THE ADVENTURES OF LIGHTSPEED MARY
In the Pink
By John J Gabarron, IV
Violets are purple and roses are red
Don't we all wish our ex-lovers were dead?
Lightspeed Mary staggered into the barroom on a crutch with a patch over her eye and her arm in a sling. Her clothes were ripped and burned and a vibrant bruise was blooming on her cheek. The place grew very quiet.
"Hi, Mary. How's it goin?" Nero said with barely a glance. She missed her footing with the crutch and lurched several steps forward. "Mary, ya gotta watch walkin with that thing."
"Thanks, Nero," she moaned breathily. "How's about helpin a girl with her chair."
"Sure. Take that one over there."
"You are a pig, Nero, a bona fide pig."
"Thanks, Mary. You're mighty swine yourself."
She threw the crutch at him. It was the first thing that surprised him, especially when it actually hit him full force in the shoulder.
"Ow! What did I do? I can't help it that's the best you can do for a Halloween costume. Sheesh."
She started peeling the bruise off of her face. "What if it had been real?"
"Then I woulda taken care of ya. Ain't nobody can use a busted arm the way you were without screamin their fuckin head off."
"Oh." She looked a little dismayed. "Where's that lunkheaded boyfriend of yours anyway? He promised to help me with my Sled."
"What's wrong with your Sled?"
"Bartholomew stuck a bomb on it."
Mary met Bartholomew when she was eighteen. It was something at first sight but neither one of them knew what for sure. One should never make the mistake of saying that it was love to Mary. There was one guy who said, "Oh, love at first sight!" to her once. Next thing he knew, he was in an airlock on deflate. He apologized profoundly and rapidly.
They quickly became romantic. Bartholomew was a hot property. He was five inches taller than Nero -- Nero was six-foot-three -- and outweighed him by forty or fifty muscular pounds. He had paper thin blue eyes and a spiky haircut. He was blond, and, contrary to the addage, "Blonds don't age well,"he had actually aged very well -- very, very well indeed.
Bartholomew Ligeti and Mary Bright were married on a sunny spring morning on Earth. It was where they both happened to be when Bartholomew asked and Mary said yes. In a quiet, small ceremony before the Jop, they vowed to have and to hold till death would they part. Then they found their first motherlode and it was the beginning of the end of their marriage.
While they were on their honeymoon cruise -- of course, one must understand that their honeymoon doubled as a scavenger hunt -- they found an undamaged t Ceti Territorial Transport from the previous century. After reconciling its markings in the computer and identifying it as part of the Treasury, they were able to ransom it back to the Cetans for an incredible fortune. The fact that the Cetans used the wealth of the transport to finance a war for secession from the Siriun Emirate troubled Mary greatly. She once observed that it would have better to have left the thing there than open that box of evil. Bartholomew on the other hand stated succinctly, Having blood on your hands is better than having shit on them. Then he bought the entire barroom a round of drinks. When he glanced back at Mary, she was looking at him in sheer horror. She shook her head and turned away.
All this while, Bartholomew had been teaching her to fly his Sled, a sleek, souped up number with all the latest gee-gaws including armaments that would have made a Marine come in his pants. He had promised, when they met, to teach her almost everything he knew. She asked him, Why almost? and he had replied that the best pilots always kept one trick secret. She had taken that to heart.
Mary turned out to be an excellent student and for their first anniversary, Bartholomew gave her her very own Sled. She took off in it and was gone for a week. She told him she had timewarped three times before she got the hang of the controls and that a week was a close as she could get. The internal chronometer indeed coroborated her story, indicating that only three-and-a- half hours had passed for her. What she didn't tell him was that she'd been to the future and snatched a newspaper out of an unsuspecting freighter pilot's private database. She had eight years worth of future encrypted in her service. She had never read "Miss Manners' Guide to Temporal Etiquette."
It was while she was mucking in her database that she learned that her husband had sold a significant claim on an asteroid field to the MMM Corporation, a claim that would be filed for about another six months on a belt that had shown no promise whatsoever on her board. That was when she took a serious interest in the mechanics of her brand new Sled.
She took the systems apart one at a time and put them back together. She found massive tampering with her scanners, an override on her light speed drive, and a board killer. She left all of the connections live and wired them into dummy lights on her console so that she would know when they were being tripped, also an auxilliary scanner screen so she could monitor the fake scans. The first nail had been driven into her marriage's coffin.
