Tomorrow? I felt a clutch of fear. Tomorrow we would go back to space. Tomorrow, we would report to the Interplanetary Council.
Tomorrow, the fate of the Earth would be decided.
Which made it oddly fitting, I suppose, that later that afternoon I found myself in a march around the capitol, carrying a sign that demanded ACTION AGAINST THE ALIENS.
I had never been in a demonstration before. I was amazed at how energy seemed to flow through the group. As the emotions grew stronger a kind of electricity seemed to bind the crowd together. To my astonishment, I felt myself being sucked into the group, as if I had become a part of something larger than myself.
The shouting grew louder, the chants more ferocious. People made speeches claiming that the government was hiding the truth about “the alien menace.”
Then someone threw a rock.
That was all it took for the situation to erupt.
Before I knew it the crowd had become a mob. Soon the police were shooting tear gas. Within minutes, the demonstration turned into a riot.
As the first bit of gas began to burn at my eyes and nose the crowd was flowing like a living thing, splitting into pieces, then reforming. It made me think of Big Julie.
As the mob surged back and forth across the open square in front of the capitol I was actually picked up and carried by the momentum of the crowd. Soon I had lost track of Broxholm, Kreeblim, and Susan. A moment later I fell. For a few terrifying seconds people were trampling over me. Then a man and a woman stopped to help me to my feet, even though that put them in danger of being run over themselves.
Coughing, gasping, choking, I worked my way to the edge of the square where a little girl grabbed me by the arm.
“Krepta!” she cried, dragging me toward an alley, “Thank goodness I found you.”
I had been chased, stepped on, and gassed. At the moment I was too dazed to wonder why this kid was calling me by my alien name. I just followed her.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Sharleen
I stood in the alley, gasping for breath, and looked at the kid who had dragged me from the riot. She was shorter than me, dressed in ragged clothes. She had shaggy brown hair and big eyes. She was fairly ugly, as kids go.
“Why did you do bring me here?” I asked when my breathing had slowed a bit. Suddenly I realized what she had said when she first saw me. “And why did you call me Krepta? Who are you, anyway?”
She smiled. “People around here call me Sharleen. But you know me by another name.”
I stared at her. After a moment, she put her fingers to her neck and pulled aside just enough skin to reveal a patch of blue underneath.
“Hoo-Lan!” I cried with joy.
“You were expecting maybe Darth Vader?”
“Where have you been? How long have you been better? Why didn’t you join us? Have you been—”
“Peace, peace!” he said, putting up his hands to stop my flow of questions. “One at a time. I’ve been working in my own way, which is what I usually do. You have to understand, Peter, that I am a bit of a renegade. The Interplanetary Council does not entirely approve of me.” He paused, then said, “Actually, I don’t think they approve of me at all. But they feel they owe me some respect, since I used to be Prime Member.”
I looked at him in awe. “Prime Member? Does that mean what I think it does?”
Hoo-Lan smiled. “If you mean was I ruler of the galaxy, the answer is yes.”
“I knew it! You kept putting me off when I asked who you really were. But I knew there was something special about you.”
“There’s something special about everyone,” said Hoo-Lan. Then he waved his hand in a very earthlinglike gesture. “Anyway, don’t take that Prime Member thing too seriously. Title aside, I didn’t have as much power as you might think. That was one reason I resigned; it was too hard to get things done. To tell you the truth, there were times when I had to resort to being downright sneaky.”
I wanted to ask him when and why, but he waved his hand again. “Enough of that! I want to know how things have gone with your mission.”
“Not very well,” I said, feeling a sudden depression at admitting the fact. “We’ve found a lot of stuff, both good and bad, but I don’t think anything we’ve found will convince the council to let us into the Interplanetary League.”
Of course, that wasn’t the real issue.
“I’m not sure anything will convince them it’s safe to let us continue to exist.”
Hoo-Lan nodded.
“How are things out there?” I asked, rolling my eyes skyward.
