What Psiona Saw, Chapter One

“To sum up, your journey of personal growth has the potential to be everything mine was,” pronounced Psiona from the Flash Club Headquarters small stage. “To which needful field of Alliance society will you turn your undoubted talents? It is known we will need warriors, and your union has a long tradition of supplying these. Or perhaps your gifts lie in journalism and research, as do mine? Or then again, maybe you are creative, and your keen eye for composition and tone shall lend itself to holo-photography of our sector’s myriad natural wonders? To what pursuits will you devote your glimmering future, as yet but barely glimpsed, when that yearned-after time is upon you?”

The assembled female Mini-Flashes were looking as if a big stretch and a vigorous bum-scratch were pretty much the plan, as soon as Psiona gave it a rest.

“As for the first gender,” that one appended primly. “Yes, they may be bothersome to you. Less so, the older ones predating the proliferation…”

4-H-N wasn’t so sure of that. Jeez, Moltron. Although to give Psiona her due, he really didn’t seem the type.

“But overenthusiastic representatives of your generation may need to hear you say…”

Psiona conjured her psychokinetic avatar, as large as she was, its five gigantic fingers outspread and its luminescent pink plane of palm pointing at the audience.

“…talk to the hand.”

Oh, it was supposed to be a joke? 4-H-N twigged to this and applauded with everyone else. Then as the others rose and untucked, thankful, and hastened for the exit just in case that wasn’t the end, 4-H-N stayed in her seat and kept her gaze likewise where it had been before.

Psiona was switching off the slide-projector and tidying her notes, a stunning upper-sixth-former in 4-H-N’s terms. It was the same mixture you saw there. 4-H-N liked to think she herself wasn’t coming along so badly, but still she had her fingers crossed she’d turn out something like the flame-haired beauty onstage, all supple swells half-squeezed into a beige Flash Club tunic apparently worn in honour of her hosts. Yet perhaps it was that this galaxy hadn’t heard of stockings, but Psiona’s bare thighs connoted summer uniform on Earth, when all-but-grown girls ready for college still walked round in white ankle-socks. Tucking her folder under her arm could only steer 4-H-N’s thoughts in that direction, as did Psiona’s lighter-than-air skip down to the auditorium, a billow of skirts disclosing nothing racier than the clean pretty pink ones anybody might have expected. Her smattering of freckles suggested chocolate chips atop a yummy pale swirl of strawberry-and-cookies ice-cream.

Yes, thought 4-H-N, pursuing that tack. There she had it. Cold. It was a word she’d been trying to avoid, but two hours would have been a long time to ignore the content of any speech.

Cold showers? Was that unfair? Was that going too far?

Yet 4-H-N wasn’t convinced any sister of hers would have been friends with such a hopeless case. And on which note. Making like her classmates 4-H-N stood, unpicked, and went over.

“Um,” was her self-introduction.

The smile returned might have lit a good-sized orbital colony.

“Carmilla’s little sister,” declared Psiona at once. “I’d have known you anywhere. Do you hear from her at all?”

“Um,” said 4-H-N again, “no. That’s actually why I wanted to talk to you.”

“Then I’m honoured,” Psiona replied. “Boy-trouble must be inevitable in your family, lovely as you all are. What’s his name, and what can I do to help?”

“Oh, it’s not that!” exclaimed 4-H-N. Then she thought of Flashslip, and continued: “Well, there is one who’s started being weird with me,” and then she thought of Mini-Flash Phytolith, and felt it only truthful to add: “and then there’s this other one who’s been weird with me since the get-go, but…”

4-H-N decided to start again.

“The Nereynis Incident,” said she. “I need to know what happened.”

A change came over Psiona. 4-H-N saw it happen. No difference whatsoever was worked on butterscotch-headed sumptuousness or delicately-dotted cheeks, but even so, you couldn’t miss it. It was as if the sixth-former in her summer uniform had gone downtown one lunchtime, and a man in the street had struck up a conversation with her. Psiona looked now as that schoolgirl would have done, the moment she realised what the man was thinking.

It wasn’t an encouraging sign. Nevertheless, 4-H-N pressed on:

“You’re the first person I’ve seen who I can ask, Psiona. Carmilla and Blaster-Track Commander and the jeeps are so far away now. Croldon Thragg and Sludge-Man went over to Joe. Zeldich and Grey Bag have been meditating in seclusion on one of the warrior-planets – ”

“You’ve done your homework,” Psiona pointed out. “So you must also know I wasn’t there, right?”

“You were monitoring telepathically,” hinted 4-H-N.

The other transferred her file of papers from left armpit to right. 4-H-N thought perhaps the elevation of one perfectly-sculpted nose underwent adjustment too.

“Non-psychics,” was Psiona’s brisk retort. “You all think it’s like a Grindotron blockbuster. I can’t help you.”

So might the sixth-former have spoken, or at any rate the last part, and of a piece was Psiona’s subsequent about-face which put the lid on further pleasantries. A decisive departure to be sure, but also that of a girl so thrown as to neglect what her hemline did, resulting in 4-H-N’s second glimpse of unsettled pink that day.

Mission accomplished for the grubby man downtown. Sadly though, the female Mini-Flash on a desperate quest for the truth was left wanting.

Psiona’s speech had taken place late in the afternoon, and she’d come a long way. Flash Club protocol called for dinner, followed by a bed for the night in the residential wing. So it was that 4-H-N bided the hours between artificial sunset and artificial dark in the cavernous reception-area of that Headquarters edifice, on the off-chance.

When the glass doors at long last opened, 4-H-N was upright the same moment.

“Please, Psiona,” she beseeched her staring senior. “You know more than you’re letting on, and I have to hear it.”

Psiona heaved a sigh.

“Your sister was kind to me,” she declared at length. “Generous, compassionate, true-hearted. In fact it was she who gave me this,” added Psiona, showing off her beige tunic.

“It looks great,” said 4-H-N, unnecessarily.

“You can’t believe she’d lie to you,” Psiona went on.

“No, I don’t,” agreed 4-H-N. “But people are sometimes mistaken about things. As far as I can see, there’s still a chance Carmilla might have been. That’s…”

“…why you want to know what I do,” conceded Psiona.

4-H-N was starting to wish she was that man again. Because the sighs were coming thick and fast, and in a slightly undersized Mini-Flash bodice you had to be careful of that.

“Then we’d better go upstairs,” Psiona said.

TO BE CONTINUED