It didn't take long for her efforts to pay off. On their very next trip together, orbitting a Puff Ball in a Big Blue 'hood, she engaged her scannerand immediately got fake news to go with the real news. It seemed that planet two of the system was a waterball like Earth with just the right mix of air and land to make a nifty colony for some expanding society. There were no signs of roads or cities and if there were intelligent beings they were less intelligent than humans -- as if that were possible. It was prime real estate.
Mary spun her Sled and mapped a jump. She had programmed her system to send false coordinates. Then, when she engaged her engines, her board went out.She stomped. She swore. She pounded the board with her fists. Bartholomew docked and when he came through the airlock asking if she was okay, she hit him in the face with a spanner, shattering his jaw and knocking him utterly out cold. She dragged him none too lightly back into his sled, wrecked his scanners and monitors, and removed, very carefully, the systems that controlled her board. She programmed his drive for a dive jump, stripped him naked and put him in the pilot's couch. She wrote "LIAR" across his chest with a indelible red paint pen and tied him down with his own shredded garments. She also took the time to treat his jaw. She didn't want anyone think he had been abused. She did wish that she could see the look on the faces of the rescue team at t Ceti when they found him. They didn't take kindly to liars, especially thirty-five years before.
She jumped back, made her claim, and filed for divorce. That was the beginning of their rivalry. Every year, around their wedding anniversary, one of them would try to kill the other.
It was Bartholomew's year.
Clyde was looking at the bomb. Mary was looking over his shoulder. Nero was looking at both of them from a discreet distance. "Whadda ya think, Clyde?" Nero yelled across the hangar.
Clyde jumped, startled. "I think if you yell at me again while I'm this close to a bomb, I'll have to hurt you," he said.
"Wha-a-at?"
Clyde, a stern look on his face, walked quickly to where Nero stood. He put his arms around Nero's thick neck and kissed him deeply, passionately. Nero just kissed him back.
"Now," Clyde whispered, "I'm going back to work on a BOMB so please don't YELL or you're gonna get HURT. Do ya scan?"
"Yup." Nero hung his head, looking for all the world like a giant four-year-old. He looked up at Clyde with one eye and asked, "Do you still love me?"
Clyde grinned and pecked him on the cheek. "Always."
"Okay. Go work on your bomb."
Clyde walked back over to the Sled, Mary and the bomb. She was smiling. "Ya know, I wish Bartholomew and I had turned out like you two."
"You really want a big, dumb hunk to yell at you while you're two feet from a bomb?"
"It's certainly better than having an ex stick it on your ship."
"Uh." Clyde stood and turned to her. "It's not a bomb. It's a leech. Every time you turn on your computer it copies whatever you call up -- nav coords, for example. The newspaper, even read-only files from protected archives are copied directly from the screen. You're not going to like this. It's been on here for a while -- a month anyway."
"Whadda ya have to do to get rid of it?"
"This." Clyde turned back around and kicked the leech. Nero, who had not heard any of their conversation, shrieked and turned white as a sheet. The leech broke off of the hull and landed on the tarmac a few feet away, spewing sparks and vomiting precious, viscous fluids. At last it made a large poofing sound and exploded. The remains looked very much like a giant egg dropped from a tall ladder.
Nero had arrived by this time. He had turned from white to bright red and spoke through his teeth: "Are you out of your FUCKIN mind?"
"What? I didn't -- eep --" Nero picked Clyde up and held him against the hull of Mary's Sled.
"DON'T YOU EVER DO THAT AGAIN!!" He roared. It was Clyde's turn to change color. Nero watched him pale and he gently set Clyde down. "I never want to lose you, Clyde. I love you too much." He turned and walked away. Mary chased after him. All Clyde could do was shake. He'd never seen Nero that angry.
When Mary caught up with him, he was choking back tears. "He thinks I'm just big and dumb. He probably doesn't even love me. He just thinks I'm a wild romp. What am I gonna do?" He looked at Mary and angrily wiped a tear from his cheek.
"I think you're gonna take a few minutes and sit. Cry if you want to. That was a bad scare, huh."
"Yup."
They sat together for a time, holding hands and talking. After a little while, Nero stopped fuming. Shortly after that, he laughed. From behind him Clyde said, "Um. I'm sorry, lover. I don't think -- a lot."
Nero turned narrowed eyes on Clyde. "Oh. So-o-o, you're little and dumb."
"I wouldn't go that far."
Nero winked discreetly at Mary. "But you think I'm big and dumb."
"I never said --"
"Short on brains, you said. Big, dumb, hairy bruiser, you said."
