by David Lubar
The thick feeling was spreading. She hoped someone would come by and help her.
Time passed. Bethany suspected she might have napped for a while. She tried to look around, but her head didn’t seem to move.
Everything looks green.
It was almost as if a thin layer of greenness covered her eyes. She could see her legs stretched out in front of her. The skin of her legs, below her shorts, was green and fuzzy. So was the hem of her shorts.
She dozed again. A voice woke her. It came from less than a yard away, but it sounded distant and muted.
Finally, someone who’ll help me.
“You’d think that people who care enough to recycle would care enough to put things in the containers and not just dump them on the ground,” the man said. He was wearing a T-shirt with BRENTSFORD COUNTY RECYCLING DEPT. written on the front.
Bethany thought about the broken water bottle. She was sorry she’d left it on the ground. She didn’t even know ceramics could be recycled. She thought they weren’t considered glass.
The man leaned toward her. “Looks like it’s up to me.”
I’m saved.
“Here we go.” He lifted her. As she rose, she saw a sign on the container she’d rested against. YARD WASTE.
The man dropped her inside.
“Making the Earth a little better place, one small piece at a time” he said, his voice cheerful and satisfied, as he walked away, leaving Bethany with the lawn clippings, pruned branches, and other bits of greenery.
FIRST CONTACT
The alien spaceship landed in my backyard. Landed is a bit too gentle a word for the way the football-shaped craft slammed into the ground and dug a twenty-foot-long trench. Backyard is a bit too small a word for the farmland that stretches for hundreds of acres behind my house.
Dad was out at the feed store. Mom had gone to the vet’s over in Sutter to pick up some medicine for one of our horses. So it was just me and my little brother, Marty, at home when the ship landed. We were out front, in the rocking chairs with a satisfying pile of curled shavings at our feet. I’d been showing Marty how to whittle the bark off a stick with a jackknife without cutting off any fingers. The trick is to always cut away from your hand. He was getting the hang of it pretty well when the crash shook the house.
“Whoa—what was that?” I shouted. I folded my knife and rushed straight through the house to the backyard. I got all the way to the back porch before I slid to a halt, my mouth wide open.
“Spaceship,” Marty said. He’s pretty smart, and he watches a lot of movies.
“Looks like it,” I said.
From what I could see, the spaceship was buried about a third of the way down. At least it hadn’t wiped out any of the corn. Of course, if it had landed fifty yards south of where it hit, it would have wiped out me and Marty.
“Think there are aliens inside?” Marty asked.
“Maybe. But they could be a bit shook up.” I tried to imagine what it would feel like to be on the wrong side of that landing. Unless they had some sort of high-tech shock-absorption system, they had to be a bit rattled. “Let’s wait a couple minutes before we start thumping on it.”
We waited. I thought about knocking on the outside of the ship, but I’d seen too many movies where the first person the aliens notice gets vaporized with an energy beam. After a while, I heard a scraping sound. Then a hatch flipped open on top. Something peeked over the rim from inside, then climbed out the opening.
“Yeah,” I said, “that’s an alien.”
He—or it—had one thick leg that branched into four parts about midway to the ground. Those parts ended in rippling things at the bottom. The body was round, and just slightly flattened in front. It had two arms, almost no neck, and a head that was sort of cylinder shaped. The hands were empty. Good. No ray guns or mind-control beams. It was wearing some kind of long shirt that was white with large black splotches on it.
I wondered how we were going to communicate. Is there a universal hand signal that means “Your landing skills stink”? Maybe it wouldn’t be necessary. If they could get here from another star system, they had to have some amazing technology. I nodded, smiled, then pointed to myself and said, “I am Thad.”
The eyes blinked. The alien looked at me and said, “Hello, Thad. I am Jreglitz. What’s up, dude?”
“You speak English?”
“We listened to your television and radio broadcasts while we approached.” He stepped away from the hatch and slid down the side of the ship, all the way to the ground. A puff of black dust drifted from his body when he came to a stop. Six more aliens just like him followed. Their clothes were covered with some sort of black powder.
