by J. E. Taylor
“The truth.”
Katrina sat down on the bed. “No, André, you didn’t.”
“Yes. I did,” he said, wishing he had a football in his hands to twirl. Instead, he shoved his hands in his pockets.
“Your dad is going to kill you.”
“He doesn’t have to know.”
“You’re delusional,” Katrina said as she pulled the portable crib closer to her, making sure Sam was still sleeping. “They are going to talk, André. It’s just too juicy a story.”
“You didn’t.”
“I know how to keep a secret,” she said, glaring at him. “Those windbags don’t.”
“You don’t know that,” he said.
“Anna,” she said and crossed her arms.
André blocked his mind. “What about her?”
“Did you know every last one of them slept with her?”
He raised his eyebrows. “Really?”
“Anna did the whole team, André.” She crossed her arms. “Including you.”
“That was before I was on the team, Kat,” he sidestepped.
“I’m aware of that, but she won’t let up until she has you again,” Kat warned.
André laughed. “She won’t come near me. Not after today.”
“You think a little cold water is going to deter her?”
His smile faded. “No,” he said. “But the things I said will.” He wouldn’t let her into that recess of his mind and he mentally threw away the key.
“What did you say?” Katrina asked.
“Let’s just say I told her a different kind of truth and it was pretty harsh.”
“What did you say?” she asked more forcefully.
“You don’t need to know what I said. All you need to know is that I got her off my back.” He walked over to his son and picked him up. “Mom just pulled in. Let’s go see what we need to get out of here.”
Chapter 13
André tensed as he walked into the school the next morning. He hated it when Katrina was right and this was no different. All eyes swiveled to him, their thoughts broadcasting a litany of questions followed by hushed whispers.
You were right. He sent the thought home and sighed.
I told you so.
Bite me, André sent back and headed in the opposite direction toward his classroom. Anna intercepted him before he could reach his destination. Her expression wavered between the wanting coursing through her veins and the anger and disgust at the rumors.
“Get out of my way, Anna,” André warned.
“You’re an alien?” she snapped.
André laughed but didn’t confirm or deny the information. Instead, he ignored her and stepped into the classroom, thinking about how to diffuse this ticking bomb. Accusatory stares met him and he slumped into his seat. “What is it with you people?”
“We heard you came from Mars,” one of the more bold students remarked.
André snorted and shook his head. “There’s no oxygen on Mars, therefore no living organisms. Didn’t you learn anything in science?” He looked around the room. “No, I’m not from Mars,” he clarified, seeing the questioning eyes still boring into him.
“Is that what you really look like?” the same kid who remarked about Mars asked.
André raised his eyebrows. “What the hell are y’all talking about?”
“You’re an alien, right?” he asked.
“What the hell kind of question is that?” André drawled.
Professor Randolf walked in the classroom. He had heard the exchange from the hallway. “Mr. Robbins, I believe the class is curious as to the rumors flying around the school,” he clarified. “Apparently, you are not from this particular planet.” He mocked the class.
André leaned back in his seat, crossing his arms. “Would it really matter?” he asked, challenging the room.
“Not at this particular moment.” The professor smiled. “You are all here to take an exam, not talk about what-ifs that don’t exist.” The professor tossed his notebook on his desk. “This year I’m doing oral exams.”
The group groaned.
“Who can tell me what is required to produce life?”
“Sperm and an egg,” someone called out.
The professor smiled. “More basic than that.” He looked around the room and his eyes landed on André. “Well?”
“Oxygen,” André answered. “Hydrogen and oxygen. You can’t have life without water and air.”
“Bingo.” The professor pointed at André. “And are there any other planets in our solar system that have that combination?”
“No,” André answered before anyone else had the chance. Astronomy was his strong suit and he knew of two planets in space that offered the ingredients for life.
“What about beyond our solar system?” he asked the class.
A few glanced back at André, but he kept his mouth closed.
“Not to our knowledge and we have been exploring space for over two hundred and fifty years,” Professor Randolf answered, and sent a stern warning glance at André. “Therefore, starting rumors about being from space is entirely without warrant.”
Irritation at the indirect slam skittered across André’s skin and he crossed his arms. “Just because you have been involved in space exploration for over two hundred and fifty years doesn’t mean you have covered the entirety of the universe. It’s huge and vast, almost endless, so how can you be so sure there isn’t life out there somewhere?”
“We would have already found it,” he replied.
“That’s pretty damn arrogant,” André snapped.
The professor glared at André.
“The human race has yet to figure out how to build a vehicle that will surpass the speed of light without falling to pieces.” He leaned forward on the desk. “The sound barrier was broken over three hundred years ago, and yet, the speed of light is still a mystery. How in God’s name can you believe there is nothing out there when you haven’t been able to get to the other side and back in the time you’ve been exploring space?”
Professor Randolf pursed his lips, considering the question.
