Rebel Without a Clue

by Kerrie Noor

  “Will she be coming back?” he muttered, but no one heard. He picked up the H-Pad and began pressing things. It did nothing. He shook it, rattled it, even pushed a few more buttons. Still nothing happened.

  THE OPERATORS’ SHED cleared almost as quickly as Beryl had disappeared, and as the last Operator left clutching her free bottle of water, Vegas entered with a small H-Pad for notes.

  “I’ll contact Earth first—get them all confused and distressed while you find this damnable library,” said Hilda, standing by the dashboard like the captain of a ship.

  “Library?”

  “Yes, but first, before you go, which button do I press to shut things down? I can’t remember.”

  “Is that wise?”

  “Wise is for me to spell and you to tick.”

  “Pardon, ma’am?”

  “No time for pardon here, put some Blu Tack on the button I press and go find that library.”

  “Ma’am, the libraries were buried years ago . . .”

  “Not according to our gran . . . she gave directions here on this napkin. Now, follow like there is no tomorrow and don’t come back till you have your library card stamped . . . ha-ha-ha.”

  “Ma’am, cards are a thing of the history books.”

  “I was metaphorically speaking,” said Hilda.

  “I see,” said Vegas, pulling a face. “And what about the energy situation then?”

  “I will have the girls poised and ready to fuel up if necessary,” said Hilda.

  Vegas looked on with disbelief—girls fueled up for what? She stared at the woman she had, up until now, never questioned.

  “The stationaries are greased and ready for riding,” said Hilda.

  “Stationaries?” said Vegas.

  “Yes, along with the rowing and running machines; they are . . .” She paused and smiled to herself. “Up and running.” She chuckled. “This leadership lark brings out the best in me—what?”

  Vegas stared in disbelief. “Stationaries are no laughing matter, ma’am.”

  Hilda turned to the screen and began telling Mex about the “disappearance of our great leader . . .”

  “Ma’am?” said Vegas.

  Hilda put up her hand to silence her. “No time for questions,” she said to Mex on the screen and pressed the button. All the communications have shut down flashed onto the screen in florescent blue; the dashboard then slurred down into darkness.

  DBO watched through the bottom gap under the door. Oh, my cucumber—what in the pickle egg has she done?

  MEX TOOK THE H-PAD off DJ and flicked the battery lid open until it snapped shut, just missing her fingers. She tried again and this time it wouldn’t budge—nothing happened, instilling in Mex a silent panic. She looked at Pete; he looked at her. Then, like a spider waking up, the H-Pad stretched out four limbs from some invisible orifice, jumped from Mex’s hands, raced to the window, and propelled itself out into the open . . .

  It cascaded down two stories into Beryl’s backyard, landing on a branch. It wrapped its limbs around the branch and swung several times, attracting the attention of a chaffinch. The bird hopped over, pecked a couple of pecks, chirped, and then, Poof! Boom! Fizzle . . .

  Black smoke appeared and then evaporated, revealing a stunned chaffinch with a blackened face and a kookaburra hairstyle.

  DJ made a grab for Pete’s plugulator, leading to a tussle. Woody, still feeling heroic, pushed in and pulled it from them both as the plugulator lit up fluorescent blue—emergency sign from Planet Hy Man.

  “Self-destruction begins in five . . . four . . .”

  “Bollocks.”

  “Beetroot.”

  “Three . . .”

  “Shit!”

  Woody, without a word, raced full pelt outside; he not only thought on his feet, he moved on his feet.

  “Two . . .”

  He threw the now-smoldering plugulator in the bin.

  “Two and a half . . .”

  He slammed the lid tight, slapped a few stones on top of the lid, and raced back inside. “Get down,” he shouted as garbage, after a muffled poof, blew into the air and fluttered back down.

  “You have now been disconnected,” echoed an automatic voice into the air.

