V_The 2nd Generation Page 4

  Thomas Murakami was smaller, thinner, and more fastidious than casual Danny. Thomas's Japanese parents were decidedly old school with very definite and strict rules. They exerted constant pressure on Thomas to excel in all his academics, which he did. But that pressure had developed in Thomas a wariness from an early age. He wasn't merely paranoid. He positively knew that people were constantly looking over his shoulder and that created in him an innate nervousness about doing anything outside the rules. Forbidden fruit was always intriguing, however, so Thomas couldn't help but be drawn to Danny Stein's panache and the excitement of Danny's ability to dance along the edge of a precipice, generally managing to narrowly avoid taking a big fall.

  Nonetheless, as they approached the closed door of their classroom, Thomas felt his pulse quicken. "I don't know, we're going to be so late."

  Danny shrugged it off lightly. "So what? Monday morning's always the same. You know that. Check it out." Danny indicated the small rectangular window in the classroom door. Thomas edged closer and carefully peeked through into the classroom. He could see their heavyset, dowdy teacher, Mrs. Richmond, a study in drab, turning on the large, ceiling-mounted flat-screen TV.

  Her voice was upbeat. "Okay, class. Time for our Monday movie. And I heard that this is a brand-new version. See how many new scenes you all can spot—then we'll talk about them afterward."

  Rhythmic, energetic music started as a flashy title appeared on the TV screen, heralding a presentation titled The Visitor Way. A smaller version of the title appeared as an icon in the lower corner of the screen that was a subtle but constant reminder of the official vid that the students were watching.

  In the hallway Thomas and Danny could hear the music coming not only from their own classroom, but from all the others up and down the corridor. Danny nodded to doubting Thomas. "I told you so. Come on." Danny started off without looking back. He knew Thomas would hesitate a moment, then quickly catch up.

  "What's so important?" Thomas asked as they walked.

  Danny spoke with conspiratorial seriousness, "I've got a different vid to show you."

  Back inside their classroom and all the others not only at Patrick Henry but in every school in the Pacific Time Zone at that moment, The Visitor Way was beginning. It was an attention-grabbing vid that had been created with slick production value, trendy editing, and simultaneous, multiple images. At first it showed documentary scenes of real people in conflict: rebellious crowds that were tearing down symbols of authority or attacking police or fighting with an opposing mob of equally enraged people. Then came classic scenes of warfare with heavy artillery firing, buildings being hit and destroyed by their shells or by missiles launched from Predator-style drone aircraft. Then images of bloodied and crying people on streets where suicide bombers had blown themselves and others to bloody pieces. Then long lines of distressed and injured refugees. The totality of images seemed to contain examples of virtually every human ethnicity and recognizable culture.

  An unseen narrator began speaking over all of the visuals. It was the voice of a concerned young woman. "Our old Earth was a real mess twenty years ago. International conflicts abounded. Just about every country in the world had some sort of internal strife. War and suffering were everywhere and it looked as though things would only get worse and worse. But then suddenly . . . They arrived."

  Images appeared on the screen of the monumental alien Motherships approaching over Earth's major cities: New York, London, Moscow, Beijing, Rio de Janeiro, and of people everywhere reacting to the astonishing sight with understandable awe.

  "And everything got better," the voice continued in a tone of friendliness and wonder. "The Visitors had arrived to bring us their gifts—and to bring peace in our time."

  Emma, the green-eyed, African-American pop singer whose latest music vid had been playing on the billboard screen at Nathan's crash site, was smiling and speaking directly into the camera as she walked beside a huge Visitor tanker craft. "Hi, kids. I'm Emma." She was wearing faded blue jeans and a Hamlet-style blouse that was loose-fitting yet managed to show the curves of her picture-perfect figure. Her long, straight black hair flowed down over her shoulders. The pale yellow of her blouse ideally complemented the coffee-with-cream color of her smooth skin. Her outfit had been carefully selected to be particularly kid-friendly, just as she herself had been. Emma was a popular celebrity who set fashion trends for young women while also having the sex appeal to turn the heads of males of any age. She was a double treat because in addition to being beautiful, she also had the talent to back it up. As a songwriter as well as a performer she was respected and admired. Thus she was an ideal choice to speak on behalf of the Visitors.

