Em smiled. “Sure. If you can wait.”
Jake nodded in relief. Maybe he wasn’t making a fool of himself.
While he waited, Jake listened to Em’s random humming and tried to think what to do. Mom had forbidden him to call her unless it was a matter of life and death. Phone calls were too easily traced, so he had to do it through encrypted websites, which meant he’d have to wait till he got home to his computer. It made Jake’s head hurt just to think about the possible public outrage and repercussions if anyone found out about his parents. Besides, Mom was so busy with her Ambassador duties that he didn’t want to bother her.
And Dad was out of touch on his top-secret assignment. Jake knew he could get a message to him in an emergency, but this wasn’t an emergency.
Sir and Easter, Jake’s Earthling grandparents, were kind, polite, and were plainly trying to help him get settled into school and life on an island. Sir was a slightly taller version of Dad, athletic and tanned. Easter ran a neat, efficient home, making Jake think of a librarian who kept all her bookshelves alphabetized and dusted. Even on Rison, they’d had the equivalent of a librarian, and as far as he could tell, the character qualities of Risonian and Earth librarians were equally regimented. But he didn’t know his grandparents well yet, didn’t trust them. When they asked about life on Rison, he barely answered because it was so different, they wouldn’t understand. Life on the Obama Moon Base was easier to answer because that was an Earthling base. Anything to do with intergalactic politics, Jake strictly avoided for now.
He had no one to turn to. It didn’t seem wise, though, to ignore all of this with Captain Hill’s presence on the island or what he had overheard—the ELLIS Force was looking for Jake.
When Em finally took off her apron and came to his table, Jake was ready to get away from his own thoughts. He remembered the manners that Dad had been trying to teach him and pulled open the coffee shop door for Em. He motioned for her to go ahead of him. She flashed him a smile—his heart thumped harder—and went outside.
“I only live a mile away,” Em said. “On nice days, I just walk.” She put on a Chicago Cubs baseball cap and pulled her long hair out the back.
“I’ll walk you home,” Jake said. “Is that okay?”
When she nodded, he tingled in anticipation. He’d never had a long conversation with an Earth girl before. Well, not with a Risonian girl, either. He’d left Rison about the time he was figuring out that girls were something different. And exciting. The Obama Moon Base had no other kids his age; it had been a special concession to let him live there with Dad. For a moment, he worried that he’d latched onto the first girl he ran across. But no. He’d been around enough to recognize that Em was special.
One thing about the Moon Base, there was plenty of time to read. Jake had read everything he could about Earth, especially its oceans, even folklore. Risonians could breathe easily on land or in the sea. They reasoned that Earth was 70% water, but Earthlings all lived on land. Surely, Earth could share their oceans and save a race of people. On paper, it sounded reasonable, but of course, the politics were immensely more complicated than that.
One old story came back to him now: mermaids sitting on rocks, combing their long hair, and singing to entice unwary sailors to their death. A siren’s song.
For the last three days, the new Earthling high school had overwhelmed Jake. He’d seen other girls, heard other girls. Since Em was in his classes, he was sure he had seen her, but only as a part of the mass of students. Seeing her individually here at the coffee shop, Em was different: she was his siren, he thought in a daze. She called to him like no other girl had ever done. He would’ve waited eight hours for her to get off work. He would’ve walked her home, even if it were all the way across the island. He found himself strangely just wanting to be near her, to get to know her better.
He stopped himself: was he going overboard here? From the movies he’d watched with his dad on the Moon Base, this was how the boy-girl thing worked on Earth. Somehow, though, he wondered if movies made a good model for how he should behave. He shook his head: movies were all the guidance he had.
Jake remembered that the first thing movie guys did was talk to the girls. Conversation. He could do this. Make an effort at conversation. “That was Mr. Blevins, the biology and civics teacher, right? But you called him Coach?”
Em nodded. “Coach Blevins. Everyone calls him that. He’s been here about five years. Teaches biology and civics. And coaches the swim team.”
Jake shrugged to himself. If everyone else did it, he’d call him Coach Blevins, too.
