You'll Like It Here (Everybody Does) (3 page)

“I've heard!” Gramps snorts. “And I can't believe you're taking them seriously.”

Mom laughs softly. “Aliens, Sheriff DuBois? Really, now …”

“I didn't say I'm a believer,” the sheriff says, chuckling a little himself. “But I have to go through the motions. People are depending on me, you know.”

“What did you expect to learn from the children?” Gramps asks.

“Anything that might give us a clue as to what scared the old man,” the sheriff says. “It was Mrs. Raskin who suggested I come out here and talk to y'all.”

“Mrs. Raskin?” I say. “But why?”

“Why indeed?” David says, unable to hide his irritation.

The sheriff chews on the earpiece of his sunglasses and studies David carefully for a time. Then he turns to Mom and says, “Your boy seems awful bright.”

“Yes, quite bright,” Mom agrees. “They both are.”

“I mean, he has an unusual way of talking,” the sheriff continues. “Around here you don't hear folks saying things like ‘Why indeed?' Especially kids.”

It's obvious that Mom is at a loss for words. She shrugs.

“Where was it y'all come from, up north somewhere?”

“California,” Mom says. “But you see, their father—my late husband—grew up abroad. They both picked up idioms from him.”

“Yeah, I reckon they would,” the sheriff says.

“And both Meggie and David read a great deal as well,” Mom adds. “I'm amazed sometimes at the expressions they pick up from their reading.”

“Right,” Sheriff DuBois says, and puts his sunglasses back on. “Anyhow, I'm awful sorry to bother y'all on a Sunday afternoon.”

In a few minutes he's gone, leaving the four of us standing in our kitchen, just looking at each other, not knowing whether to laugh or cry.

That night I dream of an alien family who live in a round silver house high on a cliff among the clouds. And they have blue hair.

It's officially the first day of summer, and I am at the front screen door trying to enjoy the smell of the summer rain. David is catching his daily show of man harassing alligator on Animal Planet. Gramps has been in his workshop for days, but today he has come upstairs to talk to Mom. I hear them whispering together on the front porch. They've been doing this a lot lately, and their secrecy really bugs me.

Our trip to Niagara Falls has been postponed for reasons unknown. Something wicked this way comes, but I am not in the loop to know about it.

“Why not just tell me and get it over with!” I suddenly yell, exasperated.

The whispering stops, and David clicks off the TV. Silently Mom and Gramps come inside, and the four of us scrunch up together on one couch. Gramps hugs me to
him. Hanging on a cord around his neck is a silver object that looks like a long whistle.

“Yes, you're old enough to hear hard truths without falling apart,” Gramps says.

“I am,” I say, but my heart is thundering. “Tell me.”

“It's all the talk in town—of aliens,” Mom says softly.

“But what about it?” I say irritably.

“It grows worse and worse,” Gramps says. “People are wild with fear. We must take precautions. Just in case … You know.”

“What kind of precautions?”

“We must have a plan,” Mom says.

I touch the whistle, and a vague memory stirs. We've had this thing for many years, and once it was used for … what? When?

“It's called the Log,” Gramps says. “You were only three the last time we played it, and in case you've forgotten, it sounds like this.” He props the whistle against his lips.

As he blows softly into it, a flimsy mist floats out of the air holes and circles our heads. It's gray and smells a lot like smoke, and there's another odor that's pretty bad, but I can't quite place it. At the same time this really lovely mystic music that sounds almost like a pan flute fills the house. I have to say, there's such a pang of longing and sadness in the sound that I feel like crying. I've almost remembered the last time I heard this whistle, when Gramps interrupts my thoughts.

“At full volume, it will be heard all around our property, and it's our danger signal,” he says. “If you ever
hear it, drop what you're doing and get to the basement pronto.”

“We'll all meet there in Gramps's workshop,” Mom says.

I can still smell the whistle mist, and feel the sadness in its music.

“And there we'll be safe from them?” I say.

