THE THINGS THAT BROTHERS SHARE by MIRVENA RATED FRT

Author's Notes: These are the random meanderings of Tin-Tin.

The ancients were mistaken. There are five elements, not four. To be fair, they couldn’t know.

I should explain, I know. Perhaps it’s easiest to start by telling you what it is that the brothers don’t share.

Mr Tracy told me once he encouraged individuality as well as team-play. They each need something they can call their own, where the other guys are not treading on their toes – some sport, pastime or skill they excel at.

Scott does have his head in the clouds. I’m speaking literally, rather than metaphorically. He loves all things mountain. I suppose it’s as near as he can get to his precious planes while he’s on dry land. He’s an excellent mountaineer and has tackled some serious ascents in his time. He’s a superb skier, too. Though the others joke that the reason he’s so much faster than they are on the downhill is just to ensure he has first pick of the cookies in the café at the bottom.

Virgil is so…well, grounded. There’s a solid presence about Virgil. But his down-to-earth-ness is tempered by some surprising talents. No-one would expect someone with Virgil’s penchant for mechanical engineering to be such an artist. But he has both Yin and Yang. And not only is he gifted with a paintbrush, he’s such a wonderful musician too. He gets that from his mother, I’m told. You’d think the others would tease him unmercifully. But they don’t. Well, not very often. I think they respect his talents.

John is so good at everything he turns his hand to. Where would I even start? His IQ has been estimated at somewhere around the 190 mark. Apparently when it’s that high they can’t really measure it accurately. I suppose the electronics and the astronomy are his big ‘things’. What do you say about someone who designed a new form of radio telescope and used it to find his own quasar? John is not really on this planet. This time I’m speaking both literally and metaphorically. Thunderbird Five relays all the signals it receives back to base, so he doesn’t really need to be up in space quite so much as he is. But any excuse to go tinker with the systems. That’s where he’s happiest, I think.

Gordon’s thing is the swimming. He’s not as fast as he was when he won his gold medal, of course. It stands to reason – in those days he had to spend five or six hours in the pool and another two in the gym, six days a week. He has other things occupying him now. The accident didn’t help. He spent a long time trying to rebuild all that lost muscle strength. But once a winner, always a winner, and strong swimmers though all his brothers are, they can’t hold a candle to him in the water.

And with Alan it’s the driving. He lives for the heat of the chase, fired up by the thrill of the pursuit. If he hadn’t given it up to join the home-team, he’d have been at the top of the leader-board by now. His love of speed does get him into trouble on the mainland, it’s true. He’s had a couple of tickets. I think it’s because he misses the racing circuit so terribly he just can’t resist going full-throttle once in a while. I keep telling him he gets to drive something much bigger these days. He just scowls and tells me that you don’t drive a rocket. One day, perhaps, he’ll get back behind the wheel again.

So there you have it, you see. There are five elements.

Air

Earth.

Space.

Water.

Fire.

Then, there are the things they do together. I’ve noticed there seems to be something special each brother reserves for just one of the others. Sometimes it’s something quite small.

Mr Tracy has noticed it too. He says it came about more by accident than design, but he encourages it where he can. He thinks it’s good for the team as a whole if individual bonds are strong.

So what do the brothers share together?

There is no particular order to this. It’s just as it pops into my head.

Water meets fire.

They’re not as close as they were, it’s true. When they were small they were never apart, I’m told. Gordon grew up a lot when he had his accident, and, if I’m perfectly truthful, Alan has not quite kept pace. He’ll get there, I know he will.

Growing up hasn’t made Gordon any less of a practical joker. But it has improved his sense of timing. Nevertheless, he can’t work alone. Every prankster needs his co-conspirator. Half the thrill is anticipating the outcome, and you need someone to share that with. Unless Alan’s the butt of a particular joke, he’s the one Gordon turns to when he needs a foil.

Alan isn’t above trickery of his own, of course. The time he painstakingly swapped every item in Scott’s and John’s bedrooms while they were away on Thunderbird Five was quite a stroke of genius. You should have seen the bemused looks on their faces when they each thought they’d walked into the wrong room. John can’t live with Virgil’s snoring next door, so they had to change everything back. Alan knew they’d have to. Gordon got the blame, of course. Alan’s surprisingly devious at times. But then, he learned from the master.

Air meets space.

Many times I’ve gone to the operations room to find John and Scott with their heads together, their hands dancing over neighboring terminals. Sometimes they’re poring over data from the satellites. Sometimes they’re poring over something that really doesn’t concern them.

John and Scott like to hack other people’s computer systems. Mr Tracy says they’ve done it since they were small and he’s given up trying to stop them. He once had a call from the FBI when Scott was about thirteen and Johnny just eight or so. Apparently someone had been nosing around their files trying to find evidence of an alien cover-up conspiracy.

He says that he doesn’t think the admonishment they received stopped them misbehaving. But it did make them better at not getting caught.

You wouldn’t think it would you? I mean, they’re both such upright citizens.

