Mayhem, Chapter Four

As Flashtease gaped uncomprehending, girl and robot sped by overhead and left the becalmed racer eating their dust. Dylan was already uncoupling the rig’s bulkhead door and hurrying down its collapsible entry-steps, while Phoenix with arms thrown out hollered joyous encouragement to the escapees as Joe wordlessly stood and took careful aim above his windshield. 4-H-N’s questing fingertips were enfolded in the gladsome hands of sister and friend and she was alighting from Micro-Mallet when Joe fired, a solitary needle-fine dart of flame dispatched with unflinching pinpoint exactitude. And all at once 4-H-N’s eyes opened wide.

“Ow!” was her word.

This was repeated, over and over with far more annoyance than pain, and while Phoenix, Dylan and Micro-Mallet stared bewildered the clone began to hop frantically from foot to foot in contorting attempts at turning her own underwear inside-out with the utmost expedition. What she shook from the slightly singed white silk was more baffling still to her spectators, for it resembled hot twisted slivers of gold and a handful of crumbled blue glass. This glinted down like spray and spattered on the sand amid a fair few wafts of smoke.

Dylan and Phoenix had never seen what the message-capsule looked like. That was why they were a few seconds behind 4-H-N and Micro-Mallet in deducing what had happened. It wasn’t long however before they figured it out.

Joe, still standing in his footwell, surveyed the far-off tableau by the rig. Every face was slowly turning its fullest fury upon him, but he held his ground and looked back at each one, unapologetic.

Phoenix spoke first. She had never ceased to be anything but mindful of the many factors behind this mission, such as the need to establish a motive for Toothfire’s mysterious non-involvement, and to bring back related data to Prof that he might determine what this enigma entailed for the Grindo people, and to discover what Joe’s recent actions had to do with all of the above. It was just that from the moment Micro-Mallet made mention of Neetra’s message, Phoenix had been driven by a different priority, less a directive than a wild longing hope. It was bound up with the memory of how a little girl called Neetra had held her in her arms when she herself was a little girl too, on the night that knowing almost nothing and owning even less she first found her way to The Four Heroes. Scientifically Phoenix understood she was a clone of Neetra’s twin sister, but ever since that hug she had been sure in her heart that real twins was what they were. All she had wanted on this desolate world was to see the face of Neetra as that face appeared now, and to hear her voice again, and to divine from both the glimmers still extant of that kindly trusting little girl who with a single embrace had banished a lifetime of loneliness and cold. It wasn’t much to ask. And if that was the kind of emotional involvement that might jeopardize the successful completion of a mission, then right now Phoenix couldn’t have cared less.

“What do you imagine you ’ave achieved by zis, Joe?” she flung hoarsely at him across the war-torn plain, too angry even for tears. “Why rob my family of ze one simple comfort Neetra meant for us?”

“Because our very presence upon this planet is the work of Harbin, who has foreseen the suffering that should ensue were that message ever yours,” Joe yelled back, for he had loved the capsule, and destroying it carried a dear cost for him too. “In this he exploits a schism between his foes which was worsened by your actions, Phoenix!”

“Don’t start that again,” snapped 4-H-N. Joe hadn’t hurt her but she certainly stung, inside as well as out from the way he’d done it in front of everybody, and 4-H-N only had to think of the overlapping pair of scorch-holes he’d given her perfectly good skirt and knickers to start seeing red. “I’m sick of you repeating yourself, Joe. This is the second time today I’ve heard your staving-off-the-apocalypse bit, but there’s been nothing yet about what you’re basing it on!”

“You know what my son is capable of,” Joe protested. “He is a time-traveller with intuitive gifts for manipulation, whose knowledge of actual and potential future events exceeds that of any of us.”

“Yes, he is!” Dylan returned heatedly. “And you’re not, Joe! The best you can offer on what he’s really up to is personal hypothesis and conjecture, all of it influenced by your own agendas. And as for what those might be, I just don’t know anymore.”

“The time was you would have taken me at my word, Dylan,” Joe pointed out quietly.

“How can you possibly expect that of me now?” came back the reply.

The other members of each contingent were trudging back to regroup alongside either Joe or Dylan. The latter, after taking several seconds to steady himself, addressed the battlefield at large.

“4-H-N’s safe,” he declared, “and the message containing the answers we were after is lost. We’d only get our hands on that information now if we went on fighting. That’d mean setting the Mini-Flashes at each others’ throats again, dragging all these citizens of this galaxy back into a Four Heroes dispute, risking their safety or even their lives. Looking at it that way, let me tell you something frankly, Joe. I don’t think you’re worth it.”

With that Dylan turned his back in disgust, and made to depart. 4-H-N, Micro-Mallet, Flashlight and Mini-Flash Bloomer followed suit, but just before Phoenix joined them she fixed her glare on Joe one last time. The eyes behind her glasses were ablaze.

“All ze grandiosity on ze wise and noble lessons of ze Four ’Eroes’ cause you ’ave elected to bestow on zis galaxy,” she pronounced, the withering words bearing more venom than Joe had ever believed Phoenix capable of. “All ze self-righteousness on ze transgressions you ’old up against me. Yet today you ’ave shown what it is you truly teach zis…zis network of yours,” Phoenix tossed out, casting a scornful hand in the direction of Contamination and Joe’s Mini-Flashes. “Nothing but an appetite for mayhem, nothing but a delight in…in viciousness,” she added choking, as she thought of the message-capsule which lay in sad broken shards by her feet. “We ’ave no more need for prophecies. Already I see which of you and Dylan ’as chosen evil ovair good. And ze universe will see it too before you are done.”