“Not good. Opinion is shifting against you—especially since we’re doing a close monitoring now, and the anti-alien demonstrations are being reported across the galaxy.”
“That’s not fair! The main reason those demonstrations are going on is that you guys have scared people.”
“I would think the idea that you are not alone in the universe would make you feel safer,” said Hoo-Lan. “The reaction on every other planet at finding other life in the galaxy has been joy. They rejoice because it doesn’t occur to them to be afraid. You fear because it doesn’t occur to you to rejoice. Which is a large part of the problem.”
I wasn’t in the mood for another lecture on the moral flaws of earthlings. “Did you hear about Duncan?” I asked.
Hoo-Lan smiled. “I not only heard about Duncan, I tended to the situation.”
“What do you—”
The end of my question was drowned out by a roar from the end of the alley. The riot seemed to be getting worse.
“Come on!” said Hoo-Lan, taking my arm. “We have to get out of here. We can talk more later.”
“I can’t leave without Susan and the others!”
Hoo-Lan dragged me to the end of the alley. The crowd still surged back and forth. A whiff of tear gas made my eyes sting. “Do you think you can find them out there?” he asked.
I shook my head. It was impossible.
“What do we do?” I asked.
“Can you go invisible?”
I nodded.
“Then best do so. If we keep our backs to the buildings and our hands in contact, we should be able to get into the open. We’ll decide what to do next after we’re in the clear.”
I switched myself invisible and followed him. Side by side, hands touching, we eased our way along the edge of the mob. I felt again how it was like a living thing, with the people seeming to act as a single mass rather than as individuals.
Several people were pushed so close they touched me. Normally, brushing against an invisible person would have caused them to draw away in fear. Now, with their focus on the riot, they barely noticed.
Where were Susan, Broxholm, and Kreeblim? I hoped they had managed to get out safely. I remembered how it had felt when I fell and people were running over me, and shuddered at the idea of that happening to Susan.
It took nearly fifteen minutes to get away from the riot. Once we were clear of it we ran for several blocks before stopping to become visible again.
“What an experience!” I gasped, leaning against a wall.
“Remember it!” said Hoo-Lan. “It may be part of the answer.”
“What do you mean? If your people saw that, they’d probably decide to get rid of us immediately.”
Hoo-Lan shrugged. I had noticed that of all the aliens, he was the one whose gestures were most humanlike. Another alien’s shrugs or winks might mean anything from “You have beautiful ear hair” to “Run away!” But with Hoo-Lan, such gestures rarely needed translation.
“CrocDoc is still analyzing the data he gathered when he removed your brain,” he said. “He has a whole team of scientists working on it. They’re also examining what happened to me when I made contact with your brain.”
“I’m sorry about that. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“Of course you didn’t! Anyway, it was my fault for moving too fast. Scary experience, though; I certainly wasn’t prepared for
the vastness of what I found. We can talk about that once things settle down. For now, we have to figure out where to go next.”
“Shouldn’t we go back to our base of operations?”
He shrugged again. “It depends on what we want to do. It might be interesting for Broxholm and Kreeblim if you go missing, too. Give them a bit to think about.”
“They’ll be terrified!”
“A little terror won’t hurt them. It may loosen up their juices, get them thinking more clearly.”
Whatever had happened to Hoo-Lan while he was in his coma, he had come out of it as strange and confusing as ever.
“Where do you think we should go?” I asked.
“I’ve been staying at a shelter for kids on the run. You’re a little young for it, but I think you’ll be all right there. Might do you some good. You’ll meet a few old friends.”
“Old friends?”
Hoo-Lan smiled mysteriously. I knew him well enough to know that I wasn’t likely to get any more information out of him at this point. With a sigh, I started to follow him. We must have walked for a mile or two, ending up in a section of the city that I would have been happier to visit with Broxholm at my side, since he’s the strongest being I have ever met. Coming here with Hoo-Lan didn’t feel nearly so safe, especially since it was starting to get dark.
