Realms of Eden Book 03: Whirlwind

"Sorry, Sir," Clinton said softly.

The big man opposite him smiled again and nodded his forgiveness. "You do realise now that there is a target on your back don't you Clinton?"

"Comes with the territory I suppose, it won't be the first time there has been one there," was the captain's reply as he indicated a bottle of scotch on the shelf behind Cue Ball. His commander retrieved it and two tumblers and the men drank a toast to Palena Yua.

"So what's next, Cue Ball?" asked Southey as he sipped his drink.

"I still have a suspicion that the group kidnapping under-aged girls are a problem, Clinton. Something about that first lot we busted was not right. I know that we have tightened so much around the schools, transport and public awareness, but these people are going to work around them before too much longer. Hell some of the girls own parents were part of it!" Sydney was still smarting over the treatment of Janine and Alison by the would be kidnappers, let alone the other girls that had gone back to their families. If the young women were so unwanted by their parents he had no hope of preventing them from being sold off like excess cattle to the sex merchants beyond the borders of Oceania.

"There needs to be a change in the balance of females to males Sydney," said Southey quietly.

"I am working on that my friend, but it won't be for a while. In the meantime we can't let something like Project BF come up again! There is no way I am going to continue to let under-aged girls be sent off to serve as sex objects for someone's fantasy games," Cue Ball had stood and was now pacing in front of the bemused captain as he spoke.

"No there has got to be some way of making the trade of these women so unhealthy, so risky that it would be far better for the organised crime lords to find something else!" Cue Ball laughed, "Maybe even go straight!"

"I have thought about starting a rumour that pre-pubescent girls have a tendency to spread venereal diseases more easily because of a lack of immunity that comes with maturity. Unfortunately our doctors say that there would be too much panic about that among the females themselves," Clinton offered.

Cue Ball chuckled. "Yes I would imagine that could cause a few concerns. No what we need is a way to make anyone, not just the criminals, think that if they so much as touch the women sexually that there would be such a huge outrage about it that they have to seriously consider the repercussions."

"I suppose castration is out of the question too," sighed Clinton. It was something that he wished he could enforce on some of the gang members that they had rounded up in several raids the previous year. He had been threatened with lawsuits from a dozen quarters over his request.

"How about a campaign to give the men that protect their daughters, sisters, nieces, friends incentive to really go all out at making sure they know that they are safe?" mused Cue Ball softly.

He recalled the words that Pauline Kendrick had said to him about the boys he had needed to talk to during his last days of school. "They no longer chase the women Sydney, they protect them and they make sure that none of the men, including teachers and other parents, say or do anything to hurt them. I have seen three or four of them gang up on a father that chastised his daughter for talking to them after school. They told him that he was better off having her talk to men who would protect her with their lives than be taken off the street by someone who didn't care about her!" Pauline had been almost shocked at the intensity of the young men but was pleased when the father apologised to all of them.

It was not just the young men she had gone on to tell him, but the girls now looked out for one another a lot more. "Sydney, your Angels are the strongest of them all! They are so protective of all of the younger ones. They watch the streets, they note the number plates of hovers that should not be parked around the school. I have had at least half a dozen 'stranger danger' alerts in the past three months! No-one could take any of these girls without someone knowing within minutes."

She had looked at the man intensely. "Sydney, you have changed the world here, again," she had smiled, "all because you wanted a dozen young men to behave themselves and you wanted to give people something to aspire to!"

"What sort of incentive are you thinking about, Sir?" asked Southey after Sydney had related the story to him.

"I am not sure, Captain. Perhaps I should ask Robert or Thelma to come up with some ideas," he replied.

"Well I think it is a great idea! As an uncle of several beautiful young women I know that I would do it for nothing! Unfortunately I can't watch them twenty-four seven," he puffed out his cheeks, "even though my sister seems to think that I do!"

"Your sister is a wise woman Clinton," Cue Ball grinned as he nodded to the electronic tablet on the desk in front of him. "Tell me that you don't have copies of their personal schedules in that book."

