Читать книгу Heroes of Earth - Martin Berman-Gorvine - Страница 11

CHAPTER 6

Arnold had never heard a girl talk so much in all his life as this Jo person, but it was sometimes a bit hard to understand her since she talked really fast and had a funny accent, a cross between British and Eastern Shore.

From the moment he and Dad had stepped out into the bookstore in this strange new version of Chincoteague, Jo had kept up a steady stream of chatter, pointing out and explaining everything they ran across, including things that needed no explaining, like seagulls and street signs.

The streets, Arnold finally interrupted her to say, mostly had the same names as back home. Some of the people looked familiar, too, though nobody seemed to recognize him or Dad. Arnold ducked behind a tree when he saw Matt Walters, but the bully wasn’t with his usual gang. He was better dressed than usual and seemed absorbed in his own thoughts.

There were way more people out in the streets than there had been at home, which was odd considering that it was even colder here, but Jo explained that it was a holiday called Union Day, “when we celebrate the unification of all the colonies under the Crown.”

“What does that mean?” It was the first question Dad had asked. He’d been quiet and wide-eyed the whole time, like a little kid on his first visit to Mars. Arnold’s memory of that very moment in his own life was vivid in every detail—he could reproduce on paper every detail of the rusty-red planetscape wheeling by far below, and he did so often, especially when class got too boring. But this strangely altered Chincoteague was even more amazing than Mars!

“Oh, that was part of the dirty deal Sir Ben Franklin worked out with the king—actually, with William Pitt,” Jo said. “They make us learn all about it in school. It’s how the colonies first got representation in Parliament—lucky for Parliament and even for batty old George III, or they’d have had nowhere to go when Bone-a-fart invaded the Home Islands.”

“I see,” said Dad, the way people did when they meant they didn’t understand at all. He shook his head. “I can’t believe all those might-have-beens are real somewhere. It’s like a fairy tale.”

“I think it’s fun!” Jo exclaimed. “I mean, travel to other worlds might seem pretty boring to you two blokes, but we just invented mechods last year.”

“Mechods?” Dad said.

Jo rolled her eyes. Arnold thought they were her best feature, brown and lively, with sparkling green flecks. “Don’t tell me you’re another one like Mom, always correcting people when they use contractions! Fine, mechanical dragons, are you happy? Heavier-than-air craft. My Dad helped design the British ones,” Jo said with unmistakable pride, “and he got a lot of inspiration of course from our real dragon. There he is now!”

Dad started and Arnold felt his heart speed up. “Who, the dragon?” Dad said.

“My dad, of course. Our dragon is a girl. People call her Assateague Ashley, though her real name is Ir’befunzu.” She pronounced Assateague as if it were two words. “There’s my dad, on top of the bandstand.”

They had been walking down Maddox Boulevard toward Assateague Island. At the same spot where, back in the real world, a McDonald’s marred the view of Assateague Lighthouse across Assateague Channel, an old-fashioned wooden bandstand had been set up and draped with patriotic red-white-and-blue-bunting (though the flags, when Arnold got a close look at them, were unfamiliar, looking like a cross between the Union Jack and the Confederate battle flag).

The man Jo had indicated stood before a bulky microphone, which he tested by rapping on it with his knuckles. He was a little above average height, with messy, sandy hair, and was wearing blue jeans and a black windbreaker. His face was ruddy and there were smile lines at the corners of his mouth.

A crowd milled around in the grassy space in front of the bandstand, talking loudly and laughing. Many of them were casually swigging from beer bottles—even middle-school-age kids, Arnold was amazed to note. Dad tapped him on the shoulder and whispered, “Don’t get any ideas.” The bright orange sun was still shedding plenty of light although it was nearing the western horizon, far off to the right in the direction of the mainland.

Jo’s dad cleared his throat and asked for quiet. “Welcome, everyone, to the first-ever Union Day air show!” There were cheers. His voice was deep, resonant, and accented like Jo’s. “As most of you know, I am Michael Purnell, the chief ranger at His Royal Majesty’s Dragon Refuge on Assateague Island, home of our very own Assateague Ashley.”