"Oh. You read that, huh?"
Nero took Clyde's hand in his and put it to his cheek. "Nobody loves me like you," he said. "Nobody touches me like you. Nobody else kisses me behind my ear. Only you do. I love you." Nero smiled, then squeezed Clyde's hand very hard and shouted: "JUST NEVER SCARE ME LIKE THAT AGAIN!" He sounded stern, but his eyes were dancing.
"I reviewed your data recall dump. He got everything you looked at for the last thirty-eight days. He knows what your fuel bill was. He knows you subscribe to Popular Mechanics, and not for the articles. Do you know you spent seventeen minutes staring at Mr October! I never saw a spanner THAT small before. Anyway, he got it all. He knows about the Strand."
"Shit."
It was the greatest day of Nero's life. It was the day he found his first motherlode. He and Clyde had been playing light speed tag and Nero had a flash and timewarped. He came out in a cluster of Big Bluewhites. It was actually quite scenic and Nero was at once caught up in its beauty. There was a crater planet nearby with an ice moon, various luminous streamers all on a backdrop of a distant but vivid orange nebula.
His service was chewing on the starcharts trying to place him and give him nav coords for the jump to homebase so he could come in "free" before Clyde. At last he was found, many dozens of light years farther than he had expectedand seventy-five years -- seventy-five years! -- into the future. He started making the computations for timewarp, and the secondary computations for the jump to homebase.
For a few more moments he looked at the landscape. The crater planet had progressed hastily across Nero's screen, winding its way between suns. It was just starting to pass through a thin pink ribbon. Its surface shimmered, became covered with black and yellow spots and vanished like lightning down the length of the strand. Its moon remained behind, passing near the filament but not through it.
Nero was intrigued. He stored the just completed computations for his return and edged his Sled toward the strand. He tuned his scanners for a pinpoint scan and scanned as much of the length as was in range. The service chewed for a few seconds, a few hundred lines scrolled across the screen and the scan was displayed for his review.
It was surspace -- pure, stable surspace.
He goosed the engines and entered the strand.
Parnell Cornelius Nero Holden-Parker was born twenty-four years before he found the Strand. He was good with his hands, as a child building inventive Play-Doh sculptures, and as a young man, working on old aircars and eventually on Sleds. He studied at the local community college and graduated with the best scores in the school's history. He was licensed as a Quantum Mechanic and went to work for a respectable repair shop in the area.
He met Mary when she brought in a damaged Wave generator. She threw herself at him repeatedly, but he just refused to catch. Nero laughed politely at her jokes, and blushed richly when they were dirty. He responded to her embraces in a most brotherly manner. He always managed to turn his head just enough, just quickly enough, that every time she kissed him, she kissed him on the cheek.
At first she wrote him off as naive. It was obvious to her that he liked her, that he liked to spend time with her. She was impressed with his ability as a mechanic -- his hands had done a delicate dance on the insides of the Wave generator and not only did it work, but he had fixed it so she could stop on a dime. She thanked him over and over but he insisted, It weren't nothin.
She finally went to see him late one evening at the shop to get it settled once and for all whether she was going to score Nero or not. She knew her score was zero when she saw him through the window. He was at the back of the garage all over a man a foot shorter than he was, one hand up the little guy's shirt, and the other down the back of his trousers.
All at once, SHE felt naive. Nero was q.
She thought of Clyde and wondered how she could get them together while she lamented her own oversexed disappointment. She certainly wasn't going to get them together tonight so she went home -- after she stopped at a trough and found some drunken stud to use and throw away.
Mary taught Nero to fly. He was a quick study and picked up the technicalities in a hurry, but the nuances escaped him. As long as the trajectory was a straight line, he could fly it, but anything more complicated had to be programmed into the computer. Hence, Nero became a first rate programmer.
Nero bought his first Sled, a broken down wreck that he had restored within a month. It was now a souped up rod with a computer capacity far larger than would normally be in a ship it's size. He christened the sleek thing Fido and took it out for its maiden journey with a cargo of crystal fuel. That trip earned him his nickname, Nero the Hero.
It was shortly after that that Mary made her legendary journey to Twennieth and brought Clyde his roses. It was his emotional state that prompted Mary to introduce Nero to him. They hit it off right away, especially since Nero liked little guys -- Clyde was five-foot-five of wiry muscle -- and Clyde liked big, hulking bruisers. Clyde fell in love at once but Nero took time. They were playing Bucking-Bronc, as Clyde called it, for almost a year before Nero kissed him at Brighthenge.
