Diamond Sky (Diamond Sky Trilogy Book 1) (21 page)

Chapter 22

The Sly Fox was trading as normal just a few days after
the fire. The guestroom was almost a complete write-off, but it had been so
seldom put to use in the past that Mindy would not miss the lost income stream.
She actually stood to make a decent amount of money out of the whole episode
once the insurance company paid out on her claim. In every disaster, there are
always some people who stand to gain from misfortune. In this case, Mindy was
that person.

Her first customer of the day was Walter Coppersmith or
Wally as he was known to his mates. Like most of the townsfolk, Wally had been
born and raised in Jackson’s Hill. He was now in his forties and he knew that
he would live in the town until his dying day.

There were seldom few secure jobs available and many men had
to learn more than one trade to earn their living. Electrician, carpenter,
mechanic and even cattle drover had been amongst the professions Wally turned
his hand to over the years. His present means of gainful employment was up at
the Merrill’s farm where he was helping with the summer harvest. The clothes
that he wore were his work clothes.

‘What will it be?’ asked Mindy, as her customer appropriated
an empty stool at the bar.

‘Whisky,’ replied Wally. ‘And make it a double.’

‘Are you sure; it’s only just gone ten o’clock. Aren’t you
supposed to be working today?’

‘Frank called and said they didn’t need me today. I thought
I may as well make the most of the time off.’

Mindy poured the man his drink and left the bottle out on
the counter. She suspected he would soon want more of the same. A man that
wanted hard liquor at this time of the morning was unlikely to stop after just
one drink. Of course, what she wanted to know was exactly why he had chosen to
hit the bottle so early.

‘How’s Sheila; does she know that you have the day off?’

Wally shrugged.

‘I wouldn’t want to go spoiling her routine now, would I?’

His tone made Mindy a little nervous. Her position made her
privy to many secrets; those of Sheila included. She wondered what secrets
Wally knew and what he would do about them if he did. In an effort to improve
the man’s mood, she decided to change the topic to a more calming subject.

‘How’s your
gran
?’ she asked.

‘You know granny,’ replied Wally. ‘She’s still running Lucas
ragged. Any little thing and she will call him out. Did you know that last week
she actually phoned him up because a galah was nesting in her guttering? He
removed it for her too. She has him wrapped around her little finger.’

Mindy chuckled.

‘Well, that’s Lucas for you. At least if any proper
criminals ever move in here we will be in safe hands. That boy will always
respond to the call of duty, no matter what it entails.’

‘Sometimes I think that granny is testing him to see how far
he will actually take his role of town guardian.’

Whilst he talked, he refrained from drinking. Mindy hoped to
keep him talking. At least until another customer arrived and offered him a
distraction.

‘I can’t blame her for trying. When one gets to her age, I
think they are entitled to act in whichever way they please. How old is Mrs
Coppersmith now?’

‘She’s got the century coming up next year. If she makes it;
there is going to be one hell of a party, for sure.’

‘She’ll make it, alright. It would not surprise me if that
lady was to outlive us all.’

‘You may just be right.’

This time Wally did have a drink. He emptied his glass in
one swift movement and then slammed it down on the table top.

‘Same again.’

‘Are you sure?’ asked Mindy, lifting the bottle, but not
pouring it. ‘I could get you a pint instead. If you don’t pace yourself, you’ll
be dead to the world by lunch time.’

‘A pint will be fine,’ he told her.

Much relieved, she picked up another glass to supply him
with the suggested beverage. When it was a little over half full the tap
started to spew out nothing but froth.

‘Shit! The barrel’s going to need changing. I’ll only be a
moment, if you don’t mind waiting.’

‘Whatever,’ said
Wally.

She poured the spoiled drink down the sink and then went
down into the cellar to prepare a new barrel. It was times like this that an
extra pair of hands would have come in handy, but her help had recently quit in
order
to return
to her vacation.

