Читать книгу Heroes of Earth - Martin Berman-Gorvine - Страница 8

CHAPTER 3

Alison’s stomach heaved as her mind tried to make sense of what her eyes had just told her. Everything, including her own body, had turned inside out and exploded, but not really. She thought of a poster of an M.C. Escher painting Mrs. Blum had hanging in her classroom, of a staircase in the air that spiraled around and led nowhere.

Whatever she’d just seen was much stranger than that, but she was definitely somewhere. Just not anywhere familiar. And she didn’t know the oddly dressed, redheaded woman standing looking at her with a slightly sheepish grin.

“Hello, Alison,” she said in a low, rich voice that sounded like music—a cello, maybe, an instrument Mom had also tried and failed to teach her to play. “Sorry for the confusion, but I wasn’t expecting you till tomorrow.”

“Who are you, and where is this?” Alison said, gesturing at the wooden-floored room filled with high, tall bookshelves.

“I’m Gloria, the new school librarian. Didn’t Arnold tell you about me?”

Alison pointed an accusing finger at the woman. “Your library is bigger on the inside than on the outside.” She clutched her head, which was starting to ache in time to the beating of her heart, and groaned. “I think I need a doctor.”

“You don’t need a doctor, dear,” Gloria said, stepping closer to her and doing something with her hands in front of Alison’s face, too fast for her to see clearly. The headache receded as quickly as it had begun.

“But you haven’t answered my question. Where are we?”

“Why, in Chincoteague, of course.”

“That’s not the point. There’s no library or bookstore like this on the island. And I should know, I’ve been to all of them.”

“Well, technically, we’re sort of alongside Chincoteague. Your version of Chincoteague, that is.”

“My version? Look, I came here for help finding books for my AP History paper on how the High Ones stopped the Cold War, not to listen to a lot of weird riddles.” She paused, and added, half under her breath, “No wonder Arnold likes you.”

“I have some history books over here, on this shelf,” Gloria said, pointing with a lacquered fingernail. The nail was covered with more than just one color of polish—there was actually an intricate design of some sort on it.

How had this fruitcake ever gotten hired by that humorless old fart of a school superintendent, Mr. Wentworth? Alison remembered with a shudder the grilling she and Arnold had gotten when Dad enrolled them here in January.

“So your dad’s a newspaper reporter, eh?” He had pronounced the words as if they were a synonym for terrorist.

“Not anymore,” Arnold had said helpfully, while Alison tried unsuccessfully to shush him, “he got fired for writing articles disruptive to the Cosmic Harmony.” Arnold was always saying stuff like that. But Mr. Wentworth had had to enroll them both anyway. It was the law.

Well, whatever weird magic this Gloria creature had worked on her, she was here now, and she had the most amazing collection of books Alison had ever seen outside her father’s attic. But it didn’t take long for her to see there was nothing in the “history” section she could use for her class. The word history needed quotes around it because it wasn’t proper history, it was some weird kind of science fiction written straight-faced as if it were fact. In one book World War I had ended early and they still called it the Great War because there was no World War II, so the British and French Empires still existed and America kept mostly to itself, except for bombing the Japanese to smithereens when they tried to take over the Philippines. In another, which was printed on cheap paper like newsprint, the world was still recovering from a nuclear war America and the Soviet Union had fought over Cuba. In a third, America had gotten to Mars in 1976 all by ourselves, without any help from the High Ones. Alison gaped as she flipped the pages through gorgeous color photographs of white-suited astronauts walking through a rust-red desert, then flipped back to the title page with a sinking feeling about what she knew would be missing there.

She stood up and shook the book under Gloria’s nose. “This doesn’t have a SCOD sticker in it.”

“Really?”

“Really. I doubt any of these books do. But this one could get you in real trouble, you know, for disrupting the Cosmic Harmony.”

“I don’t see how a wee little book like that could hurt something so grand, do you?”

“Don’t give me that! You’re as bad as my dad! Which reminds me, I’d better get home and put his supper on the table!” And with that, Alison shoved the book in her book-bag and ran out the door, ignoring Gloria calling out to her to wait.

She expected to come out on Smith Drive, or maybe on Main Street. But nothing looked familiar. It was a lot darker than she expected, with a crescent moon floating behind a thin screen of clouds high in the sky. The familiar bright orange streetlights were gone, replaced by evenly spaced poles topped by pale, wavering blue flames that danced inside clear glass globes. They reminded her of the gas range they had back home in Pikesville, but since when was natural gas used for streetlights?

Alison began to walk without any idea where she was going. Was she even in Chincoteague anymore? The air smelled right, with the familiar salt tang and the faint sulfurous hint of marsh mud, and she could hear a seagull cawing just like the one that had passed overhead when she was hurrying to the middle school. But it was a lot colder than it had been when she’d left home, and how could that be?