Scott says – seriously – that offense is sometimes the best defense. He considers it a duty to keep up to date with all the latest developments just in case there is an attack on our own systems.

I think I believe this is why they do it.

Earth meets water.

Virgil and Gordon fish together. It doesn’t happen often, but it’s so sweet when it does, don’t you agree?

Fishing is such a solitary, quiet activity that you wouldn’t think it would be Gordon’s thing, at all - but then again, I suppose there is water involved. A neighbor in Kansas taught him fly when he was a child, and he sort of taught himself deep-sea fishing. While none of the others has the patience for it, once in a while Virgil can be persuaded to haul himself out of bed at some unearthly hour in the morning, and Gordon will fire up the little launch, and they’ll both head out to deeper waters.

Sometimes they even catch something edible in time for breakfast. They don’t share with the rest of us. Instead, they build a little fire on the beach and roast the pickings then and there, while they’re still fresh.

Space meets fire.

John and Alan double-date together. This makes me very sad.

Johnny, I understand. While he spends a lot of his time being solitary, he adores women. He told me once he loves everything about us; the way we look, the way we feel, the way we dress, the way we smell. He loves the whole art of seduction. He loves to love women, if you take my meaning. And he loves variety.

He is an inveterate womaniser. I cannot imagine that he will ever be content with one woman. He has tried. It didn’t work.

But it hurts me when he gets Alan involved - which he seems to take a perverse pleasure in doing. Alan is not like John. He needs stability. He needs one woman.

Lately I overheard them discussing identical twins they were going to date next time they have some ‘down-time’ together on the mainland. I tell myself that Alan is flattered by his older brother’s attention, that is all.

It is a passing phase. Before long he will settle down.

I will be there. Waiting.

Air meets earth.

Scott and Virgil share something. I’m not quite sure what you’d call it.

Scott’s way of dealing with pressure is to work out. If things are particularly bad Virgil will sometimes accompany him down to the gym. Did I mention that Scott has this whole martial arts thing going on the side? He has a working knowledge of half a dozen of the more lethal arts, including some vicious Filipino kick-boxing thing, and earned a modest smattering of black belts in his college days to prove it.

Virgil doesn’t have any black belts, but he says he’s learned to fall well.

And when he throws his considerable weight behind one of those full body shields, he must make a satisfying target.

At other times, usually when a rescue has gone badly, or one or the other of them has been fallen temporarily foul of their father, they’ll just take a couple of cold beers out and sit together on the low wall that surrounds my father’s herb garden, looking out to sea.

Sometimes I overhear them reminiscing about growing up.

More often or not they just sit in companionable silence, drinking their beer.

Space meets water.

John and Gordon play chess together.

You wouldn’t see Gordon as a chess player, would you?

Actually, he’s not bad. He has more strategic sense that you would credit him with. Maybe it comes from all the complex planning he has to do in his official role as top trickster.

Johnny likes to play. But he doesn’t like the fact that when it comes to a battle of the high IQs Brains almost always beats him in the chess department. John beats Gordon just as often. But Gordon’s a better loser.

Besides, Gordon takes it as a prime opportunity to talk relentlessly to a captive audience. It’s just the usual stream of consciousness stuff you get with Gordon. He doesn’t let up for an instant.

Occasionally he distracts John just long enough to corner his King and checkmate him.

And that makes his week.

Air meets fire.

Scott is teaching Alan to climb. The island has some good scrambling near the top of the extinct volcano, and some wonderful rock-climbing on the cliff-faces.

They both have an enviable head for heights.

There is one place where it is possible – nay, perfectly safe, they insist – to climb the cliffs without ropes and pitons. They race. Whoever reaches the top first stands on the edge of the cliff face grinning down at the loser.

Gordon, who has to overcome considerable acrophobia to participate in some astonishing air-to-air rescues, cannot bear to watch them. He tells me it freezes his nethers.

I pretend not to know what he means.

Earth meets space.

Virgil and John share a taste for sartorial elegance. Well, that’s not strictly true. Virgil always dresses beautifully. The same artistic sense that he employs when putting brush to canvass kicks in when he’s picking clothes, and it’s a source of constant amusement to the others that he always looks as though he’s going on a date, even here on the island.

When John’s on the island he dresses much the same way as the rest of them – rarely out of jeans and tee-shirt. On the mainland, it’s another matter. His object is to attract the maximum number of females in the shortest possible time, and he relies on Virgil to help him do it.

They are the only men I know who go shopping for clothes and aftershave together.

They didn’t even seem to mind too much on the occasion that the store-keeper mistook them for a couple.

Although I notice they haven’t been shopping together quite so much since.

Air meets water.

Scott and Gordon share secrets. At least, I think they do. After all, if I knew for certain, they wouldn’t be secrets, would they?

Penny once told me that when she’d first met them she’d assumed they were twins. It seems like an odd mistake to make. But I sort of know what she means. Even though he’s eight years older, Scott does sometimes act much younger when he’s around his kid brother. It’s a good thing he didn’t find out, though. He’d never have forgiven her.

