by Maggie Allen
The 2016 Young Explorer’s Adventure Guide
Edited by Sean and Corie Weaver
© 2016 by Corie J. Weaver. All Rights Reserved
Smashwords Edition
ISBN: 978-1-940924-13-7
Published by Dreaming Robot Press
1214 San Francisco Avenue
Las Vegas, NM 87701
www.dreamingrobotpress.com
Formatted by EK Formatting
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of these authors’ rights. Thank you for respecting the hard work of these authors.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to locales, events, business establishments, or actual persons—living or dead—is entirely coincidental.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to our families for putting up with all the madness, our authors for believing in our dream, and our friends for helping spread the word. We’d also ask for a round of applause for the new additions to our editorial team of Amanda Coffin and Nicole Brugger-Dethmers. Together, I think we’ve done something amazing.
Permissions
The Rum Cake Runner has been published previously at Crossed Genres Magazine and podcasted at Cast of Wonders. Reprinted by permission of the author.
Lunar Camp has been published previously in Athena’s Daughters. Reprinted by permission of the author.
Red Dust and Dancing Horses was previously published in Stupefying Stories. Reprinted by permission of the author.
Last year we had a crazy idea: an anthology of science fiction stories for kids, with a focus on diversity and representation - but above all, great story telling.
Some fabulous authors got on board - and fabulous backers - and last autumn, the 2015 Young Explorer’s Adventure Guide became a reality.
We’ve been getting great feedback ever since:
“I just wanted to let you know that I received my print copy last night. I backed the book for my 6-year-old daughter. My expectation was that we would need to hold on to it for a few years. I had to pry it out of her hands to get her to go to bed. The going is a bit slow, in part because the stories are the most advanced she has read, but in part because she is so excited she has to stop regularly to explain to me what is going on in the story. She has declared it her favorite book.” ~Gary D.
“My daughter is on the couch reading her copy, which I handed to her approximately three minutes ago. She is engrossed. Thank you. :)” ~Matthew McFarland
“Entertaining, varied and enrapturing - my young wards for the weekend have positively devoured the book, and I’ll admit enjoying it myself once they very reluctantly set it down. I really hope Young Explorer’s Adventure Guide becomes a series. :)” ~Andro Berkovic
Who are we to argue?
So welcome to the second year of the Young Explorer’s Adventure Guide, and another amazing collection of stories.
Corie and Sean Weaver
Table of Contents
The Aliens and Me, Nancy Kress
Red Dust and Dancing Horses, Beth Cato
Cool Things That Happen On Venus, Cori Cunningham
The Worms Won’t Feed Themselves, You Know, Deborah Walker
Laddie Come Home, Curtis C. Chen
Blood Test, Elliotte Rusty Harold
Lunar Camp, Maggie Allen
Clockwork Dancer, Brad Hafford
When Hope Dies, Pam L. Wallace
Child of Luna, Ralan Conley
Warboots, Eric Del Carlo
The Rum Cake Runner, Jessi Cole Jackson
Leafheart, Anne E. Johnson
The Beach, Mike Barretta
Walk, Run, Fly, Amy Griswold
Luckless Tin Elephant, Angeline Woon
The Sugimori Sisters and the Time Machine Conflict, Brigid Collins
Alien Gifts, Sherry D. Ramsey
View from Above, Jeanne Kramer-Smyth
Cap’n Harry and the Pirates, Austin Hackney
Where You Want To Be, Jeannie Warner
The Hope of Astraea, Wendy Lambert
The Aliens and Me
Nancy Kress
Nancy Kress is the author of thirty-two books, including twenty-five novels, four collections of short stories, and three books on writing. Her work has won six Nebulas, two Hugos, a Sturgeon, and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award. Most recent works are the Nebula-nominated Yesterday’s Kin (Tachyon, 2014) and the forthcoming Best of Nancy Kress (Subterranean, September, 2015). In addition to writing, Kress often teaches at various venues around the country and abroad; in 2008 she was the Picador visiting lecturer at the University of Leipzig. Kress lives in Seattle with her husband, writer Jack Skillingstead, and Cosette, the world’s most spoiled toy poodle.
What do you say to an alien?
I looked at the alien and all I could think of was “Hi.” But what was in my mind was: This meeting is really stupid. Maybe the alien thought so too, because he didn’t say anything at all. Both of us just stared past each other, out the clear dome, at the stars shining in a black sky, while the cameras recorded on and on like something was actually happening here.
But I should back up and tell you how I got to be standing on the moon staring at a silent alien in the first place.
My name is Nia. I’m ten years old. I used to live on Alpha Colony on the moon, and then Mom, Dad, and I moved to Earth, which I hated at first, only then I made friends and got to like it. I had a new school and we got a new dog and my bratty little cousin moved in with us for a year while his parents were on an expedition to some asteroid someplace. The point here is that I was settled. Alice and Kezia and Maria and I built a clubhouse in the woods. I joined a soccer league. I won the fourth-grade spelling bee, spelling “assertive.” It was a sort of lucky guess because I never heard of “assertive” and didn’t know what it meant, but I spelled it right and so I won. A-S-S-E-R-T-I-V-E. After that everybody came to me to spell hard words for them. Sometimes at night I studied the dictionary on my tablet, so I could be ready. Life was good.
