Dark Matter

The students from the visiting girls' school were getting to be a real pain. This morning had been typical. A bunch of us were on our way to class, when Nectar suddenly pulled up so sharply that her spiral antennae all but straightened, and with a shocked little squeal of "Ooh!" clapped both hands to the back of her regulation miniskirt.

No prizes for guessing the culprit! "Hey!" I snapped, rounding on the stretch of empty corridor where I deduced one of our guests must be.

The mocking female tones sang out from behind me.

"Wow, six eyes and all any of them they can see is reflected light! Smells to be Lepidopteran!"

I turned again, this time to where the girl apparently was, and demanded: "Don't pinch Nectar. She wasn't doing anything to provoke you!"

When the sulky voice muttered something about "poking it out for everyone to see," Four-Eyes flared up.

"That's hardly a fair criticism, coming from you!"

It took a lot to get Four-Eyes to spring to Nectar's defence, but like I said, by now we'd all had it with these unwelcome visitors. Our persecutor drawled in reply:

"She'll be fine, just as long as she takes care where she sits down. Soft surfaces only for a bit, and avoid bumpy ones."

"Have you been spying on us?" I flung back, incensed.

The only response was a giggle, but none of us were such fools as to imagine the subsequent silence meant she'd gone. Keeping together in a tight pack we continued on our way to the classroom, ever watchful, girls and boys alike holding their skirts down.

It had been like this ever since they arrived here from their dark-matter expanse. They'd been giving our own girls a hard enough time, and it had been even tougher on the boys, most of whom were at their wits' end from weeks of surreptitious skirt-flippings. It wasn't even the embarrassment that infuriated us so, but rather the excuse our guests reliably trotted out each time, the same one we'd been treated to in the corridor just now.

"But the boys are the ones who register on the visual sense! Can you blame us for getting a bit carried away?"

Oh, and our teachers. No help whatsoever. Some laughed robustly and said it was just a bit of fun, while others pointed out that in their day it had all been space-suits and there weren't these troubles. Couldn't a boy just want to look good, without being accused of inviting harassment? Frankly, when it came to these kinds of issues, our school was well and truly stuck in the twenty-seventh century.

Then there was an even bigger problem, because with things being as they were, this afternoon was only going to turn into a grudge match.

"In the spirit of mutual exchange with our new sister-school," announced Principal Rivets to a capacity crowd, "the following contest will take the form of a time-honoured human trial of skill, under conditions akin to those with which our visitors are familiar. Let us - "

(Clank.)

"Let us - "

(Clank.)

"Let us have a good clean game."

Having got there at last Rivets shuffled off for the stands, chuffing steam out of his smokestacks, cogs revolving busily without producing any great turn of speed. Steady on, Sir, I thought to myself. You've been doing this job for five hundred years. Talk about your tin-plated dictators.

In our gym clothes we stood ready, me and Nectar and Four-Eyes and a telekinetic boy named Tortilla Flats. We knew the entire stadium was watching us. That much was a safe bet, when only our tiny corner of the court could be seen.

All the rest had been specially treated to resemble a dark matter system, and was a void of black.

At this point you might want to ask why spectators had turned out in such droves, for an event they weren't going to be able to see. It was probably because the entire student body and their underpants would have been happy just to know our opponents had been taken down a peg or two, irrespective of whether it was possible to watch it happen.

No pressure, then.

Speaking of which, at that moment Principal Rivets blew his whistle, and my team and I plunged together into nothingness.

Dark matter was peculiar stuff. Being inside it wasn't like being locked in a cellar, because the four of us could see each other just fine - Four-Eyes and myself in our white, Tortilla in his blue, and the vivid orange tints of Nectar's hair and skin. Everything else, however, was velvety blackness. It was like we were sprites in a computer game whose backdrop hadn't been programmed yet.

Yet the girls from the visiting school were very much in here with us, appearances to the contrary. Warily and with caution we proceeded.

"No sign of them," reported Tortilla.

"I can't believe you just said that," I replied. "Four-Eyes?"

"Give me a minute," said she, concentrating hard.

"You always hit the ball-machine target right away!" I cried.