The applause was dying down when someone shoved Arnold so hard from behind that he almost fell onto the person in front of him. He spun around, expecting to see that even in another world, an alien version of Matt Walters couldn’t just leave him alone, but instead it was his big sister, who was panting hard.

“Sorry,” Alison whispered, “I had to run to get here. What did I miss?”

“Nothing yet. That’s Jo’s dad on the platform,” Arnold explained. So many people shushed him, it sounded like a windstorm had started.

“—the discovery that a few people have the ability to mindspeak with dragons,” Mr. Purnell was saying. “Without which, of course, this air show would not be possible. I wish we could thank our village’s mindspeaker, but she has asked to remain anonymous.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Arnold noticed that Jo had a funny look on her face. Then her jaw went slack and she seemed to be gazing at something impossibly far away. It was a look Arnold often had himself when he was daydreaming. I wonder if people give her a hard time about it, too. But then she shut her mouth with an audible click and said to her visitors in a stage whisper, “Here she comes!”

A few moments later the crowd turned as one to the left, eastward toward Assateague. They ooh-ed and ah-ed like people watching fireworks, and no wonder—something enormous was soaring toward them from the direction of the ocean, something so big that when it passed over Assateague Channel it cast a shadow that easily bridged the watery gap.

Arnold shaded his eyes with his hand and looked up, and his mouth went dry. Something as big as an old-time fighter plane was passing overhead, and it was alive! The dragon was mottled green, like military jungle camouflage. Its head was as big as a house, but it came to a sharp point—an isosceles triangle, Arnold thought, proud of remembering the word at a moment like this. As the dragon soared directly overhead it flapped its wings once, twice, and a powerful downdraft blew people’s hats off their heads. There was a gust of nervous laughter. The creature banked over the village and turned around, just as a biplane came sputtering along over Assateague Channel.

Arnold tried to remember if he’d ever seen one before outside the pages of a book. He didn’t think anyone had ever seen one quite like this, painted mottled green in obvious imitation of the dragon, with shiny, curly struts connecting the two wings in a curvy, filigreed pattern. It was beautiful, a work of art, and “Oh my God, it’s going to crash into the dragon!” Arnold yelled, covering his eyes. Spots danced behind his squeezed-shut eyelids and he heard the crowd let out a gasp. Then someone elbowed him.

“Ow! What did you do that for?” he said, opening his eyes and rounding on Alison.

“Because, nerd-face, you just missed the most amazing thing ever! The dragon and the biplane did a loop-de-loop around each other—I think they’re going to do it again!” They did, to applause and cheers. Then another biplane joined them, and a third!

Arnold felt dizzy watching them, but it was exhilarating, too, like the time Mom and Dad had the Olympics on tri-vee two years ago and he thought it was going to be the most boring thing in the world, especially gymnastics, which held unpleasant memories for him—but watching those girls just a couple of years older than him spin and leap around the bars Arnold had felt something soar inside him. And this was on a much grander scale.

Arnold watched in awe until he felt an elbow in the ribs again. He clenched his fists to take a swing at Sis, but checked himself when he saw it wasn’t her, it was Jo. “Sorry, but I just had to tell you—I’m going to ask Ashley to do a figure eight in the air,” she whispered in his ear.

“Huh? How are you—” Her face went slack again for a moment, and then the dragon did just as she had said it would, drawing a perfect double loop around the biplanes. Applause again, and cheers.

“So you’re the ‘mindspeaker,’” Arnold whispered in Jo’s ear.

She nodded. “Now you know my secret,” she said quietly.

Arnold was mostly silent watching the surreal air show, though it was hard not to flinch when a plane or Ashley’s tail dipped too close to the ground. It was like the way he felt about fireworks: he loved the colors but had only recently learned to control his fear of the noise they made. Dad and Alison also seemed overwhelmed, and Sis’s eyes were shining with unshed tears. Was that from excitement, or sorrow that she could never be as powerful and free as the dragon soaring through the air? Arnold could empathize because he felt the same.

As if at a signal the biplanes zoomed back the way they had come and the dragon floated away toward Assateague. “She spends the night in a pond she dug herself over there,” Jo said. Her voice was hushed.

