A pall of dust filled the air, obscuring all sight of the towering tripod, the Garubis vessel … or the sky.
Even if the way had been clear, Mark wouldn’t have seen much. Like everyone else, he was overwhelmed with nausea that lasted for several …
… seconds?
… minutes?
Something told him the confusion had stretched longer than that. Much longer — during the span between two breaths — while that brilliant, mind-numbing curtain poured down from the alien craft, tightening and coiling around them all …
What — he thought, feeling his chest heave for the next precious gasp of air.
When it finally came, with a wrenching half-sob, another shock hit him from a different place — his nasal cavities.
Smell!
Make that smells. A flood of unfamiliar aromas. Pungent, lush, sweet, tart, acrid, fatty, musty, fruity, reeking — and yet none of those things. There were strangenesses — frightening and intoxicating — in the very wind.
That was the first hint. Before Mark’s eyes could see or the ringing left his ears, an ancient portion of his brain knew, from smell alone. Something had changed, far more than a mere dust cloud.
What is it? Have they decided to kill us?
If they had a beef, shouldn’t it be with me … not with everyone at the school?
Determined to face it like a man, Mark forced his spine erect, waving away still-swirling puffs and blinking hard in order to clear away the spots. Lifting his face skyward in defiance, he raised a hand to shade his eyes …
… and saw nothing overhead but dissipating haze … and then clouds, rolling slowly across a blue sky.
The Garubis were gone, vanished, without a trace.
But it was the shade of blue overhead that unnerved him more than anything else. That, combined with the persistent, exotic aromas. Mark felt a chill climb his back as he lowered his gaze.
The murk began to clear.
“No,” he sighed as shapes emerged.
Behind him stood the solid, reassuring bulk of Twenty-Nine Palms High School, with its broad front steps beneath his feet. Nearby, Alex, Barry and several dozen other students were gathering themselves after waves of nausea similar to his own. Further, beyond a stretch of lawn and a precariously tilting flag pole, stood Rimpau Avenue, a row of teetering palm trees, then the Food King.
That is — half of Food King. Where the rest of the supermarket should have been, a wall of forest now stood. Trees wew familiar in their pattern of branching limbs, but not in the wild colors of their leaves – crimson-tipped and lime. The nearest swayed and rippled from some recent disturbance. Several toppled over and crashed before Mark’s unbelieving eyes.
“Are …” Mark swallowed. “Are you all right?” he asked Alexandra and Barry, helping them steady themselves, even as he turned to survey the forest verge. It swept in a perfect arc along one wall of the minimart, slicing Drannen’s Hardware down the middle, then continued through Marshall Motors where one row of cars had been reduced to steaming fragments.
“I think so,” Alex answered. Barry gave a jerky nod, staring wide-eyed.
“Good. Come on then.”
Mark started at a walk, as his friends recovered their balance. But in seconds it became a jog. Alex kept pace alongside as Mark went faster down the street, heading toward the nearest edge, feeling a sudden need to hurry. They took the last fifty meters at a run over cracked pavement, past a BMW with its alarm blaring, only stopping when they reached the rim of a sheer, five-meter drop. There, they stared down at an injured meadow that hissed and groaned in complaint.
Well, you’d feel wounded too, if someone dropped part of an American town on top of you, he thought, numbly.
One surviving tree pushed a clumpy spray of multicolored leaves near enough to touch. He reached toward it.
“Careful,” Alex said. “All of this may be poisonous.” She gestured at the forest, the clearings, and expanse of rolling hills that now lay before them.
Mark quashed a sudden, hysterical urge to laugh. Somehow, he doubted the Garubis would go to all this trouble if the dangers were so simple or instantly overwhelming here. Wherever here was.
Oh, there were perils, almost certainly. But Na-bistaka’s folk operated according to some kind of code, one that limited their viciousness. There would be a chance, if a slim one.
Out of stunned silence, a babble began to rise. Two babbles, actually. One ahead of him, as the forest began stirring again. No animal had yet shown itself, but he could hear local creatures rustling, getting over their panic and surprise as a chunk of Planet Earth plopped into their rustic paradise.
