The COMPLETE Reluctant Adventures of Fletcher Connolly on the Interstellar Railroad: A Comedic Sci-Fi Adventure
Page 41
I nod slowly. “I suppose I’d better turn you in to the NEPD. Put an end to your suffering.”
Astonishment flashes in Donal’s eyes. He never for a moment thought I really would squeal. I suppose that’s good to know. But he masters his reaction, bows his head. “We deserve it.”
“Oh no, we don’t,” Harriet says.
I speak over her. “Fortunately, the NEPD has a new chief. So I’ll only be turning you in to Finian.”
Yes, I left that part out when I told Donal my story. I thought I should wait to see how Finian’s negotiations with Earth shake out. But I already know, don’t I? Finian has the Ghost Train. That’s all it will take for all the pols on Earth to crawl to him, offering him all the titles and baubles he wants, and it’s fortunate for us that all he’s ever wanted is to rove the galaxy, boozing and fighting. And there are plenty of pirates out there for him to fight.
I look at my watch. “In fact, he’s on the local loop right now, but he’ll be leaving in another hour. So we can still catch him if we step on it.”
Donal lights up with a grin. He stands up, sliding Harriet off his lap, and kisses her. “I’ll round up the treecats. You pack whatever you want to take.”
“Nothing,” she says. “I don’t want to take anything. I just want to go home.”
I smile. “You have got a car, have you? I don’t want to take another taxi. They gouged me for two thousand dollars on the way here.”
“We’ve got a new-model Mercedes-Benz 300SL.”
“Grand. Then we’re all set. Just bring your fiddle.”
CHAPTER 17
So we sweep into orbit around Earth with a ceili in full swing in the lounge. Finian may be a diehard oldies fan, but he’s also got a soft spot for the traditional songs. The Draconians also turn out to be musical souls. They can’t sing but they make an amazing rhythm section. And most surprisingly of all, Owen Jones—Sam’s long-lost father—is a virtuoso on the pibgorn. What is a pibgorn? you ask. It is the Welsh version of the bagpipes. There’s a kind of shuddering ache to the notes that makes even the Draconians lid their eyes. We’re all the same under the skin.
Dear old Earth! Hardly have we glimpsed her cloud-garlanded majesty when military spaceships mob the Ghost Train. Targeting lasers dance over our hull. They never learn. All the same, I understand their reaction. The Ghost Train was not supposed to be back until 2068, and it has never stopped at Earth in the past. The politicians must be terrified.
Heh. They have no idea.
“Youse can get off now if you like,” Finian says to us. “I’ll deal with these wretches … Yeah, I fecking copy you. Yeah, I am aware of that. Are you aware I’ve got nukes?” He chortles, leans back in the new captain’s couch on the observation deck, and crackles his knuckles. ”You have to start off by frightening them,” he muses. “Then they learn.”
I’m not sure, but I think this may be an oblique apology for the things he did to me in the past. If so, it’s all right. I have learned.
“We’ll be off, then, Finian.”
We shake hands. The moment seems to last a long time.
“Say hello to your father for me. And don’t forget my Guinness.”
“I’ll send you a whole brewery.”
I have promised to ship him several cases of Guinness (cans being better than nothing), since the Wonder Wall still can’t do carbonation.
Dizzy and Pew Pew meet us in the parking bay. They are supervising the construction of Finian’s Formula One track. They wear jeans and heavy metal t-shirts now. They look extremely cute. “DO YOU WISH TO TAKE FLYING SAUCER?” Dizzy suggests hopefully. “I WOULD LIKE TO SEE FACES OF HUMANS WHEN YOU LAND ON WHITE HOUSE LAWN.”
Sometimes I’m sure the gandy dancers are more autonomous than they let on.
“Jesus, we’re not going to the White House,” I say.
“We are,” Sam grins.
He has a whole elaborate scheme to meet the President of the United States and ‘help’ them negotiate with Finian, by which he means trousering big bucks as a consultant. Despite all we’ve been through, he is still quite naïve in some ways.
“We are not going to the bloody White House,” says Owen Jones, in his gravelly voice. “We are going to the maximum security international prison in the Seychelles to see your mother. We’re taking this.” He holds up a Gizmo cut from one of the Tombs of Youth. Finian hacked it off for them himself.
Sam hesitates. “I’m afraid we’re gonna be too late,” he says in a nearly inaudible voice.
