TE23 Double Feature

Loranne Vella

Rocket

of the world, the sectors have been isolated from each other too.”

and his own. His reason was to discover more about the new bonds that were forming between the victims of this ruling and their enemies, the remains of the previous existence and the structures of this new reality that was taking shape. “Command and control!” Xandru was telling him. “When Malta surrendered to the Italians, it was a very good acquisition for them. An amicable arrangement, they said! They made it sound friendly, but they had a hidden agenda. When we were drowning, they gave us life jackets to make it seem like they were helping us out. It would have been better had they let us drown. At least we would have died with dignity.”

Malta, a microcosm, had been fragmented into a number of smaller microcosms. The ruler was reigning like a scientist who carefully breaks up, separates and examines. The island was being closely and minutely studied under a microscope. Nobody knew the true reason of such a detailed study. People speculated and there were rumours. Xandru mentioned to Petrel the idea of a space centre at Sector No 5. Others maintained that all the sectors in the south were intended for use by ships of the naval army. Petrel was fascinated. Xandru’s words were instilling in him the urge he usually felt to look more closely at exceptional circumstances where man finds himself in structures outside the norm. He wanted to know more. While Xandru was telling him the story, for a while it seemed as if the main reason of his visit to Malta was no longer Rika and his search for her roots, 48

“How many Maltese are left in all?”

“Until four years ago we were more than a million and a half roaming on this tiny rock! The sea floods halved that amount, not to 49