Then it was love.
Nero found himself surrounded in the pink with black and yellow streaks. It looked like a jump but it didn't end. His scanners were blank. The ship had no nav coords. So far as he could tell, he wasn't moving. He goosed the engines again and fell out of the Strand. His service began to chew the starcharts.
INSUFFICIENT DATA.
Outside his window there were a few distant stars. The scanners told him there was a spiral galaxy behind him -- seventy thousand light years behind him.
Nero stared at the readout slackjawed. What am I supposed to do now? he thought. What would Mary and Clyde do? They'd go back into the Strand. But I'd just keep goin the same way! Wait. What if I went in backward?
So that's what he did.
He programmed the computer to wait for the exact same amount of transit time before it put him out of the Strand. Then he entered from the opposite side. At the appropriate instant, Fido ejected itself from the Strand.
Nero was precisely back where he started. He called up the computations for timewarp and homebase and jumped.
Clyde was waiting. "You're it," he said.
Nero smiled, "Motherlode!"
Clyde was all ears. The game was over.
"So now whadda we do?" Mary had been pacing rapidly back and forth. She ran her fingers through her hair and turned to Clyde who was laying on the sofa with his head in Nero's lap.
"Well, he doesn't know everything. All that he read from your screen was nav coords and a couple a snapshots my lover thought were -- uh -- purty." Nero smacked Clyde playfully on the top of the head. "He knows where it is, but not what it is. That buys us some time. We gotta get goin though."
All at once Nero stood up. Clyde's head snapped forward and flopped back onto the sofa. "Unh," Clyde grunted and glared at Nero's rapidly retreating backside. By the time he got to a sitting position, Nero was at the door.
"Let's go!" he said, holding the door open. Mary grinned at Clyde. Clyde rolled his eyes. "Go, go, GO!"
So they did.
When they got there, Bartholomew was waiting. Their radios chimed with Bartholomew's call signal and his face appeared. "At least as wild geese go this one has a view. How are you, my dear?"
Nero answered. "Just fine, sugar booger. Get out of my space!"
"NERO!"
"Aw, Mary, it's my space --"
"Shut --" There was a long pause. "-- up." She sent her call signal, then her image. "Happy Anniversary, Bart. Nice to see you."
"Thanks, Mary. I'm sorry about the leech." He looked genuinely repentant.
Mary sent an encrypted message to Clyde. Then she spoke to Bartholomew: "I thought it was a bomb. Fortunately, I got good friends."
"Good friends are important." As he spoke, a message came in from Clyde. It was a single word. Bartholomew continued, "Without my friends for example, I would not have had the ability to survey this cluster and discover that it was a wild goose. You know how much I hate poultry, Mary. The only thing that troubles me is that you could not possibly have known about the leech when I read these coordinates off your screen. What is the deal?"
Two Sleds materialized out of the pink. After moments of pre-programmed drifting, Nero and Clyde were mere feet from them when they appeared. Taking advantage of both ships being momentarily pinkeyed -- their scanners still blinded by surspace -- Clyde and Nero quickly grappled and secured them. Nero activated a radio controlled board killer and that was that.
Nero radioed Mary. "Gotcha," he declared. Then he saw the other four Sleds.
Clyde saw them too. He transmitted the board killer at them and their running lights only blinked for a moment. His scanners told him that the incoming Sleds were heavily armed and coming to bear. "Nero," he yelled, "follow me!" He lit his engines and bolted in the direction of a passing moon. Nero was hot on his heels. Once out of scan of Bartholomew and the other four Sleds, Clyde and Nero fell into the Strand.
Nero had only enough time to recall his previous transit time from the computer and to input it just as they fell in. He took two seconds and locked his board to Clyde's and then locked out the grappled Sleds. When they fell back out of the Strand, they loosed their passengers, boardless in the twilight between galaxies, and went back to be Mary's cavalry.
Mary and the boys had worked it all out in advance. They had planned on at least five Sleds. Mary just had to wait to be boarded. Bartholomew's Sled docked. The door opened. Mary was standing across the cabin holding a spanner. "Remember this?" she asked, waving it in a tight little circle at her eye level.
He flinched and rubbed his jaw. "I want to know what's here," he said. "I have scanned every inch of this place. You never, never-ever, never have useless info in your service. What is here, Mary?"