But a louder clamor came from behind — the loud and unreserved voices of Americans, who had never learned — till now — any of the arts of prudence. How or when to be quiet. They came spilling out of the High School and other places of shelter, staring at the off-blue sky, the strangely too-yellow sun, the circle of gaudy forest and a range of snow-capped, serrated mountains that could be seen rising in the distance, far beyond the truncated athletic field.
“They sent us to some faraway planet!” Barry murmured. “They promised us a gift. Instead they punished us!”
“No.” Alex shook her head, pausing a moment, staring at the beautiful strangeness. When she next spoke, her voice was hoarse but clear. “They may be spiteful devils, who should fry over a spit, but you can call this a gift.”
When Mark grunted in agreement, Barry cast him a questioning look.
“A colony,” he explained, unable to utter more.
“C-colony?”
“Another world for humanity,” Alex summed up, “if we manage to survive.”
“A colony,” Mark said again, letting the word sink in, and realizing that — crazy as it sounded — it must be true.
“Of course, they might’ve told us!” Alex murmured bitterly
Mark nodded. No kidding.
Given six days warning, a nation and world could have organized any number of volunteers, sorted by skill and profession, outfitted with every tool, ready for any contingency. Just a little advance notice would have allowed humanity a chance to gather its brightest and best-trained adults, ready to create a sturdy and technologically prepared settlement. One equipped to study a new world, to come to terms with it, and to thrive.
But the Garubis didn’t give notice. Instead, those arrogant space-jerks, without warning, chose to transport —
He looked around at his companions-in-exile. A thousand California teenagers, a hundred or so teachers and townsfolk, some carnival workers, a bag lady or two, all of them wandering in a fog of confusion and disbelief.
It’s a gift. Chosen from that ‘list’ they mentioned, because some law or tradition required that they repay a debt they owed.
They had to give us something valuable …
… but they twisted the rules.
Na-Bistaka — that nasty — must have done this as a joke, certain that we’ll fail.
And we may fail. We may.
His jaw clenched hard.
But not if I have anything to say about it.
Mark turned to Alexandra, who looked very young and yet somehow steadier than any of the adults who could be seen right now, babbling in the street.
“We better hurry,” he said. “There’s a lot to do.”
* * *
He said the words, but it was Alexandra Behr who proved herself quick and resourceful, during those first crucial seconds on a new world. Mark still felt a bit dazzled by just how quick.
Their slab of Earth – torn out by advanced alien science-magic – must have popped into space just above the forest, because everyone felt a sense of falling several meters, maybe farther. The air still vibrated from the painful thud that followed, as the dazzling, force-field curtain evaporated … when Alex seemed to grasp their situation before anyone else.
Oh, sure, it was Mark who led a group of teens rushing toward the edge, to gaze out over the crushed and trembling red-green vegetation below. But while Mark only gawked at the strange forest, Alex shouted— “It’s spilling!”
She jabbed Mark and Barry Tang, shaking them out of dumb paralysis. “We gotta catch it!” Alex cried, pointing.
Streams of pale fluid poured from three closely-grouped pipes a few meters below the edge of the disk. Pungent liquid splattered across alien trees. Gasoline, Mark understood an eye-blink later, desperately trying to wake himself from shock.
Jonathan’s Shell Station once featured two double-islands of pumps. Now the tarmac ended where the second group belonged. Worse, this slice of Earth was too unstable to hold the station’s underground tanks — not intact. Depending on breaks and leaks, there might be an almost-full chamber… or perhaps not be any gasoline left except what was burbling out of these severed pipes. That made it as valuable as blood.
Alex was a junior like Mark, though she had yet to reach her sixteenth birthday. Still coltish—and she was a ball of fire. “Grab buckets, tubs, anything!” Alex jerked her thumb at the school. “You try the janitor’s room! I’ll look over here!” That last part was shouted over her shoulder as she charged toward the ruins of Drannen’s Hardware.
Barry and most of the others went running, so Mark stayed put, pretty sure that he knew what Alex was planning. He leaned out over the fifteen-foot cliff, glancing sideways at the street.
The water and sewer mains must have been cut, too. What else? he thought. There must be a natural gas line, and phone and fiber optic cables … Those didn’t seem urgent. But was there any way to cap the water main before it all ran out? How many places would need to be plugged all around the island? Man … look at all the underground crap we took for granted!
