“Sorry,” whispered George again.
“I’ll see you tomorrow morning in front of your house,” the protector yelled. “You’d better go home fast, or you won’t make it!”
George stared stupidly at him for a moment, still fascinated at how tiny he looked, and how the little door looked like it belonged on a doll house.
“Get going!” yelled the protector up at him again. Suddenly remembering his mother’s threats, George twisted around, hopped out the window and ran for home as fast as he could go.
CHAPTER 10: A Little Grey Dog
George’s mind was so completely filled with his meeting with the protector that for the rest of the day he was hardly aware of what he was doing. His mother got after him three times that evening for not paying enough attention to what was going on around him. The last of these was when she asked him to feed the cat and help with dinner, and he put a bowl of cat food on the table and filled Door Jam’s bowl with string beans.
“George,” said his mother in exasperation after pouring the string beans into the disposal, “just what were you doing at the park today that’s made you so preoccupied?”
“Nothing,” said George quickly, trying to sound as innocent as possible. “There was just this yellow bird hopping around, and I was following him.”
George’s mother looked at him shrewdly. “You mean like the yellow bird that was following you a few months ago?”
George squirmed. “I guess so,” he said quietly. His mother continued to stare at him. Sometimes it seemed that she could look right into his head and read his mind. Finally she said, “Well, I don’t trust little yellow birds. Your father was also seeing strange things before he disappeared. So from now on if you see a yellow bird, stay away from it!”
“O.k., Mom,” said George meekly. He could tell she was suspicious. She could smell something unusual 100 yards off. Through the rest of the evening he tried to pay attention to what he was doing, since he didn’t want to risk her not letting him go out to meet the protector tomorrow.
But for the rest of the evening, George's mind kept going over and over his meeting with the Protector and what he had learned. He slept fitfully that night, drifting in and out of dreams about shrinking Volkswagens, grumpy mirrors hanging in mid air, and pink fuzz balls rolling across his foot and across his face.
Finally morning came. George was so anxious to meet the protector that he brushed his teeth with a tube of hand lotion and poured milk on his toast at breakfast. (Fortunately his mother was out of the room at the time, and he cleaned up the mess before she came back). Finally, after he had gulped down his breakfast, he headed for the front door.
“And just where do you think you’re going?” his mother asked, appearing out of nowhere.
“Just out front,” replied George, trying to sound as casual as possible. “Maybe I’ll just climb the tree or poke around in the bushes for awhile.”
George’s mother gave him a hard look. “Well, make sure you don’t leave the front yard. And take your cell phone with you.”
“But Mom,” cried George, “I’m just going to the front yard. Why do I need my cell phone?”
“Suppose someone kidnaps you?” his mother responded. “If your father would have had a cell phone with him, we might know where he is right now.”
“Oh, all right,” said George grumpily, hooking his cell phone onto his belt. Then he went out into the front yard. The protector’s Volkswagen was nowhere to be seen. In fact, the street was deserted except for a fluffy, grey dog coming down the sidewalk, sniffing at everything it came across.
Disappointed, George scuffed his shoe on the sidewalk and settled down to wait. He looked up and down the street again. He still saw nothing, other than the dog, which was getting closer. George looked at the sky. It promised to be a clear, cloudless day.
Then a horrible thought struck George. He hadn’t told the protector where he lived! No wonder the Volkswagen was nowhere in sight!
In frustration, George sat down hard on the sidewalk step. He could have kicked himself for being so stupid. What was he going to do now? The protector apparently lived in his car, and that car could be anywhere. How were they going to find each other again?
George drummed his fingers grumpily on his knee, thinking hard. But no matter how he looked at it, he couldn’t think of anything to do except to try and talk his Mom into letting him go back to the park, to see if the protector’s car was there.
George stood up and turned to go back into the house. As he did so, he nearly tripped over the little grey dog that he had seen earlier. It wagged its tail and looked up at him happily.
“Sorry, I can’t play now,” said George to the dog. “I’m in a hurry.” George hopped over the dog and started for his house.
“What’s the rush?” said a voice behind him.
In shock, George tripped over his own feet and sprawled on the lawn. He looked back but there was no one there, other than the little dog.
He stared at the dog for a moment. It stared back, wagging its tail eagerly. Finally, George said, “are you the protector?”
“In the fur,” replied the dog. “It’s ‘dog Tuesday.’ Every Tuesday I like to go out as a dog. There’s always so many interesting things to smell and cats to chase.”
“How do you do that?” asked George, coming over to the dog. “Talk, I mean. I can hardly see your lips move!”
“It’s not too hard,” replied the dog simply. “The transformer may change my shape, but I can still talk like normal. I didn’t talk to you yesterday when I was a bird because I didn’t want to scare you.”
“Wow!” said George. “You look so real!” He reached his hand out to pet the dog’s head—then quickly pulled it back. “Sorry,” he said, embarrassed. “I was thinking you were a real dog, rather than the protector.”
