Theme Planet (7 page)

“Shush, now, you’ll make your father
queasy,” said Katrina, stroking an errant hair from Molly’s forehead. “You know
he doesn’t like flying.”

Dex felt both girls turn their
eyes on him. Their joint gaze was more intensive than any psychotic military
drill-instructor.

“You’re not afraid of
flying,
are you, daddy?” said Molly.

“Haha! Daddy’s ‘fraid of flying,
Daddy’s ‘fraid of flying...”

“No I’m not,” said Dex, closing
his eyes and picturing the chopper, out of control, careering round in violent
circles, smoke and fire pluming and spitting from cracked engines as screams
wailed and people screamed and he wrestled with the controls, face smudged with
dirt, a bullet in one shoulder, another in his hip, his lifeblood pumping with
every movement across his chilled clammy flesh as the screams of men, and
women, and children echoed through his ears, through his head, echoed down long
corridors all the way to a fiery frozen Eternity...

“No, I’m not,” he breathed.

“Girls, girls, shush, leave your
father alone. He’s had a bad week.”

“Damn right,” he muttered, and
felt the rumble of engines igniting deep within the bowels of the huge
passenger Shuttle. Dex’s knuckles tightened that little bit more. He felt an
odd
throb
from where the bullet had lodged in his hip. Gone now. Ten
years gone. But hot, like it was still there, gnawing his flesh with tiny
teeth. Mole Bullets, they called them. Used by happy terrorists the globe over.
Once inside you, their teeth emerged and they started a slow burrow towards
something deep and meaningful.

The Shuttle lifted smoothly from
the blast-pad and Dex peered past his awe-struck daughters as the terminal fell
away amongst sheets of vertical rain. There was a
kick
and they
accelerated, the nose of the Shuttle lifting now as real power surged through motors
and Molly and Toffee giggled, blissfully unaware of the billion micro-gallons
of piped Shuttle-fuel bubbling beneath their sweet little backsides.

Dex shivered.

“Some Greebo Champagne, sir?”
asked the stewardess.

Dex glanced up. Licked dry lips. “Go
on then.”

Kat giggled and slapped his arm. “At
least look
excited.
“

“Oh, I’m excited all right,” he
said. Then added:
I’m not bloody excited about paying for it all. But then,
Dexter Colls, you always were a stingy, tight-fisted old bastard.

They clinked flutes and sipped
Greebo Champagne, and watched London disappear amidst the clouds, then the
clouds disappear amidst the swirl of the planet. And gradually, sequentially,
the grey and blue turned to black filled with a billion
billion
pin-pricks of stars.

They left Earth behind.

They were on their way to Theme
Planet.

~ * ~

“Daddy, can
I
sit on your knee?”

“Mmm?” Dex opened his eyes to see
Molly staring at him earnestly. He yawned, and gave a nod. Outside the
porthole, stars scrolled past and the
thrum
of the Shuttle’s engines was
a rhythmic, relaxing constant.

“You okay, Pudding?”

“Don’t call me a pudding.”

She settled down like a bird
trampling its nest. Dex grunted.

“Okay, then. Peanut?”

“I am not,” she pouted, close to
him, “a peanut.”

“What can I do for you, Molly?”
He smiled.

“I’d like to discuss our family
holiday on the Theme Planet.”

Dex nodded, thinking,
gods,
but she’s growing up fast. It seems like only yesterday I was changing her
nappies and using the ultra-modern Suck-o-Suck Poo Sucker & Scraper
and Infant Cleansing Apparatus to perform the terrible deed. Now, here she is,
eyes all serious, wishing to “discuss” things. Hot damn.

Dex grinned. “Of course, Miss
Molly. I am here to discuss every single element of our wonderful family
vacation. Where’s your mother?”

“Up ordering our lunch at the
bar.”

“Hmm. Sure she is.”

“Listen Daddy, I’ve been
thinking. I think we should visit
every single
area of the Theme Planet
where we’re staying, and then, if we’ve exhausted that area, we should move on
to the Red Zone.”

