Aliens In The Family

by Margaret Mahy

  "I don't know what to do," Bond said aloud, and then found himself going past a coffee bar which had a tiny, bricked courtyard holding tables like tea-trays on spindly legs with striped umbrellas hovering protectively over them. He bought himself a long glass of orange juice and some sandwiches and sat down in a corner. Apart from one couple who were very involved with each other, he was the only person there.

  "Solita," he addressed the box in a low voice, "I'm here on my first test so I'm in enforced isolation. I have no way of getting in touch with the School or warning them about the Wirdegen. Did you manage to warn them in any way?"

  "Bond, I was jammed," Solita replied. "My field responses are damaged. I can't make contact with the School but if contact was broken both ways I would be inert." Her voice was calm and untroubled and for some reason this made Bond feel very lonely.

  "My pulse is still alive," he said, looking at his wrist. "That means the School can certainly trace us and probably detect alarm, but they won't be able to tell just what's wrong. If the Wirdegen get us would they be able to gain access to the Inventory?"

  "They could get direct access through me," Solita answered. "Remember that I am also back in the School, interfaced with several direct access points. I can be withdrawn if the School is approached however. The School could break my connections. I'm not really here. You, on the other hand, are here and could be held for some sort of ransom."

  "What can I do? How can I warn them?" asked Bond. He stared blankly across the little tables. "The School may have to sacrifice me." He took a deep breath and managed a smile. "Well, I'm Galgonquan and I can work things out. Let me see. Catalogue and calculate! What do I know of the Wirdegen?" He closed his eyes to enable him to better recall the lessons the School had taught him. "I know they broke away from the Galgonqua millions of years ago—they're our wicked cousins with some of the same tricks that we have. I know that they're pirates of knowledge, and that they steal then trade technology and ideas to societies often before those societies are capable of handling them properly."

  "They appear on the surface of a planet such as this," added Solita, "in forms similar to the ones we wear but rather more uncertain. They're not as clever as we are and these forms can be torn apart by certain audio frequencies, though they reconstitute themselves in time."

  "Yes, it was lucky I remembered that!" said Bond feeling pleased with himself.

  "But I cannot defend you in such a way again until I have been recharged at some energy source," Solita reminded Bond. "I am seriously depleted." Bond arched his eyebrows and pulled a rueful face. "I can only warn you of an enemy presence close by," Solita continued. "There is never only one of them. Even now there could be several watching us outside my range."

  "Yes—and that one with the yellow eyes will reform," added Bond. "I wish we could tell the School to relocate."

  As he mumbled away to his Companion he knew that in actual fact his sister lay within the probationers' part of the School, floating out in space beyond the moon. The Companion spoke to Bond here, and back in the School the lips of Solita in a trance should move and speak too, though as things stood Bond could not be sure that this was happening. And now as never before Bond understood that talking to a sister was not just a matter of words but of tones of voice and expression, which he was missing badly. For the first time in his life he felt forlorn—there was no other word for it—and missed the company of the School and the support of the great Inventory of the Galgonqua, the catalogue of which every Galgonquan was a special part. It was frightening for Bond to be in touch with Solita in her present form. As his sister she was warm and laughing—teasing him because he was so sure of himself, so anxious to take his first test, and so certain he would do well. His thoughts had been able to interlock with hers more closely than they could with anybody else's thoughts. But sitting here, even with her voice murmuring out of the box before him, he missed the warmth of true sharing. He tried to be practical.

  "It's true, isn't it, that the Wirdegen can flip themselves through space just like we do?"

  "True enough," answered the Companion.

  "But I'm not allowed to travel like that down here," said Bond dejectedly. "If I do flip through space I'll displace time. I'm not clever enough yet to do it perfectly."

  "Neither are they!" said the Companion. "But they probably don't care."

  "Then I have to leave the city," Bond decided, "stick to the original plan. If the School can follow us, it will probably be able to find us there." Unexpectedly he placed his hand on his chest. "That's funny," he exclaimed.

