The Last Starfighter (2 page)

Now she peered across at her neighbor, having a fair idea of what was coming. Clara Parks was eighty-four.

“Clara, my ’lectric’s out again! Pay attention, Clara, I know you’re listening to me! This is
important
. I’m gonna miss my soaps!”

“Settle your britches, woman.” Parks chewed on the stem of her pipe. “I’ll pass it on.” She turned in the lounge chair and cupped both hands to her mouth, dangling the pipe from two fingers.

“Oh, Bill? Bill! Elvira’s blacked out again. Pass the word on before the crisis hits.”

The next trailer in line belonged to William Potter, aircraft mechanic, retired. Potter shaved his face the way he’d bombed North Vietnam sporadically and ineffectively. Since no one tried to get near enough to kiss him, it didn’t trouble his lifestyle.

“Pass the word along to whom?”

“Don’t get funny with me, Bill Potter,” said Clara warningly. “Just pass it on.”

“Damn women and their damn soaps,” Potter muttered. He didn’t say anything out loud, however, lest it be discovered some day that he was a closet
Days of Our Lives
freak.

He walked along his porch until he could see all the way up to the Boone mobile and shouted toward it. “Elvira’s got no juice, and if she can’t see her soaps, she’ll hyperventilate!”

That was usually enough to provoke a response from the Rogan trailer. Jane Rogan was manager, bill collector, mail distributor, sector general, field marshal and repository of all complaints as well as dispenser of favors for the tightly knit community.

She was Alex’s mother. She was the Boss.

The girl who emerged from the Boone trailer nearby was much younger than the manager of the Starlight Starbright trailer park. She was carrying a small ice chest. Her name was Maggie and it was a source of some ribbing from her friends. It was a name you had to grow into. Hard to visualize a teenager named Maggie. Still harder to imagine two proud parents standing over a hospital crib and naming the wrinkled little child in the white hospital room Maggie.

But certain names endure in families as a means of perpetuating the memory of relatives long since departed, so Maggie Gordon was heir to the name of a favorite aunt on her father’s side. It didn’t bother her anymore. Very little bothered the beautiful, dark-haired Maggie Gordon.

“Thanks, Mrs. Boone,” she called back toward the trailer. “You have a nice day.”

“You too, honey,” Mrs. Boone emerged to study the sky. “Gonna be a hot one.”

Maggie nodded, made her way down the steep steps by peering carefully around the bulk of the ice chest. Mr. Boone was just leaving the yard, having prepared for a hard day of fishing. He hefted his battered old rod proudly, like a soldier preparing for parade.

“Got yourself a great day for a picnic, Maggie.”

“I can’t wait. If it doesn’t get too hot. Catch a big one, Mr. Boone.”

He grinned back at her, secure in his age, his pension and his hobby. “I’m gonna try.”

There weren’t many fish to be had in the small desert lake nearby. That didn’t worry Mr. Boone. As any true fisherman knows, catching fish has nothing to do with fishing. The catching is an adjunct, a corollary to the actual art of fishing, which consists of killing time on a small boat as simply as possible, utilizing only the minimal amount of energy necessary to maintaining life while simultaneously consuming as much cold beer and snacks as the body will tolerate.

Whether you caught any fish or not was, of course, incidental.

When Maggie reemerged from her own trailer she was wearing a bikini beneath a baggy sweatshirt. A thick towel clung to her neck. The old woman who followed her out of the trailer was an elderly reflection of the young girl. Granny Gordon refused to let life get ahead of her. Unlike many of her contemporaries, she wasted no time running in place. The Sony Walkman dangling from her neck was proof of that.

She gave her granddaughter a kiss and a friendly warning.

“You have fun, child, but be careful. No swimming under logs and no diving off the rocks. And you take good care of Mrs. Boone’s ice chest.”

“I will, Granny. Are you sure you’ll be okay?”

“Be news if I wasn’t. Say, who’s looking after whom here? Maybe you should stay and watch TV and I’ll go on the picnic.”

“All right, Granny.” Maggie smiled affectionately. “I give up.”

“I’ll be just fine, dear.” Granny ran a hand through her still thick hair. Not all white. Not yet. “You just run along and have a good time and don’t worry about me. I’ll do all the worryin’ for both of us.”

“Fair enough. I fixed your lunch and put it in the fridge.”

