Pamela f service, p.1
Pamela F Service, page 1
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VL 7 & up RLI: IL 7 & up
A Fawcett Juniper Book Published by Ballantine Books Copyright © 1990 by Pamela F. Service
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 89-28025 ISBN 0-449-70404-1
This edition published by arrangement with Atheneum, an Imprint of Macmillan Publishing Company
Manufactured in the United States of America
First Ballantine Books Edition: December 1991
Some of this is for Karen, and some for Gayle
prologue
A THRILL OF FEAR AND EXCITEMENT TINGLED THROUGH THE
boy as he took up his station on the high redwood deck. Dutifully he surveyed the houses and lawns below as evening settled over the comfortable suburban neighborhood. Mothers had already called the younger children in, but several older ones still scrambled after a soccer ball in the deepening twilight.
The boy watched them, feeling deliciously superior. Those kids were playing games, but he was carrying out an important mission. He was standing watch, being sentinel for the secret meeting.
This was the first Resisters meeting he'd been taken to, and he was proud that his parents trusted him so much. Of course, the other adults hadn't wanted him in on the actual meeting where they planned things—the strikes, the attacks, the clandestine radio broadcasts, the pamphlet writing, and the rest. But it was important for someone to keep guard as well. Strangers might approach the house or start watching it, or a Tsorian ground car might cruise by. And of course, it was important that he watch the sky.
Nervously he looked up. The pale evening blue was darkening, and a few stars were beginning to appear—like
newly awakened eyes. He shuddered. Somehow when the stars were out, it did feel as if they were watching. After all, that was where they came from. The Tsorians, the conquerors of Earth. The enemy. Daringly he whispered the word aloud and felt a new thrill of defiance.
The enemy, yes, but they wouldn't win, they wouldn't be here long. Even after nine years, resistance hadn't crumbled. All over the planet there were Resister groups like this one. And someday their disruption, their sabotage, and their full-scale rebellion would work. The Tsorians would give up. They'd leave and let humans run their own world.
Again he scanned the neighborhood. The soccer game had dwindled down to two persistent players and one yappy dog. In the house opposite, a bedroom was lit up, and he could see a kid sprawled on the floor assembling a model. In another house, the fish-tank glow in the front room silhouetted a family watching TV.
Otherwise, though, there weren't many lights. The subdivision didn't even have streetlights. Good thing too, he thought, since it would probably foul up his night vision.
Again he scanned the sky. More stars now. He wondered how the old Greeks had come up with those crazy ideas for constellations. What patterns he did see didn't look anything like theirs. But then, they had probably spent a lot of time looking at the stars. They weren't afraid of them the way people were now.
A pity really, because those stars were rather pretty when you had to spend tune looking at them like this. Some were set together like jewels, and some were big and on their own. They were different colors too. That one was almost red, and some of the others were sort of gold. And there was a blue one.
Several, Blue. No!
He jumped from his chair in panic, staring at the growing blue lights. Then he jammed a hand down on the intercom. "Tsorians!" he yelled. "Blue ships!
They're coming this way!"
The tinny voice on the other end was his father's. "Got you, Ricky. We're ditching. Get away from this house-fast!"
One more glance at the three blue lights, clearly closer now, and he dove through the door. As he pelted down the stairs, he heard slamming doors and yelling voices from the basement.
In moments he was outside. Like panicky bugs, Resis-ters were racing for their cars. The soccer players stopped their game and looked upward. Then, yelling, they began running for their homes. The squealing thrum of the ships already tainted the air.
He heard his parents calling him and began racing for their car. On both sides of the street doors opened and people stumbled out, looking up. Three glowing blue triangles were hovering above them. Screaming, people grabbed up little children and began running down the street, barely dodging the first fleeing cars.
He redoubled his speed, wishing his own car weren't so far down the street.
Overhead, one of the triangles veered away, dropped, and flew low over the street. Blue energy shot from it. In an instant, the house they'd just left was engulfed in flame.
The air throbbed with it. Everywhere on streets and lawns, people, dogs, and cars fled in panic. Mouths were open, yet he could hear nothing but the ships and the flames.
His parents ahead of him. The car door open. Twisting, he looked back. The ship had turned and was making
another run. Pulses of energy swept down the street, engulfing house after house.
The last thought Ricky Jensen had before the blue heat reached him was, "It isn't fair! The enemy shouldn't win."
one
THE PLANET HAD CIRCLED ITS SUN ONCE SINCE THE BOY'S
death, but Aryl had been on this world's surface less than half of that time and knew nothing about it. Already she considered her stay far too long.
Standing now at the balustrade of the Headquarters plaza, she gazed out over the ocean. She frowned. It was wrong. The colors were wrong, the smell was wrong. Everything was wrong.
An ocean should be green, and so should the sky. And behind that sky, stars should stretch in a glittering curtain, close-packed and bright in their friendly familiar patterns. When this world turned from its sun, the sky was cold and dark with great stretches of emptiness between its stars. And those stars were ah1 in the wrong patterns.