“Here we are!” he said as we reached a building that looked like it had once been a church. A wooden sign in front announced that it was the Tisha Hamilton Home for Wayward Boys. Only Boys had been crossed out and the word Youth painted above it, so I assumed they had decided not to discriminate on the basis of sex.
“You’d better call me Sharleen as long as we’re in here,” said Hoo-Lan as he opened the door.
I felt pretty nervous when we stepped inside; most of the kids hanging around looked older and tougher than me. Then “Sharleen” led me to a kid sitting against the wall and whispered, “Peter, this is someone you know quite well.”
The kid stood up.
“Peter?”
My eyes went wide.
“Duncan?”
“Shhh! In this place I’m known as Roger.”
Duncan was wearing a mask that made his face look completely different. I was beginning to feel like no one had his or her own face anymore.
Then I saw two people who did have their own faces, a man and a woman leading a discussion group in the far corner of the main room. The shock was so powerful that my knees began to wobble and I had to grab Hoo-Lan’s arm to keep from collapsing.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Jealousy
I took a moment to recover, then stepped closer.
The woman leading the discussion group looked very familiar. She should have; I had spent the better part of a year in her classroom. It was Ms. Marie Schwartz, our sixth-grade teacher—the one Broxholm had locked in a force field in his attic.
The man was even more familiar; he was my father.
“What’s he doing here?” I whispered.
“Why not ask him and find out?” replied Hoo-Lan quietly.
That made me angry. “If you want me to start asking direct questions, let’s begin with you. Why did you bring me here?”
Hoo-Lan shrugged. “I thought you might learn something.”
“Maybe I don’t want to learn this!” I hissed.
He shrugged again and said, “I’m your teacher.”
“I’d rather have a math lesson.”
“Not your choice.”
Duncan leaned toward me. “They’re dating,” he whispered.
“What?”
Everyone turned to look at us. I started to blush, though I’m not sure whether that actually showed through my mask. Duncan gestured to the group that everything was all right. They returned to their discussion.
“Your father is going out with Ms. Schwartz,” he whispered.
I didn’t answer; I couldn’t think of anything to say.
“Come on, let’s go to my room,” said Duncan after a few moments of silence.
I nodded, since that made as much sense as anything at the moment.
Duncan led us into a shabby corridor that had many doors opening off either side. The fifth door on the left opened into a room with three bunk beds and three battered-looking dressers. Duncan climbed onto one of the top bunks. “Come on up,” he said, motioning to Hoo-Lan and me. We climbed the ladder and joined him. “Remember to go invisible if anyone comes in,” Duncan said to Hoo-Lan as we were settling in.
“Of course!”
“Girls aren’t supposed to hang out in the boys’ rooms,” Duncan explained to me as Hoo-Lan fluffed a pillow.
I had so many questions bouncing around in my brain that I didn’t know where to start. Finally I decided to try for the beginning. “When did you come out of your coma?” I asked Hoo-Lan.
“Shortly before you left the ship. Remember when you fainted in the council chamber?”
“How could I forget it?”
“Well, what caused it was our minds brushing as I started to come around. I was still fairly groggy; delirious, actually. But I knew I was going to be all right—though I didn’t want the council to know it yet. That’s why I gave you that signal when you came to visit me, so you wouldn’t have to worry about me.”
“Signal?”
Hoo-Lan looked surprised. “Didn’t you understand?”
Before he could finish I slapped my forehead as something that had been nagging at the back of my mind for weeks suddenly became clear. “You winked at me!” I cried, remembering how he had slowly opened and closed one eye when I was standing in his room on the New Jersey.
My pleasure at figuring that out was modified by another question. “So has this all been just a big joke to you?” I asked, trying to decide whether I was angry.
“Jokes can be very serious,” said Hoo-Lan, sounding dead serious himself. “On the other hand, most serious things are terribly funny when you look at them from the right angle.”
“Could we skip the philosophy and go straight to the information?”
