Special Guest, Chapter Two

4-H-N sought the girls’ changing-room and knocked, then on receiving no answer, pushed the door and cautiously went in.

Mini-Flash Juniper was undressing so vehemently that 4-H-N was awed, not so much by the passion as the precision of it. Wow, that was power-folding. Divested of her outer clothes, the pale girl was working the creases with deadly directed rage, that the finished tunic slapped upon the bench beside her a flat beige square.

“I need to set you to work on my drawers,” said 4-H-N, without thinking.

The other was hiking her bare feet out of hers. “I am obligated to do that boy’s homework for him,” she fumed back. “But after that I shall return to Nottingham and go to Dean’s with friends and give no further thought whatsoever to this horrid day, except to write an unfavourable account of the experience which my employer may then print in the comic he publishes.”

“Before you go to those extremes,” hinted 4-H-N, “there’s another old saying on my world. It’s about keeping politics and religion out of sport.”

She walked to the bench and sat down.

“Listen, Mini-Flash Juniper,” 4-H-N began. “You weren’t wrong about the lockdown. The Special Program had every right to break free. But please don’t judge Flashlight too harshly. There are good reasons it upsets him whenever Joe comes up. I want today to work out because there’s already been too much fighting. Once, that meant Flashlight had to hurt two friends of his, friends of yours too, and he’s never forgiven himself. That was a bad day on Drenthis,” 4-H-N concluded quietly.

For the lone and level sands had stretched away before her vision. A sonic shower cubicle came into it too, and it wasn’t one of those in the present changing-room.

On which note.

“Boys,” resumed 4-H-N, wresting herself back to the present. “Nothing like them for making us mad, huh?”

The other was attending, porcelain and smooth. 4-H-N took that in her stride, having been to parties on Flashlab Central where such Special Program sights were presented in multiplex.

“Sometimes though, Mini-Flash Juniper, we can be wrong about boys,” explained 4-H-N. “You won’t believe how wrong I was about one, not so long ago. It’s nothing like as bad as what Flashlight’s got to go through, but it’s kind of the same, at least in that it’s left me with a lot to blame myself for. So, try not to be angry with our boys, Juniper. Don’t start thinking the worst of them. The worst might not be true, and you could end up feeling the way I do now.”

4-H-N handed her the file of fourth-dimensional geometry she’d received from Flashsatsumas, and rose to depart. Then she hesitated, tucked her tunic-skirt, and sat again.

“Juniper, do you mind if I ask you something?” 4-H-N said. “I’ve always wondered. Why Joe? Like you mentioned before, no other of the runaways went to him.”

Mini-Flash Juniper slid her alabaster loveliness in alongside 4-H-N.

“It’s not Joe I have to thank,” came back the reply.

A straight answer from the Special Program was usually too much to ask. When 4-H-N didn’t follow, however, Juniper seemed surprised.

“I’d have thought you’d have known,” said she. “Especially since you’re so like her.”

And that was quite a compliment, coming from a Mini-Flash, who as a people didn’t register facial resemblances. 4-H-N in the light of what she herself had just confided to Mini-Flash Juniper felt anything but worthy of the comparison. Amid rising blushes she gave forth a grin of immense humbleness and gratitude, but one which was intended to leave no doubt her attendee was wrong. That she, 4-H-N, had eons to go before she could claim to be anything like Neetra.

Mini-Flash Juniper looked as if she wasn’t so sure of that.

“Your sister calls me Jenny,” were her next words.

“Why?” asked 4-H-N.

“I’ve no idea,” the other confessed. “But I think perhaps you may do so too.”

Mini-Flash Juniper told 4-H-N where she’d like to meet to go through the homework, and although it seemed to the latter a peculiar choice, she duly conveyed the information to Flashsatsumas and they went there together while Juniper was dressing. It was a disused loading-bay, tiered to the top of its cavernous height with corroded old gantries and elevator-platforms rusted in their ruts forevermore.

“She did say here,” 4-H-N assured Flashsatsumas, anticipating his asking.

“Oh, haven’t you heard, 4-H-N?” was the reply. “This is the homework hangout of choice for all the stuck-up smelly show-off girls who think they’re too good for the boys.”

In bed tonight, always assuming that happy hour ever came, 4-H-N was going to look back and determine exactly when she’d been appointed official peacemaker for Mini-Flashes the galaxy wide. Not that she wanted to be too hard on Flashsatsumas. He was the one who had to walk around dressed as a pneumatic tangerine.

