4-H-N Fireworks, Chapter Two

Slowly 4-H-N reached for the handset and held it to her head. She heard no dial-tone. Thing wasn’t even working, after all that.

Not that it mattered.

“Hey,” said 4-H-N aloud.

She didn’t know her own voice when it came out so hollow and cold.

“Hey,” 4-H-N repeated, “parents of the year? Oh, and I’m sure you’re in the running. Just look at your track record, not to mention this latest high.”

Now that she was underway it was surprisingly easy to keep going. Frighteningly easy. It even felt good, sort of, although that wasn’t quite the word.

“So at first I was going to ask you for a lift,” 4-H-N rattled away to the dead receiver. “You know, like the girls from normal families do. But on reflection, don’t bother. I’ve decided to move out instead. Been getting the idea I’ve outstayed my welcome. Last of the brood to shake her feathers and all that, so yeah. You just keep sitting there at Prof’s lab, like you’ve been doing since we arrived. Don’t worry about me. Your small 4-H-N’s growing…”

Her lips strove to complete the sentence, but failed.

Too much was bound up in that simplest of pet-names.

Words meant to hurt could tear at the speaker with all the ferocity they did their target, and suddenly 4-H-N was that little girl again, happily stranded on the jungle world where she’d first known a mother’s love. Or perhaps it was the night she’d said goodbye to her friends in the Avion Girls Task Force, and headed back heartbroken, only to find her family waiting and to know at last what home was.

4-H-N gritted her teeth and let the Drenthis feeling rage.

Happy memories were nothing but tools, or rather, weapons. They were how certain people who didn’t deserve forgiveness went about extorting it from you.

That was what the thunder said.

“Sorry and all, but maybe you should have tried doing a bit more,” 4-H-N breezed on, though she noticed her voice wasn’t quite as steady as it had been. “Or done something, at any rate. Like noticing, for example. Using those scientific eagle-eyes to spot what I was going through.”

She wasn’t on the jungle planet or in Nottingham. She was standing on desert sands at the moment it began.

“Maybe if you had, I wouldn’t be smelling up some call-box right now with just my knickers on, but hey,” 4-H-N drove down mercilessly. “Storm-Sky been in touch? You know about the Special Program, then? Yep, all on my own, for I don’t know how many of this galaxy’s demented cycles. And you sat there. Oh, and I bet you’re holding each other and blubbing because of the newsflashes. Just like parents on telly. Saying you don’t know what’s happened to me and it’s like I’m a different person now. Fighting Petunia and staying out all night, oh, and stealing, since I guess Prof’s put in his galactic creditsworth too by now. Well, you know what, Mum? If you still look at me and see a little girl washing between her toes at the bathing-pool, then you’re right. She’s gone. And you don’t…”

This couldn’t go on, and not just because 4-H-N had to be making a move. There were powers besides those of the Special Program which were proving too great for one girl alone.

“So, about that?” she summed up abruptly. “About your small 4-H-N?”

Yet the power awed her.

It awed 4-H-N to live in a universe where words spoken out loud might change everything, even when the intended listeners couldn’t hear. The change would be in her, where change meant destruction and also a kind of rebirth, a second coming. For 4-H-N knew that once it was said, her parents would never again be all they had been to her. No matter what came to pass, whether she saw them after this day or even lived out the rest of her life in their company. Still she would look at them, and know she had said it, and things would not be what they were before.

It was hers to say. All of that was hers to destroy. Which was what power meant.

“Like I’m even your daughter. You grew me in a bio-tube.”

4-H-N crashed the handset back upon its cradle.

Then came tears, endlessly, while the rain hammered down and the thunder rolled.

END OF CHAPTER TWO