At first nothing happened, but then we heard the first explosion at the bottom of the far staircase. A second, third, and fourth sounded before I lost count. Then . . . silence.
“Go, go, go, go . . . ,” Edwy whispered.
Alcibiades and Rosi sprang up. All six of us began running for the stairway that hadn’t been destroyed.
“Guards! Guards!” I shouted up the stairs. “We saw who did that! You have to let us into the courtroom to tell!”
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
Would it work?
While I raced up the first flight of stairs, I caught only quick glimpses around. I saw a crazy, quick snippet of the stairs beneath my feet and on up to the door: Okay, good, this side isn’t damaged. There’s a clear path up. I saw my friends and brothers around me: Yes, we’re all together. Everyone’s keeping up. Even Enu. And I saw the guards above us: Four are running toward the exploded staircase, so we won’t have to worry about them. It’s only the two still standing by the door that we have to convince, only those two we have to fool. . . .
They’d never suspect that we were the guilty parties, would they? Surely they’d never imagine that anyone would commit a crime and then be crazy enough to run straight to the authorities, instead of running away.
Surely they didn’t understand how devious humans could be, did they?
It felt like I was staking my life on that. On their not understanding.
My feet kept propelling me up and up and up the stairs, closer and closer and closer to the guards.
We reached the first landing and sprinted for the next flight of stairs. I let the others take up my cries: “We can tell the court everything!” “We know exactly what happened!” “We saw where the bad guys went after the explosion!”
When we got to the second landing, the remaining two guards stood directly in front of us—and in front of the courtroom door. They hadn’t budged. I pretended to be surprised.
“Didn’t you hear?” I cried. “We have to report to the court! Let us in! No—escort us in, so we’re sure it’s safe in there.”
It was a calculated risk. For a moment the guards only glared at me. Their eyes looked human—glittering and dark, but human all the same. Of course I knew their appearance was just an illusion, just a trick, and I felt certain that they were really Enforcers. I could feel the same chill I’d felt the first time I’d met an Enforcer; I felt the same desire to turn around and flee.
But I glared back, and the guards actually pushed open the door for us.
“You have to listen to us!” I screamed, stalking through the doorway. “We’ve got information the intergalactic court has to hear!”
At least a hundred shocked pairs of eyes stared back at us. Like the guards—like everyone we’d met since landing—the court members who were sitting in a semicircle before us all appeared entirely human. They had green or brown or blue or gray eyes; they had two arms, two legs, and a single head; they wore the same kind of business suits I wouldn’t have glanced at twice back in Refuge City, back home. They all looked so familiar.
And maybe that did help. I gathered the courage to keep moving. All six of us kids marched down the center aisle of the room. We reached a low wooden railing. Nobody stopped Alcibiades from yanking open the latched part of the railing; nobody stopped the six of us from racing on up to the podium in the center of the stage beyond. The podium was framed by ten glowing orbs—five on each side. Back in Refuge City, back on Earth, I had tried to avoid any information I could about the intergalactic court. But even I knew those ten globes were the symbols of the court, representing the ten original civilizations that had joined together for peace and harmony throughout the universe.
Yeah, right, I thought.
I had to look away from the globes. To steady myself, I fixed my gaze on the huge window behind the stage, showing the lush jungle scenery outside. After our time out in the desert on Earth and in the ruined wasteland of Zacadi, the greenery outdoors looked like paradise.
But I had to turn away from the window, too, and face the staring eyes.
Alcibiades was already stepping up to the podium.
“You have information about the explosions?” someone called out to him. It might have been one of the guards. “Do we need to evacuate?”
“I have information . . . ,” Alcibiades began, “related to those explosions. You’re safe here and now. But we bring you distressing news from the outer planets. From Zacadi and Earth.”
A roar of discontented grumbling rose from the crowd. I tried to see who looked angry and who looked concerned—would that be a way to discover which of the people before us were Enforcers and which were Freds? But my vision blurred, the faces before me too fake to decipher.
