The Twin Powers

by Robert Lipsyte

  “What are you . . . ?”

  Tom gave him the stare. “Prepare to, um, split.” The pilot got out of our way. Tom grinned at me. “Take over the steering controls.”

  “Me?”

  “Best driver I know.” He pointed at one of the big screens. “We don’t have much time.”

  On the screen, six big black rocket ships were heading toward us. No flags, no insignia. Like pirate ships.

  “Who are they?”

  “What’s the opposite of friendship?”

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “We need to lead them away from Riverboat. Back to Earth.”

  Steering Friendship One backwards out of the Riverboat bay was harder than I’d thought. It was a pretty tight fit. Every time the metal of Friendship One touched the metal of the Riverboat bay, there was a scraping noise that was worse than a million fingernails dragging over a blackboard.

  Tom’s eyes were drilling into the pilot’s head. I imagined there was a pipeline of thoughts. He could easily do that to me if I had my guard down. I was going to have to talk to him, tell him everything about me, before he found out on his own.

  The pilot tapped the microphone. “This is Friendship One to security fleet, Friendship One to security fleet. Change of orders. Follow us. Repeat: all follow us.”

  I heard angry squawking but I couldn’t understand it. The pilot was yelling into his microphone. Tom was shaking and sweating as he stared at the pilot’s head.

  There was a bump and I could see on the screens that Friendship One was out in space. I gripped the controls and turned the ship around toward Earth.

  The fleet was coming right at us.

  “What should I do, Tom?”

  He couldn’t hear me. I figured he was totally focused on keeping control of the pilot’s mind. No time for me. But he trusted me. Best driver I know, he had said. Tom had said that.

  I headed right into them, ready to swerve if any of the black spaceships came too close. But I figured none of them would want to hit us—this was the director’s ship. Even if they thought someone else had taken over, they had to think she was on board. They wouldn’t want to smash into her. Or would they? Or would they expect us to swerve away?

  It was a big game of chicken.

  That was a big deal back on EarthTwo. Two guys would drive at each other. The guy who swerved first was called a coward, a chicken. Stupidest game of all time.

  Eddie and I went to a movie once called Rebel Without a Cause. A great movie. The hero played chicken against another guy to see who would bail out first before their cars went over a cliff. The hero won because the other guy’s sleeve got caught and he couldn’t get out of his car before it went over the cliff.

  The fleet parted to let us through.

  The ice ball in my stomach melted and I felt hot.

  Hot and big and strong.

  Ronnie rocks!

  I wasn’t sure what that meant, but the tone in Tom’s voice in my head made me feel great. Like the hero in Rebel. He was played by James Dean, a great actor.

  Earth grew from a dot to a golf ball ahead of us.

  I checked the screens. Most of the black ships had turned and were following us, but one of them had stayed on its course and was heading straight to Riverboat.

  The pilot shouted, “Repeat: all ships follow us!”

  Through the squawking and static, I heard, “We’ve got orders to destroy that space station.”

  Bright red pulsing laser beams shot out of the nose of the black ship and began smashing into Riverboat. I thought I saw pieces of Riverboat break off and drift into space.

  Eddie and Buddy were on Riverboat! Alessa and Britzky!

  We could go back. Save them.

  Keep going. The voice sounded like Dr. Traum’s.

  I thought, What about you?

  One of the screens was blazing. Riverboat was on fire.

  Keep going. It was Tom’s voice this time.

  Forty-four

  BRITZKY

  EN ROUTE TO EARTH

  2012

  JUST before the first lasers hit, Eddie’s dad and Dr. Traum hustled us into the shuttlecraft we had taken to get from the gas station to Riverboat. I was surprised that they got everybody safely aboard, even the director and her soldiers. I would have left them. There were eleven of us crammed together, plus Buddy, who was whimpering in Eddie’s arms. I knew how he felt.

