On Intelligentsor Day, Chapter Two

“You’ve got a nerve.”

4-H-N hadn’t meant to start on that point. But she’d seen him onstage as she and Mini-Flash Meteor snuck through the stands, and there had been the Drenthis feeling. It was as reliable as a gastric ulcer.

“Why do you think they’re making such a big deal of Intelligentsor Day this time around?” she demanded of the flabbergasted one. “Everyone knows it’s not usually even an afternoon off. Do you think we’d be having a speech competition at all, for you to get all smarmy at, if one or two people hadn’t recently done a little thing like avert another First and Final War? And for you to be up there now, making pious speeches, after what you did against Dylan and me and everybody else who risked their lives during the Nereynis Incident…!”

Mini-Flash Phytolith, though understandably taken aback, had evidently started to strive after the obvious question.

“Oh, what a public speaker!” was the Mack truck 4-H-N drove over these attempts. “I know, Mini-Flash Phytolith! I know it was you who stole our ship!”

Mini-Flash Meteor, beside her, blinked.

“I’ve no idea how you made it back so quick,” continued 4-H-N. “But you were listening in on me and Flashbee at the flight-simulator when I told him where we were going, and then, what a coincidence! Someone happened to stow away at Headquarters. Someone happened to know exactly when my family and I were shipping out. So where are they?”

4-H-N folded her arms, waiting.

“Er, dearie,” hinted Mini-Flash Meteor. “Our little friend here could only know of your people’s whereabouts if these extraordinary charges were true, and frankly – ”

Impatiently 4-H-N shushed her. “Our little friend knows what I meant, Mini-Flash Meteor!” she flung at Phytolith again. “Where are my knickers?”

It was like a thunderclap.

“You haven’t thought of looking in the usual place?” Mini-Flash Meteor ventured.

Bringing her had been a mistake. 4-H-N saw that now. Meteor had always had a knack for making 4-H-N mad, and that was the way she’d wanted to go into this confrontation. The problem was Meteor was working too well. It was just like old times, when she’d made 4-H-N’s delinquent act seem so real that the word “seem” could safely be dropped.

“Our little friend was watching me in the shower,” declared 4-H-N. “And guess what, Mini-Flash Phytolith? When my sister Phoenix checks in I’m going to ask her to go and look in the cubicle, where I left my dirty clothes, and if anything’s missing – anything – then, then…”

It was no good. The spluttering glee directly alongside was by now ramping the Drenthis feeling too hard for 4-H-N’s voice to obey her. Never mind Intelligentsor Day. To look at Mini-Flash Meteor you’d have thought all her festivals had come at once.

“Sweetie,” that one drawled at length to Mini-Flash Phytolith, still struggling for control over the last of it. “You’re redressing everything I hitherto believed about the first gender’s fortitude. There was I with notions you were a universally listless lot, and yet what you’ve undertaken requires an heroics that’s not to be sniffed at.”

4-H-N’s burning glance shot at her, then back at him.

“It’ll prove it,” she finished, not steady, because she had been frightened in that cubicle and it had been like Drenthis. “Then it’ll be curtains for you in a different way to today. Everyone will know you’re a Flash Club traitor. And when they clear out your quarters and find what you’ve got hidden there, I’ll be the first to tell Storm-Sky I told him so.”

Mini-Flash Phytolith was white, but unto the resultant sounding hush, his lips parted.

“So you want to pin something on me,” he said, “and that’s the best you can come up with? Sneaking a peek at what Joe’s already seen?”

Phytolith was airborne almost before his last words were out, one hand clasped to his cheek where a vivid mark was fast overspreading the pallor. Even 4-H-N’s palm stung, although she guessed, not as much. But he couldn’t have known. Reason was already crying that out to her. Nobody knew how she’d felt that day, and horrid boys like him made ill-informed slurs. Yet even so, the way he’d said it…! For a moment it had been as if Mini-Flash Phytolith was privy to it all, not only 4-H-N’s shame at what Joe had put her through, but also the birth of that feeling which ruled her even while the planet for which it was named was dust.

“Yes, she hit me too when I said something like that,” remarked Mini-Flash Meteor.

With a crumpling crack Phytolith collided with one of the propped-up Intelligentsors, breaking it in half, then thudded to a bleary sitting position while the two pieces clonked down around him. Seeing him there, weak and delirious with his faded pants showing, was what did it for 4-H-N. An unexceptional little boy, nothing whatsoever to look at, and yet they’d loved him on that stage. She’d heard the audience. He could even win First Prize. So if Mini-Flash Phytolith was getting the penmanship medal, 4-H-N might as well go Patty McCormack on him right now. She only wished she was wearing her tap-shoes. Not that it was his fingers she meant to stamp on.

Then in the split-second between desire and the deed, 4-H-N froze and turned.

Auntie Green stood before her.

And backstage was no place for such a show-stopping entrance.

TO BE CONTINUED