Thirteen

As well as a built-in SatNav, Lisa seems to have a built-in clock - with full alarm function. She began to wake us at about five thirty. She got up first and got dressed. I followed her example. All our rumbling around woke Holly.

“Looking serious, Lisa,” I said.

“Hm? Oh, just thinking.”

“What about?”

“About how difficult it’s going to be to have any sort of permanent relationship with people other than us three.”

“But we do. We have.”

“No Jody. We don’t, not really. Oh, I know Brian is there for me, just as Mike is for you and maybe Victor for Holly soon. But it’ll be hard to expand those relationships to anything more than that. It’s an effort to ignore the one of us who’s - otherwise engaged. And what we’re going to do if any of us get - intimate - with our significant others is another matter altogether.”

“Mm.”

“Look at the three of us here. We’re so - comfortable - with each other.”

“What do you expect,” I said. “When we link, we’re closer than anybody’s been, ever. Even loving married couples don’t have what we’ve got.”

“My point exactly. Don’t mind me, just wool-gathering.”

But she did have a point. We needed to give it thought - but not now, breakfast was calling.

We’d decided not to shower that morning, so we were able to cross the hall fully dressed, hauling our toothbrushes and stuff with us. By six fifteen we were on the march, looking for the aforementioned breakfast.

Cook took one look at us approaching and began chucking more stuff on his hotplates. We weren’t that bad, were we? I had to reluctantly admit to myself that we were.

Doug joined us for breakfast. Don’t the COs and other top people ever sleep - or have time off. When I thought about it, Peter seemed to be in his office or at least somewhere on his base all the time, day or night.

“You’re going back on the same flight you came out on, if that makes sense. Peter has persuaded the Ministry to divert it via your base in Yorkshire again, so you won’t be dumped at Northolt this time.”

“Thank you Doug. Cheap at the price I should think,” said Lisa.

“How d’you mean?”

“Well, apparently if we’d not fixed the sub, the MoD were looking at a bill running into millions of pounds to replace the reactor. One diverted flight? Not a problem I shouldn’t think.”

Doug laughed. “When you look at it like that, you’re probably right. Anyway, enjoy your flight home. Someone will come and fetch you when it’s time to go. I have a feeling I’ve not seen the last of you three.”

Doug stood up, saluted, turned and walked off.

“Hm,” said Lisa as Doug disappeared. “A feeling, ehh? Is that a premonition by our Doug? We know all about them.”

It seemed the plane wasn’t ready or whatever. There was time for a couple more hot drinks. If they didn’t get a move on, they’d have to feed us again. I forgave them when we found out that they were loading extra sandwiches - for us. They were making them specially.

“I thought they were busy behind the counter,” grinned Lisa.

The flight was going to take eight hours, although because of the time difference it’d only be about three in the afternoon when we landed. Military aircraft don’t have in-flight movies, I reckoned on eight hours of boredom. Didn’t happen like that. What happened was that I learned how to fly a plane!

As well as no in-flight movies, military aircraft don’t have rules about who can go and visit the driver. Ok, ok, I know I’d ridden the third seat in the plane we saved from blowing up, but I think that was because they were too busy to notice me. This time was different.

The three of us were sitting more or less at the front. That was handy because when the cockpit door opened the pilot didn’t have far to look for us.

“Oh, there you are. Pilot says do you want to come and look?”

“I thought you were the pilot,” I said. “You’ve got enough rings and hash marks.”

“Me? Good Lord no. I just get to sit and push buttons when told. Roger is the pilot. Come meet him.”

It was a bit of a squash in the little cockpit, but they just left the door open. Really wouldn’t happen on a commercial flight. I even got to sit in the co-pilot seat. The real co-pilot, whose name turned out to be Eric, hung around at the back. Lisa and Holly shoved me forwards.

“Go on,” ‘said’ Lisa. “You know you want to.” I didn’t argue - because I did want to.

