“Bonsoir, Monsieur Le Minister.” said a voice and François-Xavier looked up, smiling as he took in the visage of Sir Stephen Packsley, a colleague of his from across la Manche and without hesitation rose to his feet to greet his sometime acquaintance.
“How are you, Sir Stephen?” said François-Xavier, his English impeccable if heavily accented, “I didn’t know you were staying in Paris or I would have suggested we had dinner together.”
“I’m well, Minister, trés bien, merci. Et vous?” replied Sir Stephen, waving aside the Frenchman’s apology but noting his colleague’s ever-so-slight cringe at the English stiffness Stephen applied to his French. Why, thought Stephen, are we so forgiving of the wildly incorrect ways the French pronounce English when they so stringently criticize us for the slightest mispronunciation of an ‘r’ or ‘ou?’ Nonetheless, he smiled patiently as he shook François-Xavier’s hand and accepted the man’s invitation to sit.
They had spent the day in lengthy meetings along with many others, discussing a host of not-very-fascinating issues from immigration bylaws to farming subsidy reform, and neither of them had much of an appetite for discussing political matters. The meetings had been, as they often were, in English, the most uniformly spoken language amongst the group. Though François-Xavier was fluent in his sister language, it was still an added strain to have to speak at length in it, especially in a meeting that already strained his patience quite enough, thank you very much.
He sighed discreetly as he mastered his frustration over the subjugation of his mother tongue to its gruff Germanic neighbor. In more forgiving moments he had often been amazed at the vast array of words that English had at its disposal, and in fairness it was an extremely nuanced and versatile language. A word for the thousand variations of any given emotion. If he hadn’t been essentially forced to speak it by its pan-global usage François-Xavier might have had some small respect for Shakespeare’s mother tongue. But he
was
forced to speak it, and often.
As they sat in relaxed silence, François-Xavier glanced at the report he had just received, raised his eyebrow and smiled.
“I don’t know if you have heard about it but apparently there is to be a meteor shower this evening.” he said.
“Yes?” Stephen thought a moment and then memory of the report he had read a week beforehand came to him, “Yes, yes, I remember now. I received the same news. From what I have heard it is to be quite the show. They say some of the debris may even touch down … though not on land, I understand.”
The Frenchman looked questioningly at his companion, “Oh, you have heard about it too? Good, I had assumed that you would not have had a chance to read anything since the meeting today.” François-Xavier smiled and handed the report on the shower to the Englishman. It was in French but unlike most of his compatriots Sir Stephen’s grasp of the French language was passably good.
But Stephen merely smiled and did not open the report, saying, “Oh no, I happened to read about this last week when the report came … out.” Sir Stephen trailed off as he noticed the date on the Frenchman’s report and realized that the information had only just reached them today. France had enjoyed a not-inconsiderable decrease in the cooperation of their US intelligence counterparts since their disagreement over the Iraq war, while the English were clearly still enjoying the benefits of America’s more advanced space monitoring program.
But François-Xavier was first and foremost a politician and with feigned ignorance he skated over the issue and smiled benignly, “You know, the club has a roof terrace. Perhaps you would like to take a turn up there and watch the show?” he said.
* * *
The two suited gentlemen stood on the rooftop balcony, the evening skyline of Brussels spread out before them, dominated by the Gothic bell tower of the church in the central Grand Place. The orange-yellow streetlights illuminated the picturesque cobbled streets of the old town and restaurant district below. But the picturesque city that sprawled about their feet was forgotten for now as the two of them joined a growing audience, their eyes turned firmly to the night sky above them as two stark, golden flame trails traced the path of their burning sources as they shot towards the northern Atlantic.
They were blissfully unaware of their smiling faces being noted and logged by a synthetic eye as it passed, unseen, far overhead. Lit by the candles arranged tastefully around the terrace, their mouths moved in conversation, the movements of their lips interpreted, translated and reviewed from far above in an instant. As their conversation was logged, images of their faces were also analyzed.
