Chapter 38: Discovery

21:32, 7 September

It had been a long day. Jamie and the girls hadn't slept at all, working through the night after meeting the first flight of expats at Glasgow Airport. Jamie had ferried medical staff from the airports to the Western General Hospital so they could treat the wounded from the 'last battle' and the girls had tried their best to be auxiliary nurses.

Laura had been deeply affected by the experience. At first she had felt as if she was going to faint when she had to stand beside the surgeon, doctor MacNeill, and had looked at the bloody wound he was operating on. She had surprised herself when she had found she was able to fight her squeamishness and function reasonably well.

Her contribution had been small admittedly, but she was proud of herself for playing her part. Although there were now three doctors, four nurses and a physiotherapist, they couldn't have managed to treat as many people as they had if others hadn't helped out.

Her last thought before sleep overtook her was that the arrival of the doctors had surely saved a good number of lives that day. Without the doctors, the teenagers just didn't have the ability to do what needed to be done to remove bullets, fix shattered bones or even stop the internal bleeding that had been slowly killing some of the wounded.

Jamie was dead tired too, but he had forced himself to stay up to have his videoconference with the Ambassadors and check his e-mail messages. He too felt proud of his achievements at the hospital. He hadn't joined in with the treatment of the wounded, but he had spent hours just sitting chatting with people post-op and it seemed to have done some good. His natural concern for others had made the task easy enough, but it was the reaction that he got from the patients that had really warmed his heart.

He saw the heads of Sir David Manning, Sir John Sawyer and Anthony Carry appear on the screen of his laptop and he greeted each of them in turn.

"Well you Grace, you have succeeded in securing the return of the first expatriates. I understand that twenty-two jumbos have already completed their flights. A magnificent achievement if I may say so," opined Sir David.

"I'm not forgetting the part you played in all of this Sir David...

"Please your Grace, you must drop this 'Sir David' nonsense," pleaded the Ambassador.

"Very well, I haven't forgotten the part you played in this, all of you. It was your idea David, to see Scotland select a new King and you never gave up trying to put pressure on the US Administration. It seems incredible that in less than twenty-four hours we have more than doubled the population, almost eleven thousand adults have arrived today and we're still trying to come to terms with that," said Jamie.

"And even more on the way your Grace," said Anthony Carry. "The Canadian Prime Minister has followed the policy of the US President and has announced that flights to Scotland can resume forthwith."

Jamie's head swam at the scale of what he was facing.

"If we're not careful, we're going to be swamped and it will degenerate into chaos," said Jamie, the tiredness evident in his voice.

"What plans have you got in place for dealing with them your Grace?" asked Sir David.

"So far all I've done is make sure we're capturing details of all those who're coming back and logging what skills they have. Other than that we've made it a priority to try and re-unite any adults who might be related to teenagers who have survived. We've identified housing for them too. Pretty soon I'm going to have to do much more than that and I've set up a think tank to help. I plan to review the database of new arrivals to try and identify people with skills that would lend themselves to joining that group," said Jamie.

"A sound move your Grace. If I might be so bold, I would offer some advice. Over the past few weeks you have had the benefit of the terrorists to act as a kind of focal point to make sure everybody was pulling in the same direction. The threat hanging over all of you has been immense, but that has lifted now and I'm afraid people's natural personalities are going to rise once more to the surface.

"Human nature is human nature and I'm afraid that you are bound to have some bad apples amongst your growing population. Indeed it might even be the case that some of those who have returned from the US have done so not to help rebuild the country, but rather to see what they can pick up for themselves. The current state of Scotland leaves it wide open to lawlessness and many of your subjects are still innocent and defenceless.

"You are probably thinking that food production, power and water are all priorities. I agree that these things need to high on your list, but don't forget to also plan on some kind of defence force. Such a force might not just be about external threats, but also maintaining order internally too," said Sir David.

Jamie considered the Ambassador's words. They painted a depressing picture, but he wasn't so naive as to think everybody in the country would be thinking of the common good. He made a mental note to act on Sir David's advice as soon as possible.

"Thank you David, it's not a nice thought that there are people out there thinking about personal gain in these circumstances, but I can see you're right. I'll make sure we add that to our list of top priorities," said Jamie.

"You also need to think about existing food and fuel stocks your Grace. If they are left lying around in shops and fuel stores, people will continue to help themselves and it will be the more enterprising who come out of things on top. Those less able will lose out and might well suffer as a consequence. I might hazard a guess that even now people are thinking about creating their own stockpiles to make sure they don't go short. If they do that it will be at the expense of others.

"You might also wish to consider securing the vast amounts of weapons that people have access to. The UK has never had a gun culture and I'm assuming that you will want that to continue into the future. The longer you leave the weapons unsecured, the more likely that they will be in widespread circulation," added Sir David.

Again Jamie could see sense in what the Ambassador was saying. He began to feel a little inadequate at the things he hadn't even considered yet and the scale of what needed to be done even before any rebuilding took place.

"Are you suggesting that we try and centralise everything, introduce rationing? What about all the other goods that are lying around? I can think of any number of occasions over the past weeks when I have simply helped myself to a vehicle on a car lot without thinking about it," Jamie said.

"At some point things will need to get back to some semblance of normality your Grace. Those kind of commodities might not seem like a priority right now, but they will become important further down the line. Take something like building supplies for instance. I'll bet no one is out looting for cement, but at some point the country is going to need raw materials like that and they will be in short supply.

"You don't have any trading partners remember and even if you did, you have nothing much to trade with. The UK currency is worthless; it's not worth the paper it's printed on. No, you need to be thinking ahead of everyone else and making sure that none of the resources currently stored around the country either go to waste or are spirited away by unscrupulous elements. Oh, and you might want to think about securing the one currency that does still have some value - the UK's gold reserves."

The discussions went on for another hour or so until Jamie could feel his eyelids drooping. The Ambassadors could see his tiredness clearly, even through the image generated by his little webcam.

"Your Grace, we can see that you are tired. It must have been a long day," said Anthony Carry.

"I'm sorry gentlemen, but I haven't slept in the last forty-eight hours. I spent most of last night ferrying doctors and nurses to the hospital here to treat the wounded and then most of the day just trying to cheer up patients after they had been operated on," Jamie explained.

The Ambassadors marvelled again at the capacity for their young monarch to give so much of himself to help others.

"Then we'll keep you from your bed no longer your Grace. I'm afraid there are many such busy days ahead," said Sir John.

Jamie said his goodbyes and closed down the link. Despite his overwhelming need for sleep, he forced himself to check his mail. He was hoping for some kind of message from Stuart to update him on how he was getting on in the south.

When he opened Yahoo he saw he had thousands of new messages in the overseas account and he clicked on a few to get a flavour of what people were saying. Virtually all of them were either continued messages of support from ordinary people throughout the US and Canada or messages from additional expatriates pledging themselves to be in the next wave of people who returned.

Jamie closed down the overseas account and opened up the UK mailbox. He immediately saw that he had a message from Scottishsoldier@yahoo.co.uk and he smiled as he guessed who that might be. There was also another raft of e-mails from elsewhere in the UK, no doubt from other survivors in England, Wales and Ireland.

He clicked on Stuart's message to open it.

Jamie smiled at the typical, understated, and humorous way Stuart dealt with what was a very serious situation. He realised that was how the other boy dealt with the stress of what he was dealing with, reducing things to light hearted comments to cover up his nervousness and concerns. He fired off a quick reply.