by T Swanepoel
Chapter 9 – Star studded
It was reassuring, looking up every now and then as I walked on campus over the next two days, to see one of the Reds close by. They made me feel both safe and important. It was usually Benjamin and Wilfred, as they did the day shifts. I really enjoyed their company, not that we talked much, but every now and then one of them would pass me and smile or hold a door open for me. It felt like I had two caring older brothers, or at least I thought that was what it would feel like having older brothers.
This feeling of safety worked extremely well with my new attitude of being in control. I felt like my old self again, comfortable in my own skin, in spite of the haunting image of Alex in my head. His condition was still the same, and the doctors hadn’t made a diagnosis yet. And the emergency meeting was still in progress, according to my mom’s message yesterday.
Lisa too was a little more controlled, but still worried out of her mind. She had spent all her time next to Alex’s bed since Monday. I took notes for her wherever I could; it also helped a little with my guilty conscience.
The things that Lisa had told me only made me more assertive. It was true; it was a part of me. I believed it, no matter how unreal it sounded to a sane mind.
As always, Jennifer chose the seat closest to the paying point of the dining hall. It was amusing; she was really thrilled when she first saw Benjamin and Wilfred. She winked and smiled and winked and smiled, pulling out all the stops. I wondered what Benjamin and Wilfred thought about this little eager beaver next to me. It was my chance to surprise her for once, so I kept absolutely quiet, smothering the giggle I felt coming on.
“Hey, Val. We have a pair on the way. Take a look,” she said, pointing in their direction and smiling from ear to ear. She noticed my grin and possibly interpreted it as enthusiasm. She watched them like a hawk while they dished up and then paid. Benjamin turned and looked around a bit, and then smiled when he noticed me.
“They’re heading this way!” Jennifer whispered in a high-pitched voice, without taking her eyes off them.
The two Reds walked straight to our table and stopped.
“Hi, guys. Do you want to join me and my friend for lunch?” Jennifer wheedled.
“Thank you, that’ll be great,” Wilfred answered with a slight frown.
“I’m Jennifer and this is Valerie,” she introduced with a lilt in her voice.
I slapped my hand over my mouth in an attempt not to laugh out loud. The poor girl thought they reacted to her flirting.
“Hi, Jennifer, I’m Wilfred and this is Benjamin,” Wilfred answered with a big smile on his face. He understood the situation immediately, and so did Benjamin.
“Guys, please sit down?” Jennifer invited.
I couldn’t get out one single word and she gave me a hard elbow nudge as Wilfred sat down next to her and Benjamin next to me. But Jennifer didn’t hold back at all. It wasn’t a moment before she moved closer to Wilfred.
I couldn’t hold it in any longer and burst out laughing, Wilfred and Benjamin joining in.
“What?” she asked annoyed. “Why are you all laughing?”
“Jennifer, these are my friends.”
She blinked slowly before answering. “They’re with you?” she asked, peeved.
“Yes, like I said. I met them over the weekend and invited them over for lunch yesterday.”
“Okay, cool. But tell me, just friends, or dating friends?” she asked, suddenly her old, happy self again.
This doggy doesn’t leave the bone until it’s completely finished, I thought.
“Just friends,” I quickly answered.
For the rest of the lunch she completely ignored me and put all her focus on Wilfred. With batting eyelashes and a seductive tone, she asked him about his studies and his background. I stopped listening after a while and turned to Benjamin.
“How are Leo and Peter doing? I mean, with the night shift and all?”
“They’re fine. We are used to this kind of thing, you know.”
“I know, you’ve told me. But I still feel guilty, everybody changing their lifestyles to protect me.”
“Don’t see it like that. We were trained for this, we’ve been waiting for it. And it’s not your fault people want to kill you... or kidnap you.”
My eyes went wide. I hadn’t thought about abduction. That would be worse. Who knows what they would do to me. I’d probably be a lab rat! I shivered and Benjamin noticed.
“What class do you have after lunch?” he flew off at a tangent.
“ Philosophy.”
“And is it a subject you like?” he asked, interested.
“Not really, although it might be more interesting today. We’re having a guest speaker about evolution.”
“Sounds interesting.”
