Blue Roses
Part Two: The Law of the Jungle
Max stared at Helen as she ate with her "friends" in the cafeteria. Once Max had told Isabel who he thought she was, his sister had made a special attempt to include Helen in any social gatherings. Helen thought Isabel was her friend, but Max knew the truth. Helen would never be their friend. Ever.
Unless Max was wrong.
Even if Helen was a new and mysterious alien who was out to kill them, Max saw that she was very pretty. Today she was warring light colored jeans and pale blue tank-top. Max wondered if Liz would feel jealous if they started going out.....
Max suddenly felt sick. How could he even think about going out with something that wanted to kill him? Maybe it was the danger in it. That would surely appeal to Michael, who had dated a Skin.
The bell rang. Max got up from the lunch table. He hadn't touched his food. Oh, well. He wasn't hungry. He was too absorbed in this paradox to be hungry.
Max walked to his locker. He quickly undid the code and opened it. It was neat inside, as always, but something wasn't right. It felt foreign, like there was something there that didn't quite fit.
Max started emptying his locker. The bell rang again. It was time for him to be in class. Trig class. With Helen. With Liz. But that didn't seem to matter. This, this discovery was more important. Much more important. He needed to find out what was wrong.
All his belongings were gathered on the floor. What was wrong? There had to be something wrong, Max could feel it. He was beginning to think he was insane when he found it. An envelope. Just like the one he had found on his bed a few days ago. But this time it was.....different. It was lighter. It didn't feel so threatening, just out of place. Max opened it quickly and pulled out the paper inside.
Now this is the Law of the Jungle -- as old and as true as the sky;
And the Wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the Wolf that shall break it must die. As the creeper that girdles the tree-trunk the Law runneth forward and back --For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.
Remember these words, Max, they could save your life-¤
For a few moments Max just stood there, stunned. Then he muttered to himself. "Alien writing."
They all gathered to see it. All of them. Michael, Isabel, Tess, Maria, Alex, and Liz. They all needed to see it. After all, it could say anything. I could tell them how to reach their home planet, or who was the next victim. There was no way to know for sure. So they sat at a picnic table outside of the school and stared.
"I bet it's something important," Maria marveled. "And I bet they don't want you to have it."
"Why would they give it Max if they didn't want us to have it?" Michael pointed out in a rather annoyed tone. "They're just taunting us," he said. "They're playing with our minds. I bet it doesn't say anything at all. We should just burn it, Max"
"Are you crazy," Isabel nearly shouted. "This-This is probably something we could have read in the past life. I mean.....Oh, Max, we have to find out what it say. We just have to."
"Isabel's right," Max agreed. "We need to find out what this says, they question is, how do we do that?"
Tess snorted. "Good question."
Maria rolled her eyes. "Somebody has an attitude."
"Tess, what's wrong?" Max asked.
"Oh nothing," Tess lied. "I mean, hey, if you want to fall straight into some sort of trap, that's fine with me." Tess turned and left. There was a moment of silence, then Max cleared his throat and continued with business as if nothing was wrong in the first place.
"Any ideas?" he asked.
"I think I have an idea," Liz said quietly. Max turned to look at her, fighting to resist the sudden urge to grab her hand.
"What is it, Liz?"
"There's a computer program we used in French once," she said quietly, "that translated our work into English so we knew whether or not we were writing correctly. Maybe we could scan the note, load it, and use the program to see what it says."
"Great plan, Genius. There's only one problem," Michael said. "It's not in French."
"Michael," Max scolded.
"She's not even your girl friend anymore, Max. She slept with Kyle for crying out loud. You don't need to defend her every word like she's your bitch and your her mate." Michael snorted. "Grow up." With that he, like Tess, left.
"I gotta go," Maria said. "My shift starts in ten minuets." She got up from the table and left. Alex followed her. Only Max, Isabel, and Liz were left.
"Well, what do you think?" Liz asked. "Should we give it a try?"
Max turned to Isabel. "What do you think?" Isabel shrugged.
"It's worth a try," she said. "As long as it won't damage the note."