  We saw Riverboat explode. It wasn’t one of those big yellow and red blasts you see on TV shows—it was more like gray chunks breaking apart and floating off into space. The only colors were the red lines firing out of the nose of the black rocket.

  Eddie glared at the director and said, “Did you tell them to blow us up?”

  She looked down.

  “Answer the boy,” said the Lump. His voice was cold. So which side was he on? His own, I guessed.

  I looked at Alessa. African American faces don’t get pale, but they do get that ashy look. She sighed, sounding like an air mattress collapsing. We were in trouble.

  “Ah, human beings,” said Dr. Traum. “Endlessly interesting, endlessly dangerous.”

  “Some, but not all,” said Eddie’s dad.

  “Still the idealist, John,” said Dr. Traum. “As Mark Twain said, ‘Man is the only animal that deals in that atrocity of atrocities, War.’”

  The Lump pushed his way closer to the director. “I said, answer the boy.”

  She took a deep breath. “I had nothing to do with the attack on the space station.”

  Eddie said, “How would they have known we were all off Riverboat?”

  I figured it out. “They thought the director was on Friendship One and that she was okay. They didn’t care about anyone else. Those were her orders.”

  The director gave me a killer look. I was right!

  Dr. Traum looked at Eddie’s dad. “Tell me, John. You still think human beings are worth saving?”

  “Of course I do,” he said. “Alessa and Todd are worth saving. Ronnie is worth saving. Most people are worth saving and we have no right to choose. She doesn’t either.” He pointed at the director. “Todd was right. You had this worked out from the start. If the fleet saw Friendship One leave, they were supposed to escort you back to Earth and blow up Riverboat.”

  She made a snorting noise. “We couldn’t leave a space platform for some terrorists to take over, could we?”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” asked the Lump.

  “I don’t trust you,” she said. “You said you liked the boy.” She jerked her head at Eddie. Buddy growled at her.

  My head was splitting. These people were even more untrustworthy and dishonest than I had ever imagined. They lied to one another! I could see why the Primary People wanted to get rid of human beings. Well, not all of us.

  “We have a more immediate problem,” said Dr. Traum. “This shuttle is overloaded. We won’t make it to Homeplace unless at least four people are jettisoned.”

  “The guards can go,” said the director.

  The four soldiers looked around wildly. It was a good thing they were unarmed.

  “Relax.” Dr. Traum raised his arms. “We’re not overloaded. I just wanted to make my point about the nature of humans: always ready to sacrifice others.”

  Alessa raised her hand as if she were in class. “Maybe you need to cop to some of that, Dr. Traum, seeing as how you ran our planets.”

  “She’s right,” I said. “Seems like you were ready to sacrifice us for your little experiment. How come you guys never stepped in when you could have made a difference? Like Eddie said, you guys have to take responsibility.”

  Alessa was smiling at me and I was feeling pretty good until the Lump said, “Who’s Eddie? It was Tom who said that when he was talking to the Council.”

  Dr. Traum smiled. “To be continued. Prepare for landing on Homeplace.”

  Forty-five

  TOME

  SOMEWHERE IN SPACE

  2012

/>   I TRIED to tune in Eddie. Nothing. Not even static. Not even that deep underwater sound. Were they all gone?

  Ronnie had tears in his eyes.

  “They could have escaped,” I said.

  “How?”

  “They had that shuttle.” I knew I didn’t sound very convincing.

  “Maybe we’re the only ones left,” said Ronnie.

  The pilot stood up suddenly. “What’s going on here?”

  I’d lost my concentration and slipped out of his mind. He reached into a mesh case on his belt and pulled out two Sharpie-size rods like the ones I had tried to use in the cafeteria against Hercules so long ago.

  “Those are Extreme-Temperature Narrow-Beam Climate Simulators,” I said. I put my hands up, pretending to surrender. “Either one can stop a water buffalo.”

  “You know it,” said the pilot. “I want you and your little friend to leave the bridge. Now.”

  I flicked Ronnie a quick message. Keep steering.

