Tabitha
Page 62
‘Hi,’ she said in a drunken daze, smiling as she floated up to Seven’s face. She held his jaw and bumped her mask against his big stubby snout, kissing him on the nose. She felt their minds plug back together, and felt Seven’s warm loving tide wash over her. A shining ecstasy of faith; a fierce companionship spelled out in turning glyphs and rainbow shades in her head. Laughing, high, Tabitha pushed off from his snout and tumbled over herself in floating loops among the stars. She felt the light of the sun so clearly up here; unfiltered. Her body drank in the radiation hungrily, soaking up life and light until it felt like golden liquid bliss inside her. The sun became a holy twisting enormity as she watched it; searing the black void with turning hyperbright petals of light. Seven stretched out a wing and gathered Tabitha in before she could float away. Grinning, Tabitha stroked his wing as he guided her gently back. It was so silent up here. So still. Looking down on it, the world didn’t look threatened, or covered in a creeping black cloud of evil. It looked fine. The sun crested on the edge of its vast curve like a halo, pouring golden light across endless green and blue below. The world looks just the same as it’s always been, Tabitha told herself. Because it is. It’s just changed tenants.
Tabitha headed back down into the cockpit, and the hatch sealed above her. Atmosphere flooded back into the cockpit in whispering jets of air, and Tabitha pulled her mask back down into a collar again. She peeled the catsuit off her hands and feet and floated down to her seat, and stared in shock at the thing that hovered around beside her.
‘Fishbowl!’ she screamed happily, hugging the creature close whether it wanted it or not. ‘Where the hell have you been? Have you been hiding in here all along?’ she squeezed it tighter, heart leaping, until Fishbowl was wriggling to get away from her. Maybe she had a fungal parasite affecting her nervous system, Fishbowl considered.
‘Where were you hiding, you crafty bugger?’ said Tabitha, ecstatic to see it. She let go of Fishbowl’s wriggling arms, and the creature anchored itself against the seat and floated patiently at a distance.
‘Jesus,’ Tabitha mumbled, wiping a silver blood puddle off the seat with her parka sleeve. Strange that she’d hadn’t seen her coat lying around in here for a while, she thought. She liked that coat. She’d thought the watchers must have gotten rid of it when they took Seven away. Then she remembered.
‘My flower!’ she told Fishbowl excitedly, rummaging for the bump in her coat pocket. She produced a crumpled plastic case and opened up the little toy plant inside; a present to herself from the shopping centre. Smiling, she peeled away the tab from a sticky pad underneath and stuck the plastic plant down on Seven’s dashboard. When she switched on the tiny solar panel the flower started dancing happily from side to side, taking in Seven’s huge energy around it.
‘It’s beautiful,’ Tabitha told Fishbowl in wonder; blissed out on new life. High on the thought of green and growing things. Her gardener didn’t notice the plastic flower though.
‘Well it’s not real, I guess,’ Tabitha admitted. ‘But I like it.’ She watched the flower happily and sipped from her alien water bottle; it was empty. She filled it up from Seven’s filtered dispenser in the wall behind the seat, and took big parched gulps like she’d never drunk water before. ‘Oh wow,’ she said quietly, savouring the taste. She felt the water spark inside her, colder and smoother than all the silver blood she’d ever tasted. It was a pure gleaming high that spoke to something deeper inside her; fresher and more intense than anything she’d felt before.
‘Water?’ she asked Fishbowl, taking a rest in her seat. Her gardener reached out. Tabitha tipped the bottle slightly, and poured it gently into a spout that opened in Fishbowl’s reaching tentacle. When she put her seat harness on and stepped into Seven’s mind, Tabitha felt the full swirling mixture of shock and joy there in his head. A gleaming white space that welcomed her, shining all the brighter now that she was gliding inside it.
‘I’m glad I’m back too,’ Tabitha said softly, heart leaping as she felt their minds embrace. ‘Did you miss me?’ she asked him. She felt his reply deep in her head, and cried happily for a little while in her chair.
Tabitha looked down at Earth through Seven’s eyes, thinking. There was no one to go back to down there; no place to call home. No tribe. She sat back and wrestled with her thoughts for a while, touching her black metal fingers to the dirty ribbon on her wrist.
‘I’m leaving, Mum,’ she said quietly, sad and soaring at the same time. ‘That’s not a world I can go back to.’ Pulling up the hologram map in front of her, it showed Earth as a small blue pulsing dot in a large web of lines. Tabitha spread her hands wide, and the map filled the cockpit with a glowing constellation. Looking around it in wonder Tabitha saw a small green dot, blinking far away on the web of light. It must have been the aliens’ home. But there were other dots too, pulsing on the far side of the map. White spheres to indicate stars; purple dots to represent uncertain planets. She felt as much from Seven’s mind. Pulling the huge map around and moving her hands to zoom out further, Tabitha saw more star systems with more purple planets. So many new worlds that the aliens hadn’t reached. Seven felt worry and doubt about them; they were the unknown.
‘That’s why we have to explore them,’ Tabitha told him with a smile, pushing her finger into a random purple dot on the map. The hologram vanished; their course was set. Maybe their new tribe was out there waiting for them, somewhere in the stars. A white path of light stretched out in front of them in Seven’s vision, reaching deep into space. It was their route to an alien world far from here; a new beginning.
‘Ready?’ she asked her two monsters. Tabitha willed Seven’s jet scales into glowing white life, and in a sudden burst of light her dragon shot into the void. Theirs was the deep dark infinity; a holy silver garden of stars.
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Other books:
Tales of the Strange and Grim