grace to America by stamping out the immorality that has brought down divine wrath.”
“They claim to be godly patriots, but really they are an instrument of social control,” was how Dad put it once, in a beer-soaked late-night conversation with Mr. Nomura. He had slurred the words “social control,” and Mr. Nomura had hiccuped his agreement.
Does Dad really think I can sleep through all their loud talk, or does he just not care? Back in the Sixties, Dad liked to say, you could write or say just about anything you wanted, though Mom liked to ask how would he know, when he wasn’t even born till 1970?
Suddenly Arnold was desperate to get back to school so he could ask Gloria directly what she wanted him to do. She had to be in danger every day she was here! What if she just up and disappeared, like she did earlier today after leaving the Beatles album for him—only what if this time she went away for good, or SCOD disappeared her? Then I’ll never learn how to join the Resistance. And I’ll never see Assateague Ashley and Jo again!
CHAPTER 8
This stupid history paper is driving me crazy. What did I have to go and write about such a complicated subject for?
It was no good asking Dad, Alison knew; she’d only get a rant she could never write down and hand in for class. But it also made her sick to think about cleverly rewording the textbook the way anyone else in class would. Adventures in American History, ugh! It was the most boring textbook ever.
“You take things way too seriously,” Shaniqua said with a wave of her hand when Alison brought up the problem at lunchtime. “Write whatever makes Miss Burbage happy.”
“What about thinking for ourselves?”
Shaniqua snorted milk out of her nose, then delicately dabbed at it with her napkin. “In this town? Get serious, Alison honey. Just smile and tell them what they want to hear, so you can graduate and go off to college. You want to cause trouble, do it there. At least you’ll have plenty of company.”
“And get happy-foamed, or expelled, or disappeared? No thank you.”
“Then I really don’t understand what you’re going on about, girl. Just hum along to that Cosmic Harmony in public and do what you want in private. Everyone else does.”
“If everyone jumped off a cliff, would you do it, too?”
“Long as there was a big ol’ pile of mattresses at the bottom, I would.” Alison had to chuckle at that. “Really, why make a big deal out of this?” Shaniqua said. “Just book some time on the n-reader and you’ll get all the material you need, if the textbook is too boring for you. But you’d better put your name on the list fast. As it is you’ll have to come in on the weekend to use it.”
“Can’t.” Alison lowered her voice. “My mom has NINA, remember?”
“But you could still go on the N-Network, Allie. Less than one in a million people gets NINA. You’re more likely to win the lottery! Why make things hard on yourself?”
Alison bit her lip. “What if it’s genetic? They don’t know for sure it’s not. I mean, what if it fries my brains?”
Shaniqua rolled her eyes. “It’s not scary, Allie, I promise you. I’ve used the one here, like, a hundred times for school projects. It didn’t fry my brains. Do I seem like a zombie to you?” She leaned over the unappetizing remains of her lunch, bugged her eyes out and wiggled her fingers. “Booga booga!”
Alison chuckled nervously. “But really, what’s it like, being on the n-net?”
Shaniqua shrugged. “It’s not ‘like’ anything else. For a sensum, which is all they let us do anyhow, it just feels like you’re right there at whatever place and time you’re supposed to be observing. It is a little strange for the earlier recordings because there’s no smell or touch, but that just makes it like watching a tri-vee. Or maybe like being a ghost.
“For an assignment last year I got to sit right next to the High Satrap during that famous interview the British guy did with him forty years ago. You know, the one where he explained why he had to rewrite the Constitution.” Shaniqua was a great mimic, and she lowered her voice and imitated the High Satrap himself. “Let me make one thing perfectly clear, David. I could have done the easy thing, the popular thing, and tried to retain the outmoded system of elections, even after our friends on high explained, with the wisdom of tens of thousands of years of civilization, how inefficient they are compared with monarchy, but…”
“Shh! We’ll get in big trouble,” Alison said, holding in her laughter.
Shaniqua went back to her normal voice. “I tried to touch his sleeve once and my hand passed right through his arm! That was kind of freaky, but there’s nothing to it, really.”
“But what about a massthink causing instant, total NINA? I heard they let a senior up in Salisbury join a massthink last year. She already had her acceptance letter from MIT, but now she’s, like, a vegetable.”
Shaniqua waved this off. “There’s always rumors like that. I heard it that the girl was from Norfolk and was going to Caltech before she became a drooler. Like I said, you’ll only be doing sensums, so there’s no risk anyway. Booga booga!”
Up in her bedroom, Alison put her pencil down. Her history paper was due Monday morning, and there was only one solution she could think of: since she couldn’t go on the n-net for a sensum of what it had been like during the Arrival, she’d have to talk to Grandma for a first-hand account. But that wasn’t so simple, since Mom’s mother, her only living grandparent, was in assisted living back in Baltimore. So she went looking for her father. Finding him in the kitchen, washing and drying the last of the supper dishes, she asked if they could all “go back home” for the weekend and explained why.
Dad sighed as he put a saucepan away. “I can’t get away, Allie-bear. You know we’ve got the National Medical people coming this weekend to give Mom a custom wheelchair.”
Alison started guiltily. How had she put that out of her mind?
“Tell you what, though,” Dad added. “I think you’re old enough to take the saucer to Baltimore by yourself.”
“Really, Dad? That’d be great!”
He smiled. “I’ll drive you to the Wallops Island Interplanetary Base early Saturday morning. Deal?” He held up his hand and she high-fived him.
* * * *
Alison hated getting up early on the weekend, but there wasn’t much choice. The air was cold and bright when she and Dad set out a little after eight, and their breath puffed out in clouds. She’d left waffle batter all prepared next to the waffle iron on the kitchen table, hoping Arnold could manage to feed himself and Mom without too much trouble—though she’d put the new fire extinguisher out on the table too, just in case.
The family’s battered old Chevy Ampere carried them the four miles down the causeway to the saucer field in just a few minutes; for once Dad wasn’t risking a fine by trying to drive the thing manually, instead letting the global DriveNet on the High Ones’ mothership do the steering.
While they sailed along, Dad gave Alison a pink knobbed whelk shell he’d found on the beach a few weeks ago, a little one just two inches long, to give to Grandma. “Tell her I’m sorry I can’t come and bring Mom,” he said.
“Are you sure you’ll be all right getting her into the new wheelchair?” Alison asked.
Dad ruffled her hair. “Don’t worry, Allie Bear. That’s what the Universal Health is for.”
At the fenced-in entrance to the field she had to separate from Dad to go through the female strip-search. The guard was a roundish, middle-aged lady with a scowl and calloused hands who made Alison feel like she was doing something wrong just by breathing. Plus the guard “accidentally” jammed her rigid, rubber-gloved forefinger up Alison’s butt, making her yelp.
“Don’t be