Then aliens landed on the moon.
For months, from January till June, everybody got hysterical about the aliens. What did they want? Were they going to hurt Earth? How weird did they look?
It turned out they looked a little weird but not too much. Pictures were on the TV and Internet. They were kind of blueish and bald, but they had a head and legs and arms and stuff, like humans, although they also had long skinny tails, and their hands ended in six tentacles. They didn’t hurt anybody, they just wanted to be friends, which sounded reasonable to me. Adults, though, aren’t always reasonable. A whole lot of them kept thinking that the aliens were just pretending to be friends so they could think up some nasty plot later on.
That’s called “duplicity.” D-U-P-L-I-C-I-T-Y.
My parents didn’t think the aliens had duplicity. Mom and Dad are both scientists so they were in on a lot of high-level talks about the aliens, like with the president and stuff. Well, Mom was. She’s really important. Dad stayed home to work on his science, which he could do on computers and which something to do with math. To be honest. I get along a lot better with Dad, which was probably why he was the one to tell me about the plan to unsettle my life. Again.
“Nia,” he said while I was looking hopelessly around my bedroom. I was supposed to be cleaning it before I was allowed to go hiking with Alice. Cleaning isn’t really my thing. It all just gets dirty again anyway. My plan was to shove everything under the bed,
but it was already full of stuff I’d shoved under there the last time I’d cleaned.
Dad said, “A great opportunity has opened up for you. For our whole family, but especially for you.”
“What?” I said.
“How would you like us to move back to the moon?”
That hit me so hard I had to sit down. Move back to the moon! That was all I’d wanted when we first came to Earth. But now I’d made friends and summer vacation was just starting and three of my best friends on Alpha Colony no longer lived there. Katie had moved to China and Jack to Argentina. Rosa’s family had gone really far away, to the new colony on Mars.
I blurted out, “But I’m settled here!”
“I know. But you always loved Alpha Colony.”
“There are aliens on the moon now!”
“Well, yes. That’s the point, actually.” Dad ran his fingers through his hair, which was getting really thin on top. He only does that when he’s agitated.
A-G-I-T-A-T-E-D. It means “upset.”
“You already know that the United Nations has sent a lot of scientists up to the moon to talk to the aliens. We’re making a dictionary of their language and learning to speak it. Sort of. But it’s hard because it uses both sounds and hand signals, so that if you say a word with one tentacle raised it means one thing, but if you raise a different tentacle, it means something else.”
“But,” I pointed out reasonably, “humans don’t have tentacles.”
“Well, that’s part of the problem. We’re using fingers but they have one more tentacle than we have fingers.”
“What’s the rest of the problem?” I asked. A strange feeling had started to grow in my belly, part excitement and part fear. Somehow, this was going to involve me.
“The aliens have made a request. Nia, do you know what a ‘window of opportunity’ is?”
“No.” How could a window have an opportunity? Opportunities meant you got to do something, and windows pretty much don’t do anything. They just sit there.
Dad said, “A window of opportunity means a time when you can do something, and after that, you can’t. You’re too old or it’s too late.”
“Oh,” I said. “Like ballet. If you don’t start when you’re a kid, you can’t get your feet up on toe.” Kezia takes ballet. She told me.
“Yes! That’s it exactly. The aliens—they never ask for anything, but now they have. They want some human children to play with their children, to learn to speak their language and understand their culture in a natural way. There’s a window of opportunity for learning language fluently and without an accent, and it closes around twelve years old. That’s why Maria’s mother speaks English with a Spanish accent; she didn’t come to the United States until she was a grown-up.”
“No,” I said. And then, desperately, “I’m too old! Get some younger kids. Get Jordan!” Jordan is my bratty cousin, and he’s only seven.
“Jordan is too young. The human kids have to be old enough to not be afraid, to report on what they learn, and to understand the mission here. But still be under twelve.”
I said, “Do I have to?”
“Of course not, Nia. Nobody is going to make you play with aliens if you don’t want to. This is completely your choice.”
Really? Usually nobody gives me a choice about anything. It was always: Clean your room, Nia. Do your homework, Nia. Move to Earth, Nia.
But…
“Mission” sounded cool—sort of important. I’d be a girl with a mission.
Still…
I said, “How long would we go for?”
“Six months. Then back to Earth.”
“How many kids are going with me?”
“That’s not clear yet.”
“How many alien kids are there?”
“I don’t know, really.”
Dad didn’t have a lot of information. I said, “Will you be there?”
“Of course. Are you worried about safety? There will be adults present every minute, and cameras will record everything. You’ll be safe.”
“Well… can I talk it over with Alice and Kezia and Maria?”
