Something bright flared beneath the vehicle and the odor of ozone filled the air. A bright spark jumped from the car to the road sign across the intersection, melting it like candle wax.
“Yeah, I see that you’ve got everything under control. Suit yourself.” Alex turned to gaze down the highway. “It’s only a couple of miles from here. I’ll walk it. So long, Centauri. Nice knowing you.”
“Wait a minute, boy, wait!” The old man struggled out from beneath the vehicle, wiped sand from his false face and fumbled in a pocket until he produced what appeared to be a slimline digital watch. The time on the watch, a quarter to two, was correct. Centauri might be a liar and a conman, Alex mused, but he certainly was a finicky one.
“Here.” He held out the watch.
Alex shook his head. “Gee, I can’t take a present from you.”
Centauri shook his head, spoke sadly. “Humans . . . they’re so perceptive. He reduces me to poverty and thinks I’m giving him a present. What a world this is.”
“Then what is it?” Alex asked, a mite belligerently. “It looks like a watch. If that isn’t a gift I don’t know what it is.”
“If you’ll shut up a minute, I’ll tell you. It functions as a watch, sure, but that’s only concealment. It’s very subtle, this little toy. The real components aren’t in the body, they’re in the facing, the cover.”
Intrigued, Alex accepted the “watch,” inspected it closely. “It’s transparent. There’s nothing inside the crystal.”
“It’s your thoughts that are transparent, boy, which leads me to believe there’s nothing inside your head. What makes you think a simple little short-range communicator can’t be built out of transparent materials? Anyway, the crystal really isn’t transparent. It just bends light waves around it. So it looks transparent.” He moved his fingers over the crystal, careful not to touch it.
“Then what’s it for?”
“I told you. It’s a short-range narrow-line communicator. One way only, simple signal generation. If you prefer, think of it as your second chance, my boy. Should you change your mind regarding the employment I so diligently secured for you, just tap the crystal in this brief sequence.” He demonstrated twice, until Alex nodded. “It will reach me so long as I remain suborbital.”
Alex started to hand it back. “Then keep it. I won’t be needing it.”
“Just think it over, my boy,” Centauri pleaded with him. “If nothing else, it is a perfectly serviceable watch. You don’t own a watch, do you?”
“Sure I do. It’s back in my room. Only . . . the batteries burnt out.”
“This one doesn’t need a battery. It runs off the electrical impulses running through the muscles in your wrist. It’ll keep running as long as you do.”
“All right, I’ll hold onto it, if you insist.” More than anything else Alex was tired of arguing. “But I’m not changing my mind.”
Centauri moved to the gaping gullwing on the driver’s side of the car and put one foot inside. “You’re walking away from history. History! Did Chris Columbus say he wanted to stay home? No! And what if the Wright Brothers had thought only birds could fly? And did Geloca say that the Yulus were too ugly to save?”
“Who’s Geloca?”
“Never mind. That’s not the point. The point is that history is made up of critical decisions executed by extraordinary beings at just the right moment.”
“Listen, Centauri, I’m not any of those guys. I’m not a Hannibal or Akbar. I’m not extraordinary. I’m just a kid who lives in a trailer park and wants to go away to college. I’m not special.”
“You are special, my boy. You were tested, tested rigorously, and you passed. With, as you say, flying colors, though I fail to see anything aerodynamic about color. I do so love your quaint human expressions. My boy, you are extraordinary.”
“Bull. I know how to make a quarter last, that’s all. I’m just your average kid.”
“And if that’s all you think you are, then that’s all you’ll ever be!” Centauri snapped angrily, unable to contain his frustration any longer.
He slid behind the controls and revved the false engine. The mock V-8 sputtered, came to life above the noise of the real engine. Centauri quickly dampened the sound. Then he turned the car around and headed back out onto the highway, muttering to himself loudly enough to be heard above the engine’s whine.
