Aliens In The Family (12 page)

"Don't follow me!" he cried desperately. "Let me go away and don't follow me. I am followed by too many already. I should never have let you help me. Don't follow!"

"Who
is
following you?" asked Dora. "You said that before but no-one was following you. I looked everywhere. There was no-one there."

"Remember the jump?" he asked mysteriously. "You
felt
them move closer. They made time shrug." He looked at their blank faces. "Never mind. You don't understand."

"You don't understand either," Jake threw back at him. "If you go away now, people will search for you—
our
people, that is—and they won't stop looking until they find some trace of you." As she spoke she stopped climbing, growing rigid with amazement and fear. Behind Bond, but still on the rock lip over which the water plunged, turning white then silver and then clear as glass as it flowed through a long patch of sunlight, three black patches were forming in mid-air, taking on the rough shape of men. They were flat and black, like figures in a shadow theatre, but they seemed to be filling out somehow. It was as though something was rushing into them from somewhere and Jake felt that in a moment they would have texture and substance. Right now, however, they looked as if they had been burnt into the air, and that anything poured
into them
could also gush out
through
them and flood onlookers with blackness. A quivering began, not only in the air but in the actual rocks under their hands and feet. It was not quite an earthquake—living as they did in an area prone to earthquakes, Jake and Dora were both familiar with the sensation and were vaguely aware that this movement was too mathematical to be an earthquake. It was as if someone had plucked an invisible string in the very heart of all matter, and now the entire world was vibrating to a single note. The figures moved and stretched out black shapes that were not quite real hands. They could not seize anything yet, but were getting ready to do so. They were preparing to take Bond, Lewis said nothing, but Dora screamed in horror.

"Bond! Watch out!"

"Where?" he asked.

"Behind you! Behind you!" Dora cried.

Bond turned, saw them, and spoke in a different voice and a different language while at the same time desperately dragging at the box under his arm, fumbling with the transistor switches. In an instant there came a sound as penetrating as a needle thrust in at the ear, dissolving into the blood, and coursing like a thousand little needles around the body. The black figures suddenly broke up into black rags and then to a swarm of swirling fragments before vanishing completely. Jake stared at this scene in terror. Dora, looking up towards Lewis, saw his hands grow limp and begin to slide away from the stone. She cried out as she felt him fall like a heavy bundle past her, down the rocky outcrop at the side of the waterfall, crashing to the ground below.

Back on the ridge David and Philippa, angry and puzzled at the lengthy disappearance of their patchwork family, felt the world flicker and then for a terrifying moment they felt completely disoriented.

"What on earth..." David began, but Philippa interrupted.

"David, don't try and think about it. Don't try and work it out. Let's just concentrate on what to do next."

"The horses..." David said. "Oh, no!"

"The children..." said Philippa, her face pale and stricken.

In spite of their concern they did nothing immediately except fling their arms about each other and bury their faces in each other's shoulder, giving them a much-needed moment of darkness and closeness in which to get used to the fantastic alteration of their environment.

"Electric snakes!" breathed David faintly at last, followed by "Good Heavens!" Philippa felt for his hand and twisted her fingers into his before opening her eyes.

They were still at their picnic place and it was open to the sky, but the whole forest had somehow crept up from below. The rail to which the horses had been tied had disappeared, and the horses themselves stood oddly among the trees of a forest that had never known horses. Enchanter and Scoot, who had fallen onto their sides, scrambled clumsily to their feet. It was no longer possible to look down onto the bush and see it as something over which people had control, for it now towered above them, as if in a single second they had slept for a hundred years and had woken to find seeds had sprouted into huge, old trees. There was evidence of man's habitation as someone had been working on the ridge, clearing a space—the wood of several tree stumps was still white and clean, unweathered by the elements. Every fern, every leaf and every twig seemed to stand out as though it was outlined with a thread of silver. There was a crashing sound—Cooney, contrary as ever, plunged away into the imposing forest that surrounded them.

