The Kahn Prophesies

By Donald Stallman

Planet Earth is a dangerous place. just ask the dinosaurs, and any of the thirty billion species that have become extinct since the dawn of time, if you can find one. could it happen to us, the most advanced beings that have ever existed?

It sure could, and it is overdue. asteroids collide with earth on a daily basis, most are too small to matter, but every now and then, a sizeable one arrives, creates a stir for a while, and is forgotten. it is only a matter of time before a monster arrives and creates havoc on an epic scale.

The Kahn Prophesies is a detailed and fascinating story of survival woven around such an event, and offers a fictional explanation of how it could happen, and how the human race might be saved from joining the dinosaurs in extinction.

Thanks to the Prophesies given to him by a mysterious college friend, astronomer Jock Smith discovers an asteroid the size of Mount Everest on target to hit Casablanca. he tells only the US President, who commandeers the mars voyager, a massive space craft under construction under the supervision of Buzz Aldrin. He also chooses a select band of 200 people from all nations to escape the holocaust and they take off to find a new planet where they can live and save the human race.

Jock's son Iqbal, a strangely gifted boy, becomes a hero on the voyage, his talents a source of wonderment to both himself and his father. The president's daughter Chastity also becomes a force in the world of the 200 survivors, determined not to repeat what she sees as the mistakes made back on earth by her father and others.

Strange things happen on their way to where the Prophesies said they would find their new home, and they are dragged off course into the mysterious Kuiper Belt, a remote and unexplored region of space. soon they discover that they are victims of a force far greater than anything the human race has ever encountered, a force that not only delivered the asteroid, but also took them to their new home. The reason it went to all the trouble is astounding.

This is a thoroughly entertaining story woven around a solid base of amazing facts. It is suitable for readers of all ages.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Donald Stallman
• Release date: Jun 14, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310607967

Donald Stallman

Donald Stallman began writing amusing short stories for the local paper thirty years ago. He developed a local following which provided the confidence to sit down one evening and start writing a fantasy novel for his young soon. Four years later a book was finished and offered to a few friends to read. The response was overwhelmingly favourable. That story became "The Kahn Prophesies".Donald grew up on a farm in the rich agricultural region of the Darling Downs in Queensland Australia, attended boarding school, and went on to complete a business degree at the local University. A short accounting career ended with the ownership of several Real Estate practices and then retirement. The Iqbal Smith trilogy was started just prior to moving to the Pacific Islands of Vanuatu with his partner and son, where book one, 'The Kahn Prophesies' was completed.Books 2 and 3 are well underway and will be available soon.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1 – WASTELAND

In a world more than four and a half billion years old, five hundred is no more than a heartbeat. It’s that long since the CIA kidnapped me and my Mom and took us to America. I was willing. Mom wasn’t. Dad was already there. So much has happened since then, it seems like yesterday.

Since then, I think I’ve experienced more ups and downs in my life than anyone in history. A lot happens in five hundred years. It seems like I’ve been on a never ending roller coaster ride with no end in sight. I had no choice, I was swept along on a tide of unimaginable events that no one saw coming until it was too late. I did what I could.

I’ve witnessed miracles we never believed possible in our former lives, as well as some terrible disasters. I’ve had more than my share of near death experiences. I’ve lost count of the times I should have died. Sometimes I thought I was dead, but for five hundred years, by some miracle, I’ve survived everything the universe has thrown at me. In spite of all that, nothing has prepared me for this.

I’m looking down at the aftermath of Armageddon.

There’s nothing left but piles of rubble where the world’s most exciting city once stood. The first ferocious impact, decades of acid rain, and centuries of searing heat have choked all life from the City of Angels. The pristine Pacific Ocean, where life began, is a murky steaming swamp. Our tiny blue planet, a speck in the endless expanse of the Universe, is a desolate brown wasteland.

I shouldn’t have come back. I should have known it would be like this. But I took the chance that it didn’t happen. It was a very small chance. I lost.

Ice at the South Pole was two miles thick when we left. There’s no ice now. It’s all water. North and South America are separated by a chain of bare brown islands that used to be a tropical paradise. Panama, and Costa Rica. Our beautiful blue Mother Earth has become a barren abandoned planet spinning its way aimlessly around the Sun. Billions of years of evolution were undone in an instant.

Van Demon has blood on his hands. More blood than all the murderous tyrants in history.

What’s left of LA is down there somewhere, drowned by billions of tons of toxic swamp. I found a rusty remnant of an O from the HOLLYWOOD sign on the treeless slopes of Mount Lee. There are no skyscrapers. Concrete and steel were no match for the might of the biggest tsunami the world has ever seen. If they survived the brutal slap of the first onslaught, they’d have collapsed like dominoes when the impact shocked the San Andreas Fault into the most catastrophic slide in its eternal existence. No man made creation could withstand it.

It’s a post human world. America has ceased to exist, replaced by a treeless dustbowl lapped by toxic oceans.

