TUESDAY
He examined the sky, watching the contrails of Malaga-bound 747s. Brave single-engine planes zigzagged beneath, keeping to lower horizontal layers like sparrows wary of higher eagles. He should've been urging on pupils from his year ten form and if he had, they might have absorbed some inspiration and turned their near miss into victory. He shivered his perfunctory support, looking forward more to the tea and biscuits only a short walk away at his home.
He looked at his pupils gathering their remaining energies for the final surge against a superior side.
“Are you glad you came, sir?”
“What? Oh yes, Charlene, of course,” he lied, as he pulled his John Barry coat tighter against the November chill. His mother told him he was too thin to withstand proper winters.
“Come on Brad, put your effing boot in!”
"Hey, watch your language," he said, demonstrating adult shock.
“Oh, it's expected, sir, let it all out.” She leapt up and down, demonstrating in her turn, teenage female energy making him feel tired. He was glad to hear the final whistle.
He had to brew his own tea being both single and new to the area. He'd recently inherited the Victorian end of terrace in Cavendish Road, Chingford, from his grandfather. Then he'd discovered that Chingford Borough High School needed mathematics teachers. They were so desperate they employed him, John Forrister, who used his six-feet-eight height as a discipline aid.
He put the kettle on. The bottle of Grants pulled at him but he resisted for another hour, in order to get the ticks and crosses in more or less the right places. There was an in-pile of lesson books at his feet plus the one on his lap. Throwing the latest marked effort at the out-pile and sending it spilling on the old Axminster carpet revealed something he'd not noticed. A cigarette burn mark staring defiantly at him. He thought he'd covered all his granddad's carpet-despoiling indiscretions. He didn't really like the house, whose features included being musty, draughty, creaked when he tried to sleep, but his income wouldn't let him change much for a while. The only uplifting experience was the evening view from his bedroom when he could, habitually, see the neighbour in her penthouse bedsit washing her hair, apparently not wanting to get any of her clothes wet.
He toppled books as he knelt on the carpet to examine the mark. Maroon tufts were singed in a thumbnail-sized disfigurement. Mild puzzlement turned to surprise when his finger found itself worming through a hole in the floorboard beneath. He sat on the floor his legs either side of the hole and tried to think how he missed the hole before but his head hurt from the effort.
He was hungry so he rang for a take-away pizza instead.
WEDNESDAY
He couldn't leave school when the beasts fled the building, on account of departmental meetings—inspections next term. He managed to keep his eyes open until hitting the pavement home at five.
This time the bottle of Grants whisky lost mass as it went towards nerve steadying. He sat heavily at the pre-war wooden kitchen table. It wasn't fair that he was expected to rewrite schemes of work, syllabuses, remark books properly, replace the curled up wall-displays and cultivate some boot-licking skills as backup.
He drummed his fingers on the table, trying not to think how to prioritise his tasks, when his right index finger became stuck in a hole. Not properly stuck, just enough to be pulled out easily and to make him quiz his finger. He'd not come across any knotholes in the table when he spray-polished it on Sunday. Maybe he’d drummed too hard and the knot fell through. Knocking through a knot with his finger was unlikely, giving it sufficient force to go through the floorboards as well was just ridiculous, even in his foul mood. But there it was. He lay on his stomach under the table fingering the newly discovered hole in the linoleum. It travelled through the floorboard like the carpet hole. Had he inherited a house with the largest woodworm in Britain? He rolled over onto his back to get a different viewpoint of the hole in the table. He could see a clean hole in the table as a white disc of light. With a little squinting, he could peer through it to the tall white ceiling. It had its own hole.
Breathlessly charging up the stairs, he found a hole in the boxroom yucky-green lino. It drew his eyes upwards. There it was: another hole. It went on. He'd not been up in the attic; didn't know how. A much-painted trapdoor tried to hide in the corridor ceiling but no ladder; and he'd enjoyed too much whisky to consider rearranging his furniture into a pyramid.
He was sufficiently compos mentis to lie on the boxroom lino and, while coating his sweatshirt with floor fluff, peeped down the hole to the rest of his house. The holes didn't line up vertically. His finger told him and his eye confirmed the slight angle. He had to rule out oversized woodworm unless it had a laser guidance system. His whisky-fuddled synapses gave up for the night.
THURSDAY
He was obliged to look up at the sky at the end of the school day. Unnaturally ear-splitting explosions and a riot of ever expanding umbrellas of lights filled the sky in overlapping waves. It was November 5th, Guy Fawkes Day, when Britons celebrate either the attempt to blow up parliament or the success of thwarting the conspiracy. Maybe his holes were made with pre-emptive firework rehearsals. In which case, they might've stopped turning his house into a colander by now. It was late when he reached his doorstep. He didn't relish finding more holes, and other staff from the school-supervised firework display helped him spend a good portion of his salary at the Fox & Hounds. He was aiming his front door key when a young lady's voice cut the air behind him.
