Heroes of Earth. Martin Berman-Gorvine
care what happened to him, or his family, or his planet. It was even worse than that: with its deadly radiation and its terrible gravity and its endless desert spaces, it wanted to kill him, it wanted to smash his face into the hard tarmac and leave him there to bleed to death, to send him tumbling forever like the man in the Ray Bradbury story, on his way to no particular night and no particular morning.
But as he fell through the silent blackness, a face floated before his dimming vision. A face with a mischievous gleam in its green-flecked brown eyes and its dirty blond hair pulled back in an untidy ponytail. Jo. I was on the way to see Jo. And with that thought, interstellar space vanished and a flickering blue gas flame took the place of the impossibly distant stars. And he wasn’t imagining Jo’s face, he was actually seeing it—seeing her kneeling down over him, saying his name.
CHAPTER 10
“They’re called the Gray Ones,” Jo explained as she walked Arnold to her home. Gingo Teag was quiet on this late afternoon in early December. The few electric “carriages” on the streets purred quietly as they passed, and flecks of sleet hissed down from a darkening gray sky. Arnold shivered and huddled deeper into his coat. Chincoteague was a lot warmer than its sister island.
“Have you ever seen one?” Arnold asked.
Jo’s pigtail flipped back and forth where it peeked out from under a brown cap as she shook her head. “But Tommy and Teresa told me all about them. Teresa was almost killed by one! It looked like an oil slick, they said. Gloria said that isn’t their ‘true form,’ whatever that means, but she changed the subject when I asked her what they do look like. She really doesn’t like to talk about them.”
“Why not?”
Jo shrugged.
“Do you think she’s afraid of them? Maybe they’re allied with the High Ones!”
“I never heard Gloria mention the High Ones until the day I met you,” Jo said. “And I’m not really sure the Gray Ones are a ‘they’ so much as an ‘it.’ A personification of the hostility we feel in the Gray Zone.”
Arnold sniffed when Jo said “personification.” It was a show-offy word that Alison might have used. “I know what you mean, but how can there be hostility if there isn’t a person or at least an animal or something there to be hostile? I mean, space will kill you if you go for a spacewalk without a spacesuit, but that doesn’t mean it actually hates you.” Though it sure FELT like it did, when I suddenly found myself drifting there!
Jo rubbed her chin. “It does sound weird, I admit, but haven’t you felt afraid when you had to walk through the Gray Zone, knowing that nothing you saw was really real?”
She’ll think I’m a coward. She’ll laugh at me like all the other girls do. So Arnold shook his head.
“Well, you’re the first person I’ve met who doesn’t,” Jo said, shooting Arnold a sidelong glance.
Jo’s house looked old-fashioned to Arnold, like his house had been before the contractors got to work on it. It stood on stilts above marshy ground toward the southern end of Main Street, below where the bridge to the mainland stood in Chincoteague—but in Gingo Teag, there was no causeway and no bridge. The only way to get to the island, Mrs. Purnell explained as she hung up his coat for him, was by ferry. “For which they charge a fare of thruppence. Highway robbery!”
“Mum’s been pestering the Nanticoke House of Burgesses for years to build a causeway out here,” Jo explained. When Arnold shook his head in confusion, she added, “It’s like one of your state legislatures.”
“We need the national parliament involved,” Mrs. Purnell said. Her blond hair was neatly waved, and she was wearing a double strand of pearls over a soft-looking wine-colored sweater. Arnold thought she couldn’t have reminded him less of his own messy mother if she’d tried. “Do you take jam or butter on your scones, dear?” she asked.
“What’s a scone?”
“It’s like a muffin, only not as sweet,” Jo said, munching on one. “But even Teresa knew what a scone was. She says they’re her favorite thing to get at Starbucks.”
“What’s Starbucks?”
“Teresa said there’s one on every corner in her ‘America,’” Jo said, looking puzzled.
“Gloria told you Arnold’s America is different from Teresa’s,” Mrs. Purnell said. “Wipe your mouth, Jo, you have got raspberry preserves all over your face.”
“Where are Tom and Teresa?” Arnold asked, first making sure he had swallowed everything in his mouth and that his face was clean. He had a vision of Mrs. Purnell cleaning his face with a napkin that he did not want to become reality.
“Revising for finals at Cambridge, I should think,” said Mrs. Purnell. “Our British schools do not have the long holidays you rebels seem to enjoy with your liberty.”
“Mum, you’re always telling me to be polite. That seems awfully rude,” Jo said.
Mrs. Purnell shot her a fierce look while Arnold tried to figure out what she had been talking about. Oh, right, they never had the American Revolution here. So that makes us Americans “rebels” to her.
Mrs. Purnell looked down. “I am afraid Jo is right, Arnold. It is not your fault that your ancestors were traitors to the Crown. Do forgive me.”
“That’s all right,” Arnold said, though he hadn’t felt insulted, only filled with wonder. A loud whistle made him jump.
“That will be the kettle. I shall not be a moment,” Mrs. Purnell said, jumping up and smoothing her long skirts down as she walked to the kitchen.
Jo winked at Arnold. “You won’t see that very often. Mum admitting that she’s wrong, I mean.”
“I heard that, Jodie Marybeth Purnell!” her mother called from the other room.
“Don’t get any ideas about calling me Jodie. I shall flatten you if you do,” Jo said firmly to Arnold.
“I won’t,” he said absently as he looked around the room. It was just an ordinary living room, although neater than most people’s homes, with pretty, matching floral prints on all the sofas and easy chairs, a blinding white tablecloth covering the dark wooden coffee table where they were eating, and a bookshelf lined with books Arnold felt certain were better organized than those in Gloria’s library. One important thing was missing, though.
“Where’s your tri-vee stage?”
“What are you talking about?” Mrs. Purnell asked as she walked back into the room, carrying a silver tray with a large, shiny teapot and three delicate-looking mugs.
“Oh, right. The High Ones gave us tri-vee. I mean your TV.”
“We haven’t got that either,” Jo said, reaching out for a mug.
Mrs. Purnell swatted her hand away. “Mind your manners, Jodie! Guests first. Do you take milk or sugar, Arnold?”
“I like my tea black,” Arnold said, and Mrs. Purnell smiled. She could have been a tri-vee actress when she did that.
The tea was nice and strong, just the way Arnold liked it. It warmed him and woke him up, and he began to wonder why Jo and her mother were taking so long to get around to the point of his visit—fighting Earth’s alien occupiers. They couldn’t possibly be scared of the High Ones, could they? They’d never even seen one.
Arnold had, on that family trip to Mars. Back then, before the September 11 joint attack on the UN Building by the Front and the League, which killed or maimed most of the ambassadors and staff in the UN General Assembly but missed its intended target of the Exalted High Viceroy Risssss-erianus, the High Ones piloting spaceships would often mingle with the human passengers.
Arnold had watched the alien approach, excitement mingling with dread in his guts. Mom squeezed his hand and whispered, “There’s nothing