Aliens In The Family (13 page)

"Really?
Nothing?"
repeated Dora looking from Lewis to Bond to Jake with consternation.

"People like me come down into a society like this one—this one in particular because this is where the Galgonquan race began—and we study our surroundings and retain what we see. We sift memories and match them with other memories. We name the ways in which things fit together, we put knowledge in order and share it where it's needed. We know when things run side by side and when they cross over. We can recall information more quickly than any of your computers—it's part of our power."

"Are you our ancestors?" Dora asked incredulously.

"Descendants," Jake said quickly. "You'd be a descendant, wouldn't you, Bond?"

"In a way, but we're a mixture. We are descended from other peoples too, and we're altered by what we call 'genetic specialization'. For example, I have gills—I can breathe underwater and in very thin air."

"Can your enemies do that?" asked Jake, surreptitiously looking for his gills. Bond nodded.

"They can do most of what I can do," he explained. "We're distant cousins. There was once a community of Galgonqua called the Wirdegen. They didn't want to submit to the authority of the School. They were very bright and wonderful people and thought knowledge should be free and readily available to everyone, not given out like carefully selected prizes. Eventually, they broke away from the rest of us and set up on their own. This was many years ago. The difficulty is that we Galgonqua don't work well as individuals, not like your people do. We are interlinked, and once the Wirdegen broke off from the rest of us they slowly changed and lost their good ideas and their strength. And, as they slowly lose their powers, cooling down like a piece of burning wood which has fallen out of the main fire, they try to pirate us, steal our children and make connections through them." He sounded as if he was absent-mindedly quoting someone as he stroked his forehead thoughtfully and stared down at Lewis's unconscious face. "The Wirdegen are pirates of knowledge," he continued. "They want to steal from the Inventory and give nothing back to it."

Lewis suddenly muttered something and threw out his arm.

"Lewis!" said Dora kneeling over him, her lower lip trembling. "Wake up, Lewie, wake up!"

Jake watched Dora draw Lewis to her, wishing that she had someone to hug. She turned back to Bond. "So they caught up with you?"

"The chance of meeting the Wirdegen here was very small," Bond reflected. "They must be incredibly good at tracing, too. I could have sworn I was free. But you felt them—they made a big jump through time and space—'teleporting', I think you call it. I can do it too but I'm forbidden to do it here because of effects like this." He indicated their surroundings with a sweeping gesture. "You see, a jump without the proper compensation messes up a lot of other things as well. Time flickers. I'm not clever enough to make the exact compensation yet, and the Wirdegen just don't bother."

At this moment Lewis stirred and looked with unfocused eyes up at Dora. "Dora," he said after a moment, "who are we chasing?"

"Lewie," she cried, beaming with relief. "We were following Bond, remember, and then his enemies appeared. Do you remember that?"

"I fell," said Lewis, concentrating hard. "I fell down, didn't I?"

"The black shapes frightened you and your fingers slipped from the rock," said Dora, for that was what she believed. Lewis looked at her seriously. He shook his head slightly and opened his mouth to speak but no words came out. "Don't try to talk," said Dora. "Just lie still for a minute."

With Lewis's return to consciousness a dreadful pressure lifted from them. In the middle of a mystery they still enjoyed an unexpected moment of ease.

"Have I got it right, then?" asked Jake. "You actually teleport and that alters time?"

"We move forward using a particular energy, and the sudden draining of this energy sends time back. There are ways of moving where time will be unaffected, but those methods have to be carefully learnt and perfected. You see, we don't altogether understand
why
it happens, and it's a mystery even to those who can do it properly. They argue about the past we drop into—is it really the past, or is it just that people are suddenly able to see the past and only the past? We're not sure if the jump affects the place or the way we perceive the place. But it could upset everything in a city or a town—anywhere where people live. We're lucky that we're in a lonely place. Their first jump was only a little one, it made a difference of only a second or two—remember the electric snakes?—but the second one built on the first. And if they jump again, we'll move even further back."

"Do you mean to say we're actually in the
past!"
asked Dora with dread. "I can't think of anything I could want less!"