Clinton Southey drew the tablet over to him and touched its display panel. "Not only their schedules but speed dial to their phones and panic buttons in their purses. I had to remove the links to the security camera network because I couldn't do anything else on the bloody thing because it would run out of memory," he grinned at the big man watching him.

"Panic buttons?"

"Yes I converted some electronic alarm equipment into personal alarm devices. As long as they can squeeze it I can find them!" he said proudly and brought up a display that showed five green lights at locations across New Zealand.

"You have GPS tracking on them as well!" his commander exclaimed.

"Yes, no good having them able to press the button and not know where the hell they are. I wirelessly linked it to the app I installed on their phones," the man shrugged his shoulders oblivious to the excited look on the face of his commander as he showed the diagrams of what he had done. The sudden kiss on his forehead from the big man shut him up.

"You are a fucking genius Clinton!" cried Cue Ball.

"No Sir, just protective of my girls. You see their Dad got killed protecting my sister from some thugs that wanted to steal her hover when they were shopping. Stabbed by a drug crazed fuckwit that thought he would be able to sell the thing for more drugs. Albert brought the man down but his mate stabbed him in the back then they fled the scene leaving Robyn unconscious on the ground from where they knocked her down. If Robyn had been conscious, Albert would never have died. Even if someone had gotten to them but they were parked on the highest levels where there was no-one around. Easy for thieves when no-one is around, not even a working fucking security camera. We have still never caught his killer," Southey finished softly.

"Clinton, I am sorry," said Cue Ball.

"Not your fault, Sir. But now I have my wife, sister and my nieces all wired up. I may not be able to get to them, but I have access to every law and military office where ever any of them are. I can get people to them in minutes!"

"What would happen if they lost their purse or bag? Could we make these personal alarms something that could be easily put on their bodies, say like a ring, an earring or a chain? Can we make them voice activated or triggered in some other way?" asked Cue Ball continuing his thinking with rapid fire questions.

Suddenly he stopped talking as his mind raced with possibilities and Clinton Southey could do nothing but grin as his commander went into almost a trance-like state as he stood in his office. The man in front of him disappeared. "This is going to be good," he said to himself softly as he resumed his seat and waited.

The phone on his desk rang and he absent mindedly diverted it to the wall monitor behind him. "Southey you are a dead man!" hissed a voice and the connection cut.

"Alfred can you trace that call," he called out.

"Came from Pitt Island, Sir. More specifically from a hover boat sitting about twenty kilometres off the island registered in the name of Alexander Frost. Last seen in Auckland several days ago while you were working on the aquaculture transport hover that brought the last shipment of drugs into harbour. I believe he may have been associated with the owners of the warehouses that were raided," came the voice of the green faced man on the monitor in front of him.

"Ok good, are you tracking his boat now?"

"Yes, a patrol hover is about five minutes from blowing him out of the water," replied Alfred.

"No! Just track him, I want to know where he goes and if he comes back here. We'll sort out blowing him out of the water later, for now I would like to know where the rat bastard goes," said Southey quickly.

Alfred smiled, a sinister grimace that Southey was getting used to seeing on his computer accomplice. It was without doubt one of the best resources his commander had ever given him. "Will do Sir," said the green faced man who then disappeared from the screen.

Southey picked up his tablet and the report he had been reading and walked to his office door. He turned off the light and walked down the hallway to the lifts, passing a few people as he left. His smile was a mile wide as the lift opened and his wife giggled at him as she exited the lift.

Chapter 4 -- Bugs

"No Enyalius, I cannot give you such an item! The gifts I have given over the millennia are not for everyday use by just anyone! The long term use would be disastrous to the user and to the people around them," cried Jebidiah once again. He had been arguing with the man ever since he had shown up in his realm with his request to build personal alarms for everyday people in Oceania.

"Sydney I know that you are trying to save people, trying your best to do everything at once but you cannot do it with outside interference from me or any of the other realm masters. Look there are people in the world that could do this far more easily than I could anyway," he continued.

