Chapter 23 - Explanations
Silence.
No one spoke. No one moved. Even their breathing seemed quieter and only the whirring of the fans could be heard.
Behind Eric and Ursula, Dr. Johansen began to shuffle nervously from one foot to the other. Beside him, Andrea stood like a statue, waiting patiently for someone to speak.
One, two, three minutes passed and still not a word was uttered. More time ticked away, and the silence became deafening.
Eventually, Eric spoke, his voice strong and a little too forceful to be fully believable. “I don’t care. Really I don’t. This explains a lot, and I don’t care that they were not my real parents. They were hardly ‘real’ parents anyway, even when they were alive.”
“Genetically speaking it is highly probable that they were a fraction of your parents,” said Andrea. “Both Mr. and Mrs Meyer donated their genes for you and Ursula.”
On hearing her name, Ursula joined in the conversation. She spoke softly. “Does this mean that they were partly my parents as well?”
“Yes. And a number of others.”
“So is that why I am here? They knew who I was all along.”
Dr. Johansen moved so he could face Ursula. His fingers were in his mouth, and subconsciously he was biting his nails.
“I am unable to say with definite certainty as I never had the pleasure of meeting Mr or Mrs Meyer. However, I am almost certain that they knew nothing about you,” he said and turned to face Andrea. “Would you agree with that Andrea?”
“Yes. That is true.”
“Nobody on Earth knew of your and Eric’s existence, except for Andrea and myself. However, until last night, rather surprisingly, neither of us knew that the other knew. We had both been kept in the dark by Professor Larsen. If there had been any problems on the Space Station or if your safety had been compromised in any way, you were to be sent back to Earth in specially constructed capsules or pods. We each had been given the rough co-ordinates of one pod and assumed that you would travel together. Alas, that was a mistaken assumption.”
He paused and fought to keep his fingers away from his mouth.
“When the OSS discovered Professor Larsen’s whereabouts on the space station, they sent her a well-wrapped present of a guided missile that was almost invisible to radar,” the sarcasm in Dr. Johansen’s voice was impossible to miss.
“Moments before the Space Station exploded she jettisoned the two of you towards Earth. Andrea set off for her coordinates but when she arrived at the location she found nothing, the cupboard was bare. By analysing the data and comparing it with her knowledge of the explosion, plus a meteor storm around this time, she was able to pinpoint a nearby location. Fortunately, she did this extremely quickly. I had to do the same. Andrea found Eric, and I found Ursula. When we each discovered only one of you, we assumed that the other needed, and had to be, located as soon as possible. We have independently spent more than a decade fruitlessly attempting to find you and to retrieve the two missing pods, before the OSS. I located Eric’s pod in Romania, but I had a run in with the OSS. It was not my first and unfortunately will not be my last.” He stroked the scar on his cheek. “Until sixth months ago, when I saw Eric at a gymnastic tournament in Paris, I had assumed that he was dead. Andrea had believed the same to be true of Ursula until luck, or fate, brought her to the Meyer doorstep.”
“Do my grandparents know?” asked Ursula, her voice almost cracking.
Dr. Johansen started to chew his fingers again and replied, “Your grandparents know nothing except that they found you in a shopping trolley, in a rather grotty underpass in Paris. I had placed you there. Madame Benjamin found you and I walked away.”
The moment he had finished Ursula jumped up from her chair and stepped towards the open doorway.
“I want to speak to my grandparents.”
“Not yet,” Dr. Johansen told her, placing a warm hand on her shoulder. “You need time to think about this and I recommend quite strongly that you take your time. Mr. and Mrs Benjamin are good people from what Andrea tells me. They have brought you up and taken a great deal of care over you. In all the ways that matter, they are your grandparents. I am wholly convinced that someday, when they felt that you were old enough, they had planned to tell you. Let us not upset them and disturb this happy equilibrium just yet. Please sit back down.”
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 Enqu
iry 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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