Sleepers

by Darcy Pattison

  Betrayed

  Sir and Easter Rose lived a mile and a half from the high school, right on the beach of Yeomalt Point. The first night when Easter had led Jake upstairs to his bedroom, she said, “This will be wonderful, almost like having Blake come home again for a while. You’ll sleep in his old room.”

  The room at the top of the house suited Jake. The windows opened wide and let in the sea breeze that both tortured him since he was forbidden to swim and comforted him with its smells. Like on the Moon Base, he put his strongbox of Risonian mementos at the back of his closet. The closets were huge, though, almost as big as his entire room on the Moon Base. It would take a while to feel at home in such space.

  On Rison, the Quad-de estate perched on the edge of a small cliff overlooking the ChiChi Sea, which roughly translated to Pleasant Sea. Behind them, the city of Killia sprawled across a plateau. His stepfather’s house had been half on land and half in the sea. The kitchen and bedrooms were mostly on land, along with one small living area. But the main living room and the ballroom were underwater. Moving between water-breathing and air-breathing was normal for Risonians.

  Rison. How much longer would it survive? A day, a month, a year? Scientists predicted only two years, but no one really knew. The volcanic eruptions were more frequent; the earthquakes, stronger. The planet’s core had become more and more unstable, the result of fifty years of trying to control volcanoes with Brown Matter. As if anyone could control nature! What fools they’d been.

  He’d still be there if his mother hadn’t accepted the position of Ambassador to Earth. It was her assignment that prompted her to insist that Jake live with his Earthling father.

  At the spaceport on the Cadee Moon Base, she hugged him hard and joked ironically, “My little shark, going to the dry, dry moon of Earth.” She shook her head, curls bobbing gently. “At least your father can help make a place for you on Earth. You have a chance that few other Risonians will have.”

  Jake hadn’t understood then. But as tensions between Rison and Earth progressed over the last three years, he started to understand just how desperate Rison was. Their planet was going to implode, and a couple billion people would die unless they could evacuate to somewhere. The Cadee Moon Base was already overflowing. Construction progressed as fast as possible, but there was no way it could ever accept more than twenty or thirty thousand. They desperately needed a planet.

  Dad had once explained to Jake the difficulties of finding another habitable planet. Earth’s Kepler Space Observatory was meant to find habitable planets similar to Earth. Kepler trained photometers, very sensitive light meters, onto a tiny section of stars and monitored them, looking for small variations of light that might indicate a planet had passed in front of the star. It wasn’t a short-term project because a planetary orbit around a star took months (counting in Earth time). Once a dimming of light was found, scientists had to wait for it to repeat before they could speculate it meant a planet. Scientists then calculated if the planet was in a habitable zone; humans were delicate creatures with limited temperature tolerances. If the planet was too close to its sun, it would be too hot; too far away, and it would be too cold.

  Even once it was determined a planet was in the habitable zone, it still had to be a rocky, water planet. And beyond that, humans would have to be able to reach the planet with current hyperdrive technology.

  The universe was so vast that finding a habitable planet close enough to be helpful was just as hard for Risonians. By sheer luck, one of the Risonian exploration drones had intercepted the Aricebo message that Earth broadcast in 1974. Risonian scientists interpreted it, sought its source and answered the message in 1999. It was sheer luck that Earth was similar to Rison. Sheer luck that Rison already had hyperdrives under development that could reach Earth in a reasonable time span. And sheer bad luck that in all that time, no other planets presented themselves as alternatives. In the end—it was Earth or nothing.

  Earth. Risonians had only asked for colonies in the oceans. Humans lived on land. Surely, they could share their planet and give refuge to another species that lived mostly in the water.

  Well, he wasn’t going to solve the problems of the universe by daydreaming. Jake shrugged off his worries, pulled his bedroom windows shut for the day, and went to look for Easter.

  He found her with her head bent over her laptop. She had her workspace set up right under his room so that she overlooked Puget Sound, too. For an old lady of almost sixty, she was still active. Her dark hair had highlights—she had appointments once a month to color it—and she wore clothes only slightly outdated. She certainly didn’t look old, but she didn’t look young, either.