Changing the barrel did not take long, but when she returned
to the bar, her customer was nowhere to be seen. The first thing she did was to
check the bottle of whisky had not also gone out of the door. It was still on
the bar where she had left it and the level did not look to have depleted
either. Relieved, she placed it back onto the shelf behind the bar. She did not
think to check under the counter. If she had done, she would have realised that
the shotgun she kept under there was now missing.

Chapter 23

The observatory appeared ever more imposing the closer it
got. Lucy had previously only seen it from afar and she was taken aback by its
actual size. The distinctive domed roof sat at one end of the complex, which
also housed the secondary research lab, whilst living quarters and domestic
facilities took up the remainder of the building. The entrance was concealed
behind an attractive forecourt and landscaped gardens, which were completely
incongruous to the desert landscape that bordered the property on all sides.

Lucy dropped a gear and slowed the car down as she
approached. Persuading
Davo
to allow her to drive was
the easy part. Convincing the mechanic to let her come along in the first place
had been a different matter entirely. Now she was beginning to wonder if she
should have let him go it alone, after all. The building gave off an aura and
it was not welcoming. She also saw the black Hummer, which had run her off the
road, and this greatly added to her discomfort.

‘I have a bad feeling about this,’ she said.

She felt the tension coming off the man beside her and knew
that he shared her apprehension.

‘How long is it since you were last here?’ she added.

‘More than twenty years.’

‘Twenty years, but I thought that...’ her voice trailed off
as she realised just how little she knew about the man and his life story.

‘You thought what?’

‘It’s not important. I’m just surprised that it has been so
long. I mean, this is such a small town and all.’

‘If you’ve got no business being somewhere then you have no
business being there.’

Lucy nodded, but she still did not understand. She could
have sworn that the photo of
Emmy
could not have been
taken more than two or three years previous at the most. She assumed that
whatever happened to make this day so significant had taken place after this
time, but obviously she was wrong. Something now told her that the twenty year
time period was equally important. The missing piece of the puzzle was still
the man in the photograph. Who was he and where was he now?

‘Can you tell me why you have come here today, after all
these years?’

‘I was summoned.’

‘You were summoned - why?’

‘That is what I am hoping to find out.’

The mechanic’s words sounded distant, as if he was drifting
away from her. A shadow passed over the windscreen as a wedge-tailed eagle
circled high above them. Lucy’s sense of foreboding gripped her even tighter
than before.

‘Do you want me to come with you?’

He slowly shook his head. She could feel him drifting yet
farther away.

‘I have to do this alone.’

Then as if waking from a dream, he instantly became more
alert and even offered her a smile.

‘I would appreciate it if you could wait for me,’ he added.
‘I’m not as fit as I used to be and I don’t fancy walking back to town in this
heat.’

‘Of course,’ she replied. ‘I’ll be here for as long as you
need me.’

He gave her a hug. She could feel the strength in his arms.
His embrace was reassuring; it made her feel safe.

‘If you aren’t back in thirty minutes, I’ll come looking for
you.’

‘No worries, I’m planning on being out in ten.’

He got out of the car then walked across the forecourt and
into the building. Lucy leaned back on the headrest and looked up to the sky.
The lone eagle had now been joined by three more of its kind. They performed an
elaborate dance in the sky. They circled like planes, waiting to be given
permission to touch down. It was probably nothing more than superstition, but
she could not help but think that they were expecting something.

***

Emmy
found herself drifting
through the morning on little more than cruise control. Her enthusiasm for the
project dropped in direct proportion to the rate at which Mike’s increased,
creating a perfect equilibrium. Ever since her grandfather implanted the idea
of some sort of competition into the soldier’s mind, he had become obsessed
with besting her. His first attempt was another misfire and after spiralling
out of control and being unable to stabilise his trajectory, he aborted the
journey after just seconds. Reluctantly,
Emmy
agreed
to increase the power further, making it much more difficult for Mike to abort
a journey on his own. The follow up attempt proved more successful and the
soldier had been in a state of altered consciousness for ten minutes without
incident.

