Panspermia Deorum (4 page)

Henry Fellowes
suggested that he should take over the leadership of the way
forward, knowing that the board of directors thought Waverly had
acted just as precipitously as Delacroix. They were also aware of
the dangers of going to court. Waverly acceded and walked out
without a handshake or uttering another word. The thaw was
tangible, at least for the two men remaining in the office.

T
he deal was agreed with Henry Fellowes, albeit after
a bit of shadow boxing. Julien agreed to his house being searched
if NERO gave him a typed letter giving him proof of voluntarily
handing over information which the Osaka people had failed to find.
He insisted on highlighting the duplicate memory stick. Two
sections of the document were left blank until the house search was
completed, and then a box designated as - ‘Meeting minutes 1999
A10’ - was added together with Fellowes’ signature, and the date
Julien had surrendered the stick to the temporary care of the NERO
security men who had previously escorted him from Lyon airport.
Both parties were now happy to move on to the severance package and
Henry Fellowes thanked Julien for his cooperation.

“It shouldn’t
have been left to you to say thanks. If Sir Ian had been more
understanding of my reticence to mislead the conference, this
unfortunate state of affairs would never have arisen. In
voluntarily giving your guys that stick, and I think you should
examine it carefully, I really had to struggle with my conscience.
It was the only evidence that constituted my defence, proving that
the data I was supposed to deliver was incomplete at best, but in
reality, quite manipulative with the truth. Perhaps I’ve saved his
career, and that grates with me, however, it’s now up to your board
as to what will be done. Waverly may have got away with this if his
security people in Osaka hadn’t been so keen to strip search me.
The memory stick they took from me at Osaka airport is the
original, the one I surrendered here is a duplicate. I never
thought I’d be thankful for a NERO protocol which had to be
enforced. The strip search team seemed pleased with themselves when
they took the original but didn’t even ask about the copy, which
was just nestling in a pocket of my jacket which they supposedly
searched. I’m totally perplexed as to how they weren’t told about
the copy, Waverly must have known about it, he wrote the bloody
protocol. It was only when I was aboard the aircraft that I found
it was still in my jacket. I could have exploited the information
which is on that stick. Take a look for yourself. I guess you’ll be
in touch about the severance.”

“Indeed. It may
take another day to get it ready for you to sign. I’ll call
you.”

Fellowes walked
to the waiting company car, shaking his head as he threw his
briefcase into the back seat. Julien reversed his own car from the
garage and set off to see his family.

*

The air was
thick with speculation when Julien rang the doorbell of Geraldine’s
house, and it hadn’t been dislodged by the mandatory hugging and a
few tears.

“Can you all
sit down and hear me out before bombarding me with questions. By
all means hit me with them once I’ve finished covering all aspects
of the last two days. I’d appreciate the chance to do this my
way.”

Geraldine
nodded but asked if he’d like a hot cup of coffee before getting
started. It was declined with an anxious smile.

“I assume
you’ve all seen my exit speech from the conference and Ian
Waverly’s public termination of my contract with NERO, so I don’t
need to dwell on the details involved with either of those events,
they can wait. I want to cover what can and cannot happen next,
because the family comes first. I could probably have fought my
dismissal but I chose not to. It wasn’t about money, as I’m close
to pensionable age and don’t need to work if I don’t want to. I
have already been offered a new position, and it is one which is
very worthwhile. But, you, the family should have some input before
I reply to the company. You should probably take into account that
NERO may try to whitewash their errors and divert media
inquisitions to me. This could disrupt your lives and I don’t want
that to happen. On the other hand, I don’t want to run away from
the implications which caused me to abort the conference.

