adventures

CHAPTER 3
A COMEDY TONIGHT
Once upon a time . . .
Professor Bernice Surprise Summerfield woke up, stretched, and sang a single pure note. The
stretch had brought on the singing. It was all because of the look of the day. Sunlight was dappling
through leaves above her. Birds were cheeping. The air smelt of a summer morning.
What had she been doing last night, to end up here?
Absently, she reached out for her glasses. And failed to find them. She rubbed her eyes, slapping
all around her for the missing, habitual object as she did so.
She found grass. Roots. The roots of the . . . she looked up . . . old oak tree that she had been
sleeping against.
As student pranks went, this wasn't bad at all. If she'd planned it, they would have brought her
furniture out into this lovely bit of parkland as well, and probably left her in her nightshirt rather
than take the time and trouble to put –
Her boots on. Her boots were on.
She raised a knee to her chin. Not even her boots, actually. These were a pair of green anklelength
jobs, with the tops folded over in a sort of starfish design that Bernice could only describe
as a boot cuff.
Strange. But still within the bounds of Garland College mischief. The boots probably implied
something in Tashwari culture. As did the golden tunic, rather fabulous puffy-sleeved shirt, which
she was keeping, serious tights, zero trousers and tiny tricorn hat. Bernice grinned to herself and
settled back against the tree. It could have been far, far worse.
She closed her eyes for a moment, enjoying the sunshine.
Then she opened them again.
She'd remembered the previous night.
'No it couldn't!' she screamed. 'I'm dead!'
She leapt to her feet, and slapped a hand to her mouth. Something had hit the ship. A missile.
There had been a moment of impact, of being thrown against something hard.
There had been, and this convinced her with a sudden lurch of her stomach, a moment of ending.
A cut off. A dislocation.
It felt like it had been the moment of her death.
And then nothing. Maybe some dreams. She'd woken here.
So . . .
She sniffed the air.
Bernice had never entertained much in the way of religious belief. A bit of arty paganism when
her friends had been into it, nothing that involved churches.
There was no smell of burning flesh or brimstone. This place smelt great, in fact. Not hellish,
although the costume might be the thin end of a wedge of hellish embarrassment. No, unless the
first trick of hell was building up a little hope, this looked much more like heaven. Or reincarnation,
there was always that. Maybe this place was as real as it looked, and she had been born
again. Except that she still looked like herself, was thirtysomething still, and remembered
everything about her previous existence.
Hah! There was a Heaven! And she'd got there without even trying!
She looked up at the gloriously high blue sky, and slapped her hands together, wondering