Ticket To The Sky Dance

by Cowley, Joy

  Jancie sent a thought to Shog, ‘Did you hear that?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Let’s go. The sooner we get this done, the sooner we get back.’

  They soon realised that movement, like speech, was directed by thought and any stray drifting could be corrected by focus. They floated like pale flames through the connecting passages and passed, without sensation, through closed doors, simply thinking themselves to the other side.

  They came into a small brightly lit room where two men in shorts and vests were running on a treadmill, one behind the other. The taller man was dark with close-cropped hair and ‘I Love Planet Earth’ printed across his vest. The other, who had black straight hair and looked Asian, lifted his arms sideways like wings as he ran. The running belt of their machine made a low grumbling vibration and the men’s shoes came down with the clunking noise of metal against metal.

  As Shog and Jancie floated over their heads, neither man looked up.

  Through another closed door, they found themselves in empty sleeping quarters, narrow bunks set into the wall like shelves, a silver cover pulled up on each bed. At the end of the bunks were rows of lockers and, opposite, some small windows, each no bigger than the base of a bottle.

  Jancie paused in front of a window to stare at the planet Mars which filled her view with an orange glow. From this distance, the craters and seas made the surface appear as a piece of marble, richly veined and spotted in shades of red, orange, amber and brown. Through her uncertainty, Jancie felt a small, shimmering beam of beauty touch her thinking. She remembered something that Gran had said. When you know beauty, you know love, and when you know love you know God.

  Shog was listening to her mind. ‘She was always saying that,’ he commented. ‘I miss her too, you know, Jancie.’

  ‘Yeah, I know,’ she thought back to him.

  Dr Frey’s voice cut in. ‘Ashoga, Jancine, I am getting very confused readings.’

  ‘We are on our way!’ Shog’s words were like a blast in Jancie’s mind and his light seemed to flare in an instant of anger, then his light flickered into the wall ahead and she was left to follow him, like a small transparent fish swimming in a strange dark sea.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Shog discovered that emotions were attached to the physical body just like breathing and talking, eating and drinking, brushing teeth and going to the toilet. These things were part of some distant memory and did not belong to him here. Still, every now and then, something like a feeling came up from the past and rippled over him. It happened when he looked at Jancie. She really was like a ghost, a wavering thing of greenish light, that was sometimes distinct and at other times so faint that he could not recognise her as his sister. That caused him concern. His own astral body was much stronger. When he held out his hand he could see each finger transparent like the old hologram videos but quite distinct.

  The other ripple of feeling came when Dr Frey’s voice cut in on their thoughts. Until now he had not realised how much he valued the privacy of his thinking. Sharing with Jancie was one thing, but having that woman print out everything that passed through his head was entirely different. Heck, she would even be listening to this.

  What head? he thought, interrupting himself. He tried to touch what should have been his scalp and felt the faint buzz of light against light. His head and all the rest of him was back on earth, so what was doing the thinking and the seeing and the hearing?

  ‘I apologise for the intrusion, Ashoga.’ It was Dr Frey’s voice again. ‘The astral body has its own sensory perception, which is why you can clearly see and hear, and your intelligence functions are intact. But might I remind you, these functions are at their keenest right now. Please do not waste time. You are in the ante-room of the transjection chamber. This and the data room, on the other side, are where I want you and Jancine to be stationed.’

  ‘The what chamber?’ came from Jancie.

  ‘The name doesn’t matter.’ Dr Frey’s voice had a slight echo to it. ‘Neither should you concern yourselves with understanding what you see. That can only create confusion in your readings. Pretend you are cameras. Cameras do not process information. They simply record it.’

  ‘Drop dead!’ Shog thought, deliberately.

  She did not react but said in the same cool, even tone, ‘Do not walk together in the transjection chamber but take different viewpoints. Look at one object for a few seconds and then pass on to the next. The intensity of your focus is what matters.’

  Shog moved closer to Jancie and for a moment clearly saw her face with the outline of the door behind it. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Follow me.’

