The Weapon - Apocalypse - part 22
By Diana the Valkyrie
Teenage Angst 

Fiona:

I didn't hear about the invasion until it was all over. Not that anything much
happened. Wendy hauled their aircraft carrier overland to Washington and
dumped it there, leading to an abort of the invasion, a serious long term
traffic problem in the city and a lot of red faces. People all around the
world were laughing at the joke. I mean, you could actually laugh, no-one had
gotten hurt, not so much as a stubbed toe. Wendy told us what had happened,
and while we were all laughing, I noticed that Duncan had a long face. I
waited until I could get him in a corner, and I asked him about it. "Duncan,
why the frown?" I asked, as I sipped a Pimms.

"That wasn't the war, Fiona. That was just the opening battle. We won. But so
did the Japanese at Pearl Harbour. Now we've got the yanks riled up at us, and
they won't stop until they've paid us back for the humiliation. I'm not
optimistic about what happens next."

"But we've got The Weapon, surely she'll neutralise anything they can do?"
"Maybe. She's certainly a major asset. But she can't do everything, you know.
Even if she protects Freedonia, there's all those Rescue Centers all over the
world, we're very spread out. And very vulnerable."

"But surely they wouldn't ... They couldn't ... Our babies? Impossible!"

"I'd like to agree with your, Fee, but people do some very stupid things. And
people have this horrible way of thinking that if the objective is good, then
the means to reach that objective must be good too, no matter what means are
used. No, I'm not saying we're all doomed. I'm just saying, we've got a long
hard fight ahead of us, and it isn't certain we can win."

I stared at him. "This isn't like you, Duncan. You're usually so optimistic,
so positive." "That's for public consumption, Fee. You're a big girl, I don't
want to pretend to you." "What does Wendy think?" "She thinks it's all simple,
she just has to keep breaking things until they stop sending things for her to
break." "Hmmph. Well, Mr Firefly, you better start earning your Presidential
pay. And I need to get back to work too."

I got myself dressed properly again, in my Queen's Nursing Sister uniform,
including the head-dress and cape, and went to find Wendy. She was
entertaining a small group of people with magic; making coins appear and
disappear. I watched closely, but I couldn't see her hands moving, she was
really good at this. She'd show the coin in the palm one hand, close her fist,
open her other fist, and there it was. Then she'd close that fist, open the
first one, and it was back. Then she'd point out that it was heads, close the
fist, open it, and it was tails. But the one I really couldn't follow, was
when I came up to ask her about a flight back to Bombay, and she told me to
show my hands. And I had a coin in each one. How did that happen? Everyone
applauded, and I think they assumed I was part of the act.

She bowed to the audience, took off her cape, swirled it in front of us, and
while we were covered by the cape, she put an arm round my waist and we shot
up into the air. The people on the ground must have thought we'd simply
disappeared. And then her cape was back, or maybe it had never really left,
and I decided not to try to understand all this, I'm a nurse, not a physicist,
or a member of the Magic Circle, or however it was she was doing it. I knew
her cape was back, because she had it wrapped round us both as she headed for
the stratosphere and out into space.

I guess most nurses don't ever get higher than a passenger jet. Wendy hardly
ever flew that low, or that slowly. Her idea of getting around was to get into
orbit around the globe, stay there until she was not too far from her
destination, then decelerate and land. Freedonia to India, thirty minutes. It
was quicker than it used to take me to get the bus from the hospital to my
digs.

When we got there, it was pretty late; far too late to visit the children. So
I invited her into my apartment for cocoa. Yes, I know she doesn't actually
need to eat or drink, but I also knew that she did anyway, because eating and
drinking together was something that humans did, and she was emulating a
human. "Anyway, I want to know what you and Duncan were whispering about back
there," she said.

I sat in my armchair, and looked at her, floating cross-legged a couple of
yards away. "Wendy, you can hear a fly stamping across the table, you could
hear what we were talking about." "I could ... but I don't. Duncan told me
it's rude to earwig other people's conversations, so I certainly wouldn't do
that to him." "But you're willing to ask me what it's about?" "Right, because
you can tell me to mind my own business if you want to. Are you having an
affair with Duncan?"

I blinked.

Where did she get this from?

Oh, bedpans.

