Part 2 of The Bittersweet Symphony
Summary:
Alan Tracy should have every reason to be the happiest 17 year old on the planet. Right? And that's why it's just so hard when he is very definitely... not.
Notes:
Thanks again to Solleil Lumiere for her beta work (a while back, this one!) and general TAG goodness.
Some swearing in here.
Chapter Text
Alan Tracy was bored as only a privileged seventeen year old living on a south sea island with frequent access to rocket ships could be.
At least, Alan labelled it as boredom. Far safer to claim that than anything more ambiguous.
Homework was done, so far as he could take it. The question of how to use Bernoulli's equation to find the kinetic energy of fluid if the fluid is not incompressible and inviscid was beyond him, and there was no one at hand to help him. The essential unfairness of this, given that one brother was a genius (John), whose brilliance paled when compared with his friend (Brains - genius to the max), and that his other brothers (Virgil, Scott and Gordon) were no slouches in the physics department either, and yet not one of them was immediately available to him – well, it just added to the overall shittiness of the day. He put his homework aside with a sense of dissatisfaction that collided with a well-established feeling of nothing to do and no one to do it with overlaying that darker feeling he refused to look at to leave him completely lacking in motivation for life, in general.
The reasons for the distinct lack of familial support were various. Up in Thunderbird 5 John, he knew, was on a scheduled down time. They'd come off a week of rescues, and it was just a matter of mental survival for John to take a regulated break from being the first responder. Things were patched through to the island base and John was, hopefully, sleeping. Not even Alan's well-burnished sense of grievance could justify sending a request upwards to disturb that.
Brains would have been an excellent choice, but he was currently in London, after being dropped there by Kayo on her way to Osaka. She was investigating the design and purchase of new uniforms for International Rescue. Their old ones were configured in such a way that they contained an anti-bacterial, anti-viral solution in the outer layer, something that exuded a microscopic but highly effective amount of protection to keep the Tracy boys as healthy as possible as they travelled from one time zone and one area of seasonal disorders to another. Scott was in the infirmary and Scott's illness should not, according to Brains' indignant cries, have happened. He was probably already ticked off that he misdiagnosed it in the first place; by evil chance, Scott had picked up a bad rash from a contaminant at the last rescue site, and this had sent Brains in completely the wrong direction when Scott arrived home with a raging fever and lozenge sized blisters on his hands and face.
The contaminant was nothing Brains had seen before, and if you wanted to get their resident genius in a snit, just hurt one of his boys with an unknown agent and watch him lather up. The level of muttering and banging and hair tearing-outing would have been hilarious if it weren't for the fact that Scott was in real pain – and Brains not knowing something was more than a little bit scary. Through contacts in the medical research field, Brains had discovered someone who might have a lead on what constituted the new Agent 85, as it was being called in 'certain clandestine circles of my erstwhile h'acquaintance', as Parker put it.
That fever and those blisters were the reason Scott was crossed off Alan's Helpful for Homework list. Moodily, Alan wandered downstairs to the infirmary and dared to poke his head around the door to see if Scott was any better. Less than a minute later he scuttled down the passageway, sadder and wiser. Scott was not receiving visitors today, clearly. Alan might have guessed; all his brothers hated being incapacitated, but Scott probably loathed it most vehemently. And there was the whole 'new and feral contaminant' aspect that Scott would have firmly forefronted in his mind.
"It's called quarantine for a reason, Alan!"
Yeah, always nice to have a Scott level bellow follow you down the hall. Especially when it came out as more of a constipated wheeze.
It all just sucked.
He could hear Grandma watching the TV. Grandma was great for many things, but physics was not one of them. History and geography she had a lock on; as a back-up for Virgil in art and music, she was invaluable. But the hard (and domestic) sciences were just not her thing. And as she was addicted to the Japanese detective series Hiramu, and as the latest episode was coming through about now, Alan knew he'd get a distracted hearing at best.
Alan wandered outside as a course of last resort, looking for the last two options available to him. He could see Virgil sitting on a sun lounger on the far side of the pool, and Gordon alongside him, working on something at a table under an umbrella. He kicked at discarded boogie board as he headed towards them, on the basis that if he wasn't enjoying himself he didn't see why a boogie board should sit there in the sun, so smug.
