The Second Ship (9 page)

Chapter 16

The school day started inauspiciously enough. The morning was bright and clear, and Heather had arisen at her regular time to await the sunrise. Numerous friends and acquaintances stopped her in the hall to ask about how she was feeling and to tell her how happy they were to see her again. Even the teachers went out of their way to tell her they were glad to see her back—except for Ms. Gorsky, whom Heather doubted knew the concept of happiness.

Heather’s ability to maintain a relaxed state of mind that eliminated the mathematic equations from her head was improving in fits and starts. She had almost messed up and blurted out “1,123” when her dad spilled salt on the breakfast table while trying to fill the shaker. She had just known that there were 1,123 individual grains and another 465 that had spilled off onto the floor. It was weird, but as easy as people could glance at a group of oranges and think “3,” she could glance at a pile of salt and think “1,123.”

When she had started rubbing her temples, her mother had asked if she had a headache and suggested that perhaps she should stay home another day or two. Heather managed to mollify her mother with a quick grin and an explanation that she was just dreading having to tell everyone at school that she had passed out for no apparent reason.

During lunch break, Heather and the twins made their way outside to the football field to sit in the bleachers, so they could be alone. By the time Heather finished explaining the developments on the ship and its ongoing impact on her life, Jennifer was wide-eyed.

Mark just grinned. “Cool. You hear that, Doc? We have our own Rain Girl. Maybe we could set her up at a casino blackjack table. I’ve been wanting a new set of skis.”

Jennifer glared at her brother. “Is that all you can say? Can’t you see this is causing Heather problems? God! Are you even related to me?”

Heather laughed. “It’s okay, Jen. Anyway, I could never pass for twenty-one, even in Vegas.” A serious look settled back over her face. “Are either of you having any issues with thinking?”

Mark shook his head. “Nope. Same as ever, except the memory thing.”

“Don’t let him kid you,” said Jennifer. “His reflexes, balance, and coordination have improved drastically. And based on his recent grades in Spanish class, his foreign language aptitude is off the charts.”

“And you?” Heather asked.

“I really haven’t noticed much.”

Mark snorted. “Right. ‘Data’ here has scanned every book in the school library into her memory. But then her memory was getting cluttered, so she came up with a Dewey Decimal scheme to mentally organize the books.”

Heather’s mouth dropped open.

“But here’s the kicker. She even rescanned every book she’d already memorized. I swear, I laughed my ass off watching her do it too. She just sat there, eyes closed, for hours. You’d have thought she was Gandhi.”

Jennifer’s face turned beet red. “Mark! That’s not fair. I have to be able to find the information when I need it.”

Heather nodded. “Jen, don’t let him get your goat. I think your solution is brilliant.”

Jennifer turned back toward Heather, excitement shining in her eyes. “I figured something else out too. Even though we have these perfect memories, we can’t understand data we have no background for. We still have to learn the material in order to utilize it. We just learn things way faster than normal. But it’s more than that.

“What happened to you these last few days just confirms what I was already thinking,” she continued. “The ship affects us differently depending upon our natural strengths. That’s why Mark’s physical and language skills are surging. It’s why you’re the math goddess and I’m a data machine.

“There’s one other thing,” Jennifer said. “We can’t afford to show off our new skills.”

“She wants us to throw tests,” Mark explained.

“Not throw them. Just avoid acing them all. We need to keep our scores close to our traditional grade point averages.”

“Which I don’t think is fair,” Mark said. “You two are straight-A students, but I get Bs and Cs.”

Heather laughed. “Come on, let’s head back. Classes are starting. I like Jen’s plan. Just stay inconspicuous.”

“That might be okay for you two, but I want to make some noise in high school,” Mark said.

Before Jennifer could deliver a harsh retort, Mark headed off, leaving Heather and Jennifer staring after him.

“It’s all right, Jen,” said Heather. “He'll be okay.”

Jennifer shrugged. “I hope so. I really, really hope so.”

Chapter 17

Inconspicuous.

Mark Smythe moved down the hallway of Los Alamos High School with unnatural grace, slightly shifting his weight so that the stream of students flowed past without touching him, a feat that would have been regarded as phenomenal had anyone else been aware of it.