"Wendy, we're not having an affair. Wherever did you get the idea from?"

"Well, I watched Brief Encounter, you know, and you're his age, about. And I'm
not. And you're human. And I'm not. And he calls you "Fee" and you call him
Firefly, so you have pet names for each other, and you understand about
people, and I don't, and you're good-looking, and you're human, and you're
unmarried, and you're a qualified nursing sister, and I just break things, and
you're human, and he smiles when he talks to you, and he respects your
opinions, and you're human, and ... " and she was crying.

So I did what one does. I reached across and pulled her towards me, and pushed
her down a few inches so I could put my arms round her, and I stroked her
hair, and I just held her without saying anything until she wasn't sobbing
quite so hard, and while I was doing all that, I was thinking very hard.

She was obviously very hung up on the fact that she wasn't human. She was also
saying that she was jealous of me, for a whole bunch of reasons, all of which
boiled down to Duncan. And she was clearly very insecure about her place in
things. And then I thought, but she actually isn't human, maybe she's just
emulating all this because she thinks she needs to.

So after the sobbing had turned to sniffles, I asked her if she had a hankie,
and she gave me a corner of her cape, so I wiped her eyes with that, and then
she took it and blew her nose on it. Yuck. I suppose she has some way of
cleaning it. Or maybe she was only pretending to blow what wasn't actually a
nose. And then I thought, well, I can't go down that road, it's too
complicated for me. It doesn't actually matter whether she's really being
human or if she's just emulating, because my reactions are the same. And I
could diagnose this particular problem easily.

I've dealt with adolescents before.

"First off, Wendy, thank you for saying I'm good-looking; I do try to keep up
appearances. But you. Well. You're downright gorgeous, and sexy as hell, I've
seen the way that the boys look at you. And Duncan, when he looks at you, he
gets that look in his eyes, he's totally smitten by you. And it doesn't matter
that you're not really human, because you do such a good emulation, no-one
really thinks about it."

She looked up at me, hopefully. "You think?"

"I know." And she'd also just confirmed my diagnosis, this was classic Teenage
Angst. "And Fee isn't a pet name, it's short for Fiona, because Fiona is a
three-syllable name, so people shorten it and I get called Fee. You can call
me Fee if you like." "Fee." "Wendy." And I hugged her some more. "And I'm not
having an affair with Duncan. Of course we're friends, and laugh together,
but, well, he really isn't interested in me that way." I thought; he might
have been under other circumstances, but with Wendy all over him, there was no
chance.

"I never knew my parents," she said, changing the subject completely. Or was
she? "I didn't actually have parents. I just got assembled, sort of. I didn't
get the whole parenting thing. I didn't get the birds and the bees
explanations. And I don't have anyone I can talk to about this stuff. Duncan's
great, of course, but he isn't exactly, well, you know? I mean, he thinks I
already know everything about this, I can hardly disillusion him by asking
dumb questions."

Right. No-one has ever explained to her about sex. I mean, sure, the
mechanical stuff, that's easy. Insert rod A in slot B, wiggle it a bit, anyone
can do that. No, the difficult part isn't the sex, it's the love, it's the
relationship, and you learn a lot of that from your parents. Not that they
explain it to you, of course - you get it from their example. Plus you can ask
them things, although adolescents rarely do. And I realised what she was
asking me for. She wanted a mother.

My first reaction was, I don't have the time for this. I'm trying to look
after a million babies, I can't be a mother to them all, I just can't. I want
to, that's the instincts at work, but I have to push that down. The uniform
isn't just to keep the rain out, it's to tell people that although I'm acting
like a mother might act, I'm not actually a mother for them, I'm a nurse, a
trained professional doing a job. And sure, you do it with care and sympathy,
but there's just so many of them, you can't treat them all like you were their
mother.

And my second reaction was, but this isn't just one of a million, this is
Wendy, this is the Guardian of Humanity, this is the one who thinks she's the
mother of all of us, how am I supposed to be her mother?

And my third reaction was, but she isn't human, what do I know about parenting
one of whatever she is?

And my fourth reaction was to pull her close and kiss her and tell her that
everything would be fine now, and yes, she does have a mother, and any time
she needed me I'd be there for her, and the hell with all the doubts. Because
in the last analysis, it was very simple. She needed me, and this wasn't
something I could leave for someone else to do.