  Solita did not reply. In this form she responded to questions or commands, she assessed situations and gave advice, but she had nothing to say in response to Bond's exclamation or to the sudden burning he felt on his skin. "My stone!" he said in wonderment. "The green stone my father gave me! It just burnt me." He frowned. "Why, I wonder? It might be a message, a trap... or it mightn't even mean anything."

  Just at that moment Bond hated this small city. Every corner was a blank corner, street names made little sense and there was not a single face he could recognize and be able to say with certainty—/ know that person is a friend. The hot twinge the stone had given him had died away and was replaced by something different. Not by something outside but a tug from inside. The stone was trying to tell him something.

  "Solita..." he began but she interrupted him.

  "We are being observed," she stated almost languidly. The Companions advised and calculated but they experienced no real emotion. They could not even be properly frightened. All feelings were shut up in the figure asleep in the School, connected to the machine. Everyone had a turn at working connected with the machine. In time Bond would become part of it too, for a while—if he survived.

  Bond rose unhurriedly from the table, his face impassive, and moved out of the courtyard. He pretended to look in a shop window. Reflected in the glass he saw many cars which, once set free by a green light at the corner, shot by like a school of fish, but one of them—a great black shark—was trying to draw alongside him. He could only see the shapes of the people inside it, not their faces. He began to skate faster.

  They go about so openly! he thought, amazed. They could have kept their presence secret from me but they've given Solita a chance to warn me—they're frightening me and letting me run! "There's no sense in it!" he said aloud, shaking his head as he hurried on.

  The traffic lights turned red and both Bond and the car came to a standstill a few metres apart. A door opened. However Bond was able to turn to the left and take dangerous advantage of a gap to skate across the street and to leave the car behind. He found himself crossing a little, grassy square. There was no place to hide. It was like a green tablecloth crossed with the diagonal lines of two paths, pinned to the earth by a tree at each corner. Under these trees, only a few metres from the flow of traffic, mothers played with their toddlers, lovers embraced, a solitary man read a book. Even in flight Bond blinked and recorded. The wheels of his skates sounded louder as he got away from the traffic into the centre of the square. As he fled, the stone tugged at him and he veered to the right in an involuntary response to its summons.

  There was a screech of tyres, a panic-stricken blast on a car horn, and a great eruption of noise. The car that had been pursuing him was keeping him in sight by driving in the wrong direction up a one-way street on one side of the square.

  Bond skated frantically across the road before an approaching tide of traffic. The pursuing car, having completed a circuit of the square, now came at him again, travelling this time with the flow of traffic and closing on him. He still could not see who was in the car, but he knew it was after him and he was desperate to keep ahead, not knowing what strange weapons or means of control they might possess. At any moment they might give up this clumsy means of pursuit for something more subtle and effective—a flip or a jump through space—but perhaps in the city even the Wirdegen feared the effect of a jump which twisted not
only space but time itself.

  "Evade," instructed Solita. "They are close." A slot of shadow appeared to Bond's left. He whisked into a long, narrow alley between two shops. There was a notice asking that the entrance be kept clear of vehicles at all times but a fraction of an instant later, to Bond's astonishment and horror, the big black car turned across the path of a cyclist and careered into the alleyway. Bond hadn't thought there was sufficient room for the car but it managed to fit in, just grazing the walls on either side, and he realized it was blocking his only exit. There were windows set high up but they were all shut, and in fact looked as if they had never been opened. Skating at full speed Bond burst into a square grey courtyard filled with empty crates, cardboard boxes and a lot of rubbish bins. Several back doors of shops opened into this yard. The car was right on his heels. It could have run him down if it had wanted to.

  "Can you lift me?" he shouted.

  "Evade!" commanded Solita, the pitch of her voice blurring a little, sounding more machine-like than it had before. A door opened and Bond saw a hand throwing paper into the courtyard, most of which missed the big rubbish bins. He seized the edge of the door, jerked it wide open and spun his way in, pushing a surprised young woman to one side. He banged the door behind him, automatically checking it for bolts and slamming the only one home.