Alex watched him slip away into the night, unable to push the old man’s last words from his mind. Oh, he was clever, Centauri was! Appeal to Alex’s vanity and ego when all else fails. His final words had been delivered with as much careful calculation as the first. All that talk about “honors.” Just a chance to get himself killed in a fight that had nothing to do with him or his world. Hadn’t Grig as much as said the same?
He wondered what Grig was doing now. A somber type, so different from the ebullient Centauri. Alex wondered if all Grig’s people were like that, precise and dry and courteous to a fault, or if it was just characteristic of Grig himself.
He’d never know, never have the chance to find out. Not now. A chance to explore the whole galaxy and he’d turned it down.
No, that wasn’t fair. Maybe he wouldn’t have, if he could have gone exploring without being shot at. Asking him to participate in a war so far removed from his own experience, his own concerns, was downright unfair. And no matter what the game claimed, he wasn’t the militaristic type. He’d never even considered joining ROTC at the high school.
Could Earth remain apart from the fighting? So many worlds involved. From what he’d learned during his brief visit to Rylos most of the civilized galaxy was in danger of being overrun by the Ko-Dan. There’d been talk of admitting Earth to the League some day. After its inhabitants had matured.
Was he acting maturely in refusing Centauri’s offer? Or was he behaving in a manner Grig and the Rylans and the rest would regard as adolescent? As no better than “human"?
In addition to the greater concerns, he felt for Enduran. How would he react to Alex’s refusal to help if he could? His own son was the leader of the traitors fighting against the League. In what category did Alex’s refusal place him?
Dammit, it wasn’t his responsibility! He hadn’t asked for Centauri to come and yank him away from his normal, untroubled, everyday life.
His boring, monotonous, uncertain, dull everyday life.
The crystal protecting the digital readout that Centauri had given him caught the moonlight as he walked along the side of the road. Angrily, he jammed his hand in his pocket so he wouldn’t have to look at it. The crystal had become a rectangular transparent eye that stared at him accusingly.
They needed his help. The vast, technologically advanced League needed the help of lowly Alex Rogan, videogame whiz and all-around screw-up. It was a bad joke. It didn’t make any sense.
Primitive instincts, Enduran had called them. Primitive instincts he and the other potential Starfighters retained, instincts lost to the majority of League citizens. Not lost. Outgrown.
Was Centauri right? Would he prove as effective behind the fire controls of a real gunstar as he had behind those of the videogame? Where did computers have to make way for the more flexible decision-making ability of a living mind? Of a primitive mind that walked a thin line between civilization and barbarism?
His mind?
The neon sign flashed Starlight Starbright over the front of the general store and office, welcoming him home in weary blue and yellow. The crickets were joined in their nighttime song by sounds of toilets flushing, people arguing, televisions blaring out the evening’s canned idiocies. Dust billowed around Alex’s feet.
Somehow everything looked different. Everything was changed. Yet as he looked and listened he knew everything was exactly as he’d left it. It was he who had changed. His little journey had altered his perspective. Somehow all the daily problems that vexed him no longer seemed so important. Not even going to the University seemed important.
Damn you, Centauri. You ca
n’t make me feel guilty.
“Hey, Alex, I thought you were gonna help me with this antenna?”
Otis stood near the rocking chair on the far end of the general store porch.
“Fine, Otis . . . sorry. I forgot.”
Otis saw something in Alex’s expression. Old Otis was very perceptive. He frowned as he stepped down off the porch and approached the youngster.
“Hey, you look kind of funny, Alex. Where you been?”
“For a walk. Couldn’t sleep. Nothing wrong with that, is there?” He increased his pace and hurried into the park, leaving a puzzled Otis standing and staring after him.
“What about my antenna?” Otis called to him, gesturing with the metal grid.
“Later, okay?”
He was heading for his own trailer when another figure cut past in front of him. He swerved to follow.
Maggie! Sure, he could tell Maggie. She might not believe him at first . . . hell, she might not believe him at second or third! But he didn’t think she’d laugh outright at him. At least she’d listen.
