Chapter 9

Here it is," someone said.

And this is it, Lisa thought as the four materialized into the center room of the ship. Unlike her
other two appearances at the ship in recent days, Lisa already knew that this one wasn't just a
visit.

Oh, she'd be leaving of course. Only Adam could be happy living on the island, and she still had
college and her mother to worry about. But she had been called on to keep her promise. When
she returned to the ship, and she would return, it would be without the fear that had marred her
previous visits. It wouldn't matter how long she'd been away or what had happened in the
interim; the ship would welcome her. When she returned, she'd be returning home.

She didn't see herself ever re-joining the ranks full time, but the Tomorrow People could call on
her if they needed her.

No sooner had the flash of light faded, than she and Adam moved towards the column, taking up
positions next to it like guards.

"That was . . . interesting." Grimm cleared his throat and looked around. Lisa could see him
taking in details of the ship that individually didn't seem unusual, but together added up to an
obviously alien design. "Here is the ship. Do I want to know where 'here' is?" he asked, sounding
calm, but only by a sheer effort of will.

"Don't worry," Adam reassured. "We're still on Earth, and we're not any more aliens than you
are." The last was a preemptive answer of the question that usually came after "where are we".

Grimm drew a deep breath. Rubbing his hands against his black slacks, he asked, "Does that
mean that I'm an alien?"

"I hope not," Lisa interjected with a laugh. She had wondered when someone would jump to the
obvious wrong conclusion to Adam's line. "My mom had enough trouble dealing with the whole
teleporting thing. There had better not be any other secrets I have to break to her."

That earned her a nervous smile, but the tension in the small room dissipated.

Once Professor Grimm's worries were put to rest, he found a new focus for his energies: on the
writing that covered the walls of the ship. The alien symbols. The linguist in him surfaced. Lisa
could see the questions forming, the curiosity at play as he wandered over to one of the walls and
lovingly traced the symbols etched there. She suspected he'd probably be spending a lot of time at
the ship until he solved the mystery of the words written there. Even the Tomorrow People didn't
know their meaning.

Adam grabbed Lisa's arm and pulled her into one of the side passages. The air was heavier here
and smelled of dead fish. Lisa crinkled her nose against it.

"Yeah?" she asked, not knowing what to expect.

"Did you get a good look at Sara?" He glanced out into the main room. He didn't comment on
what, if anything, he saw going on in there.

Lisa hesitated, trying to find the right words. "She's not normal, right? There's something wrong
with her." She frowned; those were not the right words. She sounded like she was commenting
on a problem that one could look up in the Merck Manual.

"She's a Tomorrow Person," he stated.

"I figured out that much. She was able to teleport here, which she wouldn't have been able to do
otherwise. Unless that's changed? No? Then, of course she's a Tomorrow Person. But there's
something else. There's something wrong with her eyes, like she's seeing but not seeing. And
there's that whole 'no touching' thing. If I didn't know better, I'd say she was Autistic."

Adam led her a little deeper into the passage, then lowered his voice, "What makes you think
she's not?"

"Because she's a Tomorrow Person," Lisa said, as if the answer were obvious. "Plus, I get the
feeling that whatever is wrong happened recently. Teenagers don't just boom, wake up one day
and find out they're autistic."

"Do you get the sense that she's not really here?"

"Yeah," she said. "That's it exactly. She's here, but not here. You know what's going on, don't
you? Again?" Because, why wouldn't he? And why wouldn't Adam or the Ship make up its mind
if it wanted her to be involved in things or not? When this was over, she was going to have to
have words with both of them about dragging her into adventures and then deliberately
withholding all the vital information.

Adam nodded. "I reckon that when her sister died, it was really sudden. They were both
telepathic, and Sara got the backlash from it. She turned her powers inward."

Lisa started. "On purpose?"

"No. Probably a defensive mechanism. Right now she's trapped in her own head. We had to bring
her here so the ship could help her turn them back the right way."