  DBO SPENT A FEW HOURS staring into the dark as Hilda shut down the shed and left. She flicked on her illegal H-Pad, put together roughly from an old plugulator dumped behind one of the boxes. She had with her a dynamo flashlight from an old stationary from years back when men were young and riding stationeries in the dark to save electricity. She shone her light about under the stairs; there was so much unused equipment she could be kept busy for days.

  She was good at not only pulling things apart but rebuilding, remodeling, and sometimes reinventing. She had fixed H2’s gran’s cooker many times. She had reset her moped speed system to go uphill in first rather than be pushed; she even took off the starting pedal and replaced it with a key. She had adjusted the lighting outside the shed so at night it stayed on longer than the regulation thirty-second flash.

  She was a young woman quickly learning the potential of being alone in the shed—with more out-of-date equipment than Beryl had hair colors. All she needed to do was make a few adjustments to things she had pulled apart, and then she could reconnect to the dashboard without anyone knowing. And perhaps save Planet Hy Man, maybe even go down in history as the first Operator to have a statue of herself . . .

  But she needed some food, and she knew where to go. DBO slid out into the night and made her way toward H2’s gran’s kitchen.

  BUNNIE, COMPLETELY fed up with no one telling her anything that made sense, decided that wine was needed to lubricate things and brought out the first of her coop three-for-the-price-of-two reds. Which in the end lubricated a heated discussion, leaving her as confused as Izzie’s stomach was upset.

  “What about this Beryl?” Bunnie said. “Will she not have the means to get you back?”

  “Beryl?”

  “Yes, isn’t she your leader? Won’t she have some sort of clout to push about?”

  “Not anymore, by the looks of it; she is probably in more of a pickled-egg situation than we are, and besides, how can we find her?”

  “What about this Legless then?”

  “Legless? Don’t think so.”

  “Why, is he an alcoholic? Is that why he’s called Legless?”

  “Legless isn’t easy to find,” said DJ. “No one I know has seen him. But Archie knows someone who knows someone who brought him a coffee once.”

  Bunnie sighed.

  “He is, according to those who read minds, a storyteller of great talent,” said Woody.

  Mex tutted. “An action man who could ride a stationary like no other—despite his shortness of stature.”

  “Short? He is tall,” said DJ. “The tales of his tallness are as legendary as his number of offspring. That why he’s called Legless, because he has such long legs. It’s a pun; we’re famous for them.”

  “Famous requires an audience,” muttered Pete.

  “He’s called Legless because his legs were so short you can hardly see them,” said Mex. “We have drawings of him in shorts; how he managed a stationary has always been a mystery.”

  “Not everything is about size,” muttered Woody.

  “I think you’ll find he was short, so short he required a leg up to get on his stationary, and . . .” said Pete. “He drank like a fish.”

  “His stories were to die for and he made great chocolate that didn’t put an inch on one’s waist,” said DJ. “Women loved him because he towered over them and made them feel safe. Of course, I am not talking of any new age storytelling of the past or a one-man comedy show. I am talking edge-of-your-seat, cliffhanger stories with”—DJ paused for drama—“chocolate . . . and he was so tall that he could, with enough run-up, hurdle a draft horse.”

  “I heard that Shetlands towered over him,” muttered Pete.

  “What’s wrong with short?” said Woody.

&
nbsp; “Absolutely, honey,” said Bunnie. “Short men make a lot of things easy for a woman. Look at my best escort, he made women ecstatic . . .” She pulled out more pictures. “Just read the backs of these.” Bunnie continued to rummage in her drawers and pulled out notepads and papers; a few fluttered to the floor. Pete’s feeling began to haunt him again.

  There’s more to this man—this escort—than a need for different haircuts, he thought, and he had no idea why.

  Bunnie opened a third bottle and began to pour.

