Slippage, Chapter Two

“That’s it, luvvies!” Grothbuckets caterwauled incessantly from the touchlines. “That’s perfect! Just be natural!”

What did it look like he was doing, fumed Flashslip to himself? He was clothed and shod once more but still red about the cheeks, this time for a different reason. Namely, that his pudding-faced leading lady had been following her director’s instructions to the letter, and doing everything that came naturally to the second gender at such times.

Flashslip wasn’t enjoying advertising quite as much as he’d expected.

A simple one-on-one match, Grothbuckets had explained, using one of the old Headquarters courts which had score-zones at either end. The girl at that moment was a tantalizing inch or two from Flashslip’s, demonstrating the elasticity and resilience of Baumgaarterns’ newest product by smacking it repeatedly against the floor.

By now Flashslip had to fight to keep certain thoughts out of his head.

Failing that, he could always give her a big shove in hopes she’d carry the ball into his zone with her. Considering the way seventeen such invitations had already gone, that was starting to sound like Flashslip’s best bet at garnering any points at all. He ran, and by the next breath was scampering round and round the girl again, while she whipped the ball deftly from his fingertips and span it in his face. About them finest Grindotron flying cameras bobbed bladderlike, poking their prying lenses into Flashslip’s fluster.

4-H-N might watch the finished advert. Mini-Flash Meteor and Mini-Flash Phytolith might. Over in Nottingham, Presh might. Such thoughts for Flashslip were one long inward groan.

Why in the galaxy had these people thought he was what they needed for this?

All of a sudden she swept away, denying Flashslip the intimate inhalations which had been driving him frantic. His eyes burned after her while he stood stupid, the ball for the first time clapped between his hands. Vermillion tips danced before the smooth slinkiness of a bare back, which the girl had turned on Flashslip only insofar as she’d still acknowledged his existence by then. At the rhythmic bumping of her tiny tinfoil hemline it wasn’t Baumgaarterns’ revolutionary textured grip that was making Flashslip’s palms tingle.

“Impeccable, dearest,” Grothbuckets crooned, draping a fluffy white robe about her while she opened her hydration-bottle. “Now drink, and keep your joints well-oiled.”

It appeared to be over. Slamming the ball on his score-zone would only have made Flashslip feel sillier still.

So instead he sighed, and began coaxing the cooing cameras to come down and roost.

Job done, Flashslip tottered off-court with his bladdery armful and sought the two men. Both were deep in their portable interplanetary telecommunication devices, Grothbuckets saying “Yes” most of the time and the Robon saying “No,” but he at least jerked his domed head in the direction of the crate where the cameras went.

Flashslip was delighted to deposit them there, though less so to have to look once more on the rising star of rubber. She was standing alongside, smellily aggrieved.

“You.”

It wasn’t an insult. It was just the way she talked.

“I’m on time-delayed shutdown,” the girl went on. “If they have to carry me back to the van, they’re certain to deduct the labour. It’s monstrous, but it does happen in this industry.”

Flashslip stared back at her. “Then please don’t let me keep you,” was the first civil response he could think of.

“I’ve forgotten how to get to the docking-port,” said she.

So Flashslip, deciding not to hold his breath in anticipation of being asked any more nicely than this, offered to walk her there.

The so-called van was in fact a fair-sized cosmic hauler, parked sidelong in the docking-port that its starboard flank faced the entrance.

It couldn’t but lend Flashslip pause, regardless of how he was feeling at that time towards his companion’s sex. The agency which owned the transport had made certain modifications in order to promote their wares. Along the hull octagonal cells spanned in a long row, each fronted by a sheet of clear perspex, and inside all but one a girl of surpassing beauty reposed. Earthlings would have thought of Eloise. It was less like a storefront than a ghastly butterfly-collection.

The empty sepulchre awaited with its transparent pane drawn back, and a small collapsible step at its threshold. Flashslip took the lissome hand held out and kept it while milk-bottle legs quivered palely for the last time before his wan physiognomy. Then he let the lovely go once she was settled, upright and a little above him, ready for lights-out.

“Well,” commenced Flashslip, who hadn’t expected thanks. “Delightful day. I’ll be sure to think of you every time I see a pair of sweaty old Baumgaarterns.”

“You’ll have to be quick,” came back from the girl.

That was the second rubber pants joke today which Flashslip had failed to get, and many more times than twice had this female teased him with something outside his grasp. So he glared, patience finally exhausted, wordlessly demanding she explain.

“They’re being discontinued,” came back the response.

That was news. Generations of boys had made Baumgaarterns a galactic institution in that particular line. The first pair was practically a rite of passage.

“Why?” begged Flashslip, his voice suddenly meek.

“Because of the Coming Conflict,” she declared. “There won’t be a market afterwards. If the galaxy’s still here at all, none of you will be. It’ll only be us.”

The look she was giving Flashslip suggested she might do well auditioning for documentaries on amoebae.

“You did understand where we were going with what we just filmed?” was her query. “The way in which the first gender was represented?”

Flashslip had to admit, he was starting to. And it wasn’t that he hadn’t been aware of it already. Everybody in the quadrant was. Yet knowing Baumgaarterns were phasing out that product with which their name had become synonymous somehow made it real for Flashslip, as a hundred public service films and no end of Mini-Flash training could have done. It was the rubber pants more than anything else which inscribed for Flashslip something portentous on the tableau, he standing small and miniskirted and male while unattainable splendour surveyed him dispassionately from on high.

“Well, that’s Baumgaarterns’ strategy, anyhow,” she continued with a shrug. “But I’m not going to stay in advertising. It’s a good way for a girl to get started, but I’m already building contacts, networking with the Grindoes especially. My plan is to star in their first historical about the Coming Conflict, once it’s over. Try to land the part of a second gender who doesn’t survive. I can do poignancy. So obviously I’m hoping one of the major players – ”

Her timer kicked in and she slept. That was that. The step retracted, and the sliding sheet of plexiglass interposed itself between her perfection and the void.

“I’m sure you’ll go far,” said Flashslip faintly.

He still felt weak as he made his way back through Headquarters towards his room. Weak from everything. And within the whirl of all that had happened, today and immediately prior to today, obscure connections were drawn and decisions of weight arrived at.

There was Auntie Green, wheeling before her a barrow of Flash Club-grade dino-chow. It had to be Mona’s feeding-time already. Flashslip didn’t know where the day had gone. Things were rushing on so fast.

The formidable one proceeded, and Flashslip watched until her large emerald-hued silhouette had vanished in the direction of the stables.

There was nothing else for it.

He’d better tell Auntie Green.

About what Presh had said. About what Flashbee had said. About Mini-Flash Meteor and other girls besides, but most of all, about 4-H-N.

It was surely Flashslip’s duty as a male Mini-Flash.

And Auntie Green would know what to do about it.

THE END