“Mr Forrister?”
“It might be,” he said, trying to stop the alcohol in his breath escaping. “Who wants to know?”
“I'm Teresa Czeremchka.” She spoke with a Polish accent. “I live in the top flat next to your house.”
He thought he'd recognised her face from the penthouse window, and if she'd seen him through wet hair on those occasions it could explain why she wasn't smiling.
“John. I'm John. Would you like to come in for a drink?”
“No. I have to tell you about your roof.”
“My roof? Oh I suppose you can see it from your window. Interesting view is it?”
“Not as interesting as yours, I think,” she replied, with a straight face. “I saw damage to your roof the other afternoon.”
He sobered immediately. “Was it Tuesday by any chance?”
“Yes. A quarter past three.”
“What can you see up there?”
“Broken tiles.”
“I don't suppose you saw it happen?”
“I think it was what you call a shooting star? It glowed.”
“My God, I'm under attack from outer space! Have you seen more of them?”
“I don’t spend all my time watching your house.”
“I didn't mean to …” he blurted, “but I'd be grateful if you'd tell me—”
“I intend to buy curtains, Mr Forrister.”
He heated with embarrassment about his incidental peeping, but his thoughts were more on the shooting star and any more holes he might find inside. He'd heard of extinction-size asteroids landing, but thought shooting stars burnt up in the atmosphere. He couldn't find a fresh hole so went to make a coffee. Damn, his sink overflowed of today's breakfast crockery and yesterday's curry supper. Cursing his sloppiness he lifted the saucepan and dropped it when a jagged hole told him he didn't need to clean it anymore.
Lifting the pan again revealed the hole's continuation into the stainless steel making it the only sink in Chingford with two plugholes. Upstairs he found it had also whizzed through his grandfather's grandfather clock. It had stopped at three fourteen.
Lying in bed he wondered how safe it was to stay. The one consolation was that whatever made the hole, shooting stars or wayward fireworks, it only happened once a day. He should've worried himself awake longer but the alcohol took over.
FRIDAY
Suppose it was rock fragments hurtling into his house, which organisation do you report it to? The police, his insurance company, the Royal Astronomical Society? Alan Cooper. As head of physics at Chingford Borough High, he was the ideal man to investigate his house: right up his street.
“No, man, not shooting stars, they're meteors and don't land. Meteorites are the ones; they're brilliant, John. It'll be meteorites landing on your house. That's fantastic!”
“Glad you're so pleased. But I thought meteorites landed about once every century or so.”
“A meteorite the right size to make a hole to fit your finger lands every twenty minutes,” said Cooper.
“My God,” Forrister said, looking up at the sky, as they walked to his house.
“That's for the whole planet of course. An area the size of London gets a hit of a pea to a grape-size meteorite every three years.”
“You'll have to readjust your figures 'cos my house gets one every day.”
“Ah.”
“Ah?”
“Well it could happen, you know, swarms; but they're usually seen as meteors like the Leonids, which are fragments of comets. They peak in twenty-four hours.”
“If it's not meteorites, maybe it's one of them?” Forrister said, pointing at the lights of an aircraft heading towards Luton.
“Could be; but I wouldn't rule out meteorites until I get one in my hands. What do they look like?”
“Haven't a clue, that's why you're coming down into my basement with me to sort out the meteorites from the meteorwrongs.”
“Haha, your basement so unruly you can't see recent additions?”
“Only been down once to see where I could put a wine rack but there's too much junk. I've only been there two months.”
“Been in mine twenty years and still haven't sorted the cellar, assuming I have one,” Cooper said.
They searched but couldn't find any new holes. They shouldered the stiff door to the cellar but it was a near-hopeless task finding the culprits in the assorted boxes and piles of mostly metal junk.
“Your granddad an engineer?”
“Yeah, he had a workshop down here making one-twentieth scale steam engines. Hence all the swarf and black metallic lumps. If they were meteorites, what are we looking for?”
“Pieces of black metallic lumps,” Cooper said, glumly.
Giving up, they sat in the lounge, each with a Fosters.
“So today's hasn't happened. Yet you think they all happen around three fifteen. Today's could be late so I'll stop a while.”
“Should we be wearing tin hats?”