“I’ve just come from telling her to give you the benefit of the doubt,” she informed him. “It’d be nice if you could try making that a two-way street, Flashsatsumas. But if you’d rather believe everything you just said about her, then be my guest. I’ll just let you know though, they’ve not invented the containment-suit that’ll regulate that once it’s in your system.”

Mini-Flash Juniper strode in, wearing reading-glasses and, 4-H-N was relieved to note, more besides. Indeed, in her blue V-necked sweater and pleated skirt to match, plus blue stockings and white blouse and collar finished off with a silver-brocaded tie, one thing you could say about her was she looked ready for homework.

If Flashsatsumas couldn’t help but stare, then for different reasons that went double as far as 4-H-N was concerned. Yes, it was she herself who’d made Sue something similar with a fabric replication device, but Mini-Flash Juniper’s outfit bore all the marks of having come into existence the same way, and it was altogether a little too odd to be mere coincidence. Earth-style school uniforms, and the gift Sue had brought back for 4-H-N had obviously come from Earth. Not for the first time, 4-H-N wondered whether Sue’s mysterious disappearance might have had something to do with Joe, and the Special Program Mini-Flashes of his faction.

Mini-Flash Juniper was carrying the open folder. “Here, here, here and here,” she announced, pointing one by one to Flashsatsumas’s errors which she’d ringed in glaring red ink. “It’s as I expected. Boys invariably bumble around helpless at this.”

4-H-N fought to keep her hand from her forehead. Great start, Jen.

“Confined as you are to the ground, you can’t appreciate the three-dimensional physicality of the universe as we girls can when we’re flying,” elucidated Juniper. “This however is essential if you’re going to grasp the fourth. Look.”

She put down Flashsatsumas’s file, and took out a large sheet of paper over which she’d etched the most stunning charcoal delineation 4-H-N had ever seen. It was the cargo-bay in which the three of them stood, shaded to such depth that you felt you could fall into it. On each of the angular planes and platforms Mini-Flash Juniper had added herself, somersaulting through an acrobatic sequence which encompassed most of the vault. Alongside each figure she’d neatly lettered a time-stamp.

“I wish I could draw,” said Mini-Flash Juniper regretfully. “Now, Flashsatsumas, I shall traverse the loading-bay in the manner described on this model. You will attempt to tag me with an energy-emission at twenty-six point thirteen and forty-seven point twenty-eight.” Her swift finger indicated these stages on the plan. “The key to this exercise is understanding that the fourth dimension acts upon the other three only for a temporary interval. Is that clear?”

What was clear to 4-H-N was that Flashsatsumas had never looked so shamefaced. The first thing he did was give each of the pneumatocapsules on his forearms a quarter-twist, swivelling them one after the other as far as they’d go in the same direction.

Mini-Flash Juniper looked at him, bewildered.

“I’m not about to hurt you, on top of everything else!” he cried. “I feel bad enough as it is that you’ve done so much for me, when I was mean to you before.”

4-H-N took both his hands in hers and checked the apertures for output.

“You won’t even ladder her stockings,” she reassured him with a grin.

Mini-Flash Juniper meanwhile seemed overcome by the sheer self-sacrificing kindness of Flashsatsumas not wanting to harm her while she was helping him with his homework. All in a flurry she took her spectacles off, and quickly bobbed to a starting-crouch.

Flashsatsumas waited ready.

The stupendous navy nylon thighs quivered, and he tensed.

Then Mini-Flash Juniper was away, straight and true like a shining arrow, scaling for the shabby gantry which was station number one on her course. 4-H-N watched Flashsatumas’s lips as he counted the microns in a whisper. At precisely sixteen point eleven Juniper completed the first ascent and boomed her flat black school soles down on corrugated dullivian.

Crack.

The gantry gave beneath her, cleaving free of the wall.

Girl and ledge deferred to Sir Isaac as though their densities were equal. That being the case, Mini-Flash Juniper’s short skirt was ill-equipped to serve as a parachute, for all that she needed one. With pleats inside-out and plastered to her polyester she made a white descent, if blue-tinted by the stretchy see-through hose, confirming for 4-H-N that when it came to retro-vintage authenticity you couldn’t go wrong with Luttertons.

Not that her choice of underwear was really the issue right –

Crump.

TO BE CONTINUED