"Don't worry," Liz said. "It won't." She stood up. "Well, let's go." Together, they left the table and walked into the school, heading straight for the computer lab. No one asked them why they were there, which was good, because they weren't supposed to be in the building at all without a pass. When they got to the computer lab, Liz quickly scanned the note. She then walked over to the nearest computer and accessed the document. After a few minuets, Isabel spoke up.
"Why isn't it working?" she asked.
Liz sighed. "It's not French."
"I know that. But you said you could use this program to translate it," Isabel said.
"I can," Liz replied as she typed something rapidly. "But this isn't French so it won't work with the existing Matrix of programing. I need to reprogram the base line of the system to do that. Normally, it would just take a few minuets. However, I don't know how to speak alien, so it'll take a little bit longer."
"What are you doing now?" Max asked.
"I'm assigning each symbol a numerical value. I'm hoping that the system will be able to at least translate numbers to letters."
"But how do you know which number goes where?" Isabel asked.
"I'm guessing," Liz admitted. "I'm just going to punch in numbers till I come up with words."
"Won't that take a long time?" Isabel inquired.
"Well," Liz said as she deleted what looked like 'Kla Rgid id...', "I have a long time." There was a few more minuets of silence and of watching. Then Isabel got worried and bored and stared pacing the room. Max soon found that he couldn't look at the computed screen anymore either. But, if he stood at the far end of the room where he couldn't see the letters, he could watch Liz in perfect contentment, which is exactly what he did.
After almost two hours they typing stopped. "What is it?" Max asked as he and Isabel rushed over to stand by Liz. Liz didn't say a word, she just turned the computed screen so that Max could see it better. His eyes widened. What used to be the forgone symbols of alien text now stood before him in perfectly readable English.
Now this is the Law of the Jungle -- as old and as true as the sky;
And the Wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the Wolf that shall break it must die. As the creeper that girdles the tree-trunk the Law runneth forward and back --For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.
Remember these words, Max, they could save your life-¤
Max finished reading and stood aside so that Isabel could read. As she did so, Isabel gasped. "Max," she said suddenly. "This is from a book."
"What book?"
"The jungle book." Isabel turned to face him eye to eye. "Helen was carrying around a copy of the jungle book today." Max nodded.
"Why didn't the last symbol translate?" he asked Liz.
"I don't know," she said. "No letters matched it. I think-I'm not sure, but I think-that it's an extra letter. An alien letter, that only they have." Max nodded.
"Are you sure this is right?" he asked.
"No," Liz admitted. "The only way to be totally sure would be to have the person who wrote it translate it, but I don't thinks that's going to happen. Do you want a copy of it, Max?"
"No," he said quickly. "We don't want to leave any clues." Liz nodded. She exited the program deleting her hours of work. Max put his hands on the computer and melted a few wires. "Just for extra protection," he said. Liz nodded.
"I'm going to go?" she said.
"Do you want be to drive you?" Max asked.
"No," Liz said quickly. "I could use the walk." She left. Max and Isabel followed her, driving home. They ate dinner with their parents. They discussed school, and did homework. Through it all, Max felt like he was only half there. He had been detached, isolated from the human, or alien, experience.
When he went to bed that night, Max lay awake for hours, thinking of nothing and everything and Liz. She really was amazing, wasn't she? How Max ever let her slip away, he didn't know, but he hated it. Finally, after hours, Max drifted into a fitful sleep with tortured dreams of color and sound, but no pictures or words. Well, maybe words. If they were words, they were words Max didn't understand. He heard a telephone ring, and the dream went on. It rung again, and Max realized that he was asleep, and that the ringing of the telephone was not part of his dream. Max opened his eyes and reached blindly for the phone, putting it to his ear.
"Hello," he said sleepily.
"We have to one you want most," said and implacable voice. Max heard a click and then dial tone. Max had been jerked awake with those words. There was no sleep left in him. There was sweet running down his brow and his heart was pounding only two thoughts came to him. The first was of the letter he had received. Fear of the telephone that rings in the dead of night. The second thought was only one word long. Liz....
to be continued.......