Becky pulled closer to me.
“And you’re Becky, right?”
Becky stared back at him.
It was just a regular kid, probably a little younger than me, maybe eleven or twelve. I tried to keep calm.
“Yeah, that’s right. Hi,” I said.
“Don’t you remember me? I live right there.” The kid pointed back toward where we had come from, but I couldn’t tell what house he was pointing at. Our house was disturbingly far away now.
“Oh, yeah,” I said. He did look a little bit familiar. Maybe he was someone I used to play with before the Pipe Men came. There’d been a few kids on this street. I tried to place his name, but it didn’t come to me.
“Well, my mom always says, you know, if you ever see those kids next door, be nice and invite them over ’cause they must not have a lot of friends what with being homeschooled and all.”
“Thanks,” I said. “That’s really nice of you, but we’re just going to the store really quick for our mom. We have to get back.” I picked up the pace a little.
“Okay, whatever,” said the kid. He stopped still and let us go.
I took a quick glance behind us and saw him standing there looking confused.
“Who was that?” Becky whispered.
“I don’t know. The kid next door, I guess.” I paused. It was bothering me that I didn’t remember his name. I felt like I should know him. But I tried to shake it off for Becky. She’d never had any Earth friends. To her, Earth was even stranger than it was for me. “Hey, he didn’t make fun of our clothes, right? It’s not so bad being out here.”
Becky didn’t answer.
I scanned the street ahead of us, desperately trying to remember which way to go. All the houses looked the same. All the intersections were marked by the same big red signs showing the word STOP in giant letters. But I knew that if I went left, I’d get to the bigger street. I hoped I’d know where to go from there. Fortunately, no one else stopped us.
As we approached the main street, a car barreled around the corner.
Becky yelped.
“It’s just a car,” I said. “You know, a machine. That’s why we stay out of the street.”
“It’s like an assistant?”
“Yeah, just like that.” I looked up and down the street and sighed with relief. “Come on, it’s down there.”
More cars passed us going both directions as we walked. They seemed so noisy, so chaotic. The Pipe Men had assistants that carried them from place to place. My tutor, Yel-to-tor, had shown me a video. They moved smoothly, noiselessly, over the dim, smooth O-thul-ban ground. I was happy to pull Becky into the little store and out of the bright street.
As we walked in, the man behind the counter looked me up and down. His eyes rested on my pant legs, then narrowed. Becky noticed and pulled closer to me. I hurriedly grabbed a basket and started throwing things in. They didn’t have a wide selection, so I just went with anything edible. After a few minutes, I had bread, Chef Boyardee, soup, canned vegetables, pasta, pretzels, chips, marshmallows, and cheese.
“Mom’s not going to be happy with me for feeding you this,” I said. As I picked through my unhealthy selections, Becky handed me a six-pack of Hershey’s chocolate bars. For the first time since we’d come in here, she smiled. I put it in my basket. Mom could yell at me if she wanted to. I just hoped I had enough money. I didn’t know how I was going to get more unless they’d let me talk to Mom.
I put the basket on the counter. The man stared at me suspiciously. He hadn’t taken his eyes off us the entire time.
“I have money,” I said, pulling the wad of cash out of my pocket.
The man’s expression didn’t change, but he started ringing my stuff up.
A woman with two kids came into the store. One of the kids was a girl Becky’s age, the other a boy who looked about ten. The girl stared at us and poked her brother. He laughed. Becky pressed her lips together like she was holding back tears. Through the glass door, I could see that the sun was starting to go down.
“Fifty-eight oh nine,” said the man.
I tried to separate the bills and count it out. Five, ten, thirty, I thought. I finished counting out the total. “Here you go.”
The man pulled his head back and opened his eyes wide.
It took me a second to realize what I’d said. “I mean, here,” I said, holding out the wad of cash I’d counted.
The man hesitated before taking it, then stuffed it into the register.