He wasn’t stupid—he wouldn’t blow their cover—but he wasn’t about to hide his talents either. He didn’t have a problem with continuing to get imperfect grades, but at least one should jump to an A. The rest could remain Bs.

Jennifer was not going to like the rest of what he had planned for the year. Not one little bit.

Hopefully Heather would be cool with it, but if not, then the girls would just have to get over it together. Maybe he should have told Jennifer that he had already asked Dad for permission to go out for the basketball team, and Dad had enthusiastically signed the permission slip.

“You know, at five-eleven, you’re going to have to work a lot harder than the bigger guys,” his dad had said. “Also, your schoolwork better not suffer. You sure you’re willing to make that commitment?”

Mark grinned. Oh, he would practice all right, and keeping up with schoolwork wasn’t going to be a problem anymore.

The gymnasium was empty when Mark walked in, something that wasn’t surprising since tryouts weren't going to start until next week.

Mark grabbed a basketball from the rack against the wall and began dribbling it out onto the court, feeling the ball’s responsiveness to the movements of his hands. Like most of his friends, Mark had played sports since grade school. Basketball had been his favorite of the team sports. He had been good, but not the best. That was about to change.

The ball felt different. Mark could feel every dimple in the ball’s skin, the lines where the sections joined, how the rotation changed as it struck the gym floor and returned to his hand.

Left hand, right hand. Back and forth he worked the ball, adding different English to the spin, causing the ball to weave about crazily, but always bouncing to the spot he anticipated. Between his legs. Behind his back. Between his legs as he walked. Between his legs as he ran. He moved around the court—whirling, spinning—and always the ball bounced flawlessly from one hand to the other.

Mark moved back to the free-throw line at one end of the court, bounced the ball twice, and then shot. The ball passed through the basket so smoothly that the strings at the bottom of the net made a gentle popping sound. Retrieving the basketball, Mark shot again and again. Ten in a row. Twenty. Fifty.

He began moving around the court and launching jump shots. The first of these missed, although he immediately knew why. He had surprised himself with the height of his jump, his new muscle efficiency propelling him far higher than ever before.

The next shot didn’t miss. Neither did the one after that. Left hand, right hand: it made absolutely no difference.

He spun the ball up onto the middle finger of his left hand and then caught it and launched a shot, which landed the ball back in the rack right beside its fellows. He made his way out through the double gymnasium doors, giving one a flat-handed smack as he left. A broad smile spread across his face.

Inconspicuous.

Chapter 18

Heather had never studied so hard in her life. Considering she was ahead in all her schoolwork and had no tests coming up, her study load was nothing short of miraculous. But compared to the work Jennifer was doing, Heather felt like a slacker.

Sometimes life drives you to do entirely new things, things you never believed you could do. Heather remembered when she first started skiing, midway through fifth grade. That was when she had met Bobby Jones. It had been forever since she had thought of him, but in fifth grade she thought Bobby Jones hung the moon.

He and his family had arrived from Steamboat Springs, Colorado. Bobby had asked her to go skiing with him, and although she protested that she didn’t know how, he promised to teach her. Allow her to humiliate herself was more like it.

To be fair, he had spent the morning with her on the bunny slopes of Pajarito Mountain, the wonderful little ski area originally built by the lab employees. As thrilled as she was with learning the gliding wedge, the snow plow, the pizza slice, or whatever you want to call the uncomfortable beginner ski position, she probably would have terminated her ski career that day if not for Bobby’s patient instruction. By noon, though, that patience had worn thin, and Bobby suggested that the she continue her practice solo.

Having fulfilled his duty, Bobby Jones spent the rest of the day swooshing down the black-diamond slopes with Kristin Beale, a sixth-grade girl whose long, blond hair would never know a ski cap, not even if her ears froze off and fell into the snow. Kristin had been born on the ski slopes, and it showed, which allowed the vacuity of her speech to go unnoticed.

Her humiliation complete, Heather had worked on her skiing that year with passion that bordered on obsession. But by the time Heather had mastered the sport, her interest in the lovely Mr. Jones had evaporated. However, the motivation that had driven her—that she could feel like it was yesterday.

