Colony high, p.3
Colony High, page 3
Small wonder that first contact with some kind of alien race was the stuff of so many vids and modern legends, occupying a place in modern hearts that used to be devoted to mythological beasts and exotic foreign princesses.
But really, how likely was it for some star-visitor to show up right now? Science had never found a single trace of intelligent life. No radio messages from the stars, nor any verifiable evidence of visits to Earth, not even in the planet’s deep past.
None of this made sense.
Why here? Why now?
“So you took this… entity to your basement,” Alex summarized, her voice low and disbelieving.
“After burying the capsule and covering our tracks.” Tom Spencer nodded. “My rec room seemed best, since my parents never come down there. Boy, was that an all-nighter! But by morning Chloe had our xeno guest surrounded with a kick-ass audio-visual translation system. We tried every language you can download from the Web.”
“How’d that go?” Barry asked eagerly.
“Not so good. So we backtracked and started over with permutation math. You know, universal stuff that any technological species oughta know. There are even some programmed scenarios, pre-worked out by amateur SETI clubs —”
SETI, Mark translated. Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. Yeah, it fit.
“And?” Barry was barely touching his seat, bouncing from excitement.
“And? Well, things got pretty frustrating! None of the stuff we downloaded seemed to work. None of the math or geometry or symbol stuff. Or web picture shows. For one thing, we had trouble getting Xeno’s attention. He wasn’t in great shape. Jorge offered all kinds of food. Thank God n’ dog he took a sudden liking to marrow.”
“Marrow?”
“The stuff inside bones, that makes red blood cells and —”
“We know what marrow is,” Mark snapped. He was starting to get angry. And he realized something else.
I’ve been driving without thinking …
… toward Colin Gornet’s house.
It was in the best neighborhood of Twenty-Nine Palms — sometimes called “New Palm Springs” — where spacious homes sprawled amid heaps of non-native greenery … lush plants and trees that drank water by the acre-foot. Mark knew the place with a nagging sense of personal hurt. Shortly after he transferred to TNPHS, someone ambiguously invited him to drop by one of Gornet’s parties, where kids at the top rung would be hanging out. Swallowing the bait, he showed up only to be turned away at the door amid raucous laughter from those inside.
Sure, he should have seen the sucker-draw miles away. My own damn fault if it hurt.
Anyway, never mind all that. What bothered Mark right now was a sense of consistency to this story. If Gornet and his pals really had taken something — or somebody — from the math nerds, it would be completely in character. Still, Mark felt little sympathy for Tom Spencer.
“Why?” he asked. “Why keep a space alien in your basement?”
Tom answered with a tone of stretched patience, as if Mark’s question were completely moronic.
“Because I’m the only one who has a basement. It’s roomier than Gavin’s shed and warmer at night. Didn’t I just say that my folks never go down there —”
A frustrated gurgle filled Mark’s throat. With a glance his way, Alex took over.
“No, Tom. The question is — why didn’t you call somebody? NASA. The Air Force. State Department. The press?”
Tom blinked, as if unsure he could be hearing her right. As if the question made no sense at all.
“But … but … he’s ours!”
For a slender youth, Tom’s jaw set with grim determination.
“He’s ours, and we’re gonna keep him.”
Once Tom got started, there were plenty of rationalizations.
“We hid Xeno in order to save his life! Those government guys would only dissect him the minute they got their hands on him.”
Sure, Mark thought sarcastically as he swung into Bryer Estates. Cut up a star-alien. You’ll learn lots that way. More than, say, by asking questions. But Tom wasn’t finished.
“Those guys would just take him to some secret underground lab and hide him forever!”
Again, Mark shook his head silently.
Maybe. But to study an alien technology you’d need hundreds of skilled people — maybe thousands — the very best, with open minds. The kind of top professionals who question assumptions and resent needless secrecy.
What’s to stop any of them from leaking proof of a coverup? Fear? When they’d become big whistle-blower media stars?