Scott resigned his commission shortly after Gordon’s accident. I’m not saying that’s why he left the Air Force. There was more to it than that, of course there was. But then he spent every spare moment with his younger brother, spurring him on with his rehabilitation, helping him regain his health.

Bonds forged in adversity are particularly strong ones. They still talk a lot.

Neither of them has a significant other.

I like to think that until they do, they’ll share their secrets.

Earth meets fire.

What do Virgil and Alan share?

I’d have to say their temper. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say their father’s temper.

The Tracy temper is a legendary thing, and makes for some volatile debriefings at times.

They all have a temper, except, so far as I know, for John. John can be highly argumentative, it’s true. But he’s not really one for confrontation. If the other guy blows, he just walks away. He’s even been known to walk out on his father on occasion. None of the others could get away with that.

Scott can be irritable, but he doesn’t often lose it completely. When he does, he goes straight from exasperated to the upper stratosphere. White-hot rage. The subject of his ire gets the cold, silent treatment, sometimes for days. Mr Tracy says it used to drive his younger siblings frantic when they were children. It’s still an uncomfortable thing to watch. These days one of them will occasionally try to call his bluff, but it only ever ends one way. Eventually they cave in and apologise.

Gordon is the sort who cannot become angry without becoming upset. This is actually remarkably effective. Everyone adores him, and a tearful Gordon in a rant is a thing that no-one can endure for long. The entire family usually turns on the perpetrator and then goes into placating mode until he’s back in sorts.

But Alan and Virgil have inherited their father’s red-hot temper. True, it takes more to move Virgil to anger than it does Alan. Where Alan flares up at the smallest thing, Virgil’s rage is more volcanic. It brews for a while, but when it does erupt, it’s not good to be in his way. The favorite target of each is the other. When those two start up, the whole house knows about it. Yelling, throwing things, storming-about, you have never seen the like. I’ve never actually seen it end in blows. But occasionally it ends up with one of them landing, fully-clothed, in the swimming pool. Usually Alan.

The others really don’t know what to do when things kick off. Sometimes they try mediating, sometimes they try to join in, as often as not they simply turn tail and flee until it has run its course. It seems to upset them.

Don’t they realise? These two guys are having an absolute ball.

So are there any activities the whole family excels at together, I hear you ask?

Why, certainly. Mr Tracy encourages family bonding, and likes to join in some activities himself.

He so badly wanted the major family pastime to be golf. That man does love his golf. Of course, on the island he has to content himself with the simulated driving range. But whenever he gets to the mainland he tries to fit in a round with whoever is accompanying him.

I can play a pretty mean eighteen holes, even if I do say so myself. And Alan has lived up to his namesake and plays off a respectable handicap.

The rest of the Tracy brothers are simply hapless.

Johnny is just not interested. He slouches straight off to the nineteenth with his laptop.

Gordon could probably make a golfer. He’s really not that bad. But he gets bored very quickly. He has discovered – the hard way – that walking round a golf course with his father is no place to play the clown.

Scott - a man who has the best motor coordination of anyone I know, and a lightning quick mathematical mind that can calculate wind vectors, trajectories and air speeds faster than his on-board computer - Scott cannot hit a ball straight. He has the worst slice I have ever seen. Mr Tracy offers him helpful advice, but this just seems to make him worse.

Virgil, in contrast, can drive like a pro. His downfall comes on the green. I’ve seen him take a dozen shots to sink a putt. And he does insist on sinking them. He says the practice will do him good. Poor Mr Tracy is usually apoplectic by the stage Virgil marks his score sheet.

So what do they all share?

Well, there is one sport they all take very seriously.

The Tracy family tennis court has been declared an Official War Zone.

They are, without exception, excellent players.

Mr Tracy has experience on his side and he is very fit for a man of his age (though his sons tell him otherwise). And he can still stump them all with that overhead lob that they weren’t expecting.

Scott has an eye for a gap that none of the others have spotted. He also has a disconcerting habit of abandoning his backhand from time to time, and swapping his racquet to his left hand, and then no-one on the opposing side of the net has a clue where the next shot is going.

Virgil is a formidable serve-volley player. Well, mainly serve, if I’m honest. For the receiver it’s mostly a case of stand back and pray. If by some miracle his opponent reaches it, they might be in with a shot. The trick then is not to let him get to the net. Not much gets past his intimidating bulk.

John, as you would expect, is an intelligent player. He’s fast, and surprisingly athletic, and he reads the game like a pro. Like Virgil, he has a long reach. He can give any of them a run for their money.

Gordon goes for everything, whether it’s physically possible or not. He just won’t let go. He flings himself around the court like a dervish. Once in a while he does return the impossible, leaving the others scratching their heads as the ball whistles past them.

Alan is an excellent ground-stroke man. He’s perfected a top-spin that would be the envy of any professional player, and he hits the ball hard. I love to watch him in motion.

No-one ever makes jokes on the tennis court, not even Gordon.

Air

Earth.

Space.

Water.

Fire.

Well, there you have it. They’re the complete package really.

What else do they share? Well, International Rescue, of course. But that’s another story.