  Chapter Thirty-One—The Second Landing

  “FATE EXISTS ONLY WHEN you look back.” —Bunnie

  Beryl looked about; everything was black. Above her were wooden boards, beside her metal poles, and on her head dripped water. She had landed under the very scaffold Pete had landed on. But unlike Pete’s landing, hers was dark, cold, and lonely; there was no audience, no music, no DJ, and no balancing on the planks. She looked about the empty street and watched as a dog trotted by and stopped to pee. Beryl was unprepared for the hot sensation spraying onto her leg. She made for a kick, skidded, and slipped straight into the puddle.

  Where the pickled egg had she been telesprayed?

  “Mind the dog!” shouted a man at the bottom of the street.

  The dog barked and went to lick her face; she pushed him off, causing the dog to only lick more, and she was just about to pull out her whip when . . . piff-puff-poof, H2 appeared, standing in an incognito pose as practiced by the masses when those in control walked past. The dog yelled, growled, crouched, and then rolled over as H2 held her statue-like pose and would have continued doing so had it not been for her standing on Beryl’s thumb.

  “Apologies, ma’am,” said H2 as her hand strayed to pat the dog.

  Beryl rubbed her thumb. “You’re here, that is all that matters.”

  H2 helped her up and hesitantly brushed her down. Beryl didn’t argue; instead she turned for H2 to continue. “Where are we?” she muttered.

  “Dunoon, love,” shouted the same man who was now by their side. He looked like he had been chasing his dog for a while. He bent to catch his breath, glancing sideways at the two women. “Fancy dress?” he said.

  Beryl glared at the man. He was unshaven and smelt of beer, another unfamiliar sensation.

  “Aye, that’s right,” laughed H2, “anything for a free drink.”

  The dog owner laughed a “right enough,” slid a lead onto his dog, and with a whistle dragged him away. The two women stared at the large man’s back disappearing into the Argyll at the end of the road.

  “What was all that about?” said Beryl. “Fancy dress, aye, right? Where did all that come from?”

  “Just banter, ma’am. The Scots love it.”

  Beryl didn’t say anything. BBC reruns were all the rage with certain lower-level workers, which often led to them imitating accents and mannerisms at work until reprimanded. Beryl made a mental note to look more deeply into such programmes—once back. She sniffed, adjusted her outfit, and tried to look about with a confident air.

  “Pete landed here,” she finally said.

  “I know, watched it all in the shed,” said H2.

  “So where’s the party?”

  “I have no idea, but I suspect a party is not a daily occurrence.”

  Beryl looked at her sidekick. Since when did she get so . . . know-it-all? She tugged at her backpack until H2 helped her slide it off. She opened it, then remembered Hilda and cursed with every pickled veg she could think of. Hilda, along with a you-won’t-be-needing-this laugh, had taken everything, leaving Beryl, for the first time in her life, with nothing but the clothes on her back and a decent hairdo.

  “I’ve been cooked,” she finally said.

  “You do have your whip, ma’am.”

  “Yes, well, Hilda gave me that, so I have my suspicions,” said Beryl. Hilda had tossed the super-light, extra-portable whip at her feet with a “knock yourself out” comment, which by the lightness of the whip and the fact that it folded into the size of a matchbox seemed highly unlikely. Beryl looked around. So what are we to do now, apart from fight off the odd slurred comment by some passerby?

  Beryl stood out like Pete and Mex, except because she was in her eighties and in leather, the reaction was more surprised than abusive. A gran with a beehive higher than her six-inch heeled boots was a sight of great interest to all three drunks who staggered down the street.

  Beryl was decked in a purple all-in-one leather jumpsuit, matching jacket, gloves, and heeled boots. The boots were designed for kicking, increasing the impact tenfold as long as, like Mex, you had good balance. Although it had been years since Beryl actually performed any kicking. In fact, she wasn’t even sure if she could still do a kick without falling, but at least she was dressed for the occasion—according to Kismet.

  Kismet, the official seller of all official outfits to be worn by officials and their counterparts, explained to Beryl that leather “breathed in the hot weather,” whatever that was, and “kept you warm in the cold.”

  “Here we use leather to impress,” she said. “On Earth it is more a case of protection.”

