VISUAL EFFECTS / CH. 5:HILL WALKING WITH OLD ... FRIENDS
LUNCHTIME, SATURDAY MAY 14TH, 2270
“It's Simon! I thought you weren't coming?”
“Sorry Steve, trying to keep plans flexible. You know Sue, and recognise Mick, I'm sure, this is Alice.”
“Hi, everyone. We've just ordered, pull up a seat. Did you hear that singing, earlier on?”
“Someone's got a good soprano,” April, Steve's wife, said. “It wasn't you, was it Sue?”
“Not me. I heard them though.”
“I suppose it must have been us,” Alice admitted. “I bullied Simon into joining me. It just seemed so appropriate, to sing of lofty mountain grandeur in lofty almost-mountains. And as for dungeons filling with light, blame Simon for that one.”
“You chose it?” Steve asked Simon.
“No... I just summoned the courage to tell Alice she did believe in God really.”
“And various other things which convinced me it was from God,” Alice added.
“Praise God!” April exclaimed.
“I've said sorry to Sue for the way I did my report a few years ago, and she's very graciously forgiven me, so I thought maybe I could dare to show my face in Christian circles.”
“Your report?” April asked, with a nasty suspicion in her mind.
“On the leader of our mission,” Sue supplied. “Please do bear in mind that Alice was far from the Lord then, and there was a lot of uncomfortable truth in what she said.”
“As well as some hatred that I wasn't proud of even before I came back to God,” Alice added. “Sorry.”
“How long were you away from the Lord?” Steve asked, breaking the silent acceptance that had followed her apology.
“My parents were killed in the Clear Sky shopping centre attack, just when I needed to talk about a spiritual crisis. My grandparents too atheist, too busy and too wrapped up in their own problems to take me to Church, I was too messed up and confused to go to a new church without them, though I guess I could have. By the time I was at university, it didn't take much to get me to stop calling myself a Christian.”
“Surely Simon's not the first Christian you've met since then?”
“No. But he's the first one to tell me to stop lying to myself when I told them that I didn't believe in God, and then go on to tell me that God believed in me.”
Samuel, sitting next to April raised his eyebrows. “That's quite some intervention, Simon.”
“Not my idea, I assure you. There was some more too, but I'm not sure how public that should be.”
“Let me guess,” Samuel said. “You're going to sweep her off her feet before any of the rest of us poor lonely men get a chance.”
Simon turned red; Alice, however, looked straight at Samuel and said “Someone tried to knock me off my feet when I was at university. He ended up in jail for thinking rather too much about being a poor lonely man. I suggest that if you want to find a wife you get in the habit of taking better care of your mental and spiritual hygiene.”
“It was a joke!” Samuel protested, taken aback.
“Mine was more in the line of friendly advice,” Alice said with a bright smile.
“I hate to think what you're like when you want to be unfriendly.”
“Less circumspect, more embarrassing details made public.” Samuel heard Alice say, her eyes seeming to bore into him, and he realised she recognised him, while he'd totally forgotten her. Bad mistake that.
“You were a second year, I think, weren't you, Samuel?”
“You two know each other?” Simon asked.
“That's stretching the word a bit,” Alice said, “I've not seen him for years.”
“I remember now. I do know what she's like when she's being unfriendly,” Samuel said.
“Ooh, past scandals?” April asked, gleefully.
“Be sure your sins will find you out,” Samuel admitted. “Sorry, Alice.”
“Do you still have Molly?”
“No. You've got a good memory.”
“The pair of you made quite an impression. She didn't escape, I hope.”
“No. I got low on cash and sold her.”
“Hold on... Molly had eight furry legs?” Sue asked.
“Yes,” Alice agreed.
“Samuel? Based on what Alice told me this morning, you really needed help, back then. Did you ever get it?”
“It was just a silly phase.”
“I'll take that as a no, then. Steve, Samuel probably needs to talk etc. even if it was before he turned to Christ.”
“OK, yes,” Samuel agreed.
Alice was reassured. His misogyny was going to face the light of day.