“You must be quick learners,” I said. “How long was your trip?”
He started to speak, then turned toward one of the others and whispered something. They had a quick discussion. “Seven thousand of your years,” he said.
“Seven thousand? That’s like forever. How’d you manage that?” I asked. I hate when I have to wait five minutes for one of my shows to start, or two minutes for something to heat up in the microwave. Waiting seven thousand years would be unbearable, even if I had a ton of good books and video games to keep me busy.
“We slept a lot,” he said. “It helped pass the time.”
I looked at the ship. “So you don’t have any kind of hyperspeed engine, or warp drive?”
“No. Our efforts in that direction have all failed. We were hoping you Earthlings would have developed something like that by the time we arrived. Otherwise, our return trip will be equally long. We have seen your space movies, and you seem to have many advanced types of technology.”
“What kind of fuel did you use?” I asked. Maybe they at least had some sort of nuclear thing going. Better yet, they could have some totally new form of energy that we hadn’t discovered, yet. This could change the world.
“Coal,” he said.
“Coal?” I asked.
“Coal.” He patted his chest, sending up another black cloud of dust. “We needed a lot of it. It’s heavy, but it’s cheap. We used to use wood, but coal is so much more advanced.”
I looked over at Marty. “Anything you want to ask them about?”
“You think they have some kind of cool weapon we could try?…”
“They use coal to crawl between the stars at an agonizingly slow pace,” I said. “They probably fight with sticks and rocks. I suspect they’d be terrified if I showed them my laser pointer.”
“Then I can’t think of anything to ask them,” he said.
“Me neither.” I checked my watch. Our favorite show, Space Cadets Conquer the Universe, was on in two minutes. I definitely didn’t want to miss that.
“Can you take us to your leader?” Jreglitz asked.
I headed for the door. “Sure. Later. We’ll be back in a little while. You don’t mind waiting, do you?” There really didn’t seem to be any rush.
“We’re very good at that,” Jreglitz said, taking a seat on the ground.
“Excellent.” I went inside with Marty and turned on the TV, eager for some real alien excitement.
BARK LIKE A DUCK
Julie suspected something was up the instant Mrs. Lahasca bounced into the classroom. “Boys and girls,” the teacher said, ringing her favorite little bell to get their attention, “I have some absolutely unbelievable news.”
Eighteen pairs of eyes turned toward their teacher. Eighteen pairs of lips began whispering and exchanging guesses. “Maybe we’re going on a trip,” Julie said to Kris, who sat at the desk to her right. “That would be fun.”
“Hope so,” Kris whispered back.
“Class!” Mrs. Lahasca tinkled the bell a bit harder and waited. Finally, when the whispering settled down from full sentences to single words, she continued. “We have been chosen, just us out of all the schools in Pennsylvania, to become a test site for the new Rubinsky Immersion Method.”
The joy and anticipation drained from
Julie. She could hear the capital letters in her teacher’s voice. She waited for the rest of the news.
Mrs. Lahasca seemed to be struggling to spew the words out rapidly enough to convey the magnitude of her enthusiasm. “It started in California, and now they’re ready to share it with the rest of the world. Think of it, the Rubinsky Immersion Method. History will never be the same. No more boring memorization. No more facts that have no meaning. We are going to live the history.”
“Cool,” Julie said. Her own enthusiasm sprang back to life. She imagined what it would be like, and wondered if they would be getting costumes. As her fantasies played out in her mind, she thought she heard her teacher saying something about animals.
“What was that?” she whispered to Kris.
Kris just shook her head and said, “No, she’s kidding.”
Julie turned her attention back to the teacher. As she listened, she realized that Mrs. Lahasca was indeed talking about animals.