I struggle to swallow the lump in my throat and board my craft. I have to visit the land of my birth. It’s a long shot, but tucked away down under, there might be a chance someone survived. I wipe away tears as I lift off, and fly over the devastated expanse that was once the vibrant entertainment capital of the world, home to twenty million people.

The Major told me it would happen. He said it would hit Casablanca.

Flying at speed even Hollywood had never imagined, I peer down at the wasteland that was once the most powerful nation the world had ever seen. The mighty Grand Canyon has fallen in on itself, reduced to a rabble of rocks along a string of festering waterholes. In the distance, Las Vegas is a giant pile of rusted metal almost covered by the creeping desert sands.

I’m going home, via Casablanca. With nothing but scorched earth so see, my mind drifts back to when it all began.

CHAPTER 2 - THE TURNING POINT

I was the least likely candidate. Except for a few strange happenings, my young life was predictable and uninteresting, but it all changed the day Dad came home from a trip to the U.S.A. That’s when the whispering started. We had always been a close knit family, but Dad came back with a secret he shared only with Mom. I was accustomed to being ignored by the kids at school, but never at home. I didn’t like it, and I didn’t understand. It was infuriating.

When I look back now, the reality was crazier than I could have ever known, I wouldn’t have understood if Dad had leveled with me. I wouldn’t have believed him. Even more crazy, it wasn’t long before the whole world knew Dad’s secret. There has never been a more defining time in history since the world began. There may never be again. There might never be another world as we knew it.

They whispered in the kitchen, watching TV, even in bed. Dad was the main culprit. Mom hardly said a word. I crept up on them time and again and listened as hard as I could, but all I ever heard was Dad’s incessant whispering and Mom’s occasional emphatic ‘I SAID NO JOCK SMITH, NO!’ followed by a quiet ‘Shush Emily, he’ll hear you.’

One night it got too much. I rushed in from my listening post outside their bedroom door, stood beside the bed, and pleaded, ‘I’m sick of this. What is it you don’t want me to know about? What?’

Mom looked away while Dad answered. ‘It’s nothing for you to worry about son. All under control. Back to bed with you please young man. School tomorrow.’

I looked him right in the eyes. He looked away as he said, ‘Go on son, off you go, that’s a good boy. Sleep tight.’ Bitterly disappointed, I spun on my heel and moped back to bed. They weren’t telling me anything. Whatever it was, Mom didn’t like it, but it wasn’t going away. My faith in Dad was all I had to console myself, he was my best mate in the world, and in spite of the secrecy, deep down, I trusted him.

I still remember his round happy face and long messy brown hair. Sometimes he grew a beard, I think he just forgot to shave. Dad always looked like something exciting was about to happen, a bit like a puppy. Every day was a bad hair day, but he didn’t care. I don’t think he ever looked in a mirror. He couldn’t have. He was about average height, had no fashion sense, brown and grey were his colors. He had few interests outside Astronomy, and no real friends that I knew of. Ever keen to please, he apologized a lot, usually for no reason. I know now that not everyone can be assertive, Dad was just over-polite and went out of his way not to cause anyone any trouble. He was a good man.

Mom said he was eccentric, that’s why she loved him. It was ironic that with the name Jock, he had no comprehension of physical fitness. He was permanently out of shape, a grown up nerd, but all things considered, he was the best father a boy like me could have. I miss him. I always will. It’s entirely thanks to Dad that I’m still here to tell our story.

On astronomical matters he was incomparably clever, regarded by his international peers as a genius, a living legend. He lived for the stars and the planets, everything in the known Universe, not to mention anything else that might be out there. I think that’s why he had the expectant look all the time. Along with Mom, me, and his musical hero Bob Dylan, all the Universes and their unsolved mysteries were his life.

He was the senior Astronomer at Australia’s major astrological research station, the Parkes Observatory, about two hundred miles west of Sydney. He was President of the Astronomical Society of Australia, and the world’s foremost expert in Astrophysics and Interferometry, whatever they were. I only knew this because it was on the front of a folder he took with him everywhere, his private nerdy joke. I’ve never forgotten that file, it proved to me that my Dad was important, and that he didn’t take himself too seriously.

PROFESSOR JOCK SMITH

WORLD’S FOREMOST EXPERT

in

ASTROPHYSICS AND INTERFEROMETRY

(and don’t you forget it!)

The year I turned twelve he was elected President of the International Astronomers Union at their annual meeting in Manchester England. He went alone to accept the appointment, Mom and I stayed home. Mom wasn’t interested in that ‘highbrow stuff,’ as she called it, she was a simple Bankstown girl and proud of it. With Dad away so much, we were all each other had. She was the best Mom in the world.

Everyone said I was a clone of hers. She was slightly built and shorter than Dad by about six inches. Unlike Dad, Mom kept herself in good shape. She was a Pilates instructor. Mom kept her blonde hair short and neat, mine too. We both had long fringes that she refused to change. In her words, she was ‘ardarment’ that a fringe suited the shape of our faces. I was too young to care. Even the bullies at school said Mom was a good looker. ‘How could such a good looker have such a dumb looking son?’ Metcalf the school bully would tease, amongst other mindless things, whenever I dropped my guard and let him get too close.

