CHAPTER 11
Magnetic field (part 2)
"No!" His denial was instant, but then, meeting my gaze, he gave a little shrug. "Okay, maybe on the first day of school, when I very first figured it out. I needed to make sure. But as soon as I started talking to you, I liked you. For yourself, not just because of . . . you know." He took my hand and looked at me pleadingly. "M, I really did want to tell you myself, but--"
"But after the way I freaked when you told me you were a Martian, you didn't want to risk me going off the deep end if you tried to tell me I was? At school?"
He shrugged and nodded, smiling sheepishly. "Sorta, yeah."
Hugely relieved, I squeezed his hand--something I could never have imagined myself doing just a couple of days earlier. "No, I get it. And I can't swear I wouldn't have. Gone off the deep end, I mean. It's . . . kind of a lot."
"Actually, you took it way better than I thought you would. Way better than I did, in fact."
"That's right--you said you didn't find out until a few years ago. So until then, you just thought you and your parents were like everyone else?"
"Pretty much. I mean, why would I think otherwise? But as I got older, I started overhearing conversations between them, and with my grandfather and others, and I started to think something weird was going on. So I started asking questions. They put me off for a while, but finally decided I was old enough to handle it."
"How old were you?"
"Almost eleven. And man, I was seriously freaked out when they told me. Locked myself in my room for two days, yelling that I didn't want to be raised by aliens. But finally I decided it was kind of cool. And now it just seems, well, normal."
I tried to imagine what he'd gone through, finding out such a thing when he was just ten years old. "I guess I have a little bit of an advantage, being older."
And having the kind of life where anything different, anything special, was bound to be an improvement. But I didn't say that part. It did make me wonder about something else, though.
"I still don't understand how you and your parents found me," I said. "I mean, Jewel is such a nowhere little town . . ." I trailed off, remembering something Rigel had told me during our very first conversation.
"Wait. Is that why you had to change schools every year? Looking for me?"
Rigel confirmed my guess with a nod. "Though I didn't know that was the reason until eighth grade."
"I'm surprised you don't resent the heck out of me."
"It's not like it's your fault."
I frowned, still skeptical, and he suddenly grinned. "Okay, I admit that before I met you I might have resented you a little. But definitely not now. Not even a little." His expression, his voice, his touch, forced me to believe him.
"As for the how," he continued, "my dad's a computer whiz. He'd been searching adoption records and stuff and was pretty sure you were in Indiana somewhere--which is why we were here. The lucky break came when Center North played Jewel at football last fall. I was the backup quarterback, had only been off the bench once before in a game, since I was a freshman. But Appleton wrenched his shoulder and the coach put me in while they iced it. And it was like I was supercharged, or something. Played way over my head."
"And you think it was because--"
"Had to be. I told my parents about it after the game and they figured you must have been there. So the next year I transferred to Jewel--and here you are."
No wonder I'd been such a whiz in the concession stand that night! I must have been "supercharged" by Rigel, as well.
"So, you want to see the house?" he asked, standing up.
"Sure. Any cool futuristic gizmos you can show me? Food replicators or a holodeck or something?"
"Funny. It's not Star Trek. But here, watch this." He picked up our empty milk glasses, but instead of rinsing them in the sink, he opened a cupboard and put them inside, right next to the clean plates and glasses. Then he closed the door, pushed a tiny button I hadn't noticed and immediately opened the cabinet again. Our used glasses sparkled, without a trace of milk.
"Whoa! What did you do?"
"It's an ionic sterilizer, built into the frame of the cupboard. There's a little one in each of the bathrooms, too, for toothbrushes and stuff. Pretty cool, huh?"
"Extremely cool," I agreed, thinking of the time it would save.
He closed the cabinet and turned back to me, his eyes glinting with suppressed excitement. "Come on. There's something else I think you'll like even more."
Taking my hand, he led me out of the kitchen and up the wide, wooden staircase to the second floor. My heart started to pound again as I wondered if he was going to show me his bedroom. Where had his parents disappeared to, anyway?
