Do You Dream of Terra-Two?

‘Because they only last for a few seconds,’ Ara said, as a small girl let out a thrilled yelp, jumping up to touch the shining edge of the thing and missing every time. ‘Imagine if, instead of bubbles, that woman was blowing balls of see-through plastic that didn’t cost much and lasted forever.’

By the time they reached the South Bank, Astrid was eager to head back. If they ran they could do it in twenty minutes. But Ara was distracted by the busyness. She kept slipping in and out of the crowd, pausing often to look at the street performers. One dressed as Charlie Chaplin doing tricks for pennies, a skinny teenager covering Jimi Hendrix songs. Ara emptied her pockets, chucking coins and a few crumpled notes at him with a laugh. ‘It’s not like I need them anymore,’ she said.

Astrid was distracted by the food trucks, the ones selling footlong hotdogs, Neapolitan ice cream, nuts that smelt like burnt sugar, boiling in vats of caramel. Only she couldn’t eat anything. With each minute that passed, her stomach knotted with dread.

‘Ara.’ She grabbed her friend’s wrist before she could turn on her heel again. ‘We have to go.’ Her voice growing stern. ‘I’ve had enough.’

The pulse in Ara’s wrist throbbed wildly. She shook herself free, and smiled.

‘This isn’t a game,’ Astrid told her. Ara pressed her palms against Astrid’s cheeks and brought their faces together, for a second, in a kiss. Her mouth tasted bitter as aspirin and there was a film of sweat on her upper lip. Astrid closed her eyes and, when she opened them again and drew in a surprised breath, Ara was running away.

‘Where are you going?’ she shouted after her friend.

‘I’m not going back!’

All Astrid could see was her red skirt as she raced down the bank, her black hair like a comet’s tail behind her.

She headed across the bridge and Astrid had to sprint to keep up, ducking and weaving past people on the walkway and calling apologies after her. She took a sharp turn down a crowded road, past the subway, which was belching steam in the May heat, into one end of Embankment station and out the other, to the crossing facing the Thames. Ara had vanished. When Astrid stopped running, her head was spinning and she pushed a hand against the strain in her chest, dizzy and panting in the humid air.

She groaned in frustration. This was getting away from her. She considered making her own way back to the BIS building, but could she go without Ara?

She headed in that direction anyway, back along the river. They had thirty minutes.

The warmth of the afternoon surprised her. It was late spring and the wind was hot as flesh. Astrid followed Victoria Embankment, where the river was the colour of rust. Then she stood for a long while, trying to memorize the city’s skyline, before she heard a voice behind her.

‘Juno…?’ She felt the cool of a shadow across her shoulders and turned around to find Eliot. ‘I mean… Astrid. Sorry, it’s hard to tell you apart… from behind.’

Astrid exhaled with relief. ‘What are you doing out here?’ she asked. Eliot looked as if he’d been struck by lightning, his eyes wide.

‘I was looking for you, and Ara. We need to get back.’

‘You ran after us? All this way?’

‘Yes. I lost you in the museum, then I saw you running up the road. Tried to catch up. Lost you on the South Bank.’ He swore, leaning against the railings to catch his breath. ‘This isn’t funny.’

‘I know,’ Astrid said, and suddenly it wasn’t at all.

‘What’s wrong with you?’ he asked. ‘You could get in trouble. You could get sanctioned. Or not cleared to fly. Astrid, don’t you want to go to space?’ The question cut her. Of course she wanted to go. Wanted nothing more. And yet, what was she doing here? Why had she done this foolish and reckless thing? Her own motivations frightened her.

‘Let’s find Ara and head back.’ Eliot glanced around wildly, as if he might find her behind him, or across the road. ‘Ara?’

‘I lost her. Should we go back without her?’ The silence between them, then, was horrible. Going back without Ara didn’t feel like an option. ‘Maybe she’s there already,’ Astrid ventured finally. ‘This is probably all a huge joke to her.’ And she imagined her in the society’s library just as they spoke, bent double with laughter. ‘If we keep going in that direction—’ she nodded ahead of her, back the way they had come, ‘…we’ll probably bump into her.’