Thunderous, Chapter Two

Joe's crimson-coloured interplanetary hot-rod was back at the drive-in that night, this time bringing with it Flashtease and Petunia who proceeded to make for themselves a little hollow of familiarity in the square seat-space. Popcorn was never a complete experience without Petunia’s perfume like hot peanut-butter melting on its sweet sticky smell, stuffying-up the nostrils with contentment. Supersized soft drinks were almost too wide to squeeze your fingers round, ice-cubes knocking in the heavy sloshing bag of cool, but once you’d fumbled the straw to your questing pout it started with a slurp and ended in a fizzy explosion blowing your senses out from within. The seats were slid down to full recline, skirts and underskirts were balled up in the small of each respective wearer’s back, and it was a mercy not to have to resettle your pants unless you wanted to. Flashtease felt just fine and Petunia did too, really, though from her restless flittering flounce fanned occasional little disturbances in the happy popcorn-miasma. It was probably going to turn out alright. Two matching pairs of feet in white ankle-socks which bore testament to a day’s wear sat propped-up on the windshield-rim, and beyond these toes the cinema-screen was a monolith of light soaring high into realms of blue.

How was Flashthunder here? How did he know all this? He’d never even met the girl Flashtease was with. How did he know her name was Petunia?

Dylan Cook of The Four Heroes was onscreen, his frame and features distorted to awesome from-below perspectives by Flashtease’s penchant for parking in the front row. It was the one public service announcement Flashthunder could bear to watch, because it wasn’t quite as frightening as the others. Vigilance must be our watchword now, but did that mean the Alliance was merely going to watch? No, sir, it did not! The Alliance was taking vigilance to new heights of dedicated peace-keeping action. Working closely with The Four Heroes’ officially-approved representative on Grindotron, they were saying no to the grasping hand of hideous ghastly intent. So look out, Foretold One, because when you come to wage war on the cause that restored harmony to our quadrant, you’re likely to find that said quadrant disappointingly devoid of any subversive presences that might have sided with you. But what you will find is our mightiest powers standing firm, and maybe even coming for you instead!

“That’s so got nothing to do with Joe’s interpretation of The Four Heroes’ cause,” Petunia pronounced from lofty peaks of disdain. “If Joe was here right now, he’d be like, er, that’s so got nothing to do with my interpretation of The Four Heroes’ cause.”

“Petunia, how much of the thinking behind all this would you say you understand?” inquired Flashtease.

She fidgeted nearer as if for warmth. “Only that I’m afraid,” came back her honest reply, the violet eyes doleful.

Flashtease put his arm around her. “Afraid Joe’s not going to be able to get the capsule open,” he asked gently, “or afraid he will?”

“I know the answer to that question, Flashtease, somewhere deep in the rubbibubbacles of my heart,” Petunia sighed, and recrossed her legs. They reminded Flashtease of milk-bottles he had seen on Earth, the same curvature and the same soft opaque gleam. He was so fond of her, and wished there was something he could do to help.

“Not long ago,” began Flashtease, after a moment’s pause, “someone took everything you’re feeling right now – I mean, my version of it – and threw it at me all at once. Do you know what I learned?”

Meekly Petunia asked.

“No-one wants all of that at once,” he told her. “It’s OK if you just wait a little.”

So saying Flashtease squeezed Petunia tighter and they both helped themselves to more popcorn, as the publicity broadcast drew to its close and the new world they had come here to discover dawned before them.

Flashthunder exited with some abruptness and before he knew it was he knew not where. His whole world was reeling. What just happened? That was no fantasy or illusion. It had been the real Flashtease, and the girl had been real too, and their conversation had run on topics Flashthunder could not have dreamed up. Somehow he had dropped in on his friend and a stranger and gone undetected, while their every thought and sensation and hidden pain had become his to know.

What was Cherry doing? There was only one explanation, though it would have been daunting to contemplate even for someone who wasn’t Flashthunder. She was doing the opposite of what Neetra did. The latter had turned her psychic powers inward, carrying herself and Flashthunder to one specific moment among his memories. Cherry had flung her powers out, as if making some ambitious bid for the pair of them to embrace every mind in the cosmos at once.

If this astral projection of Flashthunder could be said to breathe, then that breath was quickening. Privately sharing a past happiness with Neetra had been one kind of thrill, but this…! There were temptations in it that seized even the non-corporeal body he currently occupied. To see everything and be anywhere was a prospect of such euphoric promise as to almost outweigh the panic it likewise wrought. Yet in spite of it all, Flashthunder could not neglect Neetra’s warning that it would be wrong to use psychic powers in such a way.

That was Cherry for you. She was so different to Neetra, and often behaved as if she just didn’t care. Even immersed in her as Flashthunder was, great planetary planes of her personality remained no lighter than an eclipse. However, his present telepathic synthesis with Cherry also put Flashthunder in the best possible position to know there was nothing malicious, nor even voyeuristic, to what she was about. No. She was looking for something.

