Earth Angel

Over rows of tabletops bereft of better than half the movie merchandise they had borne that morning Joe threw his gaze. Some dealers were already packed up and gone, while others held out to wring a few more phillin from the last hour of trade.

In all the rich array these many marketeers brought and sold, Joe had identified not one item that so much as hinted at a relationship with his objective. Between that, and Petunia putting in a cognate non-appearance, two singularly unhelpful star guests and a hall of male Mini-Flashes doing like they did on the Discovery Channel, our hero was about ready to write off his first film festival as an unmitigated disaster.

Neetra came to his side. She was smiling.

“My little psychic girls are having the time of their lives,” said she. “You don’t have to be telepathic to hear them. They’ll be showing off their autographed photos and telling tales about who they met until long after bedtime. I’d hazard a guess that before today, they didn’t even realise it was possible to be so happy.”

“I found Flashtease,” Joe told her in reply. “And he looked happy.”

Neetra slipped a coaxing hand into his.

“How much will it matter if you don’t find this thing you’re searching for?” she asked him gently. “Suppose for a minute you never do. Won’t it still mean something to the cause that you gave everyone this?”

So saying she let Joe alone to his thoughts. His solitude however was short-lived, for not long after Neetra had left, he saw Flashshadow.

And as Joe knew Flashshadow, that was enough to strike him all a heap.

Seeing her? In a crowd, even a dwindling one? Joe could scarcely conceive of how urgent the matter must be. Without delay he let Flashshadow lead him, a benign will-o’-the-wisp weaving at uncommon pace through the ambling contented patrons. Somewhere deep in the market’s dimmest and most distant tucked-away corner she finally drew to a halt.

There on a tiny trestle of assorted bric-a-brac stood two shapes. Crudely cast in black plastic, they rested on jointed feet which were not part of the central mold. From the side of each lumpy figure jutted the head of a key.

Joe stared. Suddenly Flashshadow’s excitement was his. For they certainly looked familiar.

The stall-holder, scenting a potential eleventh-hour sale, handed one of the toys to Joe and eagerly encouraged him to take a closer look. Looking was fine, but there was only one way to know for sure. With hands that shook Joe wound the key, then he and his Mini-Flash friend leaned in close.

The little legs began to slowly kick in mid-air. And the tune that tinkled from within the monster’s hollow body was the one.

Joe scrambled to turn the singing beast over, and there it was. Embossed on the back in minuscule print ran the manufacturer’s name and address. Contact details for a person or persons who at one time or another had handled the franchise, and might reasonably be expected to remember it now.

“These, please,” Joe said to the trader, throwing all the money he had at him without looking. Then carefully he placed the creature he carried between Flashshadow’s small soft palms, picked up the other himself, and together they beheld them in wonderment.

Nereynis was rising over Spaceport Gala’s tarmac plains. Beneath the great water-globe with its Saturn-ring huge and blue against the evening sky lingered Dean and Joe, facing the far-off vanishing-point where flat black faded to an empty horizon.

At the indoor arena the stalls and screen-rooms were done for the day, and despite the absence of the advertised live music the disco had managed to get going on recorded tracks. A tired but happy First Annual Nottingham Film and Television Festival was living out its last at leisure. Dean however, even though everyone knew how much he loved a party, had quietly slipped away once there was no longer any need for him. Joe guessed where he’d gone, and considered it the very least he could do to wait with him awhile.

Our hero didn’t like to say anything bad about someone he’d never met, but he wished with all his heart that Louise-Claudia had been able to find it in hers to stop by. It felt like everybody had found what they were looking for today, except he who had done by far the most to make it happen.

“You strove tirelessly, Dean,” Joe told him. “I will never forget it. And were it within my power, I should only want her to know too.”

Dean mustered something in response to this. It was surely time they went back inside, but no sooner had Joe settled on the most tactful way to broach the subject than a change began to dawn over his companion. Turning in the direction Dean’s widening eyes were fixed, Joe saw, and barely believed.

“L.C.!” Dean breathed aloud.

Through twilight and mists she was striding, a lithe toned physique upright and strong, Nereynis overhead. Dean’s reactions suggested to Joe that from her short dark hair down to her boots she had changed little since the former saw her last. Reaching the awestruck duo Louise-Claudia halted, and parked her fighting-gloved fists on her hips.

“Right, where is he?” she demanded of Joe. “I don’t have to do this. It’s not like he was the only one in the regiment, and Bygrune and Psiona are straight-up Alliance. Though I do see that from him it’d be a lot to ask, I mean one minute’s thought about how this reflects on me.”

Into the dumbfounded Joe’s hands she thrust a jumble of metal. There was a Solidity army identity-disc, its chain wrapped round what looked like a scrap of fuselage clawed from the chassis of some space-car. The sparse lines sprawling on the face of this last Joe could tell had been scratched there with a single radioactive fingernail.

