Go Ahead 4-H-N, Chapter Two

Flashbee had never had an afternoon like this. He stood ready at the busy shuttle-port, still a little out of breath from running, 4-H-N’s spare tunic and boots bundled in his arms.

No sooner was the Nottingham one-seater’s ramp down than he was scurrying up it.

“Mini-Flash Juniper?” Flashbee called anxiously into the cockpit, not wanting to frighten its occupant but not wanting his name attached to any indecent exposure charges either. “It’s alright, you won’t remember me but I was sent by 4-H-N, because…”

The shuttle’s tiny bridge was no more than standard, boasting but controls, a pilot’s seat and a windshield. For Flashbee however, those modest bulkheads might as well have encompassed lace-trimmed sheets, a clean white chest-of-drawers keeping its secrets to itself, deep-plush pink carpeting and a dressing-table strewn with trinkets that winked and twinkled at him. For the overwhelming impression was less one of valiantly bearing Mini-Flash Juniper needed assistance, and more of blundering into her bedroom while she was in the middle of getting dressed.

In an instant it transformed him to an unfortunate ancestor with a pin through it.

He squirmed. He writhed. If he’d stood a chance of frightening her, it would have been better than this. Better yet would have been her screaming and hitting him or something.

Anything but her standing by her chair and just looking.

Long and ivory, smooth and pale, sculpted and toned, she stood. She wasn’t outraged or indignant. In fact, it would have been going too far to say she was interested.

The look merely acknowledged Flashbee’s presence, and that, extremely coolly.

It shrivelled him.

Never mind which was fully clad and which wasn’t. There was still no question as to with whom power resided. Flashbee expostulated wildly that his luckless forbear maybe hadn’t fallen foul of a collector after all, and maybe he himself wasn’t in a bedchamber. A girls’ changing room was more like it. One where Mini-Flash Juniper, about to take her shower, had with thumb and forefinger idly picked him from the tiled wall.

No wonder the galaxy was terrified of the Special Program.

One of their number was terrifying Flashbee right now.

He opened his mouth to speak, faltered before that blue unstinting stare, then tried again and managed: “Because, you see, 4-H-N didn’t want you to…”

He wasn’t making sense, and never would. Helplessly Flashbee gestured with the clothes.

It was a mercy when Mini-Flash Juniper glanced down at last. Her lips parted, and in a murmur she declared she wasn’t getting any less absent-minded.

Flashbee felt weak as he proffered his offering.

Five minutes later he was hurrying back into the therapeutic lounge with Mini-Flash Juniper, she clad in a borrowed tunic too small for her and no knickers. 4-H-N awaited, still fastened down to the couch and wearing nothing except knickers. It was starting to look like a party, albeit of the kind 4-H-N couldn’t claim to have ever attended.

“I need Flashsatsumas,” Mini-Flash Juniper greeted her.

“Hi, Jenny,” said 4-H-N in reply. “Forgive me if I don’t get up. Mini-Flash Robin told us you were coming.”

Mini-Flash Juniper blushed all over and looked as if she would die from tenderness.

“I contacted him,” she explained demurely. “Just before I arrived. So he wouldn’t worry.”

4-H-N and Flashbee both managed to refrain from comment.

“It’s still the middle of the night in Nottingham,” Juniper went on. “I was in bed asleep when suddenly the portal gave me another Intelligentsor vision. It was not unrelated to my last one, but it happened too suddenly for me to be able to fathom it out. So there was nothing to do but find you at once, 4-H-N. I need to induce the same vision. I need to know what it meant.”

“Jen,” was 4-H-N’s considered response.

With her eyes she indicated she’d like Mini-Flash Juniper to assume roughly the same position Flashbee had earlier when extracting the token. With a little guidance from him she was soon dutifully kneeling by the side of the bed. The next part was a little trickier and required some contortions on the part of both girls, but presently they determined a means by which Jenny might slip her hand into 4-H-N’s while the latter’s wrist remained manacled. This operation completed in well under two minutes, it became possible to bestow on Mini-Flash Juniper a comforting squeeze as intended.