While Mom kept house and I went to school, Dad lived and breathed his Astronomy. He told me he knew our Universe better than a local taxi driver knew the streets of Bankstown. He was still at University when he discovered a path through the Milky Way that led to other galaxies. While everyone else searched for them by starlight, Dad looked for Hydrogen, the cold gas from which many stars are made. He found the gas and the pathway, and for that, in the world of Astronomy, Dad was a superman. None of us knew then that he had an unfair advantage.

The whispering changed everything. I was locked out of their world, a stranger, not worthy of inclusion any more. I was miserable, and I started to believe the bullies were right. I should have had more faith in Dad, but it’s hard to stay positive when everything around you is changing for the worse.

Before the whispering, on a clear night when he was home, Dad and I would sit on the back steps or lie out on the lawn, gaze up at the stars, and take off on adventures through space. He’d take me to the moon with its impact craters and volcanoes, to the spectacular frozen red planet Mars, and on to Jupiter with its many moons and thirty thousand degree temperature. Sometimes we’d go past mighty Saturn, seven hundred and fifty times the size of Earth, and then on to my favorite, little Pluto, the very last Planet in our solar system that he said isn’t really a Planet at all, but a dwarf.

Sometimes he’d take me on through the Milky Way, past murderous black holes and on to parts of the universe where he believed there must be other planets that supported life, but even he didn’t try and guess what sort of life that might be. He said he knew how to avoid the appalling gravity of black holes, which aren’t really holes at all, but the most dense form of matter in the universe. Their gravitational pull is irresistible, so powerful not even light can escape. Once trapped, it disappears forever.

I have never forgotten the night he told me that the force of gravity close to a black hole is so intense, as you approach, the difference in the pull between your outstretched hand and your shoulder would result in your arm being torn from your body, followed a split second later by the rest of you, bit by bit. To make the point he said, ‘Close your eyes and imagine an ultra slow motion movie of a grasshopper being sucked into a vacuum cleaner. Got the picture?’

From listening to Dad I knew there had to be other planets with living beings. If the universe goes on forever, there simply have to be. When he told me there could be more than one hundred and forty billion galaxies, each with an average of one hundred billion stars, anyone with even half a brain would know that we couldn’t be the only lucky ones. I believed then that the only reason we had never been contacted from outer space was because we were so far away from each other, and our means of communication were different. We simply didn’t know where each other hung out. I was wrong.

Mom disagreed. ‘If they were out there,’ she said, ‘I’m sure they would have contacted us by now. Surely they’d watch the X Files.’ Dad and I would just smile at each other. I think Mom made things up just to stir us and stop Dad from getting carried away with himself. I never once heard her give Dad credit for his achievements, I don’t think she really understood how famous he was back then. Outside the nerdy world of Astronomy, I don’t think anyone in Bankstown knew Dad was an international celebrity. It didn’t worry him one bit, he didn’t do it for the fame.

CHAPTER 3 - HOME

Our place wasn’t much. The carpets were faded and frayed, paint flaked off the walls, and we had no real garden, but it was our home and we loved it. I was small for my age, and very early in life I discovered I was different. My name was my biggest problem. It came from a student mate of Dad’s, a geologist from Afghanistan he befriended at Sydney University, Doctor Iqbal Kahn. He had read the famous Dead Sea Scrolls, and Dad was in awe of his vast knowledge, not only of those ancient scripts, but also of any other topic Dad wanted to discuss.

My namesake taught him so much about so many things he never forgot him, and at my expense as an Australian boy growing up in working class Bankstown, honored him by passing on his first name to his first and only child. Lucky I was a boy. With our other name Smith, it was an intriguing and amusing combination to most people. When they were being kind I was I.Q., or Icky, but mostly I suffered the usual fate of most kids with a strange name. Sticky, Stinky, Inkbowl, and Stinkbowl were a few favorite variations I suffered.

Dad and Doctor Kahn spent a year together at Sydney University and enjoyed many stimulating days on campus and late nights at cafes and bars discussing all sorts of things. Like Dad, Doctor Kahn was particularly interested in Astronomy. Dad was an expert even then, but he never understood how his new friend knew so much more than him, sometimes it seemed to Dad he had actually been out there. In spite of his deep rooted belief that anything we can imagine is possible, even Dad knew that was stretching it. As far as he knew, the Doctor wasn’t an astronaut. In hindsight, Dad should have practiced what he preached.

Whenever Dad asked how he knew so much, the Doctor would reply, ‘One day my friend, you will understand, but you must be patient, very patient, just like me. Trust me, it will happen. Much sooner than you think.’ He was right.

Without warning, after almost a year of friendship and learning beyond even Dad’s belief, the great Doctor Iqbal Kahn disappeared. On the last night of the final semester they shared a few too many ales at a student bar in Kings Cross, and next day he disappeared without trace.