He shrugged. “I was playing possum, to use an Earth phrase. Reasons? Number one: I did not want to be included in your mission. Number two: I did not want my enemies to know I was still in the game. Later, when I was more fully recovered, I ‘woke up’ long enough to cause some excitement. This gave me a chance to ask a friend to help me with a bit of a deception. I appeared to drift in and out of my coma several times over the next few days, which gave me a chance to make a switch.” He smiled. “There is still something in that bubble back in the ship. And it is pretty comatose. Fortunately, it only looks like me.”
I frowned. “Wouldn’t technology as sophisticated as what you have on the New Jersey immediately detect that you had put something in your place?”
“As technology advances the technology to fool it advances, too. There’s a nice balance in that, don’t you think?”
I nodded, thinking many other things as well. “So when did you come down here?”
“When I heard that Duncan had been taken captive by your police force.”
To my surprise, I felt jealous. Hoo-Lan was my teacher, and I didn’t like the idea that he had spent this time with Duncan.
“Why didn’t you join us?” I asked.
“I was still not ready to let it be known that I was up and about,” said Hoo-Lan. “I certainly didn’t want to have to work out every step of what I did with Kreeblim and Broxholm. Even less did I want Uhrbhighgjououol-lee breathing down my neck. The two of us have never gotten along very well.”
“What did you want to do that you couldn’t do in front of them?”
“I’ve been doing telepathy experiments with Duncan.”
“Are you trying to kill yourself?” I cried.
What I didn’t ask, partly because I was afraid of the answer, was whether he had made contact with Duncan’s brain and survived. I still feared there was something about my brain in particular that had driven him into his coma.
“Peace!” said Hoo-Lan, holding up his hands. “I didn’t take any unnecessary chances. It wasn’t easy, but I restrained myself. No machines this time.”
Duncan spoke up. “As part of the experiments, Hoo-Lan has been helping me learn how to use my brain—teaching me ways to focus my mind and clear my thoughts. That was a relief, since it’s so powerful right now it was driving me crazy.” He smiled, a brave, sad smile. “I think I may be able to cope all right when the brain-fry starts to fade.”
“That’s good,” I said, realizing that Duncan really did seem different, more calm somehow.
“Oh, I know what I wanted to ask you!” he said. “Would you like a poot?”
“What?”
“Do you want a poot? I can make you one. It turns out they don’t mind being split. You just have to give them plenty of salt and water and let them rest for a bit afterwards. I’ve been making new ones for the kids in the shelter.”
“You’re kidding!” I cried. Turning to Hoo-Lan, I asked, “Won’t that cause all kinds of problems?”
“Possibly,” said Hoo-Lan. “Maybe it was a bad idea.”
Duncan shrugged. “I did ask the other kids to keep them a secret.”
I couldn’t believe how calmly the two of them were taking this. I was sure Kreeblim wouldn’t take it that way. In fact, I had a feeling she would be furious.
“How did you end up in this place?” I asked.
“I wanted to observe your old teacher for a while,” replied Hoo-Lan. “I checked around and learned she was working here. So we came here, too. Finding your father was an unexpected bonus.”
“In your opinion!”
“As you will,” said Hoo-Lan calmly. Duncan went to one of the dressers and pulled out a plastic container. Inside was his poot. I wondered how many copies of the thing he had passed out already. Then I wondered if the kids he had given them to were splitting their poots as well.
“How long do they have to rest between—uh—splittings?”
“About half a day, if you don’t keep them in the refrigerator like Kreeblim did,” said Duncan.
Half a day? I did a little mental arithmetic. Divide a poot at noon, and you have two poots. Divide both of those at midnight and you have four. If you split them all again at noon and midnight the next day, you’re up to sixteen. At the end of the next day you would have sixty-four. At the end of the fifth day you would have over a thousand poots. In less than ten days you could have more than a hundred thousand of the things!
My Teacher Flunked the Planet Page 7