If I couldn’t even see what species sat before me, how could I expect to figure out their emotions? Or what would work to convince them?
“We have official ambassadors representing Earth and Zacadi,” someone shouted. “You are only children. We have rules—we hear reports only from the official ambassadors or their designees.”
Okay, that was probably an Enforcer saying that, trying to get us off the stage, I thought.
“But your official ambassadors from our planets are Enforcers,” Alcibiades protested. “And our complaints are against Enforcers. We are Zacadians and humans who have been sorely treated by Enforcers, in violation of everything the intergalactic court stands for.”
That set off a buzz. Alcibiades certainly had a way with words—or, at least, in the way his words were translated for my ears. What were the Freds and the Enforcers hearing?
I had no control over the way anything was translated, but I listened hard, trying to pull out individual reactions from the hubbub.
“This is ridiculous!” a man ranted. “Have we no standards now? We’ll let any random creature interrupt us and hold our proceedings hostage?”
“Don’t we have an age limit for our speakers?” a woman shrieked. “So we’re not subjected to the babbling of infants?”
They’re both Enforcers, I thought, with a sinking heart. Are Enforcers the only ones who speak on the court?
But then I heard an undertone of softer mumblings: “. . . those poor children look so sad.” “Can you imagine the courage it would take for mere tykes to stand up there and . . .” “That boy certainly seems sincere. . . .”
I leaned in beside Alcibiades and tried my own appeal.
“The intergalactic court claims to speak for truth and justice throughout the universe, and we bring you truth the official ambassadors would not reveal,” I said. I reached into the back pocket of my shorts and pulled out my phone. “And we bring you proof.”
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
The buzz of outraged voices grew louder. How much time did I have? Alcibiades pressed the last Zacadi pearl tenth we’d commandeered into my hand. I just needed to figure out how to trick the phone into using that as an energy source, to give the phone enough juice to come back to life. Then I needed to figure out how to cue up the video I’d taken way back in Refuge City right before the Enforcers captured us, and figure out how to project that video onto the wall of the courtroom. . . .
One step at a time, I told myself.
Rosi stretched up to the podium while Alcibiades and I struggled over the phone. Edwy lifted Cana in his arms, holding her up beside Rosi, facing the microphone. Distantly I heard a few oohs and aahs and mumbled comments: “Oh, isn’t the little one cute? Small ones of any species are adorable!”
It really made me want to tell them the “adorable” little one’s role in blowing up their staircase. But I had to focus on the phone.
“Edwy, Cana, and I were among the children raised in a Fredtown and returned to Earth,” Rosi began in a trembling voice. Behind the podium I saw Edwy sneak his hand into hers, and Rosi went on. “In the beginning, knowing nothing of Earth, it was hard for us to understand why our parents there were meaner than our Fred-parents. We knew nothing of our own history. I tried to
help Edwy, and people thought I was trying to start a riot, trying to start another war.”
Gasps greeted her last word, as if it was normally too horrifying even to mention such violence in the court chambers.
Oh, just wait, I thought, fumbling with the casing of my phone.
“The Enforcers put me in prison in a place called Cursed Town, but kind and loyal humans—including my own parents—helped me escape,” Rosi continued.
More gasps. A voice rang out, “She’s the famous Cursed Town escapee? Then we’re listening to criminals! Convicts! How can we believe a word they say?”
Um, Rosi, did you have to mention that?
I was still trying to wedge the tiny piece of Zacadi pearl into the phone. What if the intergalactic court kicked us out—and back to the Enforcer guards—before I could show the video?
Edwy stepped forward, as though he enjoyed talking to angry people.