“Oh, that’s o.k.” replied the protector. “Right now I feel like a dog. The transformer does a very complete job of things. When I’m like this I even enjoy dog food, which I normally would never eat.”
“Wow,” said George again, reaching out to pet the protector and scratch behind his ears and under his chin.
“Oooh, that feels good!” said the protector as George scritch-scratched his neck. “Don’t stop!” The protector’s hind leg started to thump up and down, as dogs often do when being scratched.
There was suddenly a bang from the front door behind them. “George!” came his mother’s voice. “What are you doing?”
George turned to face her. “It’s just a dog, Mom.”
“Tell her I’m lost,” whispered the protector.
“I think he’s lost,” said George.
“Well, I don’t know if you should be petting him,” George’s mother said doubtfully. “He looks kind of scroungy and dirty to me.”
“Hmph!” said the protector grumpily. “I took a shower this morning!” Then he added, “ask if you can take me down the street to see who I belong to – that will give us a chance to go to the fallen star.”
“O.k.” whispered George back to the protector.
“Are you talking to the dog?” George’s mom asked curiously.
George coughed in embarrassment. “Uh, yeah, I am. I was just telling it I could take it down the street and ask who it belonged to.”
George’s mother scowled, pursing her lips. But George and the dog were looking at her so eagerly that she finally threw up her hands and said, “O.k! All right, go ahead! But be back in an hour!”
“Thanks, Mom,” George said happily as he and the protector bolted off down the street.
“That was a great idea,” said George to the protector as they ran.
“Well, we needed to get away from her so we could go out to the fallen star where you found the Uth stone,” said the protector, panting. “Martin has the car parked just around the corner, so we can drive right out there.”
The protector suddenly put on a burst of speed and George had to stretch just to keep up with him.
CHAPTER 11: The Ant
As George rounded the corner, he saw the protector’s Volkswagen parked a short distance up the street. The big man George had seen on the park bench the day before was sitting in the driver’s seat, staring straight ahead. George slowed down and approached the car cautiously. The protector leaped through the passenger window and stood on the passenger seat with his paws on the dashboard.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, seeing George’s hesitation as he came slowly up to the car.
“Martin,” said George quietly. “I don’t think my mom would want me to go with him.”
The protector laughed. “That’s very logical and you’re right, you should never go in a car with strangers. But you have nothing to worry about. Martin is an ant.”
George stared blankly at the protector. “An ant?” he said dumbly.
“That’s right,” replied the protector. “Ant #4, to be exact. Have you ever noticed how ants always seem to know where they’re going, and can always find any little speck of food or crumb on the ground? And how they can work their way through hordes of other ants without getting confused?”
“Yeah,” said George slowly, wondering what the protector was talking about.
“Well,” continued the protector, “I figured if ants have that good of a sense of direction and that much ability to handle traffic jams, they should be pretty good as drivers! So I used the transformer to change an ant into a human to become my driver.”
“Wow!” said George, looking at Martin in amazement. “So, he’s an ant!”
“That’s right,” said the protector. “Actually, he’s ant number four. Ants don’t live very long, you know, so I’ve had to replace my driver four times.”
“Replace him?” said George uncomfortably.
“Yep,” replied the protector. “Each ant’s human form aged very quickly so I could tell when he was getting close to the end. Then I would just change him back into an ant and get a new driver. It was hard saying good-bye to my old drivers, of course, since I got rather attached to them.”
“That’s terrible,” said George without thinking.
“I agree,” said the protector. “It’s a shame ants have such short lives, and that no one seems to care when they die. Where I come from, every form of life is greatly respected. But I’ve found that most people on this planet don’t feel that way. Whoever cares if an ant lives or dies? Whoever cares if they step on an ant?”
“Well, I guess that’s true,” said George, feeling confused. He found himself wondering how many times he had stepped on ants without paying any attention. “But people would care if the ant looked like a human.”
“Probably so,” replied the protector. “But it would still be an ant.”
Still confused, George slowly got into the Volkswagen, and sat down on the back seat.
“So, where are we going?” asked the protector. “Where is the fallen star?”
“Just outside town, right past the orchard,” said George slowly.
Immediately Martin started the car and began driving towards the outskirts of town.
“He understood me?” asked George in surprise.
“Yep,” replied the protector. “I don’t know why, but the ants I’ve transformed understand everything I say. Maybe when they go through the transformer they take on some human attributes. But they never talk. Martin has never said a single word to me.”
“He hasn’t?” asked George, turning to stare at Martin again.
“Have you ever heard an ant talk?” replied the protector.
“No,” said George. There was silence for a moment while Martin drove silently on.
“What I’m going to be looking for at the fallen star is just any clue we can find,” said the protector, changing the subject. “I don’t actually know what it might be – it could be anything. Hopefully we’ll find something that helps.”
“We’re getting close,” said George, looking out the window. “It’s right over there, past the end of the orchard.”
