Runaway World

The Birch Apartment

There were more policemen waiting for them when they emerged into the reception hall. Andrew's stomach tensed up with fear, thinking they'd come to arrest him for the death of Kartoshka, but they were there for the other rover, the one that had brought Reginald Fox in. The second rover parked alongside the first and the three policemen emerged a few moments later pushing the gurney on which the historian was lying. They'd cuffed his wrist to one of the poles of the gurney, Andrew saw, but he thought the historian was currently doing everything be could just to stay alive.

Cheval and Windsor went over to talk to the other policemen, leaving Andrew alone to make his way to the elevators down to the city proper. Before he could get there, though, two of the elevators opened. His family, dressed in thick, warm clothes, emerged from one of them, shouting happily to see him, while a small crowd of reporters emerged from the other.

"Mister Birch!" said the first of them, running over to thrust a microphone into his face. Another was pointing a camera at him. "What do you think of your failure to..."

"Leave him alone!" demanded Susan, stepping in front of him and pushing the microphone away. "He's been through enough. Seen people die, seen what happened to the old world. He needs to rest."

"The people need to know, Mrs Birch" the reporter insisted. "Your husband's failure to recover the dysprosium has repercussions for the entire human race."

"Nobody could have done more," Susan declared, standing between Andrew and the reporter like a lioness protecting her cub. The children gathered round as well, glaring up at him. James's hands were clenched into fists and Andrew stepped forward to defuse the situation.

"Obviously I feel bad that it was impossible to stop the rover," he said. He gathered his thick coat around himself as if he could hide inside it. "Mister Fox had sabotaged the controls and there wasn't time to repair the damage."

"You could have closed the airlock door," another reporter said. "If the lava couldn't get in, the rover would have floated. Lava's not hot enough to melt steel. You could have attached a cable and pulled the rover back out."

"You've had all this time to figure out what I should have done," Andrew pointed out. "I only had seconds. Yes, I could have done that if I'd thought of it, but I didn't think of it."

"You had plenty of time to consider a range of contingency plans while you were chasing Fox's rover..."

"That's enough!" said Susan forcefully. "That's the man responsible over there." She pointed to where the policemen were gathered around Fox's gurney. "Go ask him why he did what he did."

She grabbed Andrew forcefully by the arm and dragged him towards the elevators. A couple of the reporters followed them, still asking questions, but they fell away when it was apparent the Andrew family wasn't going to say any more. They'd gotten their quote, something to put on the news report. They weren't going to waste time flogging a dead horse when Fox himself might say something interesting.

"Thanks for rescuing me," said Andrew as the door closed behind them. There was a lurch and the elevator car began to descend.

"I thought you were awesome, Dad!" said David, grinning up at him. "You were awesome!"

"Pretty impressive," agreed James, also grinning. "I don't care what everyone else says. You're a hero."

"What everyone else says, eh?" said Andrew ruefully. "All the other kids at school?"

"They're idiots," said Jasmine, her face grim and serious. "You're the best dad ever."

"The best ever!" agreed David. James nodded his head and the three children closed in to give him a group hug.