They turned off the main street onto a side street that lacked sidewalks. Instead, beside the road was a swath of waist-high plants with fluffy yellow flowers that rippled in the light wind, a yellow lake in the midst of green foliage.
“You swim?” Jake asked.
“Sure. I do backstroke and IM.”
“IM?”
“Individual medley,” she said. “That means I swim one or two laps with each of the strokes: free style, backstroke, breast stroke, and butterfly.”
Jake was struck by a sudden vision of Em in a racing swimsuit and speeding through the water. It spooked him how much he wanted to see her swim. To distract himself, he asked, “Are you fast?” But he already knew that she would be; she didn’t have a cat-like grace, as he first thought, but the grace of a powerful swimmer.
She checked something on her phone, and then held it up and pointed to what looked like a list. “3rd in the district in back stroke, and I’m fighting for first in IM.” It wasn’t bragging, just a statement of fact.
Jake nodded, afraid to ask more lest he seem like a total idiot. He knew that his father had been on the Bainbridge Island swim team, but he didn’t know much more than that. He wasn’t even quite sure what a “district” meant. These were things he could ask Easter and Sir about; in fact, it would actually give them a topic for conversation for a change.
Em smiled, a sudden flash of white teeth. “Before Coach Blevins, the Bainbridge swim team was a joke. But since he came five years ago, we’ve built a strong team. We took the state meet last year. He drives us hard, but we win. I think everyone on Bainbridge likes him.”
“Where’d he come from? Was he always a swim coach and teacher?”
Em frowned, “No idea. I think he’s Canadian. He knows his science, though.”
Jake decided that he’d have to do some research on Coach Blevins. There was something fishy about Blevins owning photos taken on Rison, especially photos that might show Jake as a child.
Em stopped and turned to look him up and down. “Say, are you a swimmer? We sure need more guys. What stroke are you best at?”
“Oh, I don’t swim,” Jake said, without conviction. “I do a little freestyle, but I’m not very fast.” If he understood their terms right, his leg-tail would be akin to doing dolphin kicks instead of the flutter kicks required by freestyle.
“That’s okay,” Em said. “Swim team speeds you up. You work on your form and your times and before you know it—”
“No.” Jake had to stop her. He desperately wanted to be on the swim team, to be in the water all the time. Or rather, to have the freedom to come and go, in or out of the water, as he liked. He wanted to go home to Rison. But Rison was dying, and he had his orders from his parents; no one could know who—or what—he was.
Only a few blocks from Puget Sound the houses were large with civilized lawns. Rison houses on land were often made with ebony volcanic rock polished to a gleam; Earth houses, by contrast, were constructed from a variety of materials, from stone and brick, to logs or wood siding. Such a different world, thought Jake.
“Okay, okay. I get it,” Em said. Her face was bright red, and she started walking fast again, this time at a fast pace as if to get away from his refusal to consider swim team. “I just love swim team, and I get overly excited about it. I want everyone else to be as excited as I am. I’ll back off.” She took off her baseball cap
and waved it at her face.
“No, no.” Jake almost trotted to keep up. “I mean—oh, I’ve just been teased a lot because I can’t swim. Because really, I just can’t.”
“Oh.”
There was a world of uncertainty in that “Oh.” Jake wanted to please her, to say that he’d give swim team a try. No. He had to convince her. “I’m too scared of the water.”
“That’s all?” She gave a nervous laugh. “We can help with that.” She stopped waving her cap at her face, but fumbled with and dropped it.
Quickly, Jake picked up the blue cap, but he made no move to return it. He tried again. “I’m scared of the water because I don’t have the right lungs for it.” That part was true at least. His lungs weren’t good Earthling lungs; they were good Risonian lungs that could breathe air on land, while his underarm gills breathed in the sea.
“That’s just technique. Coach Blevins can help you with your breathing—”
“No.”
They stopped at a street corner where one road went downhill toward the water while the other stayed on higher ground. Em looked over his head, obviously embarrassed now.