I grabbed my bags of groceries and pushed Becky out the door as fast as possible. The mistake I’d made had me confused. The sidewalk didn’t feel quite right under my feet. It should have been springier. My new sneakers made my feet hurt.
“It’s okay,” said Becky. “He’ll never know what you said.”
“It’s not that, it’s . . . just a little weird being out here.”
“It’s okay now that it’s getting dark.” Becky dropped my hand and skipped, swinging the plastic shopping bag she was carrying.
I was happy that she wasn’t freaking out anymore, but I still wanted to get home as soon as possible. Every time a car passed by, I wanted to run, but I made myself walk normally. The last thing I needed was to draw more attention to us.
“Hey, look!” Becky pointed down a cross street, not the one we’d come down. In between two houses, there was a tiny playground. “Can we stop?” She didn’t wait for me to answer but skipped down the street toward it.
I followed. “We have to get back. Ip could come and find us missing, and then who knows what they’ll do?” I wasn’t sure what the Pipe Men would do if they thought we’d run off, but I didn’t want to find out.
Becky ignored me. “It’s like the one we used to have in our sector before we got the rubber tree!”
It was almost exactly like that. Two swings, a wooden structure made of logs, a slide, and a metal jungle gym. The springy maze of dull black Pipe Man synthetic fabric, designed to be the perfect exercise facility for Earth children, just wasn’t the same. I set down my bags.
“Okay, but just for a minute.”
Becky hadn’t waited for my approval and was already at the top of the slide. “Woo!” she yelled, jumping onto it, then, “Agh!” as she landed in the sawdust. “Let’s swing!”
I joined her on the swing set. It looked a little rickety, but after pushing a swing back and forth a few times, I decided it would hold my weight.
“Look at the clouds!” Becky was already swinging, a big smile on her face.
Sitting still on my swing, I looked up. The sun was setting, and parts of the clouds were turning orange. They slowly moved across the sky. The amazing part was that there was something between them. A sky that went up and up and up. On O-thul-ba, a single large, unbroken cloud covered the entire sky. I felt like I was seeing my own planet for the first time.
“Hey!” A police car had stopped at the edge of the playground, and a short but stocky cop was walking toward us. “You the Hawthorn kids?”
Becky stopped swinging.
“Yes,” I said.
“A neighbor asked me to check in on you. Seems you kids don’t come out much. Just wanted to see if everything was okay.” The officer glanced at our forgotten shopping bags, then let his eyes rest on my pant legs.
“We used to have a swing set just like this,” said Becky.
“Is that so?” The officer smiled at her. “Where are your parents, miss?”
“They’re at home waiting for us,” I said. “We’d better get going.” I jumped off the swing and gave Becky a look.
She climbed off.
The officer scrunched up his eyes as he took in Becky’s gray dress and tennis shoes. “I can give you a ride home if you want. No trouble.”
“That’s okay,” I said. “Thanks anyway. We really should go.” I rushed past the officer and picked up our bags.
Becky followed me and tried to grab one of the bags. As she came closer, I could see tears forming in h
er eyes.
“It’s okay,” I whispered. “Thanks!” I called out to the officer. Without waiting to see what he did, we took off as fast as we could go without actually running.
Six
WE DIDN’T LOOK BEHIND US until we were back at our house. As I fumbled with the key, I saw that the street was empty. I wasn’t going to give the cop a chance to catch up, so I pushed Becky inside.
“Where have you been?” Ip was sitting on our living room floor, his large pomegranate-like eyes staring at us accusingly. He had the TV on, watching a blank white picture. As I took in the scene, several Horn-Puffs rushed in front of the camera, and then the screen was blank again.
“We went to the store,” I said. “To get nutrition.”
“I brought you something,” said Ip. He tipped his head, pointing to a bag on the floor, made of Pipe Man rubbery fabric. “Didn’t think I’d let you starve, did you?”
I translated for Becky, and we both tried not to laugh. I wasn’t sure I wanted to see what was inside the bag, but I didn’t want to be rude.