  In spite of the fact that the students in Danny's classroom had seen modified versions of this video every Monday morning for years, Emma was a relatively new addition and generally made the old information sound fresh. On the screen she had continued walking in the bright sunlight and came to join a natty, engaging Visitor, who looked to be in his mid-thirties. He had a friendly, open face topped with nicely coiffed dark hair.

  "And this is a good buddy of mine," Emma said with a smile, "Paul is the Press Secretary for the Visitors." Emma turned to him. "You love your job, don't you, Paul?"

  His smile was engaging, "I sure do, Emma." Like all Visitors, Paul wore sunglasses and his voice had the peculiar alien resonance. "I love it because I get to tell young people about us Visitors." He turned to look directly into the camera and address the kids in the viewing audience. "Being a reptilian race, we were afraid we'd look a little too alien to you"—he wiggled his fingers near his face with self-deprecating humor—"and since we needed protection from your ultraviolet radiation anyway, our doctors created this human-looking skin." He pulled gently at the skin of his cheek. "It was a good idea and helped us to fit in more easily among our new friends here on Earth. We also need the sunglasses to protect our eyes which are considerably more sensitive than yours." The vid image had changed to show numerous shots of human-looking Visitors all wearing sunglasses as they arrived en masse and began working cheerfully among welcoming humans.

  Again on-camera, Paul nodded. "We were very happy to be here, but then . . ." His face grew sad and there was an abrupt cut to a Visitor fighter exploding. Then a factory was shown in flames. There were more explosions and scenes of many people injured. Human and Visitor victims were frightened and bloodied, clinging to each other. Paul's voice was heard over the images. "A conspiracy of jealous Earth scientists wanted to undermine our helping you. These Scis, as your people began to call them, committed vicious acts of sabotage and did horrific surgical experimentation on innocent Visitors."

  Emma was seen, her head bowed in sadness and shame for the disgraceful behavior of her fellow humans, then the camera panned to Paul whose face also expressed distress. "The Scis finally confessed to causing much of Earth's turmoil for their own glory and financial gain."

  In one of the school's custodial closets, which was dark and smelled of industrial-strength soap, Danny had sequestered himself and Thomas amid the buckets and cleaning supplies. As Danny pulled out his wallet-sized vid player Thomas was growing more nervous with anticipation. "It's not porn, is it?" Thomas was worried yet secretly hoped at the same time. "My parents said they'd kill me if I ever—"

  "Relax. Just watch." Danny had turned the small unit on and the screen showed a grainy image of auburn-haired Margarita Perry speaking with passion directly into the camera. They could see she was standing in what looked like an abandoned building. Beside her stood a distinguished-looking man in his fifties. His black hair was flecked with gray and he had the look of a smart, friendly college professor but with the weathered tan of someone who had spent much time doing hands-on work in the field. His eyebrows were thick and black. They set off his dark, intensely intelligent eyes. Like Margarita he was dressed in simple, serviceable clothes.

  Margarita introduced the man, "This is Nobel laureate anthropologist Robert Maxwell
. Like most scientists and their families, Dr. Maxwell was made an object of scorn and hatred by Visitor lies."

  Young Thomas's eyes flared open. "Omigod, Danny! Where'd you get this?"

  "It's a bootleg vid from the Resistance," Danny was proud to say.

  Robert Maxwell had begun to speak. "Visitors are afraid we scientists might find a way to stop them, so they want to contain us. Or worse. That's why all Scis are implanted with ID chips. And we're not the only ones singled out: anyone opposing the Visitors simply vanishes."

  The vid graphically illustrated his point by showing grainy, clandestine, handheld, telephoto shots of disturbing scenes: Visitor Patrollers and human Teammates brutally squashing demonstrations at colleges, beating students to the ground; halting union meetings, clubbing those who resisted or shooting them with pulse pistols; breaking into people's homes and dragging them out and away into the foggy darkness.

