IMAGINATION'S PLACE
FICTION
JOURNEY TO THE LIGHT
By; Speaker Gerald Polley
All rights reserved.
Chapter 7
Carol went through two months of bliss.
Everything seemed to be going perfectly. Her studies with
Throttlebottom were just absolute joy! Sometimes she'd be on the
telescope late into the night and she would not be woken in the
morning. She complained about this regularly but nobody paid any
attention whatsoever. When she worked late she slept
late. The children would have it no other way and neither would
anybody else. Then her periods became hell. For three
months she was absolutely miserable for the whole week. Finally
Zorba insisted she go to the clinic.
"When can you take me?" Carol asked.
"You're orange now," her husband answered, "you
don't need anybody to take you. I'll give you a pass for the bus and
you will take it."
Carol sighed. "Very well!" she moaned.
She knew it was no sense whatsoever arguing with her husband. You
couldn't win.
That evening Carol was getting ready to go up to the
telescope when the doorbell rang. She opened it to find what she
thought was two children standing there, but she quickly realized one
was an old man. "Carol?" he asked.
"Yes!" Carol answered.
"I'm Professor Dingleberry!" the man piped.
"This is my assistant Peter. Call me Dingle! Everybody
does! Mind if we join you tonight?"
"I'd be absolutely delighted!" Carol answered.
"Maybe you could show me how to use some of this equipment I've been
sent, that I can't make heads or tails out of."
"Ah! Peter will be glad to help you with
that!" the Professor continued. "Peter, does she look as nice as she
sounds?"
"If you could see her," Peter answered, "I would be
extremely jealous! She is an excellent specimen of the female
creature!"
"Ahhh!" the Professor managed. "Such praise from you means she must be a beauty, indeed!"
Carol laughed then realized what Peter said. "If you could see me," she muttered.
The Professor grinned. "I'm quite blind, my
dear, almost totally. I can see a little light and a little dark,
but that's the end of it. Peter is my eyes. But I still see
the stars," he tapped his forehead, "up here! I remember every
image I have ever seen, every constellation, every gaseous cloud,
everything is in here! But now! Your planetoid. I
can't believe in such a short time you have discovered an undesignated
body! Planetoid Henderson! Letting you patch into the space
station's new telescope may have been a little embarrassing for us old
fogies! I have two hours of viewing time this evening. Want
to see if we could get a closer look?"
"Absolutely love to!" Carol answered, holding her
stomach. "I was just getting ready to go up. But do say
hello to my husband and daughter first. They will be sorely
disappointed if you don't. And I hope you brought some warm
clothes. It gets rather cold up there at night."
The Professor laughed. "My dear young woman! I
know the weather conditions of every area I go to work in. We
have come totally prepared!"
They went in, said hello, then went up and the
Professor patched in the recording equipment to the big satellite while
Carol took some readings on something she had picked up the night
before.
"What's that?" Peter asked.
"I'm not sure!" Carol answered, "Maybe an
asteroid. I just detected it last night and have only got rough
readings. I should get some much better images tonight and some
time lapse to see if we can figure out where it's going."
"Oh, no!" the Professor sighed. "Not another
asteroid headed for Earth! You know that fine gentleman, The
First Speaker, has said none of them will ever hit the Earth for more
than a hundred years and we'll be well able to deal with them by then."
"May be!" Carol answered. "But he hasn't said some of them might not come pretty close!"
The Professor laughed. "No he hasn't has he?" he
agreed. "You know, I rather like that man! Met him several times,
very interested in his astronomy."
"He's interested in everything!" Peter remarked,
"Especially young women! I can't understand why they're
interested in him!"
The Professor laughed. "Sometimes," he
giggled, "my young protege let's his jealousy show. That man has
helped a lot of young women reach their potential. I wish there
were more like him. With all that is happening we need every good
mind we have. Now, the lady said she needed help with that equipment.
Let's get to work!"
By the time the night was over they had found
Carol's asteroid would pass through the outer fringes of the
atmosphere. "Ought to make quite a show!" the Professor teased.
And they also found the planetoid was strangely bigger than others that
had recently been discovered..
"Damn!" Peter remarked, "If this keeps up the
argument over planetoids and planets is going to heat up all over
again!"
"Didn't know it ever stopped!" the Professor put in. "Well, gotta get some sleep."
"Yeah, me too!" Carol agreed. "I'm ordered to see the doctor tomorrow."
"Troubles?" the Professor asked.
"Oh, just woman's things," Carol answered, "nothing serious."
"Famous last words!" the Professor sighed.
"I don't mean to be embarrassing," Carol asked, "but are you two dwarfs?"
Both her companions laughed. "No," the
Professor answered, "we're midgets. There's a difference. Dwarfs
are deformed, their bodies are out of proportion. Midgets are totally
in proportion. They're just small."
"Oh!" Carol giggled. "O.k.! I get it!"
They went off to bed. By the time Carol woke
up she was front page news and her asteroid was the talk of the
world! But she was only interested in catching the bus. She
went astray once, but got put back on track and finally found the
clinic. They passed her from specialist to specialist, and she
knew something was not right. They couldn't put their finger on
it. Finally, she was with a rather handsome doctor whose name was
Wagner. "I wonder," he remarked, "if anybody had the thought to
check on something," he asked. He went into the cabinet, picked
out a box, came over and handed it to Carol. "Do you know how to
use this?" he asked.
