The Green Futures of Tycho

by William Sleator

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  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  EPILOGUE

  Don’t get left behind! - STARSCAPE

  FUTURE SHOCK!

  TOR BOOKS Reader’s Guide - THE GREEN FUTURES OF TYCHO

  Copyright Page

  This book, naturally, is dedicated

  to my brother Tycho

  1

  ONLY A BRONTOSAURUS SAW THE BEINGS drop the thing in the swamp. Once the brontosaurus’s small, slow brain realized the beings were neither edible plants nor dangerous enemies, it forgot about them. And so it did not disturb the thing they left behind.

  For several million years the thing sank down slowly into the swamp. Then an ocean came and covered everything, and the thing lay under the waves for another eighty million years or so. Later on an earthquake turned the ocean bottom into a mountain, and there the thing stayed for more uncounted years as the mountaintop grew round and old and small. Finally a glacier picked it up and carried it for thousands of miles, leaving it behind when the ice melted in the sun. And there the thing remained for many more centuries, quite close to the surface of the earth, miraculously undisturbed.

  Until Tycho Tithonus decided to make a vegetable garden in the backyard. He dug the thing up with his first shovelful of earth.

  2

  IT FELL FROM THE SHOVEL AND LAY GLINTING on the grass, shiny and new and bright as a polished silver spoon. The metallic sheen of its surface caught the morning light and sent it dazzling directly into Tycho’s eyes—or else he might not have noticed it at all.

  He bent over and picked it up, then bounced it casually in his palm. “Weird,” he murmured. But his mind was on tomatoes and zucchini, and this thing was not quite weird enough to distract him for long. He slipped it into his blue jean pocket and plunged the shovel once more into the earth. And promptly forgot about his find.

  3

  TYCHO WAS THE YOUNGEST OF FOUR CHILDREN. His parents, who insisted on being called Bobby and Judy, had named each of their children after a famous person. They had planned what each child would be when he grew up, and the names were supposed to prod the children in the right directions.

  Tycho’s sixteen-year-old brother, Ludwig Tithonus, was named after the great German composer, Ludwig van Beethoven. He had piano lessons and theory lessons and solfeggio lessons and conducting lessons every week. He practiced the piano for three hours every day. He had already composed four piano sonatas, three string quartets, seven nocturnes, nine impromptus, and was now hard at work on an opera about voodoo and zombies.

  Tycho’s fifteen-year-old sister, Tamara Tithonus, was named after the famous Russian dancer, Tamara Karsavina. She went to dancing school for hours every day. At home she slid into splits on the kitchen floor while she talked on the phone. When she lay in bed studying for school, she held her foot behind her ear. She always wore her hair in a bun and talked about dancers named Mischa and Grischa and what injuries they had and how old they were. She was determined to dance Giselle before she was twenty.

  Tycho’s thirteen-year-old brother, Leonardo Tithonus, was named after the great Italian artist and inventor, Leonardo da Vinci. He took life-drawing lessons, and mechanical drawing, and painting and design. He was given a new notebook every month, which he quickly filled with exquisite sketches and brilliant ideas for mechanical devices as well as electronic circuitry. He had three easels, each of which always had a painting in progress on it. He was now engaged in covering the walls and ceiling of his room with a monumental mural depicting junior high school life.

  And Tycho, who was eleven, was named after the famous Danish astronomer, Tycho Brahe. Tycho thought astronomy was all right. He liked lying in the backyard at night and looking at the stars. He also liked lying there in the day and looking at the trees. When he was younger he had liked puppets, and they bought him puppets. Then he liked dinosaurs, and they gave him books about dinosaurs, but now he never looked at them. Now he liked plants. He would not take any lessons after school.

  His parents, and his brothers and sister, had never liked him very much.

  4

  “HEY, TYCHO! LET ME SEE THAT THING YOU found.”

  Plump Leonardo plodded over to the vegetable plot, panting slightly, his glasses fogged.

  “What thing?” Tycho said placidly, continuing to turn over the earth in a pleasant, steady rhythm.

  “A metal thing you picked up. I saw you put it in your pocket. Let me see it.” Leonardo planted himself directly in the path of Tycho’s shovel and glared at him threateningly. But the threat didn’t mean very much, since Tycho had been growing quickly and was now two inches taller than his older brother, though he did weigh a good deal less.

  “You’re standing where I want to dig,” Tycho said. “Will you please move?”

  “‘You’re standing where I want to dig,’” mimicked Tamara, who had been doing piqué turns across the lawn. She stumbled to a halt beside Leonardo.

  “No, he’s digging where I want to stand,” Leonardo corrected her. “And he won’t let me see the thing he found.”

  “Why don’t you go paint something and let me make my garden,” Tycho said, moving away from Leonardo and starting to turn over a new row.

  “Garden?” Tamara said, laughing. “He’ll just dig up the lawn and then forget about it in a week and go on to something else. I always finish what I start.”

  “I want to see that thing you found,” said Leonardo, making a quick, awkward hop and settling his full weight down onto the shovel.

