The Three Gifts

The question flashed into Sue’s mind and surprised her: did she love Rory? His months-long silence could have canned the friendship even though he had chased down to Spain after her. And minded the cat. Yes, she owed him for that.

He sat down. “God, it’s a bleedin’ nightmare out there.”

“And you were expecting what? Saturday before Christmas: the top of Ben Nevis?”

“That is busy actually.”

“Och, you know what I mean.” Sue grabbed the menu. “What do you recommend here?”

“I need a drink. Do you want to split a bottle of wine?”

“Hm, last time you drank nearly the whole lot. If you recall.” Sue then herself recalled that he’d also paid for the whole lot, so she leant forward and half-whispered, “But I’ll help you out, celebrate Our Lord’s birthday.”

“And yours recently?” Rory cupped his none-too-well-shaven chin in cross-examination.

“You remembered that?”

“I knew...” Rory indicated glittering decorations. “It was about now. I bought you a present. I hope you don’t mind.” His frown lines deepened as he waited.

She had to grin. “Hell, no. Gimme.”

From his oh-so-familiar dark jacket Rory fumbled an envelope, slid it to Sue and gazed, on tenterhooks.

She ripped the envelope open, extracted a ticket, scanned it, double-took. “This is for the whole year? For me?”

“For you. And a guest. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink.”

“No, but I mean to any of the exhibitions?”

“I believe so.”

“That’s cool.” Sue nodded. “That's better than wine.”

“Oh, come now –”

“No, really. It is.” She pocketed the gift and looked back at Rory. “You’re looking pretty grungy.”

“That’s good?”

“Aye, that's good.”

Rory picked up his chopsticks and drummed them on the table. “So, what else did you get?”

Sue felt that a spell had been broken. “For my birthday?” She paused. “Ali sent me an e-present.”

“A what?”

“An e-present. It’s a certificate for Amazon. She was like: you can get an art book or something.”

“Jeez, I didn't think she was so Web-savvy –” Rory broke off and looked past Sue. “Ah!”

A smiling Thai waiter appeared.

“Could we have the house white, please?”

“And the menu,” Sue added.

“Yes, and the menu.”

Sue tripped out into the night and pulled her coat closer. “Oops! I shouldn’t have had that final Singha.”

Rory smiled. “You’ve hardly had enough to sink a pedalo.” He propelled her round in the direction of Lothian Road. “Walk you to your bus, miss?”

“Aye, and thanks for the present.” She inclined against a light drizzle sparkling in the street lamps. “Hey, when’s your birthday? Isn’t it soon?”

“I don’t make a big deal of it. At my age, you know,” he quavered.

“It is, isn’t it? And I didn’t get you a thing.” Sue linked her arm through his.

“I’ll just have to see what I can think up.”

Commodore Hall

It’s bloody freezing. Literally. Icicles hang from every rivet and strut of the bridge. A metre of snow hides the track bed that it carries, abandoned before I was conceived. A while back the bridge followed the railway into neglect and will decay to the sad fate of its road-bearing sister a mile upriver. There, a couple of truncated, rusting pillars poke through the surface of the Forth, still frozen and glistening under a May sun.

Beyond, on the Fife shore, Rosyth rots into its grave. The scene below me, South Queensferry, is hardly less desolate: what roofs still survive sag under layers of snow. The odd plume of smoke discloses some brave soul still toughing it out, still clearing the path to his door, still keeping the drifts trimmed to below window level, from which feeble light glows.

It’s bleak alright but should I be abandoning it? God knows I've seen worse.

I gun my backpack jets and rise far enough to view the upper stories of TransHub breaching the middle of the Firth, just by the island of Inchcolm. From it steam vents, panels glitter and masts sway in a slight breeze. Civilisation. Clinging on. My last sight of my adopted homeland, my --

“Hall."

I hear this as though down a tunnel.

"Commodore Hall!"

“Aye, right enough.” I force my concentration back to the pulsing blue-red bioconsole in front of me.

Admiral Raven doesn't sound best pleased. "’Yes, ma'am’ is protocol, I believe.”

“Aye, aye, ma'am.” I almost bring myself to attention although zero-gravity has kept me exactly where I was before my wee reverie.

