by David Liss
CHAPTER ONE
* * *
It was a new school, in a new city, and I was once again in the crosshairs of someone big and mean and not so great at controlling his impulse to smash. As Justin narrowed his already narrow eyes at me, and his Neanderthal forehead creased with anger, I couldn’t help but think that while some people get in trouble for the same things, for the same reasons, over and over again, never learning their lessons, I wasn’t that sort of person. I wasn’t like the habitual liar, or the lazy kid who refused to do homework, or even Stone-Age Justin, who was lumbering toward me with strides so slow and plodding you’d think he was dragging a freshly clubbed cave bear with one hand. No, I kept getting in the same kind of trouble for different reasons, and I took some comfort in that, though mostly because it was the only thing I could take comfort in at the moment.
The approaching adolescent is displaying signs closely associated with antagonism, said the voice inside my head.
“No kidding,” I told the voice.
This voice was named Smelly. Actually, that was its nickname, and I think it’s important to understand that the voice had no actual smell, although it could be irritating at times. When most people talk about a voice in their head, they are describing their conscience or an idea, or perhaps an actual voice if they’ve gone completely insane. None of those applied to me. I wasn’t so lucky.
Justin stopped in front of my lunch table, the one located in what the locals cleverly called Losers’ Corner. It was where on most days I sat alone to eat—at least, as alone as a guy with a voice inside his head can sit, which is less alone than I would have liked. Justin pressed his hands on my table and leaned over. The table groaned. The floor groaned. I tried hard not to groan.
“Who,” Justin demanded, “are you calling a moron?”
This is what I mean by getting in the same sort of trouble for different reasons. In my last school I’d been picked on for being a nerd. Then I’d spent part of the fall semester in outer space, where I got picked on because the other kids from my planet didn’t think I belonged there. Then everyone was mad at me for blowing up a flying saucer. More on that later. Now I was being picked on because this kid thought I was calling him a moron, when I’d really been talking to Smelly, the disembodied voice who’d taken up residence in my brain—who, to be honest, was nowhere near being a moron. Totally different reasons, right?
“I wasn’t calling you a moron, Justin,” I said in my best reasonable voice. “I was talking to myself, okay?”
“No,” he said. “It’s not okay. You called me a moron.”
I really dislike this sort of thing. I’d cleared up the confusion and explained that no insult had been intended. Unfortunately, some people don’t want resolution. There are people who just want to hurt someone.
“I would never call you a moron,” I said, but the careful observer would note that I was no longer trying to sound reasonable at all. “I mean, I can see that you are a moron, but I also get the feeling that you’re a little sensitive about it, so I wouldn’t bring it up. That wouldn’t be nice.”
Maybe, I thought, I did get in trouble for the same sort of thing over and over again. This time the voice in my head really was my own.
The adolescent’s heart rate is accelerating, Smelly told me, and its blood pressure is rising. It is extremely likely that soon it will give you a righteous beat-down.
Smelly had only been inside my head for a few months, but I’d learned to communicate yes, no, and maybe with barely perceptible nods, shakes, and shrugs so I could avoid this exact kind of situation. Smelly’s Captain Obvious routine deserved a lengthier reply, but all I could do was bob my head. I could live with the world believing I’d insulted Justin. I did not want the other kids to think I was a ranting lunatic.
“You’re going to stand up and follow me outside,” Justin said, “and I’m going to set some things straight.”
I took a bite of my sandwich. Pimento cheese. Nice. “You can explain it here,” I told him casually. “I’m cool with that.”
He leaned closer to me. “Get up.” His face was turning red now. There was no mistaking that he was big on the idea of punching me, but I had a lifetime of experience of trying to not get punched. I would have thought Justin must have had a lifetime of experience of people not wanting to follow him to an obscure corner of the track field to be beaten up in a place of his convenience, but my hesitation appeared to confuse him.