“Now, this is very complicated, and will only make real sense to someone who has studied education,” the teacher said, grinning a bit. “Rubinsky, who holds degrees in education, history, psychology, and agriculture, has determined that the true experience of history is best viewed by the animals who are observing the people, since they are impartial. That means they haven’t already formed an opinion. They are unbiased. And we, using the Rubinsky Immersion Method, will emulate the animals.”
“Emulate?” Julie asked out loud.
Mrs. Lahasca, in her enthusiasm, allowed the interruption. “Yes, we will play the roles of the relevant animals. As we study the Pilgrims, we will see them through the eyes of sheep and geese. We will view the Revolutionary War through the eyes of the horses. Imagine—for the first time since the dawn of education, we will learn history as it was meant to be learned.”
Billy Mitchell raised his hand and squirmed the way boys do when they want to be called on.
“Yes, Billy, what is it?”
“Can I be a dog?”
The teacher smiled, as if this were a reasonable request. “You will get to be all kinds of animals. We’ll all get a chance to be many things.” She lifted a box onto her desk. “Now, for a start, we will all be sheep.” She pointed to Julie. “Would you please pass out a sheep kit to each student.”
Julie nodded. Sheep kit? she wondered. She moved along the aisles, handing each student a large envelope labeled POST PLYMOUTH SHEEP SIMULATION DEVICES—RUBINSKY NUMBER HA7-35.A. When she was done, Julie sat and opened her own pack. It contained a piece of wool on a strap, earmuffs, and special eyeglasses.
She followed the instructions that her teacher read from the manual. The muffs and glasses were supposed to let her hear and see the world the way a sheep would. The wool was for her to touch and hold whenever she wasn’t feeling sheepish.
While Julie and her classmates crawled on the floor and made baaaaaa sounds, Mrs. Lahasca walked among them, carrying cardboard cutouts of famous Pilgrims, and made conversations, doing all the voices herself. Julie suspected her teacher wasn’t really very good with voices, but the way the earmuffs muffled everything, it was hard to tell.
By the end of the day, Julie had sore knees and a dislike of wool. By the end of the week, she was certain she’d gag if anyone in her presence used anything containing lanolin.
The next week, she got to be a cow. The week after that, she was a pig. Somewhere along the line, Julie decided to become a vegetarian.
Finally, after the class had received a month of intense instruction, Mrs. Lahasca announced that it was time for a test. “Rubinsky believes that information should be thoroughly absorbed before any testing. But the time has come.”
The class groaned as the teacher handed out the tests. Julie looked at the first question: “Name three influential Pilgrim leaders.”
She picked up her pen. That’s easy, she thought. Baa, she wrote. Then Baaaa, and Baaaaa.
Julie zipped through the test. She realized that, while the method might have been a bit uncomfortable, it had taught her a lot. And she was really looking forward to the next session. They were all going to learn about the Monitor and the Merrimack, the two ironclad Civil War battle ships, from the viewpoint of fish.
THE RAREST OF MONSTERS
Most kids are afraid of the guy who runs the used book store, because he always looks angry. I don’t like him, but he doesn’t scare me. So I go there when I’m looking for something to read. I was searching through the paperback horror novels Saturday afternoon, down on my knees, going through the bottom shelf where they stash the cheapest ones. That’s how I ended up following Grungy home. That’s what we call him. Grungy. I don’t know his real name. I don’t care. I didn’t even know he could talk until he came into the shop.
“Anything?” he asked the owner.
“Just got a couple boxes from an estate sale,” the owner said, pointing toward the back of the shop. “Haven’t even sorted them yet.”
Grungy scurried down the aisle to the back. As always, winter or summer, he was wearing a stained, ripped coat and heavy work boots. It was the middle of August, so the coat definitely wasn’t a good idea. I was wearing a T-shirt, and I was sweating. But Grungy didn’t seem to notice the heat. I ignored him as I continued to dig among the shelves. About five minutes later, I heard a gasp, like he’d been kicked in the stomach. Then I heard Grungy mutter, “I never thought I’d find it.”
He stopped talking after that, but I could hear him breathing real fast, like he was super excited about something and trying to calm down.