Ip kept staring at me expectantly. Then a noise came from the TV. All of a sudden, a whole herd of Horn-Puffs appeared on the screen, and they all appeared to be jumping up and down frantically, waving their blobby limbs at us. Ip turned back to it, riveted.
I went over to the bag, took a deep breath, and pulled at it. The top of the bag, which had been stuck together with some kind of suction, fell open with a slurping sound. I couldn’t believe my eyes. “It looks like a cake!”
“A cake?” Becky hopped over to me and peered in. “It is a cake!”
It was round, a foot in diameter, and looked like an ordinary birthday cake with ordinary chocolate frosting, just like Mom made.
“Ip, is this a cake ?” I asked.
“What did you expect, insects?” Ip’s entire body shook with a deep roaring sound that I figured must be laughter.
“Well . . .” I smiled nervously. “Yeah! I mean, where did you get a cake ?”
Ip stopped laughing and looked away from me. “Helena gave it to me. It said it made it earlier today as a surprise for you children. They let it go back to the kitchen to get it for you. Helena said it was very important that you drink it.”
“Mom?” Becky asked. “Mom made it?” She reached down, grabbed a fingerful of frosting, and licked it off.
“Wait until after dinner,” I said. I liked Mom’s cake as much as Becky did. But I didn’t like that they didn’t let Mom come and give it to us herself. Why couldn’t they let her just come back?
Becky rolled her eyes at me, but she let me put the cake on the kitchen counter. I put our groceries away and opened up a soup can for each of us.
“What does homeschooled mean?” she asked.
“What?”
“That kid said we were homeschooled. What does it mean?”
“Well . . .” I wasn’t a hundred percent sure. “I think most kids go someplace else to learn. Like we have Yel-to-tor and Bre-zon-air. Only a whole bunch of kids go there together, and they only learn Earth stuff.” I had a vague memory of going to some kind of school. There was a lady with curly blond hair and a board with giant plastic letters and—
“But Bre-zon-air doesn’t come to our house. We go to our zoo sector.”
I tried to organize my thoughts. “They don’t know that. They think Mom teaches us. They think we don’t go to school because of our religion.”
“What’s our religion?”
“I don’t know. It’s just what they think. You know how we’re not supposed to tell anyone about the Pipe Men and how there are other planets and everything?” I put our soup on the table.
“Yeah.”
“Well, people have to think something about us, so when people ask Mom why we don’t go to school, that’s what she tells them.”
“I thought we weren’t supposed to lie.” She slurped her soup.
“Sometimes you have to. I mean, what would happen if everyone knew about the Pipe Men?”
“I don’t know.”
I didn’t know either. I’d never really thought about it. We just weren’t supposed to tell anyone. There was an impression that something bad would happen, but what was it?
“Hey, Ip?”
“Uurp.”
“Why aren’t we supposed to tell anyone about the Masters?”
“They’re afraid all the Earth people will find out that the Masters are stealing their resources. Then you Earth people would kick them out, or they’d have to get into a war.”
“They’re stealing our resources?”
“Oh, yes,” said Ip. “On all the from planets. Probably hiding away where no one can see them, sucking up everything they can.”
“Probably?” I asked. “You don’t know?”
Ip rolled his blobby shoulders in a shrug. “Same everywhere.”
I had the feeling these weren’t the official answers. When Mom reminded us not to tell anyone, she would just say, “For all we have, we thank them.”
“Can you tell the other Horn-Puffs about them?” I asked.
Ip pursed his thick, round lips. “My people know. They fought the assistants and lost. Now the Masters take what they want without hiding.”
I wanted to ask more, but Becky poked me.
“Ip says the Pipe Men steal everyone’s resources, and if we tell about them, they’ll start a war and take over our planet.” I said to Becky.
“Why?”