"It's impossible," Philippa said. Her teeth chattered as she spoke but she was not cold. David said nothing for a moment. When he spoke at last, he was shivering too.

"Something very strange has happened," he muttered. "I don't think we can afford to think about it too much, i mean—we could go mad just trying to understand it. We'll just do what we've got to do... look for the kids."

"Yes," agreed Philippa. She smiled weakly and added, "I'm so frightened my legs have stopped working!"

"Mine too!" replied David. "Hug me and make me strong." They embraced once more.

As David and Philippa embraced, down by the waterfall the quivering stopped. Jake still clung steadfastly to the rocks, her eyes squeezed firmly shut. When she opened them again she saw that her eight fingertips were yellowish-white and her nails were almost white too. Their usual pinkness had shrunk to a patch in the middle of each nail because she had been hanging on so tightly. Next she found to her surprise and disgust that she had been a little sick, and her mouth tasted of the orange drink she had drunk only a short time before, now sour and bitter. Someone seized her wrists. It was Bond. There were actual tears on his cheeks, tears so recently wept they were still moving.

"I'm sorry," he sobbed. "I didn't want this to happen. I'm so confused, I..." he stopped talking as he felt her come alive again and take control of her hands, grasping the rock anew, though still blinking and dazed.

"Dora!" she called. "Dora! Are you all right?"

"I slid down a bit," wailed Dora. "My knees will be all scraped. What did you do?" She directed herself at Bond. "Where's Lewis?"

"I'm all right now," said Jake as Bond climbed down past her towards Dora. She began to climb back down herself, and a moment later stood at the foot of the waterfall beside the immobile form of Lewis, while Bond helped Dora down the last little bit of the rock face.

Jake could see at once that Lewis was alive, though she was reminded in a horrid way of a broken toy. He was breathing deeply and evenly. Dora burst into tears and wailed aloud. Jake now realized that Dora's noisy cries were because she need to talk, squeal, whimper—anything to keep herself on the move. Dora's own sound was like a drum for her to march to. So Dora cried loudly, and Jake was silent, but each in their own way was trying to cope with the difficult circumstances.

"Is it all right to move Lewis?" Jake asked Bond. "He might have broken bones. Can you tell?"

"Solita?" Bond looked into the air questioningly. Jake thought he was swearing in his alien language.

"He is alive and well," replied Solita, but neither Jake nor Dora could hear her. "It is very strange. He must have been unusually susceptible. We have driven them off but not very far. I can still feel them hovering but now I need to recharge. So will they, I think, unless they have a great reserve of power on which to draw."

"He's all right—just stunned," Bond reported to the two girls. "Help me lift him out of the mud." Jake hesitated. "I promise it won't hurt him," Bond assured her. Together they gently laid Lewis on the carpet of dried leaves and grass to the side of the stream.

"He's fainted," said Dora. "Mum'll know what to do. We'll make a stretcher with our coats like we learned in First Aid, and carry him home." She pictured herself, frail but brave, caring only for her little brother, her hair wonderfully curly in spite of the single smudge of dirt on her flower-like cheek.

Jake noticed Dora was dreaming again. "Wakey, wakey!" she said gently. Jake's breathing had altered, and she was now panting slightly. She was afraid. "We don't even know where we are anymore."

From the few glimpses of the world she had had as she stumbled to Lewis's side, Dora already knew things had changed but that was something she could not bear to think about. Now there was no choice. She had to listen, lift her head and look around at a world which knew nothing of pretty hair or heroic friends and sisters. Perhaps, she reflected, it knew nothing of people. Somehow the whole bank on the west side of the creek had tilted. Just for a moment Dora was convinced she must be standing side on to everything. The stream chattered more loudly than before, not because the surroundings were any quieter or because it was excited by the adventures people were having on its banks, but because it was deeper and swifter than it had been. The waterfall had grown higher and more narrow. There were still trees but no longer the same trees. The silence beyond the sound of the stream was the same silence however, ancient and enchanted. Their voices crawled in it like little insects in the silence of an endless, shadowy hall. They were all aliens together now in a place that belonged to none of them. Dora noticed that the trees, the leaves and the ferns appeared as though someone had scratched around them with a pin of light. Jake's teeth chattered slightly as if she was cold but it was fear she was struggling to keep clenched behind her teeth, not chilliness.

