I Shrank My Teacher

by Bruce Coville

  “Gleep?” it said hopefully.

  Pleskit dropped the nugget of food into the creature’s mouth. It swallowed it in one bite. Then, cooing happily, it scrambled up his arm and onto his shoulder.

  “Well,” said the woman standing next to Meenom. “I see what you mean.” Her voice was stiff and cold, as if she had just smelled something nasty.

  “Greetings, Fatherly One,” said Pleskit. He was stroking the Veeblax, trying to keep it calm.

  “Greetings, Pleskit. And good morning to you, Mr. McNally. And you, Timothy.”

  For a moment I was surprised that such an important person as Meenom would remember me. But I guess remembering people is part of being a good diplomat.

  “And you, Shhh-foop,” he added as the cook slid into sight, singing modestly to herself.

  She waved her tentacles in response.

  Meenom gestured to the woman standing next to him. “I want you all to meet Ms. Kathryn Buttsman. She is joining our staff today as protocol officer.”

  “Protocol officer?” asked McNally.

  Meenom nodded. “After the bizarre incidents of the last few days, I realized we needed someone to help us navigate the strange paths of Earthling culture. I sent an urgent request to our host government last night, and they responded by sending us this lady. She has graciously put aside her other projects to join us on an emergency basis. I especially appreciate this as it will be several days before headquarters can send me a replacement for Mikta-makta-mookta.”

  “It is my pleasure to be of service,” said Ms. Buttsman. She smiled broadly. “I will do all I can to guide you to a better understanding of my people.” Looking at Pleskit and the Veeblax, she narrowed her eyes. With a smile that could have chilled an iceberg, she added, “I think I can be of special use in helping the young gentleman fit in with the better elements of society.”

  Uh-oh, I thought.

  And I was right.

  CHAPTER 5 [PLESKIT]

  AIR MATTRESS

  As soon as the Fatherly One had led Ms. Buttsman away, McNally made a low whistling sound. “Pleskit, my little purple pal, I think we’ve got us a problem.”

  At first I did not understand. “Please, McNally, do not be angry at the Veeblax. It was an honest mistake, and it was frightened.”

  “It’s not the Veeblax I’m talking about, kid. It’s the ice queen.”

  “More coldness!” I cried in frustration. “I do not understand!”

  “Cool is good, cold is bad,” said Tim.

  “So it’s a matter of degree?” I asked, still confused.

  Tim laughed, and I realized that I had accidentally made a joke. My first joke in the language of the Earthlings! This was a good thing. If only I had done it on purpose.…

  “Let’s just say that Ms. Buttsman doesn’t look like the warm, fuzzy type,” said McNally.

  I wondered if I would ever be not confused again. “Why should she be warm and fuzzy? She is a human, not a Grindbullian or something.”

  McNally sighed. “I just mean that our new staff member does not seem very friendly.”

  “She’s not,” said Barvgis gloomily. “That is what I was about to tell you about when Tim and Pleskit arrived. Based on my first conversation with her, I believe she must have eaten a rule book when she was a baby.”

  McNally started to reach for his coffee cup, then pulled his hand back nervously. “Look, I’ll see you guys later. I’ll be in my room if you need me.”

  I decided this was a good time for Tim and me to go to my room, too. So we bid Barvgis farewell and left the kitchen. I believe he was very happy to be left with the rest of the splurgis nuggets.

  Tim was excited about going to my room. It had not been included in the official tour I gave him, his mother, and Linnsy the night before, so this was going to be the first time he saw it.

  “Whoa!” he cried when I touched the pad that causes the door to slide into the wall. “It’s so… clean!”

  “Clean is good, is it not?” I asked, leading the way into the room.

  “Yeah, I guess so,” said Tim uncertainly. “I’m just not really used to it.”

  This made me curious. “What does your room look like?”

  “Like a bomb hit it, according to my mother. But she’s a real fussbudget about that kind of thing.”