I sat down and turned a nice smile on for the pilot. He began to tell me what everything did. Well, perhaps not everything, there was rather a lot of ‘everything’, but the important bits anyway.

“Got a course change in a minute or so. You can do it.”

“Me?” I almost squeaked.

“Oh don’t worry. George is flying the plane at the moment. We just tell George what to do. That’s what you’re going to do.”

I happened to know that ‘George’ is the autopilot. I had to explain to Holly who was looking about for another crewmember. What I had to do was really quite simple.

“Ok. Big knob here controls heading. We need to turn about fifteen degrees to starboard. Turn the knob gently from 285 to 300.”

I did this. The plane did a little bank to the right, dipping the right wing. It turned, all on its own. I watched the compass turn from 285 to 300. As I watched intently I suddenly realised I knew exactly what it was doing and why. In fact, I knew all about flying this aeroplane. I was pretty sure I could do it too, even landing it. I decided to keep quiet, not because I thought the pilot wouldn’t believe me - after all, if he asked me stuff, I could answer - but more because I thought we should begin to maintain a low profile, not boast about stuff we could do to people we didn’t really know. I asked questions, although I actually already knew the answers.

Eventually I let Lisa and Holly have a go in the chair. They didn’t get to do anything except sit there, and soon enough it was time to let Eric have his seat back. Besides, it was time for lunch.

Back in our own seats, scoffing sandwiches, I told the others what had happened.

“Yeah, we know,” ‘said’ Lisa. “I felt your mind thinking about stuff I was sure you couldn’t possibly have known about.”

“Mm. Not just guns and voice recorders, now its nuclear submarines and aeroplanes. What’s happening to us Lisa?”

“Hush, hush. It’s nothing bad. Think about it. What did we learn in Science earlier in the week? Stuff about light wasn’t it. When will we ever need to know about that sort of thing? Pretty much never, not really. Same applies to things like Maths. Most people get by with simple counting, algebra and stuff is like a foreign language. So you’ve just learned how to fly a plane. It doesn’t matter that you don’t need to know. Be happy that you’ve learned in about ten seconds what it probably took Roger and Eric years to do.”

“So you’re saying that I’ll probably forget anyway if I don’t use the knowledge?”

“Yeah. Like anything else - obviously except riding a bicycle, apparently you never forget that.”

It’s quite hard to grin and eat at the same time. We managed.

“I felt you decide not to say anything,” ‘said’ Holly.

“Two reasons. I don’t want to be thought of as different. I know I am, but I don’t want to tell everybody. Second, I don’t want the wrong people to learn about what we can do. That got Lisa and I kidnapped. I don’t want that to happen again.”

“I suppose you’re right. That’s twice you two’ve mentioned being kidnapped. Come on, time you told the youngest member all about it.”

I ‘laughed’. “Very early on, before we knew you. A gang of terrorists decided they wanted to try and find out how we did what we did. They snatched us from outside school, locked us up.”

“But nobody knows how we do what we do. There’s a whole lab-full of people trying their hardest to find that out.”

“We know that,” ‘said’ Lisa. “But they didn’t. They wanted us to pass on our abilities to others.”

“But we can’t do that,” ‘said’ Holly.

“Actually we could,” ‘said’ Lisa. “But it’d need help from a boy with good ESP abilities and take quite a while.”

“What ... oh.”

“Yep. The children of couples who both have well-developed ESP abilities are more likely to keep their powers when they reach puberty - like we did. All our mums and dads were good at the levitating and stuff when they were kids. Now look at us.”

“Err, Lisa?” I ‘said’. “That’s not exactly true, is it. Look at Holly, or Victor for instance. And don’t forget Yoshiko.”

“Yes but they all had some ability to begin with, even Yoshiko. We just reminded them how to use it. I really don’t think we could make somebody with more or less no ESP at all into a mental giant.”

“I dunnow,” ‘said’ Holly. “Worked with me.”