An orange disk sailed into her sight before curving back toward eager, outstretched hands. Turning, she stared at the native children laughing and playing at one side of the plaza. Suddenly her homesickness doubled. She was about the same chronological age as those children. Yet she was Tsorian. Last year she had gone through First Passage. The end of childhood. The end of playing and schooling and irresponsibility. She was bonded.
Sighing, she turned back to the alien sea. The sharp breeze battered her with its odd tangy smell and billowed the hair around her dark face into a pale gray cloud. Not that she could regret this change. It was the pattern of life.
And her bonding was not an average one, because her parent was not an average Tsorian adult. She felt a comforting surge of pride. He was Rogav Jy, Commander of the Ninth Fleet of the Tsorian Empire. He was her father.
Below, the waves boomed and foamed over dark, green-splotched rocks. Their
sound dulled the discordant strains of the wailing alien music. But at last Aryl turned from them and scanned the large mixed crowd, presumably enjoying the annual party that the Tsorian Occupation Headquarters threw for the native staff and their families. She picked out her father immediately. It wasn't difficult; his black body-suit and deep maroon complexion were the same as the other Tsorians', but his black cape was the only one showing a green lining, the color of command rank. The only one besides her own, of course, since as his bond-child she automatically shared his rank.
He was talking now with a native female, one with outrageous red-brown hair.
Aryl tensed. Her bonding with her father was very close. She loved and respected him, and now bonded to him, she would complete her preparation for adulthood, for rank and career, under his training. She'd share all his activities and learn all that he assigned her to learn. But one thing that he expected her to learn still seemed highly distasteful—this mingling with natives and learning their ways.
Rogav Jy had an Empire-wide reputation for that sort of thing. They said it was something that helped make him a great commander, being able to understand aliens— friends, foes, or neutrals. But Aryl was only one year away 6
from her sheltered nursery world. Aliens made her very uncomfortable, this batch particularly.
Just look at that female, she thought. Proper hair isn't red. It's black or white or a shade of grey; possibly ash gray like her own or a dark steel gray like her father's. But these people had an undisciplined riot of shades for hair, and for skin as well. Some were brown, some pink, some tan. Tsorians were orderly, uniform. From world to world, age to age, their skin was a calm, sensible maroon.
Aryl shook her head and looked away. The alien scenery was unsettling enough, but not as bad as the natives. Yet it seemed she couldn't avoid them. A young native male, with pale skin and hair a dusty yellow, now leaned against the railing not far from her. His attention was fixed where AryFs had been a few seconds earlier, on the Tsorian commander talking with the native female. Aryl wasn't practiced in
The boy abruptly turned his attention to the plate of food he was holding. He took a few jabs at something on it, then suddenly flung the whole thing, plate and all, over the railing. The brittle native crockery shattered, splattering food all over the rocks.
With raucous cries, a white, winged animal swooped from the sky and began gobbling the discarded morsels. Aryl shuddered, but the expression on the boy's face lightened. He reached into a pocket and brought out a chunk of some native food that he tore into bits and began flinging to the greedy animal.
Within moments, two more creatures circled down from above and started squawking harshly and jostling the first.
Primitive and barbaric. Again Aryl shuddered and turned away. This whole world seemed so crude and uncivilized. How could these natives stand to interact so closely with animals, with grossly lower orders? She sighed resignedly. Well, if she was going to force herself to follow her father's example, she could probably find no greater challenge than talking to this surly, barbaric alien.
Jason glowered across the milling, jabbering crowd to where his mother stood talking with that alien. He was the one she'd mentioned, he supposed, the one with the green cape lining. Then, he recalled, had come another of her lectures, this one about how he should learn the Tsorian color ranking so he could tell one from another. But he didn't want to. He didn't care who was who. They were all nasty, murdering invaders as far as he was concerned.
And he certainly didn't want to be standing here watching his own mother talk with their chiefl Angrily he turned back to watch the gulls gobble the food he'd flung to them. They were greedy and they were quarrelsome, but at least they were from Earth.
It was bad enough, Jason mused, having his mother be a known collaborator.
What would the kids at school say if they knew he'd gone to this Tsorian garden party and munched their dainty hors d'oeuvres? Well, he admitted, probably most wouldn't care a lot. They thought more about the fortunes of their school teams than about their planet having been gobbled up by an alien empire. But the kids he cared about, the ones he wanted to get in with, they'd think coming here was next to treason. Some of them, alter all, had actually been friends of Ricky Jensen's.
Jason had known him too, but not well. Ricky had hung around with those other kids, the ones who furtively called
themselves Resisters. And none of them would have anything to do with Jason—not with the son of a collaborator.
