Ulysses, Chapter Three

By the time he’d returned home and fed the cats, Joe was just about ready to put his feet up. Climbing to the attic, he plucked a video tape from the shelf and slotted it in without looking at the label, then threw himself down and surrendered to the inevitable side-effects of exhaustion from overwork.

All joking apart though, Joe knew he was lucky to be leading such a life. For he was happy, and the best part about that was not having to apologise for being so.

Oh, this one again?

For a random choice, it seemed to turn up a good deal these days. Joe could almost believe his subconscious was trying to tell him something.

Still, it was one of the very best episodes, and well worth a rewatch. Never would Joe forget how it had thrilled him the first time it was on, to which milestone this spluttering old recording presumably dated. How long ago was that? Long enough for the uncommonly high-stakes adventure to have been gripping stuff. A hapless protagonist, tricked by the villain, was stranded in a strange land with amnesia to add to his troubles. The scene where he threw away his magic sword, not even knowing what it was anymore, brought Joe’s child-self well and truly upon him.

Gripping? Try traumatic. There was no going back now.

All rather different, Joe reflected, to the pleasant stupor he was fast sinking into. Today, the installment which had once so shocked him was like a faithful friend.

Yet how it had stayed with him that first evening. The terror it should be all over, that the villain had triumphed at last. Had Joe felt a need to express these fears, despite the episode’s inevitable happy ending? Yes, he was certain he had. Even slipping off to sleep, he could see it now. A drawing, or a dream, or maybe even just a picture in his head of the villain swollen to monstrous size, having gorged himself on plundered secrets, while the princesslike defender of these languished helpless in his overgrown grasp. The very idea that one so unutterably lovely to Joe should ever have been threatened thus.

She’d been wearing a gag too. The villain must have put it on her. Even as a small child Joe hadn’t been one to skimp on detail when a topic held his interest.

Incredible, how it never left you.

The attic’s aged portable was by now mere colour and noise, and Joe’s eyelids were nearing their final droop of the day.

There, before him on the square screen, glowed that terrifying tableau which no studio but his own imagination had supplied.

It awed him. The villain wasn’t the only one who’d enlarged, because the television image seemed to be filling the room. Nor was that giant menacing figure the one Joe had expected, but rather a silhouette of darkness with red eyes and a ragged grey cloak. This was anything but a cackling cartoonish creation, but nor was the shape unknown to Joe. Its familiarity was what made it unsettling. In a way Joe couldn’t comprehend, his thoughts at the funeral on fathers and sons somehow entered into it.

The female hostage had changed too. She’d become a little girl. Her simple green dress was of Chinese design, and there were yellow ribbons in her hair.

Surely she’d lived here? Long ago?

This little replacement heroine slipped her captor’s clutches, removed her gag, and began to climb down from the television’s frame. Joe watched as with small hands clasped on that black plastic proscenium she hauled herself free, then sat down on the rim to lower her feet upon the attic floorboards. The cell-animated chaos she’d put behind her ceased to be.

Whereas in the smile she gave Joe, was everything.

Patiently, without reproach, the little girl took him by the hand. It was all Joe could do to rise and let her lead him, those wide brown eyes of hers having told their tale. Through the tapestry of the past she wove and showed Joe into golden light, then along a corridor that bore no relation to the place where he had been, and so down outdoor stairs at night. More was returning with each second that passed. By the time they reached the collection of space-racers parked in the lot below, Joe had remembered what these were and which was his and how to start it up.

Whether the little girl climbed into the passenger-seat alongside him was something he couldn’t quite say. He thought perhaps she did. But it felt as if her work was done, and as Joe lit his thrusters and forged skyward for the black, her quiet but supportive presence seemed less and less there.

Presently it dawned on Joe where he was going, and soon after that the destination drew in sight, two spaceships which hulked like derelicts on the planet’s luminous halo. The larger was the one in which Joe and Mini-Flash Splitsville had arrived – the names were rushing back on him now – which meant the other must be Flashshadow’s and Mini-Flash Juniper’s. Joe locked co-ordinates on his and made all deliberate speed for the shuttle-bay.

Stumbling into cold metal corridors, he was most manifestly alone. His small companion had helped him all she could.

The ship’s chronometers informed him it hadn’t been anything like as long as it seemed since he was last on board. That was to be expected, since Joe knew time tended to run differently when you were dealing with psionic realms. Even so, it had been more than long enough. Joe threw himself down at the communications array, weakly, shuddering as the magnitude of it gradually came home to him.

This so-called mission had spiralled to catastrophe, and it was all his fault.

He’d had the chance to end it, while he was still able, but had chosen not to.

Now four of the girls on whom this galaxy depended were lost somewhere in the morass of his mind. The one small mercy was he knew where Mini-Flash Robin and Presh were. Once he’d reacquainted them with reality, they could all devote their every effort to locating the Special Program, along with Sonica and Joe’s other self.

Always assuming he and the cowboy hadn’t combined into one person by now, which under the circumstances wouldn’t have surprised him.

Desperately he sought the communicator controls, knowing he must raise Nottingham before he went back in. Greater psychic power than he commanded was going to be called for if he was to pull his people out of there. This crisis required Neetra, and that was the least of the reasons Joe yearned to hear her voice. All would be well again, if he could only speak to Neetra…

The transmitters were still booting-up when there came a laugh.

Sniggering, malicious, high.

Strangely like the sound of shears.

Joe shot about to behold mad eyes and glinting teeth and every last bit of a lean muscled body which wore deadly scissors on the wrists.

It was Schiss-Zazz.

Flying from his seat Joe ignited both hands and lit the darkened bridge with flame, striving to pin his attacker from a distance. That one however, terrifyingly fast, scaled the bulkhead on his bare toes and went over the fireballs instead of around them. Joe compensated, his own soles mounting the perpendicular as ongoing salvos slagged service-panels and torched the chair in which he’d sat, but when he and Schiss-Zazz alighted again they did so face-to-face.

As they had duelled on Nereynis, so they resumed here. Sparks made the surrounding shadows dance in giant blocky figures as lethal blades and fiery fists rebounded from each other on every drive and whirl. Last time these enemies had fought to a standstill, but here only one of them was at his peak, and finally Schiss-Zazz seized the advantage. Toppling Joe, he leered with lust and flung back one arm, the scissors thereon springing apart for that terrible terminal plunge.

The fatal snip which would cleave Joe’s thread in twain…

Our hero started awake, outstretched on the attic couch. His video tape had played to the end. Silent static was the sum of the television screen.

It was a very long time before Joe felt ready to reach for the remote. Prior to that he could do no more than lie still, and breathe.

What were they putting in that sweet-and-sour sauce?

Definitely time to downscale from twenty nuggets to nine. Or at any rate, Robin would henceforth be welcome to more of his than just one.

In fact, when next Joe planned to cook for himself, he’d do so.

At least that way you knew what you were getting.

Happily, the dream was already starting to fade. A few disconcerting fragments were all that remained, naked lunatics and imagery straight out of science fiction and a bewildering assortment of faces and names which even now had ceased to carry any meaning. Today perhaps had been too much after all. Joe had made that joke to himself earlier on, but thinking about it, the funeral and Morag and then those two girls and Robin and that particular cartoon. Funny sort of day all round. You could tell as much from the impression it had left. Fire shooting out of his hands?

Tomorrow he’d better take it easy.

At long last Joe switched the old portable off, followed by the video. Then he settled on the sofa and rested, after having made a slight adjustment to his hat.

Nothing to fear.

He was safe and sound in Ithaca.

THE END