“Ok, ok. Always one exception. Besides, you had lots of ESP abilities when we met you.”

“Nothing like you though.”

“Hm. Have you had the statistics-thing from Beth?”

“No. What’s that about then?”

“Ok,” I ‘said’. “Normal distribution curve, called a bell curve, ‘cos it’s shaped like a bell. Higher up the curve is, the more samples it represents.”

“Yeah. Statistics. Go on.”

“So, most people have a little ESP, they go in the middle, there’s lots of them so the curve is high. At one end are the people with no ESP at all. Not many of them. At the other end, people with lots and lots of ESP. Us. When we met you, you weren’t all that far up the curve from our end. Using your abilities all the time, which you pretty much have since you met us, means you’ve got better - a lot better - but you weren’t all that bad to start with.”

Lisa had had enough of the solemn conversation. “We’ve got about an hour to go ‘til we land. I am not going to be serious all the way to the ground. Discuss something else.”

“Like what?” ‘asked’ Holly.

“Oh, I don’t know. Boys?”

“Ah,” I ‘said’. “A subject about which I know .... very little actually.”

“But you and Mike ...” ‘said’ Holly.

“We were discussing statistics a moment ago. You’re the boffin Holly, what good is a statistical sample of one?”

“You mean ... “

“Yep. Never really found anybody before that. To be fair I never really tried. Before I met Lisa, I just used to enjoy my own company. Probably scared of revealing I was different.”

“Mm, me too,” ‘said’ Lisa. “Being best friends with Jody didn’t really contribute anything to what I knew about boys - that is to say, not a lot.”

“Oh, we’ve tried. Going to the shopping centre in a strappy top and a miniskirt is fun, but doesn’t add to the available data - apart from the fact that that makes boys look at you.”

“That’s the idea - isn’t it?”

“Well yeah. But you have to look back - and like what you see. So far that hasn’t happened.”

“I have an awful feeling that us liking older boys might have something to do with it,” ‘said’ Lisa. “Look at me and Brian, and Holly and Victor.”

“But what about me?” I ‘said’. “Cousin Mike isn’t that much older than me.”

“Cousin Mike is almost twenty two. Not that much older, I’ll grant you, but not on the same level as the football-playing numpties we’re exposed to every day.”

“Lisa, you’re being unkind,” ‘said’ Holly. “Maybe our expectations are just higher than theirs. We need someone with a little more - sophistication.”

Lisa grinned. “You mean like Victor?”

“Well - yes.”

“If your hands are a bit cold, you could always warm them on Holly’s face,” I ‘said’. Then I relented and gave her a huge hug. At first she tried to push me away, then laughed and put her arms round me in return.

“Speaking of Victor,” ‘said’ Lisa. “Have you been telling him what we’ve been doing?”

“Yes, why? Should I not have done that? Anyway, haven’t you been listening?”

“Yes you should have and no we haven’t. What did he say? More to the point, has he relayed it all to Beth?”

“Yes. Should he not have done that?”

“Holly! Knock off the being defensive or you’ll get a thump. Yes he should. Think about it. He’s just saved us a visit to the lab. We can get our heads down when we get home and get ready for school tomorrow without worrying about telling Beth all about it ourselves.”

“Perhaps Holly wants to visit the lab?” I ‘grinned’.

“And you can stop baiting Holly and making her blush. If Holly wants to visit the lab, you or I will not stand in her way.”

“Yes Lisa, sorry Lisa. I’ll be a good girl.”

“Oh, that’s a shame.”

“Lisa!”

There was nothing else for it but a three way hug. Didn’t last long though. There was a ‘bong’ and the seatbelt lights came on again. Almost home.

When the plane finally stopped rolling, the engines wound down to silence, and the steps had appeared from somewhere, we disembarked to find an airman waiting for us. Had to be for us - he saluted and addressed us.

“CO’s complements and can you join him in the mess, not his office.”