But instead of a bedroom, he led me through an archway at the top of the stairs into a small room facing the back of the house. He flipped a switch on the wall and a slit opened, bottom to top, in the opposite wall where a window would normally be, and I saw there was a large telescope set in front of it--just like a real observatory, in miniature.
"Oh, wow!" I breathed. I'd begged my aunt and uncle for a telescope for years and finally, last Christmas, they'd given me a little cheapie one from Wal-Mart. But this--this was a real telescope! I stepped in front of Rigel and put my hand reverently on its smooth casing.
"Go ahead and take a look." He motioned to the telescope.
I was too eager to do just that not to obey. Of course, it was still broad daylight, so I knew I wouldn't see much--or even be able to orient it. At least we were facing away from the sun.
"Just a sec," Rigel said, and punched a code into a keypad on the telescope's mount. The telescope shifted position, a couple of inches to the left and a hair higher. "Okay, now."
"Like a GoTo on steriods," I muttered, feeling a pang of envy as I put my eye to the eyepiece. Even a low end GoTo--programmable--telescope was more than I had any hope of owning anytime soon. Then I really looked. And gasped.
"What planet is that? And how can I see it so well in the daytime?"
"It's actually one of Jupiter's moons. Leda."
I stood straight and stared at him. "No way! Astronomers didn't even discover Leda until 1974, it's so small." I bent for another look. The detail was amazing--I could see actual craters and hills.
"I'd show you Mars, but it's not visible from here right now. Soon, though, I promise."
The feeling that welled up in me at his words startled me with its intensity. It was a longing--not just to see Mars, now that I knew it was my heritage, so to speak, but, even more, to see it with him. And maybe not just through a telescope.
"You've never been there yourself, right?" I asked.
"Nope. My folks haven't been back since they moved to Earth, though my grandfather went back once, a few years before I was born. My dad says it's trickier to go that direction without being spotted, so there are just two spots on Earth we're allowed to launch from, and only if it's really important."
I tried to hide my disappointment. "Oh. I guess that makes sense. Still, it would be cool to actually visit there, don't you think?"
"Very cool," he agreed. "You'll probably get to someday." He reached out to tuck a strand of hair behind my ear as he spoke, which distracted me so much I almost didn't catch the wistfulness in his voice.
"I hope you mean 'we,'" I said.
He nodded quickly, but dropped his hand and took a half step away from me. "Of course. You think I'd let you go without me?" But I thought there was a reserve in his expression that hadn't been there a moment ago.
Before I could ask about it, he punched another set of numbers into the telescope keypad and motioned for me to look. He stood well back as I peered through the eyepiece. I smiled as I recognized the distinctive crater on Europa. "Pwyll," I mouthed soundlessly. At least, I thought I'd been soundless.
"Wow, you can tell at a glance?"
I straightened and looked at Rigel, who was several feet away from me. "You do have super hearing, don't you?"
"We're in the same room, so I hardly need--" He broke off at the look I gave him. "Okay, yeah, kind of, I guess. Most of my senses are more, um, sensitive than the average human. It's just one of those Martian things."
"But you can't, like, read my mind, right?" I really, really needed to know this.
He grinned almost like he did know what I was thinking. "Not yet."
I frowned at him, not sure if he was kidding or not. "Wait. Do you mean--"
Rigel took my hands, his smile more serious now. "Sorry. I don't really know. You might have noticed my parents communicating without speaking."
"So they can read each other's minds?" It had seemed that way, but I hadn't dared to ask. "Do they have that . . . bond, that resonance thing you said we have?" I was completely confused about that after what his parents had said.
"They have something, for sure, but it took them like twenty years to develop it. I asked. And even that's apparently pretty unusual, from what they told me."
"So it's not that graell thing that's supposed to be so incredibly rare? Do you still think--I mean--you don't think this . . . whatever we have . . . is just the usual thing between Martians that your dad mentioned?"
He took both of my hands, his expression melting my heart. "No, I really don't. I think what we have is way more than that. Special."
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