Later that night they made their good-byes and walked across the club’s private car park, their assistants escorting them to their cars. As Jeanette and her two armed guards helped the particularly merry Minister Marchelier to the door of his bulletproof Citroën, the eye watching them from above noted the briefcase chained to her side and sent a message to the interior of one of the fallen meteors.
It had analyzed the conversations of the two gentlemen and those around them, and the appearance of the case and the security detail it so clearly merited. It had sifted this from the sea of data it and its peers were already gathering as they watched the planet they now orbited. In databases already flooding with data, names, relationships, addresses, jokes, and idioms, in languages it was already decoding down to the colloquial level, the intelligences that watched from above surmised they had found a person of interest, and that one of the many primary, secondary, and tertiary mission parameters that it was so capably designed to fulfill was already clarifying itself.
It posited that it may have acquired one of its targets. It wanted the contents of that case.
Over the heads of watching fishermen on board the small Indian fishing junker the
Nada Harashnu
, a smoking orange fireball plummets to the ocean halfway to the horizon. They hear its roar as it passes overhead, but they see it hit the water several moments before the terrific sound of its impact reaches them.
The plume of water it sends into the air casts a shadow a quarter of a mile across the dawn, and the fishermen stare wide-eyed at it, the boat wallowing on the gentle but irregular chop typical of these waters.
Thirty seconds later the bow of the shockwave rushes to meet them, a gust of air preceding the sudden swell of water. The boat rises, suddenly driven upwards by the wave coursing underneath it. The small waves that had gently rocked the boat a moment ago are shaken from the surface of the water as the low parabolic flies outward. The boat’s sudden rise drives the fishermen to their knees as their very world moves violently at the whim of the shockwave surging through the water beneath it.
Though powerful, the shockwave begins to dissipate quickly as it expands outwards. The fantastic energy that had driven the meteor, like a javelin, through our atmospheric shield finally sighing its last breath as it is absorbed by the ocean’s depths. It is reduced, in the end, to a gentle spreading swell as it rolls outward to wash unseen on distant beaches.
As the southern Indian fishermen look to each other for reassurance the water lowers again and settles around them, their ship gently swaying, as though the boat is as dazed by the experience as its crew. As far as the eye can see the ocean is now perfectly smooth, as though the hand of God has grasped the very corners of their world and shaken the wrinkles out, the shockwave like the waft of air flowing under a tablecloth as it settles down on the proverbial table beneath.
* * *
Though her mother did not know it, she had just made all of young Sowmya’s dreams come true. Sowmya may not understand all the things they said at school, but she knew, for certain, that no day in her life would ever be as wonderful as today, two days before her sixth birthday. In her arms, too precious to wear, nearly too wonderful to touch, lay a sari. A new sari: purple with red stitching and gold sequins. It was obvious to Sowmya that it was by far the most beautiful sari ever made, and Sowmya marveled how her mother had accomplished such a thing when she had discovered it.
Surely the daughters of the Brahman would envy such a prize. She had discovered it in her parents’ room while trying on her mother’s pair of English high-heeled shoes which her uncle had brought home from Calcutta. Then she had seen the small card made out to her and realized this sari was to be her birthday present. She hadn’t been able to leave it there, it was simply impossible; no feat of will power could have allowed her to put it back in its box right then. She would return it later, after she had kept it close for a while. So she had gently put it under her dress, close to her belly, and then she had run out of the house.
Arriving at the beach, she had taken it out, peering carefully around to make sure no one was there to see her treasure. There she had sat for half an hour imagining how it would feel to wear it, but worried that she may never be able to bring herself to put on such a marvel. And so she sat on the beach outside the small fishing town of Kodikkarai that was her world, elated, staring out across the water.
Her papa had told her that a large island called Sri Lanka was just over the horizon, where millions of people lived. She hadn’t decided whether or not she believed him yet. After all, why wouldn’t they just come and live here in India like everyone else, there was plenty of space. Her mother even had two spare rooms she rented out to laborers; some of the Sri Lankans could stay there. Of course, her uncle also said there were whole other countries, lands, seeming other worlds out there as well. None of it sounded very plausible to young Sowmya.