It was always the same with all UFO or “Roswell” type cult stories. They invariably assumed that the very brightest members of a free society were all drones or fools or tools.
Mark envisioned someone trying to cram Dad into a category like that. Yeah, right. He always told me that the most effective, best-disciplined soldiers are those who understand the reasons. Blind obedience is for machines.
“The government would have to keep this kind of thing hidden from the public,” went Tom’s next rationalization, one he must have rehearsed among his friends. “The potential for mass hysteria is unimaginable!”
Now he’s quoting from some movie, Mark thought.
Funny how everybody is always sure that their own in-group can handle disturbing news, but that people in general would riot or go mad.
Sure, I’m kind of shocked — but I also feel … focused. Either this is a great big hoax, designed to make the whole town look stupid, or —
— or else our entire world may be changing.
Either way, it kind of gets your attention.
At last, the long chain of clichéd excuses started fizzling out. By the time they parked, a few dozen yards downhill from the stately Gornet home, Tom Spencer was fizzing with schemes to win back what had been taken from him. For starters, he wanted Alex and Barry to contact the other Junior Engineers.
“We mathists should’ve included you guys from the start,” he confessed. “With all those gladiator robots you techies keep building, it should be a cinch to break into Gornet’s place. Then pow!” He punched the air. “But first we gotta reconnoiter.”
“Gotta what?”
“Check the grounds, figure a way in. Chloe has some great night vision equipment. Let’s head over to her place and … hey! Where are you going?”
Mark stepped out of the Jeep, closing his door softly behind him.
“We’re going to reconnoiter, like you said,” Alex replied with a wry smile, following Mark’s example as Tom sputtered and started to protest. Barry grabbed the Spencer boy’s shoulder and he lapsed into silence, trailing nervously a few paces behind.
The pavement felt strangely gritty under Mark’s feet. Pebbles scraped louder, more vividly than normal, like the hissing sprinklers on a nearby lawn. Mark recognized the sensation. Adrenaline rush. The senses can heighten astoundingly when your comfortable routine has been shattered, replaced by daunting flickers of a new — and possibly hazardous — unknown.
He wondered. Did people feel this way all the time in olden-tribal days, back when the surrounding night held fearsome mysteries, anything from hungry tigers to angry gods? This level of heightened awareness could be dreadful … or exhilarating, an ultimate high. No wonder so many kids were drawn to taking risks. A more natural and thrilling high than any drug.
And yet, most of these high schoolers don’t know a thing about real danger, he thought as he led their foursome along the shadowed rim of a long, sweeping driveway. Most people learn about trouble from movies.
Mark had some first-hand experience with the real thing. Like that time in Bolivia, when his father’s training unit wasn’t supposed to bring dependents into a territory known for kidnappings and militia-style killings. But Mom had just passed away and Dad didn’t want to leave a grieving boy behind with aunts and uncles. So he swung a student exchange program for Mark in La Paz. Safe enough, it seemed. That is, till Mark and a local kid took that impulsive drive into the mountains, and everything suddenly got intense ….
The Gornet house was a rambling thing built during the recent land boom, when Cirocco Labs set up shop nearby, transforming Twenty-Nine Palms from a sleepy little garrison village into an ultra-tech center for national defense research. The house was made up of several structures linked by fancy, glassed-in walkways — great for formal entertaining. And for keeping bothersome teenagers out of the way around back, where a large guest cabaña stood next to the blue ripple of a huge swimming pool. Mark quickly spotted other kids from TNPHS hanging about, small clusters of seniors and juniors mostly, talking in hushed, excited tones. Cigarette embers flared, here and there, like rebellious fireflies.
Mark recalled the last time he came to this place. There had been loud music and a lot less tension in the air. Still, he felt wary. Could this be another trap? A hoax, designed to draw in whole groups of suckers at a time, like an assembly line? An impressive stunt could make your senior class a legend, recalled with envy by generation after generation of students at Twenty-Nine Palms High.
