PRELUDE

THE GOLDBERRY ISLANDS
ONE FINAL DANCE

​

Margaret Hunter watched each second creep by. She felt the glare of the antique golden clock on the mantelpiece behind. The bay window gave her splendid views of the sunset from her hilltop palatial cottage on the Goldberry Islands. Darkness crept in, and the glow from the candles became more prominent all around the study. There was no family, she was the last of her lineage, while friends, often more aptly described as comrades, dead. Sipping vodka, she spotted the lights of a helicopter in the distance, gliding across the silvery sand beaches of the island chain, the crystal corals glittering below like expensive jewels.

Minutes later, the doors to the wood panelled study opened. 

“Prime minister,” said the butler, ever punctual. “Are you ready?”

Margaret gave him a slight nod, and took to the white armchair at the fireplace, the heat and blaze making for an intimate backdrop. She had always enjoyed the silence, even before retirement. The photos that surrounded the clock were the perfect comrades for such preference. They looked back down as she waited out these last days alone. 

At eighty-three, Margaret had maintained a trim physique and a perfect bob of silver hair—jokingly called the power cut by the media during her tenure as prime minister. Forever one to dress formally, the finely tailored tunics finished with a gold or silver trim and simple black trousers still saw daily use. The clock struck nine, and the doors to her candle lit study opened again.

“Miss Ferry, for you, ma’am.”

With the agility of someone a decade younger, Margaret rose and shook the hand of the first visitor allowed entry to the cottage in thirteen years. Ferry came alone, but Margaret had ten staff to attend to any need, and her chief of security - Vincent - along with others stood in a protective circle around the two antique armchairs. “Miss Ferry, please, have a seat.”

“Thank you, prime minister,” said Luxe Ferry. The reporter settled herself in the facing armchair, taking out a holo-pad.
 

Margaret studied her, sitting down. The fire between them crackled and sparked from deep inside the wall. Ferry was a new breed of media, the respectful media of the past now a distant memory and replaced by a new savage and dangerously opinionated animal.
 

“Ma’am, I must admit to feeling a little… unsure of myself right now.” Young and sharp, Ferry led this new pack of media hounds in a world increasingly introverted.

Margaret chose not to return the smile. She was not in the mood to be kind to Ferry, instead looking across the dark study and ordering everyone to leave. When the heavy oak doors shut, she then replied. “I doubt anyone makes you nervous, Miss Ferry. That white power suit, the sculpted hair, your bespoke jewellery that screams financial success, and yet you claim intimidation by an old woman?”

“As the last prime minister of a united Neucarro, your thirty years in power saw you involved in the most tragic, the most hated, the most debated event of our past.”

Hunter sipped her vodka, the ice cubes rattling. “Traitor, bully, failure, sympathiser, murderer. Those are the words the media has used to describe me since I left office. Some of those words came directly from your pen, from your very mouth. And do not feel flattered, I am provided with daily media reports. I read everything.”

Ferry shifted in the armchair. “Right. Ma’am, the events you were involved in are still so divisive. As prime minister during the entire Terran incident, people will study you and your government for centuries.”

Margaret stared for a second, then looked towards the fire. That statement she could not disagree with. But looking up again, her eyes met the fallen portraits of Tabatha, Firewood, of Blackburn and Lynton, of Princeton and Flack, and the rest. She crossed her legs and returned her gaze forward with unforgiving tenacity.

“Right…” said Ferry, trying to get comfortable, a computer pad projecting in front of her. “As prime minister, you were in command of the global government when the Terrans arrived. Until their arrival, you were a three-term winning politician, an accolade never achieved before or since, at the zenith of political power and popularity.”

“Do not let my white hair fool you, my mind still operates at full speed. No one need remind me of what I achieved. Work on your dramatic interview editing after we finish. Skip this introductory charade.”

Ferry blinked a few times and then tapped some buttons in mid-air. “I have to ask, is this interview an attempt to secure a change of tone for your legacy? Supporters have sat on the side-lines since your retirement, none of them coming forward, now all dead. Tell me, ma’am, tell me just how you see your place in history now? When you became prime minister, Neucarro was united under one banner and government. Peace and prosperity were permanent dividends to enjoy after thousands of years of war. Scholars blame the actions of you, as the ultimate power holder, for the world we must now live and suffer in. You wielded unchecked executive power and your popularity before the Terran incident ensured the legal balances from the world court, parliament, even the regional ministers, were moderate.”

“And the point? If you have one?”

“Do you disagree with some of our most eminent minds?” said Ferry, who spoke with a new firmness, becoming comfortable with the uncomfortable. “Do you see yourself as a victim, like all those who perished at the time? The public deserves answers from the only surviving senior government official. The most senior. Will you finally answer them?”

Margaret had lost the last thirteen years bolted inside her grace and favour cottage just off the Frudin coast, surrounded by the security and privacy afforded to the only living ex-prime minister. Reasons to travel were moot, and any required service came to her. Neucarro changed forever as she sat in silence, the years passing by. Friends died in silence, loyal to the end. Only those who lived through those times could ever genuinely appreciate the darkness that crept over Neucarro, and as with all matters of government, nothing was ever a simple question of right or wrong. Recently, the deepening relationship with death in her elder years had proved a stark reminder that time was not something which lasted forever for mortals. They had hidden too much, brushed under a carpet that current governments had no intention of ever lifting. Ferry could be her ultimate challenge.

