The Boy Who Fell from the Sky, Jule Owen [classic romance novels txt] 📗

how you look at it, a balance of power, or chaos, in order to ensure American world dominance.

“The world wrote off the Russians after their collapse in the twenty-twenties. They were always overplaying their hand because they felt so threatened. But for a long time geopolitical analysts advising governments failed to factor in what would happen to Russia when the climate changed. Probably because years ago, you will remember, there used to be so much climate change scepticism. The West underestimated Russia.

“Initially they were as badly hit as the Americans, especially with uncontrollable forest fires, drought destroying their agriculture and threatening lives as millions struggled with heat waves in the South, much in the same way southern Europe has suffered. Turkey took advantage of their weakness in the Caucasus, and they lost all control over their old Soviet satellites. But then the sea routes in Siberia, previously blocked by ice, became clear for their war and merchant ships. Even if the world’s fresh water resources are massively depleted, the Russians have a quarter of what is left – and although they’ve lost their agricultural land, they have enormous new territory in the north now available to them for food production.

“They want what they have always wanted. To control access to the Black Sea and to put as many buffer states between themselves and Western Europe as possible. Now, I think their ambitions may be greater, but they may have acted a bit prematurely. These are well-known facts available to any citizen of this or any democratic country. There are many published works on the subject.  If the rumours about the new Battlestar are correct, then it will be a huge provocation to the Russians and the Chinese. It will be a huge miscalculation on behalf of the USA. That is why I say war is coming.”

6 Mr Lestrange

Still in the Darkroom, Mathew closes Psychopomp and calls a virtual space he created himself. 

He is on a vast ocean, in a small wooden sailing boat. The Darkroom chair moves appropriately, so he feels like he’s floating. It’s night, and he steers the boat by the stars. The pattern he has placed in the constellations leads to his destination. The wind catches the sails, and he moves through the water, the only sounds water lapping at the bottom of the boat and the canvas flapping. After a few minutes, he sees land on the horizon. A small island, an oasis of yellow sand, a single palm tree. He runs the boat ashore and climbs out, in the Darkroom, standing, stepping forward. He kneels under the tree and digs in the sand with his hands, uncovering an old wood and leather trunk. When he has cleared enough sand away, he takes a key from his pocket and unlocks the large brass padlock that hangs from the clasp on the lid and throws the trunk open. Inside there are documents, old books, which he takes out and places on the sand and then goes back to his seat.

In reality, the documents are digital artefacts concerning his father, kept in a place as secret as he knows how to make it. He could not explain why he feels the need to hide these things, but ever since his father died, he has wanted to protect them, as if a sixth sense tells him they are not entirely safe in the open. 

Mostly they are photos and videos. But there is the order of service from his father’s funeral, condolence letters from family friends and relatives. Mathew also has a collection of news articles on the solar island in the North Sea which his father was visiting when the cyclone hit and scattered the solar energy station, and the 131 men and women working on it, like match wood. 

No one survived. 

He has letters from Helios Energy, his father’s company, documents easily pilfered from his mother’s not especially secure personal drive: one regretfully confirming his father’s death, another informing them that his life insurance was unfortunately limited by a clause in the policy, and then a further letter disclaiming any further responsibility for Mathew and his mother. There had been a court case in which the disaster victims’ families sued for compensation, but the judge ruled the storm was an act of God, for which the company was not responsible.  

Mathew scrolls through these documents and finds a video of Elgol, two summers ago, the last summer holiday before his father was killed. The video is of Mathew and his grandmother. She hasn’t changed at all. He himself is so much younger, happy and carefree. He feels a pang of jealousy and resentment towards the boy in the video, who doesn’t know what’s coming, how his life is going to be changed forever. They are in his grandmother’s garden, making a trellis. The frame is flat on the floor, half constructed. He’s holding the wood while his grandmother hammers. 

His father asks from behind the camera in his Lenz, “What are you doing?”

Ju Chen says, “What does it look like? Switch that off and come and do something useful. You’re letting your son do all the work!”

The camera in his father’s eye pans around. Hoshi is sitting on a bench under the kitchen window reading in the shade of the flowering honeysuckle, which casts shadows across her eyes. 

Mathew hears his own idiotic laughter off-screen. His father is pulling faces at his mother. She grabs her Paper and walks away. She doesn’t smile. Before the video ends, his father’s pleading voice says, “Hoshi. Hoshi, come on . . .” and the video terminates.

That last summer before his father died, his parents did nothing but row. 

It’s four o’clock. Back in his bedroom, Mathew goes to his window. 

