Immortal Hate, Chapter Two

On the music swung and swayed, and overhead the clouds inched further from their dying blaze to dark. Few would have imagined destiny was ever played out on such a stage as this, yet Petunia’s bleary audience biding the final bars of her set knew no more in truth than those who had opted to face the day with rioting and violence. Here was where that of which one girl sang was slipping away note by note, as shadow and tone and gradation of light shifted all but imperceptibly about the other girl on the corner. Sometimes with no greater outward show than this did entire chapters of a galaxy’s eons-long span bid goodbye.

The soft sound of a space-car pulling up caught 4-H-N’s attention.

She whipped around, suddenly mindful she’d stayed too long in one place, fool that she was to have neglected the immediate danger. What she saw sent her heart for a plummet. Clambering out of the bright orange bodywork was everything she feared, a boy in senior Mini-Flash uniform, and it seemed that here all at once was the move from the enemy which would mate her game…

Yet there must still have been tears in 4-H-N’s eyes, because it was starting to dawn on her that what she saw couldn’t be.

From out of the galaxy’s steady shade had driven an impossibility. Now it stood by the kerb and regarded 4-H-N, one side of its slim physique dipped in the glow from the barroom window, the other outlined in headlamp-glare. 4-H-N rubbed a hand over her grubby face, bringing into final focus the bare legs of an early adolescent, the snub nose and freckles not yet grown out of, and the short-skirted tunic which bore a bygone emblem.

It was all there. Even the look he was sending 4-H-N’s way was just right. You could read in it whatever it was that steered a boy forevermore from innocence.

“You’re not Flashpower,” said 4-H-N.

“But I knew you’d be here at this time and place,” the other pointed out. “And that you’d be facing your moment of choice.”

4-H-N had had a long day, and this latest part threatened to tip it irretrievably to too much. Her shoulders dropped, and what brokenly escaped her lips sounded like: “Some choice.”

“All the choice in the galaxy,” her companion corrected her smoothly. “You can stop here or step into the club, and accept a warm shawl from Joe’s little devotee. Then run along home like a good girl. Ask Storm-Sky for your old job back, sorting mail – ”

“Who sent you?” 4-H-N interrupted.

“I was getting to that,” said the other. “I’m here on behalf of the only ones who are serious about putting a stop to Joe. They have an opening for which they’ve been considering you.”

4-H-N looked long at him.

In fact, it might have been that realities and continuua came and went before she spoke again. But when that span was over, her words were:

“I’m listening.”

4-H-N was still listening as Mini-Flash Juniper, Flashbee and Flashsatsumas pounded the alleyways in what had become a nightmare race against their own fatigue. Two of them had been exhausted before they stared running, and this had left Juniper capable of no more than staying a little ahead of Flashbee. Which was terrifying for both boys to contemplate, whereas poor Flashsatsumas in his containment-suit was struggling leagues behind. When his friends however had tried to match his pace, he’d yelled in a manner that was nothing like him for them to quit it and run.

Dear Mr. DJ, play it again,

Dear Mr. DJ, play it again;

The boy by the space-car continued to talk, and 4-H-N continued to listen.

We go together!

Petunia pronounced.

Play it again!

Added the androids.

Even Flashbee was stumbling by now, and the girl in front more so. Juniper’s ivory legs looked so flushed as to scorch their way through her stockings.

Sincerely!

Play it again!

Juniper herself flung back her fair hair in a fury, though half the strands stuck to her flaming face. She had never lost a match. She had never been outmanoeuvered by a boy.

The first time must not be now.

Now was not about her. Now was about her friend.

4-H-N listened on.

You’re a thousand miles away!

Play it again!

Plunder Dacks, lounging by the nightclub window as he waited for Petunia to finish, chanced to turn and glance outward.

He saw knickers and a near-naked 4-H-N.

Plus a phantom from the past.

Holding open the passenger-side door of its orange space-car.

And Dacks shrieked:

“Yoopy yoo!”

He’s go-o-oo-one…!

Oh!

Play it again!

Mini-Flash feet punished themselves painfully on pavement.

Dacks’s bare feet carried him pell-mell over the barroom floor, his rubber pants squealing between tightly-packed tables, in his plight to reach Petunia as she rounded off:

Dear Mr. DJ, play it again,

Dear Mr. DJ, play it again;

Had ever a Special Program girl so striven and smelled as to discorporate entirely to the airy nothing that made her up? Mini-Flash Juniper through her agony felt on the verge of a first.

Let it happen. Let there be nothing left of her but her Luttertons.

Only let her get to 4-H-N in time!

Dear Mr. DJ, play it again,

Dear Mr. DJ, play it –

Rottlebottles!

The few pub-lunch patrons still sensible heard the song break off thus. They heard the clangour of Petunia throwing down her mike.

Then there was commotion and drink splashing everywhere as she and Dacks fought their way hand-in-hand for the exit.

Before Mini-Flash Juniper yawed the mouth of the lane.

Thighs aquiver as never before carried her in terminal bounds lurching round the angle, her flat-soled school shoes spattering over puddles, so to behold at last the score-zone.

And Juniper went down, sundering her nylons on the soaking street.

Tears hotter than her cheeks spurted from squeezed-shut eyes.

There was nothing there but a pair of taillights dwindling into the night.

What it was, that had drawn them all together to that sidestreet at that hour would have been difficult to say. Yet in a galaxy where prophecies and causes and destiny mattered, it would have had to have been something. First Flashbee, red and flurried, then Dacks and Petunia bursting flabbergasted from the nightclub, and last of all Flashsatsumas wheezing for breath completed a tableau which would surely give future historians pause. For there the male Mini-Flashes stood, directly above the theatre where they’d first met 4-H-N, exchanging breathless stares with two others whose lives along with theirs had been saved by a former classmate of the Mini-Flash girl kneeling and weeping on the ground.

That same former classmate to whom 4-H-N had given the nickname Sue.

In more than one sense, 4-H-N was the only reason they were there.

It had to be something.

For the second time that day, Flashbee wondered whether Intelligentsor was having a lasting effect on his friend Flashsatsumas when that one voiced what seemed the final word:

“We were up against something we couldn’t fight. 4-H-N wanted to go with him.”

So saying he knelt too, to be beside Mini-Flash Juniper.

Nor was Flashbee oblivious to the beseeching looks coming his way from Petunia and Dacks. “You’ll have to ask them,” he declared frankly. “I’m still catching up.”

A little filling-in of the details followed from Flashsatsumas. Petunia however seemed if anything more bewildered than before.

“I know it’s hard to understand, Petunia,” Flashsatsumas told her with a sigh. “We’re dealing with forces here which very few people in the galaxy understand.”

“It’s not that,” Petunia protested. Like Mini-Flash Juniper, she was starting to cry. Dacks put his arm around her.

“I’d have helped 4-H-N,” sobbed the girl. “All she’d have had to do was come into the club. I’d have helped her right away. I don’t understand why she didn’t ask me.”

THE END