“It is never too late to make amends,” Owen Jones says. “We’ll take the Denebite star shuttle. That is, if you don’t mind, Fletch.”
“No, you’re fine,” I say. “We’ll just take the police cruiser.”
So, with Imogen at the wheel, we deorbit from Earth’s local loop and skid down through the atmosphere …
In over the Pacific …
Across North America …
The treecats yowl in the boot.
Across the Atlantic …
… and down, down, down to the raggedy-edged blot of land west of Britain.
Ireland is swathed in damp gray clouds. It’s winter. I’d forgotten about that. Forgotten about the seasons.
Imogen’s cut the engines by now. We’re coasting on anti-grav. We still come in fast enough to terrify the cows in Mahoney’s top field. I roll down my window, gulping in the damp sea-tinged air, as we skim over the hedge, touch down, jolt forward—and bury the nose in another hedge.
Auld Mahoney bursts out of his back door, cellphone in hand.
I leap out one side of the police cruiser. Donal leaps out the other. “Mr Mahoney! Don’t call the guards! It’s us!”
I have uttered these words, or ones like them, all too often. Hopefully that will change now.
We get away with minimal damage after Donal talks the auld fella into accepting an IOU in compensation for the ‘stress’ we have caused his prizewinning Jerseys. Then it’s off across the fields to my house, which is closer. Harriet and Imogen both complain about the wet grass, the wind, and the ‘scary’ sheep we meet on the lane. Harriet, ebullient, laughs at herself for being such a city girl. She’s going to like it here, I think. Not Imogen. She just goes quiet.
“Da?”
I don’t bother knocking on the back door. I just ease it open.
“Mum?”
“Jesus Mary and Joseph, ALLAN IT’S FLETCH, oh Jesus Christ come here and let me hug you, my little boy …”
I love my mother.
My father comes out of the sitting-room, where the television is going full blast. “I was just watching Finian on the telly, bellowing on in his old style about the oppression of the little guy and how that’s got to end, thinking to myself Jesus, that really is my brother … and now here’s you.”
He doesn’t look much like Finian, my dad. He’s just as tall, but thinner, like me, his ranginess turning to boniness now in his old age. Also unlike Finian, Dad is softspoken and courteous, as befits a professor of systems design.
“And Donal O’Leary! You two have been on your travels. And I see you’ve brought back the greatest treasure of all: a pair of lovely ladies.”
Harriet smiles—she loves that kind of thing. Imogen, prickly, says with a grimace, “Female human being will do, thanks.”
As my mother’s putting the kettle on, Dad draws me out the back door on the pretext of showing me the logs he’s got in for the winter, which he wants me to chop. Wood stoves are all the rage now that we’ve not got to worry about CO2 anymore. Thank you, A-tech carbon sequestration. “Is that bird of yours a stacker?” my father asks.
He’s amazing the way he can always tell. But it’s because he works with so many of them. As the years go on, stackers are taking over the top levels of all the brainwork professions. Understandably, as a professor, Dad’s got a bit of a chip on his shoulder about that. There’s more than one kind of intelligence, he’s always said. There’s more to people than what you can measure.
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“She is, Da, yeah.”
“I see.”
“Don’t worry, I don’t think she’ll be sticking around long.”
When we go back in, the tea is ready. We all sit around the kitchen table with mugs of tea and a plate of Jaffa cakes, as well as slices of my mother’s barm brack.
My prediction about Imogen comes true within just a few moments. After one bite of barm brack, she gets up to leave, saying she is worried about the police cruiser. She wants to make sure she can get home to Canada in it.
I follow her out the back door. “Can you find your way all right?”
“I’m sure I can figure it out,” she says, flinching away from Mum’s chickens, which live in the old byre where my childhood BMX bike is still rusting.
We walk together down the lane. I wish she’d come when the fuschias were in bloom. It’s a bit grim at this time of year. But I love it anyway. This little patch of planet Earth is more beautiful than any alien planet. The damp air, the dead cow parsley in the verges, the wagtails hopping on the grass down the middle of the lane—every little tiny thing is precious. Priceless.
We go through the gate into our bottom field, which is a mass of weeds since my family hasn’t farmed in generations, and slog up through two more fields to the top of the hill. We left the cruiser on the far side of here.