I’d seen this sort of thing before. The initial threats would be followed by insults—the suggestion that I was somehow actually afraid to fight a kid bigger, stronger, and more inclined to violence than I was. Next would be the threats: Come with me now, or it will be worse later. These never worked. I’d take my chances on later, thanks. At that point the goon would have to choose between (a) hurled insults followed by a menacing retreat and (b) violence then and there. Then and there was usually a place where a teacher could intervene, such as a lunchroom, so option (a) was the safer bet.
I looked at Justin. “I’m eating my sandwich. And after that”—here I paused to look into my lunch bag—“grapes. I like grapes. But I’ll tell you what. If you want to wait until I’m done eating, I’ll follow you outside then.”
“I don’t want to wait,” Justin growled, having somehow missed that I’d agreed to get beaten up, if not exactly on his preferred schedule.
“But I’m not going until I’m done. Maybe you’d understand that,” I proposed, “if you weren’t a moron.”
It appears to be growing yet more agitated, Smelly observed.
It occurred to me that all of this could have been avoided if I’d invented a subtle gesture for no kidding. I’d have to work something out with Smelly later.
Justin glanced at the clock on the wall and tried to puzzle out how much time was left for lunch if the big hand was on the nine and the little hand was on the twelve. He then cast a glance at Mr. Palmer, the lunchroom monitor that day. There was a group of teachers who took turns in that role, and they all seemed to have been chosen for their unwavering hypersensitivity to middle schoolers speaking above a whisper and their complete inability to notice when kids were actually posing a danger to one another.
“Fine,” Justin said. He sat down across from me to watch me eat.
These were not ideal conditions for enjoying a pimento-cheese sandwich, but this was the hand fate had dealt me. I finished the sandwich, took a sip of my water, and smiled at Justin. He did not smile back, which I considered rude. I started in on my grapes.
Do you believe a physical confrontation with this adolescent, at this particular time, is wise? Smelly asked me. Because I think it would be kind of dumb.
“I’ve got to try it some time,” I said.
“Yeah, you do,” Justin answered. I don’t know what, exactly, he thought I was looking to try. Getting a black eye? The taste of sod in my mouth? I let it pass. The less I knew about what went on inside his head, the happier I’d be.
Even if I believed it to be ready, which I do not, there are more controlled situations for initial trials that could be devised, Smelly explained.
I shrugged. I’d spent my whole life avoiding guys like Justin, but the events of the last year had made me less comfortable with backing down. During my time on the massive city in space known as Confederation Central, I’d had to face bullies and rivals and straight-up bad guys, and somehow I’d survived. I’d done this with the help of my friends, superior technology, the element of surprise, and a healthy dose of bending, breaking, and pretty much ignoring the rules. Not everything had worked out, but these methods had kept me and my friends alive, and they’d allowed me to rescue my father from an alien prison camp. I figured if you have a system that works, why change it?
That was the reason I decided th
at here and now was as good as any time to test the alien-technology supersuit I was wearing under my clothes.
CHAPTER TWO
* * *
A lot had happened in the previous year of my life. I’d destroyed one starship and helped to capture two more. I’d met a girl I really liked, who happened to be covered with fur and come from another planet. I’d made some amazing friends, and we’d done incredible things together. I’d discovered that my father, whom I’d believed to be dead, was really alive, a prisoner on an alien colony world, and that, perhaps most surprisingly—which I know is saying a lot—he had changed his appearance so he now resembled the DC Comics hero Martian Manhunter. I’d faced the knowledge that my mother was going to die from a horrible disease, and then, against all odds, I’d returned from space with a stolen treatment. It had cured her completely, and that was just about the only part of my story that had a happy ending.
After all I’d been through, I really wanted seventh grade to be a little easier than sixth.