  “She budgets her fussing?” I asked in fascination. “Does that mean she only gets to fuss a certain amount each day? Like a fuss allowance? What an interesting concept. I wonder if I could get the Fatherly One to consider such an arrangement!”

  Tim laughed. “It’s just a saying, Pleskit. It means she fusses a lot.”

  I sighed. “You have such a strange language! It is bad enough that you make each word have many meanings, as if there were not enough sounds and smells to go around. But then you let the meanings fight with each other!”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Budget! From what my language programs taught me, one uses a budget to limit how much one spends of something—as in ‘I am on a budget.’ But now you call your mother a fussbudget because she does so much of it! I do not know if I will ever master this strangeness. Come on. Let’s go jump on the bed.”

  “What bed?” asked Tim. It was his turn to look puzzled. “I don’t see a bed at all. I was wondering where you sleep.”

  “I have an air mattress.”

  Now Tim looked completely baffled. “You live in this totally cool place, you’re from a super-powerful alien race, and you sleep on an air mattress?”

  “It’s very comfortable,” I said, starting to feel annoyed. With my sphen-gnut-ksher I emitted the smell of sleepiness. At the same time, I farted the medium fart of summoning. This pair of signals caused the mattress to form itself.

  I climbed onto it.

  Tim looked at me in astonishment. “How did you do that?”

  “Do what? Climb on. It’s fun!”

  CHAPTER 6 [TIM]

  BED BOUNCING

  Pleskit looked like he was bouncing on nothing. And with each jump he went higher into the air. But though he was getting closer and closer to the ceiling, his feet never touched the floor—never got more than about ten inches away from it.

  I couldn’t resist. Stepping forward, I lowered my hand toward the floor.

  Something pressed back up against it.

  “What is this?” I asked, delighted, but still a little nervous.

  “I told you,” said Pleskit, still bouncing. “It’s air! Actually, it’s what we call ‘thick air,’ controlled and contained by a molecular shield. Come on, Tim, what are you waiting for?”

  Reminding myself that I had wanted strange new experiences, I scrambled up beside him.

  It was about the coolest thing ever. The air, wherever it was coming from, had just enough strength to hold us up. If you put pressure against it, it put pressure back. And if you jumped… well, the result was BOING-G-G-G-G!

  It was like a trampoline where you had taken out the canvas but somehow kept the springiness. I started doing flips and butt bounces. Pleskit did a swan dive. I wanted to try one of those myself, but didn’t have the guts to plunge face-first toward the floor when I couldn’t see what was going to stop me from hitting it.

  Soon we were laughing like a couple of lunatics. I kept expecting someone to come to the door and tell us to stop. But when Pleskit’s Fatherly One did stick his head in to see what was going on, he just nodded in satisfaction, then went away without saying a word.

  “He doesn’t mind that we’re doing this?” I asked in surprise.

  “Why should he?” replied Pleskit, equally surprised.

  When I thought about it, I couldn’t come up with any good reason. I mean, it wasn’t like we were going to ruin the mattress or anything.

  As we were jumping, I was also checking out Pleskit’s room. It was shaped a little like the wide end of a giant piece of pie. That is, the outer wall was slightly curved and the two side walls slanted toward each other. Because the embassy was s
o big, the slant was hardly noticeable. The fourth wall, the one closest to the center of the embassy, was about twelve feet long. Also, the room had no real corners. The places where the walls met were smoothly rounded.

  The outer wall was mostly clear, as if it was made out of glass. (I figured it must actually be some sort of super-space material.) Underneath it ran a shelf covered with all sorts of gadgets. Boy, was I itching to get a chance to find out what those things were!

  What I did not see were any clothes. This looked pretty odd to me, since I mostly keep my clothes on the floor. Even odder, I didn’t see any place where he could keep them.

  “Hey, Pleskit,” I said, landing on my butt and boinging into the air again. “Don’t you have a closet or anything?”