"A pregnancy test?" Carol asked.
The doctor nodded. Carol went in the rest room, used
the test, and brought it back. The doctor waited patiently
watching the clock and then looked at the test. A big grin came on his
face. "Thought so!" he cried. "You're pregnant!"
"What?" Carol moaned. "But I'm still having my period!"
"That's precisely the problem," the doctor replied.
"you're still having your period. Something's wrong. Your
body hasn't got the signal that your period is no longer
necessary. You're still ovulating. I think I better check
with some scans and make sure there's only one. Pregnancies of
this type can be a problem."
Carol hesitated a moment and asked "Can this be a real problem? Can it be dangerous?"
The doctor hesitated then answered "It could
be. If we can't get things under control. I'll put you on
some medication and then we'll see what happens next time your period
comes around. If it doesn't I think the medication will control
it. If it does we may have to take some other action."
Carol went to the pharmacy, got her
prescription and headed home. She didn't say anything to
anyone. They were all sitting down to supper when Zorba finally
asked "Did the doctors find out what was wrong?"
"Yes," Carol answered, "I'm pregnant but I'm still
ovulating and having my period. That's why they've been so miserable."
"Oh!" Zorba cried. He continued eating for a
few minutes, then stopped, put his utensils down and looked at
Carol. "Pregnant?" he muttered.
Carol nodded. "Whoa!" Zorba cried and banged the table.
"I'm gonna have a brother or sister?" Xena cried.
"If I don't mess it up," Carol answered.
"Right now my body's not doing the right things. Hopefully the
medication I've been given will straighten it out."
Peter, who had been watching the television with
earphones suddenly walked into the room, a look of total bewilderment
on his face. "Well," the Professor remarked "I hear Peter moving
but he's not making any noise. Something must be wrong. Come on, boy,
speak up!"
"They've killed him!" Peter moaned.
"Who?" the Professor asked.
"Him!" Peter repeated again.
Suddenly Carol understood who he was talking
about. "No!" she cried. She ran into the livingroom,
unplugged the earphones. A reporter was saying "The government
asks everyone to be calm. These are the most desperate
hours! The First Guardian has taken the leadership of the
church. The protectors are mobilized. We don't have all the
information yet but we know he fell in his beloved Maine, apparently at
a place called Bangor. He was felled by a Catholic deputy sheriff
belonging to a small cult that believed the church had been unfairly
betrayed."
Suddenly a signal began to flash across the
screen. "Military alert! Military alert! All reserve
officers report to your duty stations! This is not a drill!
We are under attack! All reserve officers report to your duty
stations! All citizens take cover in shelters. This is not
a drill! Take immediate action!"
Zorba snapped "Gotta go!" Carol squeezed his
shoulder as he hurried by. The next two weeks were utter
chaos. Some in the world tried to take advantage of the confusion
and seize back power. They were put down with swift and
sudden efficiency. They were attacked twice, but very little
damage was done. Finally it quieted down and things returned to a
semblance of normal.
The funeral had been broadcast around the world and
everything had stopped for that hour. "How can a person rise from
obscurity," Carol asked, "to be so revered when he dies?"
"It's the person, mother!" her daughter put in
before anyone else could speak. "When the person is very special
the people know, especially when he does good things when everybody
else is doing bad things. That's why everybody liked him so
much. So many people wanted to do bad things to them and he
wouldn't let them."
Carol picked her up and hugged her. "I think
we're gonna have a teacher here," she told her husband.
"I don't think so!" her husband argued. "I
think she's going to be a Speaker. I think she's going to make
sure what he taught isn't forgotten. If that isn't the case, I
will be very, very surprised!"
Carol smiled. "Me too!" she agreed.
One night the Professor and Peter had gone down a
while before her. They were staying in the children's room at
night. As Carol was going by she saw the door was ajar and heard
strange noises. She pushed it in a little bit and saw the Professor and
Peter standing by the full length mirror naked. Peter was in
front of the mirror, the professor was behind him running his hands
over his body. Peter was moaning as he did so. "Ohh," Carol
choked. She shut the door. "As long as they keep it to
themselves," she remarked. She would remind them to lock the
door, in the morning. As she got in bed she told Zorba.
"Thought so!" he admitted. "But as you
say, as long as they keep it to themselves. They've been very
discreet, but I think everybody's known."
Carol waited for her next period. It
came but it was very light, and after that there was none. She
just kept getting bigger and bigger! And everybody was going
"Holy cow!" But she didn't feel uncomfortable at all. She'd
heard other women complain but she had no complaints whatsoever.
Every movement was joyous. When they found it was a boy, doubly
so! Her asteroid came. It was quite a show. Some little pieces
broke off and made quite a display. It practically passed right
over them! Her husband complained she came too close!
"Never!" Carol answered.
Life was becoming pleasurable but some people didn't
like what she was doing. She remembered the Professor telling how
the Christian fundamentalist had sprayed the meeting he was attending
with bullets because he didn't like what he found. There were others
out there just as crazy. Carol didn't exactly worry, but she
wasn't foolish, either, far from it!