  Margarita was narrating: "These images were captured by ordinary people like you and me, at great personal risk to themselves, to show what the Visitors are actually doing across America and around the world. You won't see images like these on normal TV or in the press, of course, because for over twenty years the Visitors have controlled and censored all media and communication—including the Internet. They quickly destroy anything negative said against them. Or anyone saying it. Particularly if they have any connection to scientists."

  In the classroom The Visitor Way was showing happy scientists in pristine laboratories, living in pleasant, colorful, parklike suburbs as Press Secretary Paul rapturously intoned, "Most scientists are rehabilitated now and gladly work alongside Visitors. Some of their fellow men haven't yet forgiven scientists' behavior as we Visitors have, so for their own protection Sci families live within their own lovely communities."

  Then Paul continued on-camera, his face expressing sad regret. "But there are still a few misinformed social misfits who resist the help we're offering. So we must all be very vigilant and immediately report any suspicious behavior to authorities."

  AT THAT SAME MOMENT, AMID THE GIGANTIC INTERWOVEN PIPES AND catwalks at a huge biochemical plant on the southwest side of the dry chasm that had been San Francisco Bay, a sweet-faced, middle-aged woman of Italian descent named Connie Leonetti was being arrested by a Visitor Patroller and two Teammates. She was frightened and completely confused. "What are you talking about? I am not an 'undocumented scientist'!"

  "Just come along quietly, lady," said one of the Teammates, a young Pakistani woman, as she prodded Connie with a pulse pistol.

  "But it's a lie!" Connie protested, with tears of panic welling in her dark eyes. "I'm not in the Resistance! Who told you that? Who would have—?" Then Connie's eyes fell upon another woman standing some distance away, who pretended not to be watching though she obviously was. Connie shouted at her, "It was you, wasn't it!"

  The other woman, Stella Stein, was about forty with curly brown hair like her son Danny. Her full face reflected the fact that she was slightly overweight. Stella seemed to be watching the scene with curious concern. But Connie could read the smug satisfaction just beneath Stella's studied innocence.

  "You just want my job!" Connie was raging tearfully now, then as the Teammates cuffed her and took hold of her arms, her voice cracked as she pleaded to the other woman, "Tell them it's not true, Stella! Please! Stella, you tell them!" But Connie was muscled away by the Patroller and the Teammates, passing a group of upscale humans and Visitors who were walking in the opposite direction. Connie seized the opportunity and called out desperately to the corpulent man who was leading the group, "Mr. Oliver! Please help me! There's been a mistake. Please!" But the Teammates jerked her roughly into a convenient doorway and out of sight.

  Jowly J. D. Oliver had ignored her. He wore an expensive business suit. He was almost entirely bald, but refused to give in to it. He had combed his wisps of black hair back along the sides of his round head. He was the owner of the plant and spoke with an ingratiating tone to his guests regarding Connie's arrest. "As you see, we run a very tight ship."

  He was addressing the local Visitor supervisor, Shawn, who had a long angular face and deep-set eyes that could be very penetrating when he chose to make them so, as he often did. Shawn was a shrewd political animal who had risen in the Visitor ranks but not yet to the heights to which he aspired. He was touring the factory along with several of his aides and the San Francisco mayor, Mark Ohanian, who had three or four people in his own human entourage. The mayor was in his thirty-eighth year and had the striking good looks of a dark-haired, 1950s movie star, which his grandfather had in fact been. Mark was popular among the people of San Francisco and his ongoing collaboration with the Visitors made the alien force feel very comfortable about keeping him in office.

  Oliver was proudly pointing out an area of the plant. "That section over there was where we mass-produced the Visitor cure for Alzheimer's."

  Mark Ohanian smiled. "Sure helped my granddad a lot."

  "And millions of others, Mr. Mayor. Now down this way, Shawn, we've retooled to make your new chemical."

  They moved on, nodding to Stella who was cheerfully heading back inside one of the large industrial structures. Then Stella realized that a hefty black worker, whom everyone called Blue, was eyeing her. Stella glared at him. "What the hell are you looking at?"