Mark paced away from the gas pipes toward the wide street, but he couldn’t see or hear anything spilling out from under the road. Maybe there’s already no water left except what’s in toilet tanks and water heaters … a few stretches of plumbing here and there …
Or maybe their island tilted slightly the other way. He couldn’t tell; the Disk was too big. But if so, the severed water mains would be emptying out on the far edge behind him.
There’s no time. Choose. You have to choose.
Mark hurried back to the crumbling edge and tested the surface, seeking a way down. A slip would be very bad. The crushed mat of vegetation might break a fall, but even if it wasn’t toxic on contact, he didn’t want to land on top of a giant Venus flytrap or an angry, alien snake-thing. Whatever they had on this planet
Asphalt broke off as chunks in his hands. Then the gravel pack beneath spilled away as Mark dug for purchase with his cross-trainers. Below that, fortunately, lay some good hard Mojave Desert earth, shot through with a mesh of hardy roots, great for handholds. The mulberry trees that had lined the Shell station weren’t native to southern California, like so much of the inappropriate landscaping that businesses and homeowners imported, but right now he was glad for those roots. Anyway, ‘native’ has taken a whole different meaning …
The smell of gasoline was strong as he descended. Probably a huge wave of it had splashed out of a cracked storage tank. Mark found the aroma weirdly invigorating, even if the fumes were dangerous. They made his head swim and he wondered if the air mixture might be flammable, even explosive. Still, it was a city smell, an Earth smell, fighting the weird, acidic stink of the jungle.
Almost there, he thought, using two iffy footholds and one of the thickest roots to hang on the short face of the cliff. The pipes were about a meter and a half below the tarmac and this slab of Twenty-Nine Palms only extended another three or four beneath the pipes, with piles of rubble and smashed red plants reaching halfway up in places.
If a ten-eyed purple lion with octopus arms jumped out of those bushes, Mark wouldn’t have much warning.
This was a bad idea, he thought, gritting his teeth.
Then Alex and Barry were back, standing above him with a few buckets. Other kids arrived with their arms full of paint trays that were nearly useless as containers. Best of all, Alex brought some rope. It snaked down to Mark, who used one hand to whip it into a simple support bowline. There was no time for anything fancy.
“Wait!” Alex called. “Got to tie off.” She ran to secure the other end, maybe to the remaining gas pumps.
Meanwhile, Barry grimaced down past Mark. “Let’s hope those other guys have better luck. Half the hardware store is gone, Mark, I mean just gone, like even part of a box of screws was just laying there cut in half. Cut perfectly in half, like a laser went through it, like we were all inside a laser.”
Barry babbled … though actually, he seemed better off than anyone might expect. Still, Mark was glad when Alex returned and shouldered the black-haired sophomore aside. “Bamford, are you stupid?” she yelled. “You should have waited till we could belay!”
A senior named Charlie Escobar got back with four plastic trashcans. “What are you guys doing?” Charlie shouted. “Hurry up! It’s barely a trickle already!”
“Do you want to try it?” Alex said.
“Jump, dude!” Charlie shouted. “Get on the ground and we’ll throw you the—”
“No! Just … give me a second,” Mark said. “Okay, now pass me some of those smaller cans. And get more rope to tie on to the other ones!”
“We can fit the cans in these shopping baskets,” Barry said. “We’ll use ’em to haul the cans up and down.”
“Go find more rope,” Alex said to Charlie. “Please.”
“Yeah. All right.” Charlie cast one more frown over the edge, then sprinted away, shouting. Mark tested the crude harness under his armpits, then called, “Belay on!”
“On belay,” Alex answered.
Mark never hesitated as he put his weight – maybe his life — into her hands. He got himself down alongside the pipes in an instant, dug his shoes into the rough face of dirt and leaned back, spreading his arms to catch a plastic trashcan from Barry.
It whacked him in the jaw.
“Ooof!” No problem. He fumbled and pushed it under the streaming gas.
The fluid came in belches as it squeezed out past bubbles of air. Luckily, the impact must have bent the three pipes upward and badly kinked two of them as well, slowing the flow of premium, mid-grade and regular.