"Whatya up to?"
What the greeting lacked in originality it made up for in deliberate annoyingness. Gordon glanced up briefly from where he was wielding a screwdriver with evil, almost flamboyant intent on a tiny component, and gave him a welcoming grin; Virgil didn't look up from the drawing pad rested on his knees, in which he was busily engaged with a pencil. He did give Alan a grunt, which was something.
"Hey Al. Pull up a pool, take a swim."
"Nah." Alan deposited himself full length on the other sun lounger, limbs splayed as if suddenly struck down by a higher force. "Too hot."
"You know that makes exactly zero sense?" Gordon flipped the component in his hand and began driving the screwdriver energetically in its depths as if hounding out some tiny refugee from justice.
"I'm booo-ooored."
"And you thought you'd share the love?"
"No one else will talk to me."
"So you've completely lost your gruntle."
"Huh?"
"Never mind." Gordon tapped the component violently against the edge of the table. "How's Scott?"
"I stuck my head around the door and he made a sound at me that made me think of a hoot owl in a blender."
Gordon winced. "That good, huh?"
"Pneumonia sucks."
"That it does."
"Hey, Virgil. Whatcha drawing?"
"Naked women," Virgil muttered.
"Really?"
Gordon looked up under his eyebrows and gave a conspiratorial smirk to Virgil, who sighed.
"No. Not really." He gave a small shrug. "Struggling to get through the static to find my muse just now."
"So what are you doing instead of musing?" Alan asked the question without an ounce of curiosity, even as he lolled his head towards his brother as if to demonstrate that he was deeply invested in the answer.
Instead it was Gordon who gave a kind of giggle.
"He's drawing us as animals." Tongue out, he gave a wrench on the screwdriver, and half of the component suddenly popped into the air to land on the table and then roll noisily off the edge to smash against the tiles. Gordon followed its progress with surprise, and then stared sadly at the remains by his feet. "Well, shit."
"Too many muscles," Virgil said vaguely, shading something with focused industry on the drawing pad.
"You're making us animals? What am I? Do me, do me!"
"Haven't done you yet." Virgil finished the shading and held the page at arm's length to get a better view of it. Alan grumped, crossing his arms.
"Figures. Bet you've done Scott."
"I started with me." Virgil drew the picture close again and recommenced drawing. "That was the point. It's an imagination exercise, in order to access the subconscious."
"Right now my subconscious is telling me this component is screwed," Gordon sighed.
"Well, it is now you've done that to it," said Alan, looking at the dead part on the ground. He rolled over fully and draped one arm over the sun-lounger's arm. "So what kind of animal are you, Virgil?"
"Did you have to meditate to figure out your spirit animal?" Gordon said, bending to pick up the pieces and glare at each one individually.
"You just relax, and let something come to you." Reluctantly, Virgil flipped the drawing pad back several pages and turned it to face his brothers. "That was me."
A very life-like black bear was on the page, on its hind legs, claws extended to tear into the bark of the nearby tree. Its head was turned towards the viewer, calm and strong as it looked out at the world.
"Huh." Alan flumped back down after making the effort to raise himself up to see it. "Shoulda put a flannel shirt on it. But it does kinda look like you. You gave it your eyes."
"You know, I can see it?" Gordon bent back to his work. "Virgil the old bear, snuffling along, digging out bits and pieces, finding what's under the surface. Attracted to food."
"Deadly when aroused," Virgil said.
"Please." Gordon looked pained. "Don't use that word about yourself in my hearing."
"Virgil the grumpy old bear. Okay. I'll allow it." Alan rolled back so that he could rest both hands on his chest, judiciously. "Who else you got?"
"Well – I tried to do Scott." Virgil flipped the page over to the next one. "But I don't know – it just didn't work."
On the page a wolf looked outwards, its eyes a startling blue, its ears alert, one paw raised as if to launch itself at some threat only it could see. There was something very Scott-like in its expression.
"A wolf? How come?"
Virgil scratched his head. "I guess I thought, you know. Leader of the pack. Smart, brave. Ferocious when it needs to be. It should be fine, but it just doesn't work, because Scott – "
"Is such a dork," Gordon finished in perfect harmony with him.