"We may only think we are," said Bond, in a reassuring voice. "It might be that it's
us
who have altered so that we can see only the past. No-one knows for sure."

Dora stared at him in disbelief. He still looked beautiful, but his difference now showed so clearly, both in the calm manner in which he spoke, and the fact that he seemed to think he might be comforting her by saying this. She could have screamed at him. Dropping down beside Lewis again, Dora flung her arms about him. "Don't worry, Lewie," she said, as much in an effort to comfort herself as her brother. She was tremendously pleased, however to realize that Jake was no longer an enemy, but a human being with the same thoughts and feelings as herself, the same fear, the same outrage.

"Are we stuck here forever?" Jake looked at Bond questioningly. "I mean, can we get back again?" Dora was secretly pleased also to hear that Jake's voice was shaking.
Stranded in time!
rang out a voice in her mind.
Stranded in time!

"Oh, no. It's only an effect, it won't last long. It will fade," answered Bond. "You don't belong here. See how each plant is edged with light? If we were properly matched up we wouldn't see that. The further back in time, the greater that effect becomes and the wider the zone of influence. You're safe—truly. Just be patient and you'll drift back to your own time and there'll be no more trouble for you. All this is happening because you are with me."

There was a deadly hush in the old bush. As Jake and Dora helped Lewis to his feet, they understood that part of the tranquility about them was the silence of the past. They could hear the clockwork of the years not ticking but sighing out into the quietude. Some things remained unchanged. The native fuchsia still shed scrolls of bark, and the beech trees still wore the lacy grey-green of their lichen, so that the edges of their trunks were not clear-cut like those of garden trees, but faded out somewhat fuzzily into the air.

"I suppose there's not much we can do to help you now," said Jake wearily. "We should be thinking of helping ourselves. We might even get in your way."

"We won't even know what happens to you," Dora broke off suddenly. "Let's get Lewis home," she wailed, looking fearfully at their transformed world. "But how can we? Are we in a different time from Mum and David?" She looked worried.

"Different time?" asked Lewis as he sat up looking quite bewildered at the change in the trees around them. "Where's Mummy? I want to go home."

"We'll go in just a little while," Dora said, her voice trembling. "When we know where to go," she added under her breath.

"It will be all right if you just sit here," said Bond, touching her on the arm in an attempt to comfort her. "Think of it as a very mysterious dream. And it
is
mysterious because I must have been drawn to meet
you,
Dora, by a very strange effect. There was what we call an 'object anomaly'. That stone you're wearing around your neck—I was wearing it too. The present form and the future one pulled towards each other, and then when I got into the car with you my stone vanished. It was the same stone, you see, but in two different existences."

"My stone!" exclaimed Dora putting her hand to her throat to touch it. "My father—my real father—gave it to me."

"My father gave me mine too—sort of," said Bond. "I came to your time—a time where it already existed—and it cancelled itself out. But first, the attraction of the two stones pulling towards each other led me to you. It's all been a wonderful experience for me, and if I get back to my School I'll have so much to tell about—riding and red hair, and unexpected friends."

Lewis started to get to his feet. Dora put her arm around his waist and helped him.

"Don't go," Dora said to Bond, but with none of her earlier determination.

"It's a bit like Captain Scott's last expedition," Jake said uneasily. "They are dying of cold and hunger in the Antarctic, and Captain Oates was getting weaker and he knew he was holding the rest of them back. So one morning he said, 'I am just going outside for a moment, gentlemen. I may be some time', and although they knew he wouldn't come back, they let him go."

Dora remembered learning about this at school, but she had always imagined being Captain Oates, not one of the people who let him go.

Lewis suddenly startled them all by crying out, "No! No, I don't want Bond to go. No! I won't let him walk into the bush." He clung furiously to Bond. "You're not to leave us."

"Wirdegen alarm! Wirdegen alarm!" Solita warned Bond.

"They're close," Bond said, trying to detach Lewis gently. "They could be in the air around us."

Jake and Dora quickly looked all around but could see nothing to be worried about. There was no sign of any living thing, with the exception of one small fantail which came darting down, zigging and zagging with its unique twitching flight, danced around on a fallen branch nearby, spoke to them in high-pitched cheeps, then shot away again like a clockwork toy suddenly released to fly free.