"Such as?" Sydney asked. He was determined that he would somehow get Southey's system in place as a matter of priority.

"Well," Jebidiah was hesitant to name the one person he knew could satisfy Sydney's request. The relationship between him and the young man was complex at best and he had been strictly forbidden by Sydney's own father to mention him. "What about Greg Collins' contacts, the ones that built your machine for measuring human and plant interactions?"

"Greg is busy with Cellarium and anyway he wouldn't give me a contact for Camelot Corporation. Something about national security! So much for being the supreme commander of the military!" Sydney retorted.

"Sydney you are not the supreme commander of the military. Cue Ball is! You are not him now!" snapped Jebidiah. His patience was beginning to run thin, they had been going around this circle for hours now and Sydney could not understand. Jebidiah could not make him understand either, the truth would shatter the man in front of him and there was far too much for him to do.

"You keep saying that, but when I appear as Cue Ball everyone jumps!"

"Because it is not you!" yelled Jebidiah and for the first time in many years the master of science and invention fled his own realm.

"Syddy," said a small voice, it came from behind him and he recognised it as Alison's. He turned, smiling at the little woman that stood shyly watching him.

"Yes honey," he said softly and opened his arms beckoning the girl towards him.

"Don't make poppa Jeb sad, please," she said as she climbed up into his arms.

"I didn't mean to Alison. It is just that I know he can help me make a lot of people safe and it seems that he doesn't want to," Sydney told her as he brushed her long hair with his fingers.

"He makes me, Janine, Karen and Leanne safe," the little woman told him as she leant against his chest as Sydney sat in one of Jebidiah's big comfortable lounge chairs.

"I know baby, I just want to make a lot more people safe with their parents as well," Sydney sighed.

"Perhaps if you just leave the plans behind then poppa Jeb can find someone else to do the work," she suggested looking up into his face. Her hand touched the lock of hair across his eyes and rather than brush it away she arranged it to fall over his forehead more neatly.

"Do you think he would?" asked Sydney doubtfully.

"Janine can convince anyone to do anything," she giggled softly.

"Where is Janine and the others?"

"Studying," she replied, "where I should be as well but I wanted to ask poppa Jeb if we could go fishing this afternoon as well. You know how much he loves to fish."

Sydney chuckled. Jebidiah was a frequent visitor to the creek between his and Kelsey's properties. Disguised many times as a young boy that would be seen using a small pole, dressed in a large sun-hat and old jeans, on the banks of the creek near to where the creek flowed into the river. He and Bonnie had tried to talk to the boy once but he had shooed them away saying that they were scaring the fish. At other times he had been seen on a small boat out in the creek and just off the shore where he and Mrs Kelleher had gone on their fishing expeditions.

"Where would he take you fishing?" he asked the soft girl in his lap.

"Oh many places!" she cried excitedly. "Sometimes where the big fish are, sometimes just for little ones. He has a friend that likes to catch really big fish, we go with her sometimes. She broke her arm the last time trying to wrestle a really big fish back into the water. It got her with its tail."

Sydney reeled back in the chair and Alison was almost thrown from his lap at his unexpected movement. "What's wrong Syddy!" she yelped.

"Anne-Marie!" he exclaimed.

"Yes that is her name, she has two really big friends that help her as well, Lissa and Lucy, they are really funny. Poppa Jeb really likes Lucy," the girl giggled then clamped her hand over her mouth as if she had told a secret that she shouldn't have.

"It's ok, Alison, I won't tell poppa Jeb that you said anything. Ok I will have to go now but tell Jebidiah that I will bring back the plans and we will see if he can find someone else to make them," Sydney told her as he lifted the girl for one more hug before he put her down on her feet. She grinned as he walked to the portal viewer in the room before concentrating slightly then disappeared.

"Thank you Alison," said Jebidiah softly as he placed his hands on the young woman's shoulders. "I cannot tell him about his benefactor, it would change too much. Hopefully he will bring the plans back and I can take them to Stanton when we go fishing tomorrow."

Alison snuggled her cheek against his fingers and sighed, "I am glad that he let you bring us here, poppa Jeb."