Jake turned to Bond who, to her eyes, stood in this world like the very spirit of the change. "What have you done to us?" she asked him accusingly. She wanted to say 'What have you got us into?' but she knew they had no-one to blame but themselves on that score—they had got themselves into it, wishing to be adventurous in the fight against evil. They had wanted to help Bond, to be daring and brave... but had ended up unsure and afraid.

"We've gone back in time," stated Bond. "I can't tell how far. The Wirdegen made a big jump and time jumped back too."

"Gone back in time!" cried Dora and Jake together.

"I tried to warn you without actually telling you what I suspected might happen, but you wouldn't give up!" Bond said, a note of anguish in his voice. "I should have just walked away from you when I first met you, because when I did try to leave you it was already too late. Solita warned me that there was a Wirdegen presence but she couldn't tell me where. Then I felt the jump." A moment before Bond had seemed bright as a star in the shadows of the bush. Now he seemed more human—he was unhappy and that was easy to recognize even in a changed world. "All the same, he added, "I think it was fated that we should meet because of the stone."

"The stone?" asked Dora in a quivering voice.

"You've got to tell us everything now," said Jake firmly, squatting down beside Lewis, "no matter what you promised anyone else."

Bond looked up. A last, single, glassy bead clung to his cheek. Bond touched it and it vanished into a damp smear as he looked at his fingertip with interest. He even licked it. And all the time he was listening to a voice they could not hear.

"What are you listening to?" asked Dora desperately. "What do you hear through your radio?"

"It's my transistor... trans-sister," said Bond, smiling a little as he gave the word a different emphasis. "It's hard for you to understand."

"We're not stupid!" said Dora indignantly.

"No, Dora—it's something really strange," Jake told her. "I should have told you sooner, but forgot about it with all those questions of yours about Mum and Dad. Bond isn't from our world. He's from somewhere else."

"What do you mean?" Dora looked as if her hair might stand on end. "He's not a ghost...?"

"I'm Galgonquan," Bond answered proudly as if he expected them to know and understand. "Both of us are." Then, seeing their blank faces he disconnected the lead from his ear and pressed a switch that would enable him to hear Solita without using the ear piece. "This box may look like a radio but it holds some of the capacities and qualities of my sister, Solita, who is, well, older than me. She's more advanced."

Dora and Jake looked at each other quite baffled. "But what's it for? And what does it actually do?" asked Dora, staring at the box as if it had suddenly sprouted evil eyes and was looking at her. "And why are you here?"

"I was sent down to do my first test." Bond paused doubtfully. "We all have to do a test at different times."

"A sort of exam?" offered Jake. He frowned over the word then suddenly seemed to understand.

"Yes," he replied. "It is very much the same. I did the first part well enough I think, but then I came up against a Wirdegen unit—but you wouldn't know what a Wirdegen is, would you?"

Dora tore her anxious gaze from Lewis and glared at him. "Of course not! Why are they after you?"

"It's a bit complicated," he said, "but I'll try to simplify things for you." He did not say anything for a short space of time and the only sound was the faint, busy, warbling voice of the stream hurrying past their feet. "We Galgonqua," he said at last, "are trying to make something that is a great work of art—and of science as well. We call it the Inventory—a collection of all the knowledge in the Universe, but an integral part of knowledge is the way we connect things together. We think that when it's all put together it'll be more than a list. It will make a wonderful pattern."

"It makes you sound like a whole planet of librarians!" said Jake jokingly, and she was surprised when Bond's face lit up and he agreed with her.

"That's just it! That's what we are. We are the holders and arrangers of knowledge. We never know, or even meet, our parents as you do, but spend our life in the School travelling through the dimensions to various points in space to study... oh, everything, because everything matters, nothing is disconnected from anything else."