Sophie did try on an evening gown, just to see how it looked. Superb! But she realised that the circumstances required something much more practical. She settled on boot-cut jeans (the most expensive, designer ones she had ever heard of) a vee-necked metallic cashmere sweater and stylish winter boots that came half way up her calves.
Brad blinked as the lovely young woman walked up to him, carrying a fake-fur trimmed, down-filled winter coat over one shoulder of her classy but relatively rugged ensemble.
“Don’t look at me like that, young man! Aren’t you married?” Sophie winked, aware that her appearance was startling to him, but in a very positive way.
“Hey, you’re not that much older than me.” Hawk explained his own history in record time, realising as he spoke that the age difference – thirty years or so – was completely insignificant in their new reality.
“I still think of you as a kid! Can’t quite figure it all out yet. Well, this is better,” Sophie smiled as she ran her free hand over her sweater and down onto the snug jeans, putting aside the more complicated aspects of life, age and relationships for the simpler subject of dress ware. “Once I’m convinced this isn’t a dream, I’ll be looking for a younger man – though I suppose I won’t even be able to tell, with this restoration device.”
“Yeah, or no – you’re right. But I am impressed, nevertheless! As for age, it doesn’t really figure… and you’ll get it figured out okay. Now, I’m taking you back with me to the Morrison – Kirrina said she had something she wanted you to do before she drops Eric and me back here with all those ‘Morrison-ites’ and you take the trip back to New Leeds with Terry and his assistants and whoever else she can squeeze in.”
“Of course.” Sophie nodded, realising that there was nothing the fearless Mrs. Fletcher could ask that she would not be willing to do. “I’ll tell your Tracy that you are going to bring her back something from here – that should make her day, don’t you think?”
“How will I be able to pick the right size?” None of her mini-Medic created clothes have any labels!
“Ha, what a problem to have!” Mrs. Trathad grinned, her glorious dark brown hair rippling as she did a little dance around the customer service desk. “Let me think…” Sophie did her thinking and moves to nostalgic music she recalled, humming to herself.
She reminded Brad of an old movie with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers that he recalled as being frothy and delightful. Perhaps partly – no, mostly – because I watched it with Tracy!
“That’s easy!” Sophie had a ‘light bulb’ moment and stopped dancing. “From what I’ve heard from Karen, all you’d need to do is just get it several sizes too big, and she can put it on and get restored in it at the Medic in Citadel!”
Or the one in our house!
Chapter Twenty-Two
Lavish losses, gains or reclamations
“Sophie, I’d like you to talk to Shannon and Alex.” Karen found her energy levels kept dropping, despite another Restoration cycle she had ‘administered’ to herself. “I want to get as many into Magic Wagon as possible. I think we could pack thirty in, if I do away with all the seats behind the pilot and co-pilot chairs. Trouble is, Alex is so huge, she’ll take up the room of two, maybe three.”
Sophie wondered why the solution which came immediately to her mind had not occurred to Kirrina, then she realised that of course it had, but the prospect of preparing the young lady for this momentous change was what was holding her back. In an instant, or as close to this as made no difference, Alex would be released from years of conspicuous concealment as the oversized participant in countless meetings and parties, where she was regularly and ironically akin to the ‘elephant in the room’ in that her size was never remarked on or even, apparently, noticed at all. Living that way had provided her with a kind of comfortable anonymity in those everyday situations, as she had been considered to be essentially ageless, acknowledged as a special case by friends and family members who themselves could not understand her obvious acceptance of this life-limiting and possibly life-threatening situation.
