Presh's Lie, Chapter Three

Mini-Flash Semiprecious’s private room was in darkness when Mini-Flash Phytolith arrived that night. Nevertheless he stepped inside, closing the door behind him.

Next second she seized him. The data-unit he was carrying dropped to the floor and smashed. Mini-Flash Semiprecious paid it no heed whatsoever.

“It’s about time,” was her furious hiss.

“I falsified your stupid medical records, didn’t I?” the other retorted.

“This afternoon, apparently!” Mini-Flash Semiprecious flung back. “What have you been doing in the meantime? You’re supposed to know procedure. When exactly were you planning to initiate face-to-face contact? Just to get you here I’ve had to invent and fabricate and lie – ”

Mini-Flash Phytolith snorted mirthlessly, and in so doing drew closer than he knew to his first smack in the chops since Intelligentsor Day.

“How did that make you feel?” he then asked.

His addressee stared.

“A little out of the loop, I’ll bet,” continued Mini-Flash Phytolith. “Like everybody else was getting on, and here you were, not even knowing where to start. Can’t have been any fun. It’s a different galaxy outside The Magnetic Stones, isn’t it, Semiprecious? Scary place, where even a perfect teacher’s pet with the cosmos at her feet can feel like she’s…behind.” He crooned it in obvious satisfaction. “Yes, that’s a great word. I think it’s the one I’m looking for. You must have felt like you were behind.”

Mini-Flash Semiprecious went weak.

“Please don’t tell me,” she began, “that that’s the only reason you – ”

“Welcome to my world, Semiprecious,” put in Mini-Flash Phytolith, coldly now. “You made me feel that way enough times.”

Close by on the bed was Mini-Flash Semiprecious’s overnight bag. From it she took a pyramidal recording-device, threw it down on the sheets, and glared expectantly.

“Why isn’t it encoded on the standard message-block?” asked Mini-Flash Phytolith.

“Ease of duplication and distribution,” Mini-Flash Semiprecious snapped back. “It’s a film. You show it to people.”

“There’s been nothing in the communiqués,” Mini-Flash Phytolith protested.

“Do you think we’d discuss something like this over conventional channels?” was Mini-Flash Semiprecious’s reply. “Especially after the trouble we’ve had? It’s much too important to entrust to a defective. Even though that’s what I’m doing,” she added nastily.

“But what…?” spluttered Mini-Flash Phytolith, still lost.

Mini-Flash Semiprecious gave a groan which seemed to rise up from her stony core.

“So many questions,” declaimed the long-suffering one. “Your instructions are included. And now to be frank, I’d had enough of the sight of you even back at the compound.”

Flashslip for his part looked like he hadn’t had enough sleep when he came to see Mini-Flash Semiprecious off next morning. He smiled bravely, as if everything was alright, and asked after the previous evening’s errand.

“Oh, all sorted out!” Mini-Flash Semiprecious assured him, patting her overnight bag to suggest the data-unit was inside. “Thanks again, Flashslip. I hope we can meet again someday.”

And that one part was true, reflected Mini-Flash Semiprecious, even if most of the rest of it had called on an old piece of coursework for first-gender manipulation. Not for nothing had it earned her an A-plus. Miss Jade knew a promising pupil when she saw one. Yet even so, Mini-Flash Semiprecious wouldn’t lose grades if she herself saw an opportunity to keep her options open. Not that little Flashslip need get his hopes up too high. Let her take care of unfinished business in Nottingham first. Or to put it another way, just you wait, Miss Cheesy-Crackers Special Program Juniper. You just try to hang onto the boyfriend you stole. Gifted at pretence you may be, but to coin a phrase, don’t pretend it isn’t war.

Wait, Flashslip was talking. If you could call it that, as it was mostly just mournful sighs. Mini-Flash Semiprecious focused, although at first she still wanted to furrow her brow.

He’d be careful?

Oh! That. She caught on.

“Yes, do, Flashslip,” Mini-Flash Semiprecious implored him. “You’ve shown me the finest of Flash Club standards, and I don’t want your reputation to suffer through association with the worse elements which are also here. It’s part of Joe’s interpretation of the cause to believe in forgiveness and second chances, but just remember what I told you. There’s a capacity for irreparable harm to the Alliance in both those girls, especially 4-H-N.”

Another truth, as it happened. Great was the Leader. All-embracing was his vision.

As far as Flashslip was concerned, if what followed was what Presh called a proper goodbye, then it would be a long time before his heart felt ready for another. Keeping order among the neophyte girls as they clattered and giggled and smelled their way to gym class was a duty he usually dreaded, for fear of the effect it was wont to exercise on his unpredictable power. Today, however, he barely registered the noisy beige throng. Overexcitement and fluster were the furthest states from him.

4-H-N glimpsed her morose blue-skirted supervisor as she passed amidst the rest of the gaggle. Poor old Flashslip. Their uninvited guest’s medical records may have turned up in the end, but 4-H-N still wasn’t sure about that girl.

Above the surrounding bows and bunches she raised the yellow Flashball she was carrying, and beamed her friend an invitation to make up for lost time as soon as he was free.

What in the two moons was that?

Even as the cacophonous crowd hustled her along, 4-H-N craned her neck to gaze back, bewildered and a little hurt. She could understand Flashslip might be feeling sorry for himself this morning, but what had she done to deserve a look like that?

Boys. 4-H-N was through with them. Who could figure them out?

Mini-Flash Phytolith had watched what was on the recording-pyramid.

And it was…

Well, there weren’t words.

All he could say was he’d put it in the right place. His nightstand’s second drawer down. If he was ranking the importance of objects in this room, there was nowhere else for it.

Miss Jade had always said Mini-Flash Semiprecious would go far.

True enough. Where Semiprecious had been of late, accompanied by Joe and the Special Program, and what she’d discovered there…

No words. Mini-Flash Phytolith wasn’t good with them anyway, and even if he was, he’d have struggled with this. Joe would have struggled.

But there was something else besides.

For Semiprecious surely was indispensible now. Her knowledge made her so, not merely to Miss Jade, but the Leader himself. If ever a Mini-Flash had set herself above that terrible fate which impended over all, then Mini-Flash Semiprecious had.

Which would fit anybody’s definition of going far. But as for him, Mini-Flash Phytolith?

If he’d drawn out her wait much longer, it might have made it back to the compound that he was deliberately causing a delay, and then…

Mini-Flash Phytolith shuddered. A mission of this magnitude?

They’d be gravelling launch-pads with him by now.

And that was the part he couldn’t get his head around.

Because it meant Semiprecious’s haste and impatience and anger could only have been on his behalf. She was safe, after all. The consequences would have fallen on him. That alone was what she’d been so desperate to avert.

Which was ludicrous. It didn’t make any sense. It was the opposite of the Mini-Flash Semiprecious Mini-Flash Phytolith knew. And yet it was the only explanation.

She’d changed. She’d talked and behaved like she’d always done, but she’d changed.

Nottingham must have changed her.

THE END