“They'd hit the roof at around four hundred miles an hour and after going through the attic would slow considerably, with each floor, taking a fraction of a second to get to the basement. If your floors weren't Victorian cheapo wood they would get lodged en route.”
“Hope it stops soon, my insurance won't pay for meteorite hits.”
“That's right; but they would if they came from satellites or aircraft, and I've been coming round to thinking there must be a Wright Brothers seven-four-seven up there popping rivets on a regular basis,” Cooper said.
Forrister shook his head. “I can't find a flight that takes off or lands on time every day that might account for the holes.”
“Assuming your neighbour and the clock time wasn't coincidental, it seems unlikely that human timetabled events were responsible for such accuracy. On the other hand, some artefacts have to be very accurate.”
“Such as satellites?”
“Exactly, although there's hundreds of them up there and at least five hundred defunct ones; but, apart from the minibus-sized ones, which are well plotted, whole ones completely burn up. Something else relating to satellites might be happening though,” he said drifting off into deep thought.
“Another can?”
“Thanks. You live in an interesting scientific location you know.”
“No I don't. It's Chingford.”
“It's also on the Greenwich Meridian, you know, zero degrees longitude.”
“Yeah, but so are lots of places,” Forrister said.
“Apart from Greenwich and a few other London streets, there is no other city in England or anywhere else in the world precisely on the Prime Meridian. Look at an atlas, John.”
“Don't need to with you around.”
“Well I did some post-grad research on Meteosat and guess which line of longitude it's on?”
“Mine, I presume.”
“Yes, zero; but also dead over the equator, whereas we are considerably farther north.”
“But if something was being ejected or knocked off Meteosat, it doesn't mean the bits would land on the same latitude, surely?”
“You're right. It must just be an amazing coincidence but,” Cooper drifted off again, “on the other hand…”
“Maybe there’s something mystic about the Prime Meridian–like ley lines. Anyway, it's two a.m. and no space debris callers. I've got to find a roof repairer tomorrow.”
“Yeah, I'll give you a ring over the weekend if I think of anything. Hey, maybe you should stay at my place until it stops.”
“It might've stopped already.”
“Or it might've called and got lodged in a deep joist.”
“I'll take my chances since they only come in the afternoons.”
“I'll be off,” goodbyed Cooper. He stood and turning to collect his coat, noticed the cushion he'd been squashing all evening.
“Er, John, do you usually keep your cushions in this state?” He raised a green braided lump becoming inside out via two holes. They looked up at the second hole in the lounge ceiling, wondered what it had drilled upstairs, and then examined the chair.
“At least it must've happened before you sat down,” Forrister said.
“That's what you think,” joked Cooper, feeling for holes over his body.
SATURDAY
He blinked at the late morning sun as he creaked open his half-glazed front door.
“You need to repair your roof, Mr Forrister.”
“Oh hello, Miss Creze, Crzenchk–”
“Miss Czeremchka. Did your beer-soaked brain take in what I said?”
“Sorry? I'm not drunk–that was last night. No, I don't do drunk anymore, Miss Cz…it's Teresa isn't it?”
“Miss Czeremchka to you. I know a builder who do a temporary roof repair for you.”
“Really, that's brilliant. I visit my mother on Sundays…”
“Orpington?”
“Yes, but how do you know?”
“I–I knew your grandfather. He needed someone to get his shopping and the odd job in-between your rare visits.”
“I had no idea. He was so stubborn, insisting on living alone until the end and I lived up north. I should be thanking you.”
“I liked him, he was more polite. I could let the builder in for you if it has to be Sunday.”
“That's brilliant, let me give you a spare key.”
“I have one. Your grandfather gave it me.”
CURIOSITY OVERCAME HIS FEAR when he returned from Savaspend with plastic bag handles cutting into both hands. Dumping them in the corridor he ran down into the basement. He knew it was the safest place; and he saw a Second World War air-raid warden helmet he was going to wear.
He sat down on an old swivel chair and looked at his watch: 3:11. Just in time to hear a low frequency crump noise upstairs, followed by more sounds, including one sounding like his front door banging. Fearful, he looked up at the wooden cellar ceiling, waiting for a meteorite to come through. Nothing. Puzzled, he went up the cellar steps, seeing snowflakes of plaster flutter down from a hole in the ceiling. He cursed when he saw baked beans splattered over the corridor wall and floor. The meteorite must be buried in the foundations next to the cellar after neatly puncturing the Savaspend carrier and baked beans as if it knew just where to maximise clearing up time.
SUNDAY
It was a difficult visit for John Forrister. Clockwise congestion on the M25 didn't help. His comatose aged mother, however, allowed his mind to go into orbit, where it worried about waking up one morning with a hole in one of his vital bits.