Mark didn’t even try to keep the octanes separate. Just save as much as possible. He guessed he had four gallons before the small trashcan grew hard to handle. It was less than half full but he couldn’t hold more weight, hanging there on his toes. He hollered, “Okay, Barry. Haul away!”
They lowered a yellow plastic shopping basket on two lines. Mark tried to plunk the trashcan down into it, but he lost too much of his precious load when the basket swayed and he tottered out from the wall of dirt, hearing everyone shout.
They got better. Barry’s basket-elevator was smart stuff. The next bucket swap was more efficient.
Alex screamed at someone: “Get away you idiots!” And Mark glanced up to see her push at a pair – a man and a woman – who were laying on their bellies at the edge, trying to push a camera and microphone down at Mark! He ignored the fools and kept working, as Alex kicked at them, until they went away.
Soon it became like an assembly line. “Faster!” Mark yelled, trying to hold two buckets at once. The rich amber gasoline was barely dribbling now. We can siphon from cars, he thought. What else? The carnival trucks. There’s probably still some gas caught in those pumps, too, but that’ll be the only—
“Now you,” Barry said. “Mark? Now you!” Barry waved for him to climb, and Mark could hear Alex’s voice rising somewhere above him. The last bucket of gas had already gone up, but instead of climbing after it, Mark twisted around to look out at the eerie red-and-gold jungle.
Maybe it was fatigue, or dizziness from the fumes. Somehow he felt unnaturally calm, hanging there on a thread, halfway between Earth and another world.
Our world, he thought. Even if the aliens change their minds… or this is some kind of test… or rescue comes … or if someday we find a way back … Right now we have to act like this place is home now. Forever.
The truth of it felt massive. Terrifying. Mark was sore and tired. And he stank. Every scrape on his hands stung from the gasoline. A bruised elbow throbbed. Yet he felt good. He almost untied and hopped down, overcome by the temptation to be the first human being to actually touch this strange world. The impulse felt as real as his breath.
He was so close. He could actually make out veins in the leaves of a nearby tree, where photosynthesis must work differently than back home. He knew that much from biology class. Chlorophyll was green, so these plants must use something else …
“Get him up!” Alex was very loud now and Mark’s harness tightened uncomfortably. She was pulling. Then the line jerked. Other kids must have added their hands to the rope, too. Mark had no choice. He turned back to the wall of dirt and moved his legs, though they felt miles away, climb-walking upward to keep from being dragged over pipes and ragged asphalt.
Still, his head just wouldn’t let go of the temptation, ringing with mixed feelings of loss and distance and newness. He wanted to jump down!
Well, I guess that was one small step for a man, he thought, remembering old, x-tube immersions Dad had shown him of the Apollo XI moon landing.
Thinking of his father caused bright, lonely pangs of heartache. At the same time, Mark knew in his bones — Dad would be both proud and envious of him. Because this was an opportunity like no other. Heck, almost anything that a person did here today might turn out to be history in the making. If humans survived on this world and made a go of it, that is.
We’ll see, he thought as he reached the rim and felt the strong grip of his friends, hauling him the rest of the way, back onto the slab of Earth. We’ll see if it’s any kind of a leap for mankind.
* * *
The hours that followed were hectic. Nonstop, frantic work until …
… until suddenly there came a breather. A moment to climb up to the High School’s bell tower and have a good look around. To see what had been accomplished.
Not enough, he thought. We haven’t done nearly enough.
From atop the High School’s mission-style bell tower, Mark stared across Rimpau Avenue and the smoldering ruins of the Shell station, past a sudden, curving precipice to a sweeping vale of alien forest. Some miles beyond the red-and-lime jungle, there jutted a line of sheer, almost-glassy, purple cliffs, a high ridge of iridescent stone that slanted away toward serried ranges of serrated mountains.
In the opposite direction – which the Physics Club guys were now calling North – a rolling landscape, dotted with meadows, sank gradually into a far-off haze that might hint at a much larger shoreline, perhaps even a sea.
We’re not in California anymore, he thought.
All things considered, I’d rather be in Kansas.