  He went through the grey door, feeling that slight buzz of impact, like a small electric shock, and came together on the other side. As he looked back, Jancie also came through, her light spread out and then reforming itself to her shape.

  This room was big and the people in it wore white suits with visors so that it was difficult to see their faces. They walked in an awkward fashion, setting their feet down with a clunk, like the men on the treadmill, and Shog wondered if the soles of their boots were magnetised to counteract the lack of gravity.

  There were no windows in the room, only bars of artificial light and something like a large steel and glass island in the middle of the floor. Within the island there were pillars, plates and domes of shining steel and, at each end, the barrels of huge electron microscopes. Each was attended by a figure in a white suit who wore a shaped helmet that enclosed the viewing piece. The figures looked as though they were joined to the island by the microscopes.

  The other figures stood at the glass and steel barrier that defined the island and watched the flashes of lightning that went back and forth between the domes.

  ‘Separate!’ Dr Frey ordered. ‘One of you at each end. Then walk round slowly, very slowly, focussing clearly on everything in front of you.’

  Jancie turned and went in the opposite direction, while Shog moved on round the barrier. He noticed that the flashes of lightning that crackled between steel points changed colour, red, then orange, yellow, green, blue. Sometimes the flash was straight and sometimes it forked to different points. He tried to concentrate on every bit of the equipment as though he were committing it to memory, tried not to think of other things. It was difficult. When he saw Jancie opposite him, his mind wavered. First Jancie, then Gran, got in the way. He heard Gran say, ‘You’ve got a good heart in you, Shog boy.’ Her voice was as clear as a bell in his mind, and he expected a reprimand from Dr Frey. Quickly, he focussed again on the big machine in front of him, seeing the light reflected on each of the solid plates, seeing the lightning that crackled from the point of the dome. Then he felt a movement within himself and realised that he had walked through one of the white-covered figures. He looked up into the face shield. It was a woman and her blue eyes were opening wide. Her gloved hand went up to the back of her head. She had felt something.

  Her voice came out distorted through a microphone in the front of her suit. ‘Has someone turned down the air-conditioning?’

  The man near her answered, ‘No, no change,’ in a heavy accent.

  ‘You didn’t feel that, Vladimir?’ she said. ‘It was like ice.’

  ‘You are ill, maybe?’ he asked.

  ‘No, I don’t think so. Anyway, it’s gone now.’ She leaned over the glass barrier. ‘It’s looking good. What results did we get with the barium?’

  Shog moved slowly on and passed Jancie at one end of the island. Here he stopped to observe in detail the microscope which had a barrel big enough for a human body.

  ‘Very good Ashoga,’ said Dr Frey. ‘Your readings are exceptionally good. Jancie’s are fainter but still clear enough to be useful. Now, I want you both to get me micro-readings from the two electron scopes you passed.’

  ‘Sure thing,’ thought Shog. ‘We just go up to these guys, tap them on the shoulder and say, “Excuse me, please. We’re a couple
of spooks from earth. Would you mind moving away so we can look down your microscopes?”’

  ‘No, Ashoga,’ replied Dr Frey. ‘You just do it.’

  Just do it? Shog hesitated, looking at the helmet which seemed to be bonded on to the tube jutting up from the microscope. Well, if he could go through doors and walls and people—he let the thought propel him through the helmet and into the double eyepiece. He saw the man’s eyes, huge and unblinking, and he could hear the man’s breathing, so close that it seemed to be inside his mind. He turned. Ahead there was a white frame covered with squiggly lines.

  ‘It’s just lots of little waves,’ he thought.

  ‘Concentrate!’ came Dr Frey’s voice, urgent.

  He tried but the waves were going so fast he could not focus on them.

  ‘Now pull out!’ ordered Dr Frey. ‘Now! This instant!’

  He came away from the microscope as the man operating it muttered and reached for a knob on the eyepiece.

  ‘As I thought,’ said Dr Frey, ‘you are invisible to the human eye but your presence causes a small disturbance in some sensitive equipment. From now on, limit your microscope observance to five seconds at a time. We don’t want them to think they have a major problem up there.’