"That's two dimensions, this is three," said Four-Eyes impatiently. "This way."

We hurried off after her. To coin a phrase, it was too quiet.

Four-Eyes skidded to a halt. "It's there," she announced, pointing at nothing.

I reached in front of me with both hands outstretched. The feel of fabric, unseen but slick to the touch, brushed my fingertips. Yes! Good old Four-Eyes, her extra-sensory perception was right on the money! Groping awkwardly beneath the hanging cloth I established where was a slim upright stick for me to close my grip around, then thrust the invisible object above my head.

We'd captured the flag.

The easy part was over.

Whereupon the girls from the other school descended on us like night-bats.

We tried to flee, but under the circumstances you can imagine how that went. Four-Eyes went down with a splat - they must have tripped her - and the rest of us fared little better. Invisible claws were clutching at my hemline, even snagging the elastic leg-holes underneath, hauling me ever backward from our goal-line. Though I held on with every last vestige of strength to the flag they could see and I couldn't, I knew that in another breath the girls would have snatched it from my fist.

Nectar dropped directly into my path from overhead, wings fluttering, one open hand thrust behind her.

I didn't hesitate, and the moment she felt the flag in her grasp, she was up and away.

Our adversaries left off the rest of us at once. Here was a contingency they hadn't counted on, because Nectar alone among the contestants could claim the sky as her element. Unfortunately for us, she herself wasn't any too aerodynamic even at the best of times, and dark matter must have been like maple syrup to fly through. Already our Lepidopteran friend was court-bound again, breathless, her free arm clasped to her heaving bosom. We three teammates seized the opportunity to spread ourselves wide.

The second before her toes touched the ground, Nectar went long. I heard the flag flapping through darkness towards where I stood.

Across my cupped hands skittered unmistakable tactile evidence of a successful pass, but an instant later this was whipped away, and I gasped. There was laughter from right alongside me, and I felt flag-fabric lightly slap my cheek. I shot out a hand to grab, but the prize was already long gone. Then it was tickling my thigh on the other side. Fuming, I whirled about and clutched in vain once more.

It went on and on, the tantalizing girl with little prods and pokes ever tempting me to try, but staying several steps ahead of my bumbling benighted efforts. Then, every time, would come the giggle. I'd already known humans were exothermic life-forms, but was rapidly learning just how exothermic I was.

All of a sudden the tinkling titters choked to a thwarted snarl, and the flag flopped wholly into my hands.

"Run!" shouted Tortilla from the other end of the court.

A telekinetic tackle! He must have figured out where the flag was, from my having consistently been where it wasn't. So I did as he suggested and set off at a sprint, squeezing my eyes shut as I did so. I wasn't going to need them here, and I had one last little trick tucked away which, if I was right, might just mean victory.

For our guests weren't the only ones capable of minding other people's business.

I, for example, happened to know they'd been hitting the Galacti-Mall in a big way ever since their arrival in our quarter of the cosmos. I'd seen many a little glass and crystal atomizer floating as if by magic over the counters of the marketeers there, and visible currency bobbing likewise in the opposite direction. In fact, you might say the girls had gone consumer-crazy, and all for one particular product.

Because it went without saying these strict convent-schools from dark-matter expanses never did allow perfume.

Now as my feet pounded the court and I hurtled headlong and blind, I sniffed hard through both flaring nostrils and sure enough, something excessively sweet and floral was closing on my left flank. I swerved, outrunning the botanical miasma, and kept on going until I detected a singularly inappropriate seductive presence at twelve o'clock. Again I cleared it and broke through to more neutral ozone, and so it went, me deftly side-stepping everything from the cloyingly sickly to the would-have been-pleasant-in-moderation, well before the wearers of the same were anywhere near enough to try swiping what I carried. Because seriously, these girls had put so much on that their getting within arm's reach unsmelled was but a futile dream.

Since my eyes were closed, I didn't know I'd exited the dark matter until I heard the cheering.

It was the sound of a school united.

Now underwear everywhere might at last be left alone.

I raised the flag high and beamed out upon the jubilee, Four-Eyes and Nectar and Tortilla Flats beside me.