“Steve,” Samuel added, “Get Alice's take on it too, OK? If she remembers it so well, it must be worse than I thought.”
“Is that OK, Alice? As much or as little detail as you like.”
“It's fine.”
“Would you like to order?” the waitress asked.
“Yes, please, except we got talking and forgot to look at the menu,” Simon said. “Is the Stilton ploughman's still on it?”
“Yes.”
“Me too, please,” Alice said. It sounded tasty.
“We'll share another one and a plate of chips, please,” Mick said, after a quick glance at Sue.
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Samuel had quietly asked Alice to stay behind for a private chat as the others left the restaurant. Since it had turned out that he was roughly aware of his issues, and seemed to want to change, she wasn't worried. “Alice,” he started, confidently, knowingly, “I've seen women throwing themselves at the immovable rock which is Simon before now.”
Alice looked at him in surprise, and he continued, “I can see you're interested in him. But you're only going to scare him, not win him, unless you act entirely disinterested for a year or more. For old time's sake, not to mention by way of apology, would you allow me to ask you out again? Without Molly this time?”
Smooth, polite, confident. Becoming a Christian hadn't changed him that much, Alice decided, and mentally called [Simon, your friend here is suggesting I go out with him while I'm waiting for you to get to know me. Feel free to rescue me from him before he gets a punch in the face.] “You had your chance years ago, Samuel. I think Simon's got a lot going for him.”
“I'm not saying he's not a good catch, he's a lovely chap, probably most eligible bachelor amongst the lot of us, if only you could break through his shell. But you won't manage it, and if you try he's just going to run a mile whenever you come in sight.”
The thought of Samuel muscling his way back into Alice's affections had quite an effect on Simon. He'd felt awkward about her saying she was going to claim him as her boyfriend, though he could see the logic of it, but he didn't believe he could say they were attached after such a short time. Surely it wasn't possible. Now, faced with a challenger, he realised that he very much was romantically attached to her, and he had no qualms about claiming it.
Samuel moved closer to Alice, very much in her personal space, and said “I admit I messed up big time, but we're not silly students now. Why don't we see if we can get off on a better footing?”
“Hey, Samuel! “, Simon said, sticking his head back through the doorway, “Stop trying to chat up my new girlfriend, not only is it unfriendly, but we've got a lot of walking to do.”
“You didn't stand a chance, Samuel,” Alice said, ducking past him and taking Simon's arm. “But you did almost get yourself a knee in the goolies for old times' sake.”
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Although they always started walking together as a group, their normal practice was to split up into faster and slower walkers, and there was a tendency for the couples with things to discuss to walk together. When Simon and Alice had left the restaurant hand in hand they were given startled glances, and quite a few comments of 'finally' or 'are you really...' As they walked, but they had plenty of space to talk privately.
“Sorry for doing that, Simon,” Alice said.
“Doing what?”
“Asking for protection like that.”
“He was scaring you. I saw the worry in your soul.”
“A bit, yes. He was certainly coming on strong. But I expect I could have handled it myself, or not phrased it so it triggered such a 'hand's off, she's mine' response.”
“But I'd been denying I had any feelings for you, so how were you to know?”
“Not really. I heard it more as you just saying you didn't trust them enough to act on. You handled the rescue really well, by the way, well done.”
“So much for not calling you my girlfriend.”
“I told you I didn't mind. I don't.”
“Even if the title doesn't come with kisses?”
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“Do I gather that kisses were a significant part in their tormenting you?”
“Yes.”
“As in they kissed you and ran away laughing, or ran away laughing before the kiss?”
“On the most memorable occasion, one of them told me to shut my eyes and while my eyes were closed, got a frog out of her pocket and pressed it to my lips. Thereafter, they reminded me of that in some way and or ran away laughing.”
“So you never actually got a kiss?”
“No.”
“So would I be right in thinking the promise or anticipation of a kiss is far scarier than actually getting or giving one?”
“How can I know?”
