by Ruth White
“What on earth …?” Gil says.
“It looks like about a hundred fireflies!” Jennifer screeches. “Or a thousand!”
“Yeah, blue fireflies,” Gil says, “nesting in your hair!”
“And it just gets brighter and brighter!” Colin adds.
This cannot be explained away as paint, and we all know it. On this dark night I’m beginning to light up the balcony with what must look like a periwinkle fluorescent bulb attached to the right side of my head. I am so excited, my teeth start to chatter.
“Come, Meggie,” Mom says calmly. “Let’s go inside and have a look.” Once inside, she whispers, “It’s the loveliest shade of blue I’ve ever seen.”
She hugs me, and now I can’t stop grinning. Yes! I have finally achieved blue.
“Too bad we have to wipe it out,” she says as I follow her into the kitchen.
I am lighting the way, so Mom finds the vinegar quickly and cleans the luminescent stripe with a paper towel.
“What will we tell the Gilmores?” I whisper.
“Nothing,” Mom says. “Don’t worry about it.”
“But what if they tell somebody?”
“And have people consider them as loony as the madman?” Mom says with a chuckle. “Besides, we’ll be gone from here soon.”
As we approach the glass doors, which we left open, I can hear Gil saying, “I don’t understand. What was that?”
“What was what?” Gramps says.
“You know exactly what,” Gil says. “That blue light. What the heck was it?”
“Blue light? I didn’t see any blue light. Did you, David?”
“Nope,” David comes back. “Maybe you guys are taking too many blue pills.”
“Oh, come on. Don’t give me that,” Colin says. “What’s wrong with Meggie?”
“Nothing’s wrong with our Meggie!” Gramps says loudly and with much feeling.
“But the way she was jabbering in the park the other day,” Colin goes on, “like she was having some kind of fit. And the way her hair lit up. Is she sick?”
“Stop it, Colin!” Gil scolds him.
“I’m just saying,” Colin goes on, “if you’re trying to protect her from being sent away, we’re not going to turn her in.”
“We’d never do that,” Jennifer adds.
Mom and I resume our places on the porch.
“I don’t know what to tell you, Colin,” Mom says, “but no, Meggie is not sick.”
“Then what?” Colin persists. “I mean, that’s not normal!”
“Yes! Yes, it is normal!” Gramps says emphatically. “And that’s all we can tell you.”
“But we’ve never seen anything like this,” Colin says. “She’s spooky.”
I am suddenly so mad at him, I can’t see straight. “Yeah, maybe I am spooky,” I cry. “But at least I don’t pretend not to see when a policeman bullies somebody, and I don’t yell at people to shut up!”
I didn’t mean to say that, but I realize now it’s been bothering me for days, and I’m glad it came out.
“And you, kiddo, are grossly unique,” Colin fires back.
“Thank you!” I cry out with a laugh in my voice. “That’s the nicest thing anybody’s said to me since I’ve been in this place.”
“It wasn’t meant as a compliment,” Colin mumbles.
“Colin! Not another word from you!” That’s Gil putting his foot down.
After a short silence, Colin whispers, “I hope the night watchman didn’t see her.”
“What night watchman?” David speaks up. “You really think there’s somebody down there looking out for us? Well, think again. There’s only bounty hunters.”
It’s for sure, our friends now see us in a new light, so to speak, and it seems even more essential to leave this place quickly.
At breakfast Gramps says, “We’ll set up the Carriage this evening.”
“So you’ve settled on Tranquility?” David says excitedly.
“Yes,” Mom says. “It has its problems, like every place, but we need to get away—yesterday!”
“It’ll take twenty-four hours for the Carriage walls to restore,” Gramps explains. “Then we’ll be ready to leave the Land of the Fathers forever.”
“Amen!” Mom says with a long sigh. “We have only today and tomorrow to work in that stinking factory. Maybe I can stand it for that long.”
Poor Mom. She has tried to hide her frustration with the monotony of her work, but now she doesn’t have to do that anymore.
