I hesitated a bit longer, then took a bite, promising myself I would find some way to help change what we had seen.
The pleskit was thick, crusty, and delicious. Something inside it tasted like berries. I began to wonder if Kreeblim had chosen to disguise herself as a home economics teacher for a reason.
“So, what do we do now?” I asked as Duncan wandered into the room and Kreeblim handed him a pleskit.
“Fieldwork,” replied Broxholm, tucking something brown and squirmy into his mouth.
“FOOD FIRST,” rumbled Big Julie. “FIELDWORK LATER.”
Broxholm pulled on his nose. “I stand corrected. First we feed Big Julie. Then we start our fieldwork.”
“Who gets to feed him?” asked Susan.
“YOU DO!”
Susan jumped a little. (Okay, I guess I did, too.)
“Don’t worry,” whispered Kreeblim, waving her nose. “He’s just testing you. You can all do it together.”
“How do we feed him?” asked Duncan nervously.
“That’s his meal,” said Broxholm, pointing to some buckets next to the sink. “He doesn’t eat as much as you might expect.”
“Well, not now,” said Kreeblim, “but that’s because he’s fairly inactive at the moment.”
“Anyway, finish your own meal first,” said Broxholm. “Uhrbhighgjououol-lee can wait.”
The floorboards rumbled with Big Julie’s displeasure. I started to get to my feet, but Broxholm motioned for me to stay in my chair. “I said he can wait,” he repeated softly.
“TRAITOR!”
“Not so,” replied Broxholm, raising his voice only a little. “You know the codes as well as I do, Uhrbhighgjououol-lee.”
Kreeblim’s wormy lavender hair writhed in dismay. “Broxholm, there is no need to irritate him!”
“And there is no need for him to be discourteous to our friends,” replied Broxholm, giving me a wink.
According to my translator, the wink meant nothing on Broxholm’s native world. He was using it the same way we do, which was a little like speaking a foreign language with his body instead of his mouth.
My mind grabbed at the gesture. A wink. There was something about a wink that I ought to remember, or figure out.
What was it?
Puzzled, I smiled at Broxholm and returned my attention to my meal. I finished quickly, and as soon as Duncan and Susan were ready we crossed to the buckets, which were filled with a murky-looking concoction.
“What is this stuff?” I asked, turning my head to avoid the smell.
“Swamp water,” Kreeblim replied.
“Local or imported?” asked Duncan.
Broxholm smiled. “Local. Big Julie likes to sample native cuisines.”
I picked up a pair of buckets and headed down the hall. “I wonder what we’re supposed to do next,” said Susan, who was walking behind me. “I mean, you can’t feed an eyeball, right?”
She shouldn’t have worried. Big Julie had shifted position. When I opened the door, I found myself face to face, so to speak, with the biggest mouth I had seen since Hoo-Lan took me for a ride in a Rhoomba.
If we hadn’t been there to feed Big Julie, I might not have known it was a mouth. I didn’t see any teeth; he didn’t even have one of those gonger things hanging at the back of his throat. All I could see was a big black hole. The only real mouth clue was the foot-high ridge of brown and green flesh at the bottom of the door, which I think was his lower lip.
“Just toss the stuff in,” called Broxholm from the kitchen.
“Peter, look out!” cried Duncan as I lifted my bucket. I jumped back barely in time to avoid a thick strip of moist brown and green flesh that rolled through the door and slapped into the opposite wall. It was textured like a sponge and covered with fist-sized knobs.
“What is that?” asked Susan.
“His tongue,” said Duncan with a shudder.
“AHHHHHHHHHHH!”
I started to say, “Let’s do this and get it over with,” but held in the words for fear of insulting Big Julie. Not speaking, being careful to avoid stepping on the tongue, I got as close to the door as I could, then tossed in my buckets of swamp water. Susan did the same, and then Duncan. After a few seconds the great green and brown tongue slid back through the door. A wall of flesh descended over the black hole, and a sigh of contentment rumbled through the floorboards.