“You heard me
say, in Osaka, that if nothing was done immediately about tackling
this asteroid it would very probably impact our planet in 2039. The
new position I’ve been offered would require me to do just that.
Eugene, you and Sophie are just beginning your lives, and I hope
that maybe someday I’ll be able to play with my grandchildren. But,
I also have to think about billions of living souls being
extinguished if nobody is willing to acknowledge the clear danger
we face in the future. It’s what we do now that will count in
twelve years’ time. Eugene, you have to complete your studies, and
Sophie, your talent must not be wasted; you should both follow your
passion, wherever that takes you. Elise, I know how much you enjoy
our life here in Lyon, and especially being so close to Geraldine.
To all of you, I have to confess, it will be difficult for me to
sit back and let the asteroid threat be someone else’s problem.
That’s simply because I’m arrogant enough to believe I’m the best
qualified person to meet this challenge from the skies. You may all
have gathered then, that the position I’ve been offered is in
another country. Personally, it wouldn’t matter to me if it was in
the middle of the Brazilian rain forest, but I have a family, and I
want to hear what you have to say. Who wants to ask the first
question?”

There was an
uneasy silence.

“Come on,
Elise, you must have concerns.”

“I do, but I’m…
unable to just list them… as if I was on the way to the
supermarket. You’ve just told Gene and Sophie that they should
follow their passion, and I agree with you. Maybe you’ve forgotten…
I didn’t get to follow mine. Perhaps I wouldn’t have made the
grade, but I wanted to be a professional dancer. Your career was
the priority…the only priority, because it provided steady income
and gave us the freedom to start a family. Until I know where your
next position is based, I can’t even think about moving away… from
the kids and Geraldine.”

“Fair point.
But take your mind back to 2021 when I joined NERO. I had a more
lucrative offer from another company, a privately owned
organisation. I took the moral stance that a respected world body
would be less political than one at least partly driven by profit.
I now know how naïve that was. The company is VB Aerospace. Volker
Brandt wants me to start working on eradicating this asteroid
threat as soon as possible. His headquarters are in Evry, at the
Guiana Space Centre. They also have offices in Washington DC,
Singapore, and Tokyo. It was originally named Arianespace, founded
in 1980, and ultimately its shareholders included Airbus Safran
Launchers, the French space agency CNES, and all European space
companies, representing 10 European nations. But, in 2020 funding
had decreased even more than that of NASA, and Volker Brandt bought
the facilities, but didn’t retain all of the employees. It was the
following year when he asked me to join his workforce.”

Elise’s
furrowed brow preceded her outburst.

“So, we… sorry,
you are talking of living in Guiana, America, Singapore or Tokyo?
I’m sorry, Julien, this is all a step too far for me.”

Eugene relieved
the building tension.

“How certain
are you that this asteroid will crash into the Earth? Will it
really kill everybody?”

“To be brutally
honest, Eugene, I can’t be absolutely certain in answering either
of your questions. The details to which I referred in Osaka are
very important in my mind. For whatever reason, NERO didn’t allow
me to tell the conference that an impact was highly likely, even
after we’d discovered it had been deflected somewhere in our solar
system. I was supposed to omit the
fact
that it passed
within 22,000 km instead of the predicted 37,000, entirely due to a
clash with another object, which we
hadn’t
predicted.
Further extrapolation of this new trajectory gives a high
coefficient of probability of impact in twelve years from now. As
far as estimating how many people would die, it’s impossible to
tell, but the odds are that it will be an extinction event. The
last known threat of this type saw off the dinosaurs, but
miraculously, burrowing mammals survived. That’s the dilemma, do
nothing, pray, or get to work on a solution. We may not find a
solution or the asteroid may have another bump before it
returns.”

“In that case,
Dad, somebody has to do something. If it’s you, so be it. It’s a
no-brainer.”

“What do you
think, Sophie?”

“I don’t really
get how you calculate these things, Dad, but if you thought it was
going to come by at 37,000 km and it would have but for a little
bump which pushed it like, a lot closer, you have to try and stop
it next time around. I don’t really want to think about it
anymore.”