  “I don’t remember finding anything,” said Tycho, not letting go of the shovel. Now he really did remember the thing he had found, but he felt a curious reluctance to let anyone else see it. Usually he did not lie, even to his brothers and sister. But keeping the thing to himself seemed more important than telling the truth.

  “What’s going on back here?” demanded Ludwig, striding authoritatively toward them. He was taller than Tycho, and skinnier, and had shoulder length, black hair that was always falling into his eyes. He folded his arms across his thin chest and stood slouching over the three of them.

  “He won’t let me see the thing he found, even though I saw it first,” said Leonardo, beginning to whimper.

  “He’s making big, ugly holes in the lawn,” said Tamara.

  Tycho said nothing.

  “All right, all right,” said Ludwig, snapping back his head to shake the hair out of his eyes. “One thing at a time. What’s this with the digging, Tycho?”

  “I’m making a garden,” Tycho explained patiently. “I have all the seeds. You have to do it in the spring. And Judy said it was okay.”

  “Well, if she said it was okay to waste a Saturday morning like that …” said Ludwig, shrugging, “I suppose you should get off his shovel, Leo.”

  “
Well, but I saw the thing first,” said Leonardo, sniffling as he backed down. He was very emotional. “I saw it first but he picked it up and kept it and won’t even let us look at it.” He took off his glasses and rubbed the tears out of his eyes.

  “Yeah,” said Tamara. “I saw it too. I always share things.”

  Now Tycho couldn’t restrain himself. “I don’t know what they mean, they saw it first,” he said. “It’s just a piece of metal I dug up with my shovel. It’s no big deal. How could they have seen it?”

  “He’s lying!” shouted Leonardo, crying in earnest now. “I was just coming out of the house and there was this thing there and I said—”

  “Hand it over, Tycho,” interrupted Ludwig quietly, holding out his hand.

  Now there was nothing to be done but show it to them. Perhaps they would lose interest when they saw how ordinary it was, and he wouldn’t have to let anyone else touch it. Reluctantly, Tycho drew the thing out of his pocket and held it up for them all to see.

  It was nothing more than a silver oval, about the size and shape of a small egg. At first it had seemed completely plain, with no markings on it at all. Now, studying it closely, Tycho could just make out a series of thin, barely visible lines etched on one end, that looked like dials. And the opposite end now appeared to be a slightly different color from the rest. It seemed to have a faint greenish tint to it.

  Ludwig reached for it. Tycho squeezed his hand shut and whipped it behind his back. He took a step backwards.

  “I said, hand it over,” said Ludwig, taking a step forward and irritably snapping his head, shaking back his hair.

  “No,” said Tycho, not knowing why, only knowing that he must not give it up. “It’s mine. I found it. Leave me alone.” He took another backward step.

  “It’s not like you to be so stubborn,” said Ludwig. “You’re usually such a pushover. Little wishy-washy.”

  “Wishy-washy, wishy-washy,” chorused the others.

  “Come on, kids,” ordered Ludwig. “If we all go together, we can get it away from him easy.”

  Tycho’s back was now up against the wooden fence at the end of the yard. On all other sides he was surrounded. They moved closer. “Okay, kids, ready,” said Ludwig. “On your mark, get set … go!”

  Tycho braced himself against the wall. Involuntarily, his hand squeezed the thing, his thumb pressing down against the green end.

  They jumped at him.

  And vanished.

  Tycho cried out, feeling faint, and sank down to the ground, his back still against the wall. They had simply blinked out of existence, silently, like blown-out candle flames. And the whole sky had become instantly darker, as though a gigantic cloud had suddenly blotted out the sun.

  “Oh, no,” groaned Tycho, closing his eyes, terrified and bewildered. “Oh, no.”

  “So there you are, Tycho! Where on earth have you been?”

  Tycho blinked. Bobby and Judy reclined in lawn chairs in the middle of the yard, sipping cocktails, as they sometimes did in the evening. And the sky, in fact, was not cloudy at all. It was orange, like a sunset. The sound of Ludwig practicing Chopin floated out across the lawn.

  “I see you didn’t get very far with your garden,” Judy said, standing up and gesturing at the holes in the lawn and the discarded shovel. “You promised me you would stick with it. And then you just disappeared all day.”

  “But,” said Tycho, struggling to his feet. “But I … I was just …” He shook his head and gave up. Nothing was making sense. He was barely aware of the silver egg, warm now in his palm. Without thinking he slipped it into his left pocket.

  Bobby and Judy were both moving toward him now. Bobby was shaking his head. “Can’t you stick with anything?” he said. “All those gardening books and packages of seeds. And then you dig three holes and just run away. The kids told us all about it. Now you better fill up those holes and put the shovel away and go memorize your constellations before dinner.”

  Tycho had no idea at all what had happened, and so he wisely made no attempt to explain. All he knew was that somehow the whole day seemed to have passed in an instant, without his knowing it. Had he fainted and been lying unobserved beside the fence for eight hours? But that was crazy, just as crazy as his brothers and sister vanishing. It was going to take some hard thinking to figure it all out. And he was still a bit frightened. But in the meantime, he had had some unfinished business. Silently, he picked up the shovel and began to dig.