  "Hey! What are you doing?" screamed the girl. He had burst into a workshop filled with machines, two printing presses, a paper guillotine and racks of paper and card of different colours and sizes. Bond shot in between the printing presses without hesitation, evading one man and causing another to drop the pile of blank, pink paper he was carrying. Bond banged his hip on a protruding piece of machinery and then was gone almost before they realized he was among them. Behind him he heard a splintering crash. The bolt burst off the door with the impact of something driving against it from the outside. Indignant cries rose again at this second and more violent invasion. Bond slid between two offices and into a shop filled with paper, pens, paints and envelopes and saw his way clear before him. He rushed headlong through the shop and out the glass doors onto the footpath, where he spun around looking for a new direction.

  Once more he vaguely sensed the stone nudging him in some way. Raising his eyes Bond saw a large, glittering sign that seemed to draw him towards it—MR CHOPPERLOX, UNISEX HAIR STYLIST, it read. Parked beneath the sign was a battered, green car and leaning across from the passenger's side, staring at him as if she had been waiting for him for a long time, was a girl with blonde, bubbly curls. Their eyes met. She reached over behind her and opened the back door of the car. Bond raced across the road, his hands clasped over his head as if he expected something to fall from out of the sky. Narrowly avoiding a motorcycle he reached the car, threw himself in and heard the door slam behind him.

  "Object anomaly," said Solita in his ear, and Bond felt the cold, shivery feeling that generally meant he was losing control of a temporary shape. I'm going to change back! he thought with terror, lying as flat as he could.

  "There they go," said the girl dropping back into the front seat. "I don't think they saw you." Bond's stone burnt him with its own cold fire and, peering despairingly through the gap between the two front seats, he saw the reflection in the rear vision mirror of the girl who had rescued him. She was pretending to pat her hair into place.

  "Here comes my mother," she hissed. "Lie flat!" As she threw a rug over him Bond noticed that on a chain about her neck she wore a stone, larger than his own, but at heart the same stone as the one he wore, which at that very moment melted away like an ice crystal under his palm. The shivery feeling stopped. His stone had found itself, but at least for the present he was going to be able to maintain the heroic shape he had invented back in his School.

  Six - Rescuing

  Jake sat in a cane chair in Lewis's room while he showed her his treasured collection of bird feathers. "This is the most beautiful one," he was saying as he held up a very soft, white feather. It was so fine it moved gently with the breath of his words. He laid it down and took up another from the long box. "I found this one up in the hills. I think it's from an eagle." Lewis dreamed of eagles sometimes, and the mere words 'golden eagle' made him feel as if he might grow wings himself and become a flying boy. Once he had started to write a book called 'A Pair of Eagles' and he had written three and a half pages before he lost his pencil box for a week. By the time he found the box again the inspiration had gone.

  "There aren't any eagles in New Zealand," said Jake, so regretfully that Lewis forgave her for reminding him.

  "An eagle could get blown over from Australia," he suggested hopefully, stroking his feather with love. "That's how waxeyes got here—blown over from Australia. It happens all the time." Immediately he said it, he thought it must be true. He could just see the eagle, buffeted by strong winds, being carried along in a cloud of little green fluttering birds—the waxeyes—its wings spread majestically, its fierce yellow eyes staring down through the writhing layers of angry, turbulent air.

  Beside him Jake was thinking of herself as a fierce eagle blown out of its native surroundings into a new world where there was a gentle, kindly, easy life full of pretty things, encouraging her to be gentle and pretty too. She was completely certain, however, that she must not begin thinking that she had any part in such a life because it really belonged to someone else, and once she came to think it might be hers in any way it would be taken away from her. She knew this in the same way she knew she must not let people carry heavy things for her because by now she had learned to carry them for herself, and it was not a thing that any sensible person would want to learn twice over.

