“Definitely,” Richard smiled, nodding, “Definitely.”
They had visited the Glasgow Science and Technology Centre five times together since Matt had been four years old. The building had been built on the north bank of the river Clyde in the late twentieth century and had recently expanded to include the new reality TV theatre complex and the old Riverside Museum of Transport.
Matt was enjoying the macaroni and cheese. He always enjoyed the macaroni and cheese at the science centre. Richard always ate the same thing too – breaded fish and fries with a large cappuccino. Matt had started enjoying Iron Bru in the past year or two, but before that he’d always preferred plain water.
The girl with the orange hair was looking across again. This time she seemed to smile. She caught Richard’s eye and he smiled shyly, feeling suddenly quite strange. He was much older than this girl, so there was no way in Hell that she could have been interested in him that way. But her smile had seemed genuine enough.
She actually physically shook his head to clear his thoughts. He looked at Matt. Matt looked up as he did, like they were looking in a mirror.
“Can I have my cookie now?” Matt asked, looking up from his plate again.
“Nope,” Richard said, “You have to have at least… this much,” He used his own fork to divide Matt’s macaroni into two small stacks, “Then you can have your cookie.”
He cut a small corner of his fish and put it into his mouth. Then he found himself shaking his head and laughing.
“What?” Matt Silverman frowned, embarrassed. “Dad! What are you laughing at?”
“Day sleeping,” Richard kept shaking his head, “I like that.”
“Stay awake, dad!” Matt smiled, “No more day sleeping!”
“Okay, I’ll try,” Richard said.
Richard Silverman sensed movement on his left. The cafeteria had left the ground and was soaring up into the sky. There was no sensation of movement at all and the clouds rushing by made the experience all the more surreal. This was only the second time that the Silvermans had been in the café when the lift had happened. Matt hadn’t even noticed and his jaw dropped in a pantomime of surprise when his dad pointed it out.
“Fantastic, isn’t it?” Richard Silverman grinned broadly, “I wonder how high it goes.”
“Probably a hundred miles,” Matt replied, “Maybe a thousand miles.”
“Look!” Richard pointed, “Can you see the big cruiser?”
Matt followed his father’s pointing finger. The sky around the café was now a very clear blue as the structure soared through the clouds and into the thin air of the stratosphere, 35 miles up. The cruise ship could be seen in the distance almost fifty miles away. It was clearly visible in the cold and lonely sky, drifting upwards in an almost horizontal aspect with its bulbous nose tilted towards the sky.
Matt said enthusiastically, his bright chocolate brown eyes sparkling, “A story about the cruise ship and mummy!”
The cruise ship seemed closer. It was about the size of Richard Silverman’s hand now and seemed to be turning towards the SkyCafe. On closer inspection Richard realised that the ship was turning away from the large saucer shaped building. The sky had become purple blue. The moon was a large milk coloured disk to the right of the massive cruiser. Richard could make out a star that he thought might be Aldebaran. It was actually the planet Jupiter – the destination of the heavy cruiser that father and son were watching.
“This is the best Glasgow adventure ever, dad. I just wish mum could be here with us.”
Richard tilted his head to the left. He smiled and frowned at the same time and spoke gently and with great practice.
“I’m sure she is in some way. I’m sure she comes along with all our adventures.”
Matt stopped eating. He looked at the spaceship, which was rising quickly away from the skyward café. “I just wish she was here,” He said, without looking away from the spaceship, “I just wish I… knew who she was.”
Richard Silverman exhaled slowly. He reached across to touch the back of his son’s right hand and rested his large, hard skinned palm on top of his son’s much softer and smaller hand. He squeezed it gently.
“I wish that too but sadly things weren’t meant to be that way. But I want you to know that your mother loved you very, very much when you were inside her tummy. She tried really, really hard to stay with you when you were born but…” he licked his lips and swallowed slightly, “…but things were just too difficult for mum.”
“Are you sad?” Matt asked, “Dad? Did I make you sad?”
Richard Silverman smiled and wiped a tear away from his right eye. He laughed, embarrassed somehow, and leaned across the table to kiss Matt’s forehead.
“You didn’t make me sad. It’s just a little sad to remember mum sometimes. I’m like you, son. I wish she could share our adventures too. And I really hope that she does come along with us, in her own way,” He had to stop talking then because his voice no longer wanted to work. Sometimes it was unbearable to think about Belinda. He only ever brought her to his mind’s eye when Matt was asleep or at school. Otherwise he could not hold himself together.
“Maybe she comes down from Heaven when it’s the holidays,” Matt suggested.
“Or when it’s a special day,” Richard chimed in, almost crumbling. “Like a karate grading or a trip to McDonalds!”
“I like that idea,” Matt was eating again with gusto, “I hope mum does come with us to McDonalds.”
The girl with the orange hair was suddenly standing behind Richard Silverman. He could smell her perfume and somehow he knew that the strong, seductive yet delicate essence belonged to her.
He looked over his left shoulder. She’d disposed of her empty cappuccino mug in the receptacle behind his table before turning back.
“Hi there,” She said, “I just wanted to say Hello before I left.”