I didn’t know what to say, so I just ate for a minute. Mom and Dad had never said anything about the Pipe Men stealing or taking over planets. The Pipe Men were better than us. They were older, smarter. They knew everything. We did rituals to show them respect. We were the luckiest family on Earth because they’d chosen us over everyone else, and we owed them everything. Before they came, we’d been dirt poor. Dad had no job. Mom was pregnant with Becky, and we were going to lose our house. Then they came, and now we had all the food we could eat and better education than anyone on the planet. I heard Dad’s satisfied tone in my head, reciting this story for the millionth time. Only now they were keeping Mom away from us, keeping Dad in their hospital even though he might die.
I tried to remember before they came, but there wasn’t much. Just living in this house, flashes of playing with kids in the street. Flashes of school. It must have been preschool. And then the Pipe Men came through Mom and Dad’s closet.
“I want some cake!” Becky said, showing me her empty soup bowl.
“Okay.” I got up and pulled out a cake knife. I almost didn’t want to eat it. What if Mom never came back to make us another one?
“Come on!” Becky hopped excitedly in her chair.
“All right, all right.” I cut into it. The knife went through smoothly, and the piece I’d cut came out easily onto the plate. It looked too good for me to pass up, all moist and chocolaty and perfect. I began slicing another piece. Then the knife hit something that resisted it. I pulled the knife back and looked down at the slice mark. “Oh my gosh.”
“What?”
“It looks like something’s in here!”
Becky came running over and tried to peer at the cake, but she was too short to see what I was looking at.
I reached my hand into the cake to where the knife had hit something. It felt like a sheet of Pipe Man fabric. I pulled at it, and it slid easily out of the cake into my hand.
“What is it?”
“It’s . . . I think it’s some kind of note.” The fabric was almost black, but something had been etched into it. It was crude, but I could read it. I had to flip it over to read it all.
“What?”
“‘Ryan and Becky: Only the Brocine have the cure for their poison. The Hottini will take you to them. Ip will know what to do. I love you. Mom. Friend Ip: It’s time. Door 1064.’”
“Mom baked a note cake!” Becky slid the plate with her piece on it off the counter and eagerly began to eat. “If goot!” she said with her mouth full.
&nb
sp; “Ip, did you know this cake had a note in it?”
Ip had come into the entrance to the kitchen. He pressed his large blobby arms together. “I thought maybe, but I wasn’t sure. What does it say?”
“We have to find the Brocine so they can cure Dad. It says the ‘Hottini’ will take us and ‘It’s time.’ And then it gives a door number—1064.”
“Oh.” Ip wrung his blobby arms. “This isn’t good. Not good.”
“Why? What happened? What do you know?”
Ip sucked in so much air that my shirt puffed out and the end of my hair fell forward into my face. Then he let it out again, blowing my T-shirt and hair the other way. The remains of Becky’s cake landed against her dress, and she glared at Ip.
“Tell us what you know,” I said, too loudly.
“Helena wasn’t able to say anything when it gave me the . . . cake? But if it wants me to take you through door 1064, then Helena must think . . .”
That Dad was about to die. Ip didn’t need to say it.
Becky’s eyes welled up.
“It’s okay,” I said. “I didn’t mean to yell at Ip. Mom says we have to ask some froms called the Hottini to take us to the Brocine. The Brocine have the cure for their poison. Dad’s going to be okay.”
Becky nodded.
“We’ll get to see another planet. Go through some more doors. Stuff Mom never let us do before.” For good reason, I thought.
Becky stuffed the rest of her cake into her mouth. Whatever we had to do now, I didn’t want her to freak out. She wasn’t going to believe it was all fun and games, but at least I could try to make her feel safe.
“You are going to help us, right?” I asked Ip.
Ip’s eyes sucked a little way back into his head. “You know what they do when they catch you going against them?”
“What? They’re already going to let Dad . . .” I didn’t want Becky to hear the rest of it. She sometimes understood more than she let on.
“They cut you off, that’s what! You’ll never be able to come back to Earth! I’ll never be able to go back to Hdkowl.”
I felt like I was going to cry too. “I can’t find this door by myself, or these Hottini, whoever they are. You must know more about all this than I do.”
Escape from the Pipe Men! Page 3