Later, of course, they'd all learned that Ricky's parents had actually been Resisters, real ones, and they'd belonged to a secret group. But it hadn't been quite secret enough. Last year the Tsorians had wiped it out, along with Ricky and half a neighborhood. It wasn't far from home, just over the hills, and Jason's mother had taken him there once to see the devastation. The Tsorians didn't let such spots be built on again. They wanted them to remain as stark reminders of the consequences of defying the Tsorian occupation. But to Jason it had seemed more a reminder of why that occupation needed defying.
The food splattered over the rocks finally ran out, and the seabirds flapped heavily off in search of other pickings. Reluctantly Jason turned back to the party.
To his surprise, a Tsorian was standing nearby, a young female looking right at him. At least he thought she was young, though her hair was almost white.
Stupid to have drab hair colors that didn't even give a clue to a person's age.
Jason was turning back toward the ocean when the girl took a step closer and spoke in dry, harshly accented English.
"I see you have provided your own entertainment, feeding those . . . animals.
Amusing, but don't you want to throw disks with the others?"
"I don't feel like playing."
"Oh. Do you come here to the Headquarters often?"
"No, not if I can help it."
She was silent a moment, then said, "It is beautiful here."
"It was," he began, then continued boldly, "before you Tsorians came. My father used to tell me there was a park here by the water.
With the redwoods and Mount Tamal-pais beyond, it probably was beautiful."
The Tsorian frowned. "Come now, this planet has more than enough wilderness.
It's almost unkempt. Our Headquarters doesn't intrude on you."
"Intrude? I suppose wiping out armies and rebellions and innocent civilians isn't intruding?"
"We can't let you natives disrupt our holdings here. This is a strategic planet. The needs of the Empire must come before those of a few natives."
Quivering with anger, Jason looked straight into her pupil-less eyes. Eyes like black marbles, he thought, like hamsters' eyes. "Have you any idea how arrogant you sound, calling us 'natives' as if we were a pack of primitive Indians?"
The other breathed in sharply and flexed her claws a moment as if contemplating some violent response. Then she shifted her gaze beyond him, across the Golden Gate Bridge to where the city of San Francisco gleamed in the afternoon sun.
"Indeed," she said simply. "And who are these 'Indians'?"
"The people who lived here before the Europeans came and took over."
"And these 'Europeans' had a superior technology?"
"Of course."
She smiled tautly. "So there it is, the natural order of things. You see, it really is just the same."
Jason grabbed the railing to keep himself from sending a fist through that sneering alien face. "It's not the same at all! The Indians and Europeans were
one species. Sure, they squabbled about land, but you Tsorians came and 10
took everything from us, from all of us, Indians, Europeans, everybody. You took our independence, our future!"
"Ridiculous! We've given you a better future."
"Oh, really? The only marvelous technology you've shared with us is the business end of your weapons!"
Jason turned and snatched a plate from the automatic serving tray that was gliding by them. One by one he picked the glistening curls of meat off the plate and tossed them onto the rocks. Cheering raucously, two sea gulls swooped from the sky and began fighting and gobbling. The Tsorian glared at him a moment, then abruptly turned and stalked away.
Jason smiled grimly and continued to watch the gulls. At last he'd said what he'd wanted to say. And he'd said it to one of them, Slowly his elation faded. Big courageous act. Gripping the plate, he launched it like a Frisbee onto the rocks, scattering the startled birds. Someday he'd do something, something besides talk. Something that made a difference. Ricky Jensen had tried, hadn't he? Well, someday he, Jason Sikes, would try too.
Only he'd succeed!
II
two
ARYL STOMPED AWAY. WERE ALL NATIVES THAT RUDE AND obnoxious? Probably not or they wouldn't be working here in Occupation Administration. And besides, these aliens did things oddly. Young people didn't bond with a parent, didn't work with them in their careers. That boy's parent probably wasn't anything like him. Still, it was hard to imagine such incredible disharmony between parent and child, alien or not.
Well, she wouldn't try. This compulsory event was unpleasant enough without dwelling on one misfit native. She looked around, then joined a group of young Tsorians. They saluted the command green of her cape and began speaking with guarded respect. Bonded to parents in Fleet or Occupation forces, they too were bound by protocols of rank. As long as their capes all bore the same rank-color, they could talk and joke freely among themselves, but with her they had to be respectful.
Aryl left them as soon as politeness allowed. Not a whole lot more pleasant than her last encounter, she had to admit. She could almost see why her father mingled with natives, sympathetic ones at least. Relations with them were outside restrictions of protocol, while every
12
Tsorian here, besides herself, was below his rank and strictly not to be fraternized with, outside of duty.
She looked about for him now. He was no longer with that native woman but was standing near the exit. Good. Maybe they would soon be going. Aryl made her way through the crowd, then slowed as she saw that her father was talking with Oimog Vak, Governor of the Occupation.
Governor Oimog's hair was a lighter gray than the Commander's and she was nearly as tall, but under her standard tight black uniform, her body was going to fat. Rogav's was solid and muscular, and at the moment, Aryl noticed, it was tense with anger.