A car comes smoothly to a stop outside Gen Lacey’s house. The girl, Clara, is on the pavement. She wears a calm, impassive expression, but her eyes scan the road. Like most people these days, she’s on her guard. Mathew knows she can’t see his face, but she glances in his direction, perhaps scanning his broadcast data. Her hair is around her shoulders. She brushes a strand of it from her eyes with one large, long-fingered hand, tucking it behind an ear. She pauses only a moment. It’s too hot to linger. Then she disappears from sight.

Mathew’s looks across to the bay window of the house next door and for a second time sees the man with the deep-set eyes, staring at the space Clara Barculo occupied a moment before. Again Lestrange’s head snaps to the side, and those dark, dead eyes bore into Mathew like they are drilling for oil. In the next heartbeat, he steps back into the shadows of the room.

Mr Lestrange is watching the pianist, Mathew is sure of it now. But why? And should he tell her? What would he say?

He goes downstairs, realising with surprise that he’s shaking.

With O’Malley butting against him and the dragons dive-bombing him as he kneels on the floor, he installs his tiny amplifier in the front room, in a gap behind the skirting boards, under a loose flap of wallpaper. It’s a place his mother is unlikely to discover and Leibniz is unlikely to disturb while cleaning. 

It’s rigged so the audio stream comes through to his e-Pin. He switches on the feed now, setting it to record, so he’ll be able to listen to the music again afterwards. The amplifier is so sensitive it detects footsteps in Gen’s house. The hinge of an inner door squeaks, and he imagines Gen Lacey and her student entering the front room, where he knows she keeps her grand piano.

“Was your journey okay?” Gen asks.

“Yes, fine. The car cuts across town. We take a bit of a detour, but there are fewer cars on the road than normal, so it takes the same time as the direct route nearer the river. I didn’t notice anything too unusual, except no one’s about, there’s no people walking around. It’s like Sunday morning all day, every day.”

“How are your parents coping?”

“Oh, they’re fine. Since they’re teachers, they’re stuck at home, doing their supervision and lesson authoring from there. I think they’re enjoying it, actually.”

“I have to say, it doesn’t make a huge amount of difference to me, either. Now what do you want to work on today?”

“I’m struggling with the opening piece.”

“Honestly, Clara, I think you’re worrying over nothing. You still have plenty of time to prepare, and the way you’re playing, there’s very little to work to do.” 

“The expression isn’t right,” the girl says. “Technically, it’s fine, but it’s not what I want to say.”

“Why don’t you start? I’ll listen, and then we’ll discuss.”

Mathew sits on the floor with his back to the wall, the sound coming from the amplifier. His head resting against the wallpaper, he closes his eyes. O’Malley climbs into his lap and falls asleep. 

Memories of his father flood back, in particular his love of classical piano music. For the past two years it has felt dangerous to listen to any kind of music, to do anything to rouse emotion. He has avoided films and games with stories of fathers and tales of storms and disasters. It shouldn’t surprise him that he hasn’t been able to listen to music he closely associates with his father. But now, as his memory of his father recedes, he wants to pull him back. The fear of losing him forever is greater than the fear of feeling. 

When he was five or six years old, his father sat him down and made him listen to Chopin’s Nocturnes and Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. Afterwards he listened to these pieces over and over, until they wore into him. Searching for the melodies, straining to find whatever meaning his father found in them. Soren loved a wide range of composers, but most of all, he loved Bach. Bach, he told Mathew, is the mathematician’s music. It’s the music of logic, of science. “This music feeds your brain, Mathew.” 

The music is all Mathew lets in for the next hour, broken only by discussions between Clara and her teacher. Clara’s anxious search for her own version of perfection is at odds with the sublime emotions the music generates. 

Listening, absorbed in her playing, he is calm. 

He’s so lost in the place in his head where the music has sent him, it takes him a moment to realise Clara has stopped playing and is saying goodbye to Gen.

He scrambles up and gets to the window in time to watch her disappear into her car, the Aegis guard shutting the door. 

The guard scans around the road and then suddenly glares directly at Mathew. 

He receives an incoming message from the guard, not encrypted. Open. The equivalent of shouting, it says:

Haven’t you got something better to do, weirdo?

The guard grins or snarls, it’s hard to tell which, and then gets into the front seat. 

Mathew steps back as if slapped.

The autonomous vehicle does a mathematically precise three-point turn and drives away. Mathew watches Clara, who must have also received the message, craning her head to search for the “weirdo” the guard yelled at. She does not catch sight of him, but she will have seen his name and broadcast data again.

He is angry, embarrassed, flustered, and, because of this, he has forgotten about Mr Lestrange, but as he turns away from the window, he catches a glimpse of a shadowy figure retreating from the light in the semi-darkness of the house next door. 

Mr Lestrange is far weirder than