“Does she sleep?” Arnold asked.

“That’s a good question. No, not the way people do. But she does dream—often, about her family that was massacred by the early settlers.”

“You mean she’s not the only dragon?”

“Well, of course not. And since Old Carolina Joe knocked her up, she’s had a brood of dragonets, six of them. People have given them boring names, but their real names all start with their noble family name, Ir. My favorite is Ir’gassaphet. I think that’s a much nicer name than ‘Nigel,’ don’t you?”

Mr. Purnell was speaking into the microphone again. “That’s our show, folks! I hope you enjoyed it.”

“How come Ashley didn’t breathe fire, Mike?” someone yelled.

Mr. Purnell smiled the smile of someone who has heard the same dumb question a thousand times but still has to answer it politely and in detail. “She has barely started growing her beak back from the last time she had to do it. Dragons don’t breathe fire for fun—they don’t really breathe fire at all, of course, they mix fatty acids with hydrogen peroxide inside their beaks and—”

“Mike, stop boring everybody!” a woman called out. There were chuckles.

“That’s Mum,” Jo whispered, indicating a short, blond lady who was standing nearby. Standing with her was a young man who looked like a skinnier version of Mr. Purnell, and a chubby girl with curly brown hair and a mischievous gleam in her sparkling brown eyes.

“Nobody wants a chemistry lesson, love!” Mrs. Purnell added cheerfully. “What they probably do want is tea and biscuits, courtesy of the Gingo Teag Tourism Advisory Council! Come by the town hall, everybody!”

“Can we go Dad? Please?” Alison asked, beating Arnold to it.

Dad smiled. “Of course! Sounds like fun. Gloria said she could take us back home whenever we wanted.”

“Back home where?” asked Mrs. Purnell. She had made her way through the crowd and was buttoning up Jo’s coat for her, over her protests.

“Hmm? Oh, just over on—”

“They’re from Alaska, Mum,” Jo interrupted. “Like Teresa.”

“Alaska, eh?” Mrs. Purnell looked Dad over more carefully, from his scuffed brown shoes to the “Russian” black hat with the dopey-looking flaps that he wore whenever the temperature dipped below fifty degrees. Then she smiled. “I am so sorry, where are my manners! Vivian Purnell, at your service.” And she curtseyed to Dad!

Arnold had only ever seen anyone do that in old movies. Dad startled him even more, by bowing and taking Jo’s mother’s hand and kissing it.

“I’m Teresa,” the curly-haired girl said in a normal American accent. She smiled and shook hands with Alison, then with Dad, and last of all with Arnold. Why can’t I ever be first?

Teresa leaned toward them and explained quietly, “I’m from America, like you. Well, not exactly like you—long story. Anyway, we tell people I’m from Alaska so they don’t ask too many questions, and you can do the same. In this world, it’s a separate country.”

Mrs. Purnell introduced the young man as “my little Tommy,” although he was at least five centimeters taller than her.

“Mum, you are embarrassing me,” he complained as she pulled his cap firmly down over his reddening ears.

“That is a mother’s job,” she said. Jo and Tom’s dad joined them and there was another round of introductions before the group set off down Maddox Boulevard. A cutting wind was blowing, but before they had gone a single block Alison had linked arms with Teresa and they were chatting like old friends. Arnold shoved his hands in his coat pockets and watched them enviously.

He’d almost forgotten about Jo. She startled him by saying softly she hoped he had enjoyed the air show.

“Enjoyed it? I’ve never seen anything like it! I wish I lived here so I could watch Ashley—Ir’befunzu—every day.”

“I love her more than anybody,” Jo said. “But I can’t wait to grow up and get out of Gingo Teag.”

“Me too,” Arnold said with feeling.

“I’d like to read astrophysics at university. Or maybe music. I can’t decide which, I love them both so much!”

Like Einstein, Arnold thought. He could see this girl was really smart. “I don’t know what I want to study, either,” he said. “Just not journalism, like Dad did. You can get in too much trouble.”

“Oh, that’s right. You’ve got big blue slugs telling you what you can and can’t write, don’t you?”

Arnold could feel all the blood draining out of his face.

