Above His Station (21 page)

I opened the door with my key and found the place in complete darkness. As I turned on the lights I heard a faint gasp. I froze, a silhouette in the doorway, and called out.

Astrid was all askew on her bedroom floor and I rushed over to her, scooping her up and placing her gently onto the bed.

‘What happened?’ I asked her. ‘Did you fall out of bed or something?’

‘Close,’ she moaned. ‘The penthouse.’

I was horrified. ‘You
what?
What on earth were you doing up there?’

‘Trying to get the inside track on my father’s plans, remember?’

‘Yes, but…how did you end up falling?’ I asked.

‘Perhaps ‘
falling
’ is a bit misleading,’ she said. ‘I was pushed.’

‘
Pushed?
’ I cried. ‘Someone pushed you off the roof?’

‘Not intentionally...although I wouldn’t put it past them,’ Astrid said. ‘I’d flown up to the penthouse suite to listen at my father’s window and I could hear him and his cabinet discussing something, but I was concentrating so hard that I didn’t notice his aide open up the window. It struck the underside of my chin and I blacked out for a moment. I was a matter of feet from the ground before I managed to gain the necessary lift to save myself.’

I folded my arms and gave her such a look! ‘You silly girl, what did you think you were you playing at? What if someone had
seen
you?’

‘Well, they didn’t, did they?’ Astrid snapped back. ‘Don’t forget who I’m doing this for,
human
…and don’t forget what it might cost me if my father finds out!’

I sat down on her bed, watching her flick her tongue at me crossly. I didn’t know what to say, other than I didn’t want her death on my conscience because I had enough on my plate as it was. But I felt that might come across as a bit selfish, so I kept it to myself.

‘
Astrid
,’ I said, in a tone that I hadn’t had cause to adopt since the children were little. ‘I know what you’re risking by helping us. But I still don’t understand why you’d need to hide in the first place. You and your father don’t get on, that’s obvious to a blind man…but is all of this really worth falling out over?’

‘
Falling out?
’ Astrid said, aghast. ‘It’s a little more than
falling out!
’

‘Oh? Then what is it? What has driven such a wedge between you that you don’t want him to even
see
you?’ I asked.

I could tell that Astrid was seriously considering not telling me her reasons, but then I saw her eyes soften, dragging her voice reluctantly along for the ride…

‘My father never approved of me joining the A.R.S.E,’ she said. ‘He’s a bit old-fashioned, I’m afraid. He thinks that females should all stay at home making babies and dinners, not flitting about the galaxy in a star-cruiser.’

‘Well…sometimes us parents will do anything to protect our children, even if it means hurting their feelings,’ I said, tenderly. ‘I was the same with my two. Not so much with David because I was glad to see the back of him, but I couldn’t bear to let Claire out of my sight, especially when she was a teenager. Someone told me years ago that one of the hardest lessons you learn as a parent is when to stop being one, and I’ve never forgotten that. The more you try to keep your children close, the more likely they are to do exactly the opposite of what you want them to do.’

Astrid smiled. ‘I went to the other side of the galaxy.’

‘Some might say that’s a bit excessive,’ I said, smiling too. ‘Kipping round a friend’s house for a night might be more appropriate.’

‘I’d rehearsed the conversation over and over again,’ Astrid said. ‘But telling my parents that I was joining the
Viper Explorer
’s crew was still one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. I don’t have any siblings, you see. I knew my father would be fine, but I felt guilty about leaving my mother all by herself.’

‘Were you close?’ I asked.

‘Inseparable since the day I was hatched,’ Astrid said. ‘I wanted to be just like her when I was small…but as I grew up I wasn’t sure who I wanted to be anymore, only that it wasn’t like her, married to a domineering bully that hardly let her breathe. I knew that I was destined for bigger things,
better
things…and I became obsessed by the thought of blasting away into the stars.’

‘Is Asclepia that bad?’ I asked.

‘Not at all. It’s quite lovely. A paradise, even. At least…the way I remember it. My father didn’t know why I would ever want to leave. But he never had much of an interest in expanding his knowledge…only his power. And power that is gained without knowledge is a dangerous thing. Because he never had to work hard to earn it, he never learned the responsibility that came with using it.’

‘Wise words,’ I said.