“Well, one way might be you could give me permission to surprise you with one some time, all out of the blue, without all the scary run-up. Or I could give you that permission. Another way might be to do it while holding hands and listening to each others thoughts, so you know there's no nasty surprise coming. Hey, how did they manage to surprise you anyway?”
“I guess it was all planned long before.”
“Oh, of course. What do you think?”
“I really appreciate your trying to fix my phobias, Alice.”
“Is that what you think I'm doing?”
“It's all I hope you're doing, and I'm going to assume you're doing. Otherwise I'm going to get scared.”
“Because you don't think any girl would genuinely find you an attractive marriage prospect?”
“Not without knowing me well.”
“Hypothetically — don't worry, it's not true of me — if someone had asked God if they'd marry you really early on, say in the first week of meeting you, and had got a clear answer of yes, and they told you that, before you knew them well, what would do? Assume they convinced you about the answer.”
“I think I'd still panic. I mean, I can see you're trustworthy, but half the time I'm talking to you my brain is screaming 'she's going to ridicule you, make you kiss frogs, single is safer.'”
“What's it saying the rest of the time?”
“Right now? Roughly speaking, 'Oh wow, I'm having a real conversation with my girlfriend. Does that mean I'm gown up? She's gorgeous, clever and nice. I do so hope we don't break up. What does she see in me?'”
“That one's easy. You're a godly man with a unique gift who's going to keep me alive.”
“And then what? What happens after that?”
“Oh, the usual, I expect. We trust and obey and walk by faith, knowing that knowing God is much better than knowing the future.”
“You sound like you do.”
“I know some bits of it. For example, I know you coming with me means I survive. It doesn't mean you do. So in one way, maybe I'd rather someone else goes with me, because when I come back I want you around. But perhaps surviving says nothing about coming back, so taking someone else means yes, I survive and you survive, but we're not together. That'd be just plain nasty.”
“I'm confused.”
“That's OK. What about?”
“Why might you not come back?”
“Maybe my journey is a trip to Mars, and I end up staying there. Hold on... What did the message say?”
“You're going on a journey and if you go alone you won't survive.”
“But actually, it didn't say journey, did it? It said path.”
“You're right. 'She has set herself towards a great task prepared for her in advance, and she takes the right path. She must go, but not alone, for if she goes alone she will not survive.' So what path have you set yourself on?”
“I'm not sure. Except that I got called to by Mama. That's someone with the gift. I hadn't talked to her since I got convinced she was a demon, and then I get a message from God from my now boyfriend, sort out my relationship with God, and then today she tries to check up on me, tells me she's not sure if she'll be allowed to call me again, and in parting says 'go give those corrupt astronauts something to worry about'. Rumours of corruption in the administration of Marscorp or Lunacorp is why I was talking to the professor, but I wonder why she thought that was the path.”
“Can't you ask her?”
“No, I got the impression I can only call to you and Sue. I spoke to her for two days, ten years ago, then cast her out of my life like she was a demon, but she'd been following my career and it just happens that she thought to see if she could get through to me just as I was talking to Sue. That's amazing, isn't it?”
“So there are other people with the same gift as you?”
“There are other people with the whole gift I have part of, because of my abusing it. I didn't even take her lessons seriously when she first found me. If I had, then I'd have known about the peace then, and I might not have been so badly wounded by Mrs Huntsman's accusation, or so cut up about my parent's death. There's so many things I should have done.”
“Easy to say with hindsight.”
“No, I mean, I should have been practising with the gift, talking to people. But I was a teenager whose friends were more important than extra homework. About the one thing I did do was pretty questionable in its own right.”
“What was that?”
“Looked for someone I called Jack, to see where he was. I saw his home, where his home was, and so on. I was quite disappointed that he lived so far away. I can remember most of it pretty clearly now, but there are still gaps. It came back when I was talking to Sue.”
“You named someone Jack, only it wasn't his real name?” Simon asked, his thoughts hidden.
“Yes.”
“And this was ten years ago, just before the explosion?”
“Yes.”
“And you said, 'Hello Jack! I'm Alice, I thought we should become friends.' And I was totally confused, because Jack was my dog's name.”
