Cull
Stafford Ray
First Published 2014 by Classic Author and Publishing Services Pty Ltd.
This edition published 2018 by Woodslane Press
© Stafford Ray
All rights reserved. No part of this printed or video publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electrical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher and copyright owner.
Editor: Ormé Harris
Designer / typesetter: Chameleon Print Design
Digital Distribution: Ebook Alchemy
Conversion by Winking Billy
National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry
Author: Ray, Stafford, author.
Title: Cull / Stafford Ray ;
editor: Orme Harris.
ISBN: 9780992590024 (eBook)
Other Authors/Contributors: Harris, Orme, editor.
Dewey Number: A823.4
AUTHOR PROFILE
Stafford Ray was born into a deeply religious, fundamental Exclusive Brethren family, where access to music and reading should have been limited to classics, hymns, the Bible and other religious texts, but his maternal grandmother, Eusebia, an Internationalist, thought otherwise. His father encouraged his interest in music.
By fourteen, he was reading the Complete Works of Shakespeare and at sixteen was introduced to Charles Darwin at Parramatta High School. Darwin was smuggled in and read in secret, but so began an intense interest in science and how things really worked, along with the drive to write.
Trained as a teacher, but already recognised as a musician, composer and arranger, he was in heavy demand in Sydney recording studios and on television, back when TV stations had their own orchestras. When there was time, he began writing musical plays for classroom use and is currently developing a drama-based literacy program that could revolutionise how reading is taught.
Cull was conceived as a play, set in the White House, in which much the same scenario was to be planned, but his daughter, Julia, a gifted teacher, advised him to use the novel form to tell the story because, as she said: “Dad! Nobody reads plays and this story needs to be told!”
Stafford Ray is currently writing a second novel that could be an interplanetary parallel to Cull, with its own heroes, villains and environmental vandals.
To my children and theirs, in the hope they will achieve what my generation has not: the preservation of our planet
1. WASHINGTON
"Harry! You know Tanner can’t go with it.” She was probably right, but he had accepted the job. “Maybe…but if the polls…”
“Whose polls?” Felicity’s eyes pleaded for him to listen. “Murdock? Harry, the emissions part is hard enough, but…have you been following Fox? Every other idiot is demanding we ‘keep America strong’, as if signing up somehow betrays our values. They need to get past the ‘soft voice big stick’ delusion. It hasn’t worked in decades, if it ever did. Your president knows it, but hasn’t the guts to go against the Loony Right that put him there. It’s the office, not the person; it devours them. It eats at their integrity until they forget why they ran in the first place!”
“No, I don’t think so. Tanner seems to be OK with it…but I’ll know more after today’s meeting.”
Felicity took his hand. “Harry Fromm, as soon as he put Magnus Devaurno in Defense, the tail started wagging the dog…and why do they want you there? I smell live sacrifice and it scares the pants off me!”
“That’s a good start,” he growled. “How much time have we got?”
“Shh!” she warned. “Sam’s home!”
He kissed her ear, then whispered, “I was really thinking of coffee!”
She smiled up at him. “Just watch your ass with Tanner. I just don’t trust him. OK?” she pleaded and turned back to her screen. “I’ve just written this for my radio spot tomorrow. It’s a piece on how your darling president skewed the climate change conversation into a Right versus Left issue and how that is making bad guys out of anyone who supports renewables. He painted himself into a corner with that, and now with Devaurno in Cabinet, I fear another disastrous military adventure.” She took his hand. “I’m sorry Harry, but you can’t look at the last fifty years of American politics without being dismayed how we shoot from the hip. Harry, this country produces the most sophisticated people on the planet and we still give cowboys the keys to the arsenal.”
She pressed ‘print’ and turned back to Harry. “You might like to read my notes on the way.” The printer ceased whirring. She reached for the sheets, clipped them with a staple, then held the second page open.
“Listen to this. ‘If climate change is a dire threat and we fix it, we’re OK. If climate change is no threat and we fix it, we’re still OK. But if climate change is the threat Science says it is and we do nothing, we’re fucked’.”
“You didn’t write that!”
She laughed into his astonished eyes, revealed the actual words, then drew his face to hers and kissed him lightly. She loved this man so much and was suddenly afraid for him. “Just take care, Fromm!” She forced a smile to go with the quip. “There are more assholes in Cabinet than on Central Park johns.”
“Ambassador Fromm!” She was young and pretty, holding a fuzzy microphone under his nose. He had never before been waylaid on his own doorstep.
“Excuse me!” He stepped aside but the camera blocked his way.
“Just a moment of your time, Ambassador Fromm, please.” She was not much older than Sam. He recognised in her a young Felicity trying to get an interview and relented. Her name tag read: ‘Joslyn Sandor’ and revealed that she worked for Washington’s youth station, Teen Vision TV.
“OK Joslyn, but be quick. I have a meeting.”
“I’ll be quick,” she smiled, showing her perfect just-out-of-braces teeth. “Ambassador Fromm, has Felicity gotten you into trouble with President Tanner?” He smiled at the first name terms and clumsy attempt at controversy.
“Now why would she do that?” he sighed, amused. “What has Felicity said now?”
“Ambassador Fromm, your wife’s column supports inspections of US nuclear facilities by the International Atomic Energy Commission and President Tanner doesn’t.”
“Mrs Fromm writes whatever she likes. It doesn’t get me into trouble with President Tanner,” he frowned in mock anger, “but it does get her into trouble with me!”
“Does that mean you wear the trousers in your house, Mr Fromm?”
“Sometimes she wears the trousers, and sometimes she wears my pyjamas tops,” he laughed. “I assure you, Felicity Fromm is her own person and you’d do well to emulate her.”
“Oh no!” she assured him. “I wouldn’t say anything bad about Felicity. She’s cool!”
He smiled. “I think she’s cool too, so what do you think we should do about international inspections?”
“Oh, I think we must open up. We can’t demand of others what we won’t accept for ourselves. Don’t you agree?”
“Seems reasonable to me,” he smiled. “But maybe you should ask North Korea and Iran the same question.”
“And