He glanced suspiciously at Tom Spencer, who might be playing a pivotal role, lending credibility to the spoof. The fifteen-year old honors student licked his lips nervously. His earlier look of combative determination was giving way to anxiety.
Could he be acting?
Maybe. If it was Drama Club instead of Math Club. But I’d bet my chances of ever getting a sports car that he’s genuinely scared right now. And pissed-off over losing something precious.
An honest-to-gosh alien? Maybe not. Probably not. But something.
Mark and Alex led the two younger boys past several of the small groups. Eyes flitted and scanned, some of them wearing the new overlay goggles – the kind that could scan your face and seek info about you from the web, supplying your name to the wearer, plus anything else he wanted to know about you. Some of the most recent models could even detect chemicals – like what you had eaten – or read your pulse and blood pressure…
… but no one spoke or stepped in front of the four of them, offering a challenge. Not so far.
They approached within spitting distance of the cabaña before two large figures emerged from a heavily curtained doorway. One of them thrust out a burly arm.
“Close enough. You brats got cash? There’s a cover.”
“A c-cover?” Barry asked. “How much?”
“A hundred just to go in. Twenty a minute for a closer look.”
Ouch! Mark thought. He had just the price of one admission in the envelope Dad left behind. So it is a scam, after all. Whether the story’s true or not.
“What?” Tom Spencer stepped forward angrily, briefly forgetting his fear. “I let five of you in at once, for just fifty!”
The taller figure — Mark recognized one of the school running backs — shrugged with indifference. “We’ve got expenses. It costs a lot to keep a specimen like this. Call it a contribution for upkeep.”
“Specimen?” Tom squeaked. “He’s an intelligent life form! You’re not only thieves. You’ll be murderers if you keep this up. You don’t have any idea what you’re doing!”
Another form stepped out of the dimly-lit guest house. This time, Mark recognized Colin Gornet, dressed in khakis and a black turtleneck. He felt Tom Spencer go suddenly iron-tense … only to jolt back in surprise at Gornet’s mild, offhand tone.
“Hey Spencer. I’m glad you came. Sorry things got a little rough at your house. But you were being stupid and we had to act fast. Anyway, we need to talk, you and me. Right now.”
Gornet barely glanced at Mark, Alex and Barry. “Your friends can go right in, to make sure the xeno-thing is all right.”
He assumes we’re members of Tom’s bunch, Mark realized, unsure whether to feel glad … or insulted over being mistaken for one of the Math Club domes.
Stunned by Gornet’s sudden cordiality, Tom stared up blankly as a beefy hand took his arm, leading him over to the pool. Soon he was nodding as the big senior spoke, motioning repeatedly toward the guest house.
“Come on.” Barry tugged at Mark and Alex. “Before they change their minds!”
The door guardians scowled at the idea of giving out freebies. “Don’t throw anything or raise your voices,” one of them warned, holding back a thick curtain for Mark and the others to enter. “And the next guy who pokes it with a stick is gonna be sorry.”
Mark’s eyes took some time adjusting to the dim light inside, made even more difficult by a single pinpoint, glaring from one corner of the room. The source, a small but intense spotlight, shone outward from a large cage — the sort made for big dogs in a kennel.
Moving closer, he sniffed fresh redwood shavings … then a musty, wet smell of uncooked meat … and finally something else. An aroma unlike anything he ever encountered in his travels.
The cage had some furnishings. Two television sets flickered with the sound turned down low, one of them showing a children’s cartoon program while the other featured some kind of stock car demolition derby. Paper and crayons lay untouched on a low table. Mark noticed what looked like the remains of an old-fashioned tablet computer, ripped into several pieces.
Alex nudged him toward the opposite end of the enclosure. Mark had to force his reluctant body, head and gaze to turn.