  “Please don’t shoot,” I said as meekly as I could. I stood up and waved my arms to distract him as I sent a probe into his mind. It was hard. He was so intent on getting us off the deck. I kept talking. “The data suggests that the simulators operate on auto-suggestion. That means they aren’t really shooting hot or cold. They are causing the target’s brain to believe it is being bombarded with an extreme temperature that will disable it.”

  The pilot smirked. “Maybe you want to find out if that’s true.”

  I wasn’t absolutely sure if it was true or not.

  I shut down my mind to any suggestion except my own. I imagined steel shutters rolling down with a clang around my brain.

  “Move it!” said the pilot. He aimed the rods at me.

  “Fire away!”

  If I was wrong, I’d be frozen and cooked.

  In the moment he fired, his mind opened up. I imagined the beams rattling harmlessly off my steel shutters and bouncing right back into him. He started howling, dropping the little rods and clutching himself. He shivered with cold and collapsed with heat exhaustion.

  I was right! It was all in the mind!

  My mind.

  I remembered back when I’d thought that Tom Canty was only as good as his devices. A week ago? More?

  “Tom? You okay?”

  I hadn’t caught my breath yet, so I just made a fist and threw it up into the air. It was something Eddie would do after scoring a winning basket. But how did I know that? I’d never seen him play basketball. Was part of twin-sense sharing our histories?

  The pilot crawled off the bridge. Ronnie and I were alone. The others in the crew had slunk away too. The five black rockets were still following us, but they were getting closer.

  The radio crackled. “This is Security Fleet Two. Come in, Friendship One.”

  I tried to throw out a probe to the mind of the Security Fleet Two pilot, but the distance through space and two ships was too great. Maybe someday I’d be able to do that. If I lived long enough.

  Puffs of green and yellow gas burst out of the backs of the black rockets. Superboosters. The spaceships caught up to us, separated, and surrounded us.

  “What should I do?” said Ronnie. His little fists were strangling the steering controls.

  I was trying to think. As long as they thought the director was on board, they wouldn’t open fire on us. They would just herd us back to EarthOne in 2012. Did we want to go there?

  Friendship One shuddered and jerked forward, picking up speed. The back of the craft had broken off into a cuplike shape. A parachute bloomed behind it. The cup floated toward EarthOne, which was now as big as a basketball on the screen.

  “What was that?” said Ronnie.

  “A landing capsule,” I said. I’d seen it on TV when astronauts left their spaceships after coming into Earth’s atmosphere. “The pilot and the crew just bailed out.”

  “Is that bad for us?”

  “Could be. If the fleet thinks the director is safe, they might open fire on us.” I took a breath. “We might not make it, Ronnie.”

  “What are we going to do?” Ronnie seemed calm. He trusted me.

  Before I could tell him that I didn’t know, Ronnie stood up and looked into my eyes. His eyes were very blue. I’d never noticed that before. He said, “In case we don’t make it, Tom, I’ve got to tell you something. About myself.”

  I didn’t bother to probe his brain. I knew what he was going to say. “You don’t have to tell me anything, Ronnie. I think you’re a good, brave guy, and it doesn’t matter to me if you’re gay.”

  I wasn’t sure if he’d be glad or angry that I’d figured it out. But I didn’t expect him to laugh.

  “I always thought you’d be the one to realize the truth, Tom,” said Ronnie. “I’m not gay. I’m a girl.”

  Forty-six

  EDDIE

  EN ROUTE TO HOMEPLACE

  OUTSIDE TIME

  DAD and I were standing close together at the front window of the shuttle and I felt really good. I was finally with my dad again.

  But some of that good feeling leaked away as Homeplace grew in the window.

  The planet looked awful, like an old apple left out to rot, wrinkled and dry and brown.

  “Was it always like this?” I asked.

  Dad shook his head. “Once it was as green and wet as the Earths.”

  The planet filled the front window. The old brown apple had square white spots on it. Poles stuck out of the spots.