Astrid changed her tone, from one of resentment to one of regret. ‘I never realised how much of a slave to his reputation he was until the day that I launched. He told me that if the daughter of the Prime Ambassador was seen to abandon her father, what would that say about him? He wasn’t concerned that the
Viper Explorer
was doing important scientific research; all he cared about was how it would reflect on him! Couldn’t he see the value in what I was doing? How hard I had trained to live out my dreams?’

‘Sometimes,’ I said, ‘when we’re too close to something it tends to blur before our eyes…we lose sight of what’s important.’

‘His job was the only thing important to
him!
’ hissed Astria. ‘More than his own daughter’s life, that’s for sure!’

I began to object, ‘Oh, I’m sure that’s not-’

‘It is!’ insisted Astrid.

Okay, so her father was obviously a bit on the possessive side, but only because he feared for her safety, couldn’t she see that? I wouldn’t want Claire jumping into a spaceship flying around the galaxy unless I was sure that she was doing it for the right reasons, that it was what she truly wanted…

And then Astrid said something that made my assumption turn on its head.

‘He tried to sabotage my ship. Did you know that?’

I did not, and I told Astrid just that.

‘It’s true,’ her tale continued. ‘One of my crewmates let it slip once we had gone too far to turn around. He said that my father’s plan hadn’t worked, so I said ‘
What plan?
’ and after I threatened to throw him out the airlock, eventually he came clean. It seems that my father had made some…
adjustments
to our star-cruiser navigation box.’

‘He never,’ I said.

‘Oh, yes he did,’ confirmed Astrid. ‘He wanted to show me what folly my career was so he paid one of the ship’s engineers to uncouple one of the anti-matter pulse ion-fusion generators that stabilises the in-flight guidance systems for transient warp propulsion and allows us to breach- I’m not losing you am I?’

I grinned. ‘My dear, you lost me at
anti-matter
, but do continue.’

‘My father had our coordinates re-programmed so that they would return the
Explorer
back to Asclepia before we reached orbit, and then the whole flight would be delayed for months whilst the inspection crews worked day and night to isolate the cause,’ Astrid said. Her voice was so sad that I wished that she had some shoulders so I could put my arm around her. ‘Except it didn’t work out as he’d planned. Yes, the navi-box was shot to bits and it took us weeks to reprogram it, and yes it ended up blasting us into an uncharted sector of space…but the ironic thing is that if my father hadn’t interfered, we would never have intercepted the capsule that led us to Earth. I ended up fulfilling my mission…and it was by a complete fluke.’

‘So all’s well that ends well then, hmm?’ I said, trying to inject a little cheer into the room. ‘Even though it wasn’t meant to happen, perhaps on some level it was
meant
to happen…if that makes any sense.’

‘Only just,’ said Astrid. ‘But that’s why I’ve got to conceal myself from him until after the hearing, or it’ll only complicate things.’

‘For who?’ I asked.

‘For all of us,’ Astrid replied. ‘I’ve been missing for years, presumed dead, remember? Maybe he feels guilty about that. Maybe not. The point is that I really don’t know how he’ll feel one way or the other, and that is why you must not reveal that I am alive.’

‘I won’t,’ I said, earnestly.

‘Swear it.’

‘I swear!’ I insisted, as clearly my earnest voice wasn’t good enough.

Astrid’s face fell. ‘This is very important to me, human. When I see my father again, it needs to be on my own terms. I don’t know if you can understand that.’

‘Like I said, my dear, I won’t speak a word of it. And you’re right. It’s your decision to make.’ I stifled a yawn, tiredness seeming to creep in quickly now that Astrid’s tale was finished. ‘What is the time anyway?’ I snatched at my wrist. ‘Blimey! It’s later than I thought. Where the devil is that rat? It should have been back
ages
ago!’

I heard a light scratching against the apartment door and yanked it open, looking down at a crumpled mess on the carpet.

‘You look
terrible
,’ I said to the rat.

‘Good to know,’ it said, dragging its feet into the apartment, ‘because I feel like it.’

The thing was completely done in! It waved a lazy paw over its shoulder and climbed up the leg of the chair where it curled up into a furry ball and was snoring within seconds.