Granny nodded and did a little dip to barely heard music. Still a little life in the old stems yet, she mused. Wonderful inventions, these new portables. She watched as her granddaughter crossed the courtyard, heading toward the main gate. Lot of life in that girl. Looking after her wasn’t work. It was a joy.

With that happy thought in mind she turned and re-entered her trailer, getting out of the sun while getting
down
.

The woman hanging out laundry on the trailer across the way was in her forties, strong of body and personality. Mention women’s lib to Jane Rogan and she’d laugh at you, having worked for a living since her teens. For all that life of nonstop hard work, she was as cheerful as a San Francisco socialite, and a damnsight healthier.

“Morning, Mrs. Rogan.”

The park manager peeked around her laundry.

“Morning, Maggie. You’re looking spry.”

“Feeling good, Mrs. Rogan. Did you find that picnic basket?”

“Uh-hum.” She fumbled behind her, hunting briefly through mounds of white. “Here it is.” She handed it over.

“Thanks, Mrs. Rogan.” Maggie’s eyes searched the parking area beyond the gate. “Where’s Alex?”

Jane Rogan shook her head, sharing a secret smile with Maggie. “He’s up there. Where else?”

Maggie nodded knowingly. “Right. Hi, Louis.” She moved away from the open trailer door.

An instant later a rubber dart clung to the metal nearby. It was retrieved by a tousle-haired ten-year-old wearing a disappointed frown. His aim was still off. Either that or the dumb spacegun needed a new spring.

“Morning, spaceson Louis,” said Mrs. Rogan. She raised the visor of his space helmet and planted a kiss on his forehead. He wriggled away, but slowly. He was concentrating on his work, which he carried out with all the solemnity of a surgeon attempting the world’s first brain transplant. This consisted of carrying the small black-and-white TV while playing out an extension cord behind it.

Jane Rogan watched with one eye until her younger son had vanished into the garishly painted plywood teepee that squatted near the back of the small yard. As soon as the sounds of morning cartoons began to drift from it, she turned her attention away, satisfied that Louis was not going to electrocute himself. This morning.

Another voice made her turn from the washing.

“Yoo-hoo, Jane?”

Granny Gordon was leaning on the back fence. Everybody called Mrs. Gordon Granny, not out of deference to her age or status but because her real first name was Grendil and the old woman would sock anyone who used it.

“Hi, Granny. How’s the back this morning?”

Granny put a hand to her spine and smiled faintly. “Still workin’. Sort of.”

“You ought to go see that chiropractor Dan Robbins keeps recommending.”

The older woman shook her head. “No thanks. I like these old bones right where they are.”

“What’s doin’?”

“Well, Elvira’s electric is out again and she’s gonna get hyper if she can’t see her soaps. She’ll make everybody’s day impossible.”

“Don’t I know it,” agreed Jane readily. “Pass the word back that Alex’ll be over to patch her line in time for her soaps. That’ll hold her for awhile.”

“Just for awhile, though. I swear, if they said on those shows that you could walk on water, we’d be fishin’ Elvira out of the river before sundown. I’ll tell her Alex is comin’, Jane.”

“Thanks.” Jane Rogan saw movement off to her right. Louis was taking deadly aim with his spacepistol on a sleeping feline. “Louis, leave that cat alone and go tell Alex I need to see him.”

“Aw, Mom, I wasn’t gonna do nothin’.”

“Wasn’t going to do ‘anything,’ Louis. Now go and get your brother.”

“A dumb messenger, that’s all I am.” He climbed to his feet and stared longingly at the unsuspecting cat. Then he sighed and exited the yard, heading for the store and taking time off to fire a few desultory darts in the direction of old Otis’s chickens. They squawked and fled for cover, making him feel better. When you’re real small it’s important to know something’s afraid of you, even if it’s only a bunch of dumb chickens.

As he walked he looked for Mr. President, Otis’s old hound. Mr. President, however, knew Louis from long experience. Since it was forbidden to chew the boy’s arm off, the dog had learned to avoid his approach. From beneath the cool safety of the trailer’s bulk, he watched Louis pass.

Having taken as much time as possible to go from the trailer to the store, Louis finally mounted the steps onto the wooden porch. Store and porch had been there long before the trailer park, but the old wood was solid as iron.