And she’d need to Restore everyone else, too, to optimise the space completely and prevent any unforeseen events such as heart attacks and strokes during the flight… She recalled how her own heart had raced and her own precarious health balance had been toppled by the abrupt destruction of her apartment exterior wall, the sudden and precipitous drop in temperature caused by the whirlwind of snow and finally the transfer – across the precipice – into the surreal interior of a heavier-than-air vehicle which contrarily floated in the maelstrom of the endless arctic wind and snow. And before that, she’d have to prepare each one of them for the new world they’d be entering, just like she did for me – that’s a lot of mind merges… such ultra-draining mental work! “I’ll explain it to her. I even have a photo of myself taken last Christmas that I can show her. She won’t be prepared like you could do it, but she will know what’s coming, enough to be able to stand it. I’ll ‘do’ Shannon at the same time. Then I’ll tell the rest, en masse. You can zone out completely.”
“Thanks, Sophie. You really are a treasure! And as for my tiredness, I think it may be psychological – I’ve never been killed before, and it takes some getting used to!”
“I could see how that might be a shocker!” Sophie shook her head and grinned. She walked off to find the first two of her unwitting victims. Once found, she took Alexandra Montgomery and Shannon Kurg into Magic Wagon, helping the former through the wide doors, finding the seats were already missing from the interior. Kirrina doesn’t waste any time! “Now, Alex, Shannon, take your coats off – you won’t need them in here.” She waited for them to do this, indicating that they should pile them on the pseudo-carpeted floor. “Karen asked me to explain some things to you. First, there’s some quite literally out-of-this-world technology here. This Aircar uses gravity field generation to lift itself off the ground. That destruction out there, in the remains of the foyer, was done with a laser fired from this weapon.” She picked up the Narlav laser rifle and showed it to the two, noting their dubious expressions, making sure not to point it in their direction, deliberately omitting the fact that she had been the wielder of this awesome destructive force. “And, most importantly, they have a medical device which can almost instantly optimise your body. It was used on me about an hour or so ago. You are going to find this hard to believe, but I am ninety three.”
Alex looked at her, uncertain how to take this outrageous statement. After what seemed like a minute of silence, she realised that Sophie was not joking. A look at Mrs. Kurg confirmed the confusion this impossible statement had caused.
“I’ll explain how that is possible,” Sophie continued, as she saw that she had captured the attention of the young lady filling much of the space before her and the older lady seemed similarly intent on her words. “First, look at this vessel.” She led them to the front seats and sat in one. As she settled, the chair seemed to curve like over-achieving memory foam. “See? It looks rather comfortable, doesn’t it?”
Alex nodded, her triple chins moving slightly out of phase with the rest of her face. Shannon’s lips curled on one side, a clear indication of her determination not to be fooled.
“Watch me twist it around and lean back a bit.” Mrs. Trathad did as she had indicated she would, turning to face them, and the chair spread out somehow, becoming an over-stuffed armchair, when moments before it had been a business-like ‘captain’s chair’.
“Clever trick.” Alex looked quite impressed but tried to disguise it.
Shannon simply stayed silent.
“Well, Karen wants to take as many people out of here as she can, but there’s only a certain amount of space in Magic Wagon.” It almost seems to be bigger inside than outside – I wonder if that is possible in this new world I entered? “Some people will have to stay here, wait for this Aircar to return.” She made a mental note to check up on her impression when the emergency was over.
The young
Ms. Montgomery suddenly looked worried, thinking that she would be the most likely candidate for being left behind because she would take up too much space.
“Look.” Sophie showed the two her Christmas photo. “This is me, last Christmas.” She watched as Alex smiled, completely unconvinced by the picture of the stranger – an old lady that bore no resemblance to the vivacious young woman standing so confidently before them in chic-clothed perfection – and Shannon’s lips twisted again.
“Well, I’ve told you. I don’t have time to waste; there are a lot more who need to get ready for the flight, some who might get sick, or even have a heart attack or something. I’m going to say a special word and you’ll feel your bodies changing. I’m told that, a bit like the chair changing, your cells will all be optimised and you will be reformed, reshaped or reduced to an ideal condition and size for your body. I found it incredible. Still do, as it only happened a little while ago.” She put her hands on her tiny waist and wiggled theatrically for their benefit and her own pleasure.