  “What are those?” I asked.

  “The poles are sensors, checking weather and air quality,” said Dad. “The square spots are hatches. They lead down into the center of the planet, where we have to live now.”

  “What happened?” said Britzky.

  “Just what we don’t want to happen on the Earths,” said Dad. “The Primary People are not warlike, so we weren’t going to blow ourselves up, but we were pretty stupid and shortsighted when it came to carbon gases and global warming and extreme weather. Now we have a chance to prevent catastrophes on the Earths. How can we not do the right thing?”

  Alessa turned to Dr. Traum. “Will you do the right thing?” she asked.

  “That’s two questions, really,” said Dr. Traum. “Can we prevent the catastrophes on Earths, and do we want to?” He tilted his head toward the director, the Lump, and the soldiers whispering in the back of the shuttle. “Human beings don’t inspire much confidence.”

  “They’re human beings too,” said Dad, pointing to Britzky and Alessa. “Eddie and Tom are half.”

  “That’s true,” said Dr. Traum. “Small beacons of hope. Very small.”

  “Enough for us to do the right thing,” said Dad.

  Dr. Traum snorted. “We’ll see what the Council decides.”

  A digitized voice said, “Prepare for landing.”

  The shuttle settled softly on the ground. Clouds of brown dust covered the windows. We waited for the dust to settle. The nearest white hatch opened. A huge tube snaked up and fastened itself to the side of the shuttle. A door opened. Dr. Traum led us out.

  There was an escalator inside the tube that hummed as it took us down to a big elevator. When we were all inside, the elevator whooshed downward. It stopped with a little bump. The elevator door opened onto what looked like a hospital waiting room. People in white coats were walking in and out of smaller rooms with medical equipment.

  “Before we can go any farther into Homeplace,” said Dr. Traum, “everyone will need to undergo tests and decontamination. We’re very concerned about introducing any infectious bacteria or viruses.”

  The director said, “We are not submitting to any invasive procedures.”

  “The alternative,” said Dr. Traum, “is for you to stay on the surface of Homeplace. I don’t think you’d last very long.”

  We were sent to different examining rooms. At least a dozen people crowded into mine. They sort of looked like human beings except their features were smooth and without much expression. But by the way
they were bobbing up and down, I could tell they were excited, really glad to see me. When I concentrated, I felt welcoming vibrations from their minds. I had forgotten for a minute that I’m half Primary People. When I remembered that, they all started bobbing faster. And chattering.

  The guy who seemed to be in charge said, “Ahh, Edward Tudor, we have been so looking forward to meeting you.” He pumped my hand. He wouldn’t let go.

  “You know me?” It sounded dumb, especially after they all laughed.

  “You are a hero on Homeplace, Edward, as is your brother, Thomas. We’ve been following your adventures on the Earths for years. You are such a great athlete. And so clever! I particularly liked the way you defeated that gang of baseball thugs by making them think their bats were snakes.”

  All the white-coated people behind him pretended they were throwing bats away. One of them shouted, “Raiders rule!” They were laughing so hard, they were shaking.

  “How did you see that?” I said.

  “The monitors have been sending back video of you boys for years.” He finally let go of my hand. “I’m Dr. Robinson.”

  Something clicked in my brain and I said, “A Dr. Robinson was murdered by Injun Joe.”

  He clapped his hands. “And you’re so smart! You’ve read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.”

  I didn’t want to tell him I’d read only the comic-book version Dad had tucked into the back of the real book.

  I changed the subject. “What happens now, Dr. Robinson?”

  “Just a quick checkup. You won’t feel a thing.” He held out a cup attached to a tube. “Breathe in.”

  As I drifted into dreamland, I saw a blue rocket ship heading toward a sparkling green Earth. But five black rocket ships were attacking it. Ronnie was steering the blue ship and Tom was in the pilot’s chair. I sensed they would need my help soon.

  Forty-seven

  RONNIE

  SOMEWHERE IN SPACE

  2012