Neetra and Joe, Chapter Two

Light-years away, peaceful peoples of an entire galaxy were gathered as they were on Earth to celebrate an end to the Solidity’s war. Down in Planet Eshcaton’s subterranean sanctuary thankfully meditated the four wise sages who had led this passive resistance, but the populations which rallied round them were high above the barren surface, jubilating on the roofs of star-cruisers in synchronous Eshcaton-orbit. Another troupe of musicians, all residents of that far-off quadrant and personally known to Neetra, had been belting out pop song after pop song to a vast open-air audience and countless others via live holographic feed. But none of those millions knew why it should be that the lead singer Cherry, having just rounded off the latest in a line of upbeat party-numbers, suddenly slowed and paused.

More than once Neetra had pondered whether Cherry might be in some way psychic, as such teenagers from outer space tended to be. If so, the range of her powers must have been phenomenal for her to sense what was occurring on the other side of the universe. But that was to assume, of course, that Cherry had anything to do with this at all. It was Neetra, not she, who had previously broadcast a trans-galactic telepathic message when such a feat was considered impossible. Maybe this curious moment shared between two girls was due to something left over from that? What was certain, at any rate, was that no apparent event in the vicinity of Eshcaton’s stratosphere could have been responsible for the solemn look that replaced Cherry’s customary beautiful haughtiness, nor her subsequent signal for her band to strike up the very last kind of song anyone among her prolific fan-base had been expecting.

And, somehow, Neetra could hear them as it began.

Flashshadow’s strums worked deftly through steady rhythmic rises and falls, one bar then the next weaving in and out of the melody. The robot drummer laid down a soft shuffling pace. Then, from inside the great instrument hefted by the six-armed beetle-like bassist, came the strings. Neetra caught her breath. Each chord was a level land of synthesizing light etched in the colours of emotion, and ascending in stately plateaux. Our heroine was back in the seaside theatre at Qingdao. That magisterial Wurlitzer whose high notes swelled to the farthest reaches of the auditorium’s soaring vaults, lyrical intercessor between the little girl rapt in her seat and the unkenned wonders waiting in the darkness there.

Cherry’s soft sonorous voice, pulsating with adolescence, fell like summer dusk over this ethereal landscape. Then the three backing-singer girls kicked in. Their lonely longing vocalizations started tears to Neetra’s eyes. It all made sense now. It was Qingdao, and Dalian, and Hong Kong and Shanghai and Hainan Island and all those magic names from the orphanage’s annual excursions. The three girls were taking her back there. Their wordless song was a goodbye to those long-ago summers, but one which promised they would never be forgotten again. Down along the canalways and promenades to the place deep within where it was all still there. Qingdao. Oh, Qingdao. She could feel Qingdao even in her toes.

It was the old seaside provinces, then. That had been the secret all along. Where everything was a warm afternoon one generation ago. She remembered thinking something similar while she was with Flashthunder, and if his brown eyes and timid trusting lips were somewhere in it too, then fine. But this was more.

For at Qingdao had been the welcoming howls from the ghost-train and the scent of ice-cream wafers wafting through the carnival, and there had been the coarse sand beneath Neetra’s bare feet and the undying sun spread over the wide salty sea. But in the theatre everything was dark and cool, tinged with neon and electronic harmonies, and it was there the true enticements were to be tasted. This time Neetra wasn’t just listening to its music. This time she was one of those girls. This was what those painted eyes on the poster for the rock-and-roll show had known. This was the truth those glossy red acrylic lips had never spoken. The Cadillacs and the drive-ins and the throbbing motorcycle cylinders. Neetra knew then what had made those girls sing, and cry, and dance into a frenzy in their bouffant petticoats. Now she was dancing too.

Cherry’s pining bridges were made to rend hearts, and under the circumstances Neetra could scarcely expect less. This was what it was then for two members of The Four Heroes to touch eternity together. It was beyond even the land of shining spires Neetra had glimpsed earlier that day, somewhere past its celestial skyline, and to be there just once was to yearn to always to be so. Perhaps on that day there would be no more war, if all those who lived could only understand what it was to be part of that greatest mystery of all, the one that never ended, through which life from one end of the universe to the other was united. But the universe itself knew, and patiently abided until that time was ready to be. This Neetra knew in turn, even as she heard the very stars that made up the universe chorusing Cherry’s song.

The instrumental had wended its way home. Night’s candles were burnt out, and suddenly it was ending. Sparkling dust-motes were in the sunset beams. All at once Neetra and Joe were less here than there, the palms of their hands questing for one last caress, lips whispering tearful words even as they snatched kisses from the growing golden glow. Unto this, Cherry and her band imparted the final strains.