He turned a little bit around in his chair. With his weight, even after a year or more of intermittent karate, it was still a bit of a struggle.
“Hello,” Richard said automatically, “Umm, do we know you?”
She was looking at Matt very intensely, he thought. But then she looked down to his father. She surprised Richard very much by placing her right hand on his shoulder, very lightly, almost as if she had no weight at all. He realised that she was only in her early twenties – younger than he had first realised.
“Not really,” She said, her eyes back on Matt.
“Okay,” Richard shrugged. He took a quick breath and went into his well-practiced socialisation performance “This little man is Matt, my beautiful son. I’m Richard Silverman.”
She looked into his eyes a second time and this time, less nervously, he looked back. He was a shy, nervous man. Eye contact had always been difficult, but somehow he managed to make eye contact with Megyn Alexander. To his utter amazement, he found that he couldn’t look away. There was something innately sad, lonely and desolate about the beautiful young girl’s eyes. It touched his own deep sadness and, for the briefest of moments, he felt his cold stone Heart moved. But only for an instant.
“He’s a handsome young man,” Megyn Alexander smiled, touching Matt’s face tentatively and lightly with the backs of her fingertips. Matt blushed and tilted his head to look up at her.
She moved her hand away quickly, slightly electrified and with a look on her face like she was awakening from a dream. She brought both hands to her face and her eyes seemed to well up with tears. Her mouth twitched, the corners starting to turn down. Richard thought that she was going to start crying. But then, like a veil lifting, her expression changed and her hands fell loosely by her sides. She smiled a false smile and turned boldly to Matt’s father.
“It was nice to meet you,” She said, “Look after your little man. He’s a very special boy.”
She walked away, leaving Richard confused and almost scared. He didn’t know why, but something about her made shivers run down his spine. She disappeared along
the corridor, walking faster and faster the further she got from the café. Richard thought that she brought her hands to her face again just before she got out of sight, but he was distracted by Matt.
“This is a fantastic day,” Matt was saying, “This is the best Glasgow adventure ever, dad.”
Richard Silverman nodded slowly and smiled. He forgot about the girl and looked at Matt, seeing Belinda there.
“Yeah, Matthew. I agree,” He said, after a long pause.
He reached out to touch his son’s face. Father and son looked into each other’s eyes. Richard smiled a tight lipped smile. Matt laughed shyly, pretending to grimace at the touch of the big hand.
FOUR
2186AD - Earth Orbit.
Richard Silverman’s Honda Accord had never been in space before. Neither had Richard Silverman. He’d only recently come to learn, entirely by accident, that the battered silver saloon he’d bought on an online auction site could actually travel in space.
The music on the car’s music system was two hundred and ninety years old. From an era known as the swinging years – from the 1960s until the new millennium. The song was called Rosemary. Richard Silverman had played the same song over and over about eight times already.
The Honda was about 300 miles from the planet below. Besides the window on Silverman’s right being icy cold to the touch, the eight hundred pound second hand family saloon did not show any signs of having any difficulty ascending into space.
Richard Silverman had always promised himself – and his son – that if he ever travelled to space he would do so with Matt by his side. He considered this for a moment as he hit the repeat button to play the song a ninth time.
It had taken the Honda about forty minutes to travel from Edinburgh on the east coast of Scotland to the outer reaches of the earth’s atmosphere. Richard hadn’t seen any other traffic around him for over fifteen minutes.
“She talks kinda lazy
And people say she she's crazy
And her life's a mystery”
His eyes were closed. He felt really, really tired. It was six o’clock in the evening. Matt was down there below him, waiting for burgers and chips. He wondered how long he could keep his eyes closed and just drive straight and fast, accelerating into space.
He missed Belinda. He could see her face now in his mind’s eye. Her trusting, innocent, helpless expression. Looking up to him, always. Having faith in him through so much pain and adversary. He’d let her down. He’d never forget the look in her eyes as her life slipped away. Sometimes he wanted to, but he couldn’t.
He turned the volume up, even though his ears were already hurting.
“I'm a lucky fella
And I've just got to tell her
That I love her endlessly
Because Love grows where my Rosemary goes
And nobody knows like me”
The Honda beeped a short warning about the breathable air in the car. It was the fourth warning Richard had heard since starting his trip. It meant that the car’s air recycling system was losing its ability to synthesise a breathable atmosphere in the car. The Honda’s air conditioning system was ten years old and Richard guessed it had never been recharged.
Everything had always been so difficult for Belinda. She had been a Jenkin’s disease sufferer since her early teenage years right until her death just moments before she could hold the son she’d tried so hard for. She’d suffered from depression and agoraphobia all her life.
Without the constraints of Earth’s gravity, the Honda was streaking through space like a bullet, moving at over fifteen thousand miles per hour. To Silverman, inside the car, there was no sensation of movement. He kept his eyes closed, breathing hard, as the ancient blaring music drowned out his thoughts.
Belinda’s father had been an alcoholic, her mother totally dependent on her for emotional support. Her two younger brothers had looked to her for the maternal affection that their mother could not provide. She was overburdened. She always had been.