Some things were different now, to be sure. A few times a day I’d see a black sedan cruise past our house. Its purpose was so obvious that it might as well have had US GOVERNMENT stamped on its sides. My mother and I presumed that our house was bugged, our calls recorded, and our computer activity monitored. We didn’t like it, but there was nothing to be done: We had to accept surveillance as a fact of life. If the government was really interested in how many times per week I clicked on SF Signal, they were welcome to that information.
After I’d returned in disgrace from the ancient space station I’d been scheduled to live on for a year—which I’d been kicked off after less than two months—I was locked up for another few months while government people interrogated me and tried to learn everything they could about the alien technology I’d encountered. As lockups go, it actually wasn’t so bad. There were no orange jumpsuits or hardened criminals threatening to stab me with sporks. I was in a secret government facility, completely separated from any other prisoners. The rooms were comfortable enough, and my jailers let me have access to a computer, a television, and a tablet, with a decent budget for buying books and comics. It would have been like vacation, except for the loneliness. Oh, and the daily debriefings, which is governmentspeak for being asked the same questions over and over again. I also didn’t like being separated from my mother and my friends, and I spent most of my time alone and underground, which I guess is the government’s subtle way of reminding you that you’re trapped. Once a day they would take me up to a fenced yard so I could get some air and walk around. My geeky hope that I was being held in Area 51, the government’s alleged secret base somewhere in southern Nevada, was crushed during my first excursion topside. The landscape looked more like the Northeast.
I was allowed brief phone calls and visits with my mom. She was eventually flown in and allowed to stay elsewhere on the compound, the location of which they kept secret from her as well. Somewhere else on the grounds were Charles, Nayana, and Mi Sun, the other humans who had gone into space with me, but they didn’t let us see or speak to one another. When we’d first left Earth together, I hadn’t gotten along with them, but by the time we’d stolen a ship, broken into an alien prison, and cheated death in a space battle, we’d become pretty tight. The government agents wouldn’t let me communicate with them because they thought it might contaminate our statements, but I felt sure we’d end up telling the same story no matter what. I saw no point in lying or embellishing any of the facts. I told them the truth, and then I kept telling them because they kept asking.
The man doing most of the interrogating was a sinewy army officer with a full head of metallic-gray hair cut into classic military sharp angles. He wore a perfectly pressed uniform, and his face was twisted into a permanent scowl. The scar that ran from his left eye to the left corner of his mouth didn’t do much to make him look friendly. Neither did the patch over his right eye. His name—and I swear I’m not making this up—was Colonel Richard Rage. I had a hard time getting past that in our first meeting.
“That’s not really your name,” I insisted. I was sitting in a warm interrogation room with nothing but a metal table, a couple of folding chairs, a slowly turning ceiling fan, and a sweating can of orange soda, which I guess was supposed to make me feel relaxed.
Colonel Rage scowled at me. “Why can’t that be my name? Do you know something about my identity? Did the aliens provide you with intelligence regarding United States military personnel?”
“No,” I insisted, happy to assure him that he was not, unknown even to him, an alien sleeper agent. “It’s just that you’ve got the . . . you know.” I gestured toward my own eye. “Like Nick Fury. Rage. Fury.” I stopped talking because he was staring at me like I was spouting gibberish. In all fairness, I kind of was.
“Who is this Nick Fury?” demanded Colonel Rage. “Was he on the space station with you?”
I held up my hands in disbelief. “Nick Fury,” I insisted, like it needed no more explanation. “Former World War Two commando, now director of S.H.I.E.L.D. You don’t really seem like a comics reader, but you must have seen The Avengers. The Samuel L. Jackson character?”
“What is that? A movie?” he demanded in a voice that suggested he was about to make me do push-ups. “I don’t have time for movies, son. I’m trying to safeguard the United States of America.”
I remember this exchange fondly as the warmest and most sentimental exchange during our time together.