"I find it restful here. Scenic, you know." She pronounced it skee-nick. "That's all. No motherlode here. Nero was right though. You should get out of his space." She was now punctuating her conversation by patting the spanner emphatically on her open palm.
"I've checked. No claim has been filed -- ever. All I have to do is identify what there is to claim and take the scans back to the Governor's Office. And I shall leave before you!" He was now leaning against the door jamb, arms folded across his chest, smiling a typically lopsided smile. He reached casually into his jacket pocket -- he was forever wearing vintage Twennieth sport jackets -- and pulled out a small steel bottle.
"What's that?" she asked, trying to keep the fear she felt from her voice. Bartholomew unscrewed the top of the bottle and reached into it with one finger. "You know very well what this is. You've experienced it before." He withdrew from the bottle a thin metal rod. Affixed at the end of the rod was a perfect circle of the same metal. It was dripping a thick, transparent fluid. He raised the tool to his lips, not quite touching, and winked at Mary. Then he blew through the ring.
Suddenly, the air around his head was filled with dozens of tiny bubbles. Bartholomew grinned his lopsided grin and looked like a big kid. When he reached into the other pocket, Mary didn't even blink. She did, however, throw herself to the floor just as the fireball from his raygun hit the wall beside her head. He blew another volley of bubbles. He fired another shot. "Spanner won't do you much good today I fear. Why not just tell me the story? I'm a good listener. Besides, you'll get to keep all your body parts."
Mary sighed deeply. When she stood up, she found Bartholomew standing in a cloud of bubbles. The raygun was pointed at her head. "I don't have copies of the scans so you'll have to take my word."
"Your word has always been good enough for me, Mary. Besides, if I THINK you are lying --" He waved the raygun. "-- well, I don't often miss."
"Yeah, I know. So here's the deal. . ." She didn't stop talking for a long time.
When Nero and Clyde fell out of the Strand, they no longer had the convenient cover of a passing moon. They were bare-naked obvious in space and two of Bartholomew's companions launched out in their direction. They got a call chime -- a tinny Beethoven's fifth -- and the gruesome mug of one of the Jockeys. "Prepare to be boarded."
Clyde was always ready with a retort. "I'm already bored. Just lay on, would ya? I haven't got all day, ya know."
Nero's face appeared on the screen. "Lotta radio. They're tryin to get ahold a Barty. He's not home. They're gettin his service."
Clyde nodded. He pulled the trigger on his cannon, firing at the farthest Sled from him, a sleek red number with big aft fins. When Clyde's projectile hit, it ruptured, covering a large section of the hull with bright yellow paint. The Sani-Dept used such methods to mark derelict Sleds to be hauled away as scrap. It was a supreme insult and the Sled's Jockey answered at once. Clyde's radio chimed with a doorbell and the pilot appeared. "You're a dead fucker, fucker."
Clyde was eloquent. "Yackety shmackety," he smirked, and hung up.
Nero had been busy this while, recompositing some of the radio from their initial contact with Bartholomew. Just as Clyde finished egging the red Sled, Nero bounced a transmission off Mary's hull at the last remaining Sled. In it, Bartholomew said, "Get them!" It, too, turned to pursue Nero and Clyde.
Mary's Sled was left alone, docked to Bartholomew's.
Nero again locked Clyde's board to his. He was hastily programming the computer for another slide down the Strand when the first blasts hit Fido square on. There was no rocking from side-to-side, no shower of sparks from damaged panels. That was all so much Twennieth sci-fi bullroar.
The lights flickered and went out -- and because their boards were locked together, so did Clyde's. They were sitting ducks -- and like Bartholomew, Clyde hated poultry.
Mulgrew sat at her board seeing red, her face twisted in a rictus of anger and hate. That asshole had marked her precious baby with yellow Sani-Dept paint. And, she promised herself, he was going to DIE for it. She powered up her cannon. Hers wasn't loaded with paint cans either. Hers was loaded with hollowpoints. They would pierce the hull, fall to the floor and THEN explode.
Nero fumbled in his pants pockets. Flashlight? No. Gum? No. Breathmint? Well, okay. Just one. Remote? Yes. YES!
He pushed PLAY.
Mulgrew hit the scanner with her fist. How could they just disappear like that? Then her board went out. Then it came back on. There they were! They were running. They won't get far, she thought, and seriously goosed the engines.
Just as she was entering firing range, her radio came on. It was Nero. He said, "Now we return to our regulary scheduled program." He winked knowingly and disappeared. So did the reading on the scanner. It was replaced by the pink of superspace and long black and yellow streaks. The color drained out of her face.
