Exodus, Chapter Three

Along the echoing cavernous deck Joe slowly struggled. It was true that his last encounter with Presh might have suggested he was no better suited for this task than those in whose stead he’d appointed himself, yet our hero reminded himself that neither he nor she had been themselves then, and her harshness Joe had already put down to the side-effects of the schism.

So too, any uneasiness he himself might have felt towards her in turn.

Joe after all hadn’t had the chance to get to know Presh back in Nottingham, and he’d barely begun to do so when their memories and outlooks were distorted by his subconsciousness.

You couldn’t trust impressions made under such circumstances.

That was surely all it was.

In the medical bay, Mini-Flash Robin and Mini-Flash Juniper joined hands. He was thinking of the day he’d cried, when Juniper hadn’t long been a part of his life. Her thoughts meanwhile had strayed to Limb Four, and that Robin would have been there for her then if only she’d let herself see it. They’d both known pain, and in finding each other, the balm. All they wished was that this hadn’t been at the cost of pain to Presh.

Mini-Flash Splitsville meanwhile sat by her comatose love, looking on her comatose friend, and of her other friend Mini-Flash Pseudangelos thought Joe’s thoughts of earlier. The kid never was much on smarts, and now she’d been shut down in a way she didn’t feature.

As for the nothingness outside, so dense and unbroken the portholes betrayed not a sign the ship was moving at all, that was no help whatsoever to anybody.

There they remained, trawling through nowhere, left with little.

Flashshadow stepped softly to the centre of the floor.

In her hands had appeared her lyre, for she always seemed to know when it was needed. The sterile sound of ventilation and the life-support machinery’s bips had filled this empty vessel too long. Maybe it was that, or maybe it stood to reason the interstice they traversed would carry its own special kind of hush. Whichever it was, that moment made four fellow Mini-Flashes unique in the universe. Each of them heard Flashshadow loud and clear.

And her words were:

“Sing it, Cherry.”

From the first strum on the strings, white walls and clinical equipment resounded with a melody that unlocked depth and colour. The world was more for the lone slender girl working through the chords, building with each bar that which such a place as this might have led her attendees to forget. Nor was this the only magic Flashshadow wrought. Presently wide-mouthed Mini-Flash Robin and the three girls were gaping about them in wonderment, for while it was still just the few of them, others were here too. Over by the capacitors a great beetle laboured at the bass. A robot drummer had installed himself and his kit below the air-conditioners, and three girl-vocalists each of a different alien species were arrayed alongside the heart-monitor. Space was limited, but all squeezed themselves in, finding places to play around Sonica’s bed on spots of floor unoccupied by audience-members or furniture. There was no stage, but some performers could make even the most intimate of venues seem to boast one, and so now did Cherry with constellations in her hair.

The band-members flickered as might images thrown by an old projector’s glow. They weren’t here in the same sense as those who’d embarked in Boston. But they were here.

Flashshadow’s lyre led their mingling strains through the medical bay’s portal to weave through the sounding body of the ship, so that even its loneliest quarter might know it did not make this voyage alone. The music breathed onto the bridge where the diligent autopilot ticked away. It cast its spell over the storage-hold where our heroes’ space-cars bided together the long silent hours, and rolled its wistful resonance down corridors hollow no more. Then at last, just before Cherry began to sing, it found its way to Joe as he came upon an atrium with a towering arch of black, before which was Presh’s diminutive form.

She’d changed into the Mini-Flash uniform, and Morag’s blue clothes were folded neatly on a chair beside her.

Staring out on nothing Presh did not cry, and would not.

In that resolution she stood as stone.

END OF CHAPTER THREE