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When we got back to the car, we found that Lady Luck had moved to the dashboard. As Cindy opened the door, she jumped down onto the seat, rubbed up against the dashboard one more time, and gave us a "what took you so long?" look. Cindy grinned and scratched her under her chin, and she jumped back into the back seat, looking pleased.
Again, the radio went on when Cindy started the car, but this time it practicly screamed "I'm a private dancer, a dancer for money, and any old music will do..." at its highest volume. I jumped, and would probably have bumped my head against the ceiling if I hadn't been wearing the seatbelt. Cindy turned scarlet and slammed her fist down on the radio button. It went off at once, and in the sudden silence, the only sound was the quiet growl of the engine and Lady Luck's improbable purring from behind us. I was slightly surprised I couldn't hear steam hissing from Cindy's ears. I'd only seen her that mad when I returned the stolen photo...
"Lady Luck must have rubbed against the volume thing," I said at last, pointing to the little dial. "It was just an accident, she didn't mean to do that..."
"I guess not," Cindy said in a surprisingly calm voice as she reached over and firmly turned it down. "I think we can do without that for a while anyway." She started to drive on in the direction of Barton.
"So, you want to know how I got here?" she asked. I nodded, and she went on, "I thought the janitor job was good then. The pay wasn't much, but it was a bit, and nobody minded that I slept in the broom cupboard anyway. And then the day came when the place was being painted...I was carrying a ladder and two buckets of paint for the painter, who was acting quite like Madam Izan used to. I'd learned how to handle people like that, and I knew he couldn't fire me, so I didn't care... Anyway, that was when Mike saw me. He'd just started working there to save money for flying lessons, and he needed someone to carry his equipment. He couldn't belive that a skinny girl like me could carry all that stuff, and later he asked if I could carry the camera euipment." She glanced at me. "It was much bulkier then, there weren't any of these little cameras and stuff like now. I didn't find it any harder then what I'd been doing before, and I got paid more, so I got...promoted." I almost thought I heard her giggle. "Yeah, I worked for Mike then, not him for me."
"Then how'd you get from carrying the camera to being on camera?" I asked.
"I guess it was an example of how every cloud has a silver lining for someone," she went on, "no matter how black it looks outside. I'd been lugging that stuff around for about two years, when Christmas Eve, Mike came running in. I was fixing a broken camera, but I was about to go to a party, and I was wearing the best that second-hand stores could provide. Little did I know I'd wear clothes like that from then on... Yes, it was an outfit just like I'm wearing now. I'd just gotten glasses too, and I was sure I'd look awful, but luckily it turned out that that was just teenage self-hatred. No offence meant."
"None taken," I replied. "How'd you get your big break?"
"There'd been a train crash on the Barton-Aekea line. There was a snowstorm, and the signal system had broken down. A passenger train heading to Aekea had run head-on into a tanker train going the other way. The tanker train was full of a very flamable chemical. You can imagine the results." I groaned, and she nodded. "Everyone dead and a huge fire on the tracks. Before I could even say 'party' Mike had gotten me lugging the stuff into a van and we went off into the snowstorm. The fire department wouldn't let us get very close, but we got some good shots of the fire, even through the snow. The station had called the woman who always stood in front of disaster sites and talked for the camera, and she should have met us there. But she didn't...and didn't...and didn't. The fire was starting to go out, and if we didn't get it taped soon we'd be late for the ten o'clock news. I was so well dressed that... It was just a joke at first, but we needed someone to talk about the fire. Finally we decided to do it. I stood in front of the camera with the fire behind me and did a lot of talking without saying much. Then we went racing back to town." She sighed. "There we found another black cloud that had a silver lining for me. The disaster woman had tried to come, but she'd run her car straight into a tree and gotten killed. With things as they were, the station on a skeleton staff, and half the people who should have been there not there and not answering phones, my tape got on the news."
"So that was your first story?" I asked.
"I thought it would be my last too," she said. "When everyone got back, they were shocked. I had no training, not very much schooling, was just eighteen... It should have been a one-off. Except for that many-headed beast, our audience. It seems they loved me. Within two weeks, the station was getting phone calls wanting to see 'that hot girl that did the story on the train crash' again. It was either admit I shouldn't have done it at all, or make me a proper reporter. The latter was less embaressing, and they couldn't find a replacement for the disaster woman, so I got the job. I was just the disaster reporter at first, but I kept getting better, and now... Ok, I'm still the disaster reporter, but they're big ones! And now I've got the news magazine show too. But even now, Mike's always my cameraman, because he got me where I am."
"Wow," I said. "That is...amazing..."
Cindy was grinning. "Well, I always heard Barton was the land of hope and dreams come true, and it is. I had to work for it, but you have to work for everything, don't you? And now I'm happy...most of the time. But nobody's always happy, are they? Besides, I've known worse. Now, how was your holiday?"