  “Of course I do,” he replied, heading face-first for the floor. The air mattress caught him, of course, and as he was bouncing up again he clapped his hands and farted.

  It was a very musical fart—two short notes and a long one. A door slid open in the wall.

  “See,” said Pleskit. “A closet.”

  “Did you just… uh… signal that to open?” I asked. Without intending to, I jumped toward the closet. To my surprise, I landed on the floor with a thud and fell to my butt.

  “You should have stayed on the bed,” said Pleskit, jumping down to join me. “Is your behind part all right?”

  “Yeah, I think so.” I got to my feet and rubbed my rear. “They ought to put guardrails on that thing.”

  “We do not believe in guardrails,” replied Pleskit. “We think all beings should take responsibility for their own actions.”

  “You sound like my mother,” I said, walking to the closet. It looked extremely weird, but that was mostly because everything was hung up very neatly—a sight I have never personally experienced.

  The clothing was not all robes, as I had expected. Pleskit had a lot of things that were sort of like shirts and pants, though mostly they were stuck together to make one-piece outfits. The upper shelf held a collection of truly weird hats.

  “Wild colors,” I said.

  “Thank you,” said Pleskit, even though I hadn’t meant it to be a compliment. “You know, the only reason I wore my ceremonial robe to school those first few days was because that traitor Mikta-makta-mookta told me it was the Fatherly One’s desire. I did not realize she was just trying to make it harder for me to fit in.” He pointed to a piece of clothing. “I thought I would wear this on Monday. It is more like the kind of garments your people wear. Therefore, I hope it will let me merge with the throng more successfully.”

  The thing he was pointing to did have pant legs, so it didn’t look quite so much like a dress. On the other hand, it was a one-piece purple-and-green outfit covered with glittery spirals.

  I hesitated for a moment, then said, “Uh… that’s not going to do it, Pleskit. If we’re going to get you to fit in better at school, the first thing we have to do is get you out of those clothes altogether.”

  He looked alarmed. “I cannot go to school naked!”

  I felt myself blush. “No, no! I just mean we have to get you dressed in something that doesn’t look so much like it came from another planet.”

  Personally, I thought Pleskit’s clothes were pretty interesting. The robe he had worn on the first day of school had designs that moved on their own, illustrating stories from his homeworld. It was like wearing a video! Unfortunately, it also looked a little like a dress, which was more than some of the pinheads in our school could cope with.

  “What do you suggest I should wear instead?” he asked.

  “I dunno. Normal clothes, I guess. Maybe we should ask Linnsy about it.”

  Linnsy is my upstairs neighbor. She’s in the same class as me, but is much higher on the social food chain. While I knew that Pleskit needed to change his look, asking me how to do it so that he would fit in better was like asking a goldfish how to build a bonfire.

  “Let’s go see her!” said Pleskit.

  * * *

  Going anyplace with Pleskit is not entirely simple. This is because he has to be escorted by his bodyguard.

  I asked Pleskit once what it was like having a bodyguard.

  “I hate it!” he replied instantly. “I can’t do anything without McNally tagging along. It is as if I had committed a Social Violation and been assigned a Keeper.”

  “A Keeper?” I asked, feeling confused.

  Pleskit paused. “Ah, I forgot that you are still in the barbaric stage of Social Correction, and mostly use prisons.” He paused and shuddered. “A Keeper is someone assigned to a person who has violated law or custom. It’s how we guide a being to betterment after he, she, or it has fallen into social error. Which is one of the things that makes having a bodyguard so upsetting: It is as if I am the one who has committed the error! But that is not even the worst part.”

  “What is?” I asked, already startled by his answer.

  “The fact that I have to have one at all. Think about it, Tim. It means that the people in charge here think there are other people who want to hurt, kidnap, or kill me! I do not like walking around with this idea always in my head. Also, I do not like what it says about this planet.”

  I didn’t, either. But I also didn’t want to get Pleskit started on what’s wrong with Earth. Once he gets wound up, it’s hard to get him to stop. So I just said, “Let’s go get McNally.”