The fleet commander’s voice continues inside my head. “Get yourself to the Bridge. Ten minutes to departure."

Ten minutes. Twenty, counting the time it'll take the real bigwigs to bask in the glory of the launch and then hightail it back down to Luna. Twenty minutes to play my get-out-of-jail-free card if I so wish. The jail being the uncertainty of what will greet us on 18 Scorpii.

Oh, and the twelve dangerous years to get there.

No, it’s not a jail. We're leaving the jail or at least the frying pan. The other side of the Moon from us our ravaged Earth limps into oblivion. Just a personal view, mind, but one shared by the thousand-plus souls in this particular fleet, and a few thousand more who have preceded us to Eridani, Tau Ceti and Chara.

Chara. I try not to think of Chara.

I think back to Commodore Raven, "The new mods –"

"I want all senior personnel visible. That goes for the entire fleet. Understood?"

A chorus of ayes, yeses, oui’s, si’s fills the air waves as with some guilt I freeze SimPlanet 3000, whose display currently fills the main smartwall. I hadn’t been modifying anything of note. I disengage from my seat and drift away from what has been my second home for the last two years of preparation.

No, I couldn't throw all that away, nor the efforts and commitment of everyone around me, not to mention the money that's been thrown at this project. It’s money that's keeping my escape route open. The most expensive human being in history, slinking off the sinking ship. But, of the colonists, only Mamour knows that, I hope. ⇒

Jane and Hazel

Jane collapsed onto a bean bag. “This place is so retro. I love it.”

Hazel slid back to her not-so-retro 24-inch monitor. “No joy with this morning’s flat then?”

“It was grand, all to myself, the perfect space.” Jane rearranged herself into a more demure position.

“But?”

“Och, the traffic outside. Above a newsagent and next to a pub. Can you imagine? And I just feel... there's a better opportunity round the corner? Like it’s almost too soon to decide?”

“So the search continues.” Hazel shifted her mouse and a fashionably grungy collage filled the screen.

“I was lucky it even started today. The folks managed to get on the first flight out. I should really go for it, no?”

“You would,” Hazel clicked the mouse and a menu sprang down, almost to the depth of the screen. “Be near me.”

“Aye. That should clinch it but...” Jane thought of her parents’ place up in Morningside. She thought of Morningside, full stop. “I’m not sure if the area’s convenient for school, especially with the car playing up.”

Hazel selected one menu option and the display filled with what looked like the console of an interstellar battle cruiser. “I thought you were getting out of that job as soon as.”

Jane decided that Hazel’s wall was a less baffling place to look at but its hanging canvases seemed to mock her. OK, so Hazel hadn’t executed all of them but somehow she attracted artwork and her recent forays into photography had been equally fruitful.

It was less depressing to go back to the trendy website taking shape on the monitor. “I was hoping the Academy – how can you possibly need all that stuff to produce...”

Hazel clicked something else and the screen blanked. She swivelled round. “I've said: you could always stay here.”

“I wouldn’t cramp your style.” Relieved of the competition, Jane enjoyed the sensation of sliding back into the beanbag, even though she was now aware of direct looks from Hazel. “And at least in a noisy place I could rack up the Sex Pistols. It is tempting.”

“That’s fine. Take it.”

“It is too soon. I've hardly started looking.”

“And that's a reason?”

Jane removed her spectacles. The reduction of focus in the real world seemed to sharpen her mind. It didn't help her stomach, which began to knot. “I don't know. I just don't know.”

“Then move in here. For a while even.”

Hazel’s house? Noisy but spacious flat? Keep on looking? Fix the car? Change her job? Get married? Yeah, but who to, ma? Sweet Jesus. Life had been so simple down under. ⇐ ⇒

Ali

Guy didn't think he’d ever seen Ali out of her student uniform of jeans and t-shirt; but the wedding-day attire of posh frock and heels, of a sort, was bringing out his lodger’s inner Katharine Hepburn. Ali had even done something wavy to her hair, which reinforced the impression already given by broad, high cheekbones, square chin, generous mouth...

Mouth that was uttering the unHepburn-like, “No fucking card?”

“All that palaver in the shop drove it out of my mind.”

