Diamond Sky (Diamond Sky Trilogy Book 1) (8 page)

‘Lucas, Lucas!’ she screamed. ‘You’ve got to come quickly.
It’s Kyle; he’s been bitten. I don’t know what to do – please help me!’

The woman was clearly in an extreme state of distress. Lucas
apologised to Lucy and quickly left to do whatever was needed of him. This left
her standing alone in the street. The pub was within sight and with a little
hesitation, she carried on towards it.

Chapter 8

Emmy
waited until after lunch
to show her unwanted guests around the laboratory. She expected the professor
to join them for the session, but he stayed away. He chose instead to remotely
monitor the experiment from his study. She was growing increasingly frustrated
with his apparent apathy towards her work. All of the groundwork and much of
the theory behind the technology had come from him, yet he continued to keep a
distance. If he was not interested, why did he involve a third party and lumber
her with these two soldiers?

Charlie prepped the equipment and configured it as per her
instructions before she showed it to the outsiders. She wanted to convince them
that her work was at a much less advanced stage than it actually was. The
conversation she shared with Mike over breakfast had reassured her that they
knew next to nothing about what she had achieved. It would not be too difficult
to convince them they had gotten no farther than a very basic out of body
experience.

She talked the soldiers through the domestics of the lab;
safety procedures etc, whilst Charlie readied himself for the session. When she
moved on to explaining the technical aspects of the equipment they were using,
the two men showed interest, but also gave off a strong air of scepticism. This
was good. The less they were capable of believing, the easier it would be to
deceive them.

‘Do you have any questions before we begin?’ she asked.

The two soldiers shook their heads.

‘In that case, take a seat and prepare to witness history
being made.’

She directed them to chairs set up behind a computer
monitor. The display was split in two. All of Charlie’s vitals were listed on
one side and on the other was a brief digital outline of the lab. The image was
similar to a heat vision display with different materials showing up in
different colours and the four people in the lab could clearly be identified.
Their attention was focused on the image centred on Charlie. After a few
seconds, his body form started to blur slightly and then divided in two. The
new duplicate image hovered about one centimetre above the original on screen,
which equated to a separation of roughly a foot in the real world.

‘What do you think, gentlemen?’

Mike and Bradley looked at one another in disbelief and then
at
Emmy
.

‘I’m not so sure,’ replied Mike. ‘That is not quite what I
was expecting. I mean, how can we be sure that anything has actually happened?’

‘You can clearly see what has happened. It is right there on
the screen. We have harnessed Charlie’s consciousness and separated it from his
body. If that does not impress you then maybe you have come to the wrong
place.’

‘How do we know this is genuine? I mean, all I see is a bad
videogame. Where is the actual proof?’

‘The proof is in the doing. Having subjected myself to this
process, I can tell you that it is most definitely real.’

Mike stood up and walked a few paces away from the computer.
He then turned back around, frustration clearly showing in his demeanour.

‘If the proof is in the doing, then hook me up.’

‘Absolutely not; you lack the mental discipline. In time, I
may consider you ready, but there is much training that you need to undertake
first. Have you even tried meditation?’

‘Believe me when I tell you that my mind is disciplined,’
said Mike. ‘Only the strongest make it into the marines and I’m not only
talking about muscles.’

She rose to her feet in order to carry on with the argument
face to face. In doing so, she turned her back on Bradley.

‘I thought you were willing to trust my judgement on this?
Or was that a lie you told earlier?’

The captain’s eyes quickly moved from
Emmy
to his buddy, who was still seated at the computer.

‘You better take a look at this, sir,’ said Bradley.

Mike strode past
Emmy
and took up
position just behind Bradley’s shoulder. After briefly glancing at the computer
screen he turned back to
Emmy
.

‘Well, well,’ he began, ‘it looks like somebody has been
lying and it is not me. According to these readouts from a previous session,
your friend over there has travelled farther than we thought.’

‘You have no right to access those files,’ said
Emmy
, but she knew it was too late.

She only hoped this would not mean that she would be removed
from the research altogether. Luckily, the men could not know the full extent
of her deception. Due to the seemingly boundless speeds that could be attained
whilst astral travelling, the apparatus would quickly lose its signal and be
unable to record the full experience. The soldiers may have been aware that she
and Charlie had freely explored the laboratory whilst in an altered state of
consciousness, but they did not know about her other trip. The recording of her
journey into space had cut out after a few hundred kilometres. They would not
suspect that this journey had been vertical and could only presume that neither
she nor Charlie had made it past the desert.

‘
This changes things,’
said Mike.
‘I was prepared to play your waiting game, but now it is out of my hands. I’m
calling base and they can decide how we will proceed from here.’

He left the lab with Bradley following closely behind.
Emmy
unstrapped Charlie and then sat down with her head
hung in her hands. She had blown it. Whilst she tried to think of a way to
salvage her career, Charlie walked over to join her.

‘Where did the guys go?’ he asked. ‘I hope we didn’t blow
their minds too much.’

Emmy
looked up at him and took a
deep breath before delivering the bad news.

***

Lucas was sat by Kyle’s bedside along with the boy’s
mother. Though encounters with snakes in the town were relatively common
compared to elsewhere, attacks were not. In all of his years on the job, he
could only recall two or three times that anybody had suffered an actual bite.

‘Are you sure there is nothing more you can tell me about
the snake that did this?’ he asked. ‘It is important if antivenin is required
that we use the correct one.’

Lucas knew that when treating bites, the deadly snakes of
Australia are divided into broad categories. There are black snakes, brown
snakes and tiger snakes. Each requires a different antivenin. If the wrong
treatment is used it can be fatal. Unfortunately, the complications do not end
there. A good basic knowledge and ability to differentiate between snake breeds
is essential when living in rural areas. For instance, it is useful to know
that whilst the colour rule holds true in most cases, there are exceptions. The
king brown is classed as a black snake and likewise, the red bellied black
snake can only be treated with the tiger snake antivenin.