Dad could only remember parts of that evening, but he remembered it was the twelfth of December. The Doctor made a point of toasting the date at least twice that he remembered. It was a strange toast, a cryptic tongue twister, something like, ‘Never forget the twelfth of the twelfth, twelfth inverthuth Jock, mark my wordth, ith’s a date to remember.’ Dad laughed and dismissed it at the time, but it was without doubt the understatement of the millennium, almost certainly in all our known history.

Strangely, Dad had never seen where his best friend lived, he just vanished, leaving Dad a lot smarter, but friendless again. But he left Dad a legacy, a list of Prophesies he found in his briefcase a few days later. Those Prophesies drove Dad to the edge of insanity. They also saved our lives.

I know what my namesake looked like from photos of Dad’s University days. He was short and plump, with brown skin and long, curly, coal black hair, so greasy it shone. I doubt it had ever seen a barber or a comb, let alone shampoo. A wide mono brow and long erratic eyelashes guarded intense challenging eyes that stared out from his full moon face like shiny black buttons. Long hairs curled out of his wide round nose. A thick messy moustache completed an out of control, hard at work appearance. There was so much to see in that photo.

He looked a bit spooky, and from about the age of ten, I was drawn to it from time to time. I don’t know why, but every time I looked at it, I felt strange and uncomfortable, sometimes even dizzy in the head. There was something about him that unsettled me.

It was impossible for me to know then that this man would influence life on Earth more than any other person in history.

CHAPTER 4 – GROWING UP IN BANKSTOWN

Life in Bankstown, a quiet suburb of Sydney, was uncomplicated and predictable. Dad was a nerd, but a fun nerd, a devoted father, and a good teacher. He taught me early that we are all responsible for our actions, and that those actions create our destiny. To this day, I know success in life is entirely up to me and the decisions I make, and that every decision, however minor, takes me along a new path. He taught me a lot. His lessons helped me through some tough situations, helped me survive against all the odds. I think his most important lesson of all was that our thoughts control everything we do, that we are the end result of our thoughts. Good or bad.

I didn’t know it at the time, but I was fortunate in many other ways. Dad also taught me to be open minded, and to accept that anything at all is possible. Anything. He believed that to be the mark of true intelligence. ‘Only fools know everything, and it’s a fool who never tries new things,’ he’d often tell me when I was getting what he called ‘a bit too full of myself.’ It was a bit confusing. His no limit beliefs were such a contrast with the bullies at school who did their best to make my life miserable. I couldn’t understand why they were so stupid when there was so much in life to enjoy and discover. It sounds a bit harsh now, but they got what was coming to them.

Besides the lessons Dad taught me, the legacy of Iqbal Kahn was forever present in our family in the form of his Prophesies. It was a long time before we discovered the reason for the years of suffering he put Dad through. Fortunately for us, or unfortunately, whichever way you look at it, Dad was the chosen one. I will never know why. Neither did Dad.

My first knowledge of the Prophesies happened not long after my eighth birthday, years before the whispering started. When I got home from school one Friday, Mom met me outside and said quietly, ‘Son, I need you to be grown up for. There has been a terrible tsunami, you know, a tidal wave. Your father feels responsible. He arrived home early today. He’s having one of his turns’.

I was confused. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about Mom. What’s a turn?’ I found out later that I had been shielded from his turns until that day.

‘You’ll see. Just ignore it and he’ll soon be better. Just pop in and say hello. He’s in bed.’

I went in and immediately wished I hadn’t. He was lying awake staring at the ceiling, a vacant faraway look in his eyes. He didn’t hear or see me come in. I had never seen him like that. ‘Hi Dad. Everything OK?’

He raised his head off the pillow, turned slowly towards me, and struggled to focus. ‘Oh. It’s you. Hello. You ask if I’m OK? Me. OK? All those people dead, and you ask if I’m OK?’ He flopped back onto his pillow and stared at the ceiling again.

I didn’t know what to say. I slunk out and vowed never to interrupt him again when he was having a turn. I couldn’t make sense of it. Even if he knew about the tsunami, what could he have done?

Most of the TV news that night was about a massive tidal wave caused by an underwater earthquake that swept across Indonesia and wiped out thousands of poor innocent people. Dad stayed in bed for two more days and three nights. He emerged from his cave on Monday morning and beckoned me to follow him outside.

He motioned for me to sit on the back steps. He sat next to me and looked into my eyes for a second or two, then looked away and stared up at the sky. He placed his hand gently on my shoulder and said, ‘I’m so sorry son, I had no right to treat you like that. It’s just that, … well you see, … um, how do I explain this?’ He cleared his throat and gathered himself. ‘You know who you are named after don’t you.’

‘Yes Dad, of course I do. It’s caused me no end of trouble at school.’