Alice gasped. “I even talked to you! I'd forgotten that.”
“So, actually... I've known you for a long time.”
“I guess so. Did I tell you why I thought we should become friends?”
“Because you'd found out something you said was 'cool and scary'.”
“So I didn't say?”
“No, but you hinted.”
“What did I hint at?”
“Something I'd describe as... exciting and scary.”
“I tend to agree. I decided that the person matching the... cool and scary criteria was called Jack, and looked for where Jack was. No information on timing, of course, it might be a long, long time in the future.”
He looked behind him. “Alice?”
“Yes?”
“Sometime, when the time is right, when, for instance, we're not about to be overtaken by people we know, you have my permission to try that thing you spoke of earlier.”
“The surprise or the listening?”
“Both.”
“Thank you, Simon.”
“Knowing I've known you a long time does change some things, you realise.”
“It does?”
“I can introduce you as someone I used to be friends with, got separated from and had just bumped into again, for instance.”
“That's true.”
“And it also puts you into the old friends who've never made fun of me category.”
“Even though we only spoke a couple of times? It was only a couple of times, wasn't it? I tried so hard to forget everything, even you.”
“I remember it as one glorious week, every night. Then that last night, you said 'Are you real? I'm not listening to you because I don't know what to think. If you're real, and I want you to be real, stay away from me, I don't want you to get hurt too. I think I was wrong about everything, that I believed lies, that even doing this is wrong. I'm so sorry.' And I never heard from you again.”
“You have now.”
“Yes.”
“Can we hold hands?”
“Of course.”
[I'd forgotten all of this, Simon, until I saw the valley. Then I remembered the house, and that there was something important about it. And I told Sue about it, and drew a floor plan of the house, of your bedroom. She recognised it, and what I remembered came back.]
[And that's why you were thinking of being sleeping beauty?]
[No, that was from you, but that's why I knew it was time to seek peace, and it's why I was so certain I didn't mind being your girlfriend. For however long it takes.]
[Thank you, Alice, for not scaring me away. I thought it was just coincidence, your name, I mean. There are quite a lot of Alices in the world, after all. You can't go through life hoping that every Alice you meet is going to be your long-lost sort-of fiancée of a decade before. Especially not when you've ninety percent convinced yourself she was a figment of your imagination.]
[We need to get to know each other, properly. No short-cuts this time.]
[Absolutely. We were a bit silly last time.]
[What do you expect from sixteen and seventeen year olds?]
[Enough sense to know they're too young?]
[Ha, don't make me laugh. If they knew that, they'd be showing signs of wisdom, and maturity, rather than just hormones.]
[Changing the subject entirely... Mars?]
[Or the moon. Luna actually makes more sense, not just in terms of cost.]
[Space travel is dangerous, Alice.]
[Good job I've got an expert to accompany me.]
[I'm no expert, not in orbital mechanics and the rest. But... are you thinking long or short term?]
[Not sure. The paper's officially got an office on Luna, but it's been unstaffed for a year. The previous journalist thought he was onto a story, but never got anywhere conclusive. He wasn't sure if that was because he was running into a wall of silence, or if there was really nothing to write about. In the end, he came home in disgust, and warned everyone they didn't want to go there.]
[Can you say what the story's about?]
[Life-support equipment not being up to spec. There's apparently lots of stories circulating in the bars, but little in the way of hard facts. So, is it being suppressed, or is it just being blown out of proportion in the bars?]
[Sounds rather like an Alice Findhorn sort of story.]
[It does, yes.]
[It just so happens that there's an opening at the Luna University.]
[You're going to apply?]
[They actually asked me to consider it.]
[When would it start?]
[I said I'm committed to my current project for the next six months. They said, fine what about after then. I said urm, send me terms, conditions length of rotation, etc. I'm still waiting for a reply. I didn't think I'd accept, though, because of Church and what the religious scene is like there.]
“What is the Christian scene like in Luna City?”