"Or given how he sounds this morning, a honey badger," added Virgil.
"I think he could be a wolf," Alan defended stoutly. "Or at least a German shepherd."
"Have you met Scott?" Gordon feigned outrage. "A wolf is way too cool for him. A yappy dog, mayyybe."
"Huh. I bet it's better than your one. You're jealous."
Gordon grinned at him.
"Nah, I liked mine."
"You've done Gordon?"
"Phrasing," murmured Virgil.
"Show me!" Alan stretched his hand out, but Virgil kept the pad clear of his grabbing fingers.
"Here." He revealed the page, and after a single look Alan laughed.
"That's him alright," he chuckled.
An otter, its head tilted inquiringly, seemed to grin as its sinuous body stood above a captured fish. Gordon's amber eyes peered past sleek fur, above whiskers that bristled with impudence. The small, strong shoulders gave the lie to any cuteness; the claws that held down the fish were long and strategically placed.
"Yeah. Rudimentary sense of tool use, plays before it works and the pelt looks great as a hat."
"Can train them to fish, but you gotta keep a leash on them," added Alan.
Gordon held up the component and blew into it before peering closely at its interior again. "They're loyal to their family, and fierce when something they don't like –" he kicked out at Alan's lounger – "comes into their territory. Plus, you know. Boy, you should see them in the water."
The sun had shifted enough that Alan's foot was now in it, and he pulled it back with a disgruntled sigh.
"So me and John miss out. Figures."
Gordon grinned again, as Virgil ducked his head.
"Uh, no, I've finished John's. I liked that one."
"Typical." Alan's gloom was like a Pacific thunderstorm, boiling up on a low horizon. "So go on. I may as well see it."
Without a word, Virgil revealed the last finished page. In the centre, suspended in the depths of the ocean, was a giant blue whale.
"That's John is it?"
Virgil shrugged. "It's what came to me."
"It's a blubber thing. John's putting on weight," offered Gordon, helpfully.
"You just don't get it," said Alan. "Sometimes you can be such a child."
"Oh, do pray tell, O Oracle of all things arty. Please share the inner meanings of balaenoptera musculus."
"Okay." Alan's mouth screwed up as his brow furrowed.
"Damn, I can hear the clanking from here," Gordon said.
"Let him be." Virgil began drawing again.
"So," Alan began, portentously, "I think the blue whale symbolises John swimming through space. He's alone, but not lonely. He's connected. The blue whale is singing to all the other blue whales, so he's a transmitter of messages. And he goes deep, he knows all the secrets of the ocean because that's where he spends his time, in the deep stuff, thinking his deep thoughts. There. How'd I do?"
He looked over to see Gordon and Virgil staring at him. At last, Gordon shook his head.
"Just so hopelessly weird."
But Virgil gave a huff of laughter. "And once again you surprise me, little brother," he finally said.
"That's me." Alan wasn't in any mood to find comfort in compliments. If it was one, which is something you could never be too sure of where Virgil was concerned. "Source of amusement for family and friends."
"Wow." Gordon put down the component with an air of finality. "Okay. What's up with you?"
"Nothing."
"Uh-huh. Well, you know what Scott would say if he had working lungs and the ability to remain vertical for longer than ten seconds."
"Yeah. I know." Alan waved towards the hangars hidden beneath rock and villa and swimming pool. "Always plenty of work to be done." Even he could hear the whine in his voice. "I know there is, and I know I should just be happy to be – here," and he swept his arm as if to reveal the brilliance of the sky, the lushness of the trees and ferns. "I know I'm sounding like the worst spoiled brat."
And that was the great thing about Gordon. For as much as he gave him grief, a tax payable by Alan's poor judgement in not being born before him, he somehow always knew when his little brother really needed him.
"Hey." He leaned over and slapped Alan's foot. "How about we go to the inlet? You know, I think the new anemones I put in will be doing great. I've got a scuba mask with your name on it."
Alan groaned, but the attention made him feel a bit better. "Carry me," he said, raising his arms feebly.
Gordon laughed.
"In your dreams. Your wildest drug-fuelled dreams."