“You know we can’t go to the Red
Zone, sweetie. They won’t allow Toffee on any of the rides. She’s too young.”

“But Daddy!”

“Wait, wait, back-up a minute,
Molls. The Blue Zone is designed especially for a family like us. We’re staying
in the Kool Kid Zone so that
you
and Toffee can have a real fun time.
Then there’s Adventure Central a short zip tube ride away if I fancy indulging
in some adventurous mountain climbing, or something.”

“Ooh, yes, I was reading about
Adventure Central,” said Molly, and Dex caught that gleam in his daughter’s eye
that
so
reminded him of Katrina. A wicked streak. A sense of danger and
wild adventure that had no place belonging to an eight-year-old little lady...

“Now wait a minute,” said Dex. “Adventure
Central is for adults only. That’s the whole point. It’s
dangerous.
It’s
full of adrenaline sport experiences, up in the Skycloud Mountains or on the
Death Rapids, or out in the Lost Dunes. It’s not a place for children.”

“That’s cyber-rubbish,” said
Molly, frowning. “At school, my cousin Vincent’s little cousin’s brother’s
friend’s dad has been there, and
he
took his little boy who was seven
years old and
he
went on the Kid Rapids, and if you think about it,
Daddy, they wouldn’t even
have
something called the Kid Rapids if it
wasn’t designed for kids would they? And my cousin Vincent’s little cousin’s
brother’s friend’s
dad
said there was a place called the Forest of Iron
and it had bandits and everything and it led to the Caves of Hades and there
was a secret tunnel that leads under the secret sea to the secret island called
The Lost Island that everybody at school’s been talking about, so please,
Daddy, please, please, please will you take me on an expedition to Adventure
Central and we can meet bandits and find The Lost Island and everything?”

Dex digested this information. “If
everybody at school,” he said, carefully, “has been talking about
The Lost
Island,
how can it be lost? It means they found it. It’s no longer lost. It’s
been found.” He smiled at her. Molly made a
phut
sound and climbed down
off his knee.

“That’s okay, Dad. If you’re too
scared...”

“Oh,
scared
is it?” he
said, and grabbed her round the waist, tickling her ribs. She giggled and
started kicking and woke Toffee up, who started crying, just as Katrina arrived
carrying two MUGGS of coffee and frowning.

“I leave you three alone for a
minute...” she said.

“Daddy said he’s taking us to
Adventure Central,” said Molly, smugly.

“Er, no I did not!”

“You promised!”

“Did I?”

“You did. You did!”

“And I want to go as well,”
pouted Toffee.

Katrina gave him a withering
look. “Well Dex, looks like I’ll be sunbathing and admiring all those hunks on
the beach
all on my own.”
She grinned, and he took the coffee from her
and considered pouring it on her head.

“Yeah. Right.”

~ * ~

It
was
night. Or at least, night by their body-clocks. The cabin’s lights had been
dimmed and the Shuttle seats unrolled back into beds. Both Molly and Toffee
were covered by Snooze-o blankets and Dex and Katrina were reclining, sharing a
bottle of Helix Towers red wine. The Shuttle had been rapidly accelerating for
the last ten hours to 0.7LS and they were heading for a JUMP which, Dex knew,
would make him want to vomit and feel like he was wearing his internal organs
on the outside. Annoyingly, Katrina felt no adverse effects during a JUMP. She
used it as another excuse to call Dex a “pussy.”

“So then, lover. This time
tomorrow, we’ll be walking hand in hand down the beach.”

“Your reckon?”

“I hope so.” She smiled.

“But what about all those hunks
you mentioned?”

“Hey, I have my own hunk right
here.” She stroked his chest and kissed him, and their tongues lingered for a
few moments until the flashing lights in the headrests of the seats in front
got brighter and brighter and a buzzer started to get progressively louder.

No
Snogging,
said the flashing sign.
Snogging leads to sex. This is a
No
Sex Shuttle... unless you wish to upgrade to First Class+++, only an
extra
$£15,000
and have your very
own Sex Suite! You know it makes sense.

Dex groaned. “Told off by a
fucking headrest. The fucking ignominy.”