to discover that the consensus around the main reason for not embracing the metric system was because it was seen as un-American.

  He couldn’t make any sense of this line of thought – it seemed decidedly narrow-minded to him. Perhaps another sign of the general intolerance of dissident views that Bruce found more than a little ambiguous, given how cosmopolitan the country was – at least the parts he had travelled around recently.

  Bruce pulled off the road and into the underground car park of a medium-sized, nondescript office building. He knew it was the right place because he recognised the rego of the SUV parked by the exit door and lift as the one that had returned him to the hotel a few hours earlier.

  There was also a second large SUV parked beside it. A few serious looking men were standing around both vehicles and roaming around the car park, nervously touching their earpieces from time to time and tapping the obvious bulges under their armpits like youths making sure their dicks were falling the right way. There seemed to be two sets of guards eyeing each other up like they belonged to two opposing, hostile warlords at a criminal summit, unsure whether to trust the other guys or not.

  Bruce and Sue were clearly expected by one of the teams, but their arrival seemed to trigger some kind of dispute as to what should be done with them. It looked like a bit of a stand-off.

  Bruce pulled out his smokes and stared at the packet contemplatively. I really should give up, he thought, lighting up a cigarette. He leant against the car and stared at the guards until Wisneski emerged from the doorway and waved them over. As they approached the doorway another SUV rolled up and disgorged an unhappy looking Myfair and typically inscrutable Leaf.

  “Come in, come along.” Wisneski hurried them inside the lift, shepherding them through the door as quickly as possible. One of the group of guards clustered around the second SUV tried to intervene but Wisneski waved him away.

  “Out of my way. Whatever your master convinces himself to believe, he is not in charge here, nor does he have any jurisdiction. He has yet to be elected to any government office so is just an ordinary citizen, no matter what he would like to believe. So, for the last time, I am in charge of the security arrangements here and have the authority, and these people are critical to the process I am running. So get out of my way.”

  The man backed down and Wisneski led Bruce, Sue and the two Skidians into the lift. “You can wait in here, ladies.” Wisneski paused in the hallway and motioned to a reception area off to one side as they all exited the lift.

  “But what about me?” Sue demanded angrily. “I mean; I know what’s going on here.” She was determined not to be left out of proceedings and side-lined. “You guys are going to save the world and I’m being shoved aside. I know just as much as Bruce does about Skid and the space patrol ship and all,” she continued. “This is so sexist. Racist. You can’t have a black woman helping to save the world, can you?” Sue stood with her hands on her hips and pouted.

  There was some truth in Sue’s statement, especiall
y when the other key players in the drama were: an alien of uncertain provenance and a man from a part of the world few Americans had ever heard of. In some ways, Bruce was almost more alien than the actual aliens to the Americans.

  Bruce didn’t even make a pretence at challenging Wisneski and championing Sue’s position. In doing so he had crossed a point of no return in terms of their relationship and any trust there had been between them. He also wanted Sue out of the way – he knew she would embarrass him in some way by trying to interject and thrust herself into the conversation, proving her ignorance in the process. Yes, she did know a little about the Skidian spaceships – well, she knew they existed but she had never really bothered to learn much about them in the way Bruce actively had. Critically, in his own mind, the MPU had chosen him over her so he did not feel any need to be inclusive where she was concerned.

  A guard stepped out of nowhere in what looked like a planned move and closed the door behind the two women as Sue stood there trying to argue with Wisneski. Bruce could hear her protests as he walked on up the hallway to a boardroom. He glanced at Wisneski and rolled his eyes towards the ceiling. It was not going to end well, their relationship, he decided. Bruce recognised the room from the day before and hoped they had cleaned up the dog shit and sprayed the room with something that would cover up the smell.

  Bruce nodded at the general and the other old boy, Dr Roach, and smiled at Shelly Shaw. Another figure was present, one that Bruce failed to recognise immediately, but thought he possibly should because he seemed vaguely familiar. At least the room smelt as though the carpet had been deodorised – just as well for all concerned.

  “Finally I see we are all here,” this new participant announced rather pompously. “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen and welcome,” he began as if he was now in charge of, well fully in command. “I have made it my business to get involved in this affair to ensure the interests of the American people are upheld and this isn’t some kind of government conspiracy where billions of taxpayer dollars are wasted in the pursuit big government interests.”

  “You what?” Bruce blurted. He didn’t know what to make of the man and was quite taken aback by his approach. Did he understand what was going on – or actually care? Was he on some kind of misguided crusade, or was this just an exercise in manipulating events for his benefit and political gain? Then Bruce recognised the man as Ronald Chump, who was running for President and by all accounts was most likely to win the election if the current polling was to be believed. The fact that a buffoon like Chump could be elected to the highest political office in the land did nothing to change Bruce’s view of American politicians and the political process the locals had the nerve to call democracy. It was really an oligarchy, with a few faceless people being the real powerbrokers.

  Chump held out a carefully manicured hand for Bruce to grasp and shake. Which he did, despite himself, then Chump held out his hand to Myfair.

  Myfair had failed to get used to this quaint, offworld custom and simply stared over Chump’s head at some point on the wall beyond him, completely ignoring the man and his proffered hand. Myfair’s total ignorance of him seemed to disconcert Chump a little – in his carefully stage-managed life he was completely unused to people who were not in absolute awe of his celebrity status.

  “Let us begin then,” Chump started to regain his confidence and belief that he was in charge of the situation.