“Hey, don’t get so upset!” Jo said. “I was only joking.”

Teresa turned her head and said, “Alison’s the same way! It’s cool that you have aliens in your version of America, but why do you freak out when anyone asks about them? Do they use mind-control rays on you or something?”

“Of course not,” Arnold said. “It’s just that back home, you can get in big trouble if you say anything bad about them.”

Jo was quiet as they filed in the door of a building with GINGO TEAG TOWN HALL inscribed on its handsome white marble lintel. She waited till Arnold had collected a paper cup of strong, sweet tea and two sugar cookies, then steered him into a corner.

“Really, what’s the deal with your ‘High Ones?’” she asked. “Are they sensitive or something? Why should they be? I make fun of everything, all the time. Especially our silly old King Charles III, and the way he goes on about how every cow shed and chicken coop is ‘an inalienable part of our immortal British heritage.’” She stuck her chin up and said the last part in a half-strangled voice.

“Are you committing leez majesty again, you little brat?” an old guy with a red face said. Or tried to say. He had a mouthful of sugar cookies, and it was kind of hard to tell.

“Sorry, Mr. Greene, I didn’t know you were a courtier,” Jo deadpanned.

“Smart mouth! If you was my daughter, I’d paddle you till your bum was black and blue!”

“If she were your daughter, Dean, you would not dare,” Mrs. Purnell said. “I suggest you mind your own business, you nosey parker. And as for you, missy,” she said to Jo, “you had best not be giving our foreign visitors a wrong idea of the immense respect in which we Britons hold the royal family!”

“Of course not, Mum!” Jo said, waiting until her mother’s back was turned to roll her eyes dramatically.

Arnold was liking this girl more and more. He couldn’t decide what was weirder, to hear the High Ones talked about so casually, or to be called a foreigner.

Dad was having a lot of trouble fending off Mr. Greene, who kept yelling at him about “the nerve you Alaskans have.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, sir.”

“Yes, you bloody well do! You people have some nerve, after everything we’ve done for you, helping you get free of the Bonapartes’ puppet Russia!”

“Umm…”

“I mean, is it really so much to ask that you not recognize those upstart rebels in Angler-tare?”

Leez majesty? Angler-tare? Are these people really speaking English?

Jo promptly jumped up and stuck her nose in the argument. “You’re being darned rude to our guests, Mr. Greene!”

The red-faced man looked at her as if she was a seagull tearing at roadkill. “I don’t want no brat’s opinion!”

“Well, I’m gonna give it to you anyway! Any Englishman worth his salt ought to support the Anglay Republic! They are our brothers, and they fought long and hard against the French! Remember how happy we all were when they threw the Frogs out of London?”

“Then why don’t they accept the authority of their rightful king?”

“Cause they got too much sense, is what I say!”

There were gasps around the room. “Jacobin!” someone muttered. “Paine-ist! Why donchya go to Australia, ya lousy republican?”

A white-faced Mrs. Purnell swooped in, grabbed Jo by the arm and hauled her protesting from the room. Mr. Purnell hurried after them. Tom looked at the floor, and Teresa whispered something in his ear.

“I think we had best be going, too,” Dad said. “Nice, er, nice meeting everyone. Including you, Mr. Greene! Let’s not talk politics in the future, all right?” Without waiting for an answer Dad hurried Arnold and Alison outside and back to the bookstore.

“What was that all about, Dad?” Arnold asked as they walked along the dingy underground passageway they had taken from the library. Alison looked all around, up and down and behind her, and brought her right hand up to her mouth.

“Allie, stop chewing your nails,” Dad said. “And Arnold, I’m damned if I know. Politics is a dirty business, no matter what world you’re in. We’re lucky the High Ones saved us from our own stupidity.”

Arnold felt disappointed in Dad for saying that. It sounded like something a teacher would say, when Dad was always telling them to think for themselves and not just accept what they learned in school. Is he actually scared of seeing what the world is like when human beings get to run it? That’s pathetic!

But there was no more time to think about it because they had already arrived back at the bare wood-walled version of the library, and Tiferet was twining between their legs mewing, and this time Arnold kept his eyes shut during the transition because he had almost thrown up last time, but it didn’t seem to help because somehow he could still see everything anyway, and then Gloria was standing there with her arms around him and Dad and Alison, and he hurriedly broke away because it was just too icky.