“The city? Bleak. It's a money-making enterprise that thinks its a sovereign state. Think oil production-rigs, wild-west era gold mining camps and the like. According to Sue, the place is full of workaholic atheists who spend a large chunk of their substantial pay getting drunk, stoned, or gambling when they do stop work. There's therefore a number of addiction-related ministries, working with them. They get full company support — that means they get rent-free dome space, basic needs covered, and subsidised travel. Before you think how Christian of LunaCorp, that only covers social work with addicts, they're expected to work fifty hour weeks, and any gospel outreach is strictly on the missionaries' own time. There is also a significant population of prostitutes, who also have company support. That is supposedly because of the gender imbalance, but there isn't much of one actually, just far more of the men have no brains or morals than the women. The rumour is that in exchange for the free rent, the prostitutes have agreed to ah... serve the company managers for free.”
“What a nest of sin and corruption,” Alice said, with distaste.
“Yes, that's mostly the whole mining and production side of things. The research community are allegedly much more pleasant than that, and I quote 'there might even be one and a half percent Christians there.' Since there are only three hundred research staff, that makes four and a half.”
“And the communities are separate?”
“Pretty much, yes. You can get from one to the other, of course, all roads lead to the spaceport. But research is mostly done farside, Luna City is nearside.”
“The spaceport comes under Luna city?”
“No, it's a profit-making enterprise run by the university, under the U.N charter. The profits are then ploughed into research.”
“And the spaceport staff? Where do they fit on the degradation spectrum?”
“Most of the workers stay on Earth. As much as possible is robotic, automatic and the rest. People rotate up for a week or two a year, leaving their families safely at home. There are also meeting rooms you can hire, which is where the missionaries meet weekly to escape Luna City.”
“What about schools, social services, things like that?”
“No children allowed, city-side. Like I said, think oil production facility. Highly unrecommended research side, too. There are marriages, but with the radiation levels during a storm, pregnancy is dangerous.”
“Medical facilities?”
“As long as you not bleeding to death, medical care happens on Earth.”
“The paper's office is in Luna city. I think I agree with our old correspondent, I don't want to go to the moon.”
“Nor do I. Mars is much nicer if you have to leave Earth. Do you? Closest approach is sometime in August, I think, which is why so many launches are getting scheduled these days.”
“So we've got until August to decide if that's where we're going?”
“No. You want to aim to get there at closest approach, because anything later means you'd normally overshoot. If you lift off at closest approach, you'd need to shed all the free momentum the Earth's just given you, or go round the long way. The fastest flights possible are thirty days, I think, but normally they take more like forty days so they can actually carry people. It's a long time since I've looked into this stuff, sorry. But I saw the tourist trips start next week.”
“Any openings for you on Mars?”
“Probably. There's a university there which is always desperate for lecturers, research is happening on planet and on the moons too. The atmosphere still doesn't support food plants, but it's getting close. You still can't breath the atmosphere, of course, there's too much carbon dioxide, but everyone expects the colony to really boom when the agriculture moves outside of the domes.”
“Boom as in population?”
“As in economy, population, trades, things like that. There'll be more living space, lack of biomass won't be such a problem, food will become more affordable.”
“There is supposed to be a Mars end to the story, too, for all that production is on the moon,” Alice said.
“Just one story isn't really enough to get you sent all that way, surely?”
“No. They've told me if I go out after the story, then while I'm researching it I could set up an office there, make a permanent presence. They said something about it being strategically important. I wasn't really interested in staying with a bunch of convicts, though, so I didn't read it in much detail.”
“Only a very small portion are criminals, Alice. They're risk takers, yes. But the crime rate there is really low. I know a student who is from there.”
“From there? Not second generation, surely?”
“Yes. She came to Earth to do some research and maybe find a husband. She doesn't like the gravity, but does like singing God's praises in the open air, and spring fields full of flowers. Want an introduction?”
“Please. I didn't know there were any second generation colonists off planet.”
“The convict label makes them pretty shy about mentioning it.”
“Sorry.”
“Just don't repeat it, it's a lie.”