“You can’t do that.” Alex put her hands somewhere near where her hips were hidden. “It’s ridiculous.”
“Restore!”
Ms. Kurg transformed, becoming a pleasant, though otherwise fairly unimposing young lady with a clearly defined waist and short, thick, page-boy hair in a golden yellow blonde, healthy-glow tint, with rogue reddish hairs highlighting the glow. Her clothes suddenly looked rather loose. She looked at the backs of her hands, noting the youthful smoothness and looked at her colleague reflexively. What she saw made her clamp her mouth shut in a vain attempt to curtail the strangled yelp that issued forth.
Ms. Montgomery had shrunk a lot more, of course – her clothes now flopped over her slender new self, more like an unassembled tent – so much so that the skirt had dropped on the floor, leaving the still gigantic tee-shirt hanging half way down her toned thighs and draping her arms almost to her wrists.
“I-I…” Alex stammered, her hands moving over the optimised and much reduced surface rather poorly disguised by the huge cotton sack in which she now found herself enveloped. She looked in turn at the older woman that she knew so well and her mouth fell open. “Shannon! You look lovely!”
Shannon of course could not see her own face, but she knew in every breath and every simple movement she made that she was young again, and this seemed impossible and irrefutable at the same instant. She smiled, recognising the beautiful face that she saw before her, noting how much it reminded her of pictures she had seen of Alexandra as a young child, before her weight had begun increasing far faster than her height. Still feeling as motherly to the once younger girl as she ever had, she instinctively took her into her arms. “You are gorgeous, simply gorgeous!”
Sophie enjoyed several other Restoration sessions, though none of them came close to the excitement and satisfaction that she had felt supervising the first one. For the other sessions, she took as many as ten at a time, realising that the calm that surrounded their location might just be the ‘eye of a city tornado’.
Back inside the apartment building, Terry’s first reactions were also the strongest. Having picked his administrative assistants first and foremost for ability, he had also been pleased to find women that he was sure would not become romantically interesting to him. His thought was that office romances could be disruptive to business and this factor being eliminated was one more plus for efficiency in his management company.
Then he saw the restored Alex.
Liberated as she felt by this transformation, she jumped at him, hugging him with unrestrained enthusiasm as her quilted coat fell on the dusty floor behind her. “Oh, Terry! Can you believe it?” She smoothed her tee-shirt against her front, and as she had thrown away the ridiculously large bra that she had been wearing underneath it, her shapely form was outlined quite clearly against the thin cotton.
Terry pulled his eyes away from this revelation, focusing on her smiling face again and realising that she was – in his own vernacular – a total knockout! “I can’t believe it, but then again, I think I must.”
At the urging of a brief mental message from Kirrina, Ruth had been telling Terry about the Restoration process since the moment his two assistants had walked and waddled out to the truly Magic Wagon. Seeing the newly adorable Alex on her return had thrown Mrs Hardy into even more confusion, with a part of her hoping that he would fall for his young secretary and the rest of her wanting somehow to keep him for herself. I know Karen said I was over my faltering feelings but now I’m not so sure…
“Let’s get this process completed.” Kirrina had been sitting and ‘refuelling’ with Chelsea Buchanan for a short while and later, for far longer, with Eric Kirouac, reasoning that if anyone had energy to spare, it was this rock-solid soldier, this embodiment of masculinity. Deciding that her continuing lethargy must be psychological, she had returned to the ground floor in time to see the last of the refugees bouncing back into the building from the Aircar. “Come on, Terry, let’s get you restored now.” She looked at Ruth intently. “I think you had better witness this, so you can tell Isaac later.”
Once out in the privacy of Magic Wagon’s spacious interior, having sent Sophie into the Morrison after thanking her for her tremendous help, Karen got Terry to remove his suit jacket and then his shirt. This will either fix Ruth forever, or I’ll have the worst eternal triangle to deal with, for what may be close to an eternity! “Take off that arm. You won’t be needing it again.”