To cap it all, even if the correct snake is identified and
the appropriate serum chosen, there is a further risk of death if the victim
was bitten without any venom entering the bloodstream. Statistically, very few
bites are initially fatal since the animals prefer to save their poison stock
for prey and not waste it on bites that are designed purely to scare away a
large aggressor such as a human. The only way to ascertain if poison entered
the bloodstream was to wait for symptoms to show. With a child as young as
Kyle, this should not take too long.

‘Like I already told you; I think it was a common brown. We
have had trouble with them nesting under the house before, but they have never
been aggressive. This though, it seemed...’

Her voice trailed off and Lucas sensed that she was holding
something back.

‘It seemed what? If you know anything that could help, it
would be best to tell me now.’

‘It’s nothing. It’s ridiculous really. I don’t know why I
even thought it.’

‘Thought what?’

She sat back and started to massage one of her temples as if
trying to mould her thoughts into a more understandable form.

‘The snake seemed smarter than it should. I know this sounds
crazy, but there is no other way to describe it. I have a broom that I keep by
the door and in the past I have used it to frighten them away. When I reached
for it this time, it had gone. Something had moved it to the other side of the
yard.’

Lucas quickly repeated her words in his head to make sure he
had heard her correctly.

‘You are saying that the snake hid your broom?’

‘Not only that, but I think it deliberately lured Kyle in.
He knows not to go near the underside of the house, yet I found one of his toys
there. That bloody snake set a trap!’

She broke down into tears. Lucas moved closer and put his
arm around her to offer comfort.

‘I’m sure that was just a coincidence. You are obviously
distraught right now and it is understandable that you are struggling to make
sense of what happened.’

She removed her hands from her face and looked at him
directly.

‘You don’t believe me. Some animal tries to murder my boy
and you think it was just some accident. Kyle is not stupid; he knows to stay
away from danger.’

She brushed away Lucas’s arm and got up from her seat before
leaving the room. When she came back she was holding a small plastic action
figure. It appeared to be some sort of alien creature.

‘I don’t understand,’ said Lucas. ‘Was this the toy?’

‘Look at it,’ she ordered.

Lucas did not want to offend her further so he did as she
requested. At first, he saw nothing out of the ordinary, but as he turned it
over in his hand he noticed some strange marks. There were several sets of
double pin pricks, each spaced exactly the same distance apart and also some
deeper scratches, again in pairs.

‘These look like snake bites.’

‘Exactly,’ she replied, before snatching the toy back from
him. ‘Like I told you; the snake lured Kyle in with this.’

Lucas did not know what to say, but luckily he did not need
to say anything. They were interrupted by a knock at the door.

‘That will be the doctor,’ said Lucas. ‘He will stay with
Kyle until we can determine what action to take next. I will have a look around
and see if I can find the snake. They usually flee after an attack, but
sometimes they can return to the scene.’

After leaving the house, Lucas began checking the yard. He
shone his flashlight into the gap under the house, but could see nothing. The
gap was maybe only a foot high, but there was no vegetation underneath. If the
animal was still there, he would have seen it.

He was about to leave when something caught his eye next to
a bush in the far side of the garden. It was another plastic toy, but it had
been discarded quite a distance from the house or where any of the kid’s other
toys lay. Lucas started to walk over to it, but remembering the distressed
mother’s words he stopped when he was ten feet away. He looked around until he
found a small rock.

Taking careful aim, he threw the rock so that it landed
close to the toy. An instant after it impacted on the ground a large snake sprung
from the bush and struck out at the rock. It was a common brown and a big one
too; at least three metres long. Lucas backed away and called the local vet to
send someone down immediately to remove it. Whilst he waited, he did not once
take his eyes off the snake. Nor did the snake take its eyes off him.

***

‘You did what?’

Emmy
hung her head in shame. She
had not let her grandfather down so much since that B+ in geography. This time,
however, there was more than a trip to Sydney at stake.

‘I’m sorry, I realise now that I made a mistake, but I
thought I was doing what was best for the research; best for us.’

The professor turned his chair away from her whilst he
considered the confession she had just made. She knew he would be disappointed
in her, but she also knew he had the power to make it right. If another
scientist was brought in at this stage, no matter how brilliant, it would set
the research back months, maybe even years. He had invested far too much into
the project to allow that to happen.

‘I will speak to my contact in the military. If they insist
on having you removed, I may be able to call in some favours from Canberra. It
is an American operation, but they are on our soil and they cannot go against a
government directive. There will be consequences, however - there always is. Do
you understand?’

‘Yes, Pops.’

The professor reacted with a look of distaste.

‘From now on you will address me as sir. I do not need to be
reminded of our genetic connection. Do you understand?’

‘Yes, sir.’

She left his study with her head hung low. Despite the
coldness of the professor’s reaction, she knew she had gotten off lightly.

She expected him to be on the telephone for the remainder of
the afternoon and probably long into the night. The Americans, meanwhile, were
likely to become restless with little to stimulate them at the observatory and
she predicted that the lure of the town’s pub would soon keep them out of her
way. Officially, the project had suffered a setback, but off the record, she
planned on moving forward undeterred. She still had Charlie on her side and the
two had a very busy evening ahead of them.

***

Lucas had seen nothing like it. The animal handler tried
every trick he knew to lure the snake into the bag, but nothing worked. It was
as if the animal was constantly second guessing them. Of course, he dismissed
these thoughts as crazy. It had to be something else. The animal could not be
capable of using such a complex strategy. Could it?

‘He’s a smart one, isn’t he?’ said Lucas.