‘I’m sorry about that. You know what Prophesies are don’t you.’ I nodded. We had watched a show about Nostradamus on TV not long before. ‘Well, when Doctor Kahn disappeared, he left me a list of Prophesies, predictions of things that he said would happen. Bad things. And they do happen. The tsunami on the news on Friday night was just one of them.’ He closed his eyes. ‘He’s been right many times already, and there are more to come. I feel so responsible. I can’t stand it any longer.’

He sobbed quietly. Tears trickled down his face. I felt so sorry for him. He shook his head and leant heavily on my shoulder as he stood up. I followed as he trudged back inside and went back to bed.

I had to see those Prophesies. I had to help him. Many years later, I learnt that he had once tried to alert the Government of Scotland that a plane might crash there, but he couldn’t get past the receptionist at the Department of Air. She called him a crackpot. It happened just a few days later, and after that he was too embarrassed to try again. I think it made him feel even more responsible, and more guilty. He was in a hopeless situation. Doctor Kahn was playing a cruel game.

Dad was totally dedicated to his work at the Observatory, but Mom told me that every minute of every day he expected to hear of yet another catastrophe, another prophesy coming true. Mom and I shared his distress and tried to help, but there was nothing we could do. It always passed in time. Mom would roll her eyes and say, ‘He’s having one of his turns again,’ and we’d give him all the space he needed.

In between his turns, I think we were a reasonably normal family, except for some weird things that happened to me from time to time. Most Sunday evenings we’d drive out to the airport in the old grey Chrysler Valiant Dad had owned for as long as Mom could remember, his first and only car. From there Dad flew out to the Parkes Observatory in a twin engine Cessna with Hazelton Airlines. All the way home Mom worried about him, as according to her, light airplanes were very dangerous, and all of them eventually fell out of the sky and crashed without explanation. Somehow, against such great odds, he returned safely most Friday evenings.

Some weekends, if things were happening in outer space, Dad stayed at the Observatory. It was mostly just me and Mom during the week, and about every second or third weekend too. There were times when I missed Dad very much. Most kids have their insecurities, and I had more than my fair share. Dad was my best friend, and he was away most of the time.

It was in first grade that I began to realize I was different. My teacher insisted that we look her in the eyes when we answered a question. ‘You must always look into people’s eyes when addressing them,’ she told us, ‘otherwise they might think you are not telling the truth.’ The weird thing was that every time I looked into her eyes for more than a few seconds, I knew what she was thinking. Not knowing any better, I assumed that if I knew what she was thinking, she could do the same to me. I thought everyone must be able to do it.

Not wanting anyone to discover my private thoughts, I avoided looking at anyone in the eyes for more than a couple of seconds, including Mom and Dad. I always looked away, or focused on their face, away from their eyes. It became a habit. Unfortunately, because of this, Miss Thomas often made an example of me. This brought me to the attention of the bully of our class, Doug Metcalf, a big kid who singled me out for special treatment, mainly because of my name. I learnt how to avoid Metcalf and his mates by getting to school late and leaving as soon as I could.

It was the bullying that led to me to enroll at the Bankstown School of Karate not long after my ninth birthday. Only a five minute walk away, the Dojo became my second home. Having no other distractions, I set a record for the quickest junior black belt ever. I guess karate was my way of killing time while I waited for Dad, and even though my Sensei forbade us to ever use our fighting skills outside the Dojo, it was reassuring to know that at least I could give Metcalf a black eye and a serious bruise or two if he ever got too physical. It also saved my life, in very strange circumstances.

Although I was happy enough, at times it was a lonely and stressful life, made even more distressing when I sometimes did things that didn’t make sense. One day I was sitting alone in the kitchen staring vacantly at a spoon on the saucer of Mom’s empty teacup when the spoon moved. I watched in shock as it curled up on itself. I straightened it out and did it again. I yelled out, ‘Mom, quick, check this out!’ She raced in from outside thinking something was wrong. Mom was the original panic merchant.

I told her what happened. She didn’t believe me. ‘I don’t have time for your jokes, I’ve got washing to hang out,’ was all she said. After she went, I straightened the spoon and stared at it again. Nothing happened until I my mind was blank, and it happened again. I called Mom in again, straightened out the spoon, and repeated it in front of her. ‘Iqbal,’ she whispered, looking around to make sure there was no one else watching, ‘don’t you ever do that again.’

‘Why not?’ I couldn’t believe she wasn’t impressed.

‘Because if anyone finds out, they’ll think you’re some kind of weirdo, and I won’t have that. As if the name your father gave you isn’t shame enough.’ She stormed out. With one exception, I only ever bent cutlery in private from that day on. I had to wait a long time to discover why I had these strange powers. If I’d known back then I would have died of shame.

I always wanted a puppy, the birthright of every only child, and I pestered Mom and Dad for years, with no luck. ‘Don’t you think I have enough to worry about?’ was Mom’s predictable and repeated response. ‘No,’ was mine to her. I considered it even more unfair when I discovered I had yet another strange ability. When I walked around the Streets of Bankstown, dogs ran to their front fence and barked at me much more than they barked at other kids. Sometimes I thought I could understand them. They seemed to say hello. Even the most fearsome watchdogs, Dobermans, Alsatians, even savage Pit Bulls, licked my hand, stared into my eyes with a strange pleading look, and turned their heads inquisitively from side to side.