  The data room was less interesting because almost nothing on the rows of computer screens had meaning for them. They saw a jumble of figures, symbols and code signs and only very rarely a word that they could read. Even the three-dimensional information was boring, cubic grids with figures at the joints, and flowing spirals of little dots.

  It was tempting to focus instead on the seven people who sat at the computers, for they were not in any uniform and their clothes were all different. There was a man who had a white shirt with black embroidery on a round collar. Another wore a red baseball cap. Three of the people at the computers were women. One, a young Chinese woman, had long hair which floated up from her head. Looking at it, Shog realised that all seven were strapped into their chairs.

  He and Jancie moved like pale flames from chair to chair to chair, trying to stay focussed on the screens. How long they were there he did not know. But he felt a flicker of relief when the people shut down their computers, unstrapped themselves and rose up out of their seats. Their floating was clumsy compared with Shog and Jancie’s. They bumped against each other as they pulled themselves along by handles set in the wall. They spoke English but some of the words they were using were meaningless as they discussed the data they had been working with. Still, thought Shog, it was good to hear human voices and human laughter. Somehow, it made them feel closer to earth.

  ‘Outstanding work,’ came Dr Frey’s voice. ‘I cannot tell you how pleased I am. I intend to sleep now, and I suggest that you also take a short break to refresh your awareness. Then you are to make the same round of observations again. I won’t be standing by to directly supervise you, but everything you see and hear will be recorded. Please use the time well.’

  Shog sent out the thought, ‘Jancie is not strong. I am worried about her.’

  ‘There is nothing to fear,’ said Dr Frey. ‘There is a great distance between your physical bodies and your astral bodies. It places a strain on the connection, especially where Jancine is concerned, but there is no real problem. It simply means that her readings are not as clear as yours.’

  ‘When can we come back?’ Shog asked.

  ‘We’ll talk about that later,’ Dr Frey said. ‘Meanwhile, let me congratulate you once again on an extraordinary feat. You have been much more successful than I ever dared hope and the information you have gathered is quite remarkable. Goodnight, Ashoga. Goodnight, Jancine.’

  Good night? Shog realised that out here there was no night and no day as they had known it on earth. Then it occurred to him that without the rhythms of day and night, of waking and sleeping and eating, there was no sense of time. Maybe time did not really exist, he thought. Maybe it was just a little grid that people laid on a great big never-ending now.

  He turned to Jancie, keen to know what she thought, and was disturbed to see that she was fading again. ‘Shoot, Shog! I want to go back,’ echoed her voice in his head.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Two dogs rushed out at Stephen Polanski and he took a step backwards, almost falling into a bed of marigolds and cabbages. He realised, as he steadied himself, that the animals were grinning at him and even now were rolling over, inviting him to scratch their bellies. He smiled and walked around them, up the gravel path. The gardens looked as though they had been laid out by a kindergarten class, small colourful patches surrounded by stones, flowers and vegetables mixed in chaotic rows, clay pots full of herbs, a little windmill that did nothing but wave red and yellow arms, an old iron bed covered with sweet peas, a couple of beehives, a stand of drying corn, some roses blooming along ropes strung between two poles and, beyond it all, a low wooden house with a sagging verandah.

  No one answered the door but the dogs led Polanski round the house to the back area where there were more gardens and about a dozen chicken houses. The air was thick with the smell of feathers, dust and chicken shit, and it vibrated with noisy clucking.

  The dogs took him to the second shed and, as they approached, set up such a barking that the people came out, carrying shovels.

  ‘Mr and Mrs Sanders?’ Polanski asked.

  The man was slight and wiry, finely boned, his face as smooth as an ebony carving. ‘Officer Polanski?’ he said, and held out a hand that was as dark as a plum one side, as pink as candy the other. It was a supple hand, the fingers of a philosopher or a musician. ‘And this is my wife, Fern.’

