Plastic with Die-Cast Parts, Chapter Three

Now those were silk sheets.

Bearing in mind what Wodding and his people were, Neetra guessed they made them themselves. You could really feel the difference. Never mind complimentary action figures, was she going to be able to swing a free set of these? She wasn’t quite sure it was right to ask though because her bed in Nottingham was so big.

It would have been a shame to wear a nightie when every bit of you wanted to luxuriate in the sensation. The warm flickering oil-lamps of her hotel room were to Neetra’s mind far more inviting than any pretty pallid ponds of colour generated by Flaban girls. Her window was open again on the night, and gossamer drapes lifted lightly to admit more of that lovely damp straw smell. It mingled rather nicely with her, if Neetra did say so.

She hoped Robin was enjoying his sheets too. He must look really sweet, sleeping in his pants with that action figure doubtless cuddled to one cheek. This she thought throatily, smelling.

How he’d blinked his eyes. And how he’d looked like someone else when he did it.

She was so asking Wodding for a full bedroom set.

If only Joe were here. Neetra had already decided they’d honeymoon on Flaban. This hotel room, these sheets. What she’d accomplish on this trip alone had taken hold of her like wildfire. There were more than old invoices in Wodding’s storeroom. Neetra would make certain of that. In fact she wouldn’t have been surprised if she brought Joe back a big box of mint-on-card monsters, and probably a volcano playset or two. How pleased with her he’d be. Eventually. Because they were destined for hours and hours of delicious aching between their reunion and her surrendering the last scrap of compendious knowledge gleaned here.

Oh, he was going to have to work for it. She loved teasing. Mini-Flash Robin was only an appetizer. Now Neetra’s bumcheeks tingled in prelude to what she was going to make Joe do.

Those oil-lamps were giving her ideas. Once or twice she’d been able to persuade him to use his powers a bit. Ooh, that sizzle.

Definitely find out the television programme’s title.

That had to be good for that.

Not that just thinking about it wasn’t nice. Neetra rubbed her face and lips on the silk, murmuring. Her little nostrils were in rapture. She rolled over and the backs of her legs dipped into cool creamy pools. Neetra gulped and scrunched up the sheets between her toes…

Jenny, though.

Poor Jenny.

And all at once, palms that had been occupied were at a loose end. Quietly Neetra lowered them to the soft surface on either side of her and lay, breathing, but still.

Poor Jenny. She might never enjoy this now.

Talking about her to Mini-Flash Robin had brought her to Neetra’s mind. It was just like The Foretold One to take what was natural and right, and use it to hurt somebody.

He was horrible.

His mother had been the first person Neetra ever hated. She’d told her so. Now it turned out that what she’d hated lived on after her.

The pair of them weren’t happy ruining something unless they ruined it forever.

Well, they could try, Neetra thought fiercely. Yet even as she did so, she was forced to confront her own powerlessness in the matter. All her Four Heroes abilities, and all her care for the strange Special Program friend she’d taken under her wing, were about as much use as the proverbial magic wand. There was no way to simply snap Jenny out of believing it was wrong and something she shouldn’t do anymore. If you wanted a definition of evil, look no further than Harbin. That it could be years from now, and Jen might have a minute to herself in surroundings even twice as nice as these – and want to – but still decide against it. Better not.

Like the girl hadn’t had enough troubles.

Neetra knew it was silly, her feeling guilty because of this. All the same, she left off, and stepping out of bed wandered to the window. A slight sheen on her body danced under the oil-lamps’ flame.

Night breezes gave the curtains their biggest gust so far.

Oh, Neetra observed. Right. The view outside had changed.

Over a blasted rockside red fires were raging, while gigantic shapes strode before a sky of battle-smoke and sulphur. The closest and greatest of these struck Neetra through with terror and awe. They didn’t make mechanisms like him these days. He was anthropomorphic only in the absolute basics of build, and no effort whatsoever had been made to smooth out his lines. The legs were too widely spaced apart, the breast too broad, and the spindly thighs out of proportion to the trapezoid skyscraper-sides on which he marched.

Neetra’s first thought was of the field-machines she’d seen earlier on, and he wasn’t totally dissimilar. He was no farm-boy though. He was a war-god.

So vast was he, and so angular, that his body’s geometry was best thought of in terms of north and east faces. Those insurmountable elevations turned away from the burning tumult were black, whereas vistas and planes inclined to the light glinted like mirrors of smooth grey steel. Towering atop it all was a helmeted physiognomy which like the rest of him had been sculpted in no more than passing homage to human lineaments. Pinched and ascetic, he was all brow and lips and chin. Proud features, beautiful even, but cold. His glaring yellow eyes, intelligent, pitiless, alien, shone down on Neetra through the open window.

She stared back.

It wasn’t a dream.

NEXT: "TREASURES"