With her input being required less and less,
Emmy
had more time available to think about other things.
Images of the dead were never far from her thoughts. Whether it was the
semi-formed apparition from the hospital or the fully fledged ghost from the
field, she could not stop thinking about how close she had come to the
afterlife. The next step was obvious, but it also frightened her. If spirits
were watching over her then there was no better day to try and contact them
than on the anniversary of her parents’ death.

A knock on the laboratory door pulled her back to reality.
Her grandfather would have just entered unannounced, which meant that it could
not have been him. She opened the door only slightly, careful not to reveal the
experiment inside.

‘What can I do for you, Sammy; bearing in mind that I am
really busy?’

‘You got guests,’ replied the Aboriginal. ‘There’s a car
just pulled up in the courtyard.’

Emmy
let out a sigh. She neither
had the time nor the patience for visitors.

‘Could you find out what they want and unless lives depend
on it, get them to come back another time?’

‘Okay, but then can we have that talk you promised?’

‘Whatever. Just deal with the visitors and make sure not to
disturb the professor. It’s very important that he has his own space today.’

Sammy nodded and then walked back down the corridor.
Emmy
closed the door behind him and tried to resume her
train of thought. Having had her concentration broken, she eventually gave up
and decided to check on Bradley.

‘How’s your boy doing?’ she asked.

The lieutenant did not look up from the console.

‘It’s hard to keep track,’ he replied. ‘Every now and then I
will get a reading, but most of the time the computer just says that it is
tracking. It reminds me of back in the day when internet was dial up.’

‘Well, this is a little more complex than downloading porn.
There is no limit to how far your friend can travel, but the equipment we use
to trace his movements is still bound by those pesky laws of physics, I’m
afraid. If he stayed more local it would be able to pinpoint him to within a
hairs width of his location.’

‘It’s a shame that there isn’t some way to communicate
between the command station and the subject.’

This time he did look at
Emmy
,
perhaps a little too hopefully.

‘If you think that you can build a better machine, you’re
welcome to give it a go. Maybe then you could give us back control of ours.’

The soldier
tutted
and then
returned to watching the computer readout.

‘What was that for?’

‘What was what?’

‘You know what. Why did you just tut at me?’

‘It was nothing.’

‘It was not
nothing
. Tell me why
you
tutted
.’

‘Jeez, lady, Mike was right about you. Do you ever let up?’

Just as she was about to let go with a strong diatribe, a
flicker of static on the screen caught her attention. This anomaly was followed
by a brief dimming of the overhead lights. Charlie ran over to the console
immediately.

‘What just happened?’ asked Bradley.

‘It’s nothing,’
Emmy
told him.
‘Just a power surge.
We have plenty of back-up so there’s no
need to worry.’

She ushered Bradley away from the console to allow Charlie
space to take over the controls. Both of them had the same fear. After tapping
out a few commands on the keyboard and cycling through all of the different
viewing modes,
Emmy’s
lab partner relaxed back into
his chair.

‘Well?’ she asked.

‘It’s like you said; just a slight power surge. Everything
is normal.’

She could tell by the tone of his voice that there had been
no return of the apparition from before.

‘Maybe we should pull Mike out, just in case,’ suggested
Bradley.

‘That’s a good idea,’ said Charlie. ‘I’ll bring him back
right away.’

The scientist leaned over the console and pressed the
cut-out switch, but nothing happened. He pressed it a second time, but again
there was no response.

‘Something’s wrong,’ said Bradley.

‘We have it under control,’
Emmy
told him, but she was not so sure of that herself.

Charlie tried the switch several more times and got the same
response.

‘We’ll have to power down the whole system. It’ll take a
little longer, but it should bring him back safely.’

‘Should?’
repeated
Bradley,
worriedly.

‘It’s just a glitch,’
Emmy
assured
him. ‘If Mike had not been so adamant on increasing the power, we could
probably have woken him with just a shake.’

