Bells wore a white lab coat and had brought with her two suitcases. One was small and white, which she was carrying, and the other one, bulkier and heavy looking, Berossus carried for her. They strode with a rapid pace that made Evie pant.
‘Did you know the man at the Hoot Branch?’ Bells asked Evie as they passed through a corridor lined with green plants.
‘No,’ Evie said, and immediately thought, I answered too quickly. She swallowed.
‘Why’d you punch him then?’
Evie slowed down to catch her breath, and the doctor slowed her pace too. Then with a soft voice she said, ‘He was harassing me.’
Bells nodded. ‘I know. He was a loser.’
As they resumed their brisk pace, Evie let out a sigh of relief. Bells didn’t ask more about the incident, but Evie was left wondering if she knew more than she had let her believe.
Berossus walked in front of them, oblivious of what they talked about. Instead of his standard red T-shirt, he wore a blue collared shirt, which made him look almost presentable. He carried Bells’ big case with ease. Evie guessed it contained some specialist medical equipment.
Berossus’s mother lived in a full-service apartment close to the end of one the spokes, and from her window enjoyed a view over of two of the five spokes, which stretched their gargantuan tips for dozens of kilometres. The blue-belted planet Humuhumu gleamed far below in the light of the star Moola. The view outside was magnificent, but inside the room, Berossus’s mother was in worse condition than Evie had thought.
When they arrived, a plump nurse with a serious gaze opened the door. ‘You must be the family. She is bound to the bed, weakening by the day.’
Berossus walked up to his mother’s bed and lowered himself by her side. Evie could see her weak condition affecting Berossus. She opened her eyes, and the big bear leaned in for a long hug. Evie thought she saw tears in Berossus’s eyes, but could not be certain. He sat by her side, and they talked for a moment before Berossus waved Bells and Evie to join him by the bedside.
‘This here is Doctor Belinda Killock, and this is Evie Yeoh,’ he said, and gestured for them to come closer. ‘This is my mother, Inanna Dengo.’
She looked so frail. Evie had expected a thickset Andron woman, but Inanna looked like a tiny skeleton with loose skin pulled to cover her thin bones. How had she ever managed to give birth to Berossus? Evie thought. Hesitantly she said, ‘Pleased to meet you.’
Bells knelt by the bedside, and radiated amiability. ‘It is great to finally meet you in person. How are you feeling right now?’
She coughed, and squeezed the bed’s railing. With a feeble voice she said, ‘I’ve been better, thank you, but I am so glad to finally have you here. Berry, thank God you made it.’
Berry? What an interesting name for the big guy, Evie thought.
‘It’s all right, mother.’ Berossus stroked her white and grey hair.’ Dr Killock has all her equipment with her and she can start the treatment right now.’
‘That’s right.’ Bells touched Inanna’s arm, and smiled like she had brought Inanna deliverance; perhaps she had. ‘Is it OK for you to start with the tests?’
‘Certainly, dear,’ Inanna said with a hopeful expression. ‘I’ve been waiting for this for a long time.’
‘Evie,’ Berossus said, and bumped her shoulder, ‘come outside with me while they work?’
‘Sure thing.’ She felt like a bystander anyway. Inanna looked like a living corpse, with death by her door waiting to come in. Evie had no words for this situation, nor did she know what to do. She could only stand there and hope Bells could help the poor old lady.
‘Mother, I will leave you with the safe hands of Dr Killock. She’s a real specialist and will make you well.’ Berossus kissed his mother on the forehead, and stopped to look at her for a moment. Then he rose up and turned.
Evie followed Berossus out of the room. They went for a walk around the sector, following a spacious walkway with open ceiling views and colourful flowers growing on each side.
‘May I ask,’ Evie said as they strolled, ‘what is the condition your mother suffers from?’
‘It is a very rare case of phalaxymy, where the brain’s synapses fail to fire in the right order. It started with hallucinations, then progressed to making it difficult for her to perform daily tasks, and now it has started to interfere with the autonomous nervous system. That means the shutting down of the control of bodily functions. I hope we are not too late.’