From this height, there was no mistaking what had happened to the school and a few nearby city blocks. Perhaps that was why only a couple of dozen kids had come up here, yet, to feast on the full view. Most of the castaways – even those who were keeping busy at urgent tasks — kept gazing downward at familiar things, like a small patch of pavement, avoiding the truth while stumbling in a half-daze — or worse. Hours after a traumatic snatch, almost a hundred students were still cowering in dim classrooms with the blinds drawn. Not good prospects to recruit for lookout duty.
Fortunately, people came in all kinds. Some took the word “adaptable” even farther than Mark. Farther than sane, perhaps.
“Howzit, Bam?” asked the boy who had been keeping watch in the tower. He wore a wide-brimmed gray hat swiped from the janitor’s closet. Mark had insisted, since no one knew how fiercely this sun’s light would affect human skin, but Dave McCarty was clearly happy up here, soaking in the view.
“Zit happens,” Mark replied, with a shrug. “Any changes?”
Dave was into Harleys and thrash metal, but seemed perfectly okay with moving on to other interests.
“There’s nothing dangerous as far as I can tell. No more trees falling over. Oh, say! I spotted five different kinds of bird-things.” He opened his scroll-tablet by pulling apart the two rods, and the big screen showed Mark several blurry images of strange things fluttering or diving with four wings. Like large, feathered insects.
“I’m still deciding which of ’em to name after me.”
Mark smiled grimly. “Well, don’t drain your battery, It may take a while to rig something to run rechargers.”
Dave was clearly loving every minute of this, and couldn’t wait to make this planet his own. More power to him. That kind of personality might prove crazy, or crazy-useful, in the days ahead. Mark had closer, harsher concerns. For now, he only had attention for their tiny slice of Earth.
From fifty feet up, he could see just how much — how little — of their home town had been carved up and deposited unknown lightyears away from home — a disk less than four hundred meters across – or half a dozen football fields — and ten meters thick. Their island was just big enough to encompass most of the high school grounds, plus a few homes and small businesses, including two-thirds of the Food King.
Thank God for that last stroke of luck, he thought, walking around the top of the tower again. And let’s hope we’re making the best of it.
Dave sniffed and pulled back from him. “Dude, you absolutely reek like gasoline. Why don’t you take a shower or something before you blow up?”
Mark would like nothing better, yet he shook his head. This valley was covered in jungle — the trees and underbrush looked as thick as rain forest — but there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. They couldn’t be sure when or if there would be a storm. And what if the downpour wasn’t safe to drink? “Shouldn’t waste water,” Mark said.
“Water. Right. Bummer.” Dave nodded. “That was some fast thinking by you and Alex, by the way. Everybody’s talking about it.”
Mark nodded, accepting the compliment, but wondered. What did I really do when the noise stopped and everyone stood up … staring around ourselves at the Great Gift that the Garubis gave us? I tried to cope, I guess … Sometimes you don’t have a second to think. You just act.
Smoke wafted from the Food King parking lot, where a crowd of TNPHS kids tended several barbecue grills with price tags still flapping on the handles. Clumsily, and a bit dangerously, volunteers hacked away with butcher’s knives, cutting everything in the supermarket’s meat section, converting steaks, roasts, and whole chickens into thin strips. Others dipped the strips of meat into a salty marinade, then spread their work above smoldering charcoal.
It had taken Mark half an hour to show them how to turn raw meat into jerky that could be stored without refrigeration, at least till the castaways figured out what else there might be to eat around here. By the time others knew enough to take over the job, his exhausted, quivering arms had been covered in blood up to his elbows. But there wasn’t anyone else. TNPHS had no cooking staff, not since the school switched completely to franchise food twenty years ago. Only tomorrow there won’t be any delivery trucks to refill the cafeteria or the vending machines, he thought.
All of the supermarket’s perishables began to thaw when the electricity went out. At Barry’s suggestion, the very first meal served on this new world consisted of ice cream — as much as anybody wanted — not only to salvage the stuff before it melted, but also to give everyone a badly-needed boost. Even among the dozens of stunned teenagers who were in the worst shape, cringing in darkened rooms, praying for this calamity to go away, many seemed to rouse a bit when spoons were thrust into their hands along with a pint of Cherry Blitz or Webonanza, Beijing-Berry or Double Chocolate Chunk.