That afternoon the telephone rings, and I’m reminded of our second day in Fashion City, when Joe installed it. We’ve been here for the entire summer season now—autumn is upon us—and the phone has rung only a few times. Though Mom and Gramps have made calls on occasion, David and I haven’t used it at all.
“Hey,” Jennifer says when I answer. “There’s something I’ve been curious about. How come your mom was fussing at my dad for taking Lotus?”
“Because she thinks it’s addictive, Jennifer. You all may be addicted already.”
“The Fathers have us watched for symptoms of Lotus abuse,” Jennifer explains. “That’s one of Tom’s jobs. He knows all the signs, and reports when he sees them. Then you’re called in for rehab. They don’t want anybody so out of it we can’t function.”
“But why take Lotus at all?” I say.
“Because it makes you feel good.”
“When it comes to feeling good,” I tell her, “I always listen to Gramps’s advice. He says he never feels bad, and he’s the healthiest person I know.”
“Yeah, for an old person he seems to have a lot of energy,” Jennifer agrees. “Exactly what is his advice?”
“Just the basics,” I explain. “Eat right and exercise.”
“How old is Gramps, anyway?”
I laugh. “Well, he tells everybody he’s sixty, but he’s really sixty-five.”
“No!” Jennifer screams suddenly into my ear. “No! Stop it!”
“What are you talking about?”
But Jennifer has hung up. A moment later she’s banging on our door.
“Now they know!” she cries frantically. “And they’ll come for him.”
“What do you mean, Jennifer?”
“They know how old Gramps is, and they’ll force him into Vacation 65.”
“How would they know?”
“The phones are bugged!”
“What! There’s a tap on our phone?”
“On everybody’s,” Jennifer says as her pretty face melts into gloom. “The Fathers are fond of reminding us that we have privacy inside our homes. And it’s true. We do. But what good is it when the phones are bugged?”
“That’s unconstitutional!” I protest. “It’s an invasion of privacy.”
Jennifer stares at me, uncomprehending. Unconstitutional? Yeah, right! In this upside-down world, there is no U.S. Constitution! The Fathers make all the rules, and they make them to suit their own purposes.
“Why didn’t you warn me about the phones?” I raise my voice to Jennifer.
“I keep forgetting that you don’t know all the ways of the Fathers,” she says miserably.
Jeez! The last thing Gramps needs right now, when we’re so close to leaving this place, is a vacation. It seems to me a person should have a choice about a thing like that, but just before five o’clock, two police officers show up at our door. Boldly they walk inside and park themselves on one of our couches. I have told David about the phone call, and now we look at each other with worried eyes. I know we are thinking the same thing: we should warn Gramps.
David eases toward the door, saying, “I have to do some shopping for dinner.”
“Not now,” one of the officers says firmly. “Sit down. Both of you need to stay right here until the old man comes home.”
As soon as Mom and Gramps walk in the door, the officers stand up, and one of them says, “Time for Vacation 65, old-timer.”
“What’re you talking about?�
� Gramps exclaims.
“The next white bus leaves the day after tomorrow. We’ll hold you in custody until then—just for safe-keeping.”
“I can’t go on vacation now. My family needs me. Besides, I’m only sixty years old!”
The officers look at each other and laugh.
Gramps gives up way too easily. “So I lied,” he admits, “but how’d you find out?”
I cringe in dread, waiting for the officer to tell on me, but he simply says, “I have no idea. We’re just following orders.”
On top of being mad at Jennifer for not telling me about the tap, I’m also mad at myself for giving Gramps’s secret away. Mom is so distraught the night after he’s taken, she actually allows Gil to put his arms around her.
“Not to worry,” he explains to her. “Vacation 65 is a gift from the Fathers to the people. You stay in a luxury hotel on the oceanfront in a warm climate with everything your heart could desire, right at your fingertips. There’s entertainment and fine food and festive clothing, friends of the same age, games, exercise, dancing, cruise ships. Everything you’ve always wanted but didn’t have money or time for. Vacation 65 guests are also given the best medical care in the best hospitals and are treated like royalty.”