"So am I honey, so am I."

Sydney re-appeared in Captain Southey's office minutes after the man had left with his wife for home. He smiled as the printer on the cabinet against the wall began to print out diagrams of the captain's personal alarms as well as the code for the application that linked them to the phone systems. "Thank you Alfred," he called as he collected the papers and disappeared again.

Robert Dinnane looked at the plans that Sydney placed in front of him as he, Thelma and Kelsey listened in amazement to the reasons that Captain Clinton Southey had created them. "Sydney this could be either a blessing or the greatest mistake that anyone could build!" exclaimed Thelma.

"Mistake?" asked Sydney puzzled.

"Privacy, stalking, personal space invasion, distrust, over protective parents, vigilantes! Do I need to go on?" interjected Kelsey. She saw the potential to save lives but also the consequences of tagging people in this manner.

Robert added, "Sydney you cannot force people to take a bug with them where ever they go. Certainly you could not ask people to have things that would track their every movement for the rest of their lives, no matter how well intentioned it is!"

"But -," started Sydney.

"No buts Sydney, if we do not handle this properly the popularity you have now will disappear overnight! We would be back to square one, no even worse than that, we would be back to firstly just trying to get back to some place where people would trust you again!" interrupted Robert firmly.

"Besides, Sydney," said Thelma kindly, "the organisation behind this would be enormous. Think of all of the security firms that handle the business places and people's homes. How many organisations would be needed to handle millions of people?"

Sydney sat back in his chair, defeated, he had not considered all of the problem when he had raced off to see Jebidiah. Now he could see so many problems with his solution that he knew it was not worth pursuing, certainly not in its current format. Yet deep down he still believed that it was a viable way of protecting girls and young women from the bastards that carried out the kidnappings and trade that saw the girls end up in private homes and business outside of the borders of Oceania.

Sandy had simply been an observer in the discussions that had taken place. She had been on the phone talking to Moira about some issues with the motels in Cellarium and had not been fully concentrating on the conversation. However, she did see the looks on the faces around the table when she returned and it did not appear to be going well. She asked for a summary of the discussion to date.

Robert filled her in on the problem and the possible solution that Sydney had discovered when he talked with Clinton Southey. "What else did you talk to Southey about?" asked Kelsey.

"The drug bust that he was a big player in -," began Sydney.

"No, not that!" interrupted Kelsey. "What started the conversation about the alarms?"

Sydney furrowed his brow trying to remember when Alfred appeared on the monitor beside them. "I think this might help," he suggested and played his recording of the conversation between the two men.

"Yes that's right!" exclaimed Kelsey. "The boys and the Angels from the high school were doing a fantastic job with organising the kids that were left behind at school waiting for their parents or someone else to pick them up. They checked the buses, they even checked if the little kids knew who was going to be picking them up. Hell they would even stop me if Bonnie or Jenny asked if I could take one of their friends home and make sure that the girls' parents knew that I had them. It even got to be a joke with the parents at the PTA meetings that they had so many protectors for their girls that some of them wondered if they might as well let the Virgin Guardians take over the organising of security at school functions."

"Virgin Guardians?" sniggered Sandy.

"Well that is what one of the fathers called them at one meeting and it sort of stuck. He said that he was losing his grey hairs now that someone else seemed to be watching out for his daughters' virginities," Kelsey laughed as she recalled the comment.

"But Brisbane doesn't have that sort of problem, there has been no girls gone missing since Project BF was discovered and shut down," said Thelma softly.

"You may not know it, Thelma," said Kelsey, "but the Virgin Guardians are in almost every school across south Brisbane and the surrounding towns. At last count there were almost thirty schools with some form of senior school protective troop. I know that for hundreds of years the PTA's have tried to get the school watch and safe house programs to work, but it sort of got knocked down a bit when some of the safe houses ended up having predators in them, no parent felt safe."

"I had heard about that many years ago. There were a few cases in Townsville that ended up with parents taking their children out of school and teaching them at home," Thelma said sadly.