THE FIRST ANGEL 2

2

I called Margaret around four in the morning. When she picked up she wasn’t happy.

‘Sorry, Marge, but I don’t want you to bring the girl over today. I called early so you didn’t need to disturb her. Let her rest up, give her a day to get used to her surroundings. She needs a base. Show her some movies or games or something. You know what to do, but don’t take her outside.’

Margaret thought I was “real kind” and understood my concern – the snow. Truth is I’d spent about ten hours going through Sally’s dossier. I needed a rest. And a drink. A big one.

Despite a good third of a bottle of malt on an empty stomach I didn’t feel fatigued. I was wired. The data was looping the loop in my head. It was full and very detailed. Body checks, mental evaluations, blood tests. All there in hair splitting detail. All clean. Sally was a healthy little mite. DNA confirmed Brenda was the mother.

That was the good news. What bothered me was the information on the parents. Cleverly voluminous and annoyingly scant. The father, who was as monumentally important as Brenda, was just listed as DNA profiled – untraced to date. So much detail about the girl, just sophisticated BS on them. I had a nagging feeling. Something was up.

The report on Brenda’s “recovery” was pretty shocking, but given how things were going at that time not particularly surprising. Sixteen years previously when AVA crept in, unnoticed by a worn down celebrating population until it was too late, she (why on Earth do I grace it with a sex?) bequeathed a situation where having a child was like winning all the lotteries at once. In a panicking World different cultures reacted in different ways. In my so called free capital based one, infants became valuable commodities – if you could find one. A fertile female was a goose that laid golden eggs.

The whiskey answered my question. The Australian government were going to renege. They wanted Brenda for themselves. We got a child – they had a source. Not surprising with them being on China’s doorstep. With the population falling at about sixty million a year it eventually dawned. As the population aged the drop off would increase exponentially. There had to be order, otherwise – the stone-age.

I e-mailed a note to IT telling them to set me up an encrypted full scan vid and audio storage bin to run 24/7, ASAP. I added a jokey footnote signing myself as “the absent minded professor.” Then I called Margaret.

‘Morning, Marge. How is Sally?’

‘She just great, She woke about thirty minutes ago all sleepy eyed. She’s sooo cute. Oh I forgot. Hi Jonny.’

‘You know something Marge, for one of Europe’s top child psychologists you’re pretty soft centred.’

‘Don’t believe everything they say about Germans, mein herr.’

‘I need you to read the data on Sally. Can I come over?’

‘You OK?’

‘Hmm perceptive as ever. Listen, Sally isn’t very well. Maybe jet-lag. We can’t begin our work for at least two days, can we? I’ll inform my staff to step down until she’s better. I’ll see you in about an hour.’

There was a long pause. I expected that.

‘Bacon and eggs OK?’

‘Good girl’