Evie hadn’t heard of phalaxymy before, but that was no surprise as there were probably more diseases than there were stars above them. ‘Is Bells able to help her?’
Berossus was looking up too. ‘I hope so. She’s the best neuro-manipulator there is. If she can’t, no one can.’
They walked in silence for a long time. Compared to Star Bar, this spoke was eerily quiet. While on the same station, it was almost like another world. There were just a few older folks strolling around at a leisurely pace, and none of that neon-light flashing kitsch – only clean walkways decorated with neatly arranged flowers in vivid colours and subtle, calming scents.
‘You reckon Tredd will continue to Yedda and find the device he was looking for?’ Evie asked.
‘He will,’ Berossus said as they entered a viewpoint.
Evie leaned against the railing, and looked down at the man-made spokes in front of the gleaming planet and the glittering stars. This thing is huge, she thought. ‘What makes you think so?’
Berossus leaned on the railing by her side, admiring the same view. He didn’t respond instantly, but Evie knew he was not the type to do so – and that view would silence even a talkative person. Suddenly he said, ‘It’s obvious. You can see it in his eyes.’
‘I didn’t know Andron read people.’ Evie turned to look up at him.
He turned to look at her. ‘You don’t need much skill to read him.’
Evie smiled, then laughed out loud. It was not only what Berossus had said about Tredd – which seemed to be true – but also that this was the first time he had shown any sense of humour.
THE STARS WERE on the move. They streamed across space on their routes around the galaxy as they always did, even though to a human observer they looked like they were fixed on the spot. From fermions to galaxies it was a part of the universal design of repeating pattern at every scale, an expanding symmetry.
Five Ways glided on its orbit around the planet Humuhumu. Tredd sat alone in the Rutger’s cockpit, staring at an image of the icy planet on the screen. He wondered how deep the planet’s blue ocean ring might be, and what kind of creatures lived there. He remembered hearing about jumpers, fish that jumped over ten metres into the air – but for what? There was no life above sea level.
Bells and Evie had gone with Berossus to meet with his mother, and Eddie had gone out for a walk to clear his head. Tredd enjoyed the solitude, but felt torn. The more he thought about it, the more difficult it became to run away. Pushing your past aside was difficult. As Evie said, there was only the present moment. Now that he was here, in the neighbouring solar system, he felt his past closing in around him like a knot of Titanian steel wire. Tommy was safeguarding a doomsday device and, like Tredd and Eddie, Jill was on a mission to hunt it down. It was almost like a school reunion.
Tommy was so damn close. Tredd wanted to get back at him, find out what had happened that night, and complete his mission. Then he would be a free man with the financial independence to do whatever he wanted.
It was what he had set out to do, but now he was facing the one person he never wanted to cross. Is she the same girl I once knew? Is Jill just a dream, a memory of the non-existent past, and Commodore Conrad the only true reality? Can Jill Faith exist in the future too?
Whatever the truth was, what he felt for Jill made him unable to rise up against her. But he could not work together with her organisation, nor could he work without her. She had told him the navy had placed a number of battleships in Yedda, ready to inte
rcept him should he pinch in.
Remember present moment. Make the future.
They were in the neighbouring system, their ship ready to go. Jill was not the girl he knew, not anymore. Perhaps it was time to let go of the past, not hiding it as he had done before, but leaving it completely. The past was done and the future was his to create.
There could be something in that thought.
The more Tredd thought of it, the more he started leaning towards pinching to Yedda. With the presence of the navy battleships, his chances were slim, but least he had a chance, and a plan had started to form in his mind. If the battleships followed the standard pattern of patrol, they would cruise between the orbits of En and On, too far from reaching Un on propulsion and too close to pinch. Instead, they would summon support from the neighbouring solar systems, Moola, Haaga or Jolla. Even so, it would take them some time to arrive. If he pinched very close to Un, just by the lowest feasible orbit, he would have time to go down on a lander before the navy caught up. It would be risky to pinch so close to a planet, not to mention he didn’t know Tommy’s exact location. However, in these circumstances, it was a risk he could live with; he had everything to gain and nothing to lose.