“When you speak of fractures in our world today, Miss Ferry, you do not know what actual war is, what caused those fractures. A little over ten years old is what you were, during what we now call the Terran incident, and your resume shows no study or understanding of history. Nothing that would help you comprehend why we acted as we did. Why acted as I did. The Terrans represented the gravest moment in the long bloody tapestry of Neucarro. As head of government, I handled ten billion people and was charged with protecting a new and treasured way of life.” Margaret took a breath. And another drink. “My dear, government is a dark and cruel and grisly business, and to make any good out of it, one must always aim to help the greatest majorities, to think of the future in broad strokes. We learned back then how dangerously shallow and flimsy the notion of national sovereignty can be. How hazardous that notion is. It set me, the democratically elected prime minister on a collision course with the military, the government, and the people. I wanted no return to that state of constant war Neucarro had endured when those great military departments of Reclara, Troon, Frudin, and Lovin had more power in than elected leaders.”

“I’m sorry, prime minister, but are you saying that sovereignty, self-determination… are you saying you don’t believe in those things?”
 

Margaret growled her words in anger now, the famed composure she was remembered for cracking. “Those words were empty to me when the prospect of upholding them meant death and annihilation. War should never be romanticised. War is disgusting, and it is horrible and is as old and barbaric as the first time the cave dweller lifted the club to attack another.”

“With respect, your duty as prime minister was to safeguard democracy and to protect our freedom.”

Margaret sat forward. “The first duty is to govern, and to leave something worthwhile to govern when one steps down. To fight and go down in a blaze of glory sounds righteous, doesn’t it? Such thoughts are for the uneducated.”

Ferry steadied her voice. “Will you answer my question? Just how do you think history will view you?”

Margaret, her faculties as sharp as when she was a teenager, replied with an edge that could cut glass. “I have spent thirteen years nursing what I thought to be shredded dignity, watching each of those closest to me die, watching successive governments act in treasonous fashion to history and the future. Recently I realised something simple, and it was liberating.”

“Which was?”

Margaret nursed her glass, looking at the ice cubes ramming into each other. “That I could not give a damn, not one bloody damn, how you or how history or anyone views me anymore. The historians, the revisionists. Future generations, they can believe what they want. I did what was needed, the choices I made were the only choices that any sane person could contemplate. There was no play book. There is your answer.”

“The only choices?” said Ferry. “You deliberately abused your position during the Terran incident. Humans entered the palace and dictated to you. Your government destroyed paradise.”

Margaret watched the attack dog rise and moved to slap her down. “The daily reports I was privy to from GSA would make your skin crawl, and that was before the Terrans arrived. It is now fashionable to look back on our history as one of total paradise before their return, and unless you change that view, you are nothing but a childish fool with no right to sit in my company. A child trying and failing to play master, like too many out there now.”

“Then enlighten me,” snapped Ferry, her own anger now showing. “Convince me otherwise? Tell me your story.”

It was in that moment Margaret realised it was decision time. Ferry was ready, the door of her closed and conditioned mind creaking open just a little. She had wrestled to accept Ferry’s constant interview demands for years, always admiring the famed intelligence and tenacity that preceded her. What Hunter cared little for was that deep-rooted prejudice among the younger population who believed her administration cheated them of paradise. “To tell this story, at such a late hour?”

Ferry was instant in her reply. “You accuse me of being a fool of history. Do not insult me without at least giving your reasons. Time is irrelevant.”

Margaret sipped her drink, wetting her mouth. “Most of what I have to say you will not like. Some of it will astound, some of it almost unbelievable. Some will be unbelievable. The thought of an old woman, grasping to secure a change in her legacy, as you put it earlier, will cross your mind.”

“Tell me.”

Margaret set her glass aside as Ferry’s holo-pad projected images further around her, showing volume and recording controls along with a video recorder activating.

 

“Can we raise the lights?”

Margaret refused, preferring the dimness. The shadows, the quietness, they were all dear friends now. She preferred soft light in a cottage dripping with discreet technology, hidden behind the thick golden drapes and the antique furniture that sat atop plush carpets. “Put all that nonsense away.” Her hands waved in dismay. “Right now. Immediately.”

Ferry minimised the holos, dropping them to her feet. The result was a eerie glow around her feet, as if summoned from a dark force below.

“Thirteen years ago, I led the last world government. One planet united under one government with one goal, to create a better future. Then the Terrans arrived, and our future, but more importantly, our past changed forever.”

“Our past?”

“If I’m going to confess this story, then maybe it is time I told all of it…” Margaret decided the answer was yes and sent a message to her chief of security. The message to Vincent and his team was simple - it was time.

Ferry pressed the red button. The recording had begun.

Margaret got comfortable, ready to tell the story that, in her mind, was the real narrative historians should know. Governments of today vilified her. For too long the easy evil target of successive cowardly administrations seeking someone to blame. The bitter old failure locked away in the government's palatial cottage, thankfully silent. Enough was enough. For tonight, at least, she could feel in command again.             
The button on her armchair was pressed, the line to the kitchen open.

“Coffee, black.”