Coda, Chapter One

Days had passed since Joe returned from the realm of his subconsciousness, re-enacting The Four Heroes’ epochal journey from Boston to Nottingham in a manner brought wholly up to date with his present circumstances. That notwithstanding, and for all that he and his companions this time had been spread out across two spaceships traversing half the galaxy, the resemblances could not but feel timely to Joe when waiting for him at his destination was a multitude of Mini-Flashes and other sentient beings to whom that original pilgrimage meant something.

He and his friends hadn’t been lost as long as it seemed. Joe remembered noting the same, on that one occasion he’d nearly recovered his memory and escaped. Nevertheless, as far as our hero was concerned he’d been lost long enough, for someone who had work to do.

The last time he came back to Neetra, she’d flung herself into his arms. This time, Joe all but fell into hers.

Where the subconscious had been all about stasis and consistency, reflected our hero, the aspects of real life that mattered the most were those that kept pace with the person you became. Take the trek, for example, or take the Town Hall roof, which in recent years had adapted itself to the tune of a large open-air satin-sheeted bed ringed by the pillars of the dome. For all that, Joe knew it was still the same Town Hall he’d gazed upon on his first night in Nottingham. He was back. The differences of these latter days were merely part of the whole, as it stood now. Even that great blue Saturnlike orb in the sky was nostalgic, in its own way.

On such thoughts the philosophizing concluded, and there was only Neetra.

Afterwards, while she slept, Joe let his tears fall happily on the copper-burnished tresses that lay softly at rest on his shoulder. He and Neetra had done this once before when he’d had Schiss-Zazz-inflicted scars, and that had been a help in knowing how easy to take it. Now warm within her gentle sleeping embrace, Joe drifted, amid candlelit clouds of orange-zest and raisins and the rose petals Neetra kept in her old ribbon drawer. She’d been busy while he was away.

The circle of Christingles glowed long into the night.

A little ahead of Joe’s return had been the safe homecoming of the last Mini-Flashes he’d sent to sweep the galaxy for relics of that all-important old television programme. Our hero couldn’t wait to see what they’d found, but there’d been many other duties which demanded his attention first.

His cowboy alter-ego was now under Scientooth’s care, incongruous as it seemed to apply that word to a renegade Toothfire weaponmonger. Nevertheless, he was the only one who might be able to help, and Joe acknowledged Scientooth must be allowed some latitude in determining whether that was indeed possible. Since the cowboy’s existence didn’t benefit Scientooth in any way, it was clear that what the latter claimed was true, and Joe’s subconscious self springing into being had been a genuinely unforeseen side-effect of the Etherium Actualizor’s one deployment. The priority now was to establish whether that one’s incomplete psionic matrix might be stabilized, rendering him as corporeal and enduring as any of those with whom he’d shared his late adventures, although what this would mean for the cowboy’s strange powers and his future was not yet known.

Since they’d been back, Mini-Flash Splitsville had spent nearly all her time at the Stronghold. She’d become a kind of unofficial laboratory assistant to Scientooth, helping him any way she could to find a way to help her love, and for all Joe knew the morose old robot might even have been glad of the company. Our hero had however started up his Film Club again, knowing full well his most dependable member wouldn’t miss the first night. I Was a Teenage Frankenstein proved an enormous hit, reaffirming Mini-Flash Splitsville’s faith that Joe had a B-movie for every situation life threw at her.

Presh, meanwhile, had applied at once to join the second expeditionary wave of Mini-Flashes searching for more wind-up monsters and other related merchandise. It occurred to our hero that if he hadn’t come to know Presh as he had done in his subconsciousness, he’d have queried her slightly irregular requests to go solo and make an immediate start, instead of stamping her completed form decisively and with satisfaction. In the light of the promise he’d made to himself about not giving up on that girl, he could hardly have come up with a more perfect path for Presh. Neetra felt the same, since it would have been awkward for that one and Mini-Flash Robin to resume their former positions at the Town Hall and see each other every day.

“I always knew he’d break a few hearts,” Neetra had added, half to herself.

“Robin?” repeated Joe.

In the midst of all this other business had come a telephone call which spirited Joe on a prompt, albeit limping course to the Queen’s Medical Centre, that architectural duplicate of the one which had stood on Earth. He bought a box of chocolates at reception and struggled upstairs to a private ward, where the cerise-haired Sonica was sitting up in bed.

Softly our hero closed the door behind him, and looking to the patient, drew a deep breath.

“You warned me,” were his humble words. “And I heeded you not.”

“What harmed me wasn’t one of the dangers I warned you about,” replied Sonica, who was nothing if not fair. “Two chocolates, please.”

These Joe unwrapped and popped into her mouth one by one, and having done so, continued: “You shall receive the very best of medical attention, and when you are healed, rest assured your space-car will be fully serviced and waxed preparatory to your departure. Or, should you prefer a more recuperative voyage, a luxury sublight ferry to the populous galaxy departs from Spaceport Gala each – ”

“Oh, I’m staying,” put in Sonica.

Joe fell suddenly silent. He stared at her.

“You won’t get all of us,” Sonica went on. “I’ll just tell you that right now, Joe. You’re still talking about the second gender as if you know them like I do. But it can work. There are others like me who are waiting for something more to believe in. Things like having friends to count on, and a reason to fight. That day Splitsville and I crossed space-lanes, I didn’t give a grubby pair of knickers what faction Mini-Flashes ran with. Next minute, she and the other you save my life. The minute after that, most of the people I care about are Mini-Flashes. Did you really think I could go through everything I’ve shared with them, and not end up a follower of your cause?”

Perhaps it had been all his pondering over what lay ahead for the cowboy and Presh, but this eventuality genuinely hadn’t occurred to Joe. Now he began to smile.

“Besides,” finished Sonica, “convinced as I am by the cause itself, I’m still seriously worried about the one who came up with it. Someone needs to stick around in Nottingham, if only to keep an eye on him. Three more chocolates, please.”

END OF CHAPTER ONE