She was thinking about the imaginary Sri Lankans and how they could not possibly be as happy as she was right now, even if they existed, when, walking out of the gentle surf toward her, she saw one. The Sri Lankan looked very wet, but she didn’t seem very tired for how far she must have swam. Sowmya could only swim about two meters from her big sisters before she was exhausted.
Behind her the Sri Lankan woman dragged what looked like a black plank nearly as long as herself and nearly as wide, but with a round cylinder seemingly strapped along about a quarter of its underside, scraping in the dark, wet sand. By the mark it was leaving it appeared to be very heavy, but it didn’t seem to bother the woman as she gently picked it up and started folding it up. Actually it was like it was folding itself in her hands. After a moment the woman, who was about the same height as Sowmya’s mother and older sisters, was left holding something that looked remarkably like the backpack her uncle carried when he went travelling, only black, as black as night, the girl thought, momentarily.
Turning, the Sri Lankan looked straight at Sowmya, who froze on the spot, utterly transfixed by the woman’s black eyes. The woman started walking slowly toward Sowmya until she stood over her, smiling gently, like Sowmya’s mother smiled at her.
“Hello,” said the woman whose name would be Preeti Parikh, “would you like to show me where the train station is?”
Sowmya did not compute that the woman’s hair was somehow already dry: in fact, so was the casual but exquisite sari Sowmya now saw the woman was wearing.
She merely said, “ok,” meekly, and climbed to her little feet.
* * *
“Mother! Mother! I saw one, I saw one!” shouted Sowmya, running back into the house an hour later.
“One what, puppy?” her mother asked patiently, not looking up from her needle and thread as she replaced a button on her second son’s school uniform.
Sowmya had walked in silence with the Sri Lankan all the way to the train station, where the lady had quietly requested and paid for a ticket all the way New Delhi.
“A Sri Lankan, Mumma! I saw a Sri Lankan. She swam over to India to go and live in New Delhi!”
Lifting her head with a patient smile as her daughter stood panting expectantly in front of her, Sowmya’s mother looked at her, and then down at the object in the girl’s hands.
Sowmya followed her mother’s stare down to the sari still clasped at her tummy, creased now with being carried in her scrunched up little hands for over an hour.
“Oh,” said Sowmya, crestfallen, “I found it.”
* * *
Though Sowmya would be one of only a handful of folks to see them walk ashore, there were, in fact, seven other strange people who made landfall that day in different places around the world.
People would have been unlikely, for example, to see the Chinese looking gentleman stepping out of the surf north of Jiaojiang at 5am, or the apparently Pakistani gentleman climbing up a wet, craggy rock shore and then walking to the deserted coastal road toward Karachi.
Any onlookers would have been very curious and concerned to see the man washed up onto the beach in northern Scotland in October by the freezing North Sea tide. Likewise the woman who stepped lightly across a black pebble beach from the perilously cold waters near Seward, Alaska, or the dangerous-looking man who navigated the ice to stumble ashore in Petropavlovsk, in the Kamchatka region of eastern Russia.
That said, in the haze of swimmers enjoying the year-round warmth of the beach at Herzliya, north of Tel Aviv, quite a few people noticed the woman who swam ashore between the man-made rock islands preserving the beaches near the marina. However, the few that did were more focused on her striking figure and the revealing bikini she was wearing than the slightly strange black bag she was carrying.
Bill and Mandy Tubbington, on a late summer holiday in Guernsey with their two children were among the few who noted the slight but strong-looking man swim ashore there. Bill assured his wife and kids that because this man was carrying a bag he must be a scuba diver returning from a dive. Mandy recognized her husband’s tone as the one he put on when he didn’t know what the hell he was talking about, but did not make anything of it, as she was quietly enjoying the sight of the swimmer’s bum as he walked up the beach toward the car park, his hair drying surprisingly quickly in the wind.