“No-one thinks you’re a silly little girl frightened by her nightmares,” 4-H-N told her. “But Jen, these visions have got to be taking a toll. Can you be sure it wasn’t just a bad dream?”

“Doesn’t elementary fire-safety dictate Joe shut down that portal at night?” Flashbee added.

“Joe’s the reason I didn’t want to do this in Nottingham,” was Mini-Flash Juniper’s response.

4-H-N had often noted the Special Program propensity for never giving a straight answer unless you could help it. Joe however was one subject in which she couldn’t help taking an interest, as far as his relations with Jenny went, and the latter’s portentous allusion to him now had more than caught her attention.

“Not just because he denied me permission to use the portal,” Juniper went on. “It was one of my other visions, 4-H-N, one you weren’t there for. I was following up on a lead I learned from Flashsatsumas the time we tried it with him. Somebody was there who I’ve met before, named Lasser. In a way that would be hard to explain, he’s a part of Joe. Well, Lasser issued me what you might call a warning about him. I’ve been cautious around Joe ever since. Not that it was done for the sake of my safety, you understand. Lasser may be a number of things, but capable of appropriate conduct doesn’t seem to be one of them…”

4-H-N couldn’t help but notice Jenny was the one squeezing now. Deeply troubled she gazed with care upon her tremulous friend.

“You and this Lasser aren’t wrong about Joe,” 4-H-N informed her in a very quiet voice.

“Then let me, 4-H-N,” Jenny begged her. “We’ve no way of contacting Mini-Flash Meek, and when Flashsatsumas does it I get to keep my memories. I need those, if I’m going to understand what the vision’s telling me.”

4-H-N heaved a huge sigh. What Flashsatsumas did or didn’t do wasn’t up to her, but someone had to be the voice of reason.

“It wouldn’t be fair to ask him,” 4-H-N declared at length. “Not after the last time. He’d do it, because he’d jump headfirst into the Seegs if you mentioned it’d be a good idea, but I’m still not convinced you’re thinking straight. There’s too much risk in it, Jenny.”

Mini-Flash Juniper was silent a long time. When she looked up, it was directly at Flashbee.

“Yes, the portal was shut down,” she told him. “But I know what I saw. And yes, the visions are taking a toll, 4-H-N. That’s why I need them to end. I’m close now, I’m certain of it. This last brought me the nearest I’ve come to discovering what they’re all about. One more will do it. One more will take me to the truth.”

That couldn’t but strike a chord. 4-H-N had likewise gone in search of the truth. Thus far her quest had led her to an ankle-mending machine for one very strange afternoon.

Not what you’d call a promising start.

She was also well aware she wasn’t going to be able to stop Jenny, and that being the case, no-one was going to be able to stop Flashsatsumas either.

Juniper, and by now Flashbee too, were both imploring her with their eyes.

4-H-N still wasn’t sure why she was being asked to make this decision.

All of a sudden, the machinery pinged.

From around 4-H-N’s leg the clamps smoothly retracted, as those about her shoulders and arms likewise loosed their hold. 4-H-N gave her bare foot an experimental wiggle.

“Good as new,” she pronounced. “OK, Jenny. You win, as usual. This and any Flashball match ever. We’ll go and ask Flashsatsumas.”

The joy on the faces of her two companions was the last surreal touch a day like this needed. Even still, it was also the happiest 4-H-N had felt since that of the contest. Not just because her ankle was better, and not just because she was once again setting off after that elusive object called the truth.

For when she looked at the jubilant Mini-Flash Juniper and Flashbee, and thought as they were doing of Flashsatsumas, 4-H-N thought in addition of Sue, up on Flashlab Central, and of Flashlight, and Bobby, and Mini-Flash Robin if it came to that, by association anyway, over in Nottingham. Even the mysterious Mini-Flash Meek, wherever she was, had apparently pledged her formidable powers to…

Well, these days there was only one thing you called that.

4-H-N’s interpretation of the cause, she guessed.

In other words, let Joe build up his faction. Let Mini-Flash Phytolith do the same for his movement.

4-H-N had one of her own, and it was coming along just fine.

THE END