"Ugh. You suck." But Alan somehow managed to drag himself upright, because the fact of his older brother standing there waiting for him gave him just enough energy to lever himself up from the lounger.
"Come on, Al." Gordon clapped him on the back in congratulations for getting upright. "Beers on the way."
"Said no one ever on this place," Alan grumbled. "You know we can't."
"Especially not with Scott out of action," said Virgil, putting aside the drawing pad and laying back with every apparent intention of just snoozing for the foreseeable future. "Not to mention the fact you are still under age."
"Okay, okay. Ginger beer? Root beer? Non-alcoholic beer- you know, no, wash my mouth out, such a thing should not exist." Gordon reached back and grabbed Alan's jeans belt. "Come on. We'll stay pure in mind and body. Let Virgil the bear hibernate."
Groaning theatrically, Alan followed. Just being with Gordon pushed away some of the unhappiness that was pervading his body like a kind of virus, but he knew the respite was temporary. If he was truly honest with himself, he knew that something else was burning in his belly, deep below these surface irritations, but it wasn't anything he wanted to explore. He only had a dim notion of it, and it scared him. There was a sense at the back of his mind that told him whatever it was that was drifting like smoke up through his emotional self was something that could fundamentally affect who and how he was. Better by far to sulk like a child than to face his fears like a man. There had to be some advantage to being the youngest, surely?
He caught up with his brother and ambled beside him to the storage locker kept beneath the main villa, intent on not expending too much energy in the enervating heat of a south Pacific summer morning.
"Here," Gordon said, handing him a mask and a snorkel. "My rock pool is looking brilliant. All the anemones are thriving since I brought in the neopetolisthes and some alpheus."
Alan smacked his arm. "In English, doofus."
Rolling his eyes, Gordon said,"Crabs and shrimps."
"See? That wasn't so hard."
"Okay, remember that next time you start yammering on about the latest rocket gadget on that red beast of yours."
Gordon's ongoing interest in marine biology had been nurtured and maintained with his access to the abundance of life surrounding their island. Sometimes Alan envied him an interest that could be pursued without leaving the island, or spending a cent. All his own passions required engines and expense. And race-tracks, which were significantly noticeable by their absence on a rocky island. Just thinking about it as Gordon gathered their gear and headed off with unfeigned enthusiasm brought back his easily worn petulance.
"It's not fair. I can't get to do what I want, but you get to play with your crabs and shrimps. I mean, why someone would want to play with them instead of eat them…"
Gordon led the way down the path and towards the rear of the island, but his voice was clear as he called back. "You eat my shrimp, you end up with sea lice in your shorts."
"Ew. Really? You'd really do that? You suck."
Gordon's laugh was the only answer, so Alan hurried after him, muttering.
"I bet you name them all. Jerry and Dave the crabs. Herbie and Colin the shrimps."
"Colin? Who names a shrimp Colin?"
"You have freakish hearing, you know that?"
"Colin. For a shrimp." Gordon was shaking his head as they approached his prized rock pool. "That is clearly such an dugong name."
The rock pool was almost six metres across, a naturally enclosed circle of rock that still bore the traces of its beginning as a volcanic lava flow in the conglomerate that lay on the sand around it and the hardened, sharp edges of basalt bubbles that formed it. Gordon reached the edge and crouched there happily, taking time to observe whatever was going on below the surface before entering into it. On this approach the side of the pool was covered by shade from the ylang ylang trees and ferns that grew almost to its edge.
"Al! Look!" Gordon pointed excitedly. "Wow, so many babies! Can you see them?"
Alan leant over to peer moodily into the pool's clear depths, lined with green and rusty red. He could see anemones on the sides of the pool waving in the gentle ebb and flow of the sea waves that occasionally broke against the rocks and washed their leavings into the water. Further down he could see where a second current, independent of the first, swirled the larger seaweeds in a slow motion flamenco. Scattered between them all were a hundred tiny slivers of silver and red that shifted as one as the school of baby fish zigzagged about the fronds.
It was undeniably beautiful, and when Gordon lifted his face to look up at Alan's, he must have seen his brother's expression because he grinned even wider.