We closed the door and headed for the kitchen. As I was sitting down the cups on the table began to rattle, like you’d see in a film about an earthquake.
“Good,” said Kreeblim, “he liked the meal.”
The rumbling was Big Julie’s belch of appreciation!
With Big Julie fed, we started to discuss our fieldwork again. To my surprise, the first thing the aliens wanted us to do was get disguises. That turned out to be more fun than I expected, partly because when it was time to make them, Kreeblim said, “Well, how would you like to look?” I didn’t know how to respond at first. I had always wanted to look like the heroes on the covers of the science fiction books I read. But you couldn’t put a face like that on a kid’s body.
As it turned out, what I could do was use my URAT to design my mask. I sat and played with different features until I had a face I liked. Then I sent the design from my URAT to the mask machine. A few minutes later it delivered my new face.
Broxholm showed me how to put it on, then gave me a mirror. I stared at myself in astonishment; I had dark hair and eyes, a perfectly formed nose, and a mouth that somehow looked a lot more heroic than mine. (I’m not sure exactly what makes a mouth look heroic, but believe me, mine did.)
I know you should judge people on the basis of what’s inside, not how they look. Now I found I was judging myself by looks. With a different face, I felt different.
I wasn’t entirely happy to discover this about myself.
“Maybe we should choose new names to go with our new faces,” said Duncan, once we were all wearing our masks. “I want to be Albert.”
Though he didn’t say it, I was pretty sure he was naming himself after Albert Einstein. I didn’t laugh, so it annoyed me when I said, “Okay. I’m going to be Stoney,” and Duncan said, “Where did you get that name?”
I didn’t want to say that Stoney was the name of my favorite science fiction hero. It took me a while to realize how funny it was that Duncan was naming himself after a great brain, while I was naming myself for an action hero.
“How about you, Susan?” asked Kreeblim.
“I’ll just be Susan, thanks,” she said with a smile. “I like my name just fine.”
We spent the next two weeks traveling all over the world, looking at the best and the worst of what we humans do.
We roamed museums where I saw artwork so beautiful it made me weep, and streets so thick with starving people that I woke up in the night, haunted by their hungry eyes.
We began to refer to the bad sights as button-pushers—things that might convince the aliens to use the red button.
Things that gave us hope—like the night we sat by a fire in Africa and listened to an old man tell a story of how the world began—were called button-busters. I was truly happy to have my Universal Translator that night. The storyteller’s words pulled me into his spell, and I felt joined with all the other listeners, almost as if we were one being. It was one of the best nights of my life.
The next day we saw the worst button-pusher of all. That was the day we crept, invisible, into a prison where men and women were being tortured for disagreeing with their government. What had already been done to those people was so ugly I cannot bring myself to describe it, even though the memory of it remains like a scar burned into my brain with a hot iron.
Even worse was the moment when it was about to start again. When I saw what the uniformed man was going to do to the woman strapped to the table, I pressed myself against the wall and closed my eyes. But even with my hands clamped over my ears I couldn’t shut out her scream.
The screa
m lasted less than half a second. For the first and only time during the entire mission, Broxholm broke the noninvolvement rule. When I opened my eyes, I saw that he had knocked the torturer unconscious.
I could spend pages telling you how we snuck the prisoners to freedom. It was quite an adventure, and Susan did an amazing thing. But it’s not really part of this story. I’ll tell you only that I still have nightmares about that room, and that Broxholm trembled with fury for an entire day afterwards. I think he was beginning to believe that maybe the red button was the only solution after all.
“To ignore the starving is one thing,” he told me. “But to actively—” He broke off in a shudder.
“There is a great mystery here,” said Kreeblim. “The best of what your people create shows a deep longing to join together. Yet the worst of what you do seems to come from some great separation, as if you don’t even recognize yourselves as members of the same species.”