  Bruce had no idea what the hell was going on; this guy Chump had not been mentioned over breakfast or on the way back to the hotel an hour ago.

  “The American people are sick of the fantasies you people dream up to spend their hard-earned tax dollars on,” Chump continued. To Bruce it seemed Chump had practised a script he had down pat. One that he struggled to modify when the audience was hostile, or harder for him to handle, completely ambivalent to his messaging. So his approach was falling on deaf ears in this room. Bruce wondered how the man could ever have gained the power and wealth he had accumulated over his lifetime because he sounded like some kind of insecure con man who needed to talk himself up.

  “I am here to shut you down before you scare the nation and the rest of the world to death with your wild notions. I am on to your little empire-building scheme.”

  “Mr Chump, I’m not sure where you are getting your information from,” General Smith began, “but the threat here is very real.”

  “I have my spies everywhere,” Chump replied smugly, ignoring the old general. “Our supporters and followers have infiltrated every part of the infrastructure of the federal government and report back to us about every excess, about every attempt to winnow away our rights in favour of big government, and the secret plan to cede our hard-won liberty and democratic rights to the UN-sponsored one-world government.”

  Bruce could not quite believe what he was hearing and seeing. Chump smiled smugly at them all, with little beady, piggy-like eyes bulging out of his puffy red face, almost daring anyone to challenge him. He clearly believed what he was saying, or at least some of it; it was hard to tell. By the way he was ‘whopping’ on, it was almost sounded like Chump wanted his audience to believe he had been around to advise the Founding Fathers when they put the constitution together, although clearly nobody in the room was buying it.

  “My team will be along shortly, and we will tidy this conspiracy up straight away and stop you wasting tax dollars on chasing fantasies in space and Mars just so NASA can squeeze more money out of Congress to build fancy spaceships that nobody else wants. Especially when we could be building more warships or tanks to defend the American people from the enemies massing on our borders.” Chump paused for breath, wheezing a little, and Bruce realised he wasn’t a young man, nor was he in the best of health, by the look of him. He was also clearly a nutter; surely no one seriously believed that armies were poised on the border ready to invade America?

  “And what you are doing is un-American. The people of this country don’t want you to do whatever it is you are doing!” he added, finally.

  This sounded absurd to Bruce – if the American people had any idea of the danger they were in; they would be demanding the government sort out the asteroid before it hit. Well, except those who thought prayer would do the job.

  Bruce heard the lift and then the door to the room opened to reveal two oddly assorted characters standing at the entrance trying to get past the guard who was barring their way.

  Chump waved them through the door. The guard glanced at Wisneski who nodded his head almost imperceptibly to let the men pass and shut the door behind them.

  “Now down to business. May I introduce you to Pastor Ryan, my spiritual advisor, and my science advisor, Mr Reid. Now please be seated.”

  Bruce began to wonder whether he had stumbled into a revivalist prayer session he had no intention of sticking around for, and that was before Chump’s next utterance.

  “Pastor Ryan, can you give us your blessing, please.”

  “For fuck’s sake,” Bruce muttered under his breath and pulled out his smokes.

  All eyes in the room swung around to face him.

  Chump seemed taken aback. Bruce could see he was suddenly unsure how to react to the situation, and the confusion was evident in his little piggy eyes.

  “But this is disgraceful,” he blustered, interrupting the pastor as he opened his mouth to speak. “It is most disrespectful to smoke during a prayer session and, besides, smoking is banned in all public places and Federal buildings.”

  “You what?” Bruce shrugged his shoulders and ignored Chump, whose face grew beet red. So certain and sure of himself a moment ago, he was now uncertain how to proceed.

  “Do you know who I am?” Chump demanded. “You ignore me at your peril, young man.”

  Bruce was pretty sure he had nothing to worry about and grinned back unconcernedly at the man, which served to further discomfort and throw Chump right off his stride.

  “Pastor Ryan, please continue.”

  The pastor cl
eared his throat and began to pray, ignoring Bruce for the moment, who watched on in amusement. The others – except Myfair who was steadfastly ignoring everything and everyone, had no idea what was going on anyway – bowed their heads and assumed religious stances of one form or another. They all spoilt the effect by glancing surreptitiously at each other during the pastor’s short blessing.

  “Dear Lord, help to deliver us from the evil that stalks us from the heavens, and the abomination of big government. Protect our hard-won rights and freedoms.” He paused to let his words sink in. “Protect us from the deceits of the United Nations that seeks to take away our freedoms and rule over us.”

  “Are you kidding me? Do you really believe that conspiracy theory shit?”

  A stunned silence met Bruce’s question and the pastor was the first to react.

  “Excuse me, how dare you interrupt me when I am praying!” Pastor Ryan demanded. “I am Mr Chump’s direct link to God. How dare you interrupt me?” He glared self - righteously at Bruce who was not in the least bit discomforted.

  “I’m here to learn something about orbital mechanics, mate. If I’d have known I was going to be involved in some kind of prayer meeting, I wouldn’t have bothered getting here so early. Anyhow, can we just get on with it?”

  “How dare you interrupt, sonny?” Chump demanded. “Do you know who we represent? I am, according to the polls, likely to be the next President of the United States of America, and I also represent the interests of some of the most powerful people in America. I also need to inform you I need to get back on the campaign trail as soon as possible, so my time in sorting out this mess is limited.”

  Bruce could see Chump was building up quite a head of steam and decided to let him ‘whop’ on for a few more minutes for the entertainment value.