“Don’t ask me,”
said Geraldine, “it’s your family, Julien. Whatever happens, I’ll
be staying here.”

Elise turned to
her husband and held his hand.

“You must do
what you think best, darling. I won’t be coming with you. I’ll stay
here with Geraldine, if she’ll have me. The kids won’t then have to
adjust too much. They have their own apartments. That would be the
way of least disruption. I’m not going to hold you back. In any
case, surely there will be times when you need to be in Europe, and
perhaps then… we can have… vacations, or just meet up for a short
break. That’s the best I can do right now. At a different time of
my life I might have come with you. I’m really sorry.”

It was decided,
but not in the way he’d hoped. Julien would contact Volker Brandt
in the morning. It was time to catch up with what had been
happening in the lives of his family in that room. The family he
was about to split up.

*

Brandt was
happy with the way things had been handled with NERO. It was one
less item to be concerned about.

“Look, Julien,
I think it would be best if you take a flight from Paris to
Washington. I’m in America right now and rather than take risks
with phones and messaging, we can thrash out your remit and
contract face-to-face. My people in telecommunications are already
at work on the records associated with your old mobile. It’s just
as well you trashed it as agreed. I’ll arrange for your open ticket
to be collected by you in Paris. You’ll have to make your own
arrangements to get there. Now, please make sure you bring the
content of that memory stick with you, buried deep in your laptop
or tablet, don’t transmit it though the ether. So, are we ok with
all that?”

“Sure, no
problem. How long are you in the States?”

“Another week
or so, why?”

“I’ll be
leaving my family in Lyon when I begin working for you, and I owe
them something a bit special.”

“When do you
plan to travel then?”

“Well, I also
have to sign off my pension transfer documentation from NERO today,
and indemnification stuff about handing Fellowes’ people the memory
stick. Can we say I’ll travel the day after tomorrow?”

“Fine, let me
know the flight details and I’ll arrange pick up for you.”

“Thank you,
will do. Look forward to meeting up again.”

Volker Brandt
had made his fortune courtesy of being able to see the little
picture within the big picture. A few years older than Julien, he
had an instinctive ability to time the major business decisions
with uncanny accuracy. He was pretty much the antithesis to the man
he was about to employ, yet he felt they could work well together.
He had put a considerable amount of time into honing his main
weakness, delegation. He found that it worked best when
subordinates felt part of the tough decisions, when in reality,
Brandt perfected the art of knowing when to sow and more
importantly, when to reap.

April 2029

T
he landscape had changed dramatically since the Osaka
conference. Not only had protest turned to terrorist insurgence in
known hot spots, it had metastasised into mass civil unrest in
hitherto peaceful regions. Climate change had lived up to its
billing by causing even more mass migration. It was global
conflict, but not between superpowers; rather between the actors in
government and the audience on the receiving end. The audience
could see through the script and the actors knew only their lines.
Curiously, the march to anarchism greatly assisted VB Aerospace.
They had become the only safe game in town, and Julien Delacroix
was remembered as the man who broke ranks in Osaka and told it as
it was. He had unwittingly become a man of the people. However,
whilst Volker Brandt inherited far less interference from any
remaining governing structures, Julien found the whole experience
of being the fountain of hope quite a distraction.

There were two
deadlines to address. The obvious one of developing a safe method
of influencing the path of ‘Chocolate Orange’, as 1999 A10 had been
nicknamed. Then there was the launch date of the Mars mission. 2033
was ideal when considering the distance between the planets, but if
the asteroid collided with Earth, the entire manned mission could
become futile. Within VB Aerospace, arguments raged as to whether
the launch should be postponed by two, perhaps even three years.
The major concern lay in the possibility of Earth and its entire
back-up for the mission being destroyed. It was postulated that a
few humans, if safely ensconced in habitat on Mars, would simply
run out of the essentials of life. Oxygen, food, and of course
water. Typically, Volker Brandt curtailed the clamour to reach a
humane compromise.