“THEY’RE HOPELESS,” said Big Julie.
They’re hopeless. I wondered if that would be his message to the Interplanetary Council. I could hardly stand to bring him his swamp water that evening; it felt traitorous to be feeding a creature who believed we should be destroyed.
About ten minutes after Big Julie’s wall-rattling burp of appreciation someone began knocking at the door.
Kreeblim was instantly alert, like a wild animal when it hears an unexpected sound. “Who could that be?” she whispered.
Indeed, no one should have been knocking at her door, since “Miss Karpou” was supposed to be out of town with Susan.
“Probably just some salesman,” I whispered back.
The knocking sounded again, louder than before. “This is the police!” yelled a deep male voice. “Open up in there!”
“Plevvit!” said Kreeblim. This was a word from her own language, and it’s so bad I have no translation for it.
More banging.
We had taken off our masks to relax, so neither Broxholm nor Kreeblim had on a human face. Susan was supposed to be away on her scholarship trip, and I was presumed to have been kidnapped by aliens; either of us answering the door would raise dangerous questions. That left Duncan, though if he were to go to the door the police would almost certainly insist on returning him to his home.
“Maybe we should just hide,” said Susan.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
“No good,” replied Broxholm. “It sounds like they’re getting ready to break the door down. If they do that, they’ll almost certainly find Big Julie.”
He didn’t have to explain what a disaster that would be.
“I’d better get it,” said Duncan.
“Wait!” said Susan as he started toward the door.
“No,” said Broxholm, “he’s the only one who can do it. Come on—the rest of us have to get out of sight.”
Glancing over my shoulder as we headed for the stairs, I wondered if Duncan would ever stop surprising me.
CHAPTER TEN
Evacuate!
I crouched on the stairway and listened as Duncan opened the door. Susan stood one step behind me, her hand on my shoulder.
“Holy Moses!” cried the man who had been demanding to be let in. “It’s Duncan Dougal! We’ve been wondering where you were hiding. We got a call about an explosion in here. What have you been doing—blowing off dynamite?”
“He must mean Big Julie’s burp!” whispered Susan, leaning close to my ear.
“I’m not doing anything,” Duncan replied sullenly.
“Not doing anything but breaking into poor Miss Karpou’s house while she’s out of town,” said a new voice. “Anyone else in there with you?”
“Yeah,” sneered Duncan. “A bunch of aliens.”
Susan tightened her grip on my shoulder. But I knew what Duncan was doing. He figured if he made the men angry, they might hustle him off without coming inside.
For a moment, it looked like his ploy would work. “Come on, kid,” said the second man, “we’re taking you home.”
Then the first man spoke again. “Better take a look inside, Andy—make sure the kid hasn’t trashed the place.”
Susan and I began backing up the stairs as Andy came through the door. Suddenly, I realized something was different about the house. I couldn’t figure out what it was—until I realized I couldn’t hear Big Julie breathing. Wondering if he was holding his breath, I took another step backwards and almost screamed when I bumped into Broxholm, who was crouched at the top of the stairs. Broxholm put a finger to his lips, then lifted me to the top of the stairs. Turning around, he picked up Susan and set her next to me.
I could hear Andy walking around below us. Suddenly he shouted, “Yetch! What is this?”
I wondered what he had found until I glanced at Kreeblim. The worried writhing of her hair told me the problem: her poot was still on the kitchen table!
I hoped the thing had enough sense to stay in its blob form. That way it would just look like a gob of disgusting goo. If it lifted its head and went “Poot!”, Andy might really freak out.
I waited to hear a scream. Nothing. After a moment, Andy’s footsteps started down the hall. Was he going to open all of the doors? If so, he was in for a big surprise when he got to Big Julie’s room!
I glanced behind me. Kreeblim was pulling on a mask, a non-Betty Lou Karpou face. I figured she was going to try to divert Andy’s investigation. But before she could move, Duncan screamed, “Let go of me, you big brute!”