  Who was Beryl to argue? It was not like she knew any better. But now, as another taxi tooted, she was beginning to wonder.

  “Are the Americans back?” shouted the ol’ fella with a lusty laugh.

  H2, on cue, explained that “as Americans are considered to be of a more flamboyant nature, perhaps your purple implies—joke-wise—that you are a from a time when the American Navy was based here and purple leather was seen as . . . an everyday occurrence.”

  Beryl glared at H2 and for the first time understood why no one wanted her about. But as she was all that Beryl had, Beryl asked if she was cold.

  “Fine,” shivered H2, which annoyed Beryl even more.

  H2, in her neutral gray poor-man’s Star Trek jumpsuit, looked every bit a lower-class Operator of no status. Beryl had never noticed before how poorly dressed the Operators were. H2 had no jacket, no scarf—nothing. All she had was a canvas bag packed by her loopy gran, untouched by Hilda.

  Days ago, before Hilda’s last visit and before H2 had stomped out, Gran had, as she did most days, packed H2 a small bag full of goodies along with a “just in case” comment. H2 hadn’t looked because she didn’t like her gran’s cooking and her gran was always doing “just in case” things for H2. A solar-powered torch in case she got lost, which as she worked in a dark shed never charged up. Hot chocolate just in case the beverage corner was closed (which often happened), but once she poured it, it was noted and confiscated. And one time a watch that didn’t work in a bag marked “compass,” whatever that was.

  Now cold, desperate, and not knowing what else to do, H2 found a large woolen jacket (“just in case you are roped into the night shift”), her flask of hot mocha drink, and an envelope with read me when you’re safe written on the back . . .

  “You going to read that?” said Beryl.

  “No,” said H2. “Gran is always writing notes about impending doom.”

  “Like now,” said Beryl.

  WHEN DJ LEFT JIMMIE’S Tea Shop in a flurry, Archie watched from the back door. He watched the mysterious taxi pull up with a spray of water, reminding Archie of the old days when Identities were trying to find their way and ending up in places dangerous and unknown. He wondered who the taxi driver was and where they were going. He decided to follow but was not prepared for Don’s incognito driving.

  Archie decided not to involve the old cronies as he wanted to keep DJ safe from any incrimination. Besides, whatever DJ was involved in could lead to something big. It was best to find out, see if there was anything in it for him. He ESP-ed that he was out looking for tomorrow’s women and didn’t wait for a reply.

  He lost Don’s taxi at the airport. How, he had no idea; one minute he was following the taxi around the Paisley roundabout and the next, in a flash, it was gone. Archie pulled into the next lay-by. Where would DJ go? Archie concentrated on his mentor�
�Dunoon flashed into his head, a picture of DJ’s pal’s caravan and the Chinese takeaway. Pleased with himself, Archie headed for Gourock and caught the boat to Dunoon—it was not often that ESP-ing stretched farther than a few miles, except when the bond was close.

  “I am on my way,” he said and punched the air.

  BERYL PULLED THE ENVELOPE from H2. What an old woman from the wrong side of things would have to say of importance, she had no idea, but . . . what else could they do? She read the note to herself, her lips mouthing each word, making a whisper of a sound.

  H2 watched as a group of women trotted into the Argyll dressed inappropriately for the weather and in shoes that let the rain in—just as her gran had said.

  “She says, when in doubt, go to a pub.” Beryl looked at H2. “What’s that? And then she says to use taxis, as the drivers know everything, and always tip?” Beryl sighed. “I have heard of these taxis, but what the pickled egg is a tip?”

  H2 watched as a taxi pulled up outside the Argyll and more women poured out, laughing and yelling.

  “Let’s follow them,” said H2. “It’s bound to be warmer in there than it is here, and I have this.” She pulled out a purse from her jacket.

  Beryl looked questioningly at H2. “I thought Hilda took everything.”

  H2 muttered something about how starving can clarify the brain, which had Beryl flummoxed; she had no idea what starving was.