“I know!” he said. “Rosi can be really annoying, because she tries so hard to do what’s right. But is that any reason to put someone in jail for the rest of her life? Without a trial? I didn’t pay attention to much of anything the Freds told me at school, but I thought people were always supposed to have the right to tell their side of a story, any time they were accused of anything. Those poor Freds in my Fredtown had to listen to me constantly, telling all my reasons for dyeing our pet dog blue, or writing invisible-ink messages that made fun of our teachers, or, well, pulling Rosi’s hair. . . .”
Part of the crowd laughed, and part of the crowd gasped.
Oh, Edwy, you’re a genius, I thought. People are going to keep listening, just to see what you’ll say next! Now I had the Zacadi pearl solidly in place. A light flickered on the phone’s screen, then vanished. I pressed the back of the phone harder. Come on, come on, come on. . . .
“In Fredtown, I thought everything Edwy did was bad,” Rosi admitted, her gaze gliding over everyone before us. “But sometimes he was just curious, and the Freds wouldn’t give us answers. Back on Earth he was really, really brave, and he saved my life. And Cana’s. He’s a mix of good and bad. Just like all humans. Wouldn’t you rather have us doing good things in the galaxy, instead of giving us more and more reasons to rebel?”
I aimed the phone at the wall even as I typed commands into the screen. See, Enu, I wanted to say, this is why I always check out every possible function every time I get a new device. Just in case I need to do something unusual in a hurry.
But Enu already had his fists half raised, as if he couldn’t understand how to do anything but fight.
“Enu,” I whispered. “No punching, remember? This is what we wanted to do all along. Show the intergalactic court this video.”
I hit the last keystroke, and an image appeared on the wall: The dark street back in Refuge City, and the shadowy Enforcers who’d invaded its peace.
I adjusted the lighting of the video so everything showed up clearly, and that was enough to bring tears to my eyes. If I looked past the Enforcers, I could see how beautiful, how hopeful, how human my old home was. Even in my pathetically inadequate school, we’d studied our city’s history. I’d always known that Refuge City had come into existence because of war, and because of humans wanting to move past their wars and start something new and better. But I’d never understood how defiant everything was: the curlicues on the iron railings on every balcony, the ridiculously bright clothing people wore, the skyscrapers themselves. All of those things said that humans wanted to be more than warriors, more than war-haunted victims.
Then there was the way the woman caught in my video sheltered her little boy beside her, even as Enforcers’ fists pounded against her body.
Tears began to stream down my face, and I didn’t wipe them away.
I’d had only a moment to film the beating before the phone had been invisibly jerked from my hand and suspended above my head. Once that happened, I had stopped watching the beating and focused on reaching for the phone. But to my surprise, the phone had kept recording. On the balcony—and now, projected on the wall of the intergalactic court—the woman coiled her body to the side, so the Enforcers’ blows hit her back and not her stomach. And as she turned, I saw why.
“She’s pregnant!” I screamed at the intergalactic court. “The Enforcers that you sent to Earth were beating a pregnant woman! It’s right there in front of you!”
The video went blurry and then dark. I remembered how the phone had fallen and I’d caught it and then stuffed it into my pocket.
“Do you need to see that again?” I shouted. “Do you need to see more of what the Enforcers have done in your name? You have to stop them!”
I stared out into the crowd, trying again to pick out which of the human-looking creatures before me were actually Freds and which were Enforcers. I tried to read the faces: Who was most distressed? Who would stride forward and come to my aid?
Who would be the hero?
But the faces before me looked merely . . . uncertain. Confused.
A man stood at the front and waved a hand to the side the same way someone might shoo away a fly.
“Didn’t you hear these children say they are humans?” he asked. “Remember, humans are tricksters. You’ve heard how they can fake any sort of scene for their movies and video games. They’re entertained by violence. This is just more of their fakery. I assure you, nothing like this is actually happening on Earth. Or anywhere under our control.”
Murmurs flowed through the crowd. But they weren’t murmurs of disbelief or complaint. They were mutterings of “Oh, that’s right” and “What a relief” and “Why are these children wasting our time?”
