Читать книгу Heroes of Earth - Martin Berman-Gorvine - Страница 15

CHAPTER 10

“They’re called the Gray Ones,” Jo explained as she walked Arnold to her home. Gingo Teag was quiet on this late afternoon in early December. The few electric “carriages” on the streets purred quietly as they passed, and flecks of sleet hissed down from a darkening gray sky. Arnold shivered and huddled deeper into his coat. Chincoteague was a lot warmer than its sister island.

“Have you ever seen one?” Arnold asked.

Jo’s pigtail flipped back and forth where it peeked out from under a brown cap as she shook her head. “But Tommy and Teresa told me all about them. Teresa was almost killed by one! It looked like an oil slick, they said. Gloria said that isn’t their ‘true form,’ whatever that means, but she changed the subject when I asked her what they do look like. She really doesn’t like to talk about them.”

“Why not?”

Jo shrugged.

“Do you think she’s afraid of them? Maybe they’re allied with the High Ones!”

“I never heard Gloria mention the High Ones until the day I met you,” Jo said. “And I’m not really sure the Gray Ones are a ‘they’ so much as an ‘it.’ A personification of the hostility we feel in the Gray Zone.”

Arnold sniffed when Jo said “personification.” It was a show-offy word that Alison might have used. “I know what you mean, but how can there be hostility if there isn’t a person or at least an animal or something there to be hostile? I mean, space will kill you if you go for a spacewalk without a spacesuit, but that doesn’t mean it actually hates you.” Though it sure FELT like it did, when I suddenly found myself drifting there!

Jo rubbed her chin. “It does sound weird, I admit, but haven’t you felt afraid when you had to walk through the Gray Zone, knowing that nothing you saw was really real?”

She’ll think I’m a coward. She’ll laugh at me like all the other girls do. So Arnold shook his head.

“Well, you’re the first person I’ve met who doesn’t,” Jo said, shooting Arnold a sidelong glance.

Jo’s house looked old-fashioned to Arnold, like his house had been before the contractors got to work on it. It stood on stilts above marshy ground toward the southern end of Main Street, below where the bridge to the mainland stood in Chincoteague—but in Gingo Teag, there was no causeway and no bridge. The only way to get to the island, Mrs. Purnell explained as she hung up his coat for him, was by ferry. “For which they charge a fare of thruppence. Highway robbery!”

“Mum’s been pestering the Nanticoke House of Burgesses for years to build a causeway out here,” Jo explained. When Arnold shook his head in confusion, she added, “It’s like one of your state legislatures.”

“We need the national parliament involved,” Mrs. Purnell said. Her blond hair was neatly waved, and she was wearing a double strand of pearls over a soft-looking wine-colored sweater. Arnold thought she couldn’t have reminded him less of his own messy mother if she’d tried. “Do you take jam or butter on your scones, dear?” she asked.

“What’s a scone?”

“It’s like a muffin, only not as sweet,” Jo said, munching on one. “But even Teresa knew what a scone was. She says they’re her favorite thing to get at Starbucks.”

“What’s Starbucks?”

“Teresa said there’s one on every corner in her ‘America,’” Jo said, looking puzzled.

“Gloria told you Arnold’s America is different from Teresa’s,” Mrs. Purnell said. “Wipe your mouth, Jo, you have got raspberry preserves all over your face.”

“Where are Tom and Teresa?” Arnold asked, first making sure he had swallowed everything in his mouth and that his face was clean. He had a vision of Mrs. Purnell cleaning his face with a napkin that he did not want to become reality.

“Revising for finals at Cambridge, I should think,” said Mrs. Purnell. “Our British schools do not have the long holidays you rebels seem to enjoy with your liberty.”

“Mum, you’re always telling me to be polite. That seems awfully rude,” Jo said.

Mrs. Purnell shot her a fierce look while Arnold tried to figure out what she had been talking about. Oh, right, they never had the American Revolution here. So that makes us Americans “rebels” to her.

Mrs. Purnell looked down. “I am afraid Jo is right, Arnold. It is not your fault that your ancestors were traitors to the Crown. Do forgive me.”

“That’s all right,” Arnold said, though he hadn’t felt insulted, only filled with wonder. A loud whistle made him jump.

“That will be the kettle. I shall not be a moment,” Mrs. Purnell said, jumping up and smoothing her long skirts down as she walked to the kitchen.

Jo winked at Arnold. “You won’t see that very often. Mum admitting that she’s wrong, I mean.”