  The door opened. "Hi," said Dora brightly. Jake and Lewis turned, both surprised by her happy voice, and saw at once that her voice was probably the only happy part of her. Her curls were a little shorter and a little neater than they had been this morning and she smelt of hair-dressing potions, but her eyes were wide and anxious as if she had just caught a glimpse of a possible werewolf or vampire. She smiled weakly at Jake.

  "Hi," replied Jake.

  "What are you doing?" asked Dora in a chatty voice.

  "Talking about eagles," answered Lewis.

  Dora suddenly decided to tell them what was troubling her. She knelt down beside Lewis, but it was Jake she looked at—her expression asking for her help and at the same time defying her to do her worst. "Can you keep a deadly secret?" she asked, twisting the greenstone at her throat. "I wouldn't bring you into it, but I don't know what to do. I've done something absolutely awful!"

  "What is it?" asked Jake, beginning to look interested.

  "I saved a boy from gangsters," said Dora. "He was being chased and I just opened the back door of the car and let him in—not actually on the back seat that is, but down in between the front seats and the back one. I covered him up with the car rug, and Mum came and got in and drove us home."

  "Where is he now then?" asked Lewis, astounded.

  "Locked in the garage," said Dora, and she began to cry. Lewis took no notice of the tears—Dora crying was nothing unusual—but Jake stared in surprise.

  "What are you crying for?" she asked incredulously but without malice.

  "He's locked in our garage!" exclaimed Dora, as if this explained everything. "If David and Mum find out, they'll kill me."

  "Don't be silly! They wouldn't kill a snail, not even if they found it in amongst the cabbages!" Jake replied.

  "But they'll be mad," said Dora. "I'm not even allowed any pets!"

  "They said we can get a kitten sometime soon," said Lewis eagerly.

  "Hang on! It's not the same!" declared Jake. "We're talking about a person, not a pet. They'd help a person who was being chased by gangsters."

  "Mum wouldn't believe they were gangsters," Dora muttered.

  "Do you believe they were gangsters?" Jake asked. "I mean to say... gangsters? It's pretty hard to believe."

  "He came running out of a shop," said Dora. In her mind's eye th
e scene was as fresh as if it was taking place before her all over again. She had been gazing at the myriad of reflections on the glass shop window when suddenly, surfacing from that reflecting world as if swimming up through deep water, she had seen a golden boy, fleeing from unseen enemies.

  "He came skating out of a shop," she corrected herself, recalling the way he had spun through the door in a blur of colour, his pale hair shining in the afternoon light.

  "He might've been shop-lifting," suggested Jake. She had a way of half looking down at the floor and smiling, then looking up under her eyebrows that Dora found unnerving.

  "It wasn't a shop-lifting sort of shop," said Dora crossly. "It just sold cards and envelopes and wedding invitations..."

  "I still don't know how you can be sure he's a goodie," stated Jake. "Suppose it was the Mafia after him. They might have got blown over from Australia like waxeyes, or it might have been some legal organization like the SIS or the CIA who're after him—or his father, or something."

  "The CIA's in America!" cried Dora.

  "They get everywhere. They're probably checking us out all the time—that's what Manley says." Jake stopped abruptly. She had not wanted to mention Manley.

  "Who's Manley?" asked Dora, confused to find a stranger suddenly brought in to the conversation.

  "He's my mother's friend," mumbled Jake. Her lips barely moved as she spoke.

  "You'd make a really neat ventriloquist!" commented Lewis respectfully.

  Dora looked at Jake with renewed interest lighting her eyes. "Is he—a close friend?" she asked delicately. If Jake's mother married again there mightn't be the need for any more awkward visits like these.

  "He's a pain in the neck," spat Jake vehemently. "Forget him. What about this rescued boy of yours, Dora? Did he tell you anything?"

  "No—didn't have a chance. Mum arrived almost at once and now he's locked in the garage."