So now that the otherworldly combination of high personal interest and event-driven need had superimposed themselves, Heather’s study drive was fearsome.

Mark worried her, though. The seductive influence of his enhanced physical prowess only heightened his natural competitive drive. And basketball gave him the perfect outlet. Jennifer was furious at her twin and had hardly spoken to him in the last few weeks, convinced that his irresponsibility threatened them all.

When Jennifer first learned that Mark had tried out for and made the Varsity A basketball team, she had confronted him.

“Mark, are you crazy?

“No, I’m good.”

“I don’t care that you’re good. Our new gifts are too important to use for petty personal aggrandizement. I think we received them for a higher purpose.”

“Higher purpose? Sis, you’ve been reading way too many comic books. I don’t have a gift. I have talent the ship just released. And I’m not about to sit around and hide it. I plan on living my life.”

Jennifer clenched her teeth. “Mark. Think for a change. What’s it worth to become a big basketball star? Is it worth attracting all that attention? Is it worth the risk of getting our ship discovered?”

“Yes, it is. Let me tell you something, Sis. Life is risky. We might get hit by a bus tomorrow. Someone might wonder why you’re leafing through every book you can get your hands on. Heather might slip up and let the cat in the savant hat out of the bag. The only really safe place is in a cozy straightjacket in a nice rubber room. If you want that, then go for it. Not me, though.”

“Jumping off a cliff isn’t being a risk taker. It’s being an idiot.”

Heather had stood there watching the confrontation, although she might as well have been invisible for all the attention her two friends paid her. It had concluded with Mark storming off as Jennifer yelled after him, “Don’t be an idiot!”

Not that Mark would have liked helping with what they were working on anyway. She and Jennifer were on a mad quest to learn, each focused on her own areas of special interest. Heather worked her way through book after book of advanced mathematics and physics while Jennifer focused on computer science and data mining, that obtuse art of storing and categorizing data so that a search engine can find it. In addition, Jennifer had once again redone her data-tagging scheme, which forced her to rescan all of the books she had already memorized.

What drove them was growing uneasiness with the work that was being done on cold fusion around the world. But they had to admit that they had discovered nothing that might indicate cold fusion technology presented any real threat to the planet. Quite the opposite.

Heather had downloaded and read every available publication on the alien cold fusion technology. No matter how many times she reworked the equations, the technology still looked good. And the peer reviews by physicists and mathematicians around the world had been very positive.

So why was she so scared?

Outside, the wind howled so hard it shook the glass in her bedroom window. Fine pellets of sleet tapped the glass like cold, drumming fingers. Heather wrapped her thick robe more tightly around her shoulders, stretched, and then rose from the chair to peer out.

The storm was getting worse. The first of the high-country blizzards for the year was getting ready to descend upon northern New Mexico. According to the local weather man, they could expect between twelve and eighteen inches by morning, which would close all the roads in and out of town. That meant no school.

Heather smiled as she watched the sleet give way to large, thick flakes, now falling so heavily she could barely see the streetlight through the swirling whiteness. School might be closed tomorrow, but she would bet her left arm the ski area would be open.

With a sigh of regret, she moved back to her desk. She would not be skiing tomorrow or anytime soon. There was just too much to do.

A loud tap on her window caused her to look up. After several seconds, she shook her head and returned her attention to her studies. Another tap, this one much louder than the first, brought her to her feet.

Frozen in place, her pulse pounding in her ears, Heather stared at the dark window. Snow that had caked the lower-left corner of the pane had been partially scraped away. A white piece of paper fluttered wildly in the cleared space, secured by a thick wad of chewing gum.

Fascinated, Heather walked back to the window and opened it just enough to retrieve the scrap of paper. Her eyes focused on the typeset words that filled the partial page.

As when the melting fire burneth, the fire causeth the waters to boil, to make thy name known to thine adversaries, that the nations may tremble at thy presence!

Isaiah 64:2

As though she were in a dream, Heather’s gaze was drawn to the ground ten feet below her window. There in the swirling snow at the base of the streetlight, a solitary figure stood, ice caking his bearded, skeletal face, his eyes lost in dark sockets.

And as the sound of her scream split the stillness of the house, the figure below grinned up at her.