YOU KNOW HOW THIS WORKS, SOLDIER. I SAVED YOUR LIFE ON UPPER PARLIAMENT STREET. SEE THAT YOU’RE AT YOUR FELLOW HUMAN’S PATHETIC FILM-FESTIVAL AND I MIGHT JUST CONSIDER THE FAVOUR REPAID.

“I shall make certain he receives it,” Joe assured Louise-Claudia at once. Then several seconds crawled by in abject awkwardness, as he, she and Dean stood.

“Look who is here,” Joe ventured at last, feebly.

Wherewith the loquacious Dean, who earlier that day had held the throngs in thrall through the power of his oratory alone, could at best bumble round the bases of Louise-Claudia’s long journey and how it had been a while and the bar was open. When these perambulations had at length petered out Louise-Claudia looked no more pleased than before, but not so displeased as to refute any of the content.

“The bar better be open,” said she, and suffered Dean to show her there. Joe was left with his shred of tin in hand, and a smile starting to steal across his lips.

“Wherever in the galaxy you are, Contamination,” he said softly, “I am indebted to that romantic soul of yours.”

As Joe watched Louise-Claudia and Dean move off for the cluster of buildings whence faint strains of merriment emanated, she straight-backed and he scuttling ahead, our hero’s first thought ran on the odds of this much-anticipated reunion going well. Hot on its heels however followed the question of whether that wasn’t up to Joe himself? He had spent the day admiring each of his friends in turn for going above and beyond the call of duty, all in the name of his schemes. Was Joe able to say with honesty he’d done the same? And was it too late to try?

He saw Flashtease, who’d possibly come out here looking for him, though to judge from the Mini-Flash’s blissful expression Joe doubted he’d had much of a destination in mind.

“Gather the others, my friend,” our hero said.

The spotlight shone down on Dean and Louise-Claudia by the bar, and all around them the disco dropped to an expectant hush. Flashtease, beaming, appeared onstage.

“We’ve all had a great time today,” the Mini-Flash’s voice rang out, “and there’s one man above all we’ve got to thank for it. No-one worked harder to make the festival a success than our friend Dean!”

“You?” cried Louise-Claudia, astonished, though less so than she might have been before her two drinks and the trip down Memory Lane. Indeed, as she joined in at once with the round of applause there was even about her the tiniest touch of pride.

“So to Dean and the lovely Louise-Claudia,” Flashtease declared, “this one’s for you.”

The first strum from Flashshadow’s lyre lit the stage, disclosing herself and Mini-Flash Splitsville cross-legged again with her bongos. Together their rills and their rhythm struck up a song to take the listener straight to yesteryear, in the way this galaxy did so well. Flashtease, exiting, met Joe coming the other way and handed him the microphone.

Mini-Flashes, film-buffs and clientele of every kind were gladly clearing a space at the centre of the dancefloor. Dean, with the look of one dreaming, stood. Maybe Louise-Claudia’s combat trousers and bandana were not quite the requisite ballgown, and nor did Dean’s Bermuda shorts and bunches exceed full evening dress. None of this wrought in him the least hesitation as he thrust out his hand. For a second Louise-Claudia stared wide-eyed from her barstool. The next she and Dean were sweeping out underneath the glitterball, as lilting introduction broke into verse and Joe began to sing.

In the couple cheek-to-cheek among their lyrical cosmos of slow-spinning stars was magic that sprinkled its enchantment on all. Croldon Thragg clapped Thomthar on the back with the satisfaction of a day’s work well done, and Pumpus was welling up as he would have at a wedding. The two keynote speakers were comfortably talking shop, Bolotran Eyes with a glass of wine while Laurance Lo had swiftly taken charge of the dregs-bucket from behind the bar, into which he shoved his proboscis often and accompanied by a loud disgusting sucking noise.

“Really most enjoyable,” conceded Bolotran Eyes. “Good to know this sort of thing still goes on. Bolotran Eyes.”

“We must come to the next one,” agreed Laurance Lo.

Flashtease and Flashstanch had taken their place among the other dancing doubles, but Neetra was sitting this one out with Sludge-Man. It was enough for her to listen to Joe, and love him as she’d loved him that day in the basement at The Four Heroes’ house when she’d been the one on percussion.

Dean and Louise-Claudia may have been somewhere around then, soon after the creation of Nottingham. Alternately they may have been further back still, their first meeting in Pre-Nottingham Earth perhaps, or then again some special moment on their subsequent travels throughout this galaxy. Yet wherever they were in the cinematic epic of their interwoven lives, whichever reel or scene the occasion had transported them to, it did the trick. They had found anew the reason that film was their favourite, why they never tired of watching it over and over. The moment was right, the music rose, and the watching partygoers raised a cheer.

For the duration of that dance, at any rate, nowhere in Nottingham was there doubt that this movie ended with the hero and heroine walking into the sunset together.

THE END