At times I imagined they were communicating with me. I knew that was impossible, but a few days after my tenth birthday, I walked past the Jackson’s place on my way to school and their Jack Russell Terrier ran to the fence and barked at me. I leaned in and patted him. As we looked at each other, I wondered if Mr. Jackson was home from hospital yet. He barked at me several times, and I imagined he told me his owner came home yesterday but he was going back for a checkup tomorrow. I dismissed it as mere fantasy on my part, but it was nodding knowingly as I walked off.

I continued on my way to school and forgot all about it. On my way home, Mrs. Jackson was in her garden with the dog. ‘Hello IQ,’ she called. ‘How’s your Mom?’

‘She’s fine thanks,’ I replied. ‘How is Mr. Jackson?’

‘Oh, he came home yesterday,’ she said, ‘but I have to take him back for a checkup in the morning.’

The dog barked, ‘I told you so.’ I freaked out and ran home like a frightened rabbit, certain I’d gone mad. Metcalf might be right after all. I tried this a few more times with the Jack Russell, and then with every dog I encountered. I could communicate with them all. It seemed to happen subconsciously rather than in the usual way of hearing someone talk. They’d bark and I could understand them. Sometimes they didn’t have to bark, information just flowed between us. I’d think about a question and look at them, and they would respond immediately, sometimes with barking, sometimes not. I couldn’t comprehend any of it, and dared not share it with anyone, even Dad.

I was embarrassed by the weird things I could do. I didn’t want to be different, like any kid, I just wanted to be normal and popular. Being different was a magnet for the bullies, and I was already different enough.

I couldn’t possibly have known then that my strange ability to communicate with animals would be all that stood between the survival or extinction of the human race. It all started that day with Mrs. Jackson’s Jack Russell.

CHAPTER 5 - THE STAR CRUSADER

Nothing much changed until I was eleven and a half, when Dad went to America for a few days and came back whispering. We still had our usual family conversations, but they were interspersed with Mom and Dad’s whispered secrets. After nearly six exasperating months, I was almost relieved when he announced over dinner that he was going back to the ‘States,’ as he called America, for a few weeks. When I asked him why, he paused before answering, rather unconvincingly, ‘Well you see son, um, it’s like this. With the new equipment over there, I can see past the Milky Way, even as far as my new galaxy. There is so much to do, I just have to go. Um, you know how it is.’

He wasn’t himself, and I didn’t believe him for a second. I knew his heart was at home with me and Mom, it had to be something more than a telescope for them to be whispering about it. For once I looked directly at him long enough to read his thoughts, I didn’t care if he read mine. He looked away as usual. I wondered if he knew about my power. I wondered if he had it too.

I asked him if his trip was what he and Mom had been whispering about. He refused to answer at first, but I kept pestering him until he relented. ‘One day I’ll tell you son, but for now it’s best you don’t know.’ It was hard for me to believe this was the same father I had shared so many good times with over the years. Eventually I would know that he was right not to tell me.

While he was away, Mom and I spent our time as usual. I went to school and karate, did my homework studiously, got teased and tormented at school, avoided prolonged eye contact with everyone, ignored dogs when someone else was around, and communicated with Dad by email. I didn’t bend forks or spoons. Life was the same as usual, except that Dad was a long way away, and he wasn’t with us on weekends. I tried many times to read what Mom was thinking but drew a complete blank, she had completely dismissed him from her mind.

One night I was in bed teetering on the edge of sleep when the phone rang. I listened as Mom turned down the TV and answered. It had to be Dad, so I jumped out of bed and walked quietly towards the living room. I heard Mom say, ‘Why do we have to go, can’t someone else do it?’

I stopped unseen in the hall as Mom went quiet, then listened intently as she began to cry. ‘I’m not going, and neither is he,’ she sobbed, with more conviction than I’d ever heard from her. She listened for a few seconds, then raised her voice and said, ‘You can tell them that Jock Smith, it’s absolutely final, WE ARE NOT GOING ANYWHERE! NO! NO! NO!’ She slammed the phone down. I crept back to my room, confused, and uncertain whether to console Mom or go back to bed. The phone rang again. Mom let it ring out.

As I lay in bed, Mom’s words ran through my mind. Dad obviously wanted us to go somewhere with him, but where? I decided to ask her in the morning. I had almost drifted off to sleep when my subconscious woke me with a start. This could be my chance.

I waited patiently until I heard Mom turn off the TV and walk down the hall to her bedroom. It was another half an hour before her light went off, and another ten minutes until I heard the rhythmic breathing of her deep sleep.

I slid out of bed and snuck down the dark hallway as silently as a cat burglar. I held my breath as I opened the squeaky door to the computer room. It made a frightful noise, magnified by the complete silence of the night, and no doubt by my fear of being caught. I hesitated. There was no change in Mom’s breathing.

