by Steve Cole
As if in answer, a red glow lit up our lonely mountain – and suddenly we were back in the base. Me, Elodie, Ray, Kimmy, Mum and Dad and Katzburger. All down and – unbelievably, against all the odds in the universe – safe.
Spontaneously, those of us still conscious burst into a wild, jumping dance of relief and victory.
But the TAMASSISS lay empty on its side. There was no sign of Little G.
“I wonder where he went,” said Elodie.
“Home, he said,” I murmured. “Who knows where that is?” Then as I checked Dad was OK and held his hand, I remembered the Rubbish House had been burned to the ground. “Come to think of it, who knows where my home is?”
Katzburger gave me a scowling grin. “Don’t you know, fool?”
“I do,” said Kimmy.
“You’re already there, Tim,” said Ray. “Quite a place. And only about 107 billion, 802 million, 919 thousand, 700 previous not-very-careful owners.”
“Ha! Of course.” I threw open my arms and laughed. “The only home any of us have got! A kind-of-cool little planet we call . . . Earth.”
“When you nearly die, it’s like you’ve been reborn,” I said to Elodie, maybe the first or second day after Things Started Getting Back To Normal. “It’s another chance at loving life. And you know what? I’m gonna live every last minute to the absolute fullest.”
“Sure,” drawled Elodie. “For the first week, anyway.”
“No, I mean it!” I insisted.
“Well,” she said, “guess you’ll have to keep in touch, and let me know, eh?”
“Yeah.” I shrugged, a bit embarrassed. “I guess I will.”
Slowly, things got moving again.
Dad and Mum helped Ray and Kimmy with the anti-lullaby cure. First they brought round the base, then they helped the base to bring round the whole world. Weirdly, it seemed Dad and Mum found they actually quite liked working together, after all this time.
Sergeant Katzburger found she liked working more herself when she was immediately promoted to captain for her impeccable service in the defence of Earth.
Then the Big Suits decided they should buy the designs for the TAMASSISS and the antigravity pads from Kimmy. After weeks of some of the toughest negotiation ever witnessed, Kimmy made a cool fifty billion dollars from the deal. So rather than just go to Cambridge University next year, she’s decided to buy it.
She’s putting Ray in charge of the science department. Some of the old professors there kicked up a fuss, of course, but Kimmy sued their pants off.
She and Ray should have an interesting time.
As for me . . . and Elodie . . . Well, that should be interesting too.
The military compensated my dad for destroying our rubbish home. They’ve given him an incredible beach house/observatory/laboratory on a small island near Florida. It’s entirely solar-powered and carbon-neutral. And of course, he can zip to work at the North Pole base by hyper-beam so there’s no commute, while I can zip to my old school in the blink of an eye. The change in time zones is kind of tricky but I don’t fall asleep in too many lessons.
It’s kind of cool, being allowed to use an experimental instant travel system while Dad works to make it super-energy-efficient, so using it won’t cost the Earth.
Sometimes I even hyper-beam round to grab a coffee with Helen.
And very occasionally I “accidentally” zip into Fist-Face’s bedroom at midnight and run around his room pretending to be a ghost, or put custard in his football boots, or plastic dog turds in his lunchbox. You should see his face! No, actually, I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.
Anyway, my mum is staying on at the North Pole too, doing more weirdo research. See, it’s not just military stuff they do at the Pole now. They’re developing all sorts of serious ways to start protecting the planet from the harm we cause it. Surprise, surprise, the GETs’ repairs to the planet turned out to be a quick-fix con: Big Heal, Fat Nothing. Things were back to bad again in months.
Mum says, we’ll just have to manage our muck for ourselves.
And even though she and Elodie still live in Ontario, we see quite a bit of them these days. They zipped over to check out our new place, and we had a pretty good dinner with NO organic cumbers of cu and NO tomatoes, and just . . . well, got on together.
Until suddenly, someone else turned up for dinner.
“HELLO!”
Little G, in a Hawaiian shirt, straw hat, shorts and an enormous medallion, glowed redly into being on top of the dining table – and then stepped in the trifle. “Oop! Oh dear. Dear G.”
“Little G!” Elodie and I chorused.
Dad jumped up in surprise. “You’re back!”
“What happened, Little G?” I asked him, helping Mum to guide the funny little alien into a chair before he could tread in the lasagne too. “I thought you went home?”
“Uh-huh!” He reached out his long, sticky arms for me. “Little G ammmm home!”
Dad looked pale. “Er . . . Home? Here?”
“And home with Elodie!” Little G grabbed her too in a wonky hug. “Home, home, lots of homes for G! Got G wrong, see? See G?”
“Wrong?” I asked him. “What did you get wrong?”
“G in Little G not for Goldfish,” he explained. “Hello! G for Gooseheart.”
“Fantastic!” I said happily. “Dad, that’s OK if Little G has a home with us, isn’t it?”
“Isn’t it, Mum?” Elodie added.
Mum laughed and hugged Little G too. “Well . . . why not!”
“As you say, why not.” Dad’s smile was strained, but it was there. “I suppose he’s house-trained!”
“Thanks, Dad.” I put an arm around him. He actually put his arm around me too. It was quite a moment. Then, “HUGGGGGG!” Little G threw his arms around us both, and knocked us both off our chairs and into the sideboard.
That was a while ago now. Me and Dad and Mum and Elodie – and Little G, of course – all get together a lot. But we do our own things too. We’re all pretty different, and I guess we might take different routes through the years . . . You know. When we’re ready.
But however old we get, and wherever we land up, I know that some kind of crazy gravity will always hold us together. Just as it holds Earth together with its solar system stablemates while we all whizz around through space.
Space is pretty big stuff. I’ve seen that for myself. But family?
Seems to me, that’s a whole other universe.
Fin