Even when I had proof, the intergalactic court didn’t believe me.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
“What can we do now?” Edwy moaned beside me.
Alcibiades stepped up to the podium.
“But you haven’t heard my story,” he said. “I am not human. I am Zacadian, and it is my planet’s resources that fuel your expansion throughout the universe. It is my people’s slave labor and nearing extinction that should weigh on your consciences. . . .”
Even when Alcibiades spoke the words “slave labor” and “extinction,” the faces before me kept their bland expressions. The court looked, at worst, vaguely annoyed. Maybe there were no translations for those terms in the Fred language, in the Enforcer language. Maybe when the Freds saw Alcibiades as a fuzzy blue creature, like a cuddly stuffed animal, they just couldn’t understand the horror his species had endured. Maybe they couldn’t see how emaciated he was, how he’d almost starved. Or how all of us had almost starved.
How long did we have before the intergalactic court just shooed all of us away?
How could we get through to the intergalactic court when they couldn’t even see us clearly—or see one another clearly? How could the Freds on the court blame the Enforcers on the court when the Enforcers looked like kindly, fuzzy blue and green creatures, too?
My eyes fell on the row of ten glowing orbs between us and the members of the court, and suddenly I knew what I had to do. I reached for the orb nearest me, but my arms felt rubbery. Even before my weeks of slave labor and starvation on Zacadi, I’d never been an athlete; I’d never had Enu’s muscles.
I knew what to do, but I needed Enu’s help.
“Enu, do you trust me?” I whispered to my brother, while Alcibiades continued his useless appeal to the court.
“Trust you?” Enu mumbled back. “Is it time to punch someone?”
He raised his fists, and I had to shove his hands back down.
“Not punch,” I whispered back. “Throw. Do you think you’re strong enough to lift this orb?”
Keeping my hands low, so no one out in the court area could see, I pointed and pantomimed to Enu what I wanted him to do.
Enu’s eyes widened. And he never even asked, Are you sure? or Have you thought this one through? or Are you crazy?
He just grabbed the orb from its stand, gripped it like a toddle
r carrying a bowling ball, and whirled around to hurl it at the window behind us.
CHAPTER FIFTY
The glass shuddered, and for a split second I feared Enu hadn’t thrown the ball hard enough. I yanked at the next orb, ready to throw it, and saw that Edwy, Rosi, and Alcibiades followed suit. They trusted me too. Or they’d also figured out what I was trying to do. A volley of orbs sailed toward the window—tossed by Alcibiades’s multiple tentacles? Or just us puny humans all working together? I couldn’t tell which globe made the first crack in the glass, or which was the first to crash through.
But a hole appeared in the glass, and then the glass shattered completely. I felt a whoosh of air leave the room, and sirens began wailing around us.
“Can we breathe if . . . ?” Edwy asked beside me, but I didn’t listen. I was too busy gaping at the scene revealed on the other side of the window: The lush, junglelike greenery had vanished, replaced by a landscape just as dead and lifeless as the desert on Earth back home, or the destroyed Zacadi land we’d been forced to mine.
“Even that was a lie!” I screamed. I pointed out the glassless window and yelled over my shoulder toward the court, “Now you have to see things as they really are!”
The members of the court were screaming so loudly themselves, I’m sure no one heard me. I turned back toward them, and they had all been transformed: Human shapes had scrunched down into fuzzy blue and green and purple creatures, or stretched out into hard-shelled, overgrown beetles, or morphed into species that either lacked arms and legs or had too many appendages to count. . . . The variety was dazzling. Even Alcibiades was transformed back to his normal multitentacled glory. I grinned at him, then drew in a breath to scream to the members of the court before us, “And is that what all of you look like? Really?”
But what I inhaled wasn’t air. Maybe it was more like water. Maybe it wasn’t anything.
Edwy’s question finally registered: Can we breathe if . . . ?
Children of Jubilee Page 18