Common sense told me that if Mom wouldn’t talk to Dad, he would have to email her. Not that Dad actually had much common sense, but deep down, I knew if there was a message from Dad, I was about to discover something I wasn’t supposed to know, the reason for their infernal whispering. I pulled back the curtains carefully to let in as much moonlight as possible. The almost full moon cast an eerie light on the computer as I turned it on and watched anxiously as it went through its start up. In the stillness of night, the echoes and reverberations of the old modem sounded like they were on a loud speaker booming around the entire neighborhood. I had forgotten to silence it. Terrified, I thought for an instant I should shut it down and scuttle back to bed like a cockroach. Against my better judgment, I stayed. I had to know.

A noise in the hallway. Was it Mom? I turned off the screen, stood up, and closed my eyes, expecting her to burst into the room and accuse me of all sorts of sneaky things. She was pretty scary when she was riled up. If she did appear, my plan was to pretend I was sleepwalking. I stood there with my eyes closed and hands outstretched for what seemed like an eternity. She didn’t come. In spite of my pounding heart, I gained a particle of confidence, switched the screen back on, logged on, and waited. There was an incoming email and it was taking forever to open. Finally, it snapped onto the screen. I opened it.

From: Jock Smith

To: [e-mail]

STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL for YOUR eyes only

DELETE IMMEDIATELY AFTER READING

Subject: Invitation

Dearest Emily,

Please don’t be angry with me. You must try and understand that this is a once in a lifetime opportunity. I told you why he chose me for the job. I simply can not refuse him. It will change the course of history, and we can all be part of it. I repeat, I can not refuse. We have been working very hard on this and I must be part of it, and if I go, so must you and our son. Have a look at the photo in the attachment, it’s our transport. Isn’t she magnificent.

Love always,

Jock

NB: DELETE IMMEDIATELY AFTER READING

Puzzled, I opened the attachment. Plans of a dark silver airplane appeared, a spaceship with wings. ‘Star Crusader’ was written underneath. I looked at the dimensions marked on the edges. Two hundred yards long and a hundred wide, bigger than two football fields, as high as a five storey building in the centre. It looked like a massive Manta Ray gliding effortlessly through space. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.

This will be our transport? A spaceship bigger than two football fields? A couple of years? Change the course of history? A thousand questions raced through my mind as I stared at the screen. Why are we going, the ordinary Smiths from Bankstown? Who else is invited? Where are we going? Who is ‘he?’ Why does Dad have to go?’ I sat there, mesmerized.

Mom’s plaintive cry of ‘Iqbal. Where are you?’ startled me back to reality. I panicked, deleted the message by mistake, and pulled the plug on the computer, the quickest way to shut it down. She was coming from my room towards the bathroom at the end of the hall, the first place she’d look. I heard the soft sound of her slippers shuffling down the hall. I waited until she passed before I squeezed open the door, hoping I might make it back to bed before she found me.

This time the squeaky hinge was my downfall. She spun around instantly. ‘What are you doing in there?’ she demanded, shuffling quickly towards me. Going into my sleepwalking act, I dreamily muttered, ‘Where are you Dad? Why are you whispering?’

She fell for it. ‘Oh my goodness, you poor dear, sleepwalking are we? Let’s get you back to bed you poor little sausage. It’s all this Dad stuff isn’t it.’

Mom patted my back gently as she guided me to my room and said soothingly, ‘Don’t worry, Daddy will come home soon and everything will be back to normal again. I’ve told him in no uncertain terms.’ I let her help me into bed and tuck the sheets around me. After she left, I pulled the blankets over my head, breathed a huge sigh of relief, and hoped she wouldn’t put two and two together in the morning.

Where were we invited to, and why was it so important that Dad goes? With my mind on full alert, I somehow drifted off into a sleep full of wild dreams of travelling to the Milky Way and new galaxies with Dad on that awesome spaceship. Our nights out the back suddenly became vividly real.

Next morning I awoke later than usual. At seven thirty, Mom shook me gently, ‘Time to get up, you must get ready for school. I know you miss your Daddy, but he’ll be back soon.’

‘When is he coming home Mom’? I asked, hoping to reinforce last night’s act.

‘I’ll find out today, I’m sure he’ll ring me today.’

My mind worked overtime. I watched Mom closely for any signs of suspicion. I felt very guilty about reading their email, and I looked into her eyes long enough to discover that she was very confused, she couldn’t understand why Dad insisted we follow him to America on what she thought was a wild goose chase. She just wanted to stay in Bankstown where we were safe and happy. She was resolute that we would not be going anywhere, and she would rather die than change her mind. I didn’t like Dad’s chances.

As I trudged up our driveway after a wasted day of daydreaming at school, I opened the door to find Mom pacing in the kitchen. She was smoking, always a bad sign. She only smoked in times of great stress, like the time Dad went missing for a whole weekend. Totally engrossed in his search for the path through the Milky Way, he had forgotten about time, and us, altogether. It took Mom months to forgive him. She quit smoking when things returned to normal.