It was 3:20 so he'd survived another day.
His mobile phone nearly jumped out of his pocket. Alan Cooper.
“Any more incoming?”
“Yesterday, not back in today.”
“I've had an email reply from a Canadian geophysicist who's interested in your house.”
“It's his for two hundred grand.”
“I didn't mean…hey, that's a bit cheap, John.”
“Not for a Swiss cheese you have to keep out of at quarter past three every day.”
“Anyway my friend reckons they could be tektites.”
“What tights? Sounds like hosiery.”
“They're ejecta from volcanoes. They can travel far from eruptions like from Etna for instance.”
“Size and colour? Time of impact?”
“Often look like shiny black buttons or beans. Usually land within a day of eruptions and of course Etna's been throwing up regularly for a while. On the other hand it's not likely for tektites to whiz over one at a time although bursts of activity can happen at precise intervals. There's likely to be a swarm of them. Have you heard of any others in your area?”
“I haven't got to know many neighbours yet, apart from one.”
“Have a look around then, there should be what they call a strewn field. See you at the zoo tomorrow, yeah?”
“Where? Oh yeah right, bye,” Forrister said, reaching his house.
Two men were collapsing a ladder, the top part scratching its way down the gable end of his house. The larger of the two men looked at Forrister, hitched up his forty-two inch trousers, wiped a hand across his lived-in moustache, and holding out the same hand, stepped forward.
“Mr Forrister?”
“Yes. Much damage up there?” he said, now wiping his own hand on his trousers.
“Seen worse.”
“Oh? Not lots of broken tiles then?”
“Looks like your roof's never been maintained, one biggish hole where rain would've wet your attic, and it looked as if whoever put your TV aerial up had studs on his boots.”
“That'd be tektite damage,” Forrister said, instantly regretting it.
“You what?”
“I mean meteorites,” he explained, making matters worse.
“You what?”
“Is it all right now then?”
“Oh no, they don't make those tiles any more; and it'd take a while to order re-cycled ones, then a couple of days work to fix it proper. I've tarpaulined the one biggish hole and fiddled the others so you won't get wet.”
“Thanks,” Forrister said, worried about escalating costs if he had to reroof every other Sunday–forever. “By the way Mister er…”
“Cadogan, Grant Cadogan, here's me card–the phone number's wrong.”
“Thanks, Mr Cardigan, but let me know before you shin up your ladder again won't you? Oh, and just out of interest, have other roofs had any damage around here recently?”
“Funny you should ask that,” Cadogan said.
“There have been other roofs?”
“There's always a few each year near the railway and the school, both caused by kids: they put scrap on the tracks. The bits sometimes get flicked up in the air–quite spectacular. Varmints. Used to do it meself. Be seeing you, Mr Forrister.”
It hadn't occurred to him about kids. The railway and the school: his house was close to both. So: railway, school, flight paths of two major airports and a couple of local ones, not to mention the Greenwich or Prime Meridian. A snag was the timing; he could easily check on the railways, but it would be a miracle if a train passed at exactly the right time every day. Also his school, the closest secondary, didn't let the animals escape until 3:20.
There was no sign of Teresa what's-her-name as he entered his corridor whiffing parfum de baked beans. He wondered if Cadogan would've noticed a meteorite smashing through the roof he worked on. Only if it put out his fag.
No more holes in the kitchen sink. He put the still-intact kettle on for a coffee and eyes constantly on lookout, walked into the living room.
If he was tidier, Form 8b's maths homework books would've been back in his briefcase. Then Luke Darlow wouldn't have a hole in his simultaneous equations all the way from the front cover to the back. No way could he give it back to him like that. He'd have to give him a detention for not handing it in. Shame he'd already corrected it. He looked up at the extra ceiling hole, wondering what else it went through.
The state of the bedroom carpet gave him a clue as he splashed through it to the radiator. The meteorite, or whatever, ricocheted off the radiator without going straight through but enough to have a small jet peeing onto the carpet. He taped a wad of blutak and placed a bowl beneath the persistent rogue drips.
MONDAY2
Alan Cooper was dismissive of every theory involving local origins of the projectiles: they wouldn't be fast enough, assorted sizes would result, rail timetables too erratic in practice, as were children.
“No, John. Use your maths. We've thought that it can't be bits of a satellite because they'd be burnt up and would come in one go, but satellites do things on a very regular basis. Take Meteosat for instance. It's the main weather satellite you see pictures from on the telly, although it does a lot more than scan the earth for visible light and infra-red. Anyway, the point is that there are sensors and transmitters programmed to activate very regularly indeed. I know one that switches on every two hundred seconds.”