“Ha!” With a grimace Ali drew the last drag of her cigarette. “And turned you into a book thief.”

“I’ll take it back.”

“You would too, wouldn’t you.” She flicked the butt behind a nearby gravestone, which informed Guy that the poor sod below had suffered “a rapid illness” before his demise. The bloke in the shop had been suffering a pretty swift illness. How had he fared?

In sharp contrast against the dark green of a distant yew hedge, tendrils of smoke drifted from the cigarette’s last resting place. Nearby a robin warbled for a mate, like a reminder that life also had a starting point.

Ali pulled a beret over her newly tamed brunette curls. “I know what you're thinking and it’s biodegradable, I’m sure.”

“A fag end? My arse. It'll still be there on Judgment Day.”

“You’re just as bad after you’ve sunk a few.”

Guy scratched his beard, fiercely trimmed that morning at Ali’s insistence. “I've still got to get a card. And something to eat: I know what weddings are like.”

“Good idea.” Ali flipped open her pack of Lambert & Butlers. “I need same more of these... perhaps I'd better get some baccy.”

“Student loan finally exhausted, Miss Player?”

“It’s your extortionate rent that does it.”

“Wait till you hit the real world – not long now.” Guy stood, with remarkable ease for a wedding morning: the blushing bridegroom, Matthew, had held his stag night the previous Saturday.

Drinking buddy, Saul, being on some crackpot course out of town, Guy had spent this Friday evening on a rerun of The Quiet Earth at the Watershed, and in sobriety had exited at ten o'clock to the inebriated, vomiting city centre crowds. With a strange disgust he had gone home and even got to sleep before Ali had crashed in at about three. He didn't want to imagine what she had looked like then but she didn't appear too clever now, trying to stand up.

She removed the beret as though it were hurting her brain. “Oof! I don't do champagne.”

“Champagne. The night before. Stretch limo. Not very Rebecca; I thought she’d be a modern bride.”

“Yes, yes, Mr Smug. Come on. There's a newsagent over the road.”

They eventually dodged streams of post-shopping, pre-lunch, God-knows-what-other-reason cars, Chelsea Tractors, the odd idiot trying to navigate a juggernaut through suburban Bristol and even one bus belching fumes as if to make up for the vehicles its passengers would have driven. They wound up outside a pub next to the shop.

“Hair of the dog?” Guy asked.

“You,” Ali emphasised, “don't need that.”

“I need the courage to ush or whatever an usher does.”

A tall, slender blonde issued from a door between the two buildings. A blonde with spectacles that somehow served to make her even more attractive. Guy revised upward his estimate of that part of Bristol. Ali shook her head and led them into the newsagent, where she picked up a copy of The Daily Mail.

“Put that down. I’ll get us a Guardian. At least –” Guy paused in mid-stoop. The Evening Post had caught his eye: Bird Flu Death Hits Bristol. He pulled the paper out: last night... Royal Infirmary... Blackwells... “Look. It’s him.” Guy waved the article at Ali. “The bloke in the shop. Jesus Christ, I was stood right next to him. The fucker was sneezing all over me.” Guy read on. “Far East... epidemic... pandemic – what's the difference?”

Ali was cradling The Mail and supporting herself against the Lottery stand. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

“An epidemic... one in 250. Is that a lot?”

“I’m going to the pub.” Ali rushed out.

Guy had a Bloody Mary waiting for her when she reappeared, not too much dishevelled, from the Ladies. He was halfway down a pint. “Recovered?”

“A little. You?”

“Yeah.” Guy picked The Times out of a pile of papers that occupied the rest of the table. “This has the lowdown. At his probable stage he wouldn’t have been infectious, bird flu doesn't transmit readily between people and it takes twenty-four hours, tops, for the symptoms to show.” He tapped his phone, lying between the drinks. “Thirty minutes to go.”

Ali sipped her cocktail. “Thirty minutes to show time, too. We’d better get over.”

Guy finished both drinks and gathered all the purchases, including packets of crisps and Mini Cheddars. “They only had these or Wotsits or Hula-Hoops... all that shit.”

“We’re not in Clifton now, you know. What about the card?”

“Fuck me. The card.” ⇐ ⇒