Supply and Demand, Chapter One

Neetra was in the back seat of Wodding’s space-rover, watching through her window as the short stretch of cosmos between Flaban and the industrial belt passed by. Up in front sat Mini-Flash Robin with tunic-skirt tidily under-tucked, and beside him the great grub himself in pinstriped business-suit, his tank-treaded wheelchair locked securely behind the steering-stick.

“Now, this one,” Wodding commenced chuckling. “You should have heard her at the dinner, lad! What was it again? You’d come to search the store for a toy range whose name and makers you didn’t even know? Ooh, we did laugh. The tricks of the second gender! Not that you haven’t had a taste of that yourself,” he added sympathetically to Robin, then continued in spirits every bit as high as before: “Ah, but now we’re getting to it! Prolepsis Toys, eh? Can’t say I’m surprised! Well, I pity anyone in my line who’s ever foolish enough to turn down one of these delegations from Nottingham, that’s all I can say. If they only knew what they’d be missing…!”

Some of this registered on Neetra in back, and she gave Wodding a smile via his rear-view mirror. Her mind, however, was barely even on the same plane.

She’d made contact. And she’d learned at least a little.

This had included the enigmatic tip that started Neetra and her companions out on their journey this morning, but during congress with her strange new friend she’d also been able to confirm her suspicions as to what he and the other stalking warlike robots were. Not that that was a topic on which Neetra could exactly claim expertise. Her awareness of the vast primordial spirit-beings which occasionally visited their influence on this galaxy had up until now been limited to hearing about the one Joe and Flashtease encountered at Disqualification Tablet the day they met Mini-Flash Splitsville. Apparently their Brumber was of the same stamp as this colossal machine-god which looked in nightly through Neetra’s hotel room window to invite her to his ravaged otherworld. Our heroine didn’t know why he looked like a toy from Wodding’s private collection, but it went without saying such entities were able to take any form.

One thing Neetra did know however was that Brumber had been anything but safe. That was why she had no illusions that making deals with another of his kind would prove to be any safer.

The factory where Prolepsis Toys made its Four Heroes action figures was nothing like that antiquated pile to which Joe had taken a liking. Neetra, who before last night couldn’t have even said for sure what trade-name she had to thank for the Limb Four range, was impressed by how gleaming and modern everything was and especially how well the telephone-extensions worked. For although our heroine only heard the first panicky communication made by the receptionist on their arrival, she didn’t need psychic powers to sense several successive ones pinging with great alacrity all the way to the top.

After only a very short wait in the foyer, the regional manager appeared. He looked like his day was off to a bad start, not that there was any need for Neetra to guess at this. Nor did she imagine a curtsey from herself and Mini-Flash Robin would be apt to cheer him up, though that happened to be the very reason she so enjoyed treating him to her prettiest.

The regional manager spread wide his hand. He only had one, which was large and grew out of the middle of his body.

“What an honour this is,” he pronounced with great pomp, and a false smile easily the span of his palm. “The Four Heroes, in person, as it were. I do hope you’ve been pleased so far with our efforts at immortalizing in some small way your noble deeds. Which is not to say we’re running a charity here, but you can rest assured that all-important cause of yours inspires us just as much as any of the more mundane commercial objectives. Now, as to your request though. Please try to understand that the project you refer to – and by the way, I’d be most interested in knowing how you came to hear of it in the first place…?” he hinted hopefully.

“You wouldn’t believe me,” Neetra told him, and meant it. “But you have my word none of your employees are to blame.”

“Be that as it may, we’re at what we call a sensitive stage,” the regional manager went on. “Especially since some unique circumstances have of necessity been in force, so…”

There it was. Just as Neetra’s new friend had promised.

Patiently she listened on, all the while thinking she should have power-dressed, and as soon as the spiel was over proceeded in lieu of shoulder-pads:

“Let me break it down for you. All we’re asking is to look. We don’t want anything else, no free samples or exclusive interviews, and you can take my word again we won’t even tell anyone what we’ve seen. This is something to do with our cause, so I’m sure an authority on that subject like yourself will understand. Just in case you don’t though, understand this. The alternative is we leave right now, and share what my source has already told me with every toy-trade paper in the galaxy.”

The wretched regional manager squirmed.

“If, perhaps, as a gesture of respect for our confidentiality, you might ask your aide to wait out here…?” was his last wheedling plea-bargain.

In the name of the two moons. Poor Mini-Flash Robin looked most downcast. Still, if that was what it took.

“Sorry, Robin, but business is business,” Neetra said. “That’s an old Earth-expression. When we’re back on Flaban I’ll get you one of those cold custard tarts you like.”

So saying she reverted to the regional manager.

“In that case,” said he, with an air of resignation, “you might as well come this way.”

The manager, whose name in fact turned out to be Hand, led Neetra and Wodding to a locked conference-suite and keyed in his security-code with his hand.

“It’s not finished yet,” he advised, as the doors swished open.

A promotional hub and exhibition-event was fast shaping up for the new product rollout to which it owed its ongoing genesis. The partitions were done, and every vertical face which carved the shell into stylish alcoves was of shiny black daubed with neon pink lettering. A logo writ large like phosphorescent lipstick-scrawl glared at Neetra as from the bedroom mirrors of a dozen teenage girls:

4-H-N’s SECRET

And there, directly ahead in giant cardboard-cutout form, was 4-H-N herself. Looking secretive.

Wodding for his part looked like all his hatching-days had come at once. “The next range?” he breathed. “But there’s been no press-conference, not even an announcement!”

“No, there hasn’t,” agreed Hand, rather sourly.

Neetra was already scanning the text which embellished her little sister’s lofty likeness:

Nothing new about the second gender teasing with a secret – as any male Mini-Flash can testify! Only our galaxy’s stuffy sweetheart never was one to do things by halves. What 4-H-N knows, she just won’t tell, and soon she’ll have the populous quadrant’s pants in such a twist that…

It was no good, Neetra had to stop. Why did this distant corner of the cosmos always insist on reading 4-H-N through its own peculiar lens? Perhaps because she’d joined The Flash Club, which was something that made sense to the various peoples here. At any rate, our heroine had to hand it to Hand. If she’d wanted to chime with the advertising-copy she’d have ventured 4-H-N herself didn’t keep her knickers under such close wraps as those with which he’d attempted to obscure these fawnings from the genetic originator who’d made them possible. Never mind Solidities and Back Gardens and First and Final Wars. Transplant any of this galaxy’s businesses to Earth and they’d last about two minutes against the human superweapon called a lawyer.

“There’ll be a full line-up of carded action figures here, larger boxed items below, and on the opposite side we’re planning out dioramas for these display-cases,” Hand continued to Wodding, who in all fairness was a far more receptive audience for his guided tour than Neetra was. “A big interactive unit in this space, we’re having it made to order, picture and light and music and all sorts. Very expensive, so it’s sure to be good. Ah, and here’s something that actually is ready, a blow-up of the back-of-the-box art for this wall. You two are the first to see it.”

Neetra joined Wodding as he rolled with great enthusiasm after the regional manager. That one singlehandedly tugged the curtain-cord, and a mighty mural was unveiled before them.

END OF CHAPTER ONE