When she and her companions finally saw stars again, the were well past where Nero and Clyde had dropped off their grappled cohorts. The galaxy behind them was a mere spark in the deep black night.
Clyde got his board back just in time to see the four enemy Sleds dive into the Strand. He got on the radio to Nero. "Nice job," he said.
Silence.
"Hello?"
No answer.
"Nero?"
"Yeah, yeah, yeah! I'm tryin to get the lights on. Ya mind?" There was a pause. "Thanks, Clyde. That means a lot. Shit! Gotta go!" There was another pause. "Okay, got it. Let's go."
They went.
Bartholomew yawned. Mary was lecturing him on the textural composition of surspace and its direct applications to light speed travel. "What does this have to do with this particular star cluster?" He pointed the raygun at her head.
"Shoot me and you'll never know."
"Ah. Shoot you in the head and I'll never know." He made an adjustment on the weapon and fired. The fireball grazed her thigh. She shrieked. "There are plenty of places to shoot, Mary. Give me a reason not to -- please."
"You still don't forgive me for the Cetans, do you?"
He winced. He had bad memories, very bad. "I want to know why you're here. I want to know now." He fired. Mary screamed.
"Surspace highway," she said her voice shaking. She was shaking all over from the two shots.
"What does that mean?" He frowned. "No more delays. TELL ME NOW!"
Mary opened her mouth to tell him. She hadn't signed on for this. What was one more claim lost to this bastard. She could walk away.
No, she thought.
"NO!" she screamed.
She lept at him. Bartholomew fired again grazing her arm. She wailed and swung the spanner as hard as she could. It him square on his left shoulder, cleanly breaking his collarbone. He dropped the raygun and howled in pain. Then the lights and gravity went off.
Mary drifted, spinning, into the wall where she grasped for and found a handhold. She clung there. She heard Bartholomew wimpering in the dark and -- and the sounds of docking. In only moments, Nero and Clyde charged into the cockpit. They had beacon hats on and quickly scoured the room to find Bartholomew. They picked him up and threw him roughly through his airlock. Clyde disengaged Bartholomew's Sled and the decompression sent it drifting away. Nero got Mary's lights on. "What the Hell took you guys so fuckin long? He shot me three fuckin times!" When Clyde leaned toward her to look at her wounds, she balled up her fist and hit him in the chest. "Get off me," she yelled. "I'll show that son-of-a-bitch who he can't shoot." She turned to Nero and Clyde. "Get your Sleds off my hull. GET EM OFF! DO IT NOW!"
Nero and Clyde retreated to their Sleds and detached. Mary whipped her Sled around and sped toward Bartholomew's. She was firing her cannon. There were three clean hits. Nero called Clyde. "He's got no board. It's gone. No gravity, too."
Mary grappled him and turned on her on the radio. She spoke to Bartholomew through her teeth: "This is what's here. Hope you like it. Maybe you'll get out some day. Happy Anniversary, Bart." With Clyde and Nero hot on her heels, she dove into the Strand.
They were in the Strand for a long time. Nero and Clyde kept a tight formation with Mary and her captured ex. Then they began to drift apart -- slowly at first but then more rapidly. On their scanners it was apparent something was happening to the Strand. There were two distinct sets of black and yellow streaks. It was a branch -- and Mary was heading for a different one than Clyde and Nero!
Nero was on the radio before Clyde even thought of calling. "Mary! There's a split in the Strand. You're gonna go down a different branch than us. Mary! Do you hear? You're goin --"
"Received."
At first there was no change in her trajectory. Then there was. She had undone the grapple and pushed off -- pushed off! -- Bartholomew's hull. His Sled went careening down the other branch. Mary rejoined Nero and Clyde and they fell out ofthe Strand.
They were in a cluster of Big Bluewhites. Far away they could see another similar cluster. They had no idea where they were. Their service's had no landmarks.
"Someone's gonna have to make a map," Mary said.
Nero's claim made him much more famous than rich. Within a year, a station was under construction where the Strand split. It was an Art Deco masterpiece designed by premiere archictect Alexander Northton. He called it "The Coda" for, as in music, it would be the point to which everyone would return. Included in the design was space for a casino and hotel which was promptly rented by a huge Las Vegas conglomerate. The complex was called Caesar Nero's Palace.
In the fullness of time, the region came to be called Strand Forks, Northton Coda.
The End.
Minneapolis, Minnesota
October 12, 1995
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