Panspermia Deorum Read Online Free PDF Page B

to
adjust too much. They have their own apartments. That would be the
way of least disruption. I’m not going to hold you back. In any
case, surely there will be times when you need to be in Europe, and
perhaps then… we can have… vacations, or just meet up for a short
break. That’s the best I can do right now. At a different time of
my life I might have come with you. I’m really sorry.”
    It was decided,
but not in the way he’d hoped. Julien would contact Volker Brandt
in the morning. It was time to catch up with what had been
happening in the lives of his family in that room. The family he
was about to split up.
    *
    Brandt was
happy with the way things had been handled with NERO. It was one
less item to be concerned about.
    “Look, Julien,
I think it would be best if you take a flight from Paris to
Washington. I’m in America right now and rather than take risks
with phones and messaging, we can thrash out your remit and
contract face-to-face. My people in telecommunications are already
at work on the records associated with your old mobile. It’s just
as well you trashed it as agreed. I’ll arrange for your open ticket
to be collected by you in Paris. You’ll have to make your own
arrangements to get there. Now, please make sure you bring the
content of that memory stick with you, buried deep in your laptop
or tablet, don’t transmit it though the ether. So, are we ok with
all that?”
    “Sure, no
problem. How long are you in the States?”
    “Another week
or so, why?”
    “I’ll be
leaving my family in Lyon when I begin working for you, and I owe
them something a bit special.”
    “When do you
plan to travel then?”
    “Well, I also
have to sign off my pension transfer documentation from NERO today,
and indemnification stuff about handing Fellowes’ people the memory
stick. Can we say I’ll travel the day after tomorrow?”
    “Fine, let me
know the flight details and I’ll arrange pick up for you.”
    “Thank you,
will do. Look forward to meeting up again.”
    Volker Brandt
had made his fortune courtesy of being able to see the little
picture within the big picture. A few years older than Julien, he
had an instinctive ability to time the major business decisions
with uncanny accuracy. He was pretty much the antithesis to the man
he was about to employ, yet he felt they could work well together.
He had put a considerable amount of time into honing his main
weakness, delegation. He found that it worked best when
subordinates felt part of the tough decisions, when in reality,
Brandt perfected the art of knowing when to sow and more
importantly, when to reap.
     

Chapter 5
     
    April 2029
     
    T he landscape had changed dramatically since the Osaka
conference. Not only had protest turned to terrorist insurgence in
known hot spots, it had metastasised into mass civil unrest in
hitherto peaceful regions. Climate change had lived up to its
billing by causing even more mass migration. It was global
conflict, but not between superpowers; rather between the actors in
government and the audience on the receiving end. The audience
could see through the script and the actors knew only their lines.
Curiously, the march to anarchism greatly assisted VB Aerospace.
They had become the only safe game in town, and Julien Delacroix
was remembered as the man who broke ranks in Osaka and told it as
it was. He had unwittingly become a man of the people. However,
whilst Volker Brandt inherited far less interference from any
remaining governing structures, Julien found the whole experience
of being the fountain of hope quite a distraction.
    There were two
deadlines to address. The obvious one of developing a safe method
of influencing the path of ‘Chocolate Orange’, as 1999 A10 had been
nicknamed. Then there was the launch date of the Mars mission. 2033
was ideal when considering the distance between the planets, but if
the asteroid collided with Earth, the entire manned mission could
become futile. Within VB