Yes, hope can feel like poison.
Mark reflected on this while shambling through the breakfast queue. Last night’s meeting featured a lot of good news. Even the bat attack was handled far better, this time.
There were injured. At least a dozen—mostly couples who had taken to trysting out among the lawns and broken houses during boring old nightly meetings. Those who took the fewest precautions or were slow responding to the siren—trying first to put clothes on—were among those worst-injured. But no one died, and the emergency teams performed brilliantly. All-told, it should have been cause for satisfaction. Like the news about food and water.
And yet, the mood here on The Rock has never been worse.
The breakfast line moved in fits and starts, like a snake swallowing angry rodents, with clusters of friends shuffling along together—tight knots of grimy, exhausted teenagers, some of them chattering in low voices, others sullenly intent on ignoring the world. The long night only seemed to reinforce ongoing trends … toward resignation or despair.
His spirit lifted upon spotting Helene, supervising the doling out of rations in her role as Inventory Chief.
Well, hello gorgeous. I haven’t seen you in almost an hour.
Her warm smile lifted him. But when Helene made a subtle move toward the tureen, as if to increase Mark’s meager glop of rice gruel and half a cup of water, he shook his head. Nor was it just a matter of fairness. Every move I make is watched.
Mark couldn’t help grinning back at her, with perhaps a dash of smug satisfaction. Their night together—in one of the classrooms taken over by a dozen hetero couples—had been more than great, even under the strict “clothes-stay-on” rule that was meant to minimize pregnancies, even if it ruined underwear. A compromise with irresistible human nature that had only been confirmed by the bat victims.
The best part of it, though? Just sleeping side by side. Feeling her soft breath on his unmown cheek. Her arm across his chest. That is, until two hours before dawn, when an eighty pound Freshman rousted them for the first of the day’s endless string of meetings.
“I’ll see you at lunch?” Helene asked, deliberately loud enough for others to hear. And he nodded, maybe too-eagerly, before turning to carry his skimpy plate into the gym proper. Others witnessed this, of course. Some met Mark’s eyes with smiles, even admiration. Others glowered—members of the Tepper faction, or else holders of an older grudge. Several of these made a gesture—pretend kissing a pinky and thumb—which he had come to realize meant alien lover.
Yeah. I’m still the guy who saved Na-Bistaka’s life, leading indirectly to this interstellar exile. Also, defender of strange, clawed aliens on this world. And leader of the lake-pipeline teams … that hadn’t yet delivered any water. And upstart competitor in the political battles at Twenty-Nine Palms High.
As if I really wanted to be a politician.
And oh yes, the new boyfriend of Scott Tepper’s ex-girlfriend. But no, the only thing that ought to matter was getting the next task done. Delivering water.
The stench wasn’t any better this morning, as Mark took his plate across the gym to a new section of bleachers, much closer to the front, as Principal Jeffers had asked him to do, an hour ago.
“There’ll be some changes,” the educator assured Mark after a pre-dawn gathering of the Council broke up. “I’d like your people to be more visible, at the next meeting.”
Word must have got around, because there, on the upper left-front of the gym seats, was Alex, along with Dave and his pipeline gang, everyone from the lake expedition, most of the science nerds and X-Crew … and a surrounding throng that had grown in size, overnight. Students … and several teachers and townies … slid aside to let Mark through, with smiles and thumbs-up. Here, at least, there were no glowering looks or insulting gestures.
Which means all those folks are in their own zone.
He glanced past the dais, where Scott Tepper was in frowning conversation with the Principal and Mr. Castro. Pretty much the entire front area of the other grandstand was packed with … well … folks who wouldn’t want me around.
It seems that just when there’s some hope, we’ve never been more divided.
Alex had noticed the same thing. Who wouldn’t? Shifting aside to give him room, she gestured across the vaulted basketball court.
“Do you think Mr. Castro will give extra History credit for a report on this?”
“A report on … you mean the day our colony split into rigid factions?”
“Or political parties. Say, are we on the left or the right? How did they call that, back in the French Revolution? Was that facing the podium or facing the mob … I mean assembly?”
“Alex, please.” Mark rubbed his nose, between the eyelids. “I haven’t had a cup of coffee in eight days.”
“Hm. Well, can I assume you got plenty of sleep, last night?”
Mark didn’t need to look in order to know her smirk. He could only repeat.
“Please.”
If she had more teasing in mind, Alex had to stifle it. In the first of his promised changes, Principal Jeffers called the assembly to order himself, bypassing Scott Tepper.
✽✽✽
“Yesterday was … eventful and followed by a challenging night. I hope you all can feel some pride in how well almost everyone behaved. Amid some really good news, we also faced down a situation that could have been horribly tragic. Instead, none of the bat injuries were lethal … though some were near misses! A couple of bites and licks that grazed right next to arteries, in fact. I sure hope lessons were learned.”
