Loop (5 page)

CASSANDRA'S SECRET

One's friends are that part of the human race
with which one can be human.

George Saruayana

Cassie's story

The problem with being an alien is … well, everyone treats you like an alien.

At least they do if they know you
are
one.

Which is why the Grand Council spends so much time training us before it sends us to primitive planets to ‘check them out'.

I mean, it's not so bad on some planets. They're so excited to meet someone from another world that they treat you like a hero. The worst thing about those places is that you don't get any privacy and everyone wants you to show them stuff.

But then you get the places where they're just as likely to shoot first and ask questions when they're in the lab dissecting your body. Because they've always been told that you just can't trust anyone who's different.

On planets like that, you don't go up to someone and say, ‘Hi, I'm from the planet Yyedda in the Galactic Federation. Could you please take me to your leader?'

So when I found out we were going to Earth, I was a bit nervous.

Earth doesn't have a very good reputation. I guess it comes from the fact that Earthlings can't even get on with each other.

I mean, there are only four planets in the whole Galactic Federation which even have a word for war, and three of those haven't had a war in the last forty thousand years.

Of course, there are a number of primitive non-Federation planets scattered through the universe where the natives still kill each other as part of their way of life. But that's what makes Earth so dangerous.

Earth isn't all that primitive.

On Earth they have computers and TV and cars and space-shuttles, and they've even landed humans on their moon. They should have already been invited to join the Federation. Except that at last count they have, world-wide, fourteen thousand, seven hundred and twenty-one different words for war, murder and other forms of violent killing.

Of course, they do have a lot of different languages on the planet, but still, all those different words. It's a scary thought.

Jamie's story

No one saw them move in. Not even Mrs Preston, who spends just about her whole life sitting at the window of her front room watching the street. When she isn't out walking her psychotic poodle, that is.

Of course later, when everything that happened had happened, Mrs P was the first to say that it was suspicious that no one actually saw them move in. But she's really good at saying ‘I-told-you-so' when she never actually did.

Me, I didn't think it was particularly suspicious at all. I was just interested to find that there was finally someone in my street who was the same age as me. Especially a girl.

Of course, she did have these strange violet-coloured eyes, which was another thing that made Mrs P suspicious – afterwards.

Spencer Street is a funny place. It's a very long street, full of old people and families with grown-up kids or tiny babies. I was fifteen years old and I was at least eight years younger or older than anyone else in the street. This meant I was lonely a lot of the time.

So when Cassie moved in two doors down, I was interested.

Interested?

I was excited.

I even got my mum to bake scones and let me take them over, as a welcome-to-the-street present. It was the day after they'd arrived, and Mum said they probably wanted to be left alone to unpack, but I went anyway.

As I stood there at the door, I could feel Mrs Preston's eyes boring holes in the back of my head from the other side of the street.

Cassie's story

I answered the door and he was standing there with a plate in his hands and a nervous smile on his face.

‘I … that is, my mum …' he began nervously. ‘We thought you might like these. I'm Jamie.'

The plate was covered with a cloth. I lifted it up and saw the scones, but of course I didn't have a clue what they were. It doesn't matter how well they train you, they can't teach you everything. Being an Observer Family Class One, which is what we were, means that you learn to think on your feet.

‘Thank you,' I said. ‘I'm Cassie. Cassandra. Would you like a cup of tea?'

This is a custom on Earth – or so I'd been taught. If someone visits you, you offer them a cup of tea, then you talk to them about the weather. They can't control it (the weather, I mean) and they never know what it will be like the next day, so they like to talk about it.

That's what Elidor my trainer had told me. Elidor has spent fifty years studying the Earthlings.

Of course, Elidor didn't know everything.

‘I don't drink tea,' Jamie replied. ‘But if you have some orange juice …'

Orange juice?

I didn't have a clue what orange juice was. I guessed it must have been a drink when he said, ‘Or anything cold. I'm dying of thirst. Hottest February in forty years they reckon.'

Talk to them about the weather …

‘I believe it is a result of a temporary climatic disturbance resulting from the combination of global warming, the El Niño effect and increased sunspot activity on the solar surface,' I began, before I remembered that on this planet boys of my age don't understand anything about weather patterns.

‘Would you like to come in?' I asked.

He would.

He did.

Jamie's story

Cassie was fifteen going on forty-five. At least that's what my dad reckoned. He met her a couple of days after my visit with the scones.

By that time we were already friends.

I was teaching her how to play basketball, and she was teaching me the quickest way to do my maths, which is why she was over at our house when Dad came home from work.

‘She's just very clever,' I replied. She was my friend. I had to defend her, even if Dad wasn't really serious.

Still, there was something weird about Cassie. And her whole family.

Like that first day when I'd visited. They'd only been in the house a day but there were no boxes in the lounge or any other room. In fact, there was no mess anywhere.

They looked like they'd lived in the house forever.

And Cassie knew more two-dollar words than Miss Duncan, my English teacher, and she was a whiz at maths and science, although she hadn't seemed to have a clue what orange juice was.

And even when she had managed to find me a can of lemonade, she didn't know how to open the ring-pull.

It was like she was half genius and half idiot.

But she picked things up really quickly and never made the same mistake twice.

And when she started school a couple of days later, she fitted straight in.

I didn't get to speak to her much at school. She wasn't in my class for anything except French, and as soon as she arrived Rolf ‘the Hammer' Aaronson decided she needed someone to ‘show her around'.

‘Someone' meant him.

Which meant that it wasn't safe to try and communicate with her between nine and three-thirty.