And there Flashthunder had another way in which she was unlike Neetra. Sometimes he did wish Cherry would keep him in the loop a bit more. Not that he was going to go so far as to admit he was either embarrassed or annoyed, because what she’d done for him was quite the rare privilege however you looked at it, and Cherry clearly meant for him to enjoy the trip. It was just that Flashthunder might have known she’d leave it until now for him to find out it wasn’t only about the pair of them having fun. His girlfriend was also on a mission, and for some reason she needed him along.

Well, if that was how it was, Flashthunder supposed he’d better find she who must be obeyed so they could get on with it. The first part proved easy enough. Cherry’s psychic manifestation shone like a dark star in the interstitial clairaudient gulf, surfing its ethereal eddies with a well-practiced ease that put Flashthunder’s own struggles to shame. He took her hand, and let her lead the way.

Never before had Flashthunder traversed his own galaxy like this. His one date with Neetra prepared him a little, and he remembered the experience of being swept along as if on a stream of emotion. Here however the stream was a mighty river fed by crashing crosscurrents from a million minds. Down in the depths were savage sharks of sorrow and angry waterspouts that could tear you apart, but sailing above it with Cherry beside him Flashthunder had to close his spectral eyes for sheer rapture. He had glimpsed this, and the glimpses had lent him some inkling as to what it might mean. Now, over the raging river tonight, he knew. There was more happiness out there than he had ever believed.

Suddenly Flashthunder saw Joe. He was busy in what appeared to be his kitchen. Every plasma-plate had a pan sizzling atop it, and on every surface were Earth-vegetables to be chopped up and pushed ready into heaps. Contamination had truly delivered. Now Joe would have something to bring to the meeting tomorrow, in lieu of results. Not that he could keep pulling a theme night every time he himself failed to deliver. There had been no notable falling-off in attendance among regulars like Flashtease – not yet – but the Flash Club interdiction was keeping curious uninitiated Mini-Flashes from stopping by to find out more, and how was this going to look? Like one interpretation of the cause had its own advertisment on the trailers these days, while the other one didn’t even know how to open a message?

Flashtease. Joe held off slicing a minute. Actually, it was none of his business how it was going. And he hoped something would develop between his friend and Petunia. In fact, he hoped everybody in the great wide universe was hitting it off with that special someone in fine fashion. There was at present a toy spaceship standing between him and doing the same, but just let The Four Heroes’ illustrious inaugurator cope with its having no instruction-sheet, and there’d be no stopping him.

Clutching the handle of his unwieldy alien cutting-utensil Joe plunged back to work with a vengeance. Not once thus far during his hours of culinary toil had he ceased to sing the song.

Whatever it was Cherry had come here for, she had found it. Her psychic thumb and forefinger were tugging impatiently on Flashthunder’s psychic skirt. So he joined her, thinking back as he did so to the night he first became aware of Joe’s very existence. He remembered how sad and hurt and jealous he had been hearing Neetra make mention of one on her world who was so much a part of her as to hold power no other could claim. Now Flashthunder doubted he would ever envy Joe again, after that tiny taste of what the latter went through.

From here the river ran into different and wilder terrain. Cherry was striking out for the lonely places. Thoughts here were fewer than before, echoing bleakly from the handful of planets which span in the empty black. Ploughing through this nothingness was Contamination, behind the wheel of his cobalt-coloured one-seater. Engines roaring for nobody to hear, their fuel-lines coursing with nuclear light which shone a solitary dot in the void, he etched his own resolute line across uncaring vastness. Two psychic selves latched on, letting the slipstream sweep them up as Contamination’s tumultuous innermost became their guide on this long night-journey.

It went without saying Flashthunder was terrified to be anywhere near a frightful rough type like this. In trepidation he clung to the very periphery, letting the rest of his telepathic presence flap and billow in the rush. Even someone brave would have balked at delving deeper. It wasn’t that the vehicle wasn’t handling fine now the mechanics were done at last with their infernal tinkering. It was the length of time those fools had taken. He couldn’t be without this. Not if it meant the laboratory creeping back upon him, or even fragments of that all-but-forgotten sunlit span which Contamination assumed was his life before it happened. Those somehow were even more devastating than memories of the experiment itself. It was only here he could escape, brutalizing this stripped-down ramped-up old escape-pod until it was ready to burst with that which would have exploded from Contamination’s torso otherwise. Only here was there peace. Here, and at Disqualification Tablet. And in the cause. Though Contamination had no intention of ever letting Joe know about that last part.

Then Contamination was far behind while Cherry soared on, holding to that same straight-ahead course which the former’s trajectory had described.

END OF CHAPTER TWO