After a while, he took the book up front. “How much?” I noticed he didn’t put it down on the counter. I could tell he didn’t want to let go of it for even a second.
“Rare Monsters,” the owner said, as if weighing the value of the words. He named a price—a very high price. It was my turn to gasp, but Grungy didn’t even flinch.
He pulled a wallet from his pocket and paid for the book, handing over as much as I’d made all last summer. Then he left the shop. I followed. I didn’t have any plan. I wasn’t going to snatch the book from him—though I have to admit that idea did come to mind before I pushed it away. But I wasn’t ready to accept that the mystery would remain unsolved. I had to find out what would make a book cost that much.
It turned out Grungy lived in a part of town we called the Wrecks. The houses were falling apart, if they were even standing. I was half a block away from him when I watched him go inside. I waited a moment, then went around the block, cut through some yards, and crept toward his house from the back. It’s a good thing the grass and weeds were way too tall and I was stooping real low. Otherwise, I would have been caught. Before I got close to the house, he came out the back door, carrying a small table.
I flattened down and watched. He made three more trips, bringing a chair, a box full of stuff, and then the book. He took a seat and opened the book to the first page.
For half an hour, he just read. Then I heard him say, “This one. Wealth and power.”
He headed back into the house. I realized this was my chance, if I wanted to snatch the book, but I figured it was better to wait and see what he was doing.
He pulled a blanket from the box and spread it on the ground, sprinkled a circle of salt around it from a big blue carton like my mom has in the kitchen cabinet, then started reading words out loud from the book in a way that reminded me of singing. The words didn’t sound like any language I’d ever heard.
I felt the ground tremble.
Something rose from the center of the cloth. It was like a boy made of swirling sludge. He was half the height of Grungy, but broader. His hands ended in claws.
“Gold,” Grungy said. He pointed to a spot next to the cloth.
The creature growled like a cornered dog. Something glittered. I saw a small pile of gold coins on the ground.
“More,” Grungy said.
“Once a day,” the creature said.
“No matter,” Grungy said. “There are
many others I can call. I hope you enjoy company.” He went back to reading.
I didn’t watch him. I watched the creature. It moved to the very edge of the cloth, where the line of salt lay, and glared at Grungy. I had a feeling it wanted to rip him into pieces. I could never have sat there that calmly, reading a book, while that creature watched me.
Eventually, I heard another gasp of satisfaction from Grungy. “Diamonds! With no limit. Perfect.” He got up, went inside, and came back with an empty glass and a pitcher of water. He set the glass on the table, filled it, then set down the pitcher.
I watched as he cast another spell. When he was finished, he reached for the glass of water. But the cuff of his sleeve knocked over the pitcher.
The water splashed across the ground, washing away part of the circle of salt. The circle was broken.
The next part was a blur.
Grungy barely managed to let out a scream before the creature leaped from the cloth and attacked him.
I closed my eyes and pressed my palms hard against my ear. When I opened my eyes, Grungy was dead, sprawled across the ground. I held my breath, afraid the creature would spot me.
But he had other plans. “Fool,” he said as he scooped up the coins. Then he vanished in a dark puff of smoke.
“Wow…”
I was trembling, but I was also excited. Diamonds. That sounded good. I didn’t know how I’d sell them, but I could worry about that later. Or look for a safe spell.
I walked over to the table. I realized I was sweating. My face felt hot. I grabbed the glass and took a drink.
“Okay, let’s see what kind of monster you are,” I said.
I looked at the book, hoping it wasn’t in some strange language. But, except for the spell itself, the book was in English. The letters were fancy, and the spelling was strange. But I could make it out.
At the top of the page, in large letters, was written: SALAMANDER AQUAFARIOUS.
Below that, it read: Will fetch diamonds without limit.
I read on: Salamander Aquafarious is translucent when summoned. It dwells exclusively in fresh water. It is most commonly used by those seeking wealth, though it is also popular among assassins.