He sounds for all the world like an infomercial.
“That’s fine,” Mom says, “but for how long? Even Tom couldn’t tell me how long my father will be kept from us.”
She’s thinking of the Carriage to be set up and our upcoming voyage, and the fact that she’ll have to work at that awful job until Gramps comes back.
“How long?” Gil says. “An indefinite period of time.”
“Indefinite period?” David screeches.
“How long is indefinite?” Mom says irritably, and moves away from him.
“You people are obsessed with time!” Gil says tersely.
“And you people ignore time!” she snaps back.
On the morning of Gramps’s departure, I force myself to leave our apartment and stand on the sidewalk with David, Colin, and Jennifer to watch for the white bus marked VACATION 65 to come rolling by. When we see it, we wave frantically and call to him. “Goodbye, Gramps!”
His balding head appears at one of the windows, and I’m glad to see that he’s smiling. We wave until the bus is out of sight.
• 30 •
“Okay, the truth, Mrs. Blue.” Tom speaks irritably to Mom that night because she keeps bugging him about Gramps. “He won’t be coming back at all. Nobody comes back from Vacation 65, nor do they want to. They love it.”
“But they can come back for visits, can’t they?” David asks.
“Oh, no, that wouldn’t be practical,” Tom says. “It’s too far away.”
“How far is it?”
“I … I’m not real sure,” Tom says, and scratches his head. “I don’t think I ever heard anybody say.”
Then he closes the door in our faces and locks it. Mom, David, and I stand looking at each other, too stunned to move or speak. Never coming back. Never? We’ll never see Gramps again?
As The Family Hour comes on, Mom sinks onto the couch and covers her ears. David and I sit on either side of her. I try very hard to stop the flow of tears, but I can’t. Then I feel Mom’s arm around me, and I realize that all three of us are crying. We sit huddled together, trying to comfort each other, as the white bus flashes by us on the television screen.
Sherry Cross is chirping like a songbird, “Another happy group of seniors on their merry way to Vacation 65!”
Miserably, we watch the old people, with Gramps among them, get off the bus at the grand resort. He’s smiling. I’m glad of that. But he doesn’t know yet, does he? No, he doesn’t know. He couldn’t smile if he knew he was never coming home to us again.
When it’s announced at the end of the hour that we have thirty minutes until lights-out, Mom speaks up with determination in her voice.
“We have to find him and steal him away.”
“But how?” I ask.
“They are taken to a place called Farlands. We have to learn where that is,” Mom says. “All we need is a location, and the Carriage can find it.”
“The Carriage?”
“Yes. We have to set it up now while we have lights. Come, help me.”
We follow Mom to the bedroom.
“Make room for it,” Mom says to us as she takes the backpack from the closet.
We understand, and begin to rearrange the room so there will be space for the Carriage when it’s fully restored. For the next half hour Mom works quietly, doggedly, giving brief, curt commands to me and David.
“Hand me that dowel.”
“Snap it here.”
“Take the kink out of that corner.”
We obey without a word, as we know we’re racing the clock. When the lights go out at ten, Mom is fitting the last dowel into its socket. The Carriage makes a soft humming sound as its walls begin slowly to rise.
Later we sit on the balcony with the Gilmores.
“I need to know where Farlands is,” Mom says to Gil.
“But my dear,” Gil says, “believe me when I tell you your dad is as happy as a clam. They say Vacation 65 is so wonderful that you forget everything else. At first you might miss your family, but in time you’re so busy, and your life is so full, you just leave all your worries behind you.”
“Don’t give me that baloney!” Mom shouts at him. “Do you know where it is or not?”
All is quiet. I have rarely heard Mom raise her voice, and in the darkness, I can sense the fear beneath her angry words.
“No, I have no idea,” Gil says softly. “I would tell you if I did.”
“You have good reason to be upset, Mrs. Blue.” Colin speaks. “I would be too, if it were my dad—and someday it will be—because Vacation 65 is not a vacation at all!”