As if he had heard her, the unconscious soldier jerked
forward bringing his head crashing into the underside of the matchbox. Bradley
pushed
Emmy
aside and ran to his friend.

‘Mike, are you okay?’ he asked.

The more senior of the soldiers seemed oblivious to his
comrade as he eased himself out of the chamber and then slid down onto the
floor. When Bradley got to Mike, he put his arm over his shoulder and helped
him to his feet.

‘Too easy,’ said Mike, who appeared somewhat dazed and
talked with slurred speech.

‘Try to relax,’ said Charlie, as he joined the two men.
‘You’re likely to be disoriented from the exit. The manual override jammed, but
it must have just been a delayed signal.’

‘You didn’t pull me out,’ said Mike. ‘I jumped.’

His speech had become clearer, but was now bordering on the
giddy. He tried to stand freely, but once he let go of Bradley his legs gave
way and he fell to the floor.

‘He’s clearly confused by the sudden transition back to
reality,’ said
Emmy
. ‘It’s best if he rests for now
and I’ll go and report this incident to the professor.’

‘The pro-fess-or,’ said Mike, as if struggling to come to
terms with the word. ‘That was why I came back. Something has happened to the
professor; I saw it.’

Emmy
and Charlie exchanged a look
of scepticism. Mike did not bother trying to explain it any further to them. He
pushed Bradley away and staggered across the room to the door.

‘Baby steps,’ said
Emmy
. ‘It may
take a while for you to regain full control of your reflexes so you would be
wise to take it easy.’

Mike turned around and when he saw
Emmy
laughing his face turned sour.

‘Your grandfather is dead,’ he said bluntly.

Emmy
could not believe what she
had just heard. Was this some sort of a sick joke? She strode over to Mike and
pushed herself right up into his face.

‘This is not funny,’ she barked at him. ‘I’m going to go see
Pops and when I come back, you are leaving this facility for good.’

She nudged her way past him and when she got to the corridor
Charlie caught up with her.

‘
Emmy
, wait up,’ he said. ‘Mike’s
not thinking straight at the moment. I’m sure that he did not even know what he
was saying.’

‘I’m not interested in excuses. You know what today means to
me and my family. How can anybody be so insensitive, whether they meant it or
not? To cap it all off, now I have to go and make today even worse for my
grandfather.’

The pair of them
took
long, quick
strides to carry them to the professor’s office. When they got there,
Emmy
knocked on the door. There was no response from within
so she tried the handle.

‘It’s locked,’ she said.

‘Does he normally lock it?’ asked Charlie.

‘Never; something’s wrong. Oh God, you don’t think that what
Mike said could be true, do you?’

She felt panic rising in her chest. The emotion she had been
bottling up all morning was starting to overwhelm her. She tried the door one
more time, but the handle did not
so
much as budge.
There were heavy footsteps coming down the corridor behind the pair and they
were soon joined by Bradley. The soldier was holding a gun.
Emmy
was horrified to see the firearm.

‘What the Hell is that for?’

‘Captain’s orders,’ replied Bradley. ‘Mike said that your
grandfather was not alone.’

Emmy
thought back to what Sammy
had told her: “you have visitors”. She looked around for the other soldier, but
he did not come. She explained about the locked door to Bradley and he seemed
completely unfazed by the obstacle.

‘Stand back,’ he ordered her.

She duly obliged and could only look on as a passive
observer whilst the lieutenant kicked down the door. He tried to take the lead,
but she forced her way past him and ran into the room without any regard for
her own safety. Her grandfather was slumped in his chair and she knew instantly
that all life had deserted him. His skin, already grey and pallid with disease
had taken on an even lighter hue and his lips had started to turn blue. So
fragile and decayed was his body in life, that it was quicker than most to
succumb to the onset of rigor mortis.

Once Bradley gave the all clear, Charlie entered the study
and went to
Emmy
, placing his arm around her. He knew
her well enough to know that words would be of no use in this situation.