He didn’t have to nod pointedly at a dozen or so students wearing bandages, who clearly would have preferred being anywhere else. This was their punishment for ignoring the rules. To serve as bad examples.
“And now I’ll hand the mic over to Scott, to start this morning’s business with an announcement.”
Tepper seemed unusually subdued, especially avoiding any glance at Helene, standing with her tablet on the far end of the dais. Still, he radiated a kind of irrepressible confidence.
“After last night’s attack there’ll be no more argument about striking back. And so, our first and foremost explorer, Gracie Donner will depart after breakfast, leading an expedition to seek out the batoid lair.”
The assembled students clapped dutifully at that news, even those nursing injuries. But the reaction turned into thunderous cheers and stomping on the bleacher slats, when Scott added that four members of the security detail, led by Colin Gornet, would go along—not only for protection, but to fight. They would carry jars of homemade napalm, aiming to burn the batoids’ lair to a crisp.
That notion—the Twenty Nine Palms football team defeating … incinerating … the batoid enemy—seemed to rouse those still nursing wounds from the first attack, also perhaps tapping some of their former teen spirit, way back when the top foes who students worried about were sports teams from Yucca Valley or Desert Mirage highs. Cheers of blood lust now seemed wholly justified. This wasn’t a match versus human rivals but against hideously murderous alien parasites. Even Zack Serpa and the carnies joined in a chant.
“Burn the bats! Burn the bats!”
Doc Hutnicki and her cluster of ‘bat-interrogators’ accepted more cheers with restrained nods. At one point, Scott even mentioned Barry Tang’s name, in passing, like an afterthought, but Barry didn’t seem to mind.
“I wish I didn’t have to go,” he said to Alex and Mark just outside the door, amid spreading dawn light, while the Morning Meeting continued behind them. “I was on the First Contact team! The alien is coming back around mid-afternoon. That was the agreement.”
“If that sign language exchange actually worked yesterday,” Alex teased. “Ms. Shaggy might think your arm-wavings invited her to go fly to the sun. Or to attend cheerleading practice.”
“And maybe Mister Hairy Big-Eyes will bring a spaceship when he comes back,” Dave McCarty interjected, always eager to incite. Mark rolled his eyes.
Great. The Pronoun Wars have followed us, from Earth.
“I figure when they return, Dave and Kristina and Jane and Harry Castro will handle the encounter with her-him-it-them just fine,” he reassured Barry. “On the other hand Gracie and the jocks could get lost out there, without you. This is what happens when you make yourself essential. So good luck and good hunting.”
“Yeah, be careful and stay safe,” Alex added, planting a kiss on Barry’s almost stubble-free cheek, which changed color as he blushed.
“I— we will.”
✽✽✽
Principal Jeffers was talking when they ducked back inside.
“Okay, thank you Scott and Helene, for announcing work-team assignments; we’re getting better at that.” But Jeffers wasn’t finished.
“Only now, before we embark on another hard day, I have to address a few important matters, starting with an issue that caused some concern and complaints. I had planned to raise it last night. The bat attack took priority, but it can’t be put off any longer. For a week we’ve been looking away from the biggest fissure in our community, here on New Mojave. But it can no longer be ignored, because of what happened the night before last.”
“While we were camping by the lake,” Alex whispered. And when Mark gave her a puzzled look, she only whispered three words. “You’ve been … distracted.” And it was his turn to blush.
“Tuesday evening,” Jeffers continued in his rich baritone, “while we here were chowing down on eighty grams of rationed spaghetti, some of you were bothered by … an aroma that came wafting across the athletic field. And no, I’m not talking about all you smelly adolescents!”
That brought a few low chuckles. But clearly everyone—except Mark, it seemed—knew what he meant.
“The carnies threw a barbeque!” came a shout from the far back of the bleachers. “They pig out on carnival supplies while we starve, and they stand in line for free grub here!”
Another voice called: “There were students there! I saw a bunch of girls, hanging with the carnies. What were they trading for those carbs?”
That brought hisses, though whether aimed at the girls in question or the speaker’s prudishness, Mark couldn’t tell.
“And I saw Colin Gornet there!” The denouncer finished.
The football captain stood up in the front row, peering to see who tattled.
“Who was sneaking around, spying after curfew?”
“It’s a curfew for you, too, Gornet!”
“Not while I’m out checking on the watch-guards! And my last patrol stop was the carnival RV. So what?”
“So what?” Now Mark could see the speaker was a townie—the former owner of Hamster Haven Pet Store. “So? What did you have to eat there?”
The big linebacker shrugged.