Licheny boulders bulge from the sheep-cropped grass. The wind sweeps over the hilltop, carrying sheets of misty-moisty drizzle. “Come up here,” I urge Imogen, balancing on the highest rock. “You can see the steeple of Lisdoonvarna church. You’d be able to see the sea from here, too, if the weather was better.”
“It’s raining,” she says pitifully.
“It’s just a drizzle.”
“I need to get back to the cruiser. I don’t want a parking ticket.”
“You won’t get a parking ticket in auld Mahoney’s field.”
“I don’t even know if I’ve got enough juice to reach Canada. I might have to stop in London or somewhere.”
As my father says, there’s more than one kind of intelligence.
And more than one kind of stupidity.
“Anyway. Bye, Fletch.”
Imogen plods down the hill, her back stooped, her head bare to the drizzle.
Suddenly she stops and lets out a shriek.
I fly down the hill to her. “What is it? Jesus, Imogen, what’s wrong?”
Her mouth wobbles. Tears spill from her eyes. “I stepped in cow poop,” she wails.
I manage not to laugh. Impulsively, I take her in my arms. Her arms go around my neck, clinging.
And I kiss her, soft and long, never giving a damn that I’m stepping in the offending cowpat, too.
When we get back to my house, everyone’s on their second cup of tea, the treecats are rampaging under the table, and Harriet is telling my parents how grim Treetop is. “Don’t believe everything you read on the gossip sites.”
Donal grins openly to see me and Imogen hand in hand.
“I decided to stay for a while,” Imogen says. She sits down beside me and picks up her abandoned slice of barm brack. She chews thoughtfully, and then her eyes widen. She says to my mother, “Nuala, this is incredible!”
“It’s just home cooking,” my mother smiles.
“I guess it’s been a while since I was … home.”
“Consider this your home,” says Mum. “For as long as you need.”
Did I mention I love my mother?
Dad’s still looking a bit sour. He watches the treecats climbing the curtains. “Is that all you brought back?” he says. “You were going to come back rich beyond the wildest dreams, etcetera.”
Donal grins. “Allan, I am rich beyond my wildest dreams.” He slides his arm around Harriet’s waist. “This is the only treasure I need.”
“Aaaah,” says my mother. She’s a romantic. I get it from her.
“Besides,” Donal says, turning practical, “we’re going to make a mint breeding treecats. I’m thinking we’ll buy the old Healy farm on the coast road, if it’s still on the market, and turn the milking shed into a cattery.”
My father shakes his head. “They’re grand wee beasts. But what about all the A-tech you were going to find? What happened to that?”
“A-tech,” I say, “is overrated.”
I was going to save this for later. But I’m so happy that I can’t hold it back.
“I’ve brought back something better.”
“Is that it?” Dad says, nodding at the lightsaber stuck in my cargo pocket. “I thought that was the thing you pinched off Finian when you were twenty.”
“It’s a different one, but no, that’s not it.”
I put down my tea mug and reach into my back pocket. When I’ve got everyone’s attention, I unfold a sheet of material that looks like paper but isn’t. It comes out almost the size of the kitchen table.
On it is printed a snarl of lines, festooned with notations, all superimposed on a spiral whorl.
“Even Finian hasn’t got one of these,” I say.
I can say this with confidence, because I searched all over the Ghost Train to make sure there was not a duplicate somewhere. I even asked the gandy dancers. They offered to buy this one off me. Not a chance.
“But what is it?” says my mother.
“I snatched it off the noticeboard at the Nursing Home in the Core of the Galaxy. It’s a map—”
“—of the entire Interstellar Railroad,” Donal finishes for me, laughing in delight. “It’s priceless!” There’s not a shred of bitterness in that man. “Well done, Fletch!”
Imogen stares, rapt, at the map. “We could sell this for billions.”
“We could.”
“Or we could go and explore the far side of the galaxy.”
I groan. “We could.”
“Or we could put it up on the internet, for everyone to use, and do something else.”
“Like what?” I have a fair idea what she’s going to say. We talked about it on the way back from the hill, before she knew about the map.
“Well, you have some fields out there that are just going to waste. This used to be a farm, didn’t it?”
My father says uneasily, “I don’t know the first thing about cows.”
I hug him. “Don’t worry, Dad. It’s in the genes. We’ll figure it out.”
This is the conclusion of Fletcher Connolly’s reluctant adventures on the Interstellar Railroad.
DISCOVER THE ADVENTUROUS WORLDS
OF FELIX R. SAVAGE
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