  “What kind of computer work do you do?” Jake asked politely.

  “Websites for churches,” Easter said. “I’m webmaster for a dozen different churches.”

  “Is that hard?”

  “No,” she said. “But there’s a constant stream of emails from the church staffs who want this or that updated, or have this or that problem with their site. Lots of little tasks to do each day.” She laughed. “It’s fun.”

  “I need to look up some information.”

  “Sure. What do you need to know?”

  “Coach Blevins, the high school swim coach. I need to know his background.”

  Easter’s mouth tightened in disapproval. “Why?”

  Jake considered telling her everything, but there was too much to explain. “I just need to know something about him. He’s paying too much attention to me at school, and I’m worried that he may suspect something.”

  Easter said, “But—” She stopped herself. “Okay. But if you need help, Sir and I are here. Or contact your dad. Promise me that.”

  Jake’s throat felt thick with emotion. They all wanted to help, but really, there was little anyone could do for him. He was the alien here, and he had to find his own way.

  Without a word, she set him up on one of her desktop computers, showed him a few advanced search tools, and let him work.

  Boring at first, Jake quickly drilled down on information about the coach, surprised that Coach Blevins didn’t exist until five years ago; no records existed for the man before then. When he realized that, Jake started looking for volcanologists who had visited Rison and had a wife named Julianne, and he easily found Julianne H. Yarborough, wife of volcanologist Glen Yarborough, Ph.D.

  Jake sat back in surprise, staring at the black-and-white photo of Swann and the younger human. No wonder he looked vaguely familiar. It was Coach Blevins—before he used the name Blevins. And Jake had met him on Rison.

  It was 2033, Earth calendar; Jake was seven years old.

  Swann Quad-de burst out of the front door of their house, stern-faced bodyguards trotting to keep up.

  Jake had been seated cross-legged on the paving stones waiting, but now scrambled to his feet. By then, Swann had already blustered past and through the gates to the estate, leaving Jake to trot after him.

  Swann towered over the guards, at least a head taller. Deeply tanned, short blond hair—he was a striking man in his prime. Just now, his face was splotched with red, which made Jake cringe inwardly. Whoever made his father mad had better look out.

  Jake’s bodyguard trotted a step behind him. Killia’s streets were crowded, people coming and going on government business, the biggest industry of the city, so the small party wound in and out of the throng. The air was hot from the nearby volcanoes and dusty from ash; only the dark shadows of the stone buildings provided any scrap of comfort from the heat.

  Jake finally caught up and asked, “What’s wrong?”

  “Earthlings,” Swann said shortly.

  Jake groaned. Was it ever anything else?

  Swann glanced at him, intense blue eyes glaring until he pulled himself back to the present and slowed his pace so that Jake could walk instead of trot. In a kinder tone, he asked, “Ready for this fight?”

  Jake just nodded, not trusting his voice. He’d be fighting Adan,
the biggest of the seven-year-olds, who was about a third again as heavy as Jake. He’d need speed to escape.

  His hand went to his belt, to the emerald green, carbon-fiber knife that Master Bru Paniego had given him. Master Bru was his current combat tutor, a Boadan fight master from the southern Bo-See Coalition. Jake couldn’t imagine what bribes and payment Swann had given the man to entice him to come north to Killia as Jake’s tutor.

  Next week, his Boadan tutor would be replaced with an aquatic combat tutor—Jake’s tutors alternated aquatic with dry land fighting specialists—because Swann wanted Jake trained in every kind of hand-to-hand combat known on Rison. Of all the tutors so far, Jake had liked the short, squat Boadan best. Master Bru expected Jake to neither ask for nor give quarter. And he taught Jake more about simple gut reaction fighting than anyone. Jake’s fighting on the fight floor may not have improved—today was a big test of what he’d learned from Bru—but Jake thought that if he ever got in a street fight in a Bo-See country, he might have a chance of escaping alive. A slim chance, but a chance.