“So?”
“Just suppose there is a fragment of a dark asteroid near to it. It might have gas pockets inside or just be unstable and sensitive to a burst of electromagnetic radiation like a transmitter nearby.”
“So when Meteosat, which I remember is on longitude zero, like my house, sends a particular burst of data at the same time each day, a pocket of gas erupts sending a fragment of asteroid off. Its initial speed mightn't be much but most burns and ablates in the atmosphere until it's the size of a grape and slams into my house.”
“You've got it!” said the excited Cooper.
“Rubbish.”
“Or it could be an asteroid in a polar orbit that happens to pass near Meteosat at the same time each day and—”
“You're obsessed with Meteosat because you did research on it and I live on the Greenwich Meridian. If that satellite is responsible, the time it would take for incoming to reach my house would put it at least an hour, say fifteen degrees farther to the west. In the Atlantic.”
“Ye of little faith,” smiled Cooper. “You've been doing some work on it haven't you. But, there's a veritable ring of geosynchronous satellites over the equator so it could be one at fifteen degrees east doing it.”
“So the Prime Meridian has nothing to do with it after all. And like I said, millions of people must live on it.”
'”But they don't,” he said, ignoring Forrister's first comment. “About six hundred houses in the whole world and two hundred and ninety of those are here in London.”
“I don't believe it,” Forrister said.
“Go to the Geography room and get the big Times Atlas. You'll see how much sea the Prime Meridian is over and that once out of London it travels over almost uninhabited areas. By chance no French town is exactly on it, no Spanish, nothing in the Sahara or the rest of west Africa, just missing Accra in Ghana and then nothing in the rest of the south Atlantic to Antarctica and up the rear end of our planet over the Pacific Ocean.”
“Well, even so it's not fair. Why should my house be hit? About six houses in the world get hit by a meteorite every year so the odds are about one in a hundred million that my house would be hit.”
“For one thing you shouldn't take it personally.” Cooper was laughing.
“It's not funny!”
“I'm not laughing at your predicament but at your irrational response to it. Listen; if another house was hit, anyone living there could say the same thing. Why me? But that's giving the meteorite decision-making power. Come on, John. Look at it this way, if it has to be a house on the Prime Meridian, there's a one in six hundred chance it'd be yours.”
“All this talk of chances and probabilities have given me an idea to pay for the damage,” Forrister said, brightening up. “The insurance wouldn't pay for non-manmade impacts but a bookie might.”
“Brilliant,” Cooper said, “you should place a bet that your house would be hit by a meteorite tomorrow. You should get good odds; not the ones we've been throwing around. They wouldn't want to bankrupt themselves.”
“True, but they might accept a £10 bet on a thousand to one against. I'll pop in on the way home.”
“Make sure none of the kids spot you.”
“No problem. I'm a maths teacher. Gambling is applied probability theory.”
IT WASN'T FUNNY ANYMORE. John had come home to find another hole in the kitchen floor and ceiling, which had come from the bedroom upstairs. It had ploughed through his pillow sending bits of yellow Kapok everywhere. It could've been his brains instead if he'd taken a day off ill.
He had to move. Perhaps Cooper would put him up until the meteorites stopped. Suppose they didn't stop? Or not until his house was reduced to rubble with a crowd to watch the daily impact bouncing back into the air.
So much for his inheritance. He couldn't sell it with this going on, he'd be sued for withholding vital information.
On top of that, the bookies wouldn't accept his bet. They had to ring their chief actuary, who wanted to know if it had happened before and who would verify it was a true meteorite, which meant finding it in the cellar.
TUESDAY2
Lulu's Shout didn't wake him on his digital alarm. He hadn't been able to get to sleep until four, but once zonked, stayed deep. Something in his body clock stirred him around eight thirty, when his arm reached out to strangle the clock and bring it to his eyes. He expected it to be distorted by a meteorite but he'd only forgotten to set it.
He forced his legs to find the floor: they were slow but faster than his brain. The sight of the phone made his hand reach for it, shortly followed by a semblance of intelligence.
“Alan, it's me, I can't come in today. I'm going to the police and whoever else they suggest. It's doing my head in, and it would have done literally yesterday if I'd gone for a nap in the afternoon.”
“Got your bed, eh, scary stuff. Why is the thought of being killed while asleep more disturbing than when you're awake?”
“What are you on about, Alan?”
“Sorry, John, look, briefing is about to start. What shall I tell Bentley; you're not feeling yourself? In which case old boy, who are you feeling?”
“Chance would be a fine thing. Just tell him I'm not well and I'll be in tomorrow.”