Besides, he didn’t care what she said. He was too happy to see her.
“Hey, Maggie!”
He finally caught her on the steps leading into her own trailer. That’s when he saw the expression on her face.
“Maggie, is something wrong?”
She hit him hard, right across the right side of his face. He wasn’t sure if she’d been crying or not, but she was as mad as he’d ever seen her.
“I told you,” she said tightly, glaring up at him as he felt his cheek burning, “me and my . . . how did you put it . . . ‘strange sexual urges’ . . . aren’t talking to you anymore. Is that clear enough for you, Alex Rogan?”
The trailer door closed behind her with a metallic bang. Slowly Alex recovered his senses enough to close his mouth, which had been gaping dumbly. It took longer before he was able to stumble down the steps toward his own trailer, wondering what the hell was going on.
She’d hit him before, but always in play. Never like that. She’d intended to hurt him. He wasn’t angry at her for doing it, because he was too confused to be angry, and too stunned to respond.
Later. Sure, later. Fix Otis’s antenna and find out why his best girl had tried to knock his teeth down his throat. Two items filed for future consideration.
He opened the door to his trailer quietly. It wasn’t locked. Nobody in the Starlight Starbright Trailer Park locked their doors. There was no need to. He tiptoed through the living room, past the tiny kitchen and its ticking wall clock. At the far end of the narrow central hallway the door to his mother’s room remained shut. As hard as Jane Rogan worked, it would have taken more to awaken her from a sound sleep than the noise of one of her sons prowling about.
With considerable relief he cracked the door to his bedroom and stepped inside.
And got another shock. The room was a disaster area, a complete mess. Jane Rogan insisted on neatness from her boys because it was a good habit to acquire and because she didn’t have the time to spare to spend cleaning up after them. Alex made it a point to keep the room as neat and tidy as was possible for any eighteen-year-old living in cramped quarters with a younger brother, and Louis usually did his best to help out.
But something had gone badly wrong. It looked like the police had run a hasty search of the premises. Clothes were scattered everywhere on the floor; school supplies spilled off the side of the single desk; bits and pieces of plastic model kits crunched underfoot as he entered; his books were strewn all over the place.
As he picked his way through the mess his gaze rose to the small figure sleeping on the top half of the bunk bed. Louis lay asleep on his side, his mouth open, one arm dangling over the side of the bed. A dozen or so Playboy magazines lay scattered around him, forming a second blanket of slick paper.
Alex checked his anger. Let Louis sleep. There was no point in waking Mom. He’d take care of his younger brother in the morning. It was just like Louis. Alex had only been gone for a little while and . . .
How long had he been gone? What about Einstein? What about the effects of traveling faster than light? What about relativity?
Nuts, what about it? He was too tired to care, much less to try puzzling out the great unanswered questions of modern physics in his demolished bedroom. He had more important problems to solve, the rationale for Maggie’s fury being foremost among them.
He sat quietly on the edge of the lower bunk and started working on his running shoes. It would be good to sleep in his own bed, listening to the night sounds of the trailer park, far far away from Rylans and Xurians and Ko-Dans and other figments of a deranged imagination. Maybe he could even slip in a quick bath without waking his mother. A bath would feel great.
Already the memories were starting to fade, to become less imposing. In his mind Centauri’s ranting and raving was changing into dialogue spouted by some refugee from a Saturday morning cartoon. A few days should see him back in the groove of lazy normality. The events of this night would be as one with memories of special Christmas presents and busy nights at the drive-in with Maggie. Nothing more.
Something moved beneath the covers on his bunk. Something large and irregular in shape.
He leaped off the bed, whirled to stare at the shifting sheets and blankets, his eyes wide.
“Who’s there?”
The last thing he expected was a nervous reply. There was something about the voice that was familiar, though he couldn’t quite place it.
“Hey, keep it down!” the voice told him anxiously. “You’re gonna wake Louis! That could be awkward.”