“I was raised not to turn down hospitality.”
“Yeah, and meanwhile, all my rats and mice and even the fish are experimental sacrifices, fed all kinds of alien—”
Scott Tepper stepped back to the podium.
“Yes, well, you’ll recall how Ms. Takka’s team reported great news last night. They’re narrowing in on likely foods! Why don’t we have Ms. Takka come up and her club can report this morning on how great the rodent survival rate was, after another long night. Soon we can begin human trials!”
He beckoned forward the young biology teacher. But if he expected that news to divert attention, Scott was rocked back by a round of boos.
“The carnies have been gorging while we’re on starvation rations!” cried a former cheerleader, who might have been expected to support Tepper. Another senior girl, next to her shouted.
“They run their generator for hours, each evening. Their biggest RV has air conditioning.”
Mark glanced at Alex, who shared a look of amazement. With possible solutions to the water and food shortages on the horizon, this was what people wanted to scream about?
It’s about perceptions of fairness. I once saw a nature show, where chimpanzees were offered different numbers of raisins. A chimp who got twice as many as most would scream if one other got four times as much.
I’m feeling kind of chimp-ish right now.
Jeffers raised his hands.
“I’ve invited Zach Serpa to explain this. Zach?”
The Principal’s tone was friendly enough, but Serpa scowled as he approached from a side entrance, behind the bleachers. He had three big, denim clad men with him. One of them leaned slightly on a cane, but it would make a wicked cudgel. Mark knew there were likely other items under their bulky leather jackets.
Serpa smiled, nodding left and right until the chamber went quiet. Then he spread his arms in a wide, friendly gesture.
“Fuck you all.”
A dozen students shot to their feet, fists balled. The Channel Six reporter hurried over, eager to capture the drama, while her technician got his camera right up into the faces of the angry students, whose numbers grew with each passing second, till Jeffers used hand gestures, getting them to sit. All the while, Serpa grinned.
“Those Garubis aliens had some reason to take this school to another planet. Sure, you’re victims … most of you … but at least there was some alien reason for it. Maybe a colony for humanity.” He snorted. “But not for us. We were taken up by mistake. We’re not part of whatever revenge or reward those E.T. monsters felt they owed all of you.
“You don’t have any right to our stuff.”
Then the carnie leader did something that just had to have been calculated. Turning to the student body president, he said—“Ain’t that right, Tepper?”
Boos and hisses erupted, all over the gymnasium. Serpa and his men radiated confident contempt, though. And Mark wasn’t sure it was unwarranted.
Many of them are probably ex-military. Or else spent time in gangs, or maybe prison. He recognized something wary and tough about the way they walked, the way they stood. A man who’s fought—maybe killed—whether at war or in the streets, has an initial advantage over unblooded youths.
“This is stupid,” Alex commented.
“Of course it is,” he murmured, not having to state the obvious. We outnumber a couple of dozen carnies, fifty to one. Anyway, we’re not all unblooded youths.
As if to make Mark’s point, another cluster formed some distance from Serpa’s men. The heavyset campus security guard Mr. Perez. Coach Lavallee, hard as nails, despite his prosthetic leg. The former Navy medic Ms. O’Brien … and Chuck Hewman, without his handy rifle, but relaxed and giving fresh meaning to “confident.” Oh, and right by Chuck’s side, standing in for students, stood his diminutive apprentice, little Leo Kelly, with his chest puffed-out in defiance. And Mark could swear it was Leo’s fierce expression that rocked back one of the carnies, who tugged Serpa’s sleeve, calling a conference.
After a few tense moments, when the leader of the carnival crew turned back around, his grin was still there, but different in quality and grimness.
“Yeah, yeah. What is it about this planet that kills any sense of humor? I was joking!”
“All except the fuck-you part. That stands.”
Jeffers stepped toward him, now with Helene Shockley by his side, tablet in hand. Mark tensed, seeing her between those angry groups. Alex’s fingernails bit his thigh. Easy boy. Let her do her own brave thing.
“So you’ll accept inventory?” the principal asked. The news crew was right there, cameras trained on both Serpa and Jeffers, to the obvious annoyance of both.
Serpa shrugged. “Sure. Send your cutie accountants over to count our beans and beers.” And he ogled patronizingly at Helene. Mark felt pride that she met the leer with steely calm.
“And essentials go into a storehouse, for rationing?” she demanded.
Two of the denim-clad men growled, but Serpa cut them off.
“We’ll negotiate what that word means. ‘Essentials.’ We’re keeping our personal stuff! But yeah, take the food n’ drinks and we’ll stand in line for gruel, like everybody else. In fact, we knew this was coming. That’s why we had a barbeque!”
