The Distant Home (3 page)

Those next twelve years, the years between the strange circumstances of Sally and Bobby Harrison’s birth and the events that began on their twelfth birthday, were absolutely normal. Almost, one might say, suspiciously normal.

The only odd thing, the only thing that people could point to later, was that Sally never got sick. People say sometimes that they’ve never had a day’s illness in their lives, but it is never quite true. With Sally Harrison it was literally true. She was never ill, never had a cold, never had flu, never had measles or chicken pox or mumps or any of the things you expect kids to catch when they are young. Even when her twin brother Bobby caught them, she never caught them from him.

Apart from school health checks, Sally never saw a doctor, and as we will discover later, she never even saw one then. So the events of her twelfth birthday came as something of a surprise.

It really started the night before, when Jim and Maria were going out to an official dinner, one at which the accountancy firm that Jim still worked for, Flannery and Flannery, was to be given an award.

Old Mr Flannery had died some years back, so it was young Mr Flannery (as the staff still thought of him, though he was not young in any other sense) who would be accepting the award on behalf of the firm.

Young Mr Flannery had been pretty busy going to lunch and playing golf that week, so Jim had written his acceptance speech for him, had his secretary word-process it and print it out and had then left it on Mr Flannery’s desk that morning.

Now Jim was dressed up in his dinner suit, and Maria in her evening dress, and they were preparing to go out, just as they had when they were dating before they got married and had children.

Sally and Bobby were so impressed with the way their parents looked—just like rich people on TV was the way Bobby put it—that they were taking turns photographing Jim and Maria when Mrs Webster arrived from next door to babysit, though that was a word that the twins had banned from the house since they were six. As far as they were concerned, it was okay for Mrs Webster to visit any time Jim and Maria were out. Mrs Webster was their friend, and they enjoyed her visits and her stories, but any talk of babysitting and there was a revolution.

So this night, the night before their twelfth birthday, Mrs Webster was coming in to visit. As usual she brought her cookie tin and her knitting with her, and as usual, the twins were expecting one of her stories.

Mrs Webster’s stories had become a big part of their lives, just the way that Mrs Webster had. Their real grandmothers both lived in towns a long way away, and they had adopted Mrs Webster as a third grandmother. Not that they ever said that to their real grandmothers, because they did not want to hurt them, but Mrs Webster was really interesting.

She had had a very colourful life. She had worked on ships, she had been in a war once (she never said which one, but Sally had estimated her age and decided she had probably been in the services in World War Two, perhaps in the Navy which would also explain the ships). She had travelled a lot, she knew heaps about one of Sally’s favourite subjects, astronomy (though she sometimes called the constellations by very strange names) and she had more stories in her head than the whole school library had on its shelves.

She was more like a friend than a grown-up. You could tell Mrs Webster things you could not tell other people, and she always seemed to understand. So Sally and Bobby were really looking forward to this night.

Just as Mrs Webster came in, the phone rang and Jim picked it up. Maria saw his face change. A moment before he had been making faces for the camera, and posing with Maria as if they were models. Now his face got that kind of worried, sad look that it always did when Mr Flannery rang him.

And of course it was indeed Mr Flannery. He was wanting to know where his speech was. Jim explained that he had left it on Mr Flannery’s desk, and Mr Flannery was saying that was no good, he had not gone back to his office after his golf game. He told Jim to collect the speech on his way to the dinner, and Jim said ‘Yes, Mr Flannery’, and hung up, and explained all this to Maria in a way that sounded as if he was ashamed of himself.

The twins had never worked out why it should be like this. Their father was so brave with everyone else in the world, and such a wimp with Mr Flannery. When asked, he would always say ‘mortgage’ as if that explained everything, and perhaps it did. Whatever the reason, whenever Mr Flannery told him to jump he just said how high and did it.

After Jim and Maria got away to the dinner, and the twins were fixing coffee for Mrs Webster the way she liked it—strong and without milk or sugar—Bobby put it into words. ‘How come Dad always jumps when Mr Flannery snaps his fingers?’

‘Rank hath its privileges,’ Mrs Webster answered, but said it with a flick of her mouth to say that she did not approve of it. And they settled down for their evening together.

Mrs Webster began, as she so often began, like this. ‘This,’ she said, as she sat on the sofa knitting while the twins sat on the floor before her, ‘this happened out on the Rim of the Galaxy, about seventy years after first contact with the Ursoids.’