  Blue held up his hands to indicate he was staying out of it: no harm, no foul. Stella stared coldly at him a moment longer, as if in warning, then went on her way. Blue shook his head and sighed. He had liked Connie Leonetti and knew for certain that she wasn't involved with the Resistance. He hated to see her denounced and arrested, but also knew there was nothing he could do to save her.

  Blue heard the nearby checkpoint gate beeping and looked up to see Dr. Charles Elgin entering. Charles was forty-six, only a few months older than Blue, but he looked years older. His shoulders were always slumped slightly forward, as though the weight of the world were upon him. He paused in the entry gate where a vid screen was flashing the word Sci and showing Charles's photo. A full-body scan pinpointed the ID implant in his left arm and presented all his vital statistics. The Patroller at the gate checked the data and admitted him. Charles took off his glasses to clean them and nodded a greeting to Blue, noticing the frown on the big man's face. "What?"

  "Good ol' Stella screwed another one."

  Charles also frowned. "Who?"

  "Connie."

  Charles sighed bitterly. The two men began to walk together. Though Charles was of average height and size he looked small beside Blue. Charles's mind was turning on distressing possibilities. "Could be any of us next."

  "Yep. I hate that bitch."

  "If she keeps it up, she's going to be a Player, too." Charles was looking across the complex to where the plant's owner Oliver was sucking up to the mayor and Visitor Shawn.

  "They all deserve each other," Blue grumbled.

  Charles looked away. "I didn't hear that."

  "I didn't say it." Blue smirked. Then he drew a breath. "So what's this new crap we're making? Insecticide?"

  "Very potent," Charles said, nodding, "weapons grade."

  "What for?" Blue puzzled over the news. "Visitors got them some giant cockroaches somewhere?"

  Charles shrugged, unconcerned and slightly preoccupied. He had spotted an electric drill that was lying behind some barrels, apparently misplaced or forgotten.

  IN THE MIDDLE-SCHOOL CLASSROOM THE YOUNG STUDENTS WERE still watching The Visitor Way. It was now showing brisk shots of "industry on parade"—smiling people working alongside friendly Visitors. The vigilant Mrs. Richmond saw that one or two of the students were glancing out the window or doodling inattentively and she cruised by them like a dark cloud, tapping their shoulders to refocus them on the vid. On the TV screen Emma's voice was heard over the images of happy workers. "The Visitors soon got Earth running smoothly under the dynamic guidance of their Commandant, Diana."

  The beautiful face of Visitor Diana
appeared in a compelling close-up. She was a striking brunette with high cheekbones. Her large brown eyes bespoke great intelligence and innate wisdom, and were quite easy to get lost in. She was seen working as a benevolent organizer, meeting her own people and humans at their work places always with a smile and the Visitor greeting-salute, which was the right hand extended and slightly raised, palm up. Diana was shown talking to factory workers, nurturing children at a day-care center, visiting patients at a hospital, and addressing the United Nations General Assembly.

  Visitor Press Secretary Paul's sonorous alien voice described the scenes, "Working in humanity's best interests, Diana settled petty disputes like the Middle East by suppressing unruly elements. With advanced Visitor surveillance technology, Diana also ferreted out rogue troublemakers and virtually snuffed out global terrorism. World leaders, like revered U.N. Secretary-General Alberto Mendez, quickly recognized that the Visitors were a powerful force for good. All the top human leaders happily stepped aside to let Visitor wisdom streamline government and bring peace."

  Emma's voice chimed in cheerfully, "And so much more, Paul. 'Team Visitor' has shown us how to create cheap fuel cells that eliminated our dependence on oil. They ended famine and gave us miraculous cures for heart disease, AIDS, and most cancers."

  In the school custodial closet, Danny Stein's clandestine Resistance vid was chronicling the darker side of the Visitors: stolen glimpses showed crowds of frightened people, their hands on their heads, under heavy Visitor guard, being shoved onto Visitor shuttle craft. People of both genders and sexes, including many disoriented and tearful children, were herded aboard the craft for deportation. Their faces and clothing indicated various ethnicities from different parts of the world. Dr. Robert Maxwell's voice was narrating, "Visitor cures for diseases seem like a good thing, but they also yield more healthy people for the Visitors to take away."