More boos and catcalls. Though Mark also recognized the appeal to teenager logic. If the grownups are about to catch you red-handed and you’re about to be grounded, then hell, guzzle what you’ve got.
Mark wasn’t happy when Helene and her inventory team left with the carnies, though Chuck and Mr. Perez went along, so she ought to be okay. Leaving the gymnasium, Serpa snarled and took a swipe at the Channel Six cameraman, who barely dodged aside in time.
The news crew hurried back as Principal Jeffers moved on to another topic.
“There’s also been a lot of complaints—justified, I think—about other favored groups who haven’t had to do hard physical labor. I hope you have all noticed that every teacher and school administrator has put in many hours swinging axes or digging with shovels … though I confess that I keep getting called away to settle this matter or another. Well, this policy of everyone pitching in has got to be reinforced. With just one exception—Ms. Takka and Ms. O’Brien and the biology kids. They have vital work indoors that can’t be interrupted. Oh, and those who are on the sick or injured list.
“Everyone else will spend at least half a day, six hours, no matter what their other jobs are, laboring for the good of all. And I know one perfect place we’re going to start.” The Principal paused for dramatic effect, looking into the TV crew’s camera lens.
On the scoreboard screen, overhead, he seemed to be looking at every person present. And he said “You.”
But Mark suddenly realized, Jeffers wasn’t addressing anyone in the audience at all! No, he means—
“I mean you. Yes, you the Channel Six ‘Head-Witness News’ team. Yes, put that damn thing down and listen to me!”
He stared hard until the technician lowered his camera, and then at the reporter, till she removed her headset. The scoreboard screen showed an image of her feet.
Mark saw the technician stare daggers at Jeffers for a moment, but then the reporter put her hand on the cameraman's arm and muttered something in his ear. This seemed to calm him down.
“Whoa,” Alex whispered to Mark. “I seriously thought that guy was going to walk up on stage and slug Jeffers right in the face!”
But the principal wasn’t finished. “For a week the pair of you have been scampering about, getting into everyone’s faces, into our way, justifying it as ‘recording history in the making.’ And sure, there’s a point to that. In fact, I’ve encouraged everyone to keep a diary on your phones! Though you should use text, not video, to save memory.” Then he shook his head. “But the excuse for you two is just getting lame. You can find time for ‘history’ during the long nights, and during meetings like this. Or keep your damn headset on, and record what it’s like to swing an axe for a few hours!”
The gymnasium erupted in cheers that became thunderous as a thousand pairs of feet thumped hard on wooden slats.
Okay now, that was popular, Mark noted, as Jeffers raised his arms to bring silence again. He nodded at the TV people and they resumed aiming their devices, backing away and to the side. The Principal’s face loomed overhead, again.
“I’ve also had reports of storehouse guards pilfering supplies—drinks and energy bars and even beers—to either consume or trade for favors. So, I’m taking action. We’re going to shuffle assignments, to make sure there are watchers on the watchmen.”
Jeffers glanced up and to his right—where Mark sat with his friends. Forewarned, he nodded back. So much for making peace with Scott Tepper. I’m supposed to appoint some of those ‘watchers.’ As if things weren’t bad enough, with Scott’s former lover joining the other side.
Jeffers turned to Tepper, whose expression was less controlled—more clearly unhappy—than Mark had ever seen.
“You’ve done a great job organizing the committees, Scott! And I want you to keep doing it. But something you said a few days ago struck me as true … about our situation being like a ship, adrift at sea, with rocks and storms and sharks all around. This is no time for politics. And it’s time I took a stronger hand.
“Sure, I know what some of you are thinking. Being a high school principal may not prepare me to lead a human colony on an alien world. Pretty soon, we’ll need elected leadership. A Constitution! We will have democracy on New Mojave, after we reach sheltered waters. When we have food and water and survival isn’t at stake, any day and hour. In fact, let’s talk about a constitution every night, after each Big Meeting!
“But for now, we’ve wasted way too much time and energy on factions, jockeying for position—a problem that looks likely to get worse. And so …” the principal took a deep breath. “I’m going to ask you all to back me up, to run things the way a captain must run a ship. Give me a month—or till the worst of the emergency is over—then we can revisit things. Will you give me your blessing on this? Your vote of confidence?”
He didn’t really have to ask, Mark noted, as he stood and joined the clear majority, giving approval by voice and applause. Not to be seen dissenting, Scott Tepper clapped as well. Soon, all of his people had risen to join the ovation.
Mark saw one figure who kept his arms crossed. Harry Castro, the history teacher, leaning against a far wall mostly out of view, next to one of the fire exists.
And the expression on his face spoke volumes. Not so much disapproval, as resignation. As if he had—on the pages of books and in his own lifetime—seen it all before.