The sheets were tossed aside and a figure sat up in his bed. Alex didn’t know what to expect an old friend playing an elaborate practical joke on him, a Rylan, Centauri himself.
It wasn’t any of them. It was just another guy, dressed like Alex, staring back at him.
In fact, it looked exactly like Alex Rogan.
It was a mirror-image of himself, come to life. There was no doubt about it. It was unarguably himself, Alex Rogan, down to the smallest mole, the slight change in hair color at the sideburns. It sat on the edge of the bunk exactly as he might have and stared back at him. Alex stared at this duplicate of himself and swallowed hard.
Maybe he was too tired to be frightened. Maybe it was a good thing he was so exhausted. Certainly it was a good thing that in the past hours he’d seen so many marvels and impossibilities that one more couldn’t shock him any worse than anything he’d already seen.
He did not run gibbering from the room. His reaction was more matter-of-fact than anything else.
“Hey, you look like me!”
The perfect double made shushing sounds while glancing up and back to make sure their little brother was still locked fast in sleep.
“Of course I look like you. I’d be worthless if I didn’t. I’m the Beta Unit.”
“What the hell’s a Beta Unit? I know what a Betamax is, but not a Beta Unit.”
“I recognize the reference, but there is only the most tenuous of relations. Centauri didn’t tell you?”
“No, Centauri didn’t tell me. Centauri doesn’t tell people things,” Alex murmured angrily. “Why did I think that you had something to do with Centauri?”
The double hesitated a moment. “You’re being sarcastic now, aren’t you? Sarcasm is difficult to recognize.”
“It shouldn’t be. Not when Centauri’s involved. You still haven’t explained what you are, besides me.”
“I am a BS-RS.”
“I’ll buy the first half of that. What about the rest?”
“I don’t think you buy any of it, unless you’re being sarcastic again. I am a brain-scan regenerated simulacrum. An exact duplicate of you. Only not as loud.”
The noise made Louis turn lazily in his bed, the dangling arm rolling to flop against the far wall. Alex fought to keep his voice down. It would not do his younger brother’s development any good at all if he awoke in the middle of the nigh
t to confront two Alexes sitting on the bunk beneath his, staring anxiously up at him.
“We met before,” the alien said. “Don’t you recall?”
Alex shook his head slowly, thinking. “Somehow I think I’d remember you.”
“I was in the car, Centauri’s vehicle. Remember now? In the back. We touched hands, I took a fast impulse and retina scan, the final impression was complete, and then I got out fast. After which I became you . . . unfortunately.”
“Unfortunately for whom?” Alex frowned. “A brain-scan regranulated . . . can’t you put that in plain English?”
“All English is plain; a scientifically unsophisticated language.”
“That’s okay. I’m a scientifically unsophisticated guy. Lemme give it a try, though. You’re a robot?”
His double looked offended. “I beg your pardon! I am a state-of-the-art, top-of-the-line Beta Unit, fully programmable on short notice with slipsoidal epidermis and complete self-adapting internal cultural acclimatization features designed specifically for work on backward planets.”
“Which means?”
“Which means that to you morons I’m a robot.”
Alex pondered this a moment, brightened. “I didn’t remember promising to help Otis fix his antenna. So you’re the one who made that promise.”
“That’s what I liked the first time I was told I was going to be working among you humans. You’re so quick on the uptake. Of course it was me. Who else?”
“What else have you been doing while I was stuck chasing Centauri through a cave on Rylos?”
“Oh, wonderful things. Eminently suitable to a simulacrum of my class. Patching electric lines and fixtures, plunging toilets, repairing fences, chasing stray dogs; no wonder you wanna get out of here! What a dump, and a backward dump to boot. And I thought this was gonna be a cushy assignment; big metropolitan area, everything nice and clean, the pick of local museums, my choice of exotic native lubricants and electronic stimuli . . . You don’t even have cable out here! If I hadn’t been able to pick up transmissions from a couple of your geosynchronous satellites I would’ve gone bonkers by now.”