“We’ll be glad to,” said Lisa. “No, you needn’t show us the way. You can leave it to us.” Then she grinned and smiled at him, “What is it I have to say? Oh, yes. Carry on.”

The grin and the smile made sure he knew she wasn’t actually giving him orders, just a little humorous aside. Lisa knows this sort of thing is worth its weight in gold. But then, that’s one of the reasons she’s our Director and not me or Holly. Might as well have been an order though. Airman grinned, saluted again, turned smartly, and marched away.

Peter was waiting in the mess. Lisa got the first word in.

“Peter? You’ve got to tell your men to stop saluting and stuff as if we were some of your officers.”

“Ah. Are you missing the point of the saluting? When they salute me it’s because they acknowledge I’m their Commanding Officer. They jump when I say ‘frog’. When they salute you, it’s simply a mark of respect. They could offer to shake hands or give you a kiss, the right sort of kiss anyway. What they know to do is to salute. They do that. I don’t propose to try to stop them.

“Oh. Hadn’t thought of it like that. And the correct response is to smile and nod, let them you know you appreciate the gesture?”

“Exactly. Now, if that’s all sorted out, care to tell me what you’ve been up to - around a burger or two of course.”

“I’m sure you know most of it already,” grinned Lisa. “Don’t tell me Doug hasn’t been on the phone.”

“Mm. And just about everybody else - up to and including the Minister. But I like to hear you tell it.”

Lisa wriggled a bit and beamed at him, but dutifully began the latest saga. I found it slightly curious as the story unfolded. Three girls told the story. We never interrupted each other, each comment followed on from the last to weave the story into a coherent whole, it was just that there were three voices instead of one. Granted this was sometimes caused by one or more of us having our mouths full at the time, but it was still curious - and interesting.

Rather than drag mums or dads out on taxi duty, we made our way home under our own power, calling first at the tower as per new standing orders. Holly had a question for the controllers.

“Can you actually see us on your radar?”

“Not really. You’re a bit little and not made of the right stuff. You don’t reflect the radar beam strongly enough.”

“Ok. I’d like to try an experiment. When we leave this time, keep an eye on your wiggle-scopes. You can let us know via the CO if you see anything.”

They agreed to this and allowed us go anytime now-ish. Outside the tower I said, “What are you planning? Going to get us to carry a radar reflector like a sailing boat?”

“No. What I want us to do is link up, sufficiently closely for Lisa to fly the three of us together, like we did with the jet over the sub. Our shield should deflect most things in that mode. Might reflect radar. Be interesting to find out.”

Lisa caught on at once. “So if we fly into the base, they might see us coming?”

“Yeah, kind of. Might be useful to know.”

“Ok. Link up. I’ll drive - at least ‘til we reach the town.”

Three girls became just one. I relaxed and let Lisa direct us, just supplying energy as required. On the outskirts of the town, she stopped us in mid-air.

“Ok. On your own again. Bye Holly. See you later.”

Holly shot off in one direction, Lisa and I went in the other. Don’t know why Lisa had bothered to say goodbye to Holly, she might as well still have been with us, mentally anyway.

Lisa and I split up finally and I landed in my back garden. The kitchen door was locked but a loud knock brought Mum at the run to let me in.

“Hello dear. How are you? Did we win?”

“Yep. Angels ten, submarine nil. It’s somewhere or other, rushing around as if it’s new out of the shipyards.”

“Need major food - or did you persuade the air force to feed you?”

“No Mum, just a snack, then straight to bed. School tomorrow. Don’t want bags under the eyes to spoil the girlish complexion.”

Mum laughed with me as she began opening cupboards. As she assembled a ‘snack’, I told her all about our latest adventures. I could feel the others doing more or less the same thing.

Good old Mum had got tomorrow’s school things ready for me already. All I had to do was haul off my clothes, bung on my jim-jams, and fall into bed. I fell asleep almost at once - to wake up again almost immediately into bedlam!