There was another warning sound. Silverman could hear it, vaguely, even through the music. He wondered what it would be like to run out of air. He imagined it wouldn’t be pleasant. The stars around the car barely moved as the car streaked through space. It seemed like the car was almost at a standstill, but it was moving faster than Richard had ever travelled before.
Her father had died, of course. He was beginning to die even before he’d first met Belinda. Two bottles of watered down whisky a day had taken their toll. Henry Grogan was seventy four years old when he eventually met Richard Silverman. Richard remembered the meeting very well. It wasn’t one of his favourite memories.
He’d been with Belinda for three years. They’d been living together almost the same time. He didn’t see Henry before he died, but Belinda spent four weeks in Londtown taking care of her father in the last stages of his cancer. He could have been by her side – should have been by her side. She needed him to be there, but he had been five hundred miles away when Henry had succumbed to his mercifully short battle. Not that it had been a battle. Henry had been ready to die for many, many years.
Richard Silverman opened his eyes, half expecting to find a massive cruise ship or freighter filling the windscreen. But there was nothing but the darkness of space and the amazing brilliantly white points of light that made their way through the filthy interior of the car’s windscreen.
The Honda had been dirtier than this by far. Three weeks ago Richard had had the car professionally valeted by the father of Matt’s best friend. He’d never had considered such a thing until Murdo mentioned that he liked the cars he worked on to be as “dirty as possible” before he started. Richard guessed that few cars were as utterly filthy as his neglected flyer. Murdo had worked his magic over a period of about three hours. The end result had literally astonished Richard. He’d never driven a car so clean before.
Belinda’s family were strange. Overinvolved in every aspect of her life. Needy, clingy, invasive. It creeped Richard out. His parents were indifferent to him most times – unless they needed a ride or something in their house needed repairing. Belinda’s parents opened and read her mail. Richard’s parents didn’t care if he ever received mail or if he even had any friends. Belinda’s parents were her life. Until he’d come along.
He’d closed his eyes again. He had a sudden insane urge to pull the handbrake, just to see what would happen. But he didn’t. He kept the accelerator pressed to the floor and surged onwards and outwards away from everything.
Richard Silverman had not been looking for a relationship. He’d been six months out of the second worst breakup of his life, living alone in an over expensive studio flat in an unfriendly market town. Meeting Belinda had been a total accident. He should never have met her at all, but he contacted her out of politeness. She wasn’t what he was looking for, but he didn’t have the heart to tell her.
It had been three weeks now since Matt had gone to karate. He’d missed six lessons and, according to sensei John, had fallen three months behind in training as every week of training that you missed meant you went back a month. Richard himself had missed the first two sessions with Matt, but had started again hoping that his now eleven year old son would come back with him. But Matt had not changed his mind. Karate was, as he put it, “no fun anymore”.
Lately, nothing that involved spending time with dad seemed to be much fun for Matt.
The car was moving at forty thousand miles an hour now and was eight thousand miles away from earth. Richard Silverman opened his eyes and saw the glare of what he thought must be the moon lighting the car from the left. He steered that way and, in a few seconds, the bright milk white globe filled the windscreen.
“I'm a lucky fella
And I've just got to tell her
That I love her endlessly
Because Love grows where my Rosemary goes
And nobody knows like me”
Matt was eleven years old. Back home, asleep. Played two
hours of videogames. Raced a dozen different muscle cars, flew round the east coast of the USA and crashed two hundred and eight times. He was dreaming of candy apple red sports cars crashing into and through buildings. He was deeply asleep and overtired, his neck lying at an awkward angle in his grey steel framed high bed.
Richard Silverman’s eyes were closed. There was nothing to hit in space. Space, like its namesake, was empty. There was nothing to hit, nowhere to go. Except the moon, Mars or the Jupiter stations. Or Haven.
He could drive to the moon. Land there. Have a coffee, jump around for a half hour. Go home. He could check out Mars, drive there flat out in maybe two hours. If the Honda’s air recycler was up to it – which it wasn’t. He’d get there, cover fifty eight million miles like a flash of lightning and arrive choked and dead. Or maybe he could just head on out into the outer reaches of the solar system – another tiny insignificant dot amongst decades worth of meaningless space debris. There were easier ways to die. Suicide in space was painful, he'd heard. Eyes boiling, bulging, hurting. Choking, gasping, pain.
Silverman looked at the speedometer. The Honda had exceeded Mark two point nine. He tried to work out how fast that was. Two hundred thousand miles an hour. He guessed wrongly. It didn't matter. The car was travelling at four hundred thousand miles an hour and still accelerating. Mark three.
The air alarm kept sounding. It was a low, honking sound that began to seem distant - like something that was happening to someone else far away. Richard wasn't too concerned. He was only playing at committing suicide. Deep down, he had a firm grip on reality. The fantasy of leaving everything behind was a wonderful one to indulge, now and then. He'd never come as far as this before. And this would be the last time he indulged that seductive temptress of self-destruction.
In under a month the final report would indicate that Silverman's Honda Accord struck a micro meteor. However, the tiny particle that tore through the Honda's right wing mirror was actually a carbon fragment left over from a rocket stage launched in the nineteen eighties.
Beyond the Starport Adventure (Bullet Book 1) Page 8