“There are millions of galaxies, Professor,” André said. “Well beyond Andromeda and Triangulum.” He glanced around the room. “There are 240,000 galaxy groups within one billion light years of our sun.” He let that sink in. “Three million large galaxies and sixty million dwarf galaxies.” He took a breath. “Mankind has only been able to get to the edge of our own solar system with manned crafts. The automated crafts lost contact about the time they reached the Andromeda galaxy.” He looked around the room. “So who’s to say there isn’t life out there?”
“Where are you from?” a classmate asked.
“Andromeda galaxy,” he answered before he could catch himself.
“So it’s true?” Samantha asked from the other side of the room.
André closed his eyes and hung his head. “Damn,” he whispered, pissed that he slipped up when he was doing so well with just the scientific facts.
The questions began to fly fast and furiously at André until finally the professor yelled, “QUIET!” at the top of his lungs.
The room went silent. Professor Randolf stared at André. “Are you telling me you’re that boy they found?”
“Does it really matter?” André asked.
The teacher sat down on his seat hard and just stared.
“I’m flesh and blood just like y’all,” André added, looking around the room. “I laugh, I cry, I get girls pregnant.”
Some of the members of his class broke out in grins.
“So does it really matter that my origin might be a billion light years away?”
“I’ll be damned,” Professor Randolf whispered.
“Are we done with the exam now?” André asked, looking for an escape route out of this conversation.
The professor looked at the notebook on his desk and his brow creased. “No,” he said, leaning back. “No, we’re going to discuss
this some more instead.”
Questions started to fly all at once.
“Hey!” Professor Randolf shouted, quieting the group. “I’ll be asking the questions.”
André picked at a hangnail without looking at the classroom. This entire situation reeked of havoc and the idea of answering more questions about his origin made him squirm in his seat.
Hands slowly lowered.
“Why are you here?” Professor Randolf asked.
André shrugged. “Dumb luck,” he replied.
People shifted uncomfortably in their chairs as the blanket of silence descended.
“From what I’ve observed of you, there doesn’t seem to be very many differences between your race and ours,” the professor said. “Are there any significant differences?”
“I guess it’s my eyes. That seems to be the only significant difference. Some of you have seen the primary difference, but I’ve been told my physical and physiological makeup is almost identical to yours.”
Holly got up and crossed the distance within seconds, taking André’s face in her hands and kissing him hard to the surprise of everyone in the room.
André scrambled out of his seat and away from her, looking around at the collective shock on the faces of all the males in the classroom. The females held the same hot, horny look on Holly’s face. André stood with his back to the wall and glanced at Professor Randolf with a shrug.
“Holly, please take your seat,” Professor Randolf ordered. Holly complied, but wouldn’t take her eyes off André.
“What the hell is this?” Cameron snapped, glancing between André and his girlfriend.
André let out a nervous laugh. “I don’t really have an answer for you there, dude.” He slid back into his seat. “Kat says I’m emitting some sort of vibe. It started after the baby was born and apparently only affects women.”
Eyebrows raised across the room.
André blushed. “Man, if I wasn’t married...” He grinned sheepishly, leaving the remainder of the thought to their imaginations.
Craig smiled back at André. “So, the locker room was real?”
André’s smile disappeared. “We are running way off the subject here,” he replied, directing the conversation away from that ordeal.
“What was your planet like?” Professor Randolf asked.
André thought before he spoke, pulling memories out of the recess of his mind where he had locked them so long ago. “Green and lush,” he said, remembering some of the places his parents hid with him. “The cities were cold, though,” he replied, thinking of the tall steel-like buildings. “Not temperature wise, just in lack of any sort of warmth.” He didn’t add that the inhabitants were just as cold as the city itself. “The cities were like steel jungles. Everything was silver, grey, and white. Severe.” He homed in on the word. “It was severe.” He looked around the room. “But when you got out to the countryside, it was beautiful. We had sister suns, that’s what my mom used to call them.” He smiled at the memory. “Two suns chasing each other from horizon to horizon.” André’s mind was no longer in the classroom. He was standing in a field with his mother, picking wild flowers and laughing. “Everything in the countryside was green. The grass, the trees, even the lake water had green hues, and the flowers—they were every color imaginable. And our sky was always shades of green, yellow, orange, and red. Sunsets would brighten the colors before dark took hold.” His smile faded as the image dissipated. He sighed. “As beautiful as it was, that beauty was not found in the people there. Very few of them were willing to help my parents, not with a blue-eyed child in tow.” He looked down at his hands. “Are we done?” He glanced at the professor unwilling to expose the reason for his exile or the torture of those years alone in the pod.
Professor Randolf studied him and then his gaze drifted across the rest of the class. “Yes.”
André didn’t wait for permission to leave. He got up and walked out of the room and out to the craft in the lot. He dug his cell phone out and dialed his father’s office.
“Is my dad available?” he asked.
“Yes, I’ll get him.”
André listened to the classical hold music, rolling his eyes. He didn’t think the music had ever been updated since the invention of the hold function.
“Is everything okay?” Matthew said, discarding the salutations.