"Damn right, it's awesome," he said, in answer to Alan's unspoken approval.
Alan sat down and pulled off his sneakers.
"Wonder if they think my feet are gods from above. The five headed god of Alan," he said, sliding first one foot and then the other into the water. The coolness was almost abrasive after the heat of the walk.
"Huh. You know, I've never had a messianic moment when I got in the pool. You are a Very Special Boy," Gordon said, his voice dripping with insincere admiration.
"Piss off," Alan grinned. "Look." He wriggled his toes. "They think the sky god is speaking to them."
"Flee! The sky is full of evil!"
The fish ignored them both, darting and turning en masse above the coral. Alan leaned back on his elbows, shifting until he found a relatively smooth place for his arms to rest, avoiding the sharper outcrops. He turned his head lazily to insult his brother again, in thanks for the beauty and peace of this place, and something incongruous caught his attention, a darker spot upon the soil. He reached over, balanced on one elbow, and lifted an overhanging broad leaf.
Stark and immediately foreign was the broad imprint of a boot.
And there it was, in the shape of that imprint. Everything bleak and dark and scary that was lingering deep in his belly suddenly made itself known.
"Look, Gordon." He held the fern frond aside so that his brother, turning back, could get a better look at it, and was astonished his own voice didn't shake. "That doesn't belong to any of us."
"How do you know?" Gordon peered backwards. He wasn't disagreeing with him, but he wanted the argument laid out.
Alan pointed to the raised heel with its half-diamond pattern. "No one on this island has a boot with that sole on it."
"You know this?"
"Yeah." Alan dropped the fern and angrily swiped over the imprint, as if that simple act would render the significance of that boot print null and void. "I went around and studied all of our boots about a year ago. I figured I'd know if anyone else ever set foot on the place."
Gordon gave a sympathetic grimace. "Alan Tracy, boy detective to the rescue?"
"Something like that. I'd be out walking, and I'd see the footprint, and I'd know it wasn't anyone on the island and so I'd raise the alarm and we'd catch the intruder."
He shrugged, trying to downplay the ugliness that was catching in his throat. "Just a stupid kid's daydream. When it really happened, I was stuck out in space."
"Hey. We were all stuck. None of us covered ourselves in glory that day. Except Kayo, of course. Kayo handed that asshole's asshole to him on a plate with a double banger firecracker up it just for free. All we got to do was bat our eyelashes and thank our hero for saving us." Alan was aware that Gordon was carefully not looking at him. "That why you've been out of sorts?"
In one way, it was comforting to know that Gordon, at least, had noticed that he was unhappy. On another, it was getting dangerously close to that big unspoken worry that roiled in his gut. Pushback was needed.
"Out of sorts? You sound like Grandma."
"Okay. A miserable little pain in the ass, then?"
Alan shrugged again, and deliberately kicked his feet to disrupt the gentle swell of the rock-pool's surface.
"Okay, so I'm miserable. Don't I have the right to be?" Great. Without even the slightest hint of resistance, that looming sense of unease, of wrongness, was finding voice. "I hate thinking of that – that creep here. Him, all his stupid henchmen and their stupid ideas about taking us all down."
"Al. Listen." Gordon put his hand on Alan's shoulder, then pulled it off self-consciously. "I get it. The Hood is an asshole, and for a bit there he got to be an asshole on our island."
"In our home," Alan said, his voice leaving no doubt as to how much worse that was.
"Yeah."
"I mean, anywhere I look, I think, was he here? Did he touch that? And knowing I did nothing, absolutely nothing to get him off this place… how can you deal with it? Doesn't it just butter your muffin, knowing he was standing in our home, pushing around our family, standing where Dad – where Dad used to - " He stopped. He couldn't remember ever feeling so young and so inadequate. It didn't seem as though anyone else had taken anything but a moment to shake off the lingering sense of disquiet that The Hood's incursion had aroused. And here he was, a month later, still stewing over it. He gave a quick side glance at Gordon, to see if he was mocking him; but Gordon's face was down, looking at the water, only a slight frown showing he was listening.
"So yeah. I'm 'out of sorts'. I can't settle. Can't stop thinking about it. How easy it was for him. How hopeless we were."