Eventually they let me go, and while I wasn’t exactly enjoying life in government lockup, I was also not too eager for it to end. It meant closing the book on my extraordinary life and going back to an ordinary one. While I was still trapped in the governmental phantom zone, I could convince myself that I could get back out there somehow, find a way to return to Confederation Central and deal with all my unfinished business. Being sent home would mean admitting that it was all over. I was never going back, and that meant I was never going to honor the promise I’d made.
“I have an idea,” I told Colonel Rage the day before I was scheduled to be blindfolded and taken to a helicopter, which would take me to an airplane, the location of which I was not authorized to know. “Why don’t we put together some kind of, I don’t know, institute. Set me up with Charles and Nayana and Mi Sun, and we’ll get some scientists, and maybe we can reverse engineer some of the technology we encountered while on the station.”
“Negative!” the colonel barked. “The last thing we want is to put a bunch of children in charge of developing alien technology. Your friends have already been shipped out, and they’ve been placed on a watch list. If they attempt to enter the United States, they will be arrested immediately. You may not call, write, or otherwise communicate with these people or we will consider you a national security threat.”
I stood there, stunned and angry. Sending my friends away without letting me say good-bye, and then telling me I couldn’t stay in touch with them, was like . . . well, it was like smacking me with a plasma wand. It was one thing to be told that I had to keep everything I’d experienced a secret, but it was another to have the government prevent me from speaking to the only people in the world who were in on that secret.
The colonel must have seen how upset I was, because he actually softened. “Son, I know it’s tough, but this is for your own protection. A lot of dangerous people would love to learn what you and your friends know. We’re trying to erase any connection between you and your time . . . away, because that’s what will keep you from being abducted and interrogated by terrorists or criminals who would have no problem torturing you to learn about ray guns and spaceships. You understand?”
I did understand. Life in the Confederation of United Planets had been very different from Earth: It was full of advanced technology, but populated by strangely naïve beings who mostly never thought to break laws or bend rules or try to game the system. A bunch of troublemakers from primitive planets—that is, me and my friends—had been ab
le to take advantage of that society’s relative unfamiliarity with crime. Here it would be a different story. I’d be in serious danger if someone really bad decided they wanted to learn what I knew—let alone if the Confederation’s enemies, the Phands, came looking for revenge.
So it was back to life as an ordinary kid for me. My mother’s new job took us to the suburbs of Boulder, Colorado, and it was nice there, but I was not in the best frame of mind to be a good sport. Somewhere, countless light years away from Earth, was the girl I’d met, and she was in trouble, alone and helpless on her home world. Tamret, who looked like a white-furred cat person, and Steve, who was basically an upright Komodo dragon with a cockney accent, had been the best friends I’d ever had. I missed them both every day, but Steve was going to be fine. He would go back to his family and his life as a good-natured and unrepentant hooligan. Not Tamret.
I knew that the rest of her delegation to the Confederation blamed her for their getting kicked off the station, and they were right in that it was her fault, but only because Tamret had also been instrumental in helping us rescue my father and capture ships belonging to the warlike—and pretty much straight-up villainous—Phands. For decades the Phands and the Confederation had been locked in a struggle that had been balanced by the Phands’ superior weaponry and the Confederation’s superior defenses. That balance had begun to shift, and I’d learned that it was only a matter of time before the Phands conquered the Confederation, but then my friends and I changed all that. We delivered exactly what the Confederation needed to hold off an inevitable defeat at the hands of its enemies, so even though we broke a few rules, we figured the beings in charge would give us a break. Instead they gave us the boot.
Before she’d been selected to represent Rarel, her planet, on Confederation Central, Tamret had been in real trouble: casteless, which was apparently a bad thing to be in her society, and in prison for hacking. On the space station she’d been harassed and threatened by Ardov, a boy from her world, who’d taken a sick pleasure in pushing her around. Now she was back there with him, and probably with Rarels a whole lot worse, and no one was there to protect her. Tamret was the sort of girl who usually didn’t need protecting, who was about as good at taking care of herself as anyone I’d ever met, but she’d been terrified at the thought of going home.