Out of habit she was retracing her steps back home. But how could she be doing that, if these weren’t the old familiar streets? The street signs looked different, too, but squinting up at one, which was cream colored with black cursive letters that looked hand-painted, Alison was surprised to find herself at the corner of Poplar Street and Pension Street, less than half a block from the house. But everything looked so different, as in a dream. She scratched her head and set off walking, eyes firmly glued to the sidewalk so she could ignore all the strangeness around her. If I can just get home, everything will be normal again. But she felt how ridiculous this thought was even while thinking it, not least because even the sidewalk was strange, being made of weathered wooden boards instead of normal concrete.

Suddenly she bumped right into somebody. “Hey, watch where you’re going!” said a familiar voice. Alison looked up and started to stammer an apology, and relief flooded her—it was Shaniqua Thomas, the closest thing to a friend she’d made in this godforsaken town. It had helped break the ice that Shaniqua was black and also in the AP class, both things that made her an outsider even though her family had roots on the Eastern Shore going back three hundred fifty years. Of course, simply by their existence the High Ones had shown people that there was only one human race and we all had a lot more in common with each other than we did with three-meter-tall blue starfish with more useful appendages than a Swiss Army knife, but somehow not everybody had got the message yet.

“Shaniqua, hi! Am I glad to see you! Something really strange is happening and I haven’t even got an outline for my history paper yet ’cause I went to the school library to get some books for it but all the freaky new librarian there had was science fiction and did you hear there was another terrorist attack at the Capitol so it’ll take, like, forever to get into school tomorrow and what are you doing dressed like an American Heritage doll?”

Because she was. Dressed like an American Heritage doll, that is, in a long skirt that looked like it was made from a heavy green curtain, and were those actually white gloves she was wearing? And she was eyeing Alison strangely, and when she opened her mouth she was speaking in a weird accent, familiar Eastern Shore twang crossed with Beatles.

“My name is Sharon, and who are you?” Alison stared at her in shock. Shaniqua hated practical jokes and the people who played them. Her big brother Tavon was always hiding her homework, tying her shoelaces together, and short-sheeting her bed. So Alison couldn’t imagine how she could be playing a prank now. She waited for her to crack a smile, but instead she snorted and stomped away.

This must be a dream. The feeling only strengthened when she walked up to the house and saw that the picket fence was gone, replaced by a high wall of deep green shrubs. Peeking through, she saw that Arnold and Dad had repainted the outside while she was out with her favorite color, turquoise—although that was quite impossible because Dad hated that color.

“Okay, I’m dreaming,” Alison said aloud, in as firm a tone as she could muster. “In that case, I’d like to fly now. Oh, and for Donny Schmitz to be flying alongside me and to give me a huge kiss on the lips!” Nothing happened. So it wasn’t one of those dreams. Something flickered at the edge of her vision and she tilted her head up to look at the moon. There was a huge, dark silhouette flitting in front of it. “Oh, I see, it’s that kind of dream instead,” she said, and began to run and pinch herself at the same time. Pinch, pinch, pinch, ow ow ow, but she failed to wake up in bed. She braced herself for unimaginable pain when the dragon she’d just seen breathed fire all over her. But the only thing that hurt was the cold air roaring into her lungs, and then her knee as she tripped over something and pitched face forward on the impossible wooden sidewalk. She rolled around clutching her knee, crying and wishing she would wake up already.

Instead an unfamiliar but ordinary-looking girl about Arnold’s age appeared, looking down at her with a tentative half-smile. “Alison? Alison Grossbard?”

“That’s my name,” she said, sitting up and drying her eyes with her coat sleeve. “But how can I be dreaming about you? I’ve never met you before.”

“You’re not dreaming,” the stranger said, helping her to her feet. She was dressed more normally than Shaniqua had been, in jeans and a jacket. Her dirty blond hair was tied back in a ponytail and she had a friendly, mischievous gleam in her brown eyes.

“My name’s Jo Purnell,” she said. “Gloria sent me to find you. I had a little help from Ir’befunzu of course.”

“Who?”

“The dragon,” Jo said matter-of-factly. “Most people call her Ashley, though, and I suppose you can too, if it’s easier. She sensed you right away, and she says to tell you that she never barbecues people. Well, hardly ever. Only if they really, really deserve it.” They were walking back the way Alison had come, toward Main Street and the site where the high school should be. Instead there was a small, wood-framed building that said “GLORIA’S GATEWAY BOOKS AND RECORDS.” That must have been the building Alison had walked out of. But what had happened to the high school? More important, what had happened to Shaniqua, and to her house?

“I can tell you’re really confused,” Jo said as they walked into the bookstore. A cowbell jangled, and Gloria looked up, a sheepish expression on her face, from the book she was reading. At least Alison recognized this one: Mark Twain’s Life on the Mississippi, which Dad had a copy of along with the rest of his contraband books in the attic.

“Thanks, Jo,” Gloria said. “Alison, are you all right?”

“Apart from a bruised knee, yeah, sure.”

“Let me see that.” The red-haired lady knelt down, rolled up Alison’s pants leg and put a cool cloth on the knee. Alison blinked in astonishment as the ache rapidly faded.