So saying, Phoenix took her leave. Hers was the only victory which could be said to have emerged from this sorry and bitter engagement. For Joe too thought of the capsule, and he thought of James and Iskira who would now be waiting forevermore to hear the message it had held, and he thought of the many friendships he might likewise have eternally sundered by insisting on his war, and he even thought of Petunia, lost and heartbroken because of him. All of which, taken together, could not but lend the ring of truth to Phoenix’s invective. And if the coming days should prove she was indeed correct, then that would be the realization of Joe’s greatest fear.

Flashtease put his hand on his arm and gently reminded him: “We stopped them hearing Neetra’s message. That was the most important thing.”

“Indeed, my friend,” Joe responded in a small voice. “But who can tell what means are at The Foretold One’s disposal, or what his ends truly were this day?”

Dylan’s rig rolled lumbering for the marketplace and the moored Grindo ship, with Phoenix’s immobilized fighter on tow and the two rocket-bikes stashed inside. The weary crusaders were making their journey atop the roof, both Mini-Flashes sitting together a little way apart from the sisters and Micro-Mallet, while Dylan himself was at the prow alone.

4-H-N, holding an ice-pack to where it was needed, took the last of several glances toward the tail-end of the convoy. It had been clear for some time they were not being followed. Apparently satisfied, she then announced to her disparate and disconsolate comrades: “Hey, everyone, lighten up. Things aren’t as bad as they seem.”

Dylan couldn’t hold back a mirthless laugh. “I’m glad the cheerleading lessons paid off, 4-H-N, but seriously?” he declared. “We didn’t get the information. We failed.”

A tiny smile however remained on 4-H-N’s pretty face, and by now it was starting to pique everyone’s curiosity. “Ma soeur?” inquired Phoenix, still drying her eyes. “What is zis are you saying?”

“Just that you’re not the only clever little clone our parents made,” 4-H-N replied coyly. “After all it wasn’t like I had to keep the message in my hiding-place the whole time, comfortable and stylish as it was. Nothing to stop a girl taking it out and having a quick listen, while you were all so busy outside!”

Then her teasing smirk broke at last into the radiance she had struggled to keep down since the end of the battle, and all at once her friends were around her, beaming too, their laughter now anything but empty. It was joyful and triumphant, and 4-H-N glowed from the heart of a myriad hugs and kisses and accolades lavished on her by her five loving peers.

“Right,” pronounced the clone at great length, businesslike. “The first thing is that the world we’re on was once known as Drenthis, and its twin planet a little way off used to be called Nereynis. Those names must be some kind of clue to why Toothfire doesn’t want to come here, because there was nothing else in the message that could have led Joe to figure it out.”

“And if he can, Prof can,” finished Dylan in no uncertain terms. “It’s not like Joe was ever the brains of our operation. This is fantastic, 4-H-N!”

“There’s more,” she grinned. “I’m just getting to the best bit! Neetra’s here, on the other side of Nereynis. Joe’s on his way to meet her, and that’s where Harbin’s holding the farns! Neetra and Joe were going to try and rescue them together!”

This time 4-H-N’s revelation took the others’ breath away, even Micro-Mallet who supposedly had none to take. Incredulous glee was enthroned on Dylan as he slowly rose to his feet.

“Then we’ll beat him to it,” he told his team. “He’s a hot-rod gang and we’re the Alliance army. We’ll rendezvous with Neetra. We’ll save the farns. There’s no need for Joe and his love-life to be any part of that. In other words, you ladies are going to see your sister again soon! And what’s more,” Dylan added, clapping a hand on the shoulders of Flashlight and Mini-Flash Bloomer, “this’ll be the end of Joe’s little counterculture. We’ll blow him and his weekly jam-sessions right into orbit. Because when the Flash Club and our side of The Four Heroes bring the farns safely home, how many of your people are going to want to stand by him instead of us? I swear today’s the last time you’ll have to fight among yourselves. This is going to bring your friends home too.”

The youngsters’ eyes were alive. “We want that more than anything, Dylan!” Flashlight cried earnestly. “Just for Joe to stop leading Mini-Flashes astray, Flashtease and Flashshadow and that entry-level girl who was with him, and all the others. The Flash Club already wants that. If Bloomer and I can play a part in actually making it happen…!”

“Then blimey, what are we waiting for?” the said girl exclaimed. So it was that Dylan’s command struck off as one for the control-cabin to radio their findings post-haste to Grindotron, all laughing and talking nineteen to the dozen, though 4-H-N was happy beyond the power of speech as she looked on the happiness she herself had wrought. She was a proper agent at last.

And not even she saw what was really going on.

We’ll beat him to it.

There’s no need for Joe.

It’s not like Joe was ever the brains of our operation.

We’ll blow him and his weekly jam-sessions right into orbit.

Our side of The Four Heroes.

Joe had laboured earlier that day to impress upon 4-H-N the reasons why those such as he should never change. It was a timely lesson, when there were others around her who were changing already. They did not know it yet, but they were. Even as they turned their boundless enthusiasm to predicting and orchestrating the downfall of Joe’s interpretation of the cause.

Who could tell what means were at The Foretold One’s disposal?

Or what his ends truly were this day?

END OF CHAPTER FOUR