In Mark’s estimate, Barry deserved some kind of medal, especially as it grew evident how varied people could be. Some who you’d least expect turned out to be pragmatic, active types. Others faltered. The imposing Chief of Campus Security, Mr. Perez, wandered around, babbling in a soft, unnerving tone, alternately stroking his bear-like pot belly or the revolver at his hip. Meanwhile, an unlikely trio of sophomore girls, previously known only for useless giggling and gossip, took charge of preparing tonight’s first and final all-you-can-eat New World Burger Bash.
As for tomorrow—
Mark still felt a twinge, recalling the Food King’s freezer section. As much as possible had been crammed tight, in hope of hanging on to some of the chill. But gourmet dinners and ready-to-heat pizzas were already beginning to thaw. Cheesecakes and tater tots, frozen strawberries and cans of concentrated orange juice … No matter how many ingenious tricks they came up with, most of it would be on the verge of going bad by morning. Whenever morning came.
Among the resilient ones? About half of the science nerds. Those who had not given in to shock or panic seemed to share the very opposite reaction, plunging into a state of focus that seemed way-intense, showing the kind of teamwork they were accustomed to pouring into quiz contests and robot competitions. Just ninety minutes or so after the arrival, Mr. Davis and his physics geeks gave a preliminary report on this new planet. A simple pendulum experiment showed it had only nine-tenths the gravity of Earth, for example. Maybe that helped put a little spring into everyone’s step. But there was more. The too-yellow sun moved too-slowly across the sky.
We might as well dump all our clocks over the cliff-edge. And before the next long day, there was going to be an awfully long night.
Looking down, Mark saw again the pair of fools who had tried to shove a camera and microphone down at him, when he was dangling over the edge, salvaging gas. They were from Channel Six “Headwitness News: On The Spot News Leaders for San Bernardino County!” So read a logo emblazoned on their van, whose now-useless roof antennas jutted skyward. The woman reporter and her technician-cameraman must have rushed to the school as soon as the Garubis ship arrived overhead. A brave or dedicated move … and a stupid one. Now, trapped like everyone else.
Keeping busy is therapeutic for shock, Mark pondered hours later, watching them still scurrying about, poking their lenses at everyone who was busy. And who am I to judge what’s crazy.
Dave had been looking elsewhere with his binoculars while Mark surveyed activity below. At last, Mark turned and said, “You’re okay alone up here for a while longer?”
The gangly blond nodded. “It’s all good, dude. Real good. I’ve been naming the mountains, and that river. I got everything in here.” Dave held up the tubelike scroll-tablet, covered with stickers of guitars and band logos. “Think about it. Any names we lay down will stick for hundreds of years. Maybe forever!”
For Dave and a small minority like him, the gift of the Garubis was exactly that, something great and thrilling, a sudden immersion into a different world that just had to be better than his old life! Dave’s intoxication, the way he stared joyfully at the new shapes and colors, struck Mark as a little frantic, nor even entirely sane. But who was he to judge another guy’s way of coping? Mark’s own method was to keep busy – the reason he clambered all the way up here again. Looking for anything urgent they might have missed.
“Looks like they got the last of the booze,” Dave said, pointing the other way.
Mark saw a caravan of shopping carts now leaving the Food King. Pushed by several of the biggest faculty, the carts were heavily laden with bottles, cases, and kegs. In front strode the tall form of Principal Jeffers, stern and capable, his priorities clear. This was their third trip to ferry all of the prescription drugs and alcohol across Rimpau and up the school steps, into Jeffers’ locked office.
And so it went, a few clusters of activity organized by anyone with a plan and a loud enough voice, while others scooped dismally at tepid ice cream or just sat and stared. Or meandered aimlessly, lacking any will or focus.
“Why us?” they asked. Mark couldn’t walk more than thirty feet down there without hearing that complaint. “Why did the Garubis punish us? We’re just kids!”
Why ask me? As if I know?
But some of the kids seemed to think that he did. That he had to know something. Just because he had spoken once or twice with Na-Bistaka, the alien envoy, and … well … and maybe saved the unpleasant fellow’s life.
One small group struck Mark as so poignant that he felt a catch in his throat when he saw them using paints from the art room to make a big sign, drawing neat letters on the other side of a banner for the never-gonna-happen Desert Carnival dance.