“I always say Gloria is better than any doctor who I’ve ever met,” Jo said.

“That’s whom, dear,” Gloria said. “Any doctor whom you’ve ever met.”

Jo folded her arms and scowled. “Now you sound like Mum! I thought it was going to be fun when you came and opened your bookstore here. I don’t need four parents!”

“How do you have four parents?” Alison asked.

“Besides Mum and Dad—he’s the only real softie—there’s Gloria here, and my big brother Tom’s girlfriend Teresa. Three mothers constantly scolding and correcting me! I can’t take it anymore! Hey, why are you crying? Did I say something wrong?”

“I’m not crying!” Alison said, clenching her fists. Three mothers! I haven’t even got ONE whole mother! Aloud, she said, “I don’t care if you’ve got a thousand mothers! Just explain to me what the hell is going on here!”

Jo puckered her lips. “Wow, you said a bad word!”

“What, ‘hell’?”

“You said it again!”

“Jo, just tell her how she got here,” Gloria said.

Jo folded her arms again. “Huh-uh. You explain to her how come she’s important enough for you to transport her across the dimensions from her world to this one, even though you just met her, while I’ve known you for ages and you still won’t let me visit any of the other worlds!”

The hairs stood up on the back of Alison’s neck. “Do you mean to tell me I’ve traveled to another world, not on a giant spaceship powered by the High Ones’ fusion drive, but using… a cat?”

Gloria ducked her head. “I’m not really a cat, dear, though I sometimes look like one. And this is your same old Earth, just with a few details of the past different.”

“Yeah, like in your world Ben Franklin wasn’t a little weasel who worked out a dirty deal with that slyboots William Pitt so we all still have to bow to a stupid git of a king,” Jo said, “and Napoleon Bone-a-Fart got his butt kicked and had to go live on a desert island instead of conquering half the world. On the other hand, we don’t have big blue slugs slithering around telling us what to do.”

Alison’s head was spinning. Luckily there was a comfy chair handy. “You can’t say that,” she whispered through a tight throat.

“Oh, so what if I insulted the king,” Jo said with a dismissive wave of her hand. “They don’t even put you in jail for that anymore. Besides, Gloria would never peach on me.”

“No, I mean you can’t talk about the High Ones that way. You can get in really big trouble.” Trouble so big, you might wish you were in jail.

“That’s what they call the echinodermoids from Gliese 581d,” Gloria told Jo, who clasped her hands together and went down on one knee.

“Oh, please, please, Gloria, let me go back to Alison’s world with her. I can’t wait to see a real live alien!”

Gloria cleared her throat noisily.

“Apart from you, that is!”

“You’re an alien?” Alison gasped.

“To me, you’re the alien,” Gloria said nonchalantly. “And I don’t come from Gliese 581d. I’ve never even met a High One in person. That’s not what they call themselves, by the way. ‘Winged-Thinkers’ is a better translation.”

“You’re both changing the subject,” Jo accused. “Which is, how come I can’t go visit with Alison in her world?”

“Because it’s too dangerous, for now,” Gloria said. “The time isn’t yet ripe.”

“Come on, it’s only Chincoteague,” Jo whined. Alison thought it sounded funny the way she said it, more like Jingo Teag. “Nothing ever happens in Chincoteague in any world, except the annual pony swim.”

Gloria shook her head. “No. Not tonight, Jo. I told you I’d think about it, but it’s important that Alison and Arnold visit you here first.”

Jo flounced over to another easy chair and turned her back to Gloria and Alison.

“Oh, very mature. She and Arnold ought to get along just great,” Alison said. “Can you please take me home now? I haven’t got any of my homework done, and by now Dad’s probably trying to cook dinner himself, and if he sets fire to the house again the Volunteer Fire Department might have to hold two pony swims to pay for all the equipment they have to use.”

“Your fire department sponsors the pony swims?” Jo said. “That’s funny. Here it’s the Dragonfire Club. Oh, I forgot. It’s dangerous for me to talk to you.”

“Just ignore her,” Alison suggested to Gloria as they made their way to the back. “That’s what I do when Arnold gets into one of his moods.”

“I’ll bear it in mind, dear. Now, I’d better tell you something before I put you back in your world, because it’s rather more difficult to hold a conversation when my cat aspect is showing. You know that weird, long hallway you had to walk down to get here?”

Alison nodded. She didn’t think she would ever forget it.

“It’s called the Gray Zone. The things you see there aren’t exactly real. You might feel a little scared, which is sensible because there are unfriendly presences there. But I’ll be watching and I won’t let them bother you. All right?” Alison swallowed hard, but nodded. “Good girl. Just keep your head down and try to enjoy the journey, and you’ll be home before you know it.” Gloria squeezed Alison’s hand.

Then everything turned inside out, and Alison found herself holding an orange cat’s paw, in a room full of books. She let go, took a deep breath and turned to face the corridor. I can do this.