He said that like he was stating the obvious. In a way, she figured, he was. But, she was going to
have to go home and spend a few hours thinking about everything before she figured out how any
of this was obvious. Until then, she found herself saying, "Which you knew. And I guess I knew
that too, because I knew we had to come here. That makes sense. I guess. So there's a new
Tomorrow Person, now."

Adam didn't say anything right away. She gave him a few seconds, then began to walk past him
back to the main room. "That's cool," she said, because it seemed like she needed to say
something else. "The world needs more."

They hadn't gone very far into the tunnels, just far enough that they couldn't be easily overheard.
With a few steps she was almost back in the main room. The air became less oppressive as she
walked, the humidity level lessening. The dead fish smell also eased. Lisa drew a deep breath of
the fresher air and paused for a moment to enjoy the warmth. This was turning out to be a pretty
good day, after all.

From behind her, she heard Adam respond, "Yes, it does." He didn't sound happy.

"What?" she asked, turning around to look at him. "What do you mean?"

He just shook his head. "It wasn't supposed to end this way."

Huh? That sounded familiar, but what did he mean by it? She glanced at him again, about to ask,
but he just kept walking, right on past her. His face was set in an expression she knew well. If he
had anything else to say, she was going to have to wait to hear it.

No sooner had she stepped back into the main chamber when a small sound directed her attention
to Sara, who stood next to the wall that kissed the sea. Sara stepped close to the panel, as if
intending to walk through it, then stopped short. "The ocean," she murmured. She too sounded
happy, as if finding something she'd been searching for her entire life. And perhaps, Lisa
speculated, she had.

Sara's remark preceding the teleport hadn't gone unnoticed, even if there hadn't been time to
comment on it. It had sounded almost rehearsed, something said so many times that its meaning
had been sapped away. But it was becoming apparent that the Sara that had Lisa had met in her
dreams wasn't the Sara that Lisa and Adam had met. Maybe once the two had been the same, but
Clara's teleport had done more than tear apart a set of twins.

Lisa nodded to herself, a small glimmer of understanding taking root.

"Is that what she's been talking about?" her father asked, a different kind of clarity stealing over
his features. Then almost too low to hear, "All this time."

The two Tomorrow People stood together, flanking the central column, while Professor Grimm
hovered somewhere behind his daughter, close enough to assert his protectiveness and far enough
not to frighten her.

Sara regarded her reflection in the transparent panel. It was faint, being not in a mirror but on a
glass panel backed only by deep blue sea water. It wavered with the small movements of the sea
pushing against the island, and the remnants of the waves breaking against the shore. Looking
closely, Lisa could make out the barely visible image. Sara regarded her reflection, but didn't
make any other movement.

The three watched her, watching herself, waiting for her to complete whatever ritual needed
completing before they could take her home.

Nothing happened for long enough that Lisa's mind started to wander. She almost didn't notice
when the reflection brought both its hands up and pressed them against the glass. She heard a
sharp intake of breath from someone, then realized that Sara still hadn't moved.

Slowly Sara brought her own hands up and mirrored Clara's gesture.

In the glass, Lisa could see a small smile start on the girl's lips. The smile seemed hesitant at first,
then grew, brightening her face; creating an illusion of health and happiness on the wane
countenance. The pose was held. A sense of anticipation settled about the ship; Lisa took several
deep breaths, quietly forcing the air in and out of her lungs so as not to disturb anything. She
could hear Adam next to her doing the same thing.

Sara was here to get her powers turned around, to correct the backlash that started when her twin
sister killed. Lisa knew that because Adam had told her. How Adam knew it, she still couldn't
figure out. That was fine, however, because she was coming to accept that Adam knew a lot of
things that he wasn't letting on.

She also didn't know what it would mean for Sara's powers to be fixed. The concept was easy
enough; the actuality was outside her imagination.

Despite the knowledge that something major was going to happen, Lisa wasn't prepared when
Sara turned away from the reflection, the smile still on her face, and with a tilt to her head said,
"Daddy?"