  * * *

  Before long Pleskit, McNally, and I were on the way to my apartment building. We were taking the limo, which meant I would have to come back later to pick up my bike. That was okay with me. I was glad to have any excuse to go back to the embassy.

  The limousine tunnel brought us out well past the circle of gawkers looking up at the embassy. Also, security sent out a couple of decoy limousines to draw off the reporters and stuff. So we made it to my place without much problem.

  It was the first time I had brought Pleskit home, and I suddenly realized I should have called and let my mother know we were coming. But I had been so excited that it didn’t occur to me. For a minute I thought maybe we should go directly to Linnsy’s place. There was only one problem with that idea: Her mother was even more likely to wig out than mine was.

  So we went to my apartment.

  My mother wigged anyway. Actually, she was pretty controlled about it. She only wigged a little when we came through the door. But after she had greeted Pleskit and McNally, she said, “Timothy, can I see you in the kitchen for a moment?”

  Her neck was so tight the words barely made it through her lips.

  I followed her into the kitchen.

  “How could you do this to me?” she asked in an urgent whisper.

  “You always tell me I should bring home more friends,” I replied, trying to sound innocent.

  “This isn’t just a friend,” she hissed. “It’s an alien!”

  I was disappointed. “I didn’t expect you to be so prejudiced, Mom.”

  Her eyes got wide, and then she looked angry. “I am not upset because you brought an alien home! I’m upset because you didn’t warn me so I could clean the house!”

  Mothers. What can you do?

  “Sorry,” I said. “Next time I’ll call first.”

  “Assuming you live that long,” she said. “Come on—let’s go be polite.”

  I followed her into the living room.

  Pleskit and McNally were sitting on the couch. Pleskit was examining a clown my mother had made in her ceramics class. He looked up at her. “This is very terrifying,” he said politely.

  I wasn’t sure, but I thought it was a compliment. Even so, my mother looked baffled, and a little hurt.

  “We decided we needed to get Pleskit some normal clothes,” I said. “So we came to talk to Linnsy about it.”

  My mother nodded. “She’ll be a much better guide than you would.”

  I would have been insulted, except that this was incredibly true.

  We called Linnsy, and she came down to our apartment.r />
  “Well, there’s only one thing to do!” she said gleefully. “It’s time to take a trip to the mall!”

  My mother turned to McNally. “Will that be safe?”

  “I’ll have to call for reinforcements,” he replied.

  Suddenly I realized that taking an alien to the shopping mall was going to be a lot more complicated than I had expected.

  CHAPTER 7 [PLESKIT]

  AT THE TEMPLE OF COMMERCE

  It’s a good thing that the limousine, which the Earthlings seem to love but which I find smelly and bumpy, is so big. By the time we left for the mall we had me, Tim, McNally, Tim’s mother, and Linnsy all packed into the back. Fortunately, there was still lots of room.

  Ralph the Driver raised his eyebrows when he saw us coming out of the building. But he didn’t say anything. He never does.

  Linnsy, who is taller than either Tim or me, seemed very excited by the trip. “You’re gonna love this place, Pleskit,” she kept telling me.

  Indeed, I was truly amazed when we drove up to the mall. It was an enormous building, many, many times bigger than our school. The walls were covered with shiny glass, and it had a tall central section with a soaring spire.

  “It is a temple of commerce!” I exclaimed. “A sacred place of business. Oh, Tim. For the first time I understand how truly your people value money and trade. Perhaps there is hope for our societies to connect after all.”

  “Money is not the only thing we value,” said Mrs. Tompkins quickly. She sounded a little upset.

  “It is not the only thing we value, either. But my father has taught me that all societies demonstrate what they value by what they build, and this is the biggest, most beautiful building I have seen since my arrival here. When I saw the school building, I feared your culture was not very advanced. But now that I see this tremendous structure, I understand your values better.”