‘Well, I’ll be blowed!’ I said. ‘Normally it’s a bugger to get to sleep for its incessant chattering. Still, I won’t knock it. I need a good night’s kip. And speaking of which, I think I’ll take myself off. Goodnight, Astrid, sleep well.’

‘I cannot sleep,’ said the snake. ‘Not when there is work to be done.’

16

We woke the next morning to find a note from Haakenslaars Bloch slipped under the apartment door. It was official confirmation that the High Council had accepted our appeal and it was set to convene the following day at 08:00 hrs. Even though it was me that had set things in motion I wasn’t looking forward to it, not least because it meant another day on my own idling away the hours. The rat was looking forward to it even less, because it meant yet another day training hard with Taisho Sanshoku and the poor thing was as quiet as a mouse during breakfast.

That was a joke, by the way.

*

There’s not much to report on how my day panned out, other than the news that I managed to catch another episode of my favourite mid-morning television programme. This time there were two alien penguins, both males (I know this because they were wearing shirts and ties) and they seemed to be involved in a long-running feud over a plot of land, with both contesting the other’s rights. One of the alien penguins was far more vocal than the other one, chirruping and clacking its beak angrily, and every so often the sound would go quiet, so I assumed there must have been expletives. At one point the presenter alien penguin seemed to consult an expert alien penguin sat in the front row of the audience. I certainly didn’t envy him. You’d need the wisdom of Solomon to sort that mess out. 

*

Lunch was a test of my courage to say the least. There was no soup on the cafeteria menu so I opted instead for a cottage pie. It was so tough you’d almost have thought that it was made with real cottages!

*

I played 6 rounds of crazy golf with Nixt-Plar Sandersanderson and the jammy sod won all 6 of them! I can only put my poor performance down to my worries about the forthcoming court case.

*

Astrid was up and about come tea-time. She’d slept in most of the day, and I was relieved to hear that she hadn’t been pushed off any tall buildings since we’d last spoken.

Her tale about her father attempting to sabotage her spaceship was still playing on my mind, but I felt sure that he must have had his reasons. She didn’t mention it during our meal together, so I felt awkward about bringing it up. Instead, I asked her if she’d managed to learn anything the night before, reminding her that the hearing was scheduled for the very next day. She said that she’d discovered some receipts which indicated that the Asclepian government had paid an undisclosed party the sum of 42,000 Asclepian wedg’nuts (which I learned later was well over £26,000) for what was detailed only as “
Expenses Incurred
”. It was curious, but still nothing in the way of hard evidence. Evidence of what though? We still didn’t know that the Prime Ambassador was involved in anything shady, but Astrid seemed convinced of it. She still had one more night before the hearing and she hoped that her father’s defences would be down. I told her to be careful. This case wasn’t worth dying for. Too many innocent people had suffered already as it was.

*

The rat was let off early from fish school (another joke!) for good behaviour, or so it said as it hopped up onto the bed with a spring it its step, regaling me with all sorts of information that it had picked up.

‘Did you know that in 1303 the crowned prince of Fallaphallaysia was convicted of trying to poison his personal chef?’

‘If the chef in question then came to work in the cafeteria downstairs I can well believe it,’ was my deadpan reply.

‘He got let off with a plea of temporary insanity due to a debilitating case of syphilis, apparently,’ said the rat. ‘Did you know that officially recognised as an acceptable condition in space?’

‘That’s understandable,’ I said. ‘Although I’m not sure that ‘
temporary
’ is all that accurate. This place seems permanently insane to me.’

‘Did you know in the Roja-Mor quadrant it’s legal to kick a swan?’ asked the rat.

‘No,’ I said, trying my best to look exactly how I imagined the rat would expect me to look: a combination of surprise and alarm. ‘I wasn’t aware of that.’

‘It’s true!’ said the rat, proudly. ‘Taisho told me all about it. About a lot of things, as it goes. She knows so much about intergalactic law, you know? It’s actually a fascinating subject once you grasp the basics. Most of it involves removing any logic from an argument, and so many cases in history have been won or lost purely on how you interpret the wording of the law. For instance, in the year 300 BC, according to Earth’s timeline, a guy from Drebin-9 was successfully acquitted of killing his next-door neighbour’s wife, and do you know what his defence was?’