They don't call him ‘the Hammer' because he's good at woodwork.

Cassie's story

It's really not such a bad school. Primitive, of course. I mean, you should see the way they do maths. But it's better than a lot of schools I've been to on planets that are supposed to be more advanced.

Naturally, they couldn't teach me anything I didn't already know. Most of the planets we study can't. But I always go to school anyway. It's a great place to observe the natives.

Take the ritual of the alpha male, for example.

I'd barely touched ground when this blond-headed Neanderthal tried to claim me – like a trophy or the choice portion of the kill.

Rolf Aaronson. At first I couldn't work out why everyone took a step backwards when he approached them. Then I watched him in action, and I thought of those fourteen thousand, seven hundred and twenty-one different words …

I made a mental note to find a way to neutralise his aggressive tendencies, one which fell within the Grand Council guidelines, of course. But for the first couple of weeks I decided to just stand back and observe. I was new. I didn't want to take the chance of making waves too quickly.

It made it difficult to talk to Jamie, and that was a pity. After all, he lived in the same street, and for a member of a non-Federation proto-civilisation he really was quite cute.

But back to the story.

You'd think that being there with all those teachers and kids would be the time I'd be most likely to make a mistake and give myself away, but in the end it wasn't.

And when you think about it, I guess it isn't all that surprising. The fact that it is dangerous puts you on your guard. You act more carefully; you watch what you say and do.

It's when you feel safe that you drop your guard. At least, that's how it worked with me.

Luckily, it was Jamie who caught me and not some suspicious adult.

It wasn't the kind of mistake an Observer Class One should make, but it's hard to be at your best when you've caught a local virus that clogs your head up and makes you sneeze. On Earth they call it ‘the common cold', but it's not common anywhere except on Earth.

What I did was … Well, I forgot to put my hair on.

I was lying down feeling like my head was about to explode – which is an interesting, if painful, experience – when Jamie knocked on the door. Both my parents were out, so I opened the door. Minus my hair.

I knew something was wrong when his mouth dropped open and he went white.

‘Cassie?' he said.

‘Jamie,' I replied.

‘Your head,' he said.

‘Oops!' I replied. And I immobilised him with a mind-lock.

I got him inside and closed the door, but now I had a real problem.

The rules say that if one of the natives blows our cover we have to leave immediately, report the incident and suffer the consequences. And the consequences are pretty serious.

My parents had worked hard to get the Class One rating, and a mistake like this could bump us all back down to Class Four, which meant we'd only be able to observe on planets without any intelligent life-forms.

Question:
How do you tell your parents that you've just completely ruined their lives?

Answer:
You don't.

I decided to take a gamble and see what happened. After all, it couldn't get much worse than it already was.

Jamie's story

When Cassie un-immobilised me, she had her hair on. And I have to admit she looked much prettier that way. Her face was the same, of course; it's just that Yyeddans don't have hair. What they do have are these three small, bony ridges that run the full length of their head, which you can't see if they wear a wig.

The ridges – and their violet-coloured eyes – are the only things that give them away. In every other way they look human, which is why they get to observe on Earth and planets like Earth.

I won't lie. I was scared.

I mean, I've seen loads of science-fiction films, so I know that not all ‘visitors' are cute like E.T.

I was definitely scared.

But this was Cassie, and something told me she wasn't anything like those other aliens.

If she had been, she wouldn't have un-immobilised me. She would have cut off my head, or zapped me with a pulse-laser, or eaten me.

‘I need your help,' she said.

‘Mine?' I replied.

She went on to tell me what they were doing here and how much trouble she'd be in if I told anyone what I knew.

It wasn't a hard decision.

I think I mentioned that I don't have too many friends.

I said I'd keep her secret.

She leaned across and kissed me – which should have been embarrassing. I mean, it's bad enough being suddenly and unexpectedly kissed by a girl – but a girl with three bony ridges instead of hair, and strange violet-coloured eyes, who'd just told you she was an alien from Yyedda …

The strange part was, it
wasn't
embarrassing. In fact, I quite liked it. So much so that I kissed her back.

The good thing about having an alien as a girl-friend is that you suddenly get really good at things in school.

I mean, they know so much more than we do and they do things differently.

Cassie showed me tricks in maths that university professors had never thought of, and she taught me how to remember.

Everything.

Even French.

So I'll never have to worry about exams again.

The least I could do was to repay her, and the only way I could do this was by helping her
observe.

We spent hours over at her house or shut in my bedroom, with her asking questions and me answering them. And we spent lots more hours riding our bikes around town, just watching things happen.

It's amazing how much you learn when you really look at things.

I knew she was pleased with what she was learning, because she kept saying things like, ‘You know, it's so much better when you have a guide.'

I even told her how to disguise those violet-coloured eyes.

Cassie's story

‘They're a dead giveaway, you know. No one has violet-coloured eyes.'

He was looking straight at me.

‘I wouldn't say that,' I replied. ‘Everybody on Yyedda has violet-coloured eyes.'

‘Maybe. But you're not on Yyedda.' He was smiling the way he did when he knew something that I didn't. ‘Don't they have coloured contacts there?'

‘Coloured what?' I asked, sounding dumb.

‘Contacts. Contact lenses. My brother's wife wears them. Her eyes are green, but she always wanted blue. So now they're blue.'

And that's the way it was. There's no way to beat local knowledge. I was sort of glad Jamie had caught me out. With my parents out most of the time working and observing, I was glad to have a friend. It's not easy being alone.