It was hard to talk about it, but I ended up telling her everything I hadn't told her before. About the vaccine Yama's friend had made for the jellyfish venom, about the jellyfish getting into the cave, about how I was related to the king. She kept asking so many questions that it took a long time to finish, and the sun was setting as I said "Don't tell anyone else about this, ok?"
"Of course! Don't you trust me? It's not like I'd put it on the news or something, I just want to help you."
We'd gotten to the fork in the road, and instead of going on to Barton, Cindy turned off on the other road, into the woods. "Where are we going?" I asked
"My house," she answered. "As soon as I could afford it I bought an old farmhouse up here. It was in ruins, but I fixed it up... You'll stay with me, won't you?" She looked at me almost pleadingly. "It's big, there's loads of room, and there's a pool and a big garden, and it's so peaceful..."
I accepted, even though I'd been going to go back to Durem. As Cindy had told her story, I saw how alike we were. I'd just been older when I went off on my own...older and luckier. A thrilling thought came to me. If she had gotten this far through luck, how high might I get, with more of a start? I smiled, looking out the side window at the darkning trees outside...
I must have dozed off, because the next thing I knew, it was truely dark outside. Cindy was talking, but not to me. "...sure it's moving like that?"
I turned my head and saw that she had one of the new cell phone headsets on and a worried look on her face. "Mike, you know I don't understand that kind of stuff," she said. "All I know is that it's moving way too fast. I mean, the observatory didn't even see it untill this week..." She paused, listening. "How far did you say again?" Another pause. "What?!? So it could be here in three weeks.?" Another pause, much longer. "Great," she said in a disgusted tone. "So we have no way of knowing if whatever's controling that thing is going to land it here tomorrow or in a century, right?"
My hair felt like it was standing on end. What was she talking about? What was going on?
"No, I can't go there now!" Cindy was saying. "I picked up Dawna... No, she's sleeping now. But I'm taking her back to my place now, and I am not going back to town untill the weekend's over." She listened, then sighed disgustedly. "No, I don't care if it's the end of the world, I'm going to spend some time doing what I want for a change, ok?" Mike must have said something funny at the other end, because she laughed and said, "That's not what I want!" Then she said "Bye!" and removed the headset from her ear.
"What was that?" I asked. "Why's the world going to end? What could be here in three weeks?"
"I thought you were sleeping!" Cindy said. "Don't worry, the world's not going to end. It's just something Mike's worried about..."
"What?" I asked again.
"Nothing for you to worry about," she answered, although she was clearly worried. "It'll turn out to be someting silly...Look, here we are!"
We'd just rounded a bend, and were in front of a large house in a clearing where the road ended. The house was only a dark shadow at first, but as Cindy turned off the car and we got out, my eyes addapted to the moonlight, starlight, and a faint ringlight. It was a big white house with two floors and, from the look of the windows at the top, an attic. "Come on, let's get inside," Cindy said.
Over dinner in the huge, stone-floored kitchen, she told me about the house. With a bit of pride, she explained that both the house's water and electricty came from the spring behind it. Since water gushed from it at such a high pressure, it had enough power to go up to a tank in the attic, which constantly drained through another pipe as the tank got too full. That pipe led to a small turbine, which the water ran over before being piped to the swimming pool in the back garden, and finally draining into the irrigation system for the lush garden. The turbine generated enough electricity for the house, and water came straight from the attic tank. "There's enough pressure that the lights don't go off when you turn on the faucet," she said, "and the water's the purest you've ever tasted." I got myself a glass of water from the sink, and heartily agreed. It was delicious. Cindy went on to explain that with a septic tank ("Stinks when the truck comes out to empty it, but it's only once a year." wink the house was entirely self-sufficient. "It's a good thing too," she said, "because we're too far out of town even to get a phone line. I've got my cell phone, and I go online at the office..." She saw the look on my face and said hurriedly, "You can too, of course."
That night I couldn't sleep for a long time, I was so excited. My room was small compared to at Angel's but larger then in my flat in Durem, and even though the the floor was wood and the wooden dubble bed was much smaller then at Angel's, I was happy. That place had been to showy. Here had the same feeling as the dingy little flat...the feeling of home.
It's been good living here. I go to Barton with Cindy whenever I'm needed (which was every day the first week...the computers missed me!), and we all are habby here. Lady Luck loves the garden, I love the whole place (the round swimming pool is great!) and Cindy clearly loves us being here.
We had one argument because she wanted me to go back to school, but she let up when I pointed out that I was learning enough on my own, and that I'd be working in a factory by now in Aekea. She hasn't mentioned what that phone call was about, and I havn't asked again. I'll just let things be...and hope for the best.