I didn't get much sleep that night, there was so much she wanted to ask that
she hadn't had anyone to ask before, and all the questions just poured out,
and I did my best to answer, because that's all you can do. She phoned Duncan,
and I told him she was with me, and we were talking. "What about?" "Girl
stuff, Duncan." "Oh. What stuff?" "Don't ask."

Quite a lot of them were about sex, and love, and parenting, and how a wife
was supposed to behave, and all the stuff that children nomally learn just by
watching their parents. I wouldn't claim to be any sort of expert on this
stuff, but I think it's better to get it from someone you love who knows just
a little, than from an complete stranger who's an absolute expert. And
somewhere along there, I told her that curries came from India, which is where
we were now, and she practically dragged me out to go shopping with her, for
spices and stuff. But I told her that everything would be closed at this time
of night, and she should plan a trip some other time, during daylight. I felt
strange telling her to travel halfway round the world for a shopping trip, but
if it's only half an hour, it's quicker than it takes most people to travel
down to London from wherever they live. "Oh, if I'm not carrying anyone, I can
move a lot faster, because I don't have to worry about the G forces."

And she told me a lot of stuff about herself, most of which I didn't
understand, and she told me why she had been sent here, about the war in the
galaxy, which I found very easy to believe, because we've done that so often
here on earth, and how both sides were good, and both sides were evil, and I
told her that's often the way, and that I felt sure she'd be able to keep them
off us. And then she asked me why there were so many crying babies in the
world, and she didn't mean the ones you pick up and cuddle and feed, she meant
the ones that have been crying so long that they don't have the strength to
cry any more, and I told her I often wondered that myself, but that now we
were doing something about it. But I think it's because people just don't care 
much about other people. "It's the way we are, Wendy, we can't do much about it.
People can just walk on by, even when someone else so obviously needs help." "Is
everyone like that?" "No, not everyone. But most people are, to some extent. You
take care of your own, but not of other people."


And she asked me how to make Duncan love her, and I told her that was in the bag, 
all she needed to do was what she was already doing, and then she asked me about 
my sex life, and I told her to mind her own business, daughters don't ask mothers 
about that.

"Oh. Well, if you ever need any help ..."

And I told her, no, I most certainly do not need any help, because as she'd
already pointed out, I was still a good-looking woman, and there's something
about a nurse's uniform that seems to have an effect on some men, plus you
wouldn't believe how many patients fall in love with their nurse, and, well,
just don't poke your nose into this, little Miss Weapon, I'm quite capable of
fending for myself. And I thought, you know, Fee, she's right, get a life, I
ought to flutter a few eyelashes a bit, there are one or two rather
distinguished looking doctors around the place, who might be interested in the
occasional game of Doctors and Nurses. Life isn't all bedpans and carbolic.

She asked me to explain to her about money, so I told her it was because there
just wasn't enough stuff for everyone. "So can't people just, have less?" "Yes,
and that's exactly the whole purpose of money. So different people can choose what 
different things are most important, and have less of the things that are less
important." She looked at me. "Where I come from, if there's a shortage of stuff,
you just make more." "We aren't like you, Wendy, we don't have your resources and
capabilities." She nodded. "So maybe I can help there. Like with making the oil,
that sort of thing. But can't people just agree about how to share things out
when there isn't enough?" "No. It gets back to what I said before. People just don't
care much about other people."

We went outside to watch the sun rise, and she took me up a few thousand feet
so we'd have a good view. And then back inside, I told her, "Now Wendy, you
really have to go now, I've got things to do, Rescue Centers to run, and
you've got to make it up to Duncan for leaving him alone all night."

So she took off her cloak, and held it out in front of her, between us, and
let go. It fell slowly to the floor, too slowly, and when it hit the floor it
vanished. And, of course, so had Wendy, a nicely dramatic exit. But where
she'd been standing, there was a life sized statue, made of some metal that
was so heavy I couldn't even rock it. A statue wearing a tunic and a skirt,
wearing a cape. And a head-dress. It was the uniform of the Queen's Nursing
Sisters, and the face on the statue was mine. And I was holding a baby in my
arms, hugged against me, but the baby's head was turned sideways, and you
could see her face.

It was Wendy.