anyone came through the station without an implant and William couldnât understand what they were saying. There was the code for the storage seals on the food and drink cabinets, and there were the medipacs.
âI should have told you about these before,â said Uncle Larry, pulling the box off the wall in the central lobby. âThereâs half a dozen of them scattered over the station and theyâre very easy to use.â He explained how the patches worked out what was wrong and sent the information back to the box so that it could provide a cure.
âIt gets a bit more complicated if youâve got an arm missing or youâre bleeding to death,â he said, putting the medipac back on the wall and heading for the Portal, âbut the principleâs still the same. You do whatever the box tells you. Itâs very clever. Even gives you a couple of options if your patientâs already dead.â
Standing by the Portal he began taking off his suit. âYouâve got the letter for Mrs Duggan?â
âYes,â said William.
âWell, donât forget. If thereâs any problems, ask Emma to send me a message on the bricks. If itâs an emergency, you can always send it to Brin on Qâvaar. Heâs only a station away and he can be with you in a blink.â
âOK,â said William.
âBut youâll be fine, I know you will. And Iâll be back on Wednesday.â Uncle Larry stepped on to the floor of the Portal in his shorts. âAnd by then weâll have this whole business sorted out. One way or another.â
After heâd gone, William bent down to pick up the pile of clothes and took them through to the laundry, hoping as he did so that Uncle Larry was right.
He wanted very much for everything to be sorted out.
The envelope that William took down to Mrs Duggan contained her wages â Uncle Larry had put in a couple of extra twenty pound notes as a thank you for looking after William and Daniel the night their parents had âgone on holidayâ â and a letter to explain that William would not be going to school for the next three days.
Mrs Duggan read it carefully while sitting on the footplate of the tractor parked outside her cottage.
âSays here youâre going to be off sick,â she said when sheâd finished.
âYes,â said William, âbut I wonât really be ill. Itâs just that Uncle Larry needs me to help with his work for a few days.â
Mrs Duggan nodded, counted her money and tucked it carefully into a pocket of her dungarees before standing up.
âThought I might ask you all to lunch,â she said.
âLunch?â
Mrs Duggan gestured to the kitchen door. âGot a chicken in the oven. Thought you might appreciate someone else doing the cooking.â
âThank you,â said William. âYes, we would.â
Mrs Dugganâs lunch, he realized later, was the first real meal he and Daniel had eaten since Mum and Dad had disappeared. Mrs Duggan had done proper vegetables and gravy to go with the roast chicken, and there was an apple pie and ice cream for afters. It tasted very good, and sitting round the table in the tiny kitchen was very warm and pleasant. When the meal was over, and Daniel and Amy had disappeared upstairs and Mrs Duggan said she had to get back to cleaning out the fuel line on the tractor, William found a part of himself didnât want to leave.
âShame your uncle couldnât join us,â said Mrs Duggan as she walked him to the door.
âYes,â William agreed. He couldnât say that Uncle Larry was by now on a planet nearly four light years away, so he had simply said that he was âworkingâ and couldnât come.
âNext time, eh?â said Mrs Duggan.
âNext time,â William agreed. He thanked her again for the lunch, and set off back up the track to the farmhouse.
As he left, he heard Mrs Duggan
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