“I heard that, Jodie Marybeth Purnell!” her mother called from the other room.

“Don’t get any ideas about calling me Jodie. I shall flatten you if you do,” Jo said firmly to Arnold.

“I won’t,” he said absently as he looked around the room. It was just an ordinary living room, although neater than most people’s homes, with pretty, matching floral prints on all the sofas and easy chairs, a blinding white tablecloth covering the dark wooden coffee table where they were eating, and a bookshelf lined with books Arnold felt certain were better organized than those in Gloria’s library. One important thing was missing, though.

“Where’s your tri-vee stage?”

“What are you talking about?” Mrs. Purnell asked as she walked back into the room, carrying a silver tray with a large, shiny teapot and three delicate-looking mugs.

“Oh, right. The High Ones gave us tri-vee. I mean your TV.”

“We haven’t got that either,” Jo said, reaching out for a mug.

Mrs. Purnell swatted her hand away. “Mind your manners, Jodie! Guests first. Do you take milk or sugar, Arnold?”

“I like my tea black,” Arnold said, and Mrs. Purnell smiled. She could have been a tri-vee actress when she did that.

The tea was nice and strong, just the way Arnold liked it. It warmed him and woke him up, and he began to wonder why Jo and her mother were taking so long to get around to the point of his visit—fighting Earth’s alien occupiers. They couldn’t possibly be scared of the High Ones, could they? They’d never even seen one.

Arnold had, on that family trip to Mars. Back then, before the September 11 joint attack on the UN Building by the Front and the League, which killed or maimed most of the ambassadors and staff in the UN General Assembly but missed its intended target of the Exalted High Viceroy Risssss-erianus, the High Ones piloting spaceships would often mingle with the human passengers.

Arnold had watched the alien approach, excitement mingling with dread in his guts. Mom squeezed his hand and whispered, “There’s nothing to be afraid of, honey! Just say hello like you would to anyone.” But her palm was sweaty and she gripped his hand hard as the creature made its way around their ring of the saucer.

Arnold thought that the tri-vids he had seen, even the life-sized ones, didn’t really do justice to the aliens’ massive, three-meter-long physical presence. It was like being inside a zoo enclosure with a hippopotamus, not that a High One looked anything like a mammal—or even an insect, for that matter. Its closest Earthly analogue was a sea creature called a crown of thorns starfish, an echinoderm that feasted on corals in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef by first throwing up on them and dissolving the poor corals in its stomach acid. Like them, the High Ones were radially symmetrical and had many more arms than the familiar five-armed starfish, but Earth’s alien overlords were more discreet in their dining habits, and their spines weren’t venomous like those of the crown of thorns. That was a good thing because the High Ones used their spines like little tentacles for grabbing food, starship controls, and people’s hands when it wanted to shake them, as it was now doing to Arnold’s.

“Sub-Baron Shhhh-iblius at your service. How are you, son? First time in space?” it asked. Its voice synthesizer made it sound like Arnold’s math teacher, Mr. Podolski. Arnold started to relax a little—he liked Mr. Podolski—though he couldn’t help thinking that the High One looked way less human than the starfish Sammy on the cartoon “Curly-Coral Swim-Trunks,” a show SCOD had banned as “probably offensive to the High Ones.”

Offending this creature was the last thing on Arnold’s mind, even if he did have a Sammy action figure hidden at the bottom of his underwear drawer at home. The High One was so pretty, for one thing, covered with overlapping aquamarine scales that were pleasantly cool to the touch and useful for discreetly hiding the water-bottles they needed while moving about on dry land, like a human deep-sea diver’s air tanks. Its ivory-colored spines and tentacles were as warm as a person’s hand.

Arnold bent his trembling head. “My n-name is Master Arnold Grossbard. I am hon-honored t-to meet you, s-sir,” he stammered, hoping he was remembering his Imperial Etiquette right. They taught it to you from the moment you started kindergarten, but it was so easy to mess up! “I’m d-d-doing j-just f-f-fine, s-sir. S-so c-cool to be in sp-sp-space!”

“My name is Mrs. Rachel Grossbard, and I am deeply honored to meet you, sir,” Mom murmured, taking another of the creature’s spines.

How could I have forgotten the “deeply”? Arnold thought. He’s almost a baron! I just had that on a quiz. Stupid, stupid! Maybe he’ll forgive me…

“He’s so looking forward to a tour of Bradbury Colony,” Mom was saying. “I haven’t been back myself since my honeymoon ten years ago.”