“You can come with if you want to. It’s a full class and no one will notice a stranger.”
“No thanks, that’s fine. I’ve had my fair share of classes and lectures. I’d rather just wait outside for you.”
By this time, we were all finished and it was almost time for class.
Jennifer offered to clean up after the guys. They left with a promise of meeting for lunch again the next day.
They were barely out of sight when she turned to me. “Thanks, Val. You’re a real pal,” she said angrily. “Make fun of me; humiliate me in front of Ben and Wil.”
I’d already forgotten about the silly episode and was caught a little off guard. “Jennifer, I didn’t mean to humiliate you. You took over and didn’t give me a chance to introduce them,” I twisted the truth a little. And now we are even, I thought. I owed her one for the blind date and the silly outfit she had given me.
“Oh, come on. You know that’s not true.”
“Look, you can believe me or not. I didn’t mean to humiliate you.” It came out harshly and I regretted my reaction immediately. I was the guilty party here. She didn’t answer me, so I tried again. “I’ll make it up to you – I’ll buy you dinner tonight?”
“No.” And then grudgingly, “I’ll think about it.”
I decided not to tell her about the other two as it would only get her more worked up. I felt impatient with her persistent stubbornness. I’d already apologised for something minutely small.
“I need to go to class now, see you later, okay?”
“Fine,” and she walked away, leaving all the dishes on the table.
I sighed and collected the trays. The class was about to start in two minutes and I hurried out. Benjamin spotted me immediately from the bench underneath a big oak and trailed along a few feet distant.
By the time I reached the class, the professor was already busy, a funny looking round little man, not like the other professors. He didn’t look up at all, just continued as if no one was in the room. I didn’t want to interrupt him, so I didn’t apologise. He was one of those lecturers that ignored the entire universe around him and continued with his lecture no matter what.
Usually students responded to such an attitude by not paying any attention at all. Fair enough, the topic wasn’t the most interesting in the world. But it was a compulsory subject.
The room was very full, and I had to settle for a chair in the third row. I paged to the next open page in my notebook and started writing down the stuff on the board. It was all history and definitions, mind-numbing stuff. The rhythmic drone of his voice made me sleepy and my mind wandered. It drifted back to the incident with Jennifer.
Suddenly something happened in front. I heard a thumping sound and then the class exploded with laughter.
“What happened?” I whispered to the girl in the row behind me.
“His foot got stuck on something and he fell down, probably because he couldn’t see over his big round waist,” she laughed.
It was kind-of funny, but I felt rather sorry for the Professor. He got up with a bit of an effort and went on as if nothing had happened. He didn’t even wait for the class to settle down; he simply picked up from where he’d stopped.
Every now and then, I looked at my watch. It felt as if time was standing still. I hated classes like this; it was such a frustration and waste of time. I picked up my pen and started writing again. There was a new cure for insomnia, I thought: this little professor’s voice, combined with the hum of voices around me.
The period was almost finished when I dozed off a little. Then, somewhere in the midst of a semi-sleeping trance, a phrase caught my ears. I sat up and started listening again. He had said something about the sun being alive.
My heart pounded and my ears swooshed. I didn’t like asking questions in class, especially not a full philosophy class, but I had to make sure that I had heard correctly.
“But, Professor, do you really believe it is possible for the sun, a star, to be alive?” I had to speak up above the buzz of voices from where I sat in the third row. No one was listening. They thought the Professor was just a big fat joke. And his overweight, wobbly appearance made him even more ridiculous, not to mention his bald Bozo-the-clown hairstyle.
He stopped writing on the board and turned towards the class.
“Who asked that question?” The noise level died down a bit. He had never spoken to anyone directly before.
I raised my hand slightly but enough for him to see me. He frowned before answering.
“It is not a question of whether it is alive. It is a question of form.”
The noise level from disinterested students climbed even higher than before.
I nodded and stuck my shaking hands deep into my pockets. I wanted to ask more, but the time was up and I didn’t want to attract any more attention to myself; I’d rather ask him afterwards.
Some of the students had stood up already, without giving him a chance to finish.
“Thank you, Ladies and Gentlemen. Next week Professor Greenwald will be back,” he said and walked out.