PLEASE. WE’RE SORRY. TAKE US HOME.
He didn’t expect the appeal to do any good. Still, when they unfurled their work between two poles at the edge of the disk, turning to aim it this way and that, Mark felt his breath catch, for a full minute. As if half in expectation, or hope, that the petition might work. Because up until this very day, fairness really had been an element of daily life.
Oh, there was always bad or uneven luck, and not all injustice could be appealed, even in mellow California of the year 2028. But some of it — a lot of it — could be. Anyway, one rule of American teenage life was: hey, what does it hurt to ask?
When the plaintive artists finally gave up, leaving their entreaty on a patch of lawn, facing skyward, Mark noticed that nobody stepped on it or even let a shadow block it from the heavens.
Beyond twelve hundred or so students, the Rock’s population included a couple of dozen faculty, and about the same number of townspeople from stores and homes surrounding the school, or unlucky enough to be driving past when the dazzling curtain fell. Plus at least twenty carnival workers who had been erecting the Ferris Wheel, the Spinning Top, and several game booths on the football field. Mark had no great hopes for exceptional usefulness from those over twenty-one. Some of them, for sure – but far from all. If anything, the average teen seemed more resilient. At least the people who weren’t doing squat could see others hard at work, laboring to make the best of a crazy situation.
“What’s all that noise?” Mark shaded his eyes to peer toward the ruined car dealership.
“Oh, don’t sweat it,” Dave said. “That’s the defense patrol. Varsity jocks armed with shovels and crowbars, always getting spooked by something. Bunch of drama queens, if you ask me.”
“Right.” Mark made a mental note to see Scott Tepper and learn more. Did Scott expect this improvised militia to accomplish much against any real danger? Like if the Garubis came back and chose to mess up Earthling lives even more.
Still, watching them hurry about the perimeter in squads with makeshift spears, Mark decided he approved. Patrolling the ring-shaped border got the athletic boys — and several girls — involved in their survival, shouting hoarsely at each other as they struggled through the wreckage of buildings along the edge of the island, grabbing bits of salvage that might fall into the surrounding moat and forest. Anyway there was no telling what kind of wildlife might emerge from the jungle. Or maybe even native creatures on a higher level, clever and resentful of invaders from space.
One likely reason they were shouting? Because very few of the gadgets that Generation M considered their birthright were any good here. There was no cell tower on this tiny wafer of home, no Internet to tap, or TV or radio broadcasts. Sure, the best devices had already done a semi-intelligent sift-search and set up a basic, ad-hoc mesh. Maybe a quarter of their Q-phones, scrolls, wristies and eBees were smart enough to join the makeshift P-to-P network in creaky ways, like exchanging old-fashioned texts. The rest had become so much pretty junk. Good for snapping a picture, but little else.
A few kids had the latest thing—active-ink tattoo-phones, which they tapped and rubbed habitually, till each one gave a mournful ping and died. Rubbing the tat any more just raised an old-fashioned welt.
Someone tried launching a mini-drone, but it soon careened out of control. Probably because there’s no GPS signals and a different magnetic field. Most of our tech is dependent on shared systems that just don’t exist here.
A new kind of silence for the hypermedia generation, sinister and unreal. Mark figured he’d seen half the kids in school, even those who knew better, wasting time as they tried over and over to get a signal. To make a call.
Who knows how many thousands of hours of battery life we’ve lost already. Our few solar chargers could burn out from the strain. There’s got to be another way.
But he had more immediate priorities, like a growling emptiness in his belly. After all these hours scurrying about … I haven’t eaten a single bite. There was always so much to do. Only now he felt ravenous.
“Okay, Dave. Just don’t let any of your bird-things eat you,” Mark said, turning to head back down into the chaos and confusion.
Ice cream, he thought. I hope there’s still some.
* * *
“Don’t do that again,” Alex said as Mark wolfed down more Caramel Almond Fudge in front of the Food King.
“Um.” Mark felt queasy from so much sugar and fat hitting his system after a strenuous day, but he spooned up more. Better get calories.
Alex leaned over and rapped her knuckle on one of his, hard.
“Ow! Dang. What’d I do?”
