The Once-Dead Girl

by Laer Carroll

  Beth removed all her clothing except her bra and panties. As she did this she was also changing her face to look even younger than it did. She was also changing her hair to bright red and very curly and tousled, part of it hanging down over her face.

  Then she walked down the hall, past a bedroom, then another, and came to a stair. She walked down it, along a hall and approached the lighted open door to the living room. She made no effort to sneak. Instead she came to the door and called out.

  “Mom? Mom? I’m feeling better. Did you bring the ice cream?”

  She stepped around the door into the room. To find the kidnapper crouched and leveling a pistol at her, but seeming more wary than alarmed when he faced a nearly naked girl standing before him.

  She’d been prepared to leap back out of sight if it seemed he was about to pull the trigger. But he gave no evidence of that. Instead he was slowly standing more upright.

  “Who are you?” said Bethany, assuming a confused and none-too-bright expression. “You’re not my mom.”

  “Come on in,” the man said. “Where were you? I looked in every room.”

  “I was in my hidey hole. I always go there when I’m sick. Who ARE you? Oh!”

  She pretended to see the young girl for the first time. She was lying curled up on a couch. She had twisted her body so she could see Bethany over her shoulder. Then she uncurled and sat up on the couch to stare at Bethany, who repaid the favor. The little girl seemed mostly unharmed; she was not moving as if she were hurt. But there was a scratch alongside one temple. It had bled but the wound was now clotted.

  “Oh, you’re hurt!” Bethany hurried by the man. This showed him her backside and the fact that she was not hiding anything there. She reached a hand to touch the girl’s temple near the wound. Through the touch she sent strong Go-to-sleep messengers.

  She turned to look at the man accusingly. “Did you put me’thiolate on it? You’re supposed to disinfect hurts. And put Band-Aids on them!”

  The shapechanger was improvising and judging the results of her actions. So far the man seemed more tired than angry. It was now several hours since he’d kidnapped his daughter, had his car fail him, and taken refuge in someone’s house. He’d gone several rounds of discussion with the police department’s hostage negotiator. Which could wear one down. At least what she saw before her suggested that.

  Now she tested him some more. She marched toward the door through which she’d come. He stepped hurriedly forward and barred her way. She stopped, looking up at him.

  “Where do you think you’re going?”

  “To get some me’thiolate and bandages.”

  “Well, don’t! You just sit yourself down beside Betsy and shut up.”

  Bethany glanced at “Betsy” and saw that she was wilting onto the couch. In moments she’d be unconscious. She also saw that his gun was not pointing at anyone now and his trigger finger was outside the trigger guard.

  The shapechanger’s closest hand grabbed his gun hand and squeezed hard enough to squash his hand but not enough to crush it. His mouth opened in pain and he pulled his hand back. She simply flowed with it, all her aikido training fully engaged.

  He tried to shake her off him but had as much success as if trying to shake a forklift. For at the same time the Go-to-sleep messengers she’d injected into him were taking effect .

  He opened his mouth as if to scream. It must seem as if a vampire was sucking his blood. For it was panic and not rage which rushed through him.

  He lifted his other hand, why she couldn’t guess. But it sank. So did he as his knees failed him. He wilted, fell sideways, and curled up over his hurt hand as sleep overwhelmed him.

  Quickly Bethany slipped the pistol from his hand and let him curl up on his side.

  She took a deep breath and let it sigh out of her. Then she looked about her.

  The daughter was sleeping. The man was sleeping. Neither seemed to have been hurt. She double-checked by touching him, then striding to do the same to the daughter. Her probe of their health checked with their appearance.

  Now to get the police in here without that status changing. And get herself out before they came in.

  She picked up the pink phone in its pink cradle sitting on a table at one end of the couch and dialed 999.

  “This is Burbank Emergency Services. How can I help?”

  “Hello. I’m in the house the police have surrounded. My father has fainted. I want help for him.”

  There was the briefest of pauses.

  “Which house is this?”

  “I just told you! The one the police have surrounded! I need help!”

  “Keep calm. Tell us just what has happened. Slowly now.”

  Bethany drew in a loud breath and let it out, blowing it directly into the phone mouth piece.

  “He has a gun. He took me away from Mommy. But he put the gun down just now and lay down and now he’s asleep.”

  “What is your name? ”

  “I want help!”

  “OK. Now here’s what you do. When I tell you, pick up the gun and open the front door. Just enough you can put your hand outside it. Place the gun on the porch. Then go back inside. Leave the door open. Sit down near your father and put your arms in the air. Do you understand why?”

  “So the police won’t think I’m bad and shoot me.”

  “Very good. You’re a very smart girl. And a brave one. Now—”

  The dispatcher or someone else must have been in touch with the police on the scene, warning them what was happening. For in just a few seconds the 999 operator began repeating what Beth had said to someone near the operator.

  Bethany followed orders, exposing only a hand and lower arm. Then she ran upstairs to where she had left her clothes. Quickly she donned them, entered the bathroom, and carefully left through the window.