"Were we?" Gordon still didn't look at him, instead picking at a piece of loose coral caught in the rocks and dropping it carefully into the water.
"You want me to rewind the blow by blow? I was trapped in space, just sitting there, Gords, couldn't do a damn thing. Scotty and Virgil had their ships stolen from them. You – "
"Yeah, I was stuck too far down to get back to the surface in any kind of a hurry. That was a real moment."
Alan threw up his hands. "And that doesn't bother you?"
"Nope." Gordon dug out another piece of coral, flipped it further out into the rock pool. "I think you're looking at it wrong, Allie."
"Well of course I am!" Alan dragged an agitated hand through his hair. "Everyone else is fine with it. Don't you get it? That's the worst thing about all this. I'm obviously too much of a kid. I keep feeling like it was the day Mom left us alone in the storm, and I just knew we were both gonna get swept away, and then after I just couldn't feel safe, not for the longest time, and nobody else even noticed. It's just like that. All the rest of you just think it's another day at the office."
"Whoa. No." That made Gordon look around. "Hell no. Wait, okay, firstly? Mom didn't leave us alone, I got no idea where that came from, and second? That day when that douchenozzle took the island was one of the truly sucky days of my life and I have had a few. Including the day I let Grandma's chickens out and forgot to put them back and they got over the fence and started the Coniston County Chicken War."
Alan couldn't help it. As preoccupied by his unhappiness as he was, he had to gasp at that revelation.
"That was you?"
Gordon held up a warning finger. "That information stays here. I have not told a soul, so if she hears I'll know it was you."
"Dayum." Alan was beyond impressed. "The Chicken Wars got Mrs Chaverton out of her house for the first time in thirty years."
"I know."
"Jaynie Cullen lost her prize vegetable patch."
"I know, Al."
"They arrested Mackie Kenundra over that one."
"I KNOW, Al. Jeez."
"So – worse than that?"
Gordon had to chuckle.
"Yeah, I think the Hood won on a countback. Mind you, it was hard to tell – he's got a head like an egg, and his minions were running round like headless chickens, by the time Kayo got done with them."
"But what about next time?" The fear that lay at the heart of it all was finally out, and Alan felt his face heat up. "What if we don't get so lucky next time?"
"Lucky? Had nothing to do with luck, Al. Dude, you're looking at it wrong. Here; if Grainey Morris has a bad day on the mound, the other team gets up four zip but Alvaro Sanchez comes in and pitches for him and wins the game – does that make the team bad? Because it was losing for a while?"
"We were beyond losers, Gordon, we were getting our butts whipped."
"Individually, yes. But the team didn't. Did it?" Gordon waved his arm around, indicating the gentle sea, the green lushness, the blazing blue sky. "Who won? Which team came out on top? And it had nothing to do with luck, it had everything to do with good people being on the team, lots of good planning, lots of brains and smarts. We weren't prepared to get trapped the way we were, but we were prepared for the end-run onto the island, and Kayo played her part like the champion she is. How many times in a rescue has it looked like things are going wrong, and how many times do we pull it back? It's not luck, Al. It's being the right people for the job, with the right training, right equipment, right purpose." Gordon stopped, obviously a little surprised at his own vehemence. "Yeah, well. The Hood's got nothing on us, Al. We have got a hell of a team."
It felt better. It really did. The overwhelming sense of inadequacy, and loneliness in feeling that way, subsided, just a little. Gordon was right; somehow, Alan had become focused on what he did that day and how little he had contributed to the successful outcome. But after all, Gordon hadn't done much better, and nor had Scott or Virgil.
"Yeah, I know that we're a team."
"Sure. But there's knowing something and there's trusting something." Gordon gave a funny little dip of his head, as if a memory had just bitten behind his ear. "At WASP, I remember doing trust exercises with buddies of mine, and there was always that moment at the top of the drop – you say you trust 'em, but when it comes to your life, do you really? And then we all kinda went, hell yeah, and dived. That's what a team does, and you gotta trust they've got your back."
"As long as one member of the team gets it, we're okay?"
"There you go." Gordon nudged at Alan's shoulder, deliberately too rough. "This mean you're going to stop sulking about like a drama major in a dating slump?"