  She was plump, pale and freckled with an abundance of dusty red hair that was falling out of a tie at the back of her neck. Her eyes were green and sunny.

  ‘Hello, Mr Polanski, it was sure good of you to come out right away. As I explained to that nice lady—’

  ‘Officer Villiers.’

  ‘Yes, that’s the one. As I said we didn’t know what to do. He didn’t give us any contact number, just said he’d ring back. Trevor told me not to wipe the message.’

  ‘I thought someone else had better hear it,’ Trevor replied. ‘It sounded genuine to me.’

  They set aside their shovels and took him back to the house, sat him down in a kitchen that smelled of apples and woodsmoke, and washed their hands at the sink.

  ‘He said something about Banjo, too,’ Trevor said, drying his hands on a thick towel that Fern held out for him.

  ‘Who’s Banjo?’ Polanski asked.

  ‘I don’t know his other name. Something like Pulo or Palo. He’s been Shog’s buddy for several years, long before the grandmother took sick. Lives with his dad in a trailer at West End Caravan Park.’

  ‘Play the message, Trev,’ said Fern.

  There was not much in the way of modern equipment in the house. Most of the furnishings belonged well back in the last century and the wood stove went back a century before that. The phone did not have an image screen but it was recent, no more than five years old, and the voice on the tape was clear. Polanski could pick up the breathlessness, the vowel sounds tight with fear:

  ‘Hey, you guys. It’s me, Shog. We’re in big trouble. Me and Jancie. They’ve got Banjo. I’ll ring back later.’

  Fern took down three coffee mugs. ‘We thought that by trouble he meant the police. That’s why we phoned. We thought that either you people or Social Welfare had taken Banjo.’

  ‘It was a strange hour to call,’ said Trevor.

  Polanski shook his head. ‘The girl, Jancine, she phoned me the same night. She sounded real scared. She wanted me to go out there.’

  ‘Where?’ asked Trevor.

  ‘The gas station out on the coast road. Eyeglass Bay. I—I didn’t go. Lieutenant Peachman went instead. He said—’ Polanski swallowed. ‘He told me there was no one there when he arrived.’

  Trevor got a tin from the cupboard, opened it and cut slices from a cake. The smell of chocolate and vanilla reminde
d Stephen Polanski that he had skipped breakfast.

  ‘I saw Shog as a level-headed kid,’ Trevor Sanders said. ‘If he said they were in big trouble, I think he meant just that. Fern and I are really worried.’

  ‘I’ve got a free day,’ Polanski said. ‘I’ll try to find them. Yes, please. Cream and two sugars. You had them living here a while, didn’t you?’

  ‘Five months,’ said Trevor. ‘One morning we woke up and they were gone.’

  ‘I blame myself,’ said Fern, bringing the coffee to the table. ‘I just wanted those kids so much, I guess I smothered them. From the time they walked in, I was all over them. I had to be their mother. That was a big mistake.’ She passed the cake to Polanski. ‘You know, for fifteen years, Trevor and I have been eating our hearts out for a baby, then, glory be, we got two ready made, that even looked like they were ours. So what if they were twelve years old already? That didn’t matter. We were just so glad to have them!’

  Trevor nodded with a small smile. ‘You understand, Mr Polanski—’

  ‘Please, I’m Stephen.’

  ‘You realise, Stephen, that even in this day and age, we haven’t had it easy. There have been people with prejudice on both sides. We had to turn broad shoulders to that. There’s not a thing you can do about the poverty of racism except ignore it. Fern is right. Those kids really did look as though they could have been ours. They were an answer to our prayers. The girl had red hair. The boy had my eyes. So that’s how we treated them and I guess it was a shock to their sense of independence. The girl, anyway. One morning they were gone and later we heard they’d joined a gang of homeless kids.’

  ‘It was the morning after I talked about adoption,’ admitted Fern. ‘That was so silly of me, but it just kind of blurted out. We were all talking about names and I said, in a joking way, that maybe one day they would like to be Sanders instead of Donoghue. That really lit them up, especially Jancie.’