Va-Va-Vramm, Chapter Three

Vramm in all honesty didn’t think there’d been any need for the female to say what she had about his sensors, because the last thing he needed on top of everything else was anxiety they might not be working. Nevertheless, and even if she really was no more than she claimed, Vramm couldn’t have done without her help in interpreting this planet’s needlessly complicated road-signage to make it to the same turning their quarry had taken. He’d just known he was sure to go wrong somewhere otherwise, and when you were fitted with the most advanced nitro-injected ceramic engine in existence, losing a lumbering old corporation double-decker would have been exactly the sort of hilarious anecdote that ended up on your permanent data-record.

As it was however, Main Street went by in a wet lit-up blur as Vramm smoothly slid in and out of the traffic that faltered down both its lanes, lingering phosphor-smears from his fender charting a course of unchecked acceleration. To Jenny the arcades and souvenir-shops and shivering rain-sodden trees were a melded mass of gloomy grey whipping by.

Ahead the bus was nearing the clock tower. Jenny made a mental note to start avoiding that thing on future trips.

“It’ll turn left at the roundabout,” she called to Vramm above the roaring of his motor. “Double-deckers on this route don’t go to the nature reserve.”

Vramm cringed, envying Jenny her self-assured tone. He was never comfortable around life-forms like this one, who effortlessly managed to be everything he wasn’t. The bus, just as she’d predicted, showed them its slow starboard flank now proceeding parallel to the shoreline, and Vramm wondered whether he’d picked up a rare specimen of these Earth-units called girls, or whether each came off the assembly-line an insufferable know-it-all.

“In fact there’s only one double-decker that goes that way,” Jenny went on contemplatively. “Why would that little purple goblin want to take the boy to the camp?”

“We’ll ask, as long as we haven’t fried its diodes first!” Vramm threw back. To his audio-receptors it sounded ghastly, as though he were trying too hard. Wishing he’d never spoken he triggered his boosters for short-term flight capabilities, skipping the tower to surmount instead lanes and railings and oncoming vehicles in a leap through the torrents and the gale, then bumped back down again with pallid gasping Jenny on the very tailpipe of their target.

The coast road was scrolling, hotels on the one hand, sea the other. Vramm elevated his roof-mounted photon rifle, thinking in that instant only of warning-shots.

Jenny was still recovering from the jump when the narrow perch she straddled tipped her backward. A shriek escaped her lips as she tumbled with skirt inside-out and school shoes higher than her head, which latter extremity was next second upside-down alongside Vramm’s skimming wheels. Had the hood of her cagoule not been up, Jenny’s long hair would have been but the first part of her mashed and mangled beyond recognition.

“Oh!” exclaimed Vramm, as Jenny somehow clawed herself to her prior crouch.

“Seriously?” came back in disbelief. “And besides, no guns! As long as that thing’s using the child as a decoy, you’ll never get a clear shot.”

“Sometimes I wonder if I’m cut out for this!” hurled Vramm.

Jenny had an indistinct notion she’d done some cheerleading once, and surprising as it might have seemed, now was apparently the time for more.

“If there’s anything you’re confident about,” she told her steed in a firm voice, “then do it. We’re not going to get anywhere unless you believe in yourself.”

She was right, Vramm knew. This kind of being was always right.

So he searched his every circuit-board, thereby arriving at the conclusion of which he’d been sure deep down from the start.

“I’m confident my sensors are functioning fine,” he told Jenny, and slammed on the brakes.

There was even a cheer-stunt that went like that, flipping you skywards just as hard and every bit as high, though Jenny’s kicking legs and flailing arms would have cost her points in competition as she cannonballed helplessly through nothingness. More of a problem still was the absence of the rest of the squad to catch her when she came down, and Jenny guessed she should have seen from the start that this transforming robot was insane, but even so, to end up schoolgirl roadkill was a pretty poor reward for –

She wasn’t coming down.

Instead, having commenced an ascent, she was holding that course.

She could fly.

Just like Wendy Darling. In a cagoule.

There was the lip of the double-decker’s stern and passing it Jenny perceived the little boy, soaked through and menaced yet by his devilish diminutive abductor. The ability to think fast mattered as much here as it did on any netball court. Jenny hooked her hands under small warm armpits and continued in the direction she was going, her new passenger in tow.

Vramm drew abreast of the coach, and in defiance of its desperate dash home, refrained from changing it into a pumpkin.

Though his photon gun changed the fiend atop it to purple splatter on the wind.

Robbie always did as he was told, and so his first words after thanking Jenny were to remind her to eat her chocolate cake. She herself, as had happened before, was already starting to think that that might indeed be a good idea, so Vramm ferried them back forthwith to where his outer shell was still keeping watch. Presently Mini-Flash Juniper and Flashsatsumas had revived themselves with several slices, while Robbie was still busy doing the same.

“There’s more to toys than either of us ever imagined, Flashsatsumas,” was Mini-Flash Juniper’s conclusion. “But if we keep liaising with our experts from Earth, I’m confident that one of these days we’ll get it right the first time.”

She grinned at Robbie, who grinned back, chocolate all over his cheeks.

“Speaking of confidence,” Juniper continued to Vramm, who was outside the bus-shelter and in his shell again to keep the weather off. “You may be a bit of a pretender when it comes to that, but you’re certainly no coward. That’ll make you the perfect deterrent against those who are. The sight of you on the camp, standing guard, should make our enemies think twice about any more attempts on Calvin or Sheila until Peter can finally get them both home.”

Flashsatsumas was impressed. “Sometimes I’m almost willing to swear you know what you’re doing,” he told Mini-Flash Juniper with a smile. “At this rate I could even believe we’ll complete our mission, make it home ourselves, save 4-H-N…”

“And live happily ever after,” Juniper concurred, though she had no idea where she’d picked that up from.

END OF CHAPTER THREE