Martin brought the car to a stop at the specified place and George and the protector got out. “It’s just over that rise, out of sight.” The protector trotted ahead with George following close behind.
The site was the same as when George had been there last. The circular fallen star lay half submerged in the earth where it had landed, with the hook-like appendage pointing up to the north. There was nothing else around at all. George felt a twinge of guilt at being here again. His mother had not wanted him to come back here. But he had only promised to not come here alone, and since the protector was with him, it was easy to rationalize that he had not broken his promise.
The protector looked closely at the fallen star and tapped it with his paw.
“It’s not a meteor or an asteroid. It looks like it was made by somebody, and I would guess it’s not here by accident. I would think that hook-like part pointing up has a definite purpose, although I can’t imagine what it would be.”
“Really?” replied George. “I thought this was just something that fell randomly from space.”
“I doubt it,” said the protector. “It looks almost like it’s positioned for something.” He paused. “Where did you find the Uth rock?”
George pointed out the spot in the grass near the fallen star, and the protector went over to it. “This is another reason why I decided to be a dog today. Their sniffers are much better than those of a human.” He then sniffed all around the grassy area George had pointed out, and looked carefully through the grass. But he found nothing.
“It can’t be a coincidence that the Uth stone was right here with the fallen star,” muttered the protector. “The two must have come together. But why?” After looking around for another minute, the protector said to George, “there’s a camera on the front seat of the car. Can you get it? I need to take some pictures so we can analyze them.”
George quickly went back to the car and retrieved the camera. Unlike the protector’s other gadgets it looked perfectly normal.
“I bought it at Wal-Mart,” said the protector sheepishly when George brought it back, and he noticed George looking at it curiously. “Your earth cameras work pretty well.”
The protector then had George take several pictures of the fallen star from different angles. When they were finished, the two walked slowly back to the car. Ant number 4 was still sitting in the driver’s seat, staring straight ahead with a vacant expression on his face.
“Take us back to the street we started from,” instructed the protector after he and George had got into the car. As the car began to move forward, the protector said to George, “as you recall, yesterday I had my settings arranged so that you would shrink when you came in the window—“
“Yeah, that’s right,” said George, remembering.
“Today, I’ve got it set to shrink only when you actually touch the little door into my home,” said the protector. “Watch.” He reached out a paw and bumped it against the tiny door. Instantly he shrank to about an inch in height. It was as if George were watching him through a zoom lens working in reverse. The protector was still a dog though, who now looked like a toy.
“Wow!” he said in amazement.
The protector’s tiny voice reached up to him. “Remember to whisper so you don’t deafen me. Now it’s your turn. Come here and touch the door, but be careful you don’t crush me in the process. Then we’ll go inside and look at the pictures.”
George moved to the front seat and cautiously stretched out his finger toward the door.
CHAPTER 12: Another Fallen Star
George felt tense and nervous, since he knew what was about to happen. The instant he touched the door he felt like his tongue was being sucked right down into his stomach. Everything around him seemed to be growing at fantastic speed. Then he found himself on his hands and knees looking up at the door which had been so tiny only a second ago.
“Wow!” said George, shaking a little as he dizzily stood up. “
That is so weird.”
“Kind of fun, isn’t it?” replied the protector. “You’ll get used to it.” Then he trotted through the door. George followed and watched in amazement as the protector instantly changed from a dog back to his former flabby-skinned self the instant he went through the door.
“Come on in and let’s do a search on these pictures,” said the protector, taking the camera (which had also shrunk) from George. They went over to what looked like a simple printer, such as the one his mother had for her camera at home.
“I got this printer at Wal-Mart too,” said the protector with an embarrassed smile at George. “Not all of my gadgets are fancy, high tech things from outer space.”
The protector connected a cord to the camera and quickly printed off the pictures they had taken at the fallen star. Then he led George over to a plain glass screen with a slot below it, right next to the snorkfinder they had used the day before.
“This is the news finder,” said the protector. “It’s kind of old fashioned, but it still works quite well. All you do is put a picture or a request into the slot and it will search all of the newspapers on every planet in the known universe and show whatever it matches.”
“You mean other planets have newspapers?” asked George in surprise.
“You bet,” replied the protector. “Although most of them are never actually printed on paper. They usually come over the viewscreen. Anyway, let’s put in a picture of the fallen star and see what we get.”
The protector popped a picture into the slot. A humming noise immediately started from the news finder. The protector turned to George and said in embarrassment, “like I said, it’s a bit old fashioned. I really should replace it. Sometimes it takes a whole 15 seconds to do a universe search of billions of newspapers, and give a result. Terribly slow, you know.”
A voice suddenly came out of the machine, startling George. Mechanically it said, “there is only one matching result out of 10,487,501,908,432 news sources. There are 90,586,273 similar objects that are not quite a perfect match. Would you like to see all of them?” The voice sounded anxious, as if begging to show them all of its matches.
George Brown and the Protector Page 5