"What do you know about drama majors?"
"Hey! I did two semesters of drama. Had a blast, too." The smile on Gordon's face was one of reminiscence. "I mean, mostly it was just to watch Dad's face when I told him. That alone was worth the price of the greasepaint. So? How 'bout it?"
"Yeah. Maybe." Alan couldn't help the grin that was growing on his face. "I'll think about it."
"There's my brave little trouper."
"Fuck off."
They sat in silence for a while, the water glistening and cool on their feet, shade shifting through the leaves of the foliage above them. At last, Alan sighed.
"Guess I better get back. I really do need to finish that homework. Don't suppose you know anything about some dude called Bernoulli?"
"Bernoulli? Man, I am all about Bernoulli. Compression of fluids? That's so my gig. He's definitely in my rock band." Gordon grinned at him as if that kind of statement would ever make sense. But he'd been nice to him, so Alan only used a third of his sarcasm death ray in his look.
"Your what?"
"My rock band. I got Bernoulli, I got Jacques Cousteau on lead guitar, I got Edie Widder and Elke Jonsdottir on vocals, Henry Stommel on drums and I'm rhythm guitar, natch."
"Your rock band."
"What – you telling me you don't have an all-star line-up in your head?"
"Well," Alan mumbled, "not a band."
"Ohhh, I see." Gordon flicked water at him, making the tiny creatures below the surface scatter into the rock crevices. "So what do you have?"
"My space crew?"
"Mmm-mm. Space Crew. On your spacey intergalactic space voyage of space discovery. In space. Makes sense. So you got…" His big brother rolled his hand in invitation. A small, reluctant smile began to quirk Alan's mouth.
"Gagarin. 'Cos, you know, the first. Chuck Yeager."
"Bringing the awesome," said Gordon solemnly. Alan nodded.
"Definitely bringing the awesome. Alan Shephard."
"Must have," Gordon agreed. Above him in a ylang-ylang tree a blue-crowned lorikeet gave a shriek that made both men look up and laugh.
"Another Shep fan," said Gordon. Alan gave a thumbs up into the dense foliage that overhung the rock pool and Gordon nudged him with his shoulder. "So – next?"
"Xiue Lin-Chin. That EVA, when she single-handedly rescued that space station crew by re-rigging the escape pod and scooting back into the radiation blowout on Orbiter 5? Wow."
"And, way John tells it, she then went on to design the safety valve on the new Orbiters that meant the leak could never happen again. See?" Gordon grinned. "I pay attention to your boring spacey stuff. Who else?"
Alan went to open his mouth, and his mood, steadily improving, took a dive again.
"Well… Dad."
Gordon, bless him, didn't let the ball drop.
"Well, yeah. 'Course, Dad. Best of the best, right there. Anyone else?"
"Maybe Paulina Gregorieva? I mean, she's amazing, but she's kinda scary too."
"And Chuck Yeager isn't?" Gordon shook his head. "I think if I ever met Chuck, I'd break out in hives and then pee my pants."
Alan snorted. "Before giggling hysterically and running away."
"Oh yeah. Hysterics coming up in five. That man invented badass. He makes my best badass exploring look like a cub scout camping in the scout hall."
"Do you even have a 'best badass'?"
John's voice coming from a hidden speaker above them and to the right startled them both so much that Alan nearly fell into the pool.
"Alan and Gordon, get yourselves back to control. We have a situation."
"Ah, no," he heard Gordon mutter under his breath. He glanced over, and saw the worried expression there before it was lost to a tight grin and a sigh of exaggerated annoyance.
"Guess Thunderbird One will be getting a day out after all," Gordon said, his tone light. "Hey, how many other kids get to avoid homework because they're flying a jet at 22k an hour?"
"Yeah. So lucky, me."
"Well, you are. I mean, you have to put up with lame-ass Scott, and Virgil's insane, certifiable, and John is weird. Off the planet weird, literally. But you do have one outstanding brother. And Grandma."
"And Max."
"And Brains and Kayo." Gordon leaned down and helped himself up by pushing off Alan's shoulder, sending Alan sprawling back down to the ground. "Hell of a team we got there."