I walked through the kitchen door as though I hadn’t a care in the world. ‘Hi Mom, how was your day?’

Her response was so quick I didn’t have time to read her thoughts. ‘Don’t you hi Mom me! What were you doing in the computer room last night? Where’s the email Dad sent? Don’t think for a moment I don’t know what you’re up to young man. How dare you read my private mail.’

‘What are you talking about?’ I felt far less confident than I sounded. I knew she had no idea how to retrieve a deleted email.

‘You know,’ she wheezed, puffing on her cigarette. ‘You read Dad’s email and rubbed it out!’

I was snookered. Months of frustration boiled over inside me. I couldn’t hold back. I shouted at her for the first time in my life. ‘Well you and Dad have been whispering behind my back like sneaky robbers since he came back from America last time, now he’s away all the time, and you won’t tell me what’s going on! I’m sick and tired of it Mom, I’m part of this family too you know, I don’t care what you do, wherever Dad’s going, I’m going with him.’

She looked at me like I‘d slapped her. Her eyes grew wide as she opened her mouth to say something. Before she could, her legs gave way. She collapsed like she’d been shot and fell to the floor.

I cradled her head in my arms, wet her face with mist from the ironing spray, and fanned her with a magazine. After a couple of minutes, she regained consciousness and struggled to sit up. She reached out and held me close, looked into my eyes, and said sadly, ‘Oh Iqbal, I don’t know what we’re going to do. Your father wants to take us on some crazy trip into outer space, and the president of some Yankee company insists that we go too. He just won’t listen to me. All I want is for you and me to stay right here where we’re safe.’

She was in no state to talk, so in a role reversal from last night, even though it was still daylight outside, I led her to bed and tucked her in. She fell asleep immediately, muttering about outer space, Dad, Presidents, and me.

At last things made a bit of sense. There was still a lot to find out, but at least I knew the reason for the whispering. Mom’s muddled up mind didn’t reveal much, I’d have to draw it out of her slowly. I couldn’t help but think it was all a dream and I’d wake up and it would all be over, but I didn’t want that for one second. Some time off school was too good to be true.

While Mom slept, I took the chance of recovering Dad’s email. Along with what Mom had told me, it made more sense now. I knew I should have followed Dad’s instructions and deleted it properly, but there was so much more to find out. I left it in the inbox.

Next morning I woke early and checked Mom, she’d been asleep for almost fourteen hours. I made her a pot of tea and toast with her favorite Rose’s English marmalade, sat on the edge of her bed with the tray, and prodded her gently with my elbow. She woke up slowly, looked at me strangely and said, ‘Oh IQ, I don’t think I can cope with this at all. Your father doesn’t think of anything but this crazy trip, and now you say you want to go as well. What is a poor woman to do?’ She lay there and stared at the ceiling for a few seconds then said quietly, ‘I suppose it’s time for me to tell you all about it.’ My heart skipped a beat.

I poured the tea just how she liked it, strong with a splash of milk. As she nibbled at her toast, she looked at me thoughtfully and said, ‘I don’t care how much you want to be with your father, we have to defy him this time. There is no way he can force us to go with him if we don’t want to. He expects us to follow him and his oddball friends in some spaceship out to the Milky Way and even further. Do you have any idea how far that is? It’s further than from here to Perth but straight up’. She pointed to the ceiling for emphasis.

Not daring to interrupt, I sat quietly as she went on. ‘Well, do you want to go into outer space looking for new planets, living on a spaceship, not knowing where we’re going or what will happen from day to day or whether we’ll ever see our family and friends again? I’m damn sure I don’t.’

I looked at her as if to say, ‘Are you kidding?’ I didn’t care, I didn’t have any friends.

‘Well do you? What happens if we crash or run out of petrol up there?’ Mom’s sense of humor was always there, even in the most stressful of times. I think she was joking.

I didn’t answer, I was already on board the Star Crusader. Bigger than two football fields and five stories high. I thought of ‘Star Trek’ and ‘Star Wars,’ and imagined myself speeding from planet to planet, fighting aliens and making incredible discoveries with Dad. I’d sure let them know about my adventures at school when we got back. What sweet revenge. I stared at Mom. There was no doubt in her mind that she wasn’t going. ‘So what’s it all about Mom? What’s Dad told you?’

‘I just told you what he said. Your father and some other people are building a spaceship and they want us to go with them on a very long trip to find somewhere else for people to live. That’s all I know, and it’s more than enough for me to say I’m not going. And neither are you. It will be over my dead body. That is my final word. I’ll sort it out with him today. When you come home from school, everything will be sorted and we can get on with our lives, with or without Jock Smith.’

My heart sank. Life without Dad was not an option. I had to change her mind.

CHAPTER 6 - SORRY SENSEI

I stumbled from class to class that day like a zombie. Teachers asked me questions I didn’t hear. Metcalf and his goons ragged me all day. My thoughts were all about Dad, the Star Crusader, and how I could convince Mom to come with us.