She held out her hand for her cap. Jake stepped closer, and reaching to the back of her head, pulled her shiny pony tail through the back of the cap, and settled it on her head. For a moment, Jake stared into her eyes, a warm sienna, and felt like he was falling.
Em sucked in a breath and jerked her head away, breaking eye contact. “Oh. Well, if you ever want to come and watch, we practice early mornings.” She waved downhill. “Well, thanks for walking with me a while. I live down that way, and I’m sure it’s too far for you. You have better things to do.” With a tap of her thumb, she wakened her phone and concentrated on the screen.
She was giving him the brush-off.
Jake bit back the words he wanted to say: You’re beautiful. I would walk—or swim—anywhere with you.
Em turned, and with a half-wave, she strode away.
He let her go.
He stood watching until she turned the corner. Em was his first friend on Bainbridge Island. At least, he hoped they’d be friends. It was going to be hard, he realized, to resist the swim team. He wanted to belong, to be on equal footing with everyone else. But he wasn’t equal. He was a Risonian and a Quad-de.
Discouraged, he turned to trudge further on to his grandparent’s house on Yeomalt Point. It wasn’t home, not yet, maybe not ever.
His thoughts turned back to Captain Cy Hill and his friend Coach Blevins. They were investigating him. Jake didn’t know the ways of Earth yet, nor did he know how to look into someone’s background. He’d have to be patient, but he’d eventually figure out what was going on. He could maybe search the Internet or maybe find out more about Coach at school. It might take him a while, but Risonians were patient fishermen; in the end, he’d hook the two men and reel ‘em in.
Lungs vs. Gills
Jake walked into Bainbridge High School on Monday morning—the first full week of class—with one goal: to be invisible. That’s what his parents expected, and that’s what he would deliver.
He didn’t want or need to be noticed. He just wanted to be one of the crowd. He sidled close to one group of students, close enough to be on the fringes, but not so close that someone would single him out. Once inside the brick building, he drifted from group to group. Always close enough that someone might think he belonged, but never so close that he invaded the group’s space.
The day went well until Coach Blevins’s biology class.
“Our first unit is anatomy and physiology,” Coach said. He flipped on the holo-projector and pulled up a set of 3-D slides of major organs.
“Sometimes it’s easier to understand anatomy when we compare it to something else.” A second set of 3-D slides opened on the right side of the screen.
Instantly, Jake recognized Risonian anatomy. Lungs vs. Gills. The so-called Velcro legs. The wrinkled nose that was the result of internal flaps that closed off the Risonian nose so water didn’t fill their air-breathing lungs.
“Humans vs. Sharks.” Coach spat out the words. “They may resemble us physically, but think of all the science fiction aliens that look like insects or slugs or monsters. These anatomical differences may not be huge, but their mentality is completely foreign. Alien.” Coach pointed at the gills, and his hand trembled, in what Jake thought must be anger.
Jake cringed. What had happened to make Coach Blevins hate the Risonians? he wondered. Coach must have been on Rison at some point to have pictures of Jake. But when? And what had happened to him while there?
Coach was lecturing about blood. “Risonians have hemoglobin to carry oxygen, but also myoglobin, which is—well, some people are of the opinion that it’s more efficient. But the Risonians have to have twice the blood, so it’s a trade-off. They’re also dependent on a different molecule that’s been named magma-sapiens.” Coach barked a short laugh. “Late night TV comedians call it the hot-man molecule.”
A titter ran through the class, and made Jake shiver in frustration.
One side of Coach’s mouth curved up in a lopsided grin.
Jake sat straighter and glared. Coach was deliberately making fun of Risonians. It was a dangerous game for Jake to say anything, but he should just let it pass without drawing attention to himself. Still, his stomach clenched.
Coach continued, “The function of the magma-sapiens, though, is to keep Risonians warm when they slink away to the cold depths of the ocean.”
From the back of the room, someone heckled. “Hey, does that make girl-Sharks hot mamas?”
Coach Blevins smirked but kept talking. “Humans need wet suits to survive the cold of Puget Sound except on the warmest summer days. Wet suits, glove, boots, and a headpiece—humans will freeze if anything is exposed.”
