The Green Butterfly, Chapter One

4-H-N and Flashbee were ferrying six drums of nitrite glycogomia across a tricky stretch of space which required continual course-corrections. This was the sort of task Flashbee was good at – too good to really need a neophyte assistant, as 4-H-N had discovered well within the first hour. By the second, Flashbee had suggested she might assist him best by quitting fidgeting and being quiet. Now it was the third, and 4-H-N having hit full recline on the co-pilot’s chair was outstretched upon it, groaning aloud and smelling.

If looks could say seats were for sitting on, Flashbee’s would have done. 4-H-N responded with what she sincerely hoped was the nose-crinkling of his life.

“You know, some of these calculations are among the most interesting,” Flashbee told her.

“Flashbee, keeping my knickers out from up my bumcrack isn’t without its element of interest,” replied 4-H-N. “Is there no way to pass the time? I can’t believe I’m making this journey with someone who doesn’t even know what I-spy is.”

“Well, there’s one thing we could try,” said Flashbee, a little slyly. “That Earth-game I’ve heard of, where I’m allowed to ask you anything.”

4-H-N rolled her eyes. “You can ask me anything,” she returned, with emphasis on the “ask.”

If they’d had a small portable flight-simulator, no doubt he’d have wanted a go on it. She’d never known a boy so fixated on finding out her secrets, although granted, only the ones that threatened catastrophe for his home quadrant. He didn’t seem to care about the exciting kind.

“In that case, you were at the Arch of Titus,” commenced Flashbee, entering a new heading. “How did the farns look?”

4-H-N blinked at the unexpected question.

“Well, not good,” was her reply. “Harbin had enslaved them. He’d put them through a lot on that machine of his.”

“It’s said their mystical powers haven’t been the same since,” Flashbee commented sadly.

“They haven’t,” affirmed 4-H-N. “Not that the farns would have told me something like that. But I overheard Manual saying it to Storm-Sky, just before the Nereynis Incident broke loose.”

“A-ha,” said Flashbee, with satisfaction, as if he’d been waiting to hear that.

Why did 4-H-N suddenly see herself, superimposed over the motion of Flashbee’s deft sure fingers? Something in the way he clicked about those fiddly navigation controls put her in mind of her own nimbleness in the gym, where she was the one who routinely outfoxed Flashbee with footwork that danced rings round his. Watching how well the latter mastered this different type of playing-field, 4-H-N couldn’t shake the feeling the roles were reversed.

“Never the same since,” repeated Flashbee at length. “But not completely gone either, then? I mean, the old guys are still equal to the odd prophetic portent here and there?”

“That’s what it sounded like,” 4-H-N corroborated cautiously.

“A-ha,” Flashbee said again. “And Storm-Sky’s Manual’s old student, you know. So it might have been something Manual said that convinced him to overlook you for advancement.”

4-H-N started and spluttered. Auntie Green had told her it was strictly off the record! And now she found the old bag had been shouting out it to –

But Flashbee was already laughing.

“No-one told me,” he anticipated. “You know I’m good at figuring things out. Up until around Intelligentsor Day you used to have a lot of time for Storm-Sky, but ever since then you’ve not had a good word to say about him. And that was exactly the same time you stopped complaining every five minutes it must have been Auntie Green who voted to keep you back.”

“Am I really that obvious?” marvelled 4-H-N.

“Not to everyone,” said Flashbee rather smugly. “But Auntie Green was a pretty big clue. Don’t get me wrong, you do about a million things that’d make any self-respecting boy want to strangle you. But you’d never falsely accuse someone.”

4-H-N said nothing to that. The memory was too recent, and it had brought out a side of her she didn’t like. Besides, Flashbee’s other theories were more than enough to be going on with.

“But what could Manual have possibly told Storm-Sky,” she asked in wonder, “that would have persuaded him not to advance me?”

“Farns deal with the bigger picture,” was Flashbee’s light reply. “The fate of the universe, destiny, all of that. I’d have to guess too the Coming Conflict features prominently these days. Somebody who might bear an influence over the balance of power, as regards that, is only too likely to appear in a farn’s vision. And if the power that person held was itself difficult to understand or control, that person would be dangerous in Manual and Storm-Sky’s eyes. They wouldn’t want the person to have any more power than he or she had already.”

4-H-N gaped.

“But if Manual knows all about – ” she began.

Then she clammed up at once.

Oh, Flashbee was good.

Battles of wits smelled when you left your wits on the flight-simulator.

4-H-N jumped up. She couldn’t believe how close he’d come, and knew she wasn’t going to be able to sit down again until the subject of the Special Program was banished from that brilliant brain. Luckily she also knew its owner, and suspected there was a reliable way of achieving that.

“Right, my go,” said 4-H-N briskly. “And my question is about my technique for receiving physical discipline.”

She turned her back, put her heels together, then raised tunic-skirts and assumed the position. This time it was Flashbee’s turn to splutter. His once-steady fingers skittered on the keys.

“This is how I’d usually do it,” 4-H-N informed him over her shoulder.

It was a strain not to giggle at the picture of divided attention behind her. Good thinking to wear her nice new ones with lace and vertical stripes. 4-H-N had treated herself, on the excuse of having lost a pair.

“Not long ago though,” she continued, coyly covering up again her pretty leg-elastic, “I had to prepare for a spanking I actually deserved. First time for everything! So, I felt I’d better add something a little extra-special. Would you like to see that one too?”

Flashbee, riveted now, expressed that he rather would. The equipment ticked unheeded in front of him.

“Just so you know, I wasn’t wearing these particular bum-bloomers so you’ll have to picture my other ones,” sang 4-H-N. “Then after this I’ll do the first one again, so you can compare – ”

Crash.

It turned out the calculations weren’t only interesting, but also very important.

From out of the ruined shuttle 4-H-N emerged upon a forest of gigantic grass-stalks, the tapered tips of which towered a dizzying distance above. All that arched over these was brilliant blue, but for the occasional bobbing umbrella of a vast dandelion or daisy.

“Oh, one of these,” said 4-H-N without enthusiasm.

“Distress-signal up and running,” reported Flashbee, exiting the wreck.

“Someday I’m hoping to go a mission and not need one,” 4-H-N replied.

Flashbee’s long antennae were starting to wiggle. “But I don’t think we can wait here,” he continued. “A lot of life-signs about.”

Feelers still fiddling, he elbowed back his tunic-skirts and both hands went to his underwear.

“Do you want me to look away?” hinted 4-H-N.

“My stinger,” was the brief reply.

“Ah,” said 4-H-N. “Do you want me to look away?”

“I might need it!” Flashbee cried. “We both might! I know this is more my sort of planet than yours, but you are aware how such places generally work?”

“But we’ll be alright, won’t we, Flashbee?” asked 4-H-N, suddenly scared.

“I’ll find us somewhere safe,” Flashbee reassured her, pointing the way with his nodes.

4-H-N trotted at once to him, casting many a fidgety glace around the gargantuan garden. “And if the worst comes to the worst we’ve got your stinger, right?” said she.

The bearer of that appendage heaved a sigh, somehow sounding not so much anxious as ashamed.

“I hope so,” he murmured back. “I mean, I hope I know how to use it.”

4-H-N stared.

“I never actually have,” confessed Flashbee.

TO BE CONTINUED