“What do you mean?” Mom snaps at him too.
“Oh, sure, they’re given three days of vacation,” Colin explains. “Then, on the third night, they are given a shot at bedtime. The people of the Resistance have managed to leak this information to us. Now everybody knows it, but they go on pretending. It’s easier that way. So you don’t have to admit that the Fathers are killing our elders.”
“Stop it, Colin!” Gil commands his son.
“K-killing them?” I stammer. I almost say this in Chromish, but I muzzle myself by placing my face against Mom’s shoulder.
“Yes, killing them!” Colin goes on, in spite of his dad’s command, and his voice is almost as angry as Mom’s. “So they won’t become a burden. Just as they kill the handicapped and the seriously ill.”
“Colin … please don’t.” Gil protests only mildly now, with a tremble in his voice. In the darkness, I can see him place his head in his hands.
“His bus left this morning,” I say. “So this is his first night.”
“That gives him about forty-eight hours to live,” Colin says without emotion.
“Gil, you work for the television station,” Mom says, “so you must know how I can find out where he is. Please help me.”
Gil lifts his head. “Maybe I could find out,” he admits, “but what good would it do? I’m telling you, it’s hopeless. Don’t you know that’s why we swallow the pills? It’s easier to take what comfort you can and live out your days in a fog—than to know what’s really going on. We have learned that to fight back means an earlier death.
“You wanted to know what happened to my wife? Well, I’ll tell you. She was careful not to involve me or the kids, but she was working with the Resistance, trying to undermine the Fathers. Someone—probably Tom Lincoln—turned her in, and the police took her away. We never saw her again. That’s what you get for defying them.”
“I understand,” Mom says gently. “But suppose I told you there is hope for us? There’s a way out, and I have it. We can escape and take our children to a free society.”
“I wouldn’t believe you.”
“You said you might be abl
e to find out where my dad is,” Mom reminds him. “So if I convinced you that it’s possible to escape, would you find out for me?”
“I would certainly try,” he whispers.
Mom reaches over and squeezes my hand, then does the same to David.
“I have to tell,” she says to us.
David and I agree. In exchange for Gil’s help, we have to tell him the truth.
“We did not come from the Western Province” is how Mom begins to unfold our story to the Gilmores.
“I suspected as much,” Gil says. “But where on Earth …?”
“Not from Earth,” Mom says, “not originally.” Then she tells them everything.
Being a teacher, my mom is thorough and descriptive in telling a story. Still, it’s obvious that the Gilmores don’t immediately swallow it. Far from it. Who would? But their fascination is obvious, and they listen.
Colin is the easiest to convince. “That first day we met, Meggie, you said something about a foreign language. Is that what you were doing in the park, speaking the language of your world?”
“Yes, I was speaking Chromish,” I say. “It comes to me automatically when I’m upset, and it’s hard to stop.”
“And the blue light in your hair?” Colin goes on.
“Yeah, Meg, tell them the legacy of the lights.” David’s voice comes out of the darkness. “You wear the blue better than anybody.”
I nearly choke. Did my big brother actually say that? I take a long, deep breath and begin our story. I manage to tell it proudly, confidently, and I realize it’s the first time any of us has spoken about it to anyone outside the family.
“And that’s why you call yourselves the Blues?”
“Yes, just as you are the Caucasian race, we are the Blue race.”
“And the alien hunter?” Colin goes on. “He really isn’t crazy?”
“Oh, sure, he’s crazy,” Mom says. “But … later, later. Right now we have urgent business.” She turns to Gil. “What do you think?”
“How do you expect us to believe such a fantastic tale?” is his answer.
“David,” Mom says to my brother. “Please fetch the Log.”
Of course—the Log. It holds the record of our lives, and when it’s played, anybody present can see the memory and feel all the sensations of the moment it was recorded, even if they weren’t there. That’s how it was designed to work, but some Chromians play it better than others. Mom is really good at it, but Gramps, the artiste, is better. Someday he’ll teach me to play. I know he will.