Everything is clear now. We will pinch as soon as—
An unfamiliar beep cut off his thoughts. He looked up on the screen and, to his surprise, found the station’s emergency communication channel opening up.
‘Attention all inhabitants of Five Ways Wonderland – we have observed a gravitational anomaly and are investigating the matter. There is no need for alarm. You do not need to do anything. Expect further information on the event shortly.’
The message baffled him. A malfunction of gravitational stabilisers of a rotating station would result in a bit of a rumble, and sometimes a momentary weakening or strengthening of the gravitational field, depending on how far from the centre of the station you stood. But Tredd had felt nothing.
It didn’t take long for Eddie to come rushing in. ‘Did you hear that?’ he asked, panting. ‘I’ve got a bad feeling about this.’
Eddie’s running entrance detached Tredd from his brooding over the mission. ‘About the gravitational anomaly? I didn’t feel anything.’
‘Think about your mission,’ Eddie said, and jumped on the seat beside Tredd. ‘Meanwhile, let me run a few analyses on it.’
He lit up the systems, and started pulling up maps, sensory information and data from the network, mashing them up to something that would make sense.
‘Think about the mission?’ Tredd repeated, but didn’t get any reply from Eddie. Then he got it, and gasped. ‘We’re late, and the Starcrasher has been activated?’
‘Perhaps,’ Eddie said, bringing up and combining various sets of data and visualising the results. ‘Actually, quite likely. See here. This is Moola, the star that Humuhumu and the Five Ways station orbit. I’ve visualised the direction of its travel with these arrows – the length signifies speed, and the direction of the arrow means the direction of the star’s movement. If you compare Moola to the others, you can clearly see that the arrow indicates that the direction of travel is different and so is the speed. Significantly so. Moola has changed its course and is gaining speed.’
Tredd peered at the visualisation. The sudden change of direction, which was taking Moola out of its orbit around the centre of the galaxy, was clearly visible among the other stars going with the flow and on a much slower speed.
Eddie zoomed in closer to Moola, revealing the planets and their distorted orbits around the star. ‘Humuhumu’s orbit is expanding?’
Eddie nodded. ‘It’s being left behind…’
The sudden change in Moola’s direction made it impossible for the planets to keep on their orbits. As the star accelerated, Humuhumu couldn’t keep up. Being left behind in the cold was going to end the life on the beautiful blue belted planet, and rob the Five Ways station of its energy source. ‘That does not look good.’
‘No, but it’s better than being drawn in like Ramarama over there,’ Eddie said, and pointed out another planet in distress.
Tredd gasped as the small planet in front of Moola’s new path was drawn from its orbit, close to being engulfed by the star. It was happening as they spoke, and Tredd could only imagine the force on the planet’s surface as it hurtled towards the power of Moola’s massive nuclear fusion.
In a few seconds Ramarama was gone. Moola ate the whole planet like a snack. There were no fancy explosions, no rumbles, no fireworks – only a rounding error’s worth of new mass on Moola.
Eddie backed up to the big picture. That was when they saw it.
‘That other star,’ Tredd said, ‘it’s also breaking away from the pack, and it’s heading straight towards Moola.’
‘It’s Yedda,’ Eddie said.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
‘I FEEL MUCH BETTER,’ Inanna said. She still looked frail, but was now sitting on a chair with a new kind of energy in her presence. Evie and Berossus sat with her around a small coffee table as Bells maintained her equipment.
Evie felt glad for the positive change, and smiled back.
‘This doctor is a miracle worker,’ Inanna said, and lifted her small hand to Berossus’s thick forearm. While her complexion showed signs of improvement, her voice was still weak. ‘Thank you so much, Berry, for bringing her to me.’
Evie couldn’t help but feel merry when she heard Berossus being called Berry, quite the opposite to what she had thought. Perhaps there is another side to him…
‘Not at all, mother. It’s all her,’ Berossus said, and turned to the doctor. ‘Thank you so much for healing my mother. If there’s anything you need—’
‘Yes, please, I would like some sweet strawberry ice cream,’ Bells said with a smile. She had started packing her equipment, and opened a box. ‘Seriously though, it is me who should thank you.’