“That business at the edge, starting descent over a loose surface without setting a belay. Don’t scare me like that again, Bamford.” Her brown eyes swept his face. So serious, it made her seem older –
Mark looked away first. Unconsciously or accidentally, his gaze happened across Helene Shockley, standing with Scott Tepper at the school steps.
Student body president and the varsity team quarterback, a natural at everything he does… and good-looking to boot. Of course he was named to the Emergency Committee, thrown together by Principal Jeffers. While Mark and his friends struggled to save fuel, salvage food and set up lookouts, others had been positioning themselves politically.
Helene, looking sultry and amazonic, like a candidate for Queen of the World, stood poised on the stairs with her chin up, firmly guarding access to Scott … as Mark had discovered minutes ago when he sought information about the Defense Patrol. Rumored reports told of rabbit- and pig-sized animals scurrying in the brush — native life was returning to the area. And lately, folks increasingly had to shoo away several kinds of flying bugs, large and slow, but persistent, with iridescent wings. They left a pungent pulp when you swatted them and some kids were developing rashes. Mark had wanted to ask – was there a policy about killing local life forms? And had anyone thought of getting samples to the biology lab?
But Helene’s protective exclusion zone was firm – reinforced with that dazzling-friendly smile. Sorry, but you only got to see Scott if you were on one of the committees sanctioned by Principal Jeffers.
Like the one building latrines – “poop decks” that stuck out over the edge of the Rock, so that waste went into the surrounding ravine – Mark wondered what the natives were making of that. It kept the shop guys busy, though, and showed that other folks were coming up with good ideas.
Or the committee working to inventory toilet paper and sanitary napkins. Or one that was acting on Alex’s idea – did they remember who suggested it? — sending volunteers around to seal and tape closed any toilets that still had water in a tank, so that some absent-minded student wouldn’t flush the precious fluid away. Barry Tang had joined the group scrounging solar chargers and getting them busy on the most essential items.
As for the vital Food Committee, none of its members had participated in the jerky-making ordeal – though they happily seized the resulting piles of dried meat and locked it all away in the Food King. Where they now roamed, scanning product codes and tabulating spreadsheets. Useful? Sure … if completely forgetful of the roles that Mark and Alex and the Rayner girls had played.
Well, Dad warned me — bureaucracy seldom rewards those who get stuff done.
Helene’s dazzling smile had been compensation – but only a little — for the sting of being turned away. Patronized. Ignored.
Don’t stare, he reminded himself and turned his gaze away from Helene, only to catch Alex watching him. She opened her mouth, closed it, then held out a mostly-empty half-gallon container of Vanilla Bean. Mark nodded, trading her. He didn’t need to ever see Caramel Almond Fudge again in his life. And I probably won’t.
“We’re buds, right?” Alex asked.
Mark felt an odd reluctance. We’re more than that. If I ever had a sister, I’d want it to be you. I’ll guard you with my life. You’ve already saved mine a couple of times.
But he didn’t know how to say any of that. Not aloud. So he bobbed his head.
“Buds don’t let buds be idiots,” Alex said as she rapped him again, much softer this time. And they both managed to laugh. Only then did she add, “You don’t have to kill yourself being a superstar just because you think this is all your fault, Bam.”
“What? I don’t …”
He stopped.
She’s right. It drives me. I do feel like I’m to blame for everyone being here. If I hadn’t brought in grown-ups – NASA and the Air Force and Cirocco and the others — to rescue Na-Bistaka, Colin would’ve taken the alien to L.A. and it probably would have quietly faded away there. A curiosity to be poked at, till it died. Thanks to me, the whole world got involved and saved Na-Bistaka, which is why the Garubis “rewarded” us like this.
Some reward.
Still, he shook his head. “That’s not it,” he lied.
“Well then, whatever the reason,” Alex said, and Mark thought he saw her glance at Helene … reading him like a book. “Be smart, okay?”
He nodded, but within, he knew a deeper problem.
Once everyone has a little time to work it out, what will they say? Or do to me?
Should I be thinking about what the heck to do if I’m not safe here?
There’s a whole world out there … beyond the Edge.
The thought was about ninety percent terrifying.
And another part … found the very notion alluring as heck.