Ruth tried to order her emotions as she inferred the stump’s reality from the over-laying synthetic contraption.
Terry spent a minute disengaging the sophisticated pseudo-limb, his nervousness in front of his first love making him fumble with the device.
“Chuck it on the floor.” Mrs. Fletcher smiled as she said this, not being at all surprised that he instead put the fake arm down with great care. As soon as he was standing more or less upright again, she spoke the powerful word.
The stump end blurred, expanded… lengthened so quickly that it was impossible to follow the re-growth of his right arm, until the fingertips were flexing in wonder.
Ruth threw herself against him and was gratified – to put it mildly – when both his arms enclosed her in a loving hug.
“I think I’d better take a step back.” He pulled her away, maintaining her at arm’s length with his newly paired appendages. “This is powerful medicine!” He turned his head, a process that required a deliberate force of will, to face Kirrina. Then he let go of Ruth and was relieved, or mostly so, when she stayed in place, rather than sinking so warmly against his bare and well-muscled chest.
“Good!” Karen grinned, touching his new hand with a sense of amazement, though she had seen the power of the Medic so many times before. Somehow, I think they’ll make it! “Let’s get this flight boarded!”
***
Sitting comfortably in the left hand of the two seats remaining in Magic Wagon as the time when she would be able to contact Richard, mind-to-mind, approached, Kirrina turned again to Ruth – who she had insisted should sit beside her for the return journey. “I want you to remember what I told you.”
Ruth looked into her pilot friend’s blue, blue eyes – her own were glistening, as if she could hear what was coming already. And I haven’t touched her for several minutes!
“I admire your passion for bringing happiness to others. I’m sure you will continue to do this.” Karen’s words were measured and slow. “Remember how blessed you are and you will go far.” She reached over and put a hand on Ruth’s nearest. You have so much, don’t risk it on something you know is impossible.
Ruth blinked back the tears. Somehow the feeling of power rushing down her arm and across to Karen was different – no more than this, she felt something swimming up, against the downward flow… I will be fine. Just stay with me until I’m back with Isaac!
Kirrina moved the laser from the central storage space and wished the two command chairs together. She pulled Ruth agains
t her side as the chairs merged into a kind of love seat – the Aircar being on autopilot as they sped through the darkness. Love is the most powerful thing in this Galaxy… Karen sent. …or any other!
Behind them, the thirty-one closely packed passengers dozed and chatted, though one or two looked forwards and observed with interest as the furniture morphed into its latest form and Ruth’s dark, curly-covered head sank onto the shoulder of the platinum blonde. Brad was one of those observant ones – Kirrina had decided that Eric could handle the famous store and its refugee occupants without that worthy’s assistance, and that Tracy would need to treasure her man just as much as Isaac and Richard would need to treasure their wives, once the truth of the near-deadly ambush was known to them.
***
Richard! Faintly the responding thought crystallised in Kirrina/Karen’s mind as a whispered repetition of the two versions of her names.
Ruth felt the emotion flooding into her own heart and quickly pulled free, a feeling of intrusion overlapping with the multitude of other emotions she had sampled that single day. She marvelled at the interweaving of the minds she had felt, though the touch was whisper-faint. Oh Isaac! Could we handle such honesty?
Kirrina sat up, grabbing the Navigation Sphere as the checkered ball appeared. She pushed it forwards, taking Magic Wagon rapidly beyond the normal maximum cruising speed. Outside, the blackness of the night was broken only by the slightly muted stars overhead. Time to descend! She pushed down, not slowing the vehicle more than a fraction, confident that the vessel’s disguise would minimise the sonic boom somewhat. Maybe someone will get woken up… I don’t care; I can’t wait!
Despite her emotional response, as she descended through the thick cloud cover, having to rely on her instruments to navigate, she found herself pulling back until Magic Wagon was no longer supersonic. Somehow the clouds whipped past slowly, or so it seemed to her.
Cavalry Page 20