André considered the question. “I’m not sure.”
“André, I don’t have a whole lot of time right now.”
“You better make some time for damage control,” André answered. “Because the secret is out and it’s only a matter of time before it gets to someone who can cause problems.”
“What did you do?”
André laughed. “It all started with Anna and my teacher the first day of exams.” He stared at the school. “Can I come to your office?”
“I’ve got a meeting with the president in a half hour. I don’t have much time, André.”
“Maybe the timing is perfect. We can talk to the president in person,” André replied. He was already in the high-speed zone, shooting toward Matthew’s office.
“André, we can discuss this later this afternoon.”
“Too late, Dad. I’m landing now.”
Matthew met André at the entrance to the building. “I don’t have the time for this.”
André transmitted the entire story to his father, starting with the ambush at the school by the female population and ending with the final exam in Professor Randolf’s class during the short walk back to Matthew’s office.
He stood on the opposite side of the desk with his hands behind his back and waited for his father’s reaction. When Matthew turned away from the window and met his gaze, he knew there was more to the quiet response, but his father was putting up the same type of wall in his mind as André had around the locker scene.
“You didn’t actually show them your powers,” Matthew said.
“True, but I did acknowledge that I wasn’t from here.” He shifted his weight as nerves got the best of him. Not knowing what his father was thinking or feeling left him in the dark, and he hated being in the dark.
“Take a seat,” Matthew said in a calm voice, and waved to the chair.
André sat down and started picking at a hangnail, unsure of how to respond. He thought his father would go on another tirade like he did when he found out Katrina was pregnant, so this calm reaction threw him.
Matthew sat at his desk and folded his arms in front of him. “We both knew this day would eventually come. I can do damage control if you want me to, but that’s up to you.”
André raised a questioning eyebrow.
“Either way, I think it’s time I give the president a heads-up,” Matthew said and his gaze traveled to the door.
Before André could speak, Matthew’s secretary poked her head in the door. “Sir, the president is here.”
“Send him in,” Matthew said and stood.
André followed suit, turning to see the president walk into his father’s office.
President Foster was a regal looking man with white hair and a rugged build hidden beneath the finely tailored suit. His dark brown intelligent eyes surveyed the room, falling on André.
“Sir.” Matthew saluted.
“At ease,” President Foster replied. “This is your son?”
“Yes, sir. President Foster, I’d like you to meet André,” he said.
André extended his hand. “Pleased to meet you, sir.”
“My pleasure.” The president smiled and shook André’s hand with a firm grip.
André was hit by the confident air around the president, reminding him a little of the arrogance of the emperor on Zyclon, but unlike the emperor, this man had a warmth radiating under the projected persona.
Matthew took a deep breath. “Sir, I asked André to join us today because I think it’s time we discussed the matter of his origin.”
The president’s brow creased and he glanced at Andr�
� while Matthew crossed to the safe on the wall, opened it and returned, handing the president the contents.
He waited in silence while President Foster shuffled through the papers, reading each one before trading it with a new one. Each paper brought forth a darker shade of red in his cheeks and André glanced at his father. Matthew sent an imperceptible shake of his head, telling him not to speak.
Finally, the president lowered the papers, meeting Matthew’s gaze. “You have been keeping this a secret for over six years?” he hissed, tossing the papers on the desk and ignoring André for the time being.
“Yes, sir.” Matthew replied.
“What the hell were you thinking?”
Matthew glanced at André. “He was just a boy, sir.” He looked back at his president.
André opened his mouth to defend his father but Matthew’s silent directive snapped it closed. Keep your mouth shut. André clammed up and sank into the chair.
“I could have you court-martialed for this.”
Matthew shrugged. “I’m aware of that, sir. I ignored my orders when I boarded his ship,” he said. “I kept him out of the media fiasco and hid him from the government with the help of Commander Lawrence.” He nodded at the gravity of his infractions. “I raised him as my own, producing false documentation as to his identity.” He looked at André. “And I’d do it again in a second, sir.”
President Foster turned his attention to André, the aggravation visible in his eyes.
“He took me in and gave me something I never had before,” André said.
“What was that?”
“A home.”
His answer struck the president into silence, but his mind was active with aggravation and questions.
The president swung his gaze back to Matthew. “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t have you stripped of your rank and court-martialed?”
“You’re a father,” Matthew said. “What would you do for your child?”
“It isn’t the same, Commander. You risked your career for an alien child you knew nothing about.”
“André was a scared eleven-year-old boy drifting in space,” Matthew responded. “I was a colonel in the Armed Forces, sworn to protect the innocent, and he certainly fell into that category. My sworn duty to protect him was in direct conflict with the orders to terminate him and I went with my gut.” He paused, looking at his son. “It was a ludicrous order given the situation. Six years have passed and for all intents and purposes, that boy sitting next to you is my son.” Matthew stepped behind the desk and took his seat, his jaw set in defiance. “So do what you feel is right, sir. I did, and I have no regrets.”