“You know where I live if you want a safe house for the night.”
THE POLICE WERE VERY COMFORTING. They said nothing like it has happened before and so it couldn't be happening now. They'd send a constable round in a few days, once they'd all stopped laughing. The police were also helpful in that they'd notify the planning enforcement officer, just to make sure there aren't unauthorised alterations.
He spent some time with an estate agent seeking advice on selling a house that's more of a site of scientific interest. The best advice was to come clean and put it to auction. There would be interest in purchasing it as a novelty; and he could expect around £50k, which was better than a smack in the face but not much.
He was keen to get back by three. Not to go in but to observe the roof. His preparations were to buy an HD video camera, a tripod and hoped-for permission from Teresa Czzzzzetc to film from her penthouse. He was wearing out his finger on her bell when he saw her coming out of his own house.
“Hi, Teresa!”
“Oh, it's you, Mr Forrister, why are you at my door?”
“I wanted to ask a favour,” he said, neatly distracted from asking her the same question.
“What favour is that, I'm very busy.”
“In case a meteorite hits my house again today I'd like to film it from your window if that's okay with you?” He smiled encouragement.
“It would reverse the situation: you looking at your own house from my window wouldn't it?” she said without the smile that should have accompanied such irony.
“Is that a yes?”
“I suppose so but give me five minutes to tidy my things.”
When he was allowed in, he asked: “By the way what were you doing in my house? The builders come back?”
“You got post delivered to my house by mistake, it wouldn't fit your letter box.”
He had a good view of his roof. It was overcast and the tarpaulin flapped a little in the wind. He looked up at the cloud base.
3:13 came and although he stared and filmed, he realised he wasn't going to see a meteorite. If the cloud wasn't there he might've seen a glow from the ionised air around it and maybe from its friction glow but at a few miles up it would slow and cool too much to glow. It might still be hot, especially when boring through his house, but he was so unlikely to actually see it with the naked eye. Hopefully, his camera might pick it up with image enhancement.
3:14 His eyes ached, monitoring every shadow; eagerly watching the starlings, trying to see what scared them when they squawked off.
3:15 His ears tired of intensive listening, trying to distinguish a small meteorite impact from the melee of Chingford's finest screaming kids, tormented trains, reverberating Number 212 buses and suburban mayhem, as well as the accidental dropping of a mug of coffee from Ms Czeremchka's hands.
3:16 He looked at his watch and refocused quickly on his roof when he realised he might've missed it.
3:17 A car pulled up sharply by his house. He could just make out a beefy woman dragging a boy up to his door. The prisoner was Luke Darlow. The one Forrister had put in detention. His mum must have found out he wasn't in school and collected her son promptly to have it out with him.
“Teresa, is it possible to hang around for a few more minutes?” He'd given up filming now it was past the assumed hit time.
“No, I need to get ready to go out; and please don't ask to come up here again,” she said, shutting herself in the bathroom. Forrister pulled a long face at the residual vibrations, before returning for a last glance out of the window. The Darlow woman was still there beating his door with one fist with the other clutching what might be Luke's detention notification. He shuffled around for while in Teresa's hallway before overcoming cowardice to bluff Mrs Darlow. To his surprise, Alan Cooper, who'd arrived to see the day's hit, had sent her on her way.
Cooper was rubbing his hands. “Come on John, I've sent the Darlows packing; let's see today's damage.”
“You're keener than usual to take a measure of my misfortune.”
“You're becoming a scientific oddity and celebrity. My Canadian friend contacted NASA.”
“Really?” Forrister never dreamt anything happening to him would make a pencil twitch in the teeth of a Houston Mission Control egg-head.
“They've set up a preliminary project team to look into it. One of them, a Eugene Borelli, is currently on secondment at the Jodrell Bank radio telescope and is coming down to see us.”
“Us?”
“Apparently they suspected the Chinese–”
“The Chinese have been bombarding my house?”
“No. Not directly. They have lots of satellites up there and the Pentagon think they've developed a killer satellite that can knock out others. One of them is a remote sensing satellite called Ziyuan that they think is being used as target practice.”
“Does the maths work out, you know, the fifteen degrees more to the east than the prime meridian and all that?” asked Forrister.
“We were wrong by twenty three hours–for Meteosat, it takes longer than I thought; but there are so many, such as the Ziyuan series in polar orbits.”
“Incredible,' Forrister said, shaking his head as he unlocked his door. “All right, stop shoving, Alan.'”
“There's another hole in the kitchen ceiling, but I can't see where it went,” said Cooper, who stooped to scrutinise the floor.
