Wildflower, Chapter Four

So much for swine. But speaking of sending people out of the country, Neetra had ground to make up.

She and Mini-Flash Juniper faced each other over a strip of shore. The miracle of Neetra’s magic mud was that after working its wonders it slipped from skin without leaving so much as a smudge, so she was clean as could be and smelled great for her interview even if it was the first one she’d officiated thus. Her interviewee however seemed to have taken one look at the panel and started getting ready herself. The boots were already off, and the tunic was next. Less than a minute ago Neetra would have thought her job done, because Mini-Flash Juniper was preparing to leave.

“Never in my young life have I been made to feel so uncomfortable,” she declared. “I don’t even specifically mean the Fringers, because that’s the sort of thing that does happen, but the conduct of your male Mini-Flashes towards me has been shocking. If this is what boys are, I shall never serve out to others. There,” and having taken off her white panties folded them neatly and put them at perfect right-angles on top of the uniform she’d already set down on the sand.

“You may wear those to go home in,” said the gracious one. “Then see you return them to Mini-Flash Splitsville. She’s my friend.”

This last, besides being a veiled criticism, was spoken with fierce pride. Neetra said: “Wait.”

The other, surprised, looked at her across Nottingham’s first nudist beach. Maybe Mini-Flash Splitsville had had a point about volleyball.

“I was about to send you packing myself,” Neetra confessed. “But Juniper, listen. It’s true. I don’t understand you. You’re Special Program, and the galaxy doesn’t understand you yet. Problem is, we all keep trying to make sense of you only on the terms we do know. When The Flash Club’s sports and combat drill wasn’t working, their response was to drill you harder. No wonder you made a break for it. And just today, someone I could quite fancy using as a Flashball right now played me by showing me a supervillain when he knew that was what I wanted to see. Like I was still a cheesy little girl with yellow ribbons in her hair, vanquishing megalomaniacs in the old Nottingham.”

Neetra reached out both hands. Mini-Flash Juniper, as one awed, slowly raised hers and took them.

“The coming conflict’s not going to be two little armies pinging lasers back and forth, or Harbin sitting in a big ray-gun firing it at us,” our heroine explained. “We can’t fight what’s ahead the way we used to. Joe’s closest to getting that, even though he had to hear it from someone else. No-one knows what part girls like you are going to play. But if you don’t fit here in Nottingham, driving you off isn’t the answer. Finding out how you do fit is. And we can only do that if you stay.”

Mini-Flash Juniper seemed to be thinking about it. “So your boyfriend will teach me when he returns?” she asked.

Neetra suppressed a well-meaning snort of laughter as she pictured Joe trying to handle this girl alone. “I’ll probably start looking in on his class around then,” she told Juniper kindly. “So how about it? Feel like giving us a second chance?”

What Neetra saw next was proof enough her first impression of Mini-Flash Juniper hadn’t been wrong. She really was adorable when she smiled. Our heroine hoped she’d have more reason to do so from now on.

“Were you taking a bath?” Juniper asked her at last. “And if so, can I try it out?”

Neetra grinned back.

“Anytime,” she promised. “Just come as you are.”

The rubber armour Neetra had ordered hadn’t been delivered yet. That was too bad, because it would have been just the thing to wear while she was marching as to war.

Before her the command centre doors swished open, and there was Scientooth in his shaft.

“So you were lying through your tin teeth about the pheromones,” Neetra greeted him. Her own teeth weren’t made of tin, but they were gritted.

“If you know as much, then you know also it is of no consequence,” Scientooth retorted smoothly. “A small and necessitous deception. The threat I sought to eradicate was real enough, and interference on your part was factored-in and ruled out. Yet you interfered regardless. And so the threat remains,” he finished splendidly.

“What you did wasn’t any different to what I might have expected of you,” Neetra told him. “I’m mad because of what you nearly had me do. After your Fringers and your lies I was all set to send Mini-Flash Juniper away. Denying her the care and guidance of our cause, so she’d have just one place left to run. If she wasn’t already in Harbin’s hands she would have been then. Your actions to end her supposed threat came this close to bringing it about. Why are you robots all alike?”

She knew the answer though, which was why she wouldn’t let herself be too angry at Scientooth. That wasn’t only because without her he’d stand a pocket-calculator’s chance of surviving The Foretold One. Scientooth’s acting in unwitting accordance with the pattern for lifeless things, and the mystery of the Special Program visiting itself on Nottingham in earnest, were no more or less than confirmation of what few truths The Four Heroes had thus far gleaned on how the coming conflict was going to be. There was no doubt it was all beginning.

So, Neetra looked Scientooth in the monocle and confined herself to: “She’s staying, and she’s off-limits. Got that?”

“And what of the somewhat weighty contingency you yourself acknowledge?” Scientooth inquired. “Should the girl prove indeed to be a catspaw of your nemesis, what then?”

Neetra put her hands on her hips.

“Then she’ll have some explaining to do,” our heroine declared. “Kind of like you’ve left me with. And I bet it’s not even occurred to you I’d have a slightly easier job of that if this business hadn’t left Mini-Flash Juniper short one pair of shorts.”

No sooner were her words spoken than a second spotlight picked out the missing membrane, hanging on a rack within easy reach of Neetra’s very fingertips.

“All ready for the little organic who fears for my ability to read the future,” Scientooth sang, his mock-courteousness setting new standards for mockery.

Neetra whipped the garment from its frame.

“He often meets his destiny on the road he takes to avoid it,” said she. “You’re not the first robot I’ve had to tell that to. The other one lied to me like you did. Try it again and I’ll show you what happened to him.”

With that our heroine turned her back and walked, through the doors and down the steel steps to trade Stronghold for sun. Overnight the heatwave had broken and early autumn was in the air. Bars of clean white cloud were tracking obliquely in the direction of dusk as Neetra crossed to the kerbside, where Flashshadow and Mini-Flash Splitsville had pulled up in the latter’s black hot-rod and Mini-Flash Juniper was bringing Neetra’s own space-car around. Climbing inside and taking over the wheel she handed the membrane to her passenger at once, who was grateful and told her not to worry about it. Then they were off, first for the Town Hall to take a long-awaited four-way dip in Neetra’s tub, after which they were meeting Sludge-Man who they’d doubtless drag later to Dean’s poetry-slam, where they were all certain to end up on the open mic and make utter fools of themselves and have a great time one and all.

THE END