The choir of three gave out the gentle crescendo. And in Nottingham, one girl’s bedroom was exhausted and still.

So, as Joe returned to the plasmodic planet where minutes ago a crew of interstellar traders had detected his psychic signal, and the friendly space-suited ones in their faceless spherical helmets heaved our grateful hero on board and set course for the nearest inhabited cluster, Neetra awoke in the gravelly doldrums of The Back Garden. Even while she had slumbered here, she made sure throughout to keep Joe and Gala’s newborn baby safely enclosed in her arms. Holding this small one our heroine rose quietly to her feet.

She was looking down the barrel of a gun. There stood The Chancellor, out of uniform and his skin a fungal green-grey, while close by sat his organic one-man hunter-starcraft.

“You won’t need that,” Neetra told him calmly. “I’m no danger to Baby Harbin here. As a matter of fact, one of the many things I managed to squeeze into today was risking my life to save his.”

“I am not aiming at you,” came back The Chancellor’s response.

Then Neetra understood. She said:

“But you’re not going to pull the trigger.”

It was neither a plea, nor even a question. The Chancellor, resignedly, lowered his firearm.

“If I were any kind of soldier, I would,” he declared. “The alternative course of action is daunting. I doubt my capacities for shouldering such a responsibility, and rightly fear the consequences should I fail. On which note, you might claim as much of an entitlement to his guardianship as I.”

But Neetra shook her head. “No,” she gently replied. “He’s all you have left of the one you loved. Believe me, I don’t mean for the last time I was with Joe to be the end.”

Courteously The Chancellor half-bowed. “I am not wholly unprepared,” he went on. “Indeed, you cannot be aware how long my thoughts dwelled on lines that were at least similar to what is now ahead. Of course, in those plans the child was to be mine, and Gala my wife. But was it not natural that my daydreams should once have taken such a shape? Nor that I should suppose my son would be named after the city where it all began?”

Neetra looked inquisitively at him. She could not quite follow this last sentence.

“That city and that day,” The Chancellor explained, knowing he was telling the story for the first time. “When I was still young, and fighting in the war we now call the Fourth Dark Advent. There, in a dark neglected library, a mysterious messenger out of the past first led me to The Prophecy of The Flame. That was the day I learned of my destiny, and of Gala and all that was to be. Thus it seemed to me only proper that our child’s name should honour that distant day, its snows and its gales and its wild revelations, out there on the remotest reaches of the Russian-Chinese border. Out there, in Manchukuo.”

It was the final piece of the puzzle. Neetra let her breath out long and slow.

“I’d really been wondering about that,” she exclaimed softly. “You know I grew up in China. Manchukuo, then? The old wartime name for that city. Which is called something else now.”

The Chancellor nodded. Somewhere in the tips of his moustache was the ghost of an incredulous smile.

“Rushing into the castle to come to Gala’s aid, and finding you and your future children there in the midst of your latest implausible engagement…yes, it struck me, when I heard you speaking that name aloud,” he admitted. “But my fantasy was only ever of the most private, and already by then seemed fated never to be. So I convinced myself it was no more than a curious coincidence. Given my supposed expertise on the space-time-continuum, I ought to have known better.”

“I’ll tell you the one thing The Four Heroes ever learned for sure about that subject,” Neetra contributed in return. “It’s that love can make a difference. Promise me you’ll remember that, Chancellor, through everything that’s to come.”

This was acknowledged. From there, all passed in something of a blur for Neetra as The Chancellor holstered his gun, and she handed the baby into his arms. Then in what felt like the very next second, she was alone, watching as twin blue-glowing dots from the hunter’s afterburners receded into the hugeness of tomorrow.

“Raise him well, old soldier,” whispered Neetra. “The future’s in your hands now.”

So saying she turned, and looked to the stars beyond The Back Garden. It was time.

More than a teleport, more than any deployment of The Four Heroes’ powers ever hitherto beheld, and Neetra was away across the constellations. Though this galaxy was vast, our heroine no longer feared losing herself among those billions of twinkling glints. They were spirits to watch over her on her journey until she was home.

It didn’t matter how long it took, or how far she had to go. She would see Joe again one day. Everyone else could say she was wrong, but Neetra wouldn’t care. What they had shared in that moment was something she would gladly devote the rest of her life to seeking. Maybe love was the loneliest choice of all, but it was love Neetra had chosen.

Its refusal to bend or alter, its determination to bear out, was its strength. Love like that was our heroine’s assurance that wherever her wanderings led her, and whatever happiness or hurt may befall her between, the day would come that saw her safely in Joe’s arms. Certain of this at last Neetra sailed on, riding out the solar slipstream and coasting clear by the edge of doom, to find her way back to him.

THE END