“Perhaps supplication to the Gods will help,” Forrister said.
“It would be a first. Ah, you're giving me a clue.”
Above the table against ghastly yellow wallpaper, was a wooden crucifix. It had probably been there for a century, but only very recently acquired an angled hole right in the middle.
“I assume it is today's,” Alan said.
“I don't look at it every day, but there's sawdust on the table, and it matches the line of the hole in the ceiling. Which means–”
“It should've gone through to the lounge,” Alan said, joining in the race round the wall. The exit hole in the soft plasterboard wall led to another hole in the floor to the metal scrap in the cellar.
“It might still be warm, I'd like to find it this time,” Alan said.
In the cellar, their scrambling only resulted in dirty fingernails. There were so many lumps of metal—nuts, bolts and fragments; most blackened or rusty and many were slightly magnetic. Cooper had a magnet and wasted over an hour testing lumps: looking for repulsion since only two magnets can repel each other. Iron meteorites tend to be slightly magnetic. But no luck.
WEDNESDAY2
John was exasperated. What with the Chinese and the supernatural against him he might as well take up the estate agent's suggestion of an auction and accept a tenth of the house's value. On the other hand the value of a pile of Victorian bricks and century-old plain and coloured glass, copper and lead probably came to about twenty grand. Though they'd have to shift it quickly before the diurnal meteorite bombardment reduced it all to dust.
On his way home, he called in at Price & Gamble, the estate agent he'd seen previously.
“Oh it's you, Mr Forrister,” said the secretary.
“You own the house of God, and want to sell it!” boomed Mr Gamble coming in from an inner office.
“What?”
“Young Kate here belongs to The New Church of The Cross, and hearing of a rumour about a crucifix today, remembered you.”
“But—”
“It's true then? The hand of God actually went through a crucifix? And in your house?” she said.
“Well a meteorite, or something did, yes.”
“Please, please, please take me to see it, please.” She clutched his lapels. Forrister couldn't remember the last time an attractive brunette threw herself at him so enthusiastically, even if he was only proxy for his pile of bricks.
“I'll come along too,” said Gamble, “I am responsible for my female staff when they go in the field.”
'”Since when?” Kate said.
Forrister was swept up in the moment, and a while later followed the whole office into his house. They ran about finding all the old holes and photographed the crucifix so much he was sure it would ignite. He found the day's new hole, while they were making tea and emptying his biscuit tin. The hole in the soap was neat but its continuation through the bath was another repair job. At least the rest of its journey merely added to the holes in the lower floors.
“Do you have any pets, John?” asked the increasingly familiar Kate. “Only it must be a bit scary for them not knowing where and when to hide.”
“I hadn't given much thought to it. No wonder I haven't seen Felix since last Monday,” he said grimly.
“What! The poor thing. You mean she was—”
“I'm kidding, I don't have a cat. Or a dog.”
When their digital cameras ran out of memory, Gamble sat Forrister down at his own kitchen table.
“I'm not really sure what's happening here, and I know you don’t, Mr Forrister, but that hole in the crucifix could make a big difference to the value of your property.”
“It could?”
“You do still want to sell, and at a price you can get another, safer dwelling?”
“Yes of course. But who in their right mind would want it?”
“The Church. It doesn't have a mind. It has faith and miracles. Mr Forrister, you are in a fortunate position.”
Forrister was about to make a suitable response when he heard the doorbell. He was too slow and Kate answered it bringing in a large black overcoat, which wasn't quite big enough for Eugene Borelli and his NASA intentions. Forrister, spasmodically speechless with awe gave him the tour including the basement. Borelli was keen to get up into the attic and was astonished no one had investigated it, even though the builders had done some repairs.
After the estate agents left, Borelli spent two hours examining and photographing each hole and damage, although was a bit annoyed that some patching up had been carried out.
“Well, I still live here you know.”
“More fool you, buddy.”
“I think you're ready to leave now.”
“I didn't mean to offend. I would like to return and take your cellar apart. I haven't seen anything that definitely came from a satellite yet. Then some of those holes you know—” He was interrupted by Cooper, pushing at the door bell and bringing more people with him, sporting cameras.
“Oh, come on, Alan, I'm shoving people out of the house now, not letting them in. It's getting late.”
“Ten minutes, John. Are you Borelli…” and the two scientists did the tour again with whoever the other people were. Sounded like press. Forrister had the sneaky feeling that Cooper was making money out of the situation. He'd have to tackle him for a cut.
His chance came twenty minutes later but Alan pre-empted him.