“Hey!” bellowed the cop. “Hey, watch it kid! Owwww! ”
I smiled to myself. Duncan’s life as a jerk hadn’t been entirely wasted. He had just kicked the guy holding him in the shins in order to draw Andy’s attention away from the house.
I blinked and shook my head. How did I know what Duncan had just done—and why he had done it?
A familiar wave of dizziness passed through me. Before I could even think of fainting, we heard a scream.
“Ahhhhhhhh!” cried Andy, sounding a lot like Duncan had the day he accidentally turned on the communication device that went to the alien spaceship. “Ahhhhhhhhhh!”
His scream was interrupted by a rush of wind as Big Julie let out his breath.
I think the thudding sound that followed was Andy getting blown against a wall. A swamplike stench filled the house. Next came the sound of someone throwing up, then running footsteps as Andy raced along the hall. “We’ve got to get out of here!” he screamed as he burst through the front door.
“Why?” asked the other guy. “What’s going on?”
“Don’t ask! Don’t talk! Just get out of here!”
“Lemme go!” yelled Duncan. “Hey, lemme go! I don’t want to get in that car with you guys!”
The men ignored his complaints. Seconds later we heard the car start, then race away.
“Plevvit!” said Kreeblim.
“What do we do now?” asked Susan.
“Evacuate!” said Broxholm. “Everything that might provide even a hint that we have been here has to go.”
“STARTING WITH ME,” rumbled Big Julie.
“Yes, starting with you!” shouted Broxholm.
The next half-hour was a blur as we rushed to load the aliens’ equipment into Kreeblim’s saucer. Susan and I took turns watching at the front windows for any sign of the police. It was hard to tell when they might return; it depended on how scared they were, and what kind of weapons and how much manpower they decided to gather.
If we had been living in a cheap horror movie, they would have been back soon, with just a few men and some guns. But Kennituck Falls had already had one experience with aliens. They were not apt to take this lightly.
I saw something slouching down the hall behind me. I turned to get a better look, and turned back with a shudder when I realized it was a piece of Big Julie, heading for the transport beam that would take it back to the New Jersey.
I wondered what we would be doing next. Would we establish another base of operations—or would the missi
on be canceled altogether? If that happened, what would the alien council decide to do about Earth?
A car pulled up outside. It didn’t park right in front of the house, but stopped where the driver would have a clear view of the place. A minute later another car pulled up.
“We’re being watched,” I said.
Kreeblim joined me at the window. “Plevvit,” she whispered.
“One more load,” said Broxholm. “Peter, Susan, grab those components. Let’s see if we can do this in one trip.”
Terrified that the police would break in before we could make our escape, I picked up the things Broxholm had pointed to and headed for the secret cellar. Susan was right behind me.
“Peter,” she said, “this is really going to mess things up. We’ve got to do something.”
That was Susan; ten thousand planets trying to figure out what to do about Earth, and she feels it’s her personal responsibility to deal with the situation.
“Any suggestions?” I asked.
“Not yet,” said Susan.
Soon Kreeblim joined us in the secret cellar. We finished loading the saucer while Broxholm used a pencil-sized laser beam to seal the door so no one could enter the space we were about to leave.
As soon as we were all in our places on the saucer, Kreeblim set the controls. We rolled forward. The backyard lifted. We shot into the air.
As we did, we heard a roar beneath us.
The police were shooting at the house!
I knew they were afraid; I was afraid, too. But I didn’t think this would be taken as a good sign by the Interplanetary Council.
Well, that was the least of our problems at the moment.
“What are we going to do about Duncan?” I asked as we soared into the sky.
Kreeblim’s hair waved in distress. “I don’t know. If he talks about what we’re doing, it could cause a great disruption. If things get too messy, the council may simply call off the mission.”
“And if that happens?” Susan asked.
“Let’s just say that we’d better find Duncan,” said Broxholm.
My Teacher Flunked the Planet Page 5