A shape stirred there, about the size of a ten year-old child — or maybe a chimpanzee. There was something hunched-over about its posture. Clutching a shrouding blanket like a monk’s hood, it moved from the far corner as Mark squinted. The figure slowly reached out to take something from a greasy platter. Droplets of dark, dense moisture fell audibly.
Till that moment, part of Mark had nursed the fading hope that it would all turn out to be a hoax after all, a truly first-rate gotcha, so clever that you’d tell your kids about it someday, proud even to be one of the dumb suckers who fell for it.
Meanwhile, another part yearned for everything to be true! Something both dazzling and different to shake up this dreary suburban life. A thrill of recognition and affinity with the strange. He had felt it before, in other lands, finding things in common with people who spoke exotic tongues in far corners of the globe.
One or the other. A grand hoax or a startling new connection. Either would be fine.
But then Mark watched that limb extend, grabbing a hunk of raw meat, and he knew.
It’s got two elbows on each arm. Just one joint on each finger.
And that’s not like any skin I ever saw.
And there’s nobody this side of Hollywood who could fake moves like that.
A big, dripping rib-eye steak lifted from the platter and vanished under the blanket. There were crunching sounds …
… then a gobbet of chewed-up meat and bone hurtled toward a nearby bucket, already brimming with bloody detritus.
“Yikes,” Alex said.
“It — it can’t be real,” Barry stammered, though he had been the most enthusiastic up till that very moment. Instead of standing in front, he slipped back, a little behind Mark and Alex.
Then the makeshift hood slipped back. From under the blanket emerged a tapered snout, tinged red. It moved in a side-to-side chewing motion that Mark could not remember ever seeing on Animal Planet. The skull was very wide and flat on top. Two forward-facing eyes bulged from either side of the extended jaw. They glittered in the spotlight, with a golden quality that Mark didn’t find either warm or cheering.
A faint chuttering sound emerged. Strange and unhappy. Or at least, that was how it felt. Then a greasy hand stretched toward them. A multi-digited hand extended, pointing.
It could be asking for help, Mark speculated. Or saying ‘I’ll remember your faces.’
Or that could be a polite gesture where he comes from, meaning ‘thanks for all the yummy steaks.’
Or else, he thought, watching the finger twitch at each of them in turn, maybe that sound is its way of saying ‘Bang, bang!’
Mark tried to quash feelings of revulsion that welled from the pit of his stomach. According to the movies, aliens came in five varieties, monstrous, sexy, silly, god-like or adorable … or some combination of those clearcut traits. They were supposed to rouse simple emotions — attraction, pity, giggles, awe or dread.
Off-hand, he couldn’t recall portrayals of anything like this — so ambiguously weird, so pathetic, yet intimidating at the same time …
… but also kind of gross.
That was what finally convinced him it couldn’t be a ruse. Nobody would try so hard to fake a creature that filled you with confusion. The old clichés — even terror — were more comforting and credible.
Everybody has a coping mechanism. Alex seemed to take refuge in dispassionate scrutiny.
“Binocular vision,” she mused. “Very widely spaced hunters’ eyes. I’d guess nocturnal predator ancestors … those jaws …”
It was the sort of thing Mark might have expected Barry Tang to say. But under stress, it was all Barry could manage just to stammer.
“I can’t decide … w-whether to laugh or hurl.”
Mark nodded, agreeing.
Just don’t do both at the same time.
“All right, that’s enough,” growled a voice behind them. “You can see he’s doing just fine. Now you nerds get out.”
Mark and Alex had to drag at Barry till his gaze broke from the creature in the cage. “Wait,” he babbled. “There’s got to be … some kind of explanation ….”
And he was right. An explanation of a sort awaited them outside, where a suddenly eager Tom Spencer could be seen shaking Colin Gornet’s hand. As Gornet turned to stride toward the big house, Tom actually beamed.
“It’s all settled!” he told Barry, nodding also to Alex and Mark. “It turns out this was all for the best.”