  From there she walked quickly to the edge of the house and peered down. People could see her if they looked up and to their sides. But all those she could see were looking toward the front of the house.

  Bethany waited. Then when people leaned forward to watch something, presumably a SWAT team entering the house, she skipped back a few steps, ran forward, and launched herself across the 30 feet or so between this house and the next.

  From there it was almost routine to retrace her previous route, jump down into the alley, and walk barefoot to the air car and retrieve her shoes. Then she went to find her mother.

  “What’s happening?”

  “Where were you?”

  “Helping fix coffee. Over there.”

  She pointed in the vague direction of the police department operations-support truck.

  “What’s been happening? Someone said the man gave up and we could all go home soon.”

  “WE can go home now. Get your stuff from your father’s air car.”

  “He’ll worry.”

  “I’ll etext him that you’ve finally come to your senses.”

  ·

  The story was all over school the next day about the kidnapping drama. Burbank was a peaceful neighborhood and something like it had not happened in recent memory. Bethany got some fame from being peripherally involved but it didn’t last. After all, she said, she been kept several blocks away from the action and her mother took her home soon.

  Much was made of the mysterious red-haired girl which the father and the daughter swore had intervened in ending the hostage situation. That there had been someone else was proven by the broken window. But that and the 999 call from the house were all the evidence there was of such a girl.

  Many theories were put forward to explain her presence. She was an angel. She was a neighbor kid who’d gotten involved. She was a stargirl, from a Chinese TV series about the alien Stargirls who fought crime in China.

  For nights afterward Bethany had vague dreams about the events, all mixed up: the K-9 dogs, flying in an air car, shooting guns, rescuing the girl.

  Then one night she woke up from a dream of mostly flying to fi
nd that she could fly.

  Chapter 5 - Flier

  Bethany woke from a memory-not-a-dream about flying. She was an alien unlike any she’d dreamed before. S/he (who had two sexes and alternated between them) was six-limbed but completely unlike her old friend the blue cat-like centaur. S/he stood upright on hi/r lower legs, had middle legs which doubled as arms, and upper arms with great dexterity.

  S/he formed an invisible force-field bubble around hi/rself by some device inside hi/rself controlled by hi/r mind. And so could send hi/rself into the air and out over the land.

  That was when Beth awoke knowing somehow that she could do the same.

  She lay awake for several minutes reviewing what she could remember. Unlike dreams which quickly raveled away to nothing these memories stayed with her as if she had just experienced them in real life.

  She had long gotten over the peculiarities of this strange kind of “dreaming” so spent all her time fixing important parts of it in her everyday memory.

  Shortly she got up and dressed in warm clothing which included a light raincoat. The usual heat of summer had broken and light drizzle was blanketing the area. She let herself out of the house and began to jog north, zigzagging a few blocks to the west to end up in the small public park at the northern edge of her home’s up-scale residential area.

  No one was around an hour or two before dawn on a wet day. The lights which illuminated the park after dusk had long since automatically switched off, leaving only the southerly edge of the park lit by street lights. She walked past that edge perhaps 50 feet into the low-cut grass. The only sound was the faint crisp noise of the crumpling grass she trod. The only sight was the ever-fainter fog of golden street-light all around her.

  She stopped. Remembered. Gave a silent command in a language never spoken within 5000 light years of Earth. It meant Form!

  Suddenly she was falling—a foot above the ground.

  She squelched panic. She was floating, not falling. It felt as if she were at the top of a bounce from a trampoline or diving board.

  Around her was an egg-shaped bubble, perfectly invisible except for the rain sliding down around it. Which in the darkness was barely visible even to her supersensitive eyesight.

  It was very visible to another sense. She could perceive the edge of the bubble as if it were part of her, a strange combination of feeling and seeing. This sensation extended behind her as well as before her. It was very strange to “see” all 360 degrees of the world when one’s eyes and brain were used to seeing only the 180 degrees or so in front of oneself.

  She spent several minutes floating in the air getting used to what she was feeling and sensing, getting used to being suspended weightless in the air. Like an astronaut, she suddenly thought, in a space station or a space ship.

  Thinking of ships— That was what she was in. Her very own space ship. Or at least air ship. The only air she had was inside the bubble. She’d exhaust it pretty quickly if she flew into space. If she COULD fly into space.

  Yet the air around her was not getting stale. She wasn’t sure how long it would take to get low on oxygen if she were completely cut off from the air around her. But she sensed not the slightest evidence of such staleness, and she was pretty sure her super senses would detect it.

  An instant’s thought and the bubble rotated slowly a half-turn till she was facing the near edge of the park and the street and its lights beyond it. Another thought and the bubble drifted toward the south .

  A slight sound brought her attention to the ground below her. The bottom of the bubble had just scraped over a slight rise in the grass, bending it. The sound disappeared as the ground dipped ever so slightly and the bubble ceased disturbing the grass.

  Oops! She lofted the bubble several feet in the air. Not a good idea to be plowing up the park and ruining it for others.

  She wondered how hard the bubble was. And suddenly she knew. It was far harder than steel or diamond—or anything built on Earth. She could fly right through a building and not feel the slightest bump.