  “Remember: do as much damage as possible, as fast as possible,” Swann said.

  Jake sighed at the unnecessary instructions, “Yes, sir.”

  But Swann got that far away look again and repeated softly to himself, “As fast as possible.”

  Jake shuddered and pitied the Earthling who’d made Swann angry.

  “Your weapons, sir.”

  Three massive soldiers blocked the entrance to the fight floor. Dressed in scarlet military uniforms, even their faces were scarlet from the heat of the day.

  Reluctantly, Jake handed over his Boadan knife and watched Swann give up four concealed knives, two strapped to his legs under his own red uniform, one strapped to his forearm and one in a holster at the pit of his back. Every politician was armed these days because tempers ran as hot as lava.

  The air was heavy with a sulfur smell from the volcano visible just northwest of the city. Jake was sweating, a light sheen across his chest as he took off his shirt and shoes, getting ready to step onto the fight floor. It was a bare dirt ring that Swann could cross in ten quick steps, but Jake’s shorter legs would need twenty steps. Surrounded by a thick, black metal wall as tall as Jake, it gave no place to run and kept everything at close combat.

  Jake had no time to fret because his opponent entered from the opposite side. Even at seven, almost eight, Adan Utset’s chest hinted at muscles that Jake would never have. Staring at Adan, Jake wanted to rub his fingers over his own ribs, his chest muscles, and his arm muscles to make sure they were even there.

  “You’re scrawny now,” his mother always said. “But when you’re a teenager, you’ll put on muscles.”

  Swann leaned over and murmured, “Be sure you survive to fight another day.”

  Jake groaned to himself. Swann expected him to lose. The best he was hoping for was survival.

  Jake threw out his chest and breathed deeply. He opened the metal door and stepped onto the hard-packed floor.

  Instantly, Adan charged, arms outspread to grasp the smaller boy.

  But Master Bru had prepared Jake well for surprises; the Bo-See were known for street fighting. At the last moment, Jake sidestepped, pivoted on his foot, clasped both hands together and crashed his fists onto Adan’s neck. If Jake had been larger, it would’ve felled Adan or even knocked his breath away. Instead, Adan stumbled, caught himself and awkwardly turned.

  But Jake had already danced away, across the ring. Close combat would kill him. His only choice was to force the bigger boy to chase him and hope that he tired.

  Wary, Adan closed on Jake. Off to his right, Jake saw his tutor leaning over the wall, grinning from ear to ear. Master Bru hadn’t seen the boys on the fight floor before and had been anxious to observe. It was obvious that part of the appeal of tutoring Jake was to spy on the Tizzalurians; Swann had accepted that and hadn’t worried about hiding anything. What was the point when their planet’s days were numbered?

  Adan stepped closer, but this wasn’t a square fight floor where he might corner Jake. Instead, Jake slid right along the curved wall, escaping—except Adan lunged, and caught Jake’s ankle, toppling them both. As he rolled, Jake scrabbled at the ground, digging in his fingernails, and managed to grab a scrap of dirt. Adan lumbered to his feet and started forward again. Jake waited for the bigger boy to get closer, and then flung the dirt at Adan’s eyes.

  From somewhere, he heard Master Bru crowing. It was a street tactic, not something often seen in a Tizzalurian fight.

  Adan wavered, fists rubbing at his eyes.

  And Jake remembered Swann’s edicts: Attack the attacker.

  Jake gathered his feet under himself and leapt, tackling Adan, the larger boy almost defenseless because he was still trying to get dirt out of his eyes. They rolled together on the ground, and again, Swann’s edicts echoed in Jake’s mind: Do as much damage as necessary, as fast as possible.

  Jake shoved Adan, keeping him on the ground until he could straddle Adan’s chest. He pummeled Adan’s face, half of his blows falling uselessly on Adan’s forearms which were thrown up as protection. But a few blows got through the defense. They weren’t as hard as Jake wanted—he hadn’t the muscles to really hurt someone.