“I was wondering why all the girls were so frigid,” came the call.
The class groaned.
Coach Blevins cleared his throat and became serious. “Think about this difference in how humans and Sharks regulate their temperatures. What would it mean if Sharks colonized our oceans?”
Coach ran a finger down his seating chart, his hand still trembling with anger. He called, “David Gordon.”
He looked up expectantly, waiting for David to say something.
“Um. They could live in the Arctic Ocean away from human population centers.” Seated in almost the center of the room, David slumped in his desk, his long legs filling the aisles. He also had a long face and long nose, like a bottlenose dolphin.
“Yes, what else?”
No answer.
“Emmeline Tullis,” Coach Blevins called.
All morning, Jake had tried hard not to look at Em. Last week, he hadn’t been confident enough to even lift his head to look past one row. Now, he glanced sideways across the room to where she sat by the wall. Her pink hoodie made her dark cheeks look rosy.
“They can go where we can’t go,” Em said. “They could hide, ambush us, or just disappear and do anything they wanted.”
Wait! Was Em anti-Risonian? Maybe she was just saying what Coach wanted to hear. Still, Jake frowned.
“Exactly right!” Coach exclaimed. “Would you invite someone dangerous to live in your house? Of course not!”
Pulse racing, Jake couldn’t hold back the words: “Are the Risonians dangerous?”
Now, Coach sounded vicious. “I know people who’ve worked with the Sharks: those aliens pretend to be friends, and then they lie and turn on you. Threw my friend to the wolves. You can’t trust them.”
Jake blinked in surprise. Where did the venom come from? He had to find out more about this man.
Blevins walked down the aisle to stand in front of Jake. “Jake, right? You’re new here. What are you, for or against the Sharks?”
Looking right and then left, Jake found every eye turned toward him. The classroom, with its white plastic skeleton in the corner and the black-topped laboratory desks, seemed suddenly dangerous. He wonde
red if these students would turn on him if they knew about his parents, if they knew who he was.
“Well?” Blevins demanded.
“Neither,” Jake said. “I’m pro-life. Creatures have the right to try to live, and that’s all the Risonians are trying to do: survive.”
Coach snorted. “Survive? Yeah, if they move here, it will be survival of the fittest. And there’s no guarantee that humans will win.” He spun to point at the rest of the class.
“There’s a good biology question. What do you think? Are humans physically superior compared to Risonians, or vice versa?”
Jake wanted to laugh. Of course, the Risonians had the advantage in almost any comparison of anatomy. He gripped the edge of his chair to keep his hand from shooting up to continue the argument.
Just then, the bell rang. Jake let out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. Escape. For now.
He grabbed his backpack and joined the throng rushing through the door and into the hallway. Glancing back, he saw Coach Blevins was still glaring at him.
Yes, Jake thought. It was definitely time to find out more about Coach Blevins and Captain Hill.
Break-in
After supper, Jake told Easter, “I think I’ll run a couple miles.”
“Enjoy the weather while you can,” Easter said. “We’ll be into the fall rains soon enough.”
Jake pulled on tight running pants to hide the villi on his legs, a short sleeve t-shirt, and a baseball cap. In the top of his bedroom closet, he’d discovered his Dad’s collection of baseball caps, and now he grabbed an old NYPD (New York Police Department) cap that had seen better days. When Dad got around to visiting again—whenever that might be—Jake would ask him about the collection. In the meantime, Jake had decided to try a different hat each day.
Evergreen trees towered on either side of the road, making the deserted road feel like a huge tunnel. Breaking into an easy trot, Jake tried to understand the last twenty-four hours. Coach Blevins was Canadian but had somehow landed here on Bainbridge Island. Jake had glanced at Coach’s bookshelf and had been surprised at the mathematical, volcanology, and biology journals stacked there, some of the most technical scientific journals published, if Swann was right. And Swann had kept track of most of Earth’s scientific journals.
Sleepers (The Blue Planets World series Book 1) Page 4