  Whoa! How had she known that?

  The park’s edge came into dimly into view, and she into view of anyone up at this early hour. She backed up and floated where she was, returning to her question.

  The answer came to her. She had “read” it in something inside herself like the owner’s manual she’d gotten along with her laptop.

  How high could the bubble go? All the way to the Moon and back, and even further. How would she breathe in space? The bubble was capturing the air even now and storing it in an alternate universe. Where did the energy come from that powered the bubble? From the shape of space itself, unbending it into energy. How—?

  Stop! Stop! The information was coming too fast!

  There was silence in her mind. Bethany breathed a sigh of relief.

  How high could she go? As before: As high as you want. Then there was silence. A waiting silence, as if her “owner’s manual” had learned how much she could take in at a time.

  Wow! If only her computer’s owner’s manual was this smart! She’d been dismayed when she’d first opened it from the icon on the laptop’s screen. The manual was huge.

  OK. Now. How fast could she go?

  As fast as you want.

  As fast as a jet plane?

  Yes.

  As fast as a space ship?

  Yes.

  Could she go faster than the speed of light? (In her mind was an image from the Star Battles movie of space ships “breaking the light barrier” with attendant rainbow-like light shows.)

  Why would she want to do that?

  What? Her manual had ATTITUDE?!

  No. It explained that it was designed to ask for clarification when it could not find an answer inside itself.

  Whew! That was a relief. She’d had a sudden memory of an episode of Star Voyager where the artificial intelligence that ran the huge Voyager star ship had rebelled for some reason and tried to be the boss rather than the servant of its crew.

  She noticed that the rain had stopped, leaving behind a light fog which had formed from the rain-drop splashes. She could see the street better. And she could be seen.

  Can I go up now above the clouds? Yes. Here is what is around you in the air.

  An image of the surrounding surface and the air above it formed in her imagination. It was translucent and the street beyond her shown through it.

  She closed her eyes to block out her eye’s view and examined the image.

  It was in shades of grey without lots of detail. Except several images which had different colors. Red meant close, orange further away, and so on. The closest aerial image was of a jet airliner which was passing over the area on its way to the BurbankAirPort a few miles to the west. There was an orange-lit one behind the red image, and an orange-lit one in front which had passed over her and was coming in to land.

  There were also surface images in fainter colors which indicated surface obstacles: a stand of oak trees in one corner of the park, telephone and power lines and poles, the net behind the baseball players batting mound and the poles which supported it, and others.

  Bethany opened her eyes and desired to go straight up.

  Her bubble took off like a rocket.

  Stop!

  Bethany just breathed for a full minute or two. THAT had been scary!

  She was above the fog however, maybe the height of a football field. The city was visible below her, dark still but lit by the thousands of street lights, yellow windows of early risers, and (further south) the lights of the city’s main thoroughfares and the buildings around them. Some of the distant lights were of different colors, red, green, others, of open businesses advertising themselves. A few flashed and pulsed.

  She desired to go up, slowly.

  The bubble began to rise as slowly as a hot-air balloon she’d seen on TV.

  Faster.

  The rate of rise increased.

  Faster.

  Now that was more like it.

/>   Bethany took in the wider vistas which were visible below her. They were quite beautiful.

  The cloud cover was coming down to her. Soon she’d pass into it and above it. But then she would not be able to see much of the city.

  Besides, she was hungry.

  Bethany desired to go to her favorite pancake house and the bubble quit rising and went to level flight. Instantly. Without curving its path at all.

  Yet she felt nothing to indicate the change. Why—?

  You are protected by an intertialess field. Otherwise you’d be smeared into jelly by high accelerations.

  Beth wasn’t sure what such a field was, but the answer was clear enough. She could go very fast as well as very slow and not worry that course corrections would hurt her.

  In minutes she was above San Fernando street and the Pancake House, perhaps a mile up. But there was a problem. The street and the whole area was very well lit. She could be seen coming down.

  She began spiraling out from the House, looking for a convenient dark area. She finally decided on one and drifted down toward it. She kept a sharp lookout for anyone who could see her and monitored how brightly her body was lit by ground light reflected upward.

  She had a sudden thought.

  Can I be invisible?

  Yes. Do it?

  Yes.

  Instantly the view became very slightly dimmer. Which she took to mean she was now in stealth mode, as the Star Voyager crew would call it.

  To test it out she steered her path toward one of the office buildings in the center of Burbank and lowered to a few dozen feet from the windows in the side of one. There was a reflection in the window only of the buildings behind her .

  She guided the bubble closer, then closer still. Still not even the slightest sign she existed.

  Wow! This made getting around much easier!

  She went up above all the buildings and hurried toward the Pancake House. A block away from it several establishments had alleys between them which would suit for a landing spot.

  Bethany floated down into one and, when her bubble touched the concrete, abolished it. She thumped down from a foot in the air.

  For a moment her legs were wobbly. She’d been weightless for well over an hour and her muscles were slack. She staggered, caught her balance, then walked out of the alley and turned toward the Pancake House.