  But Adan howled, “Enough!”

  Instantly, Jake stopped hitting and just sat on Adan’s chest heaving, trying to breathe the thick sulfurous air. Still straddling the bigger boy, Jake rose to his feet, and then stepped to the left, and held out a hand to Adan.

  Reluctantly, Adan took the hand. Jake braced himself and pulled, barely managing to help Adan rise.

  The larger boy’s chest, back and face were streaked with red dirt.

  Jake turned first to Master Bru, whose long white beard nodding in approval. And then to Swann, who wore a grim smile.

  Exiting the fight floor, though, Swann just slapped his back and said, “As fast as possible!”

  There wouldn’t be more words of praise, only a dissection of what Jake could have or should have done differently. But the slap was enough. Swann was pleased. A warmth spread through Jake, a glow that would carry him through many a tutoring session from the next fight master.

  It was the next morning that Jake met Dr. Yarborough, the man who had so angered Swann.

  Jake had come back from his morning swim. Coming up out of the water, he had paused to quickly readjust to air-breathing, and then bounded up the steps into the Swann’s day-office. Their estate was built with thick granite; it kept out heat but made for poor sound quality, as the rooms echoed badly.

  “No!” Swann’s angry words bounced off the stone walls and floors. He was hunched over, his tall form bent to speak to someone much shorter—a human.

  Jake had seen many humans because they came through his household regularly to talk to his stepfather, who was the prime minister of Tizzalura. Politicians and scientists—mostly Earth volcanologists—came regularly to Killia to consult. But Jake hadn’t quite gotten used to humans: there was something odd about their smooth noses, or the proportions of their limbs.

  Swann Quad-de jabbed a finger at a computer display. “You should have given our scientists credit in your reports.”

  The scientist waved a hand, as if to dismiss the argument. “They were published in Risonian scientific journals, not Earth journals. Another language. Another planet. It wasn’t relevant.”

  Quad-de’s voice lowered, and Jake stopped cold. He’d heard that note of anger in his stepfather’s voice before, and it never ended well. Quad-de said, “You quoted others’ work and didn’t give them credit. That is unacceptable.”

  “And you’ll do what?” The scientist tried to deflect the Risonian minister’s anger. “You’ll ruin me?”

  Quad-de said simply, “Yes.”

  Jake shivered, remembering Swann’s angry voice, “As much damage as possible, as fast as possible!”

  He must’ve jerked or made some movement because at that moment Quad-de turned his head to gla
re at Jake. Heart pounding in fear, Jake stepped backwards. His stepfather’s face was screwed up like he’s just eaten a sour kwitch, and his neck muscles bulged like they did after a session with a punching bag. “Go. To your mother. Get your breakfast.”

  Jake fled, his footsteps slapping on the stone floors and echoing behind him.

  That Yarborough! The one who was disgraced within the volcanology scientific circles. People still warned, “Don’t make a Yarborough mistake.” And everyone knew they were talking about interstellar plagiarism. You must cite your interstellar sources, whether Rison or Earth was the source. Swann’s retribution had indeed been swift and damaging.

  Apparently after that disgrace, Yarborough had changed everything. His face was different, like maybe he’d had a nose job or something; he wore a mustache, short hair and thick glasses. Even knowing that Blevins had to be Yarborough, Jake was amazed at how well the simple changes worked as a disguise. And then, to make a new life, Yarborough had become Coach Blevins, a high school biology and civics teacher and a swim team coach.

  But there was no doubt: Coach Blevins was Yarborough.

  Now, Jake could start to trace some of the anti-Shark movement in the ELLIS Forces. General Puentes, who had sent in the beach helicopter, was friends with Yarborough/Blevins. No, it was worse: they were brothers-in-law, having married sisters. Both wives were dead now, but the connection clearly remained strong between the two men. They still jointly owned a hunting and fishing cabin on the upper peninsula of Michigan.

  Why had Blevins chosen to teach on Bainbridge Island? Did he know about Jake’s Mom and Dad?