‘How come?’ Inanna asked.
‘Your condition is a rare one, and you have given me a lot of new data that will help people suffering, not only from phalaxymy but also from many other neurodegenerative diseases.’ She picked a metallic helmet that looked like a mechanical spider and started aligning it inside its box.
The thing looked disgusting to Evie. It did not matter if they were mechanical or real, she hated spiders. She flinched back. ‘What does that thing do?’
‘It’s a psychic spider machine that eats the life force right out of your brain.’ Bells raised the thing up, its metallic legs hanging down against her arm.
Everyone stared at Bells. Inanna especially, first searching for confirmation from others, then tilting her head and gaping at Bells through narrow eyes. What did she just say?
Bells burst into giggles. ‘I’m sorry, I was just joking. It is actually a multi-function brain scanner with a feedback mechanism to allow the reconnection of synapses. It’s the best tool there is, but no, it doesn’t look welcoming, does it?’ She inserted the machine in its box.
‘I do not know how it operates and don’t need to,’ Inanna said. ‘It is enough for me to know it helped you heal me.’
Berossus hugged his mother. ‘I’m so grateful for having you back.’
Evie was not amused by Bells’ joke. To her it was out of line, even if Inanna seemed to be unaffected by it. Looking at the smiling faces of Berossus and his mother, however, and even though she felt a sting of jealousy – she had never had this kind of family – she forgot her worries and enjoyed the content feeling.
Inanna smiled too. She had plenty of wrinkles around her eyes and mouth, like someone close to hundred years. Though that would have meant she’d had Berossus at over sixty. That could not be right – perhaps her sickness had made her look older. A frail old woman with thin grey hair, and a thickset bearded man in his thirties, Inanna and Berossus shared little in the way of appearance, but as Evie watched them talk, she started to notice things. Both had no earlobes to speak of, their noses shared the same soft shape, and their lower lip turned down wide as
they talked. Removing the obvious differences in her mind’s eye, Evie realised their gestures, too, were similar, as was their countenance – so much the same, yet so different.
Inanna spoke. ‘Even the robots feel like part of the family. Yesterday, when my mouth was dry but I couldn’t get up, one passing by stopped and asked if I’d like some tea. Such a perfect timing, and so polite, the robot helped me up and offered a hot cup of Berdunamian, my long-time favourite.’
Berossus chuckled. ‘Berdunamian tea was the scent of our home.’
‘I miss those days…’ Inanna said, drifting off and gazing out at the planet. ‘To be honest, the last few nights I’ve gone to sleep not knowing whether I will wake up or not. But always, in my mind, I’ve brought up a picture of those golden days on IIS258 space station with my little Berry, playing with his ball on the floor, a picture to wipe all my fears away.’
‘Oh, Mother…’ Berossus bent down and hugged her. To Evie, this was a new side of the big man. The bag of meat and testosterone had turned into cuddly Berry the bear cub.
Evie leaned back in her chair as Berossus let go of his mother. Wanting to know more, Evie asked, ‘Was he grumpy as a child too?’
Evie winked at Berossus and he smiled.
‘Not at all. Actually he was a sweet and quiet boy,’ Inanna said, with a smile that seemed to fondly evaluate Evie, catching her off guard, and continued, ‘But, well, not so in his teens—’
‘Mother…’ Berossus said with a penetrating stare.
‘He was like teenagers are, you know, dear.’
Evie smiled and nodded.
‘And some,’ Inanna continued, ‘continue like that, and hope to have their atonement by the time they’re dead.’
Confused, Evie said, ‘I don’t quite follow you.’
‘Don’t worry about him, he has grown to be good man,’ Inanna said, and again gave Evie that kind but appraising look. ‘It’s myself I’m talking about. You know, I had him at a mature age, just me alone, without a father, wanting to start everything anew. Sometimes I wonder if I was selfish and wrong.’
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