“I've learnt so much from that man. Apparently we're either looking for siderites, which are iron meteorites or the harder bits of satellites. Besides using magnetic properties—a failure as we know—the timing of impact might help. For instance our solar day is twenty four hours but from the point of view of a star or asteroid the sidereal day is more relevant.”
“And the sidereal day is–”
“Shorter than the ordinary or solar day. It's because the earth travels around the sun and so has to rotate a little more each day than would appear from a fixed star. What it means is that if the meteorites are hitting your house about four minutes less each day it's more likely to be meteorite than satellite in origin. We aren't absolutely sure each hits at spot-on three-fifteen, are we?” he said looking pleased with himself.
“Unless it's both,” said a tired Forrister.
“What…oh yes, a satellite's transmission triggering bits off an asteroid. I forgot about that. Never mind. Look I have another—”
“Good night, Alan. See you in the morning.”
THURSDAY2
12:08 in the staff room, Forrister took a call from Mr Gamble.
“How does eight hundred and sixty-five thousand sound to you, Mr Forrister?”
“I couldn't possibly afford it.”
“No, it's what you've been offered for your house, no strings, no chain, just a genuine big cheque. Minus our commission of course. Don't forget it has no central heating, double-glazing, no maintenance for nearly a century so normally it would struggle to reach two-hundred thousand.”
“Is this the freaky religious sect you mentioned?”
“There's nothing freaky about a suitcase full of money, Mr Forrister.”
“Actually there is, but when could it happen?”
“If you agree now, come in to sign after work, borrow the school minibus to move out, and you can buy a deluxe Regency-mode air raid shelter tomorrow.”
A flurried paperwork session followed, and Forrister stood in a daze with a bill of sale in his hand. He rushed round to his bank before they closed, and called in at Walthamstow Furniture Removals and Storage.
He called George Bentley at the school. He knew he'd still be there sorting out the next day's cover lessons. Although teachers were allowed time off for moving house it was usual to give notice, so he had to be more obsequious than he'd like. He almost skipped home. Home? He'd find a B&B for a couple of weeks until he found a more permanent residence. Maybe a flat in a very tall building only he'd have the ground floor or even the cellar, especially if it had a stone floor.
Once more, Alan Cooper was at his front door when the exuberant Forrister finally arrived home.
“Come in and have a serious drink, Alan, assuming my bottle of Grant's hasn't been trashed.”
“Let me guess, you've had an offer for the house, and it's more than fifty quid.”
“The God squad have bought it, and good riddance.”
“Hey, will they still let the NASA guys in, and me?” asked Cooper.
Forrister laughed: “Maybe. What do you look like in a cassock?”
They crept in but couldn't find a fresh hole until Cooper went to the bathroom.
“Hey, John, your john's sprung a leak.”
They looked at it. There was a neat hole in the plastic toilet seat cover but it looked as if a grenade had gone off in the bowl with large cracks in the ceramic and a few pieces over the floor.
“There should be its continuation in the corridor downstairs,” said Cooper. They couldn't find it. “Maybe it's lodged in the wall or ceiling somewhere.”
“Let's have that drink,” Forrister urged. “I can't tell you what a relief it is to get out of here. I was mentally prepared to leave stoney broke, though at least I have a job. But now…”
Three hours later they smiled Alan’s way to the bus stop. John out for some fresh air.
As Cooper stepped onto the bus, Teresa disembarked.
“Hello there,” John said, “on your way home?”
“So?”
“You might be interested to know I'm moving.”
FRIDAY2 TERESA
The smile continued to grow, completely out of control. It had been on her face throughout the night, in her dreams and now at the penthouse breakfast table.
The smile metamorphosed to rapid bursts of laughter as she stood with her steaming coffee and saw through the window the removals vehicle and men in overalls extracting the few sad bits of furniture worth keeping. Not bad, it had taken two weeks to rid herself of the peeping tom pervert. The whole point of moving to the penthouse in a politically Conservative London suburb was to put her private life away from such men.
Now look who had the power. She sat down again to finish her muesli and yoghurt, throwing a glance at the collection of her tools spilling out of the rucksack in the corner. A powerdrill, hole-borer, power-hammer, mini-vacuum cleaner and the keys. No point being the only girl and the only top grade in the NVQ engineering class at Wapping College unless you made use of it. As she took another mouthful, she ruminated on the pure luck of seeing the first and only meteorite hit on Forrister's house and the idea it gave her.
She stopped smiling to sip her coffee although she was still laughing inside. Her eyes opened wider as her ears picked up a noise. Before she could register what made it, the remains of her milky muesli splattered out in a corona as the bowl disintegrated. Even before she could take the mug from her lips she could see the hole where the bowl was and in her floor. It was 0814.