“That’s okay.” He had to work hard not to focus on her body. “They look like fun.”.
Her attention flicked between Wiley and her remote controller. “Yeah. They are. Few rules to learn though.”
“Really. Like what?” Some he already knew.
“Can’t go higher than 120 metres and can’t fly closer than thirty metres to people and can’t fly over or above people. That’s why I yelled out sorry.”
“No problem. They’re loud. I thought it was a helicopter.” She was nice. “You live around here or are you on holiday?”
“Holiday. Sort of. My parents own a house up the hill a little.” She nodded towards the hill. “And you?”
“Just visiting.”
She focussed back on the drone. “Best bring this thing back in.”
Wiley didn’t want to press his luck too far. “Well, nice meeting you.”
“Yes, same to you. May see you around.”
Wiley hoped so. Maybe she could be his instructor. He would like that.
As he headed back to the gate, he turned to take one last look at the drone pilot and realised he’d just made a big mistake. She had a video of him.
Something didn’t feel right so he decided to explore the beach. She wasn’t an amateur drone pilot. So what was she, and what were her motives? Burglary. Scoping a place. He knew one thing. He needed to get the recording of him from that device. If she was up to naughty things, it would be easy to get the device. If not? Then he wasn’t sure.
He decided not to go back over the gate but positioned himself so he could watch the drone pilot and work out what to do. He walked up a hill towards a park with a good view of the beach. She was packing up and looking around to see if she’d left anything. She looked up towards where Wiley sat, but skimmed past where he was sitting. It would have been foolish to wave, so he didn’t.
She started walking along the beach towards the national park. He headed back to the walking track outside the gate and followed the drone lady.
The girl focussed on the waves and wetting her feet and gave no indication of knowing he was following. She stopped for a brief swim. He considered swooping on the drone and making a run for it, but the distance was too great, and it would have been a foolish move. Maybe she’d get caught in a rip and be dragged out to sea. She wasn’t swimming between the flags so that was a possibility. Maybe she knew what she was doing—she had the look of a lifesaver or maybe an iron woman. His interest in her went up a notch. She struck him as someone who knew what she was about. Now out of the water, she picked up her towel and started to dry herself. She gave a quick glance in his direction, but he was sure she didn’t see him.
Her walk continued and after a short duration she turned and headed towards a steep staircase winding up the hill, weaving in and out of shrubbery. He picked up his pace and reached the stairs just as she turned left on to another set of stairs. He skipped two steps a time and reached where she’d turned. Gone. Strange. He stood there, looking in all directions. Voices. Best that he vanish.
He backtracked and headed back to his abode, his thoughts of Sheila and Camellia replaced by thoughts of the drone lady, the iron woman.
25 - Listening to astronomers
Jack had slept in. He’d needed to.
He was cooking scrambled eggs and watching the morning news show on TV. They were speculating about Adventus—the name had caught the people’s imaginations. There was some reference to an unsubstantiated rumour that Adventus was first discovered in outback Australia, and that information on amateur astronomers’ social media and websites was patchy because of missing pages and broken links.
“It’s also been suggested that the government might be shutting down sites to help avoid apocalyptic alarmism, something they are paying close attention to.”
Hmm. He was reminded of a note on file, where all this had started. The mother who thought her son had been abducted by aliens while stargazing in the outback. Was he part of a cover-up? Had he discovered something the authorities didn’t want to be public knowledge? Why would they do such a thing? To avoid panic?
Pop.
His toast was ready. He opened the fridge, grabbed the butter, and buttered the toast. Sprinkled chives on the scrambled eggs, transferred them to the toast, and settled in to enjoy his breakfast. The reporters were still talking about Adventus, discussing the meaning of the word. He’d heard that before, from Frank.
An image appeared on the screen, a lady. Jack stopped chewing his food. Her shoulders were slumped and her eyes glazed. Someone asked her a question and the tears came.
“I’m sorry.” She tried to compose herself.
“You don’t have to apologise for tears.”
A name rolled under the image. It was the mother of the man who committed the crime at the river.
“My son had told me about what you call Adventus long before it came to your attention. Whatever the connection is … it … it caused my son to commit the crime he did and now he’s dead. I want to say sorry to that young girl’s loved ones. Something destroyed my son, and it’s connected to that thing up there. I don’t know how or what, but something is going on.
“Are you suggesting some kind of cover-up?” the interviewer asked.
The mother straightened and a steely look came into her eyes.
“Why not? Look at the condition of the world. Not a stable place. Politicians can’t be trusted. Bosses can’t be trusted. Leaders can’t be trusted. We’re in pretty bad shape, aren’t we? And that’s at the top.”
What did this lady do before the world caved in on her?
“Then you bring in religion and racial tensions, climate change, events in the Middle East. Man appears to be incapable of fixing the mess although people continue to believe he will. Am I allowed to say man? See how silly it all is. Wouldn’t be surprised if that thing up there is coming to sort the world out, because it’s in a real, real mess.”
She took a deep breath.
“And really, one would think that the suggestion of an asteroid hitting the world would be the last thing governments would want. Can you imagine the panic? Best end the rumour before panic sets in. That’s why they got to my son. He knew what was coming long before the rest of us. Maybe gave them some time to build an underground city before it got here.”
Hear! Hear! Thank you, she’d given foundation to Jack’s conspiracy theory and she was right about things needing to be sorted out.
The lady took another deep breath. “And you can add drugs and people taking their own lives into the mess. And man is going to fix things? I don’t think so.”
She laughed and then composed herself. “But it’s no excuse for what he’s done. Please … please try and forgive my son. Whoever committed that crime was not the boy I raised. Something else was controlling him and took him to his grave.”
That was good reporting, for a change. Jack would like to meet that lady. His eggs were getting cold so he quickly devoured them, and then got up to rinse the plate. The TV anchors were now talking about rumours the asteroid was an alien ship, telling viewers to ignore the images floating around on social media.
“Some of these images have been attributed to NASA, who have refuted them and advise that this fake news has to stop before people start to panic.”
They interviewed an astronomer for an update on the status of the discovery. He stressed it was only his opinion but there was something weird about Adventus, as though it was not of this world.
The hosts giggled. “Appropriate words,” one of them said.
He corrected himself. “Not of the known universe. It’s weird in the sense that it does follow—"
“Well, there’s a lot we don’t know about the universe and weird things.” The female host raised her eyebrows and tilted her head towards her co-host. “Sorry, but we have run out of time. We may get you back on in the future for an update.”
“You mean, back to the future?” the male co-host said.
It was rude to cut off the expert’s final comments. What had he said? The hosts’ straight-lipped Botox smiles and wide-eyed looks masked their true feelings about what they really thought about Adventus. The show broke for advertisements, then they were back into their giggle and fluffy mood.
Jack changed channels to a serious news show. The news reader provided an update on Adventus. There was no getting away from it.
“According to astronomers at one of Queensland’s leading universities, Adventus’s path passed through the Kuiper Belt, which is in the far reaches of our solar system. There’s talk that it originated from a different solar system and is on a journey towards the sun. There is concern that it could collide with other objects in the asteroid belt located between Jupiter and Mars but the experts tell us that’s unlikely, that it’s hard for things to collide with each other in the belt because, basically, there’s a lot of space in space—material in the asteroid belt is thinly distributed.”