“Are you really proposing that a mission of interstellar significance be decided by a group of ten-year-old girls?”
“Yes,” I said, to see what he would answer. Dad ran his hand through his hair again. He should stop doing that. I think that’s why his hair getting so thin.
He said, “Tell me your answer tomorrow, at the latest,”
Wow! I really do get to decide!
“Assertive” means “in charge.”
Alice and Kezia and Maria all said that of course I should go talk to alien kids on the moon, as long as I came back in six months because they would miss me. We all hugged and Alice, who gets emotional, cried a little. We all promised to be best friends forever. Then we went for ice cream.
So now I was standing in the park under the moon dome. The sky above the dome was black, thick with stars. Alpha Colony lay underground, beneath my feet. Adults and cameras were off to one side behind some benches—like that was supposed to make them invisible. On the other side of the little park stood some aliens. Maybe they were the alien kid’s parents. Nobody told me. The alien kid, whose name is H’raf, or something like that (you blow out air through your lips real fast, say “raf,” and raise up your left pinkie) and I stared at each other through the faceplates of our space suits.
Nobody told me I’d have to wear a space suit. Actually, I didn’t have to, because the air inside the dome is just like Earth’s. But H’raf and the other aliens breathe some different air, and it wouldn’t be fair if humans were out of s-suits while aliens had to be in theirs. So I wore the stupid s-suit, which wasn’t uncomfortable except for the big tank of oxygen on my back like a backpack full of rocks.
Actually, there was a lot of stuff nobody told me. Like: There was only one alien kid. Like: There was only one human kid too—me. Nobody else’s parents would let them go first. What did they think the aliens would do now that they didn’t do before? Blow us all up because now Nia Philips was there? Sometimes adults just don’t think.
So there I was, feeling dumb because all the cameras and watching people made “playing” impossible. So I said, “Hi.” I said it first in English and then in alien, which sounds sort of like blowing your nose and jumping up and down at the same time. There was a dictionary of alien words we humans had learned so far, and I memorized part of it on the way up to the moon.
H’raf smiled. At least I hoped it was a smile and not a snarl. He kind of twisted his blue lips, showing some teeth. Then he said nothing.
“How are you?” I asked, first in English and then in alien. Another memorized sentence.
He smiled again and still said nothing. Did nothing. Just stood there like a blue moon rock with teeth.
And it went on and on like that. I asked if he liked the moon. I asked if he liked to jump. I jumped, to show him. I whistled for Luna, and my robodog came running from where Mom was holding her. I made Luna sit and roll over and I said “This is my dog” in English. I asked if H’raf had a dog. I brought over a soccer ball and showed him how I can kick it. You can kick a ball really, really high and far on the moon, and I managed to hit one of the cameras, which wasn’t good because it broke.
Mom said, “Never mind the camera, Nia. Just keep playing.”
This was not playing. This was not anything. H’raf didn’t answer my questions. He didn’t kick the soccer ball. He ignored Luna, which got me mad. Luna is adorable!
Mom saw that I was getting mad and she ended the “play date” before I could ask my next question to H’raf, which was, “What the devil is wrong with you?”
That would not be a tactful thing to say.
T-A-C-T-F-U-L. It means being careful not to upset other people.
“It was awful,” I said to Jordan, my bratty little cousin. I was talking to him only because my last two friends on Alpha Colony, Jillian and Ben, were in school, which is where I wish I
was. Jordan was home from school because he had a cold, or was faking a cold. Only this wasn’t “home” and Jordan was no good to talk to.
He had brought his ant farm with him from Earth. Mom wasn’t going to let him because animals brought up to the moon are supposed to be approved by a committee, which takes forever. We couldn’t bring Bandit, Dad’s dog, but Mom got special permission for the ant farm because the ants are sealed inside a box of unbreakable plastic. Although I think she got permission because Jordan threw one of his horrible temper tantrums, lying on the floor and kicking his heels in the air and screaming until his face turned bright red. If I behaved that way, I would get the longest time-out in the history of the universe. But Jordan? Nooo… he got to bring his ant farm because his parents were gone for six months and he used that same excuse to get away with murder.
The ant farm, however, was kind of interesting. The plastic box was long and thin so you can see the tunnels the ants make. The box was filled with colored sand that shifted into different patterns when the worker ants dug. The feeder ants scurried along the tunnels, carrying bits of the food that Dad and Jordan put in the top of the box twice a day. At the bottom was a nest where the queen ant laid eggs. Jordan could watch it for hours, which was a good thing because, otherwise he’s a pain in the butt.
“Jordan,” I said. “Did you hear me?”
“No,” he said, which made no sense. If he answered, he must have heard me.
I didn’t like my cousin. I didn’t like H’raf either. Why couldn’t he at least answer me when I spoke to him? He was not tactful. And it wasn’t fair that I had to be.
Then it got even more unfair, because Mom and Dad came into my room, looking upset. Mom said, “Nia, did you say anything to H’raf that the microphones didn’t pick up?”