“Then you’re in for a real treat,” the High One informed her. “It’s almost twice as big as it was back then, but of course the real difference is that there’s no dome anymore, not since we got the atmosphere up almost to mountaintop pressure. It was a great achievement for Subduke F’ssss-terponicus. He’s in high favor at court at the moment.”

Struggling to get his stammer under control, Arnold said, “I’m really looking forward to seeing the t-two moons, sir. Phobos and D-deimos.”

“Fear and panic, eh? You humans certainly are a timid lot, to be scared by a couple of little asteroids,” the Arch-baron chuckled. “Though I suppose if we were to toss one of them at your world, it would cause an extinction-level event, wouldn’t it?”

Mom let out a high-pitched squeal that sounded nothing like her real laugh, a deep-throated guffaw. “You do soooooo deeply honor us with your humor, Your Excellency!”

“Indeed. Now, young Arnold, since this is your first time traveling from your developing world, I have a little present for you.” A spine reached into a pocket tucked between two scales and pulled out a glittering egg-shaped bauble about a centimeter long.

“A Homeworld amulet! Gee, thanks, deeply honored sir!” His gratitude was genuine, though it burned him to remember that now. Especially because some seventh graders had beaten him up and stolen the amulet, along with the silver necklace Mom had had it mounted on, barely a week after he got back to school from his Mars trip. People would kill for things from Homeworld. But Jo and her mother seemed no more than casually curious about Earth’s overlords. How could that be, when they’d volunteered to help him fight them? He had to broach the subject with them somehow. Maybe it’s a test—they want to see if I’m brave enough to say how I really feel about the High Ones.

Arnold put his empty tea cup down carefully in its saucer. “Mrs. Purnell, thank you very much for having me over,” he said. “But I think we all know Gloria didn’t bring me all the way here just to have tea.” He felt great saying that, so important and grown-up, having heard somebody say something just like it on a tri-vee spy show.

“No? But I make very good tea,” Mrs. Purnell said.

Jo nodded vigorously. “The best. Even I have to admit it.”

“No,” Arnold said, and then in a rush, “I hate the High Ones, I really hate them! I know Gloria brought me here to meet you so you can help me fight them, right?”

Mrs. Purnell raised an eyebrow at Jo, who explained, “They’re the aliens who took over the Earth—Arnold and Alison’s Earth, that is. I told you about them, Mum. They look like blue slugs, right, Arnold?”

“Worse. They look like giant, armored, blue starfish with tentacles.”

“It’s just like in Herbert Wells’s book, The War Between the Worlds!” Jo exclaimed, her eyes gleaming.

“You know I do not approve of scientification,” Mrs. Purnell said, frowning.

“You mean science fiction? But you’re friends with a telepathic dragon,” Arnold said.

“That is just normal, everyday reality.”

“And Gloria?”

“She saved our lives, so of course I am fond of her. But she never asked us to help you fight the aliens ruling your world,” Mrs. Purnell said. She frowned and pushed a stray strand of hair out of her face. “Arnold, I know what it is like to grow up under foreign occupation. Trust me when I say you do not want to get involved in the ‘resistance.’”

“Mum grew up in Liverpool, before England rebelled against l’Empire,” Jo explained, pronouncing the word French-style: lump-ear. “But you were thrilled when that happened, Mum! You jitterbugged with Dad around the parlor.”

Mrs. Purnell colored slightly. “Yes, of course I was happy that Anglatare was free. We shall go there soon to visit, Jodie, I promise. But when I think of the danger Tom and Teresa put themselves in, sneaking over there just before the Revolution broke out, it makes me sick. If Tom were not eighteen years old, I should confine him to his room until Judgment Day.”

Arnold smiled to himself. Some things were the same in all worlds.

“Mum’s not telling you the whole story. My dopey big brother actually helped to start the Anglay Revolution!” Jo said. “Of course, Teresa was even more important, and her double Palermo Teresa was the most important of all!”

“I do not like that girl. She is trouble,” Mrs. Purnell said, her brows knitted.

“I’m sorry, who is Palermo Teresa?” Arnold said.

“Oh, she is wizard!” Jo said, clapping her hands. “She’s the double of Tom’s Teresa, except instead of being from boring old Philadelphia, she’s from Sicily, and she’s tough as nails and hates the Frogs—l’Empire—and any kind of royalty! Which is only common sense, just like good old Tom Paine called for.”