I tried my best to squeeze quickly past the huddle of people, but by the time I had reached the door, he was gone.
I grabbed the closest student, a tall geekish guy, by the arm. “What was his surname?”
“Whose surname?” he asked, frowning down at me.
“The Professor who gave the lecture just now.” Who else, I thought.
“Can’t remember, I think he said it was Rosenbaum.”
“Thanks.”
Outside, I looked around for Benjamin.
With the Professor’s answer fresh in my mind, I suddenly remembered that Peter had said that they were the four closest red dwarfs. Was it possibly the closest red dwarf stars? When Lisa had explained it all to me, I had the impression that these ‘links’ were with planets. Now the stars were also a possibility.
Wow! How cool was that? Stars have such immeasurable amounts of energy and mass; they would have to be super strong people. Suddenly the Reds seemed even more impressive to me, although technically red dwarf stars are smaller and colder than regular white stars. Suddenly there was a new dimension to this secret world: stars. Stars! Who would ever believe this? Stars amongst us!
The hair on my arms stood up. Maybe this was why my memories of being out there in the wild at night felt so strong and alive, as if I had been watched. Someone had been watching over me. Or rather the stars had, not only the planets! Stars, with such massive energy that they fuse.
Surely Lisa made a mistake when she had said that I was the most powerful human on earth? She clearly didn’t know about this.
It also meant that someone had a connection with the sun as well. Could it be Duncan? Some of the recent events lined up in my mind and I tried to put two and two together. The sunspots, the mobile interference, the eight minutes Duncan had mentioned. No, it wasn’t Duncan. Duncan was afraid of the sun; that I was sure about. I clearly remembered the fear on his face and then his words:
“Oh no! He is… here! Has it… been… eight minutes… already?”
Whoever had a connection with the sun, he or she was on the other side, my personal enemy. He or she was the villain, the one behind all of this. It felt scary, the thought of someone as strong as the sun on the other side. Who knew what this person would be capable of, with such power in their possession?
I thought about the sun, all the facts that I had learned, and one thing stood out: the sun’s gravity is so strong that it holds all the planets in the solar system in orbit. It literally holds it all together. This person was incredibly powerful.
I stopped in my tracks and looked up at the sun. It felt wrong, the thought of the sun being anything but good. I had always associated the sun with good and warmth and life. Life on earth exists because of the sun; how could it be bad?
But I trusted Duncan. How did he fit into all of this? My guess was that he had a link with Mars.
I was almost at the dorm, when Benjamin came running towards me.
“Hey Benjamin, what’s going on?”
“Hi, Val. Something terrible has happened,” he gasped, out of breath.
“What, Ben, what?”
“It’s Alex. He’s gone.”
“What do you mean gone? How can he be gone? He’s in a coma! It isn’t possible for him to stand up and walk out, you know! Unless someone kidnapped him. Oh. Oh no! Someone kidnapped Alex? Is that what’s happened?”
He nodded. “They’re getting serious, I’ll tell you that. Someone wants you, and they are willing to stop at nothing.”
My throat closed up with fright. “But, but... how is that possible? What about Lisa? Is she okay? Wasn’t she with him?”
“Lisa is here now, in her room, but in a state. She said that she had gone to the hospital’s little coffee shop to get something to drink and when she returned, he was gone.”
My eyes widened. They could have captured her as well.
“Don’t panic, Valerie, me and Wilfred will stay here: we won’t leave you. You remain our first priority,” he assured me.
“When did all of this happen?”
“About an hour or so back. Lisa immediately phoned Peter and we all rushed there. We looked and sensed all over the place, but he was gone.”
“Poor Lisa.” If I knew Lisa, she blamed herself for this.
“Yep, poor girl’s in a state. But listen, it’s not safe to phone. The conversation between Lisa and Peter was definitely overheard.”
“Do you think my phone is bugged...as well?” I asked. It felt more and more like a conversation from some or other high-tech spy movie.
“Possibly. But listen now, please, just take care of yourself. I’ll be around, watching closely,” his green eyes were begging. He hesitated. “Don’t go anywhere strange, keep close to the dorm at all times. Promise me?” he insisted.
Why wouldn’t I? I thought.
“Promise.”
***