“Well, my dears,” Gloria said, “did you enjoy the air show?”

Arnold wanted to shout that it was the most amazing thing ever, but that wouldn’t be cool, would it? Cool was answering casually, “It was pretty good, I guess.”

Alison didn’t say anything, but her eyes were glowing. Dad said, “It was the most incredible thing I’ve ever seen, Gloria. Thank you.”

“It is a pity the dracos all died out in the yellow-wood at your world’s K-T Boundary,” Gloria said. “They could have provided some needed balance between you humans and the High Ones.”

Arnold had been really into dinosaurs when he was younger, so he knew what she was talking about, though the slight frown on Alison’s face meant she probably didn’t. “Gloria means the time when the asteroid killed all the dinosaurs, 65 million years ago,” he told her. “Which means Jo’s ‘dragon’ is really a highly evolved pterodactyl, isn’t that right, Gloria?”

She smiled at him. “That’s right.”

“What’s a ‘yellow-wood,’ though?”

“A yellow-wood is the turning point where two worlds’ histories diverge,” Gloria said. “You know, from the poem—”

“—by Robert Frost, yeah, I get it,” Alison said. “We had to read it in English class last May. ‘Two roads split in a yellow wood, and I took the less crowded one,’ or something.”

“So Jo’s world isn’t magical, then,” Arnold said.

Gloria’s expression turned very serious. “Magic is where you find it, Arnold. Never forget that. It’s a truth that holds in all the worlds.” She paused. “Well, I shouldn’t keep you waiting here. You’ll be wanting your dinner. I’ll see you both tomorrow in school.”

“Not me, you won’t,” Arnold said. “I’m suspended, remember?”

“I know. But I’ll stop by your house and bring you some books so you won’t fall behind in your classes.”

“That’s the reason Arnold and I came here after meeting with the principal,” Dad explained to Alison. “To get some books so he wouldn’t fall behind. We got more than we bargained for.”

“How long did you get suspended for, Arnold?” Alison asked as the three of them turned onto Main Street. It was completely dark outside.

“Two weeks,” he answered.

Sis whistled appreciatively. Then she jumped as a dark figure leapt out from behind a fence. Arnold jumped too, and even Dad looked scared for a second. But it was only crazy Barry Freed.

“Area 51,” he said. He was wearing a plaid shirt that was buttoned up wrong. One side was untucked.

“Hi, Barry,” Dad said calmly. “What’s Area 51?”

“A secret Air Force base in Nevada. Ever hear of it?”

“Uh, no, Barry.”

“Right, because it’s secret,” Mr. Freed said, as if Dad might be stupid. “And do you know why they want it kept secret?” Even Arnold knew who Mr. Freed meant by “they.” The Establishment, the government, the men in gray suits and dark sunglasses. The High Satrap himself was just a tool of Them, if you believed Mr. Freed—not that anybody did.

“That’s a rhetorical question, isn’t it, Mr. Freed?” Arnold said, and was rewarded with a scowl.

“Area 51, ladies and gentlemen, is where they make the fake aliens.”

“Fake aliens, Mr. Freed?” Alison said. She had told Arnold she felt sorry for him. Arnold didn’t—he was scared of him.

“The so-called High Ones. They’re a fake, I tell you, the biggest fraud in history! Don’t feel too bad that you fell for those big blue sea slugs—so did everyone else! Area 51 is the key to everything, I’m telling you! It’s where They make the phony flying saucers—”

“I’ve been in them myself, Mr. Freed,” Alison explained patiently. “That’s why you never see jets anymore—they’re such a cheap, comfortable way to fly.”

“—and the controlled fusion reactors, and the make-believe interstellar travel, and…”

Dad looked at Arnold and Alison and jerked his head toward home, and the three of them started walking, with Mr. Freed gradually falling behind as he trailed after them.

Once they had the front door safely shut behind them, Dad turned and said slowly to Arnold and Alison, “What do you suppose Mr. Freed would say if he knew we were just in a whole other universe?”