“Utterly and completely,” Gramps says. “They can't touch us there.”

We fall asleep on the screened porch with moonlight washing over our faces. It's long after midnight when I wake up with a start, to the uncomfortable feeling of a hand being placed over my mouth.

Before I can react, Gramps whispers, “It's just me. Let's go quickly, quietly.”

My body stiffens with fear.

When he takes his hand away from my mouth, I squeak, “Are they here?”

“Yes, in the cornfield.”

I can't resist looking out at the corn in the full light of the moon. There I see dark figures moving without a sound among the stalks. I shrink against Gramps, fearing they might see us. But we have the advantage, for at this hour we are in the moon's shadow, and they are in its light.

I see Mom and David tiptoeing through the French doors into the house. With Gramps holding my hand, we follow.

In our bare feet we step down the stairs to the main floor, with Mom and David ahead of us. Nobody speaks as
we hurry toward the basement stairs near the kitchen. Then I hear sounds outside the house, and my breath starts to come in gasps. Mom and David reach the basement stairs and disappear down them. When Gramps and I are inside the stairwell, he turns and locks the door behind us.

We hear something that sounds like angry growls outside our kitchen, and a thumping against the back door. I freeze in my tracks. Gramps scoops me up under one arm and carries me down the rest of the way. His workshop is enclosed within the full basement. Once inside this inner room, he sets me down and locks that door behind us.

And standing there before us is the Carriage. Shaped like a child's paper airplane, it has standing room of around seven feet, and an approximate width of eight feet at the base. The Carriage is also transparent, so that I can see Mom at the control panel and David on the floor behind her, against the wall. I step inside and crouch beside my brother.

Gramps follows and quickly secures the door of the Carriage. Mom points to a small computer screen and reads aloud to Gramps in our native tongue. Gramps looks at the screen, then begins working the controls.

The commotion I heard outside is now tumbling down the basement stairs, now pushing against the inner door. Terrified and fascinated at the same time, I watch that door while Gramps and Mom concentrate on the controls. Finally a little swoosh tells us the Carriage is in operation.

When the workshop door bursts open, I cry out. I
can't help myself. David clutches me to him, and I hold on.

Through the transparent walls, we can see clearly the faces of the townspeople surrounding the Carriage, and they can see us as well. Among others, we see Mrs. Raskin, Mr. Alvarez, Kitty's grandpa, the Romano sisters, Mr. O'Reilley—people we have grown to care about. But they have become a mob of strangers, and there is so much fear and anger and hate in their eyes that I hardly recognize them. Furiously they begin beating on the sides of the Carriage with sticks and stones and bare fists.

Then someone—Mr. O'Reilley, I think—grabs a hammer from Gramps's workbench and begins beating on the sides of the Carriage. Others take up heavy tools and do the same. Though the Carriage is soundproof, we still can hear muffled noises. The screams and curses get louder and louder and more ferocious as the people hammer the sides.

Gramps is frantic as he strikes the palm of his hand against a wide bar, which reads in English:
OPEN THE GATE
.

Instantly the Carriage is enveloped in a white vapor. The Gate has opened for us, and like a spear cutting through water, we move swiftly through it, to safety on the other side.

A
ccording to legend, at the dawn of time, in the distant world of Chroma, when the life-forms there were not highly evolved, much of the planet was shrouded in darkness. During those dark periods, luminescent streaks began to appear, as if by magic, in the hair of the planet's inhabitants, who were my ancestors.

For females the color was a whimsical periwinkle, and for males a deep royal blue. The streaks were attractive, and both shades glowed in the dark, though they could appear in daylight as well. Subsequently, our race, for eons, was known by a Chroma word meaning “blue.”

That's the reason my mother chose the name Blue for herself, and for me and my sister, Meggie, when we traveled from our homeland of Chroma to Earth.