"It will be difficult at first," Bond told them. "Especially when the whole world begins churning and changing, but it will pass—it will settle down to a grey-green blur, night and day running together to make one twilight, whole summers nothing but little flashes of brightness."

"Like a cassette tape quickly rewinding," said Dora, inspired.

"Mmm—rather like that," Bond agreed after some hesitation, "and then the present—your time—will approach and there will be accumulated drag. The days will slow down again, and when the silver line vanishes you'll know you're back in your own time, one reality fitting exactly over another, everything matched up. You'll be back where you started and can just walk upstream to your parents. I don't know how far this distortion spreads but it may be that they won't even have missed you."

"We've been away for ages," said Dora.

"But mostly in another time!" Bond reminded her, smiling. He looked from one to the other of them. "Thank you for all you have done and all you have tried to do for me. You've been good friends and if ever I get back to my School, it will all be put down in the great Inventory to become part of the information of the Universe. It will be part of that pattern I was talking about."

Jake and Dora watched Bond turn to go, both feeling powerless to protect either him or themselves but unable to think of any more arguments to prevent him from leaving. By now they were so overwhelmed by the silver-edged forest and by the strange things Bond had divulged, that although they felt desperate and sad at seeing him turn and walk away, they also felt a certain guilty relief.

"Have we all stopped being brave?" Dora asked Jake, who shrugged and sighed but said nothing.

"No!" shouted Lewis. He sounded shaken and weak, but desperate too.

"Bond!" commanded a voice and Bond stopped. It was a man's voice but came from Solita, and went on to speak in a series of twitters and clicks as if a bird was trapped in the box behind the buttons and switches. "The time is now! Contact is re-established!" Solita reported. Bond stared down at the box in astonishment and relief. "Elementary Chikkulen breathing with repetition of the first Xu formula coordinates for voluntary metamorphose will be read to you. Walk in the direction indicated on the dial."

Bond looked back at Dora and Jake and Lewis. "Did you hear?" he cried, seizing his Companion as if it was a book, clasping it against his chest. "Did you hear what he said?"

"How could we understand?" Dora said. "It was all squeaks and clicks!" But she had understood enough, and smiled.

"I might be saved after all. I might be saved!" Bond cried. The Companion began to reel off a long list of numbers and, almost as if all living things responded to the rhythm of the voice, a ripple of movement spread through the forest. There was the sound of a flock of frightened birds as they rose out of the tree-tops, beating their wings furiously. Change accelerated so that at one moment the trees around were sunny and peaceful in their net of silver fire, and the next they were lashing in the grip of a wind from the past which had, however, no power to ruffle Jake, Dora, Lewis or Bond. They stood in the heart of a storm but remained untouched by it. A nearby branch tore away, leaving a long, ivory scar amidst the grey bark, which immediately began to discolour and heal. From somewhere up above them, another bough—a dry one—snapped so sharply that they all jumped. It fell at Jake's feet and she bent to pick it up.

"Pay attention," she urged Bond anxiously as she noticed his eyes wandering too. "Don't miss anything!"

"I am," he said, surprised. "What I'm hearing is like a mathematical password. When I have absorbed it all, I will undergo metamorphosis and be taken back to my School. I'll be safe and it's thanks to you."

"Anyway," said Dora. "Even if the Wirdegen had caught up with you again, you could have made that sound that drove them all away before."

"Audio defence?" said Bond. "No, Solita needs to recharge before she can be used for audio defence again. It would take a very long time to recharge here using sunlight alone."

Lewis started as if in surprise, then his head tilted back almost as if some invisible hand was forcing his chin back against his will. "Bond," he said in a strange voice. As he spoke, the quivering they had begun to recognize and fear started again, very faintly at first, but becoming stronger. The world strummed like a quavering musical note and the air, already tormented with shifting time, was seeded with black points. Lewis cried out, flinging himself around wildly as if struggling with an invisible assailant. He twisted and panted then suddenly screamed out. "Run, Bond! Run! They're coming to get you. They made me listen! I couldn't help it. They know you can't break them up anymore."