Sally smiled in anticipation. ‘When we were little kids,’ she said, ‘you used to call them dragons.’

‘Younger people understand dragons better than Ursoid invaders,’ replied Mrs Webster, taking another colour into her pattern.

‘Sally’s feeling kind of old because Cyril Flannery says he’s going to marry her,’ said Bobby, grinning and nudging his sister.

Sally was indignant. ‘I wouldn’t marry Cyril Flannery! He looks like a Kavarsh.’

Bobby looked at Mrs Webster, knowing the answer to the question he was about to ask, but wanting to hear the answer again. ‘What’s a Kavarsh again?’

‘Like a toad with fangs,’ Mrs Webster said, as Bobby laughed. ‘And Sally’s right. That boy does look as if he’s got Kavarsh blood somewhere. Now do you want this story or not?’

‘Yes!’ they chorussed. ‘We want the story.’

‘Okay then. Where was I? Oh yeah. All this happened about seventy years after first contact with the Ursoids.’

‘And the Empress of the Galaxy knew she was really going to have to kick some alien butt,’ chimed in Sally and Bobby, because they knew that this was how the story went on.

‘Darn right she did,’ Mrs Webster said.

The story concerned the captain of a scout ship, caught in an Ursoid trap. Before they could destroy him, he contacted the Ursoids, and explained that he was just the advance guard, that a bigger ship was coming, a much more valuable prize than he was, and that if they destroyed him, they would warn the bigger ship to stay away.

The Ursoids agreed not to destroy him, but to wait. The bigger Empire ship arrived, and this time the captain of this ship told the Ursoids that an even larger, more valuable ship was coming, but if there were any sign of danger, it would divert.

Again, the Ursoids agreed to postpone battle. And then the big ship arrived. It was enormous. A battle cruiser the size of an asteroid, captained by the ruler of the Galactic Empire herself. Now the big ship, the middle sized ship and the little ship joined forces and destroyed the Ursoids.

‘I’ve heard that story before,’ said Sally, ‘except it was about the Three Billy Goats Gruff.’

‘That’s a kids’ story,’ protested Bobby.

‘What’s it about?’ said Mrs Webster.

‘You must’ve heard it,’ said Sally. ‘Everyone knows it. Little Billy Goat Gruff comes to a bridge. There’s a troll, a kind of Kavarsh, living under the bridge—’

‘The troll’s called Cyril Flannery,’ said Bobby.

‘It’s going to eat the little goat. The little goat says his big brother’s coming and he’ll make better eating. When the middle sized goat comes, he says the same thing. The biggest goat’s coming and he’ll make even better eating. And when the biggest goat arrives, he destroys the troll.’

‘One story’s a kids’ story about talking goats and the other story’s a grown-ups’ story about space ships,’ protested Bobby.

‘Sally’s right. Same story,’ said Mrs Webster, ‘there’s versions of it all over the …’ and she hesitated as if she was about to use the wrong word, and then said, ‘… Earth. Never heard it about talking goats before.’

‘How can it be the same story?’ said Bobby.

‘Because it’s about delaying battle until you’ve got superiority of numbers,’ said Mrs Webster. ‘It’s a lesson that history keeps teaching us, so naturally it turns up in stories. It’s why stories are so important. Anyway this time, it really happened. And the Galactic Empire was saved from the Ursoid threat, the Queen sheathed her light sword …’

‘And turned her face toward her distant home,’ Bobby and Sally chimed in, finishing for her.

Mrs Webster smiled and got on with her knitting. ‘Sure did,’ she said, her eyes far away, as if remembering.

Sally looked at Mrs Webster intently. The answer seemed important to her. ‘Why do they always do that?’

‘Do what?’

‘At the end of your space stories why do people always turn their faces toward their distant home?’

Mrs Webster shrugged, and pulled some more wool out of her bag. ‘Because that’s what grown people have to do.’

Bobby frowned. ‘What if they’re already home?’

Mrs Webster hesitated, then said, ‘The home you have when you’re a child isn’t the same as the home you have when you’re grown up.’

The twins thought about that, then Sally nodded. ‘Sometimes growing up must be just that. Deciding where your real home is.’

Mrs Webster glanced at Sally. She seemed pleased. ‘Good,’ she said, but did not explain why Sally’s answer pleased her. ‘Now it’s bed time.’