In a more enlightened age, Chromian anthropologists studied the phenomenon of the blue hair and declared
that, in the beginning, its main purpose was to help the people identify one another in the dark, but it was also apparent that a person did not begin to glow until he or she had come to a certain degree of maturity in body, mind, and spirit. Most Chromians were proud to reach this plateau around the age of twelve, give or take a year, but some rare individuals, sadly, never arrived. I achieved blue at the age of eleven, but Meggie, being very immature in many ways, did not.

Once, our home planet was a land of many bright colors, thus the name Chroma, but by the time Meggie and I were born, it had become a bleak and dying world, with its air, soil, and water contaminated beyond salvation. In fact, pollution poisoning killed off our people in great numbers, with Dad and Grandmama being among those who perished.

Though Chroma's technology was highly sophisticated, our fine scientists could not reverse the damage done to the environment. Attempting to make amends for this dismal failure, they developed the ultimate vehicle for dimensional and space travel—the Carriage. This grand creation was unique in that it was programmed to seek out the hidden passages and secret gateways of the universe, making it possible for its occupants to navigate astronomical distances in short periods of time.

With the Carriage, Chromians could leave the sad ruins of our once-splendid civilization and migrate in small groups to other, more promising worlds, where we could assimilate undetected into society.

Mom and Gramps chose Earth for its natural beauty,
and the United States of America for its magnificent Constitution. The English language was also a plus. Mom learned it as a child from her teacher, who had learned it from his space travels. Mom taught English to Gramps, then to me and Meggie, along with Chromish, when we first began to speak.

As for our bodies, it was always a mystery to me why Earthlings imagined that someone alien to their planet would have to be grotesque. In Chroma kindergarten I learned that advanced life is similar all over the universe, except for some rare mutations on the far edges of the known galaxies. In fact, the major difference in appearance we found between ourselves and the Earthlings was size. Chromian adults were, on the average, about six inches shorter than Earthlings, and weighed much less. A petite figure was considered a trait of beauty and was desired by both men and women.

After much debate and soul-searching, Mom requested the services of Chroma's physicians, who were among the most skilled in the universe, to treat each of us with growth enzymes, so that we would not be considered oddities among the natives of Earth. Mom and Gramps assumed these new bodies with great misgivings, because they seemed, as Meggie's friend Kitty Singer might say, “Ooo-ooo, gross!” In only a matter of months, the change was complete and permanent. Meggie and I were too young to care very much, soon forgetting how we had looked before, and the adults, out of necessity, learned, in time, to adjust.

I was five and Meggie three when we arrived in the
Carriage on the shores of California, USA, North America, Earth, expecting to find security and happiness—as we surely did for a time. Through all the amazing years of living on Earth, we did not speak of our secret even with each other, but harbored it close to our hearts. At times it seemed Meggie might have forgotten Chroma completely, and it was best, I thought, if she could forget who we really were. But I was wrong. She remembered much more than I suspected. In fact, I thought perhaps her memories of Chroma and the attack of the madman created her fears of being hunted like an animal.

Now here we are once again, homeless. The Carriage, however, cuts through the blackness with such stunning sureness that I feel strangely safe. If somebody were out there watching our flight, this superb vehicle might appear to be a glass rocket. But of course it's not glass at all. It's made from a fine and complex synthetic, unknown on Earth.

A dim light from the control panel allows us to see each other, and the Carriage temperature is perfectly regulated so that we are comfortable. Mom and Gramps appear almost to be in shock. They are still standing at the controls, but not touching anything, just staring ahead. Meggie and I sit huddled together against the wall. Far off we can see sporadic twinkles of light in the vast, cold blackness around us.

“We meant them … no harm.… We meant them … no harm,” Mom mumbles. “We wanted only to live, to survive, to raise healthy children on their lovely planet. We were good citizens. How could they …?”

For a while there is no sound but the hum of the Carriage.

“Where are we going, Gramps?” I whisper.

“I don't know,” Gramps says, and gazes out into the nothingness.

“You don't know?” Meggie says.

“I'll be perfectly honest with you,” Gramps says. “I was in such a panic, you understand, so desperate to get away from those … those …”