“Common sense, indeed! She is as dangerous a radical as he was. I cannot understand why the Crown let her into British territory,” Mrs. Purnell said.

“That must be why Gloria brought you here!” Jo exclaimed, seizing Arnold’s hand. Her hands were warm and soft, except for calluses on the fingertips. Holding them made Arnold’s guts feel mushy and warm. She said, “Mum, don’t you think there must be some reason that Gloria introduced us?”

“Perhaps,” Mrs. Purnell said, “it is simply that you and Arnold both need a friend.”

Jo tossed her head back, making her ponytail bob. Her neck was long and unexpectedly graceful. “Why, just ’cause Marcia moved away, the rotter?”

“She has been your best friend since you started primary school, Jodie-kins.”

“Do NOT call me Jodie-kins!” Jo said, stamping her foot so hard Arnold’s chair rattled. “She’s a rotter who couldn’t even remember to call me Jo and not Jodie! And she borrowed my copy of A Wrinkle in Time and never gave it back!”

“As I recall, it was actually Tom’s copy, from Gloria’s bookstore,” Mrs. Purnell said drily.

Arnold kept silent. Denying that he needed a friend would have been too big of a lie.

“Well, young lady, if you are quite finished with your tea, you can walk your non-friend back to Gloria’s bookstore,” Mrs. Purnell said. “I believe you still have some revising to do for your calculus test.”

“Mum! I don’t have to revise for calculus. Even a baby could do those epsilon-delta proofs!”

“Jodie Marybeth Purnell, what have I told you about boasting!”

“But I’m not boasting, Mum!”

“Out the door with you,” Mrs. Purnell said firmly, grabbing Jo with her right hand and Arnold with her left. Her grip was as strong as the clamp in metal shop. “Arnold, it was simply delightful having you to tea. Please do tell Alison and Gerald they are welcome any time.” It took Arnold a moment to figure out she was talking about Dad. No one ever called him anything except Jerry.

“And remember my rule, Jodie,” Mrs. Purnell added. “No visiting parallel worlds while you still have homework to do!”

“But Mum,” Jo said, as the door shut in their faces.

Outside, it was as dark as midnight. Arnold could see his breath and more stars than he ever saw at home, though not as many as he’d seen in the Gray Zone. After a moment they began to walk. He longed to touch Jo’s hand again, but she had jammed her hands deep in her pockets.

“Right then,” she said after a moment, “I shall tell Teresa it is urgent she contact her double and tell her to come to Gingo Teag. Palermo Teresa is an experienced revolutionary and will have just loads of good ideas for you.”

“Okay,” Arnold said.

“And here are my rules. You are not my friend, you are my brother in arms. Together we shall free your Earth from alien tyranny.”

“Roger that,” Arnold said.

“Roger who? Oh, you mean yes. Very well. Rule number two, no hand holding.”

“Roger that,” Arnold said, hoping that Jo had not noticed his hesitation.

“Likewise, no snogging, no smooching, no disgusting stuff. I see Tom and Teresa doing that all the time. It’s not for me, thank you very much.”

“Roger that. No disgusting stuff.”

“We are professional rebels, you and I. I am not going to walk out with you.”

“What?”

“I’m not your girlfriend.”

“Roger that.”

“Next rule. Nobody but my Mum is allowed to call me Jodie. And as for Marybeth—instant death.”

“Roger that,” said Arnold, grateful that the darkness helped him hide a smile.

“What number are we up to?”

“Er, six, I think.”

“Right. Rule six. There is no… uh, I guess there is no rule six.”

“Roger that.”

Jo gave him a hard stare, which again turned his insides into hot cream of wheat. Then she nodded and stopped walking. They were standing on a street corner down the block from Gloria’s Gateway Books.

“Very well. We must take a blood oath to be faithful to the cause of Earth’s freedom.”

“A what?” Arnold started to say, but Jo had already grabbed his right hand—so much for no hand-holding—produced a safety pin from somewhere and pricked first her little finger, then his. He stifled a startled yelp as she stirred the tiny, mingled droplet of blood around with the pinpoint.

“Repeat after me. I do solemnly swear to protect, defend, and uphold the sacred cause of human freedom, even under hideous physical torture and mutilation, the threat of death, or alien brainwashing.”

Arnold solemnly swore, and Jo said, “I hereby declare the Fighters for the Freedom of Earth founded.” She grasped his hand once more, tightly, then let it go before they walked into the bookstore together.