‘I might just spend a little time on my computer,’ Sally said. ‘The program I’m writing’s giving me a little trouble.’

‘No!’ said Bobby. ‘Spock Sally having trouble with an itsy bitsy little computer program?’

‘I don’t complain about the dork games you play on yours!’

Mrs Webster thumped her walking cane on the carpet to stop the developing argument. ‘She does Spock programs, you do dork games, what’s wrong with that, eh?’

They grinned sheepishly. ‘Nothing.’

‘It’s good the two of you are different. Having one birthday’s bad enough, you don’t have to have everything else the same. Now give me a Mrs Webster hug before you go.’

And she opened both arms, and they fell on her. She wrapped her arms round them.

‘You’re always so strong!’ said Sally, her voice a bit muffled by the three-way hug.

‘You’d led my life, you’d be strong too,’ said Mrs Webster. ‘Off now.’

The twins moved off, leaving Mrs Webster alone.
Click, click, click.
The knitting needles sounded like a clock ticking.

Middle Street’s last night of being absolutely statistically normal passed quietly. Sally fixed the glitch in her computer program while Bobby killed some monsters and won a treasure hoard on his computer.

Then they slept. At one point Mrs Webster checked on them, and found Bobby’s light still on, and in Sally’s room a coloured glow being cast from the computer screen on which a Mandelbrot Set was slowly evolving.

Maria and Jim came home from the dinner, where they had been thankful to be ignored by Mrs Flannery while she tried to charm people far more important. At this stage Mrs Webster went home and anyone observing could have seen her doing some strange things with her kitchen appliances, things that did not seem to have much to do with baking cookies.

While that was going on, Jim and Maria got out the twins’ birthday presents and, as usual, put them on the living room floor, having found in earlier years that taking them into the twins’ bedrooms only caused certain people to wake up and refuse to go back to sleep.

And then the last lights went out in Middle Street and everyone settled down to their statistically normal amount of sleep.

Some hours later, the currawongs woke and began calling as first light crept into Middle Street, and then the sun eased its way up over an horizon made jagged by the roofs which lined it.

As the sun’s first rays hit the Harrison house, Sally woke, then dressed and crept from her bedroom intending to wake Bobby, at the same time as Bobby was waking, dressing and creeping from his bedroom intending to wake Sally. This meant that they ran into each other in the hallway, ‘shssshed’ each other loudly, and then crept toward the living room where they knew they would find their presents.

The ‘shssshing’ had woken Maria and Jim, who now lay there in their bed, knowing it was hopeless to try getting back to sleep again. The next thing they heard was the tearing of paper as the twins opened their presents. Jim and Maria looked at each other. They knew bed was over for the day, and they rolled out, and started putting on dressing gowns as they heard cries of ‘Wow!’ ‘Yeayyy!’ ‘Unreal!’ ‘Radical’ and ‘Street cred here I come!’

‘Sounds like a success,’ murmured Maria.

‘Your idea,’ said Jim.

‘It was not, it was your idea, and you can cope with the broken legs,’ said Maria, only half meaning it, as she led the way out of the bedroom.

In the living room, the twins were sitting on the floor, lacing up brand new sets of rollerblades. Both looked up with wide smiles as their parents entered.

‘Great!’ said Bobby.

‘Radical!’ said Sally.

‘The wrist guards, the knee guards, the head guards …’ began Maria.

‘Are in the other boxes,’ finished Jim.

The twins climbed to their feet, thumped across the room in their new rollerblades, and hugged their parents. ‘Thank you! Thank you!’

‘Just watch it, uh?’ Jim told them. ‘I’ve been made responsible for any mayhem you commit.’

‘Promise. No mayhem,’ Sally said, raising one hand.

‘Only on Kavarshes,’ added Bobby.

Maria and Jim exchanged a look. ‘More Mrs Webster stories last night.’

‘We learned about delaying battle till you have superior numbers,’ Bobby told him, and made for the front door. Having pestered friends for short term loans of their rollerblades, he was already getting the hang of it.

‘I must try that on Mr Flannery some time,’ Jim said to Maria as Sally coasted past them. Because Sally did not believe in pestering friends for loans of their rollerblades, this was her first time on them, and she was more awkward than Bobby.

‘Stay on the footpath!’ yelled Maria. Then the front door slammed, ending the conversation.