Louis crossed the porch, keeping an eye out for scorpions. His big brother was eighteen. To Louis that put him right up there with their mother, though not with Granny Gordon or Otis. Alex seemed impossibly tall to Louis, who knew for a certainty that he would never,
ever
reach such impressive heights himself. He’d also heard that Alex was good-looking, which just goes to show how much grown-ups know. Because Louis knew it for a fact that his brother was just a malformed klutz whose sole task in life was to make things unbearable for the only important human being on the planet, Louis Rogan.

At times he could be neat to have around, though, like when they went swimming together. Louis conceded that as big brothers went, Alex wasn’t all that bad. But today he was going swimming with his own friends, and to compound the bad judgment, he was going swimming with
girls
. That lapse of taste Louis could never forgive.

Now he strained to see past his brother’s ribs, looking at the videoscreen that was alive with flashing, rapidly changing lights. The images fascinated Louis. They were so alive, so full of movement and trickery. Alex ignored his younger shadow, letting his fingers dance easily over the multiple controls. Louis watched and tried to learn, knowing that Alex was a master at video games. Once he’d watched during a trip to the big arcade in town while other older kids oohed and aahed as Alex ran up several million points on Stargate, a game too complex for his ten-year-old mind to think of trying.

But this new game, this Starfighter, was even more complex, with half again as many controls to manipulate. Yet Alex seemed better at it than anything else. Something one of the other kids had called “rising to the challenge.” Some kids wouldn’t even try Starfighter because it ate their quarters too fast. On a good day, Alex could play the game for hours on just one.

When he wasn’t being interrupted, Louis reminded himself. So readily did he lose himself in the game that he’d almost forgotten what had sent him to the store.

“Mom’s lookin’ for you, Alex.”

“Yeah, sure.” His brother replied without taking his gaze from videoscreen. His arms hung parallel to the ground, still, relaxed. Only his fingers moved, depressing fire controls, adjusting thrust, guiding the tiny microprocessed gunstar through the maze of enemy fighters. It was very much a virtuoso display. Alex played the game as smoothly as Horowitz did his Steinway.

“Come on, Alex. Mom’ll be mad at me.”

“What for?” Bright blue light momentarily filled the screen, fading to reveal a new series of targets attacking faster than ever, relentless and uncaring. “She told you to come tell me she wants to see me. Okay, you’ve told me. You’re in the clear.”

“Yeah, right.” Louis brightened, tore his gaze away from the motion-filled screen just long enough to locate one of the chairs that sat on the porch. Dragging it over, he climbed up onto the rickety platform. For a breathless moment he was an adult, as big as Alex.

“Look out!” Somehow his brother avoided the wave attack from the left quadrant. Louis couldn’t imagine how Alex had seen the attack coming in time to evade. He swayed on the chair, mesmerized by the lights and sounds, waving and bobbing wildly.

After all, it wasn’t his quarter at stake.

“Get ’em, Alex, get ’em!”

Get ’em Alex did efficiently, professionally, avoiding every attack on his own vessel while methodically eliminating everything the game could throw at him, quietly reveling in the simulated destruction and fully confident of his skills.

Louis edged closer and closer to the machine, drawn by the sights on the screen. His small face was aglow with delight. Alex was so good it was more fun to watch him than to play yourself. Well, almost. So much pleasure, and all for a quarter. Being good helped, though. Somehow the game wasn’t as much fun to play when it only lasted a minute or so.

“Blam, blam, blam!”

“Cool the sound effects, Louis. I can’t hear the machine. And move your head, will you?”

Once more the screen showed him the command ship. It loomed huge on the battle screen. He tried a different evasion pattern this time, hoping to avoid the squadrons of enveloping fighters that had shot him down the last time. It didn’t work. He was dead again.

Dying a lot this morning, he thought.

“Nuts!” He gave the console a whack before jamming both hands into his pants pockets. “Not fast enough. I should’ve had it that time.”

A new voice chimed in. Both boys turned to see Otis staring at the screen. “Heard you almost hit eight hundred thousand, Alex.”

“That was yesterday. Would’ve too, if Louis hadn’t bumped my hand.”

“Did not! Wow!” Louis pointed toward the screen. “Seven hunnert and . . . and . . .” His face wrinkled up in confusion. The number was beyond him.

Alex eyed the screen with careful indifference. “Seven hundred eighty-two thousand. Almost as good as last night.”

“Yeah, and I didn’t hit your hand this time, neither,” Louis shot back.