  “Isn’t it a little late for that now?” said Judy, her hands on her hips.

  “Please, just let me finish this,” Tycho said. “I’m sorry about today. I just … I really do want to make a garden. I mean it.”

  They sighed, and shrugged, and reluctantly let him dig, and told him to wash his hands before he came in to eat. They went into the house.

  Tycho kept on digging and thinking. He knew there had to be a logical explanation for what had happened. All he had to do was put the pieces together, like a jigsaw puzzle. He was so engrossed in his thoughts that he did not notice the piano music coming to an abrupt halt, and soon after that three pairs of footsteps padding across the lawn.

  “So you decided to come back after all.”

  “Running away like that only proves you were wrong.”

  “What makes you think you have time to make that stupid garden now?”

  Tycho pushed the shovel into the earth, rested his foot on it, and gazed speculatively at them. He too, had some questions to ask.

  “How did you get away from us like that, anyway?” asked Ludwig, squinting at him through his long bangs.

  If they knew he was confused, and trying to get the answers from them, they wouldn’t tell him a thing. He was going to have to be clever about it. “Oh, it was just a trick I learned, in a book I read about guerilla warfare. I guess it must have worked. How did it look to you?”

  “You just disappeared,” said Leonardo, sounding a little frightened. “We were asking you some questions, and suddenly you weren’t there. You went out like a light. We couldn’t find you anywhere. So then we just gave up and went back to our projects. And finally Bobby and Judy came in and told us you were back. Come on, how did you do it?”

  From their point of view, he had vanished. The other difference was that he had skipped a whole day, whereas their day had gone on as usual. That had to mean something.

  “Yeah, how did you do it?” demanded Tamara.

  “It’s really simple,” he said. “Maybe I’ll tell you someday, if you’re nice.”

  “But where did you go all day, anyway?” Ludwig was still squinting at him suspiciously.

  “Oh, nowhere. Just around,” said Tycho, beginning to dig again.

  “Well, what about that thing you found?” said Ludwig. “I want to see it now.”

  That thing! He had almost forgotten about it again. The metal thing he had dug up, like an egg, with the dials at one end.

  “Yeah, give it to me,” Leonardo said shrilly. “I saw it first.”

  The silver egg he had been squeezing when they had jumped him and then vanished, and suddenly morning had become evening …

  “If you don’t hand it over now, I’ll have to tell Bobby and Judy,” Ludwig said.

  Now the pieces of the puzzle were falling into place. And the solution was incredible, fantastic, marvelous! Was it possible that the egg had carried him eight hours ahead in time, from morning to evening in an instant?

  “Oh,” said Tycho. He shrugged. “You’re still thinking about that stupid thing? It was just an old empty lipstick tube. You want it? I guess I still have it.” He reached into his right-hand pocket and fished around. Then he grinned sheepishly and pulled the pocket inside out, displaying a huge hole. “I guess it must have fallen out sometime while I was gone. Sorry. It wasn’t anything, really.” He started digging again.

  “You idiot!”

  “But if it wasn’t anything,” said Ludwig, “then how come you were so determined to keep it away fr
om us?”

  “Well … Just because … I don’t know. I mean—”

  “Children! Time to eat!” Judy called from the back porch.

  “Oops, I have to go wash my hands,” said Tycho, and he darted away from them. As he sprinted toward the house, he could feel the silver egg still warm in his left-hand pocket. After dinner he would get away somewhere by himself. And then he would test the egg, and find out if the fantastic solution was really true.

  And if it was true, nothing would ever be the same again.

  5

  AT SUPPER, LUDWIG TOLD BOBBY AND JUDY that Tycho had found a strange object in the backyard which he would not show to anyone. Then they discussed selfishness, and how in a family it is necessary to share things. Leonardo had been reading a psychology book and told them that the youngest child in the family was often the most spoiled. All five of them agreed. Then they discussed responsibility, and how running away from duty was a sign of weakness. Tamara pointed out that she never ran away from duty. At that point Tycho said that he had to finish digging his garden and excused himself.

  He dug until it was too dark to see. He was dying to test out his theory about the egg; but every time he looked back at the house, somebody was watching him. And he could not test it until he was unobserved.

  After he had put the shovel away and hung up his jacket and washed his hands, he went to his room on the second floor. There was no lock on the door, and when he closed it, he thought of barricading it with his dresser. But closing the door was suspicious enough. To barricade it would be an invitation for the others to break in.

  He sat down at his desk and pulled the egg out of his pocket. Under the desk light, the markings on one end were clearer than ever and remarkably complex. And the other end was not merely tinted, but had a distinct greenish glow. It was